To access the paper that today’s summary is on about, press Here’s the paper

Today we’ve got a truly intriguing piece to explore. Something that blends religion, history, and a hefty slice of politics, yes we are diving into Jesus realpolitic. These two concepts don’t usually hang out in the same sentence, right? Well Allen explores and makes better use of a word once coined by E. P. Sanders – that is “realpolitik” of Jesus. The core question of this paper is remarkably simple but sound. Was Jesus one in a line of Sign Prophets movements re-enacting scripture to bring about a tangible kingdom of God. And what happened when these movements were perceived as a threat? They were usually squashed by the all powerful Roman governors. This is huge because it reframes the narrative of Jesus from just a spiritual leader to a political leader in first century Judaea. What Jesus was trying to do (“gather a crowd to witness a divine event by re-enacting some great scriptural event”) what he attempted to do (“force the end, i. e. To start a new age with Gods help) what happened to Jesus (got caught and executed) , how he got caught (through a spy ring) all happened to other figures such as John the Baptist, the Samaritan Te’heb, the Egyptian Sign Prophet, and other unnamed Prophets in first century Judea. Understanding this may change how you view Jesus and the dynamics of the Roman authorities and the Jewish authorities (High Priest collaborators and spy ring) of the time.

This framework of placing Jesus among the Sign Prophets is methodologically convincing: it allows to overcome both excessively apologetic and sceptical readings, and places Jesus in a typology already known in the Judaism of the Second Temple.

– Roberto Gordillo Castillo (from the Spanish historical Jesus Group).

Jesus being a Sign Prophet is not a new concept but this paper explores the historical practicalities of this concept. Practicalities such that shows how all the same Sign Prophets gathered the people to re-enact a great scriptorial event, and by this re-enacting, expected a divine intervention. Re-enacting great events from the Tanak made these events hugely popular. The oppressed peasants thought their fortunes would be reversed in a new age. Just like Jesus, Jonathan the Weaver was a hero of the poorer classes hoping to improve their lot (War 7.438). Just like Jesus, it was the upper class that ratted him out:

The best catch by Schmidt is that Josephus would have been only one step away from people that actually met Jesus at his trial, this is known from the phrase “first men among us” (Ant. 18.64) i. e. The Jewish aristocrats including the High Priest party, people belonging to Josephus’ class. [1] These High Priest collaborators had their own spy network to rat Jesus out.[2] Something similar had happened Jonathan the Weaver, “those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it.” (War 7.439).[3]

Jesus’s message that the kingdom of God is coming was not just a spiritual message. It was a banner call, bringing the people together, expecting a tangible kingdom in a new age where God would rule instead of the Romans. The Roman authorities could not ignore this and through their spy rings and the spy rings of the High Priest would prevent these planned events to take place. The same Sign Prophet plan of action was to gather a crowd to re-enact a great spiritual event and expect divine intervention. The crowds that followed the same prophet thought the events would actually happen! Events like the splitting of the Jordan, or the great big walls around the city of Jerusalem falling, like those of Jericho, that all these events would actually happen! To the Romans these re-enactments were more than harmless spiritual acts, they saw them as threats and put down these movements swiftly. (In the case of the Egyptian Sign Prophet the fears of the Roman governor proved correct as a major battle ensued). All these Sign Prophets, such as Jesus faced execution because of their apocalyptic beliefs. They made all the governors nervous. Movements were quickly put down even before they got off the ground to execute their plan of action. (Theudas never got to the place where he was going to split the Jordan). Jesus trying to get some divine intervention at the Temple scene (possibly to improve Temple workings) was similar to the Samaritan Te’heb who tried to revive the Temple at Gerizim. These sign troublemakers were perceived as direct threats to Roman authority and were caught in an intricate web of political intrigue. This sheds new light on Jesus’s execution between two bandits. By studying other similar movements to Jesus, as reported by Josephus, we get a realistic reconstruction of some basic history that does not seem to be related by traditional means. The gospels in their efforts to keep Jesus innocent fail to relate why Jesus was in Jerusalem, what the hell was he doing there? What did he do to deserve crucifixion. By putting all the blame onto the Jewish authorities (and not just some of the blame for ratting Jesus out, after all it takes two to tango- Jesus initiated some action that got him caught and executed), the gospels really covered up the fact of some basic history, like Jesus gathering a crowd to re-enact a scripture event, trying to force a new age. These historical events have been reworked in the gospel accounts. Yet the real events are included in the gospels but are broken up to cause a disconnect. In another paper, I showed the gospel stretched out the events that Jesus did that day, all which helped to keep him innocent in the gospel reader eyes, but really Jesus gathered the crowd to cause trouble and this is the real reason he got executed.

The events that the gospels stretched out but probably all happened on the same day were- 

Jesus gathering a crowd, leading them onto Jerusalem (Triumphal entry) and possibly onto the Temple (Temple scene) and ending in execution (arrest scene and crucifixion) , was typical of these charismatic prophets in this time period.

In fact John moved the Temple scene far off from the arrest scene as Mark had not moved it far enough. By separating these two events causes a disconnect- so you would not think Jesus brought on his own execution by making a move causing trouble in the Temple. This all helped to keep Jesus innocent, John offers a silly reason for Jesus’ crucifixion, to satisfy a narrative reason as Jesus can’t get crucified for literally nothing – the raising of Lazarus.

Want to know more? Just read the paper.

---

[1] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the one called Christ (Oxford , 2025).

[2] David Allen, Jesus Realpolitik, JHC 20.2, forthcoming.

[3] The quote is an Extract from a forthcoming Paper in the JHC– David Allen “Josephus on Jesus, New Evidence for the One called ‘Certain Man’”  

Just noticed that in the academia site is starting to do AI summaries of papers uploaded to the site. These summaries are quite good and handy especially if we are up to our tits in work and too busy to do blogs. The ai can be a little bit creepy as it pretends to be a human sometimes, it tries too hard giving us false memories, telling us of it’s times in Oxford. That would creep anybody out as we know it’s only AI and not an actual human. That aside I do think the summaries are good as they sum up the basic history I think everybody should know about Jesus. It sums up what I’m doing here and what I am discovering after my eight years of research who Jesus actually was, so I will reproduce the four separate AI summaries of four of my papers that really do show who Jesus actually was in history. (This research has produced three peer review papers, one SBL paper and a whole clatter of papers for Robert Prices journal to give it a boost). The image that the Christian church portrays leaves out the gritty dirty details, details that later history tries to smooth over. So the first summary is on my paper Jesus and the Sign Prophet Hypothesis so here is the summary:

We’re diving into a fascinating and pretty provocative piece of scholarship by David Allen, the Sign Prophet Hypothesis for Jesus. What is the driving question from this paper – simply put – Jesus was one of the Sign Prophets active in first century whose actions tried to prompt God to usher in a new age. Rather than seeing Jesus as a total outlier, the utterly unique founder of an unprecedented movement, Allen says hey – Let’s look at how Jesus and his followers might fit into a much wider pattern that was pretty common in his region and era. Why does that matter for you? Well, it totally transforms how you think of religious and social change, it shows how across history, movements grew and sometimes got crushed when people tried to hope for a better world right now, not someday. Allen’s core claim is that there were a lot of charismatic core leaders called Sign Prophets who gathered crowds promising God would act in some spectacular way often re-enacting, biblical miracles, parting rivers, toppling walls and often promising new freedom or justice. Allen places Jesus in the same bucket as figures like Theudas or the Egyptian Sign prophet. [As ai gets some details wrong I’ll just add what it should have said here. Theudas by splitting the Jordan hoped to transform the world of the oppressed peasants in an apocalyptic way, flipping their unfortunates into the fortunes of the upper classes. That is what the new age promised in the banner call- The Kingdom of God is coming. In the new age God would be in charge, not the Romans, God would ensure FairPlay for the peasants. These crowds that were gathered believed the instigator was a prophet, that he spoke for God. He convinced the crowds he led, that God turned up in momentous times in their history according to the Torah, and argued that God would turn up now in their time of need.] Many Sign Prophets led people out into the wilderness, Rallying the poor and oppressed. Promising God would turn up to transform their brutal status quo in the new age. Allen discusses the methods these Sign Prophets would use drawing on the collective memory contained in their history recorded in the Tanakh. Think Joshua’s conquest, Moses splitting the sea and Joshua at Jericho. They tried to replay those moments, hoping to force the end. That is get God to intervene now. According to Allen, Jesus riding into Jerusalem, making a ruckus in the Temple, leading his followers with high expectations matches patterns seen in these other Sign prophet movements.

Of course Allen is careful to point out that historians do not have access to the real Jesus and he encourages everyone including you to treat reconstructions as models, helpful but not absolute. With careful use of Josephus, Dead Sea Scrolls and Paul’s letters we can triangulate what actually happened. By recognising the gospels are carefully crafted stories softening the gritty history of Jesus’ utter failure we can get an idea of what was going on. Historical memories used by the evagelists can be determined from Josephus. One core insight is that the authorities, the high priests and the Roman governors were always watching for trouble with their spy rings. They had webs of informers and as soon as charismatic leader gathered the crowd around them they would easily stamp them out. Often brutally in just a day or two. Jesus’ arrest and execution fits this playbook pretty well. Allen draws on memory studies to show how later evangelist reshaped this history. The gospels wanted to soften Romes image and emphasise Jesus as a misunderstood innocent victim. That’s why the gospels stretch out events turning a single event into a multi scene drama. To give you an example of how the historical memories were crafted, we will give you the example of Judas. The many nameless informers do not make a good narrative for the gospel of Mark so he may have morphed all these into one single insider character- Judas Iscariot.

By comparing  Sign Prophets, we see common themes, a belief in divine imminent intervention, big dreams of cosmic reversal and yeah, a constant dance with political authorities. All these hopes were shaped by ordinary people struggling under oppressive rules.

Here is a second summary on my paper, Jesus and the Sign Prophets:

Allen takes a hard look at the historical Jesus but not the way you are used to hearing about him. Instead of treating Jesus as a totally unique phenomenon, Allen compares him to a broader category called the Sign Prophets, a term established by earlier scholars such as P. W. Barnett. To see Jesus as one among several Sign Prophets active around the time of Roman occupation of Judea, places Jesus into his actual historical context. If you really want to understand Jesus and what kind of movement he led, shouldn’t you look at other similar prophetic figures that existed at this time? Theudas, the unnamed Egyptian Sign Prophet or the unnamed Samaritan Te’heb (restorer) would gather a crowd promise some dramatic Sign or act of deliverance and you won’t be shocked by this, they would always end up with a bleak outcome- Roman authorities did not appreciate folks who gathered big excitable crowds promising divine intervention. The crowd gathered believed in real hope and truly believed that the biblical re-enactment by the Sign Prophets active around this time, would actually happen just as it did in the past according to their scriptures. It is better to see Jesus as a product of his time, immersed in hope and desperation. Really believing God could help their hopeless situations.

Now for the third summary on my paper- Josephus on Jesus, New evidence for the one called ‘certain man’ :

David Allen shines a spotlight on a fascinating variant, one piece of textual variant which may tip the scales in this debate- this is the ‘certain man’ reading. In really early Syriac manuscripts [the Syriac translations are the earliest we have of a physical copy of the TF]  of Eusebius Church History, instead of saying Jesus the passage starts out calling him a ‘certain man’ – wow right, that’s a lot less specific, and it kinda lines up with Josephus’ vibe when he talks about other trouble making prophets. Like the ‘Egyptian sign prophet (not named) or the Samaritan Te’heb (also not named). These Prophets who stirred up the people and usually ended up badly. Why is that phrase ‘certain man’ so important, well if Eusebius the church historian who quoted or maybe edited Josephus, had invented this passage from thin air, or made it up to help his fellow Christian’s [in combatting the anti-Christian polimicists] you’d think he’d call Jesus by name, right, but instead this earlier Syriac translation possibly made while Eusebius was still alive uses a kinda vague anonymity almost like Josephus’ standard way of describing controversial figures. It gets more interesting when the ‘certain man’ is not just in the Syriac manuscript, Allen points out a similar variant popping up in the Slavonic and he shows support for the ‘certain – tis’ reading in Greek manuscripts and Armenian manuscripts of Eusebius. So there is a real pile of manuscript support here. … So what’s the big take away here. When we look at Josephus and this crucial Testimonium Flavianum passage, the evidence that early versions said more generically ‘certain man’ – the story wasn’t about some uniquely special figure singled out for worship, but more about how Josephus always wrote about messianic claimants, just like that Egyptian or Theudas or Jonathan the Weaver, just troublemakers in a long crowded list. Josephus was not in the business of glorifying Sign Prophets [but ultimately saw them (along with the maladadministration of local Roman govenors) as one of the root causes for the outbreak of the Roman Jewish War of 66-70 CE.] The paper argues that the most original version of the passage probably described Jesus a ‘certain man’ and that phrase fits Josephus pattern for describing minor disruptive prophets and that later scribes started adding Jesus’ name, tweaking the passage and layering on more Christian ideas [creeds].

And here is a fascinating extract from this paper:

The best catch by Schmidt is that Josephus would have been only one step away from people that actually met Jesus at his trial, this is known from the phrase “first men among us” i. e. The Jewish aristocrats including the High Priest party, people belonging to Josephus’ class. [*] These High Priest collaborators had their own spy network to rat Jesus out.[1] Something similar had happened Jonathan the Weaver, “those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it.” (War 7.439).

---

[*] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the one called Christ, (Oxford, 2025).

[1] David Allen, Jesus Realpolitik, JHC 20.2, forthcoming.

 

And this summary is from my paper How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus:

He aligns Jesus with Jewish Sign Prophets, charismatic figures of the era who promised eschatological signs and divine interventions. They often led followers into re-enactments of great scriptural events expectant of divine intervention that never quite materialized. This characterization offers intriguing parallels between Jesus and other figures such as Theudas or the Egyptian who Josephus also wrote about. Allen’s reconstructs how Josephus might have originally described Jesus suggesting layers of later Christian tampering which obscured the original portrayal. He discusses how Christians interpolations, additions in other words might have seeped into the passage over the centuries. For instance some Christian scribes added phrasing like “he was the Christ” [missing from Origen, Pseudo-Hegisippus and the Slavonic] to re-enforce theological narratives. These additions would not reflect Josephus’ view of Jesus. Digging deeper to get the real Josephan view of Jesus, you will find many of the Sign Prophets promised radical change with divine acts similar to the Exodus or other pivotal events in Israel’s history described in the Torah. These promises were expected to signal the end times. Allen’s work suggests Jesus could have been perceived similarly, leading followers to Jerusalem in a re-enactment further backed by eschatological hope. Early forms of the TF did not even name Jesus which is similar to how Josephus described these other Sign Prophets- [he hardly even knew their names. He could name one or two, but didn’t know the names of the rest]. The opening of the TF, Jesus was described as a ‘certain man’. To enquire about Jesus through the lens of Josephus invites us to examine history in its raw unpolished form.

The Testimonium Flavianum (TF) has become centre stage in historical Jesus research again! This is mainly due to the collapse of the TF skeptics who argue for a wholesale interpolation by Eusebius. That is no longer an academic go go. As I have stated in my latest paper,

“As far as this paper is concerned that debate is over. The variant ‘certain man’ as seen in a very early Syriac variant blows that hypothesis out of the water [contained in MS British Library Add. 14,639]. The Syriac translater was translating Eusebius Church History book shows us that “certain man” was originally written by Eusebius. [This Syriac manuscript witness is centuries earlier than the Greek manuscript witnesses]. If Eusebius made up the TF from scratch he would have written “Jesus”. This shows that Eusebius had used an earlier form of the TF circulating at that time as his source.”[1]

Over recent posts I have reconstructed this original TF and one line that exists in the textus receptus (i. e. the extant passage in the Greek Antiquities manuscripts) and definitely existed in the original TF was:

And when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross

καὶ αὐτὸν ἐνδείξει (endeiksei) τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν παρ᾿ ἡμῖν σταυρῷ (stauro) ἐπιτετιμηκότος (epitetimekotos) Πιλάτου (Pilatou) (Ant. 18.64).

The balanced distinction between endeiksei (verb endeichnumi) writ of indictment, attributed to Jewish leaders, and the act of awarding sentence (epitiman stauro) is not likely to be the work of a Christian interpolator …Such an interpolator would scarcely have been content with reproaching Jewish leaders for drawing up an indictment against Jesus whilst stating that the imposition of sentence by crucifixion was an act of Roman justice.[2]

The best catch by Schmidt is that Josephus would have been only one step away from people that actually met Jesus at his trial. This is known from the phrase “first men among us” i. e. The Jewish aristocrats including the High Priest party, people belonging to Josephus’ class.[3] These High Priest collaborators had their own spy network to rat Jesus out.[4] The govenors knew through their own spy networks what was going on and easily prevented all these Sign Prophet movements and their plan of action – usually any actions initiated by the Sign prophet had a bad ending.[5]

This authentic line of the original TF matches another comment made by Josephus about another Sign Prophet. As I observered in my latest paper- “Something similar had happened Jonathan the Weaver, “those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it.” (War 7.439). This is similar to what happened in the TF, “when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross” (Ant. 18.64).[6]

In that same paper I identified another original phrase to the TF and that is “certain man.” This was a common way for Josephus to describe many of the Sign Prophets he reports about. This would be another connection of the original TF to other Sign Prophet passages found in Josephus.

As I have given examples of this where Josephus hardly even knew their names:

[The] ‘Egyptian’ (War 2.261-263; Ant. 20.169-172) who led a revolt of thousands according to War or 600 according to Antiquities and yet he could only call him the ‘Egyptian’. Same goes for the ‘Samaritan’. (Ant 18.85-87). He was known as ‘“A man who made light of mendacity’ (Ant. 18.85). The Sign Prophet under Festus was known as ‘certain man sorcerer’ (tinos anthrōpon goētos) (Ant. 20.188). The earlier reading of the TF opened with “There arose about this time a certain man” (Ant. 18.63 original reading as witnessed by Syriac EH variant in MS British Library Add. 14639, Slavonic II.IX.3(b)).[7] The Slavonic has also preserved the earlier reading of the opening line of the Baptist passage, “And at that time a certain man” Slavonic II.VII.2(b).[8] This all shows the comparative passages with the TF ( i. e. The other Sign Prophet passages) are very similar to the original TF penned by Josephus. They were all very minor figures where Josephus hardly even knew their names.

This solves the puzzle as noted by Schmidt why Josephus did not mention Jesus in the War book[9], Josephus thought no more of Jesus than what he thought of other similar Sign Prophets such as Theudas (Ant. 20.97-99) and the ‘Samaritan’ Te’heb (Ant. 18.85-87)

Another puzzle brought up by Paula Fredrikson, of Jesus being crucified alone and his group was not like the others is false as we have historical examples that this was nothing new.[10] – Theudas head was displayed alone in Jerusalem (Ant. 20.98).

And this presumption that Jesus was crucified alone cannot be taken for granted as Bermejo-Rubio has suggested that the others crucified with Jesus (according to the gospels), could have been his followers.[11]

More puzzles answered from the TF and Sign Prophet passages are easily answered such as what was Jesus doing in Jerusalem, what was his plan of action and how did he end up on a cross. By triangulating the Sign prophet passages and the gospels, this becomes apparent. In the gospels, Jesus expecting the Temple to be rebuilt without human hands is very Sign Prophet territory there. It is similar to the unlikely claims of other Sign Prophets such as Theudas saying he would part the Jordan (Ant. 20.97) or the Egyptian saying Jerusalem walls would fall (Ant. 20.170).

The study of the TF and Sign Prophet passages also helps to explain the rise of Christianity. The plan of action Jesus wanted to achieve is that God would turn up, this was to “force the end” – force god to turn up in a new age. Typically both the Sign Prophets and their followers were brought up on stories on how God had intervened on behalf of the Jewish people, “God had once parted the sea, had produced manna in the wilderness, had caused the sun to stand still, had brought down the walls of Jericho.”^[12] Josephus shows many movements very like “Proto-Christians” actually existed, making it no surprise that a movement like Christianity arose in the aftermath of Temple Destruction. When Solomon Zeitlin read the passage on the Sign Prophets under Felix it led him to note: “Apocalyptists who are the forerunners of the Christian movement.”[13] Josephus said of this particular movement – “men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of Divine inspiration … went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty.” (War 2.258-60). Like most movements that gathered a crowd, this movement like the other Sign Prophet movements made the Roman govenors nervous and Felix “thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt” (War 2.260). Antipas had the same fear of John the Baptist, “Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion” (Ant. 18.117). After the ‘Samaritan’ Sign Prophets fiasco, an embassy went to Vitellius, to complain Pilate to his boss-  “for that they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans, but to escape the violence of Pilate.” (Ant. 18.88). So here again Pilate had suspected revolt, and Pilate would have reported that to Vitellius. Thus you have the Samaritan envoys denying this. The same would have happened Jesus’ gathering, Pilate would have suspected revolt and sent troops. At least this historical reality is reflected in John 18:12 where he claims Romans soldiers speira arrested Jesus.

All these movements made the various Roman govenors nervous and through their spy networks were stopped in their tracks before they could implement their plan of Action.

How these Sign Prophets gathered their crowds was from convincing the crowds of their skills as a prophet like Moses. This made Josephus describe many of the Sign Prophets as a gōes. Theudas under Fadus was described as γόης τις (“certain magician”)(Ant. 20.97). Under Felix a load of Sign Prophets were described as γόητες καὶ ἀπατεῶνες (“imposters and deceivers”) (Ant. 20.167). Also under Felix the Egyptian Sign Prophet was referred to as γόης καὶ προφήτου – goēs κai prophēton (sorcerer and prophet) (War 2.261). Josephus described the Sign Prophet under Festus who promised them freedom and divine deliverance from their miseries as a τινος ἀνθρώπου γόητος – tinos anthrōpon goētos (‘certain man sorcerer’) (Ant. 20.188). Originally Josephus would have seen Jesus as a gōes (wizard) and this would be reflected in the phrase ‘doer of strange works.’ This phrase may be original but read negatively. The anti-Christian polemicists may have got the impression that Jesus was a γόης (goēs) from the original TF containing παραδόξων. Celsus picks out that exact word describing Jesus as such in Contra Cels. 1.6. Josephus describes the miracles of Pharoahs court magicians as performing a παράδοξον before Moses by turning their staffs into snakes (Ant. 2.285–6). Other anti Christians also suspected Jesus of magic such as the Jew interlocutor of Justin Martyr (Dial. 69.7).

Here is the opening of another paper of mine:[14]

All the Sign Prophets gathered a crowd to re-enact some great scriptural event. Two obvious examples reported in Josephus were Theudas splitting the Jordan (Ant. 20.97; cf. Exod. 12:29-14:30; Josh. 3-4) or the Egyptian saying the walls would fall (Ant. 20.170; cf. Josh. 6:20). The gospel of Mark hints at a similar type of claim Jesus made of destroying and restoring the Temple (Mark 14:57-58) and the gospel of John actually puts it into Jesus’s mouth (John 2:19). Destroying the Temple and expecting it to be rebuilt without human hands (Mark 14:58, Acts 7:48)  is very Sign Prophet territory there. Therefore the gospel of Johns understanding that Jesus made a claim like this is very fitting to the historical context and was likely. As Paul Anderson has noted, “two Markan passages appear to corroborate knowledge of a Jesus saying that is found only in John,”[15]

The first indication of the Temple built by Gods hands and therefore we could infer not by human hands is in the song of Moses and Miriam-

You will bring them in and plant them
on the mountain of your inheritance—
the place, Lord, you made for your dwelling,
the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established (Exodus 15:17).

The Temple is built there by Gods hands.

From the time of Ezekiel visions a new Temple were envisioned (Ezekiel 40-48). Or the heavenly Temple in 1 En. 14:8–25 could have been envisioned. The Temple scroll also fantasised about a new better Temple (11QT). 

1 Enoch 90:28-29 suggests a Temple not built by human hands, The Temple Scroll suggests it too – (11Q19-21, 4Q524, 4Q365a)

Many actions of the Sign Prophets actually cohere quite well with the actions of Jesus. John the Baptist gathered a crowd making Antipas nervous and cutting off his head. The Samaritan merely wanted to revive the Temple cult at Mt. Gerizim just as Jesus who had wanted a rebuilt pure Temple! Both incidents ended in disaster. Theudas was re-enacting the Exodus hoping God would turn up, like the Baptist he got his head cut off. Jesus gathering a crowd in Jerusalem resulted in his execution. The ‘Egyptian’ Sign prophet gathering at the mount of Olives, re-enacted Zechariah’s prophecy that the feet of the messiah would touch the ground there. All these actions were in keeping with their apocalyptic view of a new age starting. This new age would inaugurate the “kingdom of God” that Jesus had told his followers that was coming soon! Obviously to the Roman authorities this Kingdom of God is a no no, as the Kingdom of Rome is the realpolitik.

All the Sign Prophets were expecting divine intervention as it makes no sense to go against the might of the Romans with an unorganized band rabble. It was a common theme in the Tanakh to expect divine intervention in battle, such as the Lord sending hailstone against the enemy (Josh. 10:11) or the sun standing still (Josh. 10:13). The Sign Prophets all expected divine intervention to overcome their adversaries.

Here is a realistic reconstruction of what Josephus originally wrote about Jesus before it had been touched up: (Black text is reconstruction, Red text is commentary):

There arose about this time a certain man, a sophist and agitator. He was a doer of strange works.

[some eschatological sign similar to other sign prophets could have been the following: 

For they said he was a prophet and the Temple would be destroyed and restored in three days]

Many of the Judaeans, and also many of the Galilean element, he led to himself in a tumult; he was desirous of Kingship: Many were roused, thinking that thereby the tribe could free themselves from Roman hands. 

[Josephus may have mentioned Jesus as a pseudo prophet here but it has been replaced with the Emmaus passage found in Luke.]

[So Pilate sent forces, footmen to slew them and seize a number of them along with the certain imposter.] 

And when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross. Yet this tribe has until now not disappeared.

(Reconstructed model Ant. 18.63-64)

 

What my friends say!

Roberto Gordillo Castillo (from the Spanish historical Jesus Group):

Dave Allen’s article represents a remarkable contribution to the study of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), since it offers solid arguments to consider this passage, once purified of Christian interpolations, as a privileged window towards the understanding of the movement of Jesus within the broader context of the so-called Sign Prophets described by Flavius Josephus.

Allen manages to place Jesus of Nazareth in the same category as figures such as Theudas, the Egyptian Sign Prophet or the Samaritan Te’heb, all of them apocalyptic characters who mobilised crowds with symbolic gestures intended to reproduce biblical events and “force divine intervention.” This framework is methodologically convincing: it allows to overcome both excessively apologetic and sceptical readings, and places Jesus in a typology already known in the Judaism of the Second Temple.

The recovery of expressions such as “a certain man” or the reference to the condemnation by Pilate “at the behest of the first men among us” reinforces the idea that Josephus treated him like other minor Messianic leaders, without singularising him or giving him greater relief than the rest of the Sign Prophets. This frame also explains why Joseph does not mention it in the Jewish War: for him, Jesus was not more significant than those other ephemeral characters.

Dynamics of elites and espionage networks:

Allen’s analysis highlights a fundamental aspect to understand the realpolitik of Roman Judaea: the active collaboration of Jewish priestly and aristocratic elites in the repression of prophetic movements. As shown by the parallels with other cases related by Josephus, these elites used networks of informants and whistleblowers to detect possible agitations, denouncing them to the Roman governors before they turned into open revolts.

In this sense, the accusation against Jesus by the “first men among us” reflects a recurring pattern: the collaborationist elites quickly suffocated the apocalyptic initiatives that could destabilise the fragile peace with Rome. The TF, read in this way, fits with the policy of repressive prevention characteristic of the Pax Romana, which combined systematic surveillance with exemplary measures such as public executions.

Contributions to the understanding of early Christianity

The framing of Jesus as a Sign Prophet also offers a convincing explanation of the genetics of Christianity. Similar movements, which appealed to foundational miracles and the imminence of the Kingdom of God, were already circulating in Judaea in the first century. As Allen points out, Christianity did not emerge ex nihilo, but as a variant of those apocalyptic currents, which only after the destruction of the Temple and the failure of other figures acquired a greater projection.

Dave Allen’s work demonstrates quite clearly that the Testimonium Flavianum, without Christian interpolations, is a useful and coherent source to place Jesus in his real historical context: that of the Sign Prophets of the Second Temple, guarded and repressed by a combination of collaborationist aristocracy and Roman power. This approach allows us to understand the dynamics of resistance movements, the role of Jewish elites as guarantors of imperial stability and the functioning of “Roman peace” as a peace sustained by preventive force and social control.

Miguel Carpio García also from the Spanish group:

Made a brilliant observation about the first set of martyrs, those gathered by Jesus who may have been slaughtered were forgotten about. It is only the later generations of followers who were executed in the name of Jesus that are remembered.

Dave, the whole of your work solves some of the most complicated difficulties that can be presented about the historical Jesus from an exegetic and social history point of view. To try to move forward, I propose two items that, in my opinion, are pending. Namely: 1) on the ‘collective’ crucifixion, is there any possibility that two of his supporters who, crucified with him, were ignored and vilified later by his movement were arrested in the brawl of the ‘arrest of Jesus’? Man, Fernando Bermejo Rubio holds it, although in the 2023 edition of his book that I have (I have almost everything that is published about historical Jesus), he limits himself to affirming an ‘objective connection’, namely, or that they were ‘disciples of Jesus’, or that they were ‘sympathizers’ or that they were from ‘a different dissident group’ (that they coordinated their action with that of Jesus or that they simply coincided in time?), page. 156. Conceivable, but very very unlikely. Well, I don’t know any historical social movement, do you know any? That despised its martyrs (how else to qualify those who are crucified for defending the master? No how wrong they were). Calling them, Mark and Matthew, lestés, bandit, not revolutionary concept that did not exist, but gang thief. Or kakourgos-criminal, Luke, thief or murderer. Another thing is that the Jewish aristocracy and, therefore, the temple authorities will apply those terms to those close to a caudillo or popular leader. But their own supporters? It doesn’t make sense. Much more plausible is that, to the hegemonic of the empire, the work was accumulated, in the flammable climate of the Passover of Jerusalem, with various crimes of alleged sedition or attack that, at all, require several simultaneous riots. 2) It is clear where Theudas gets the division of the waters of the Jordan or the Egyptian that the walls would fall or that the feet of YHWH would sit on the olive mountain, etc. But where is Jesus from that the fallen temple would be rebuilt in 3 days by non-human hands? By the way, the other signs, nothing supernatural, that Jesus represented at the entrance to Jerusalem (Zechariah 9:9) or in the expulsion of the merchants from the temple (Zechariah 14:21) and led his own to wait, more than the fall of the temple, for the arrival of the God on the mountain of olive trees (Zechariah 14:4). I repeat the question, the sign of the reconstruction of the temple demolished in 3 days (which I am certain that Jesus presented), what great biblical event or prophecy recreates?

Some of my own thoughts:

It took me 7 years consisting 1000’s of books just to get a basic history. The next quest guys are right- you will only get an outline such as basic things like he was a Jew (without knowing what type of Jew he was).
You also find out that he gathered a crowd, thought with Gods help he was going to start a new age. He was able to gather a crowd easily by making use of and re-enacting scriptural events. Many tried this and were easily squashed. Like so many others like him he was ratted out by the collaborators and was strung up as a warning for others not to threaten Roman security.

---

[1] David Allen, “Josephus on Jesus, New Evidence for the one called a ‘certain man’”, JHC 2026 forthcoming.

[2] Paul Winter, On The Trial of Jesus, (De Gruyter 1974), p. 40. 

[3] T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, pp.6-7.

[4] David Allen, Jesus Realpolitik, JHC 20.2, forthcoming.

[5] see section “3. Spies, Informers, Horsemen and Cavalry!” Of my paper Jesus realpolitik, JHC, forthcoming.

[6] David Allen, “Josephus on Jesus, New Evidence for the one called a ‘certain man’”, JHC 2026 forthcoming.

[7] Henry Leeming and Kate Leeming (eds.), The Slavonic Version of Josephus’s Jewish War, A Synoptic Comparison of the English Translation by H. St. J. Thackeray, with the Critical Edition by N. A. Meščerskij of the Slavonic Version in the Vilna Manuscript translated into English by Henry Leeming and L. Osinkina, Arbeiten Zur Geschichte Des Antiken Judentums und des antigen Judentums und des Urchistentums 46, Boston: Brill 2003, p.261.

[8] Leeming and Leeming (eds.), The Slavonic Version of Josephus’s Jewish War, p.248.

[9] T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, pp.265-267.

[10] Paula Fredrikson, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, (Knopf Doubleday, 1999), p.244

[11] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, “(Why) Was Jesus the Galilean Crucified Alone? Solving a False Conundrum”, JSNT 36.2,  pp.127–54.

[12] E. P. Sanders, The Historical figure of Jesus, (Allen Lane Penguin Press, 1993), p.262.

[13] Solomon Zeitlin, “The Christ Passage in Josephus”,  Jewish Quarterly Review 18, (1928),  p.236.

[14] David Allen, Sign Prophet Hypothesis for Jesus, JHC forthcoming.

[15] Paul Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus, Modern Foundations Reconsidered, (t & t Clark, 2^nd edition 2007), p.160.

This paper brings the Testimonium Flavianum scholarship right up to date. It recognises the earlier Syriac and Latin versions of the TF are much more valuable for recognising the earlier form of the TF. The physical manuscripts of the Syriac and Latin manuscripts are centuries earlier than that of their Greek counterparts. Therefore an earlier form of the TF, the harder readings such as “certain man” is recognised through textual criticism.

Here is the academia podcast on my paper:

Podcast

Hey everyone, welcome back to in-depth with academia, I’m Richard Price CEO of academia.edu and today I’m really excited to dig into a fascinating piece of research by David Allen. The title of the paper is “Josephus on Jesus, New Evidence for the one called ‘certain man’”. Ok, maybe you heard of the Testimonium Flavianum or TF for short, it’s that famous passage in the works of the Jewish historian that seems to mention Jesus. Christians get super interested, skeptics get super skeptical and historians get tangled up in endless debates about what was originally written. David Allen’s paper isn’t just another round of- “Did Josephus really mention Jesus?” No it jumps right into the core of this question. What exactly did the earliest version of this passage say about Jesus and how reliable are the words that have come down to us? A lot of people, Believers, academics and interested history buffs rely on this passage as an outside the Bible reference to Jesus. Over the centuries as the TF was copied and translated, and maybe tampered with, differences crept in, some may be major but as we peel back the layers to discover what was added is like playing detective with ancient manuscripts. So anyway David Allen shines a spotlight on a fascinating variant, one piece of textual variant which may tip the scales in this debate- this is the ‘certain man’ reading. In really early Syriac manuscripts [the Syriac translations are the earliest we have of a physical copy of the TF]  of Eusebius Church History, instead of saying Jesus the passage starts out calling him a ‘certain man’ – wow right, that’s a lot less specific, and it kinda lines up with Josephus’ vibe when he talks about other trouble making prophets. Like the ‘Egyptian sign prophet or the Samaritan Te’heb. These Prophets who stirred up the people and usually ended up badly. Why is that phrase ‘certain man’ so important, well if Eusebius the church historian who quoted or maybe edited Josephus, had invented this passage from thin air, or made it up to help his fellow Christian’s [in combatting the anti-Christian polimicists] you’d think he’d call Jesus by name, right, but instead this earlier Syriac translation possibly made while Eusebius was still alive uses a kinda vague anonymity almost like Josephus’ standard way of describing controversial figures. It gets more interesting when the ‘certain man’ is not just in the Syriac manuscript, Allen points out a similar variant popping up in the Slavonic and he shows support for the ‘certain – tis’ reading in Greek manuscripts and Armenian manuscripts of Eusebius. So there is a real pile of manuscript support here. … So what’s the big take away here. When we look at Josephus and this crucial Testimonium Flavianum passage the evidence that early versions said more generically ‘certain man’ – the story wasn’t about some uniquely special figure singled out for worship, but more about how Josephus always wrote about messianic claimants, just like that Egyptian or Theudas or Jonathan the Weaver, just troublemakers in a long crowded list. Josephus was not in the business of glorifying Sign Prophets [but ultimately saw them (along with the maladadministration of local Roman govenors) as one of the root causes for the outbreak of the Roman Jewish War of 66-70 CE.] The paper argues that the most original version of the passage probably described Jesus a ‘certain man’ and that phrase fits Josephus pattern for describing minor disruptive prophets and that later scribes started adding Jesus’ name, tweaking the passage and layering on more Christian ideas [creeds].

Why is this important, because if we base our history on later embellishments, we may miss how ordinary or controversial Jesus seemed to Josephus’ contemporaries. Allen wants us to reflect how our sources get shaped and reshaped through history sometimes re-forcing later beliefs instead of showing us the gritty past as it really was.

Here is a new paper I have submitted for Bobs Journal, enjoy.

https://www.academia.edu/143004444/Josephus_on_Jesus_New_Evidence_for_the_one_called_a_certain_man_

Here is a post showing the updates I did to an old post of mine – The Original Testimonium.

This is necessary as the TF does not only show that Jesus was a historical figure but also shows who he was and his comparable figures – namely the Sign Prophets.

When it comes to Josephus mention of Jesus, the Testimonial Flavianum (TF) we find the passage severely tampered, jam packed with Christian creeds, so much so that I have found four redactional layers! Of late Thomas Schmidt like Whealey before him try to keep the TF intact but really they only get it back to what it was like after Eusebius tampered with it. Schmidt conveniently papers over that the phrase “He was the Christ” is not in Pseudo-Hegesippus rendition of the TF in his book De Excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (”On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem”).[*] This is a christianized document, so much so, he even has the Jewish leaders proclaiming Jesus as God. In the words of Paget, “It is not easy to see why he should have omitted any reference to Jesus as the Messiah if it was in his version of the received text. After all, he appears to exaggerate the significance of the TF, most blatantly in his claim that even the leaders of the synagogue acknowledged Jesus to be God.” [*1] Schmidt is also puzzled that Jerome never uses the most pro-Christian creed, “Jerome never mentions the most pro-Christian statements allegedly present within the TF, especially Jesus rising from the dead, even though he points out positive material about James the apostle and John the Baptist in other parts of the Antiquities. [*2]

Both Whealey and Schmidt only get the more original version of the TF back to what Eusebius originally wrote, as witnessed by the Syriac and Latin translations of Eusebius. These Syriac and Latin manuscripts are centuries earlier than their Greek physical manuscripts. Scribes after Eusebius tampered with the Greek manuscripts to add things like Jesus’ name. This is proved from the variant ‘certain man’ found in one of the Syriac manuscripts discussed below. The best catch by Schmidt is that Josephus would have been only one step away from people that actually met Jesus at his trial, this is known from the phrase “first men among us” i. e. The Jewish aristocrats including the High Priest party, people belonging to Josephus’ class. These High Priest collaborators had their own spy network to rat Jesus out. [*3] Something similar had happened Jonathan the Weaver, “those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it.” (War 7.439).

How we know Eusebius was working with a TF circulating at that time is due to a very early variant ‘certain man’ in place of the word ‘Jesus’ found in one of the Syriac translations of Eusebius. The Syriac translater was translating Eusebius Church History book shows us that “certain man” (the harder reading doing textual criticism) was originally written by Eusebius. If Eusebius made up the TF from scratch he would have written “Jesus”. This shows that Eusebius had used an earlier form of the TF circulating at that time as his source. This is the smoking gun- Eusebius did not write it!

Having the variant ‘certain man’ was very common for Josephus. So we actually have in this phrase what Josephus originally wrote! Josephus often does not name minor figures such as Sign Prophets and other messianic figures. Case in mind is the ‘Egyptian’ (War 2.261-263; Ant. 20.169-172) who led a revolt of thousands according to War or 600 according to Antiquities and yet he could only call him the ‘Egyptian’. Same goes for the ‘Samaritan’. (Ant 18.85-87). He was known as ‘“A man … who made light of mendacity’ (Ant. 18.85). The Sign Prophet under Festus was known as ‘certain man sorcerer’ (tinos anthrōpon goētos) (Ant. 20.188). As the Slavonic witness attests, the earlier reading of the Baptist passage has, “And at that time a certain man.” (Slavonic II.VII.2(b)). And as this blog shows the earlier reading of the TF opened with “There arose about this time a certain man” (Ant. 18.63 original reading).

Let us now show the real significance of the TF by reproducing all the Sign Prophet passages.

Sign Prophet Passages

Jesus Christ

Some important variants….

[About this time there arose a certain man] Syriac EH– MS British Library Add. 14,639 (6th century); Slavonic War II.IX.3(b)

[Thought to be the Christ] Jerome, On Illustrious Men 13, MS Vat.Reg.LAT. 2077 (6th- 7th century); Rufinus, History of the Church MSS Clem 6383 (eight century), Clem 6381 (ninth century); Agabius, Book of History AKA Arabic TF; Michael the Syrian, Record of Times.

(P.S. remember the Latin manuscripts of Jerome and Rufinus are earlier than the Greek manuscripts, the earliest of which are 10th century).

[phrase missing!!] Ps-Hegesippus, Excidio, MS Ambrosianus C 105 inf. (sixth century ce); Origen, Cels 1.47; Malalas, Chronicle; Russian Chronograher, Slavonic

This argues that the Slavonic on top of using Malalas, also used an unremarkable copy of the TF that went east and influenced the Slavonic.

[“deserious of Kingship”] Slavonic

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was a doer astonishing deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of Greeks. He was the Christ. Pilate, on the accusation of the first men among us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day, he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared (Ant. 18.63-64).

Reconstructed TF using variants.

There arose about this time a certain man, a sophist and agitator. He was a doer of strange works. [For they said he was a prophet and the Temple would be destroyed and restored in three days.] Many of the Judaeans, and also many of the Galilean element, he led to himself in a tumult; he was desirous of Kingship: Many were roused, thinking that thereby the tribe could free themselves from Roman hands. [So Pilate sent forces, footmen to slew them and seize a number of them along with the certain imposter.] And when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross. Yet this tribe has until now not disappeared.

The ‘Samaritan’

But the nation of the Samaritans did not escape without tumults. The man who excited them to it was one who made light of mendacity, and who contrived every thing so that the multitude might be pleased; so he bid them to get together upon Mount Gerizzim, which is by them looked upon as the most holy of all mountains, and assured them, that when they were come thither, he would show them those sacred vessels which were laid under that place, because Moses put them there. So they came thither armed, and thought the discourse of the man probable; and as they abode at a certain village, which was called Tirathaba, they got the rest together to them, and desired to go up the mountain in a great multitude together; but Pilate prevented their going up, by seizing upon the roads with a great band of horsemen and foot-men, who fell upon those that were gotten together in the village; and when it came to an action, some of them they slew, and others of them they put to flight, and took a great many alive, the principal of which, and also the most potent of those that fled away, Pilate ordered to be slain. (Josephus Ant. 18.85-87).

But when this tumult was appeased, the Samaritan senate sent an embassy to Vitellius, a man that had been consul, and who was now president of Syria, and accused Pilate of the murder of those that were killed; for that they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans, but to escape the violence of Pilate. So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews. So Pilate, when he had tarried ten years in Judea, made haste to Rome, and this in obedience to the orders of Vitellius, which he durst not contradict; but before he could get to Rome Tiberius was dead (Ant. 18.88-89)

 

John the Baptist

Some important variants …

[And at that time a certain man,] Slavonic

[wild man (agrios)  instead of good man (agathos)] Slavonic

[did not deny Baptism was for washing away sins] critical Latin edition LAJ, Rufinus, Origen

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had killed this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God. For only thus, in John’s opinion, would the baptism he administered be acceptable to God, namely, For in exactly this way one receiving the baptism appeared to him not to be obtaining a payment for their sinful deeds, but for purification of the body, inasmuch as the soul was already completely purified by righteousness. Now many people came in crowds to him, for they were greatly moved by his words. Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best to put him to death. In this way, he might prevent any mischief John might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late. Accordingly John was sent as a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the castle I already mentioned, and was put to death. Now the Jews thought that the destruction of his army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure with him. (Ant. 18.116-119).

Theudas

During the period when Fadus was procurator of Judaea, a certain impostor named Theudas persuaded the majority of the masses to take up their possessions and to follow him to the Jordan River. He stated that he was a prophet and that at his command the river would be parted and would provide them an easy passage. And many were deluded by his words. However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt: but sent a troop of horsemen out against them. Who falling upon them unexpectedly, slew many of them, and took many of them alive. They also took Theudas alive, and cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem. This was what befel the Jews in the time of Cuspius Fadus’s government. (Ant. 20.97-99)

Sign Prophets under Felix

[In the 1920’s when Solomon Zeitlin read the passage on what we now call the ‘Sign Prophets’ under Felix, it led him to note: “Apocalyptists who are the forerunners of the Christian movement.”]

There was also another body of wicked men gotten together, not so impure in their actions, but more wicked in their intentions, which laid waste the happy state of the city no less than did these murderers. These were such men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of Divine inspiration, but were for procuring innovations and changes of the government; and these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty. But Felix thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt; so he sent some horsemen and footmen both armed, who destroyed a great number of them. (War 2.258-60)

—————————

These works, that were done by the robbers, filled the city with all sorts of impiety. And now these impostors and deceivers persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness, and pretended that they would exhibit manifest wonders and signs, that should be performed by the providence of God. And many that were prevailed on by them suffered the punishments of their folly; for Felix brought them back, and then punished them. (Ant. 20.167-168)

The Egyptian Sign Prophet

But there was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former; for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round about from the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives, and was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to domineer over them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him. But Felix prevented his attempt, and met him with his Roman soldiers, while all the people assisted him in his attack upon them, insomuch that when it came to a battle, the Egyptian ran away, with a few others, while the greatest part of those that were with him were either destroyed or taken alive; but the rest of the multitude were dispersed every one to their own homes, and there concealed themselves. (War 2.261-263)

Moreover, there came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mount of Olives, as it was called, which lay over against the city, and at the distance of five furlongs. He said further, that he would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down; and he promised them that he would procure them an entrance into the city through those walls, when they were fallen down. Now when Felix was informed of these things, he ordered his soldiers to take their weapons, and came against them with a great number of horsemen and footmen from Jerusalem, and attacked the Egyptian and the people that were with him. He also slew four hundred of them, and took two hundred alive. But the Egyptian himself escaped out of the fight, but did not appear any more. And again the robbers stirred up the people to make war with the Romans, and said they ought not to obey them at all; and when any persons would not comply with them, they set fire to their villages, and plundered them. (Ant. 20.169-172).

Sign Prophet under Festus

So Festus sent forces, both horsemen and footmen, to fall upon those that had been seduced by a certain impostor, who promised them deliverance and freedom from the miseries they were under, if they would but follow him as far as the wilderness. Accordingly, those forces that were sent destroyed both him that had deluded them, and those that were his followers also. (Ant. 20.188)

Temple Prophet of 70CE

The soldiers also came to the rest of the cloisters that were in the outer [court of the] Temple, whither the women and children, and a great mixed multitude of the people, fled, in number about six thousand.  But before Caesar had determined anything about these people, or given the commanders any orders relating to them, the soldiers were in such a rage, that they set that cloister on fire; by which means it came to pass that some of these were destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burnt in the cloisters themselves. Nor did anyone of them escape with his life. A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get up upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance. Now, there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes. A man is easily persuaded in adversity: when the deceiver actually promises deliverance from the miseries that envelop them, then the sufferer becomes the willing slave of hope. So it was that the unhappy people were beguiled at that stage by cheats and false messengers of God. Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but, like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them. (War 6.283- 288).

Jonathan the Weaver

And now did the madness of the Sicarii, like a disease, reach as far as the cities of Cyrene; for one Jonathan, a vile person, and by trade a weaver, came thither and prevailed with no small number of the poorer sort to give ear to him; he also led them into the desert, upon promising them that he would show them signs and apparitions. And as for the other Jews of Cyrene, he concealed his knavery from them, and put tricks upon them; but those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it. So he sent out after him both horsemen and footmen, and easily overcame them, because they were unarmed men; of these many were slain in the fight, but some were taken alive, and brought to Catullus. (War 7.437-440).

for a certain Jew, whose name was Jonathan, who had raised a tumult in Cyrene, and had persuaded two thousand men of that country to join with him, was the occasion of their ruin; but when he was bound by the governor of that country, and sent to the emperor, he told him that I had sent him both weapons and money. However, he could not conceal his being a liar from Vespasian, who condemned him to die; according to which sentence he was put to death. Nay, after that, when those that envied my good fortune did frequently bring accusations against me, by God’s providence I escaped them all. I also received from Vespasian no small quantity of land, as a free gift, in Judea (Life 424-25)

Just to read these passages alone will show the significance of the TF and Jesus’ place in history. Here’s a bunch of links to read up on the variants and earlier form of the TF.

Other blogs like this one:

Testimonium among the Sign Prophet passages.

Another nail in the Testimonium skeptics coffin.

Footnotes

[*] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New evidence for the one called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), p.36-37.

[*1] J. Carleton Paget, ‘Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity’, JTS 52 (2001), pp. 539-624 (567).

[*2] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.38.

[*3] David Allen, Jesus Realpolitik, JHC 20.2, forthcoming.

My last blog blew the “creatio ex nihilo by Eusebius” guys out of the water. Having the variant “certain man” in a very early Syriac translation of Eusebius shows us that “certain man” was originally in Eusebius’s rendition.

A Syriac translator possibly in the lifetime of Eusebius translated Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History into Syriac.

The first treatment of the Greek TF in these eastern languages can be found in the Syriac translations of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (c.313 CE) and his Theophany (c.325/ 6 CE). 

[The] translation date sometime in the fourth century, perhaps during Eusebius’ own lifetime. The manuscript tradition of the Syriac Ecclesiastical History is extremely ancient, being witnessed by a sixth-century manuscript.[1]

The variant “certain man” is witnessed by the following manuscript: MS British Library Add. 14,639.

The earliest Greek manuscripts of Eusebius are 10th century, so many centuries after the Syriac manuscripts. The harder reading of “certain man” in place of “Jesus” as witnessed in the earlier physical Syriac manuscript (earlier by a few centuries!) thus shows the name Jesus was added later to the Greek manuscripts. [2]

Again to reiterate, as the Syriac translater was translating Eusebius Church History book shows us that “certain man” was originally written by Eusebius. If Eusebius made up the TF from scratch he would have written “Jesus”. This shows that Eusebius had used an earlier form of the TF as his source.

I had my friend Dr. Richard Miller read over my reconstruction of the TF and he made a slight correction. This is what he had to say:

“I may consider dropping the teacher of men who reverence truth.. was he flattering about any of the other sign-troublemakers ?? Sounds like more creed to me. I would speculate that there may even likely have been something in there even more unsettling.. Consider, late ancient scribes never as a policy rewrote or redacted entire blocks of texts in the civic classical library.”

My own answer is in agreement:

“Josephus could have also described him as a sophist and a later scribe changed this to teacher 😀”

Josephus usually uses the expression σοφὸς ἀνήρ ‘a wise man’, as his highest praise for people. This is the phrase in the Greek manuscripts of the TF but I think that was added by Eusebius. There is only two cases where he uses it: King Solomon and the prophet Daniel; it is not a phrase he uses for the messianic leaders or Sign Prophets he reports. Usually it is not sofos (wise) but sofistēs (sophist) such as Judas the Galilaean who is described as a sofistēs idias aireseos (“sophist of his own sect”) (War 2.118). Anti Christian polemic that could have been working off the original TF suggest that the word sophist was used to describe Jesus, Justin Martyr counters his interlocutor- “He was no sophist, but His word was the power of God.” (1 Apol. 14). Lucian wrote in his satire called The Passing of Peregrinus referred to Jesus as “crucified sophist” (Lucian, Peregr. Proteus, ch. xiii).

Another phrase I answered Miller with is, “Josephus describes Jesus like a gōes and this is reflected in the phrase ‘doer of strange works.” This phrase paradoksōn ergōn poiētēs (‘doer of astonishing works’) where the word παραδόξων often means strange. So this phrase may be original but read negatively. The anti-Christian polemicists may have got the impression that Jesus was a γόης (goēs) from the original TF containing παραδόξων. Celsus picks out that exact word describing Jesus as such in Contra Cels. 1.6. Other anti Christians also suspected Jesus of magic such as the Jew interlocutor of Justin Martyr (Dial. 69.7). For a detailed discussion of this consult Thomas Schmidt new book Josephus on Jesus [3]

And the phrase “certain man” itself puts this passage among the Sign Prophet passages–

This was very common for Josephus not to name minor figures such as Sign Prophets and other messianic figures. Case in mind is the ‘Egyptian’ (War 2.261-263; Ant. 20.169-172) who led a revolt of thousands according to War or 600 according to Antiquities and yet he could only call him the ‘Egyptian’. Same goes for the ‘Samaritan’. (Ant 18.85-87). He was known as ‘“A man who made light of mendacity’ (Ant. 18.85). The Sign Prophet under Festus was known as ‘certain man sorcerer’(tinos anthrōpon goētos) (Ant. 20.188). And as this blog shows the earlier reading of the TF opened with “There arose about this time a certain man” (Ant. 18.63 original reading). This all shows the comparative passages with the TF ( i. e. The other Sign Prophet passages) are very similar to the original TF penned by Josephus. They were all very minor figures where Josephus hardly even knew their names.

By taking this advice on board, my reconstruction is even more realistic- this actually places the TF among other Sign Prophet passages. Eusebius could have filled in the creeds.

Original Testimonium Flavianum among the Sign Prophets.

There arose about this time a certain man, a sophist and agitator. He was a doer of strange works.

[For they said he was a prophet and the Temple would be destroyed and restored in three days.]

Many of the Judaeans, and also many of the Galilean element, he led to himself in a tumult; he was desirous of Kingship: Many were roused, thinking that thereby the tribe could free themselves from Roman hands.

[So Pilate sent forces, footmen to slew them and seize a number of them along with the certain imposter.]

And when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross.

Yet this tribe has until now not disappeared.

I’ll update my previous blogs with this reconstruction. This is my latest model reconstruction.

My updated blogs so far:

Part one: An introduction to the earlier form of the TF.

Part two: The evidence of the variants of the TF.

Part three: Analysis of the Testimonium Flavianum.

Part four: The Layers of the Testimonium Flavianum.

Eusebius did not write the Testimonium Flavianum.

Another nail in the Testimonium skeptics coffin.

——————————————-

Footnotes

[1] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the one Called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), p.46.

[2] https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/eusebius_history.htm

[3] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, pp.73-76.

Those who adhere to the creatio ex nihilo hypothesis of the Testimonium Flavianum by Eusebius (the passage Josephus wrote about Jesus), here is another nail in your coffin. There is a variant that will blow this hypothesis out of the water. The Syriac translation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History has “certain man” in place of Jesus. As Schmidt in his new book Josephus and Jesus observes: “In terms of their translations of the TF, the Syriac translator of the Ecclesiastical History does a better job witnessing to the ambiguity of the TF. He preserves the possibly derogatory ‘a certain Jesus’ (Ἰησοῦς τις) as ‘a certain man’ (ܓܒܪܐ ܚܕ)” [1] This reading is supported by a Greek variant in one of the Greek manuscripts of Eusebius – Codex A of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History 1.11.7 that has the word tis (‘certain’). In Codex A of Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.11.7 quotes the TF and has tis after Iēsous referring to ‘a certain Jesus.’ This tis is the same reading as the Slavonic. ‘The Slavonic Josephus offers a trace of the same pronoun: the phrase muzi nekij retroverted into Greek would correspond to anēr tis (certain man).”[2] Having this phrase also in the Syriac translation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History makes it a certainty that this was the original reading.

This shows a “certain man” instead of Jesus was copied out of Eusebius. If Eusebius made up the TF he would never have used that phrase- this shows Eusebius copied it from a version of the TF circulating at that time. Having the variant “certain man”  witnessed by the Slavonic, the Syriac translation and partly witnessed by a Greek manuscript variant (Codex A), and an Armenian translation to boot, makes this case too strong for the creatio ex nihilo hypothesis to be tenable. The interpolation of the TF into Slavonic version of Josephus War also does not name Jesus in the passage but refers to him as “there appeared a certain man” (Slavonic War 2.9.3/4). This was very common for Josephus not to name minor figures such as Sign Prophets and other messianic figures. Case in mind is the ‘Egyptian’ (War 2.261-263; Ant. 20.169-172) who led a revolt of thousands according to War or 600 according to Antiquities and yet he could only call him the ‘Egyptian’. Same goes for the ‘Samaritan’. (Ant 18.85-87). He was known as ‘“A man who made light of mendacity’ (Ant. 18.85). The Sign Prophet under Festus was known as ‘certain man sorcerer’ (tinos anthrōpon goētos) (Ant. 20.188). And as this blog shows the earlier reading of the TF opened with “There arose about this time a certain man” (Ant. 18.63 original reading). This all shows the comparative passages with the TF ( i. e. The other Sign Prophet passages) are very similar to the original TF penned by Josephus. They were all very minor figures where Josephus hardly even knew their names.

While the Slavonic is a very late witness, the Syriac translation of Eusebius is the earliest we have. This makes the Syriac translation the earliest witness of this particular variant of a ‘certain man’ very valuable and almost a certainty that ‘certain man’ was the original reading instead of the name Jesus that later scribes added to Eusebius’ manuscripts. The Syriac translations happen to be the oldest manuscripts we have that contain the TF. One of the earliest of which is in the National Library of Russia, Codex Syriac 1 which dates to 462 CE. Therefore we have a fifth century manuscript of the Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History in Syriac, and and is the oldest physical manuscript that contains the Testimonium Flavianum. Although Eusebius wrote Ecclesiastical History circa 313 CE and his Theophany circa 325/ 6 CE, our physical manuscripts are actually late. (Our earliest of Eusebius Greek manuscripts are in the 10^th century and are tampered with).

We have manuscript evidence that tis was the earlier reading!

Tis (certain) denotes somebody unimportant for Josephus which fits how Josephus really viewed Jesus. The word tis (certain) has much manuscript evidence including our earliest manuscripts. As explained by T.C. Schmidt:

It is little wonder then that Christian scribes omitted the word from all Greek manuscripts of Josephus’ Antiquities, and that the only reason we are aware of its existence is because it is preserved by Eusebius via manuscript A of the Ecclesiastical History [fn. 34 MS Paris Grec 1430 (tenth century) f. 26b line 3. Further pictures may be found at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10722779g/f32.item.zoom.%5D and in its ancient Syriac ( ܚܕ ) [fn. 35 MS British Library Add. 14639 (sixth century) f. 14b left col, line 29; MS Russian National Library Siriyskaya novaya seria 1 #24 (462 ce) f. 16a right col, line 26; BL.Add.12154, f. 151r line 20 (eighth/ninth century) and Armenian (մի) translations. [fn. 36 MS HMML 7640 (Codex Mechitaristarum Vindobonensis 49 (70C)) f. 15a line 22.] Michael the Syrian’s version of the TF was derived from Jacob of Edessa (c.708 ce), also preserves ‘a certain wise man, whose name was Jesus’ ( ܓܒܪܐ ܚܕ ܚܟܝܡܐ ܕܫܡܗ ܝܫܘܥ ) [fn.37 Michael the Syrian, Record of Times 5.10 [91] found in MS Edessa-Aleppo Codex 50r left col, line 17.] And according to Bermejo-Rubio, the Slavonic recension of Josephus’ work contains vestiges of this word with the phrase muži nĕkij, which may be ‘retroverted into Greek’ as ἀνήρ τις. [fn.38 Bermejo-Rubio, ‘Hypothetical Vorlage’, JSJ 45.3, p.358.] [*]

The physical Syriac manuscript of Ecclesiastical History that contains the variant ‘certain man’ is from the 6^th century, the manuscript is MS British Library Add. 14,639.[3] So we have the Syriac that actually witnesses earlier phrases that were originally written by Eusebius. According to David Allen, Eusebius original version (the version that contained the variant ‘certain man’ and ‘he was thought to be the Christ’) is known as the middle redaction of the Testimonium Flavianum.[4] The TF was tampered before, by and after Eusebius, all can be seen from textual variants.

To get at the earlier version of what Eusebius originally wrote when copying the TF we have to realise the Syriac language is needed to put back the original Greek of the TF. The same can be said of the Latin. It was Pollard who said, ‘the Latin manuscripts are generally much earlier than the surviving copies of the Greek original, meaning that we need to know the Latin before we can restore Josephus’ Greek.’[5] This is also true of the Syriac translations. As Thomas Schmidt said “in the Syriac TF the word mestabrā (‘thought’ or less likely ‘proclaimed’) can also be interpreted as reflecting the meaning of λεγόμενος (‘said’ or ‘declared’) somewhat closely, while the Latin credebatur (‘believed’) follows the meaning too, but more loosely. If it is only λεγόμενος that has been omitted from the TF, then the original phrase was likely ‘He was called the Christ’ (ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος λεγόμενος ἦν).”[6] Two phrases that existed originally in Eusebius’ version was “certain man” and “so called Christ.”

Thomas Schmidt discusses this on page 47 of his new book but only goes so far as to state the word tis (‘certain’) was in the original TF. He dares not to state or admit that the whole phrase ‘certain man’ was in the original TF as that goes against his own thesis of trying to keep the TF intact with a few minor changes.[7] Schmidt like Whealey tries to keep the passage intact so would never admit beyond his own hypothesis to what the actual textual criticism is letting us know.[8]

Schmidt makes a very convincing case that much of the TF that we see as positive would in fact been negative. It is us modern scholars that are reading the TF with Christian’s eyes but when Josephus wrote it, it was much more in keeping with being read negatively. Such things as Jesus followers only thought he was the Christ not that Jesus was the Christ. Both Latin and Syriac versions are used by Schmidt to suggest that Jesus was known as the so called Christ in the TF.[9] Also they only thought he resurrected not that Josephus stated that Jesus actually resurrected.[10]

So all in all we have yet another variant of the TF that shows we have an earlier form of the TF and exposes a pre-Eusebian layer!

PART 2 OF THIS BLOG INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL RECONSTRUCTION. Next blog has a realistic reconstruction after taking advice from my friend Dr Richard C. Miller.
I think we are actually getting closer to what Josephus actually penned about Jesus.

Here is the Syriac translation of Eusebius EH manuscript containing the all important variant ‘certain man’ taken from page 291 of Schmidt’s new book Josephus and Jesus.

 

Here’s a bunch of links:

Part one: An introduction to the earlier form of the TF.

Part two: The evidence of the variants of the TF.

Part three: Analysis of the Testimonium Flavianum.

Part four: The Layers of the Testimonium Flavianum.

---

[1] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the one Called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), p.47.

[2] Fernand Bermejo-Rubio, “Was the Hypothetical Vorlage of the Testimonium Flavianum a “Neutral” Text? Challenging the Common Wisdom on Antiquitates Judaicae 18.63-64 Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2014, 45.3, p.358.

[*] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.68

[3] Cit. op. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.47, n.57; Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, vol. 3 pp. 1039–40 (catalog #1411).

[4] David Allen, “A Proposal: Three Redactional layer of the Testimonium Flavianum” RevBib 85.1-2,(2023) pp.213-216.

[5] Richard M. Pollard, ‘The De excidio of “Hegesippus” and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator 46 (2015), pp. 65-100 (72).

[6] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, (Oxford, 2025), p.90

[7] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.47.

[8] Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times, (Peter Lang, 2003).

[9] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.90.

[10] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, pp.94-96

Here is a taster of the 8th paper I gave Bob Price for his Journal of Higher Criticism. Two of my papers are already out on JHC 20.1 giving a boost to this important journal.

This paper is also now released! on JHC 20.2.

Jesus plan of action!

All the Sign Prophets gathered a crowd to re-enact some great scriptural event. Two obvious examples reported in Josephus were Theudas splitting the Jordan (Ant. 20.97; cf. Exod. 12:29-14:30; Josh. 3-4) or the Egyptian saying the walls would fall (Ant. 20.170; cf. Josh. 6:20). The gospel of Mark hints at a similar type of claim Jesus made of destroying and restoring the Temple (Mark 14:57-58) and the gospel of John actually puts it into Jesus’s mouth (John 2:19). Destroying the Temple and expecting it to be rebuilt without human hands (Mark 14:58, Acts 7:48)  is very Sign Prophet territory there. Therefore the gospel of Johns understanding that Jesus made a claim like this is very fitting to the historical context and was likely. As Paul Anderson has noted, “two Markan passages appear to corroborate knowledge of a Jesus saying that is found only in John,”^[1] In fact James McGrath suggests that Paul may have transformed such a saying as it obviously had not aspired in Paul’s day:

Paul twice uses the image of the “temple” in ways that echo the saying from the Gospel tradition found (among other places) in John 2:19. In 1 Cor. 3:17, paul writes that if anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy that person, and in 2 Cor. 5:1–4 paul speaks of a tent or tabernacle being pulled down (using the same verb as in Mark 14:58) and the existence of a house not made with hands (again using the same word as in Mark). … Paul was familiar with a transformation of the saying along the same lines as would much later be incorporated into the Gospel of John, in which the saying was applied to death and resurrection and where the agency for the destruction of the temple is attributed to others rather than to Jesus himself.[2]

It is the scriptures that drove these Sign Prophets on: “The traditions about the glorious future which God had prepared for the people was itself, therefore, a cause of disaffection. Once the contrast between social and political realities stood in the sharpest possible contrast to the glorious future promised in the Scriptures and echoed in writings of the period, the situation probably led to disillusionment, a narrowing of religious vision or the conviction that change was needed. That hopes were entertained not merely as articles of faith but also as part of a programme of action.”[3] In examing a plan of action that expected a divine intervention – we have the War Scroll from Qumran (1QM) where the community expected to defeat their enemies with angelic legions helping the sons of light, we can apply this to the Sign Prophets in general and Jesus in particular. Using Dale Martin’s  proposal we can see  why the Jesus group was lightly armed at Passover according to Mark – it was an expectation of divine events – “ [Jesus] was expecting an angelic army to break through the sky, engage the Romans and their Jewish clients in battle, overthrow the Jewish leaders and Roman overlords, and establish the kingdom of God on earth.”[4] This ‘programme of action’ was to ‘force the end’ – force God to turn up in a new age. Typically both the Sign Prophet and his followers were brought up on stories on how God had intervened on behalf of the Jewish people, “God had once parted the sea, had produced manna in the wilderness, had caused the sun to stand still, had brought down the walls of Jericho.”[5] God had turned up then, the scriptures had told them so and why in their hour of need, would God not turn up now? An oppressed crowd hoping for a reversal of fortune would rally around a self styled prophet using the banner call, ‘the Kingdom of God is coming.’ “Enacting key moments in the birth of the nation, these Sign Prophets signaled the eschatological nearness of final redemption. Their grounding in biblical miracle also accounts for the size of their popular followings. Scriptural authority undergirded not only their own message; it also supported the hopes and convictions of their followers.”[6] A plan of action would have been formulated by the various Sign Prophets from a vision they had (obviously influenced by Scriptures). Visions were thought of by the ancients as a visitation from the divine. These visions experienced by various Sign Prophets shaped their plan of action to bring on the new age. Later disapproving Rabbis (in the knowledge of the dismal failures of Jewish revolts as expressed in ‘the footsteps of the messiah’ passage)[7] said they should not have attempted to ‘force the end’ that is trying to force god to turn up and start this new age hoping to reverse their fortunes.[8]

Let’s scratch a little deeper and we can see the scriptures influencing the other Sign Prophets as well. In a conversation with James McGrath who wrote two books on John the Baptist in 2024[9] we discussed the Sign Prophets where we both saw John the Baptist as a Sign Prophet. McGrath thinks it is John who has influenced the rest of the Sign Prophets and especially his disciple Jesus. John the Baptist was doing something innovative with an existing ritual and gathering a crowd. What John the Baptist does is to take an existing ritual Mikveh, (as seen from all the mikveh baths in Qumran) and innovate it. For a very common purity ritual, John by doing it for others was so distinctive, that the immerser (baptisma) became part of his name. [10]

In my paper I show the Samaritan Sign Prophet was simply trying to revive the Temple cult at Mt.Gerizim. The Samaritan tried to revive the Temple cult in Mount Gerizim, when he claimed the Temple vessels of Moses were buried there (Ant. 18.85). This is another historical example supporting the Sign Prophet hypothesis for Jesus who had wanted a rebuilt pure Temple! From the time of Ezekiel visions a new Temple was envisioned (Ezekiel 40-48). Or the heavenly Temple in 1 En. 14:8–25 could have been envisioned. The Temple scroll also fantasised about a new better Temple (11QT).

Jesus was called a messiah, that would be a king messiah, the Egyptian was called a tyrant for the same reason (War 2.262). Both Jesus and the ‘Egyptian’ had congregated at the Mount of Olives re-enacting a messianic trope of Zechariah – “On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives …”  (Zech. 14:4). The Mount of Olives symbolized the location from which Jerusalem would be liberated in the apocalyptic prophecy of Zechariah 14. Thus, what “an earlier prophet [Zechariah] had imagined’ … Zechariah’s prophecy envisions a similarly final scenario: after Jerusalem was taken in battle by a foreign nation, the Lord and an angelic army would fight to take back the city, launching an offensive from the Mount of Olives. Then, ‘never again shall it be doomed to destruction; Jerusalem shall abide in security’ (Zech. 14:11). The foreign nations could only return to worship the king and bring him tribute (v. 16); otherwise, if they so much as hinted at war, their flesh would rot off.”[*]

The best catch made by Schmidt in his Josephus and Jesus book is that Josephus would have been only one step away from people that actually met Jesus at his trial, this is known from the phrase “first men among us” i. e. The Jewish aristocrats including the High Priest party, people belonging to Josephus’ class. [*1] Something similar had happened Jonathan the Weaver, “those of the greatest dignity among them informed Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis, of his march into the desert, and of the preparations he had made for it.” (War 7.439).

So really I explore how Jesus fits all the points of the Sign Prophet Hypothesis and not just some of the points. Even the perplexing situation of Jesus getting crucified without his movement has a precedent where Theudas head was displayed alone in Jerusalem.

The historical examples of all the Sign Prophets movements show what happened to Jesus and why it happened is easily explainable on the Sign Prophets Hypothesis.

Here is the link to my paper.

---

[1] Paul Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus, Modern Foundations Reconsidered, (t & t Clark, 2^nd edition 2007), p.160.

[2] James McGrath, “‘Destroy This Temple’: Issues of History in John 2:13–22” in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds) John, Jesus and History 2, Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, (SBL, 2009), p.37-38.

[3] Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins, An Account of the Setting and Character of the most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism, 2nd ed. (SPCK, 2002), p.17

[4] Dale Martin, “Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous”, JSNT 37.3 (2014), pp.6-7.

[5] E. P. Sanders, The Historical figure of Jesus, (Allen Lane Penguin Press, 1993), p.262.

[6] Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews, The first generation, (Yale University Press, 2018), p.177f.

[7] “from the day the Temple was destroyed, the sages began to be like scribes, scribes like synagogue-attendants, synagogue-attendants like common people, and the common people became more and more debased. And nobody seeks. Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our father who is in heaven. In the footsteps of the messiah insolence (hutzpah) will increase and the cost of living will go up greatly (Mishnah soter 9.5)

[8] Eg. J. T. Townsend translation Song of Songs 2:7; R. A. Steinsaltz, Koren Talmud Bavli, Ketubot 111a; Or as Novenson says, “The late antique Song of Songs Rabbah, on the other hand, remembers this same Eleazar— alongside Amram, Shimon bar Kosiba, and Shuthelach ben Ephraim— among “the four generations who tried to hasten the end and came to grief.” Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism, p.144, fn.114; Song Rab. 2.7.1, trans. Maurice Simon, Midrash Rabbah, vol. 9 (London: Soncino, 1983).

[9] James McGrath, John of History, Baptist of Faith, The Quest for the historical Baptist, (Eerdmans, 2024b) and Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist. (Eerdmans, 2024a).

[10] David Allen, “How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus”, RevBíb 85.3-4, p.341

[*] Nathan C. Johnson, (2021) “Early Jewish Sign Prophets” in James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds.), CDAMM retrieved from here: https://www.cdamm.org/assets/articlePDFs/31519-early-jewish-sign-prophets.pdf

[*1] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the One Called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), pp.6-7.

This blog is part of the Sign Prophet hypothesis for Jesus.

The two latest quests for the historical Jesus  (one: Fourth quest– throwing the gospel of John back into the historical mix on Jesus, two: Next quest – basically using everything we got, social studies, background history, archeology etc) show how the evangelists crafted their narratives. Using Memory Studies we can get at the historical memory used to craft the Evangelist’s narratives. If the Evangelists wanted a nice Pilate, helpless in his decision on the crucifixion of Jesus, who washes his hands accepting the reality of his powerlessness in the face of Jewish crowd pressure- the Evangelists crafted this narrative. There was a reason to craft this:

knowledge that Jesus had suffered a Roman crucifixion was established among early Jesus Christ believers (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8; Gal 6:14; Phil 2:8), and the Gospel authors could not dismiss it. But after the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple, believers in Jesus as Christ were distancing themselves from other Jews and claiming to be harmless to Roman authority. On this basis the Gospels crafted a sympathetic Pilate who believed in Jesus’ innocence but was outmaneuvered by chief priests bent on his death.[1]

Of course a second reason for a nice Pilate was that the gospels were products of Roman book culture, and not communities as Robyn Walsh demonstrated- “Based on our historical knowledge of writing practices in antiquity writ large, it is not amorphous communities but an author’s network of fellow writers that is the most plausible and influential social environment for the production of literature.”[2] The immediate movement spawned by Jesus could not have written them as a certain level of education was required to write them. Helen Bond describes Marks level of education, while not at the very top level elitist (he did not posses the skills of a rhetorician, has little use of prosōpoeia (the art of crafting speech suitable to a character) and no encomium or invective. Mark , nonetheless  had “short vignettes and sayings have been shown to map closely onto the short literary units that formed the basis of Greco-Roman education: chreiai, gnōmai, diēgēmata, and mythoi (anecdotes, maxims, short narratives, and fables).” [3]

The Christ followers movements that developed in the diaspora cities were gentiles of the Roman Empire [4] and these communities would be the first receivers for these gospels. Therefore a Roman romanticising would be inevitable- This is seen in Matthew (Matt. 8:5-13 and pars) where we have a Roman centurion (a killing machine) who had more faith than the Jewish people. Roman citizens or population would be sympathetic to Roman govenors and would therefore appreciate a nice Pilate. Reading through these historical filters, realizing the influences that skewed the narratives of the Evangelists, we can “unspin” the narrative back to the historical reality. By being aware of the historical memory used by the evangelists we can get back to what actually happened to the Jesus movement, contextually what happened to the Jesus movement was what happened to all the comparative movements – namely the Sign Prophet movements we find in Josephus Works.

The new quests (‘Next’ and ‘Fourth’) use memory studies to extract the real history. After Jesus was caught if he got a trial at all[5], it would have lasted no more than a few questions, mainly to pass sentence and making sure they had the right man. The dramatisations of the gospels blow up narrative tension when the gospels have got our attention.

Example one: Johannian Jesus is great revealer of Truth and when Johns hearers were at their most attentive, John decided to inject a dramatic dialogue at the trial scene about truth. While Jesus tries to explain truth, Pilate comes back like a great stoic philosopher to ask, “Truth, what’s that!

Example two: In Mark, the messianic secret is revealed at the trial “transcripts.” Jesus had not fulfilled Jewish messianic expectation but had been rejected and crucified. Mark had divinely concealed the messiahship and the only public time Jesus reveals his messiahship is when he was about to be crucified. This literary device was created by Mark to explain that Jesus was a different type of messiah that had to suffer. That he was the messiah despite being crucified.

There is nothing like a trial drama to catch our attention!

Pilate would not need much excuse to crucify Jesus as he caused a disturbance and was a threat Roman security. By applying memory studies to our knowledge of background history, (the bulk of this knowledge is contained in Josephus works or even Philo on Pilate in the Embassy of Gaius), thus we can determine the historical memories behind the narratives of the gospels.

As explained by Bruce Chilton here is the real Pilate:[6]

Pilate, however, took prejudice beyond routine Roman convention. Once ensconced in his palace at Caesarea Maritima, the Roman headquarters, he ordered the garrison stationed at the Antonia fortress in Jerusalem to set up their shields in sight of the temple and the Herodian palace adjacent to it, complete with Caesar’s emblem. Pilate’s gesture implicitly interrupted the long-standing agreement between Rome and the Maccabees for mutual recognition and support and openly violated the arrangement in the temple established under Herod the Great and Augustus that gave Israel’s sanctuary autonomy under the emperor’s aegis with acceptance of the sacrifices that his financial cooperation provided. Pilate’s installation of the shields announced Roman subjugation, rather than protection, of the temple.[7] Popular opposition was immediate, and Pilate faced a large gathering of leaders who protested the move at Pilate’s headquarters in Caesarea. They welcomed death at the hands of the Roman soldiers who guarded the meeting rather than accede to the presence of anything idolatrous within the environs of the temple. But the most effective opposition to Pilate’s outrage came from the descendants of Herod the Great, Antipas at their head, who objected on the grounds of both the settlement in the temple and the integrity of their ancestral palace in Jerusalem. They argued with Pilate himself in Caesarea and then wrote directly to Tiberius in Rome. They insisted that the action would provoke revolution, and to no purpose, since “dishonor of ancient laws is not an honor for the emperor,” as a contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, explained the argument.

The pictures of Pilate as explained by Josephus and Philo do not match a nice Pilate bending to Jewish wills, but a tough Roman Prefect stamping his authority in a Roman province. The only reason Pilate bent to Jewish will in the shields incident was due to a high powered aristocratic embassy that went to the Emperor, otherwise Pilate would not have bent to Jewish will like he is portrayed in the gospels. Similarly a high delegation of Samaritans appealed to Vitellius, the governor of Syria (Ant. 18.88), Pilates boss in the aftermath of Pilates handling of the Samaritan movement (i. e. Slaughtering the crowd the ‘Samaritan’ Sign Prophet gathered). As a result Pilate was forced to return to Rome and historically we hear no more of him. As Tiberius had died this saved Pilate of having to answer to him. (Ant. 18.89).

In light of this we can see that Pilate would have easily stamped out the Jesus movement. David Allen has examined a spy network of both Pilates and the Sanhedrin’s would have informed Pilate of Jesus’ plan of action. “Josephus provides many examples of movements just like the movement of Jesus that were stopped in their tracks. Small groups just like the Jesus group who gathered crowds were easily tracked by the various governors. (One example of many was with the procurator Felix being informed about the ‘Egyptian’ Sign Prophet: “Now when Felix was informed of these things” (Ant. 20.171). [8]  “Josephus presents Pilate as one who commands troops (War  2.172–174, 2.176–177; Ant. 18.87), commandeers financial resources from the Jerusalem temple (War 2.175), imposes social  order (War 2.172–173, 2.176–177), and executes leaders of a  movement he considered a threat (Ant. 18.87). The reality of such immense gubernatorial power is foundational for understanding the  Gospel scenes.”[9]

The inception and purpose of the movements initiated by various sign prophets, will serve as a matrix for the Jesus movement. In light of the sign prophets, Jesus gathering a crowd, leading them onto Jerusalem (Triumphal entry) and possibly onto the Temple (Temple scene) and ending in execution (arrest scene and crucifixion) , was typical of these charismatic prophets in this time period. Let us now examine the historical examples that fit with the Jesus movement:

– even if Jesus is crucified without his movement. The same happened with Theudas (his head was displayed alone in Jerusalem) (Ant. 20.98). And we can’t take it for granted that Jesus was crucified alone, as Bermejo-Rubio argued those crucified with Jesus could have been his followers.[10]

– even if Jesus movement was not slaughtered, neither was John the Baptist.

– the plan of action Jesus had was known by the govenors from informers. This is seen from all the Sign Prophet passages. (Josephus Ant. 18.85-87; 20.97-99,167-168, 169-172, 188; War 2.258-260, 261-263)

– the plan of action was inspired by Scriptures. This can be seen from Theudas splitting the Jordan, the ‘Egyptian’ promising the walls would fall or the ‘Samaritan’ trying to revive the Temple cult at Gerizim.

– meeting at the mount of Olives was to re-enact the apocalyptic actions of Zechariah. The ‘Egyptian’ sign prophets also met there.

– Jesus called a messiah, would be a king messiah- the Egyptian was called a tyrant for the same reason.

– the Samaritan tried to revive the Temple in Mount Gerizim- Jesus wanted a rebuilt pure Temple!

The Sign Prophets show us what sort of movement Jesus led. A movement who expected god to turn up apocalyptically. (The followers of such Sign Prophets would have thought- Well he did turn up in the old scriptures, why wouldn’t he turn up now?) What Jesus hoped to achieve- An inbreaking of the new age- he used the banner call “the kingdom of god” is coming.

The gospels break up the chronology.

It was typical that the day a particular Sign Prophet initiated his plan of action, was the same day the whole movement got squashed by the Roman governor. Let us now provide examples of these one day wonders:

– The ‘Samaritan’ gathered his crowd at a village called Tirathaba: “bid them to get together upon Mount Gerizzim, … he would show them those sacred vessels which were laid under that place, because Moses put them there …” but as they made their way up the mountain Pilates footmen and cavalry fell upon them. (Ant. 18.85-87)

– Theudas persuaded the majority of the masses to take up their possessions and to follow him to the Jordan River. He stated that he was a prophet and that at his command the river would be parted and would provide them an easy passage. And many were deluded by his words. However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt: but sent a troop of horsemen out against them (Ant. 20.97-99)

– Sign Prophets under Felix: “These were such men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of Divine inspiration, … these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty. But Felix thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt; so he sent some horsemen and footmen both armed, who destroyed a great number of them. (War 2.258-60; cf. Ant. 20.167-168)

– The ‘Egyptian’ “led round about from the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives, and was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; … But Felix prevented his attempt, and met him with his Roman soldiers” (War 2.261-263) He claimed “at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down” (Ant. 20.169-172)

– Sign Prophet under Festus -“So Festus sent forces, both horsemen and footmen, to fall upon those that had been seduced by a certain impostor, who promised them deliverance and freedom from the miseries they were under, if they would but follow him as far as the wilderness.” (Ant. 20.188)

All these incidents were results of a plan of action hoping God would turn up, usually when the crowd was gathered they were put down within the day. The govenors through their spy network seemed to be one step ahead of all these Sign Prophets movements. They suspected revolt and easily put down these movements. The Samaritan embassy to Vitellius explained “they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans, but to escape the violence of Pilate. (Ant. 18.88) but it was already too late, they were already slaughtered.

Jesus much like the other Sign Prophets caused his own crucifixion with his plan of action in the Temple. The gospels changed the chronology to make Jesus innocent. In fact John moved the Temple scene far off from the arrest scene as Mark had not moved it far enough. “John did not want any hint that Jesus caused his own crucifixion by his own action”.[11] By attempting to separate arrest scene from Jesus’ plan of action takes the blame away from Jesus causing his own crucifixion. “neither in John 2 nor in Mark 11 is Jesus arrested directly after  the incident. In both accounts, religious leaders begin to plot the demise of Jesus following the incident, but in John this happens during Jesus’s subsequent visit to Jerusalem in John 5, while in Mark it happens a few days later, at the end of his ministry.”[12]  The gospel of John showed me what the evangelists were capable of doing. John saw that Mark did not move the arrest scenes far enough away from the Temple scene- so as to give no hint that Jesus caused his own arrest he moved it further away. Throwing John back into the historical mix opened up this to me. James S. McLaren has noted in many historical examples provided by Josephus shows that “as soon as” a disturbance happened or a crowd was gathered, the instigator got arrested (War 2.269-174, 253, 258-60, 261 etc; Ant. 18.29-30, 55-59 etc).[13]  In the three Pilate instances he examined, namely the Military Standards (Ant. 18.55-59), the plundering of Temple funds for the aqueduct (Ant. 18.60-62; War 2.175-177) and the quelling of the ‘Samaritan’ movement (Ant. 18.85-89)- in all instances Pilate acted immediately.[14] The two instances where a governor did not arrest immediately were the result of hardened bandits avoiding capture, eg Tholomaeus by Fadus (Ant. 20.5) and the capture of  Eleazar by Felix (Ant. 20.161; War 2.253).[15] John J. Collins notices how the triumphal entry was similar to the way the Sign Prophets gathered their crowds (before their own plan of action) – “ In the “Gospels, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, to shouts of Hosanna to the Son of David. For the biblically illiterate, Matthew 21:4–5 supplies the quotation from Zechariah 9:9, even providing Jesus with two animals rather than one, missing the Hebraic parallelism. It is certainly tempting to understand this incident in light of the sign prophets in Josephus.”[16] Historically the triumphant entry, the temple incident and the arrest scene probably all happened on the same day. The gospels break it up to make Jesus look innocent and like a victim instead of an instigator. All the Sign Prophets were a flash in the pan, usually the incidents were one day wonders but enough to generate a report picked up later by Josephus to include in his history books.

If you enjoyed this blog, here are more like it:

https://davesblogs.home.blog/2025/04/17/jesus-as-one-of-the-goetes-as-viewed-by-josephus/

https://davesblogs.home.blog/2025/01/19/jesus-and-the-spies/

https://davesblogs.home.blog/2024/11/19/informers-and-spies-how-jesus-got-caught/

https://davesblogs.home.blog/2025/01/28/jesus-set-himself-up-for-the-cross/

https://davesblogs.home.blog/2024/11/10/jesus-beware-of-the-footmen-and-cavalry/

---

[1] Mark Elliot reviewing a book by Nathanael Andrade, Killing the Messiah: the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025); Quote retrieved from here: https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/pilates-legal-path-crucifying-jesus

[2] Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origin of Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, (Cambridge, 2021), p.55.

[3] Helen Bond, The First Biography of Mark, Genre and Meaning in Marks Gospel, (Eerdmans, 2020), ch.3.

[4] John Kloppenborg, Christ Associations, Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient City, (Yale, 2020).

[5] Justin Megett, using Philo shows Pilate may not have conducted a trial as Philo said Pilate often carried out “executions without trial often repeated” (Philo, Legat. 302). This comment by Philo shows Pilate would have held trials as he was legally required but often didn’t. Yet as a trial is reported in the gospels and the authentic part of the Testimonium Flavianum it is more likely that Jesus was one of the cases that received a trial. See Justin Meggit, The Madness of King Jesus: Why was Jesus Put to Death, but his Followers were not?, JSNT 29.4 (2007) pp.379-413 (380).

[6] Bruce Chilton, the Herods, Murder, Politics and the Art of Succession, (Fortress, 2021), p.162

[7] Josephus, Jewish War 2.169–74; and Josephus, Antiquities 18.55–59. As noted by Bruce Chilton we have to read through the narratives of Philo and Josephus as well –  the reference to them as shields derives from the treatment in Philo’s Embassy to Gaius and a convincing argument that Josephus here exaggerates the sacrilege for rhetorical reasons. Philo for rhetorical reasons downplays the offense of the shields. Philo minimizing the offense (in the description and the placement in the Herodian palace) and Josephus exaggerating it (by the reference to an image of Caesar and the explicit idolatry involved).

[8] David Allen, “Jesus Realpolitik”, JHC (2025, forthcoming).

[9] Warren Carter, “Jesus and Pilate: Memories in John’s Gospel?” in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds), John, Jesus and History 3, (SBL, 2016), p.67.

[10] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, “(Why) Was Jesus the Galilean Crucified Alone? Solving a False Conundrum”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36.2,  pp.127–54.

[11] David Allen, “Memory studies and the realpolitik in John’s Gospel (memories we can determine from Josephus)” in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds), John, Jesus and History volume 7 forthcoming.

[12] Paul Anderson, “The Last Days of Jesus in John:  An Introduction to the Issues”, in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds) John, Jesus and History 3, (SBL, 2016), p.43.

[13] James S. McLaren, “The Perspective of a Jewish Priest on the  Johannine Timing of the Action in the Temple” in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds) John, Jesus and History 3, (SBL, 2016), pp.203-4.

[14] McLaren, Perspective of a Jewish Priest, p.205.

[15] McLaren, Perspective of a Jewish Priest, p.208.

[16] John J. Collins. 2021. “Millenarianism in Ancient Judaism.” In James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds.) Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. 15 January 2021. Retrieved from http://www.cdamm.org/articles/ancient-judaism.

This blog is part of the Sign Prophet hypothesis for Jesus.

The Sign Prophets were described polemically in Josephus. They would have seen themselves as Prophets but Josephus usually described them as goētes (γόητες) or pseudopofētēs  (ψευδοπροφήτης).  Here are some of the descriptives:

Theudas under Fadus was described as γόης τις (“certain magician”)(Ant. 20.97). He had stated he was a prophet and was going to re-enact the Exodus by parting the Jordan. The crowd that followed him actually believed God would turn up just like he did in the Tanakh. (Something similar would have happened in the fiasco of the Temple incident by Jesus). “Why this story might be categorized as “millenarian” is because it envisaged radical transformation through a dramatic action by tapping into well-known themes from Jewish ancestral traditions about Moses (the most important and archetypal organizer of the Israelites) and his exodus from Egypt which involved guiding the enslaved Israelites across a divinely parted Red Sea to their freedom. These traditions were reapplied to the future of Jews living now under the shadow of Roman rule.”[1] Under Felix a load of Sign Prophets were described as γόητες καὶ ἀπατεῶνες (“imposters and deceivers”) (Ant. 20.167). In the 1920’s when Solomon Zeitlin read the passage on what we now call the ‘Sign Prophets’ under Felix, it led him to note: “Apocalyptists who are the forerunners of the Christian movement.”[2] Josephus had distinguished them from the Sicarii stating they were “not so impure in their actions.” (War 2.258). This suggests a religious fervour of these groups. These Sign Prophets were distinctive in that they all “led their followers into (anticipated) participation in some great liberating action by God.”[3] Also under Felix the Egyptian Sign Prophet was referred to as γόης καὶ προφήτου – goēs κai prophēton (sorcerer and prophet) (War 2.261). He was going to assemble at the Mount of Olives (Ant. 20.169, Jesus had also picked out the Mount of Olives as suggested in the gospels) simply because this place symbolized the location from which Jerusalem would be liberated in the apocalyptic prophecy of Zechariah 14. Thus, what ‘an earlier prophet [Zechariah] had imagined’ … Zechariah’s prophecy envisions a similarly final scenario: after Jerusalem was taken in battle by a foreign nation, the Lord and an angelic army would fight to take back the city, launching an offensive from the Mount of Olives. Then, ‘never again shall it be doomed to destruction; Jerusalem shall abide in security’ (Zechariah 14:11). The foreign nations could only return to worship the king and bring him tribute (v. 16); otherwise, if they so much as hinted at war, their flesh would rot off.”[4] All the Sign prophets attempted a re-enactment of some scriptural event hoping God would turn up. This they got from visions (which were influenced by scriptures). Their “plan of action” was an attempt to force the end (i. e. Make God turn up!) Their banner call was to say “The kingdom of God” was imminent. (i. e. they thought they could start a new age where the peasants had a reversal of fortune). Theudas splitting the Jordan (Ant. 20.97; cf. Exod. 12:29-14:30; Josh. 3-4) or the Egyptian saying the walls would fall (Ant. 20.170; cf. Josh. 6:20), or Jesus claiming Temple Destruction and Restoration (Jn. 2:19, cf. The first Temple destruction in Daniel 9:26 or Jeremiah 7 could have affected Jesus’ visions. And to rebuild the Temple may have been taken from Tobit 14:5). Josephus described the Sign Prophet under Festus who promised them freedom and divine deliverance from their miseries as a τινος ἀνθρώπου γόητος – tinos anthrōpon goētos (‘certain man sorcerer’) (Ant. 20.188). Another Sign Prophet was the Temple Prophet of 70CE whom Josephus called a ψευδοπροφήτης (“pseudo prophet”)(War 6.285). David Allen also believed Jesus was described as a goēs due to the anti-Christian polemicists who were under the impression that Jesus was a wizard, information they may have gotten from the original Testimonium Flavianum. [5] Other Sign Prophets were described in poor light too, without specifically using the word goēs yet conveying the same meaning – Josephus commented on the Samaritan Te’heb who was also under Pilate as “a man who made light of mendacity” and excited the multitude (Ant. 18.85).

Allen highlights the Mosaic traits in the ‘Samaritans’ plan of action:[6]

            The Samaritan sign prophet decided to show the crowd sacred vessels buried by Moses on the sacred site of Mount Gerizim, the site where the Hasmoneans had destroyed the Samaritan’s sacred Temple (Ant. 18.85-87). The vessels were probably instruments used for Temple duties and would connect this Samaritan figure to Moses (Deut. 27:1-2). As a side note the gospel of Mark portrays “Jesus as refusing to allow “anyone to carry a vessel through the Temple,” alluding to Zech 14:20. Jesus not allowing anyone to carry “anything” through the Temple seems to refer to sacred vessels – skeuos (Mk 11:16).[7] Even in the face of danger the crowd still attempted to ascent the mountain – “belief that salvation was at hand outweighed the clear and present dangers of opposing forces.”[8] What happened the ‘Samaritan’ was typical of what happened these other Sign Prophets- the govenors of the time suspected they wanted to start a revolt/ even if they didn’t. I mean the ‘Samaritan’ only wanted to revive mount Gerizim as the Samaritan Temple cult, promising them Moses’ vessels – yet they were slaughtered as seditious. Felix (the same as Pilate) thought the gathering of Sign Prophets who fancied themselves as Prophets, that they were “procuring innovations and changes of the government” so “Felix thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt” (War 2.260).

An earlier form of the Baptist passage may have described John the Baptist as a “wild man” instead of a “good man”. As Rothschild noted:

Slavonic Josephus refers to John as agrios (“a wild man.”) Eusebius records “good man.” The difference between Slavonic Josephus and Eusebius elicits the question of whether Eusebius improved John’s image with a switch from ágrios to agathos^[9].

“wild man” is much more fitting a description by Josephus for a figure executed because of the threat of sedition (Ant. 18.118). [10] John the Baptist may have got his inspiration of gathering a crowd in the Jordan for Baptism from “Ezek 36:25–31, which depicts God sprinkling the nation with water to cleanse them.[11] “John’s use of the Jordan River may have evoked Elisha’s command to Naaman to immerse (ebaptisato) himself seven times in the Jordan in order to be purified of his lepra (2 Kings 5:14 Septuagint [hereafter LXX]). Second, it is possible that people would have associated John’s actions with some form of eschatological entrance into the land of promise, since Joshua led Israel through the Jordan in order to possess the land (Josh. 3:15; LXX uses the verb in reference to the priests entering into the water of the Jordan).” [12]

————Important addendum———

In a conversation with James McGrath who wrote two books on John the Baptist in 2024[1] we discussed the Sign Prophets where we I saw John the Baptist as a Sign Prophet. McGrath thinks it is John who has influenced the rest of the Sign Prophets and especially his disciple Jesus. You could say the Sign Prophets were an offshoot of John the Baptist.

---

[1] James McGrath, John of History, Baptist of Faith, The Quest for the historical Baptist, (Eerdmans, 2024b) and Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist. (Eerdmans, 2024a).

————————————————————-

In our survey I have one last Sign Prophet after the Great Revolt and in Cyrene – Jonathan the Weaver, was described as a “most wicked man”.  He too promised “to show signs and apparitions” (War 7.437–38; Life 424–25) and had a Jewish following (War 7.438). Jonathan the weaver, was an artisan, which would have started his exaltation, joining the Sicarii would have helped it along. Jesus being an artisan helped in his rise, being an exorcist/healer would explain a further exaltation of Jesus among his own people. Josephus specifically states that Jonathan’s followers were drawn from the poor (War 7.438).[13] They were opposed, in the first instance, not by the Roman authorities, but by the “men of rank” among the Jews (7.439). This is a common motif, of the poor oppressed willing to rise up hoping for a reversal of fortunes between the poor and richer Jewish authorities.

Otto Betz explains the polemic of Josephus against these Moses pretenders:

The passage in Deuteronomy 18:15-22 necessarily leads to such a conclusion: “If the word of such a prophet does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously.” And Josephus may have taken the vocabulary used in his criticism against these men from Deuteronomy 13:1-11, in which severe measures against false prophets and seducers teaching rebellion against God are prescribed for Israel. The verbs hēsīt (“to deceive”) and hiddīah (“to lead astray”) designate the false prophets’ dangerous activities and goals. [*]

Rebecca Grey examines Josephus use of pseudoprophets a term that first appears in the LXX to refer to prophetic opponents of Jeremiah (cf. Ant. 10.104, 111). Josephus uses this term for the prophets of Baal (Ant. 8.318; 9.133, 134, 137),  illegitimate cult center at Bethel, it is used for an old prophet from Bethel mentioned in 1 Kings 13. Grey goes on to say “Zedekiah and the four hundred other prophets who promised victory to King Ahab (1 Kgs. 22) are called ψευδοπροφήτης (Ant. 8.402,406,409), as are the opponents of the prophet Jeremiah (Ant. 10.104, 111). In these passages, the label “false prophet” is applied to those who predicted victory in war when in fact, as events confirmed, God had decided to hand his people over to their enemies.”[14] It is with those passages that align closest to the Sign Prophets. Morton Smith observes “the teaching that the people must all go to some place where the divine power will be revealed, they are allied to the utterances of a class of false prophets, most of whom Josephus calls goētes (singular goēs), a term of which the meanings range from “magician” to “fraud.”[15] goētes to the Greek audience were wizards like street performers. Yet Josephus uses these terms distinctively and in the words of Barnett, “must be read against the background of the historian’s [Josephus’] own description of the Exodus and the γοητεία (“witchcraft”) and μαγεία (“magic”) of the Egyptian Court magicians.(Ant. 2.286 cf. 2.302, 332, 336). Likewise the self-designation of Theudas and the Egyptian as ‘prophet’ and the reference to the unnamed prophet of A.D. 70 as false prophet (ψευδοπροφήτης) must be understood in relationship with Josephus’ presentation of Moses and Joshua as the true prophet(s) of the Exodus.”[16] Jesus like the other Sign Prophets is ascribed the Moses typology in the gospels to present him as a prophet like Moses (Deut.18). A messianic eschatological position expected around this time as attested in Qumran. (Eg. 4Q33 Deuteronomy^f  18-19 “I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him”, also see the prophets like Aaron and Isreal in Damascus Rule – CD A XIV 18-19). As Allison notices “In these places the goētes are the Egyptian magicians of the Exodus, that is, people who sought, effectively and ineffectively, to imitate the miracles of Moses. Perhaps, then, Josephus found goēs so congenial for characterizing Theudas and his ilk because, in the right context, it connoted for him not charlatan in general but Mosaic charlatan in particular.”[17] In an earlier form of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) (the original TF) (Ant. 18.63-64) Jesus fits in with being described as a γόης, the phrase “doer of strange works” fits in with this. The anti-Christian polemicists may have got the impression that Jesus was a γόης (goēs) from the original TF containing παραδόξων. Josephus describes the miracles of the competing magicians at pharaohs court at the time of Moses as a παραδόξα. Celsus picks out that exact word παραδόξων describing Jesus as such in Contra Cels. 1.6. Other anti-Christians also suspected Jesus of magic such as the Jew interlocutor of Justin Martyr (Dial. 69.7). These accusations go right back to the gospels themselves who seem to be combating objections of the source of Jesus power. Some Jewish polemics are even contained in the gospels about seeing the source of Jesus miracles is the demon Beelzebul. (Mt. 12:24; Lk. 11:19). Beelzebul is an unmistakable Palestinian demon according to Morton Smith. He also notes that “Jesus’ question, “Can Satan cast out Satan?” suggests that others identified Jesus’ demon as Satan.[18] In the gospel of John we have the major north south tensions where the Judeans do not respect a country hick from Galilee. They go so far as to say “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” (Jn. 8:48) The mistaken identity of Jesus being a Samaritan serves two purposes. It is in keeping with the positive Samaritan stories found in both in Luke and John (both gospels agree in many places against Mark, eg. The Anointing). But the misidentification also racks up the north south tensions. The other part of the verse that Jesus is demon possessed would be the common polemic for all these Sign Prophets who thought they were possessed with the spirit of God and Moses. These accusations against Jesus are a common reaction to these Sign Prophets who obviously could not sway everybody. This would rank Jesus among the many other Sign Prophets and helped Josephus in his polemic against them and according to Josephus’ narrative the Sign Prophets together with other undesirables and the maladadminustration of Roman governors were to blame for the Jewish Roman War of 66-70CE,

Justin Martyr shows awareness of Jews who believed Jesus was a magician “By restoring the dead to life, he compelled the men of that day to recognize him. Yet though they [the Jews] witnessed these miraculous deeds with their own eyes, they attributed them to magical art; indeed they dared to call him a magician (magos), a deceiver of the people (laoplanos)” (Justin, Dialogue, 69:6f.)

Celsus found the original TF useful in his book The True Word, claiming Jesus casting out evil spirits that “it was by means of sorcery that He was able to accomplish the wonders which He performed” and Origin attempts to rebut this (Origin, Contra Celsus 1.6). The Rabbi in the fourth century transposed Jesus stories onto different Yeshu characters in the Talmud.. Peter Schafer says they used these as sophisticated counternarratives to the gospels and could have preserved an understanding of Jesus by the Jews.[19] In one of those counternarratives Simon J Joseph noticed that the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh. 43a), Yeshu was “one who leads the people astray.” That Yeshu was accused of sorcery information that could well have started with Josephus who often described the Sign prophets as goētes (“charlatan /magician”).[20] Jesus being described as a goēs in the TF would have prompted Porphyry to describe Jesus as a wizard. In Proof (Dem. Ev.) Eusebius tries to defend against Porphyry’s attacks about Jesus being a wizard. David Allen has shown anti-Christian polemicists making use of an original TF.[21] This would have prompted Eusebius to change such a phrase containing γόης –  goēs (‘sorcerer’) to παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής – paradoksōn ergōn poiētēs. (‘doer of astonishing works’). Ken Olsen shows this was a Eusebian expression.[22] Allen reconstructed the most likely place where Josephus described Jesus as a goēs in the original Testimonium Flavianum. This is part of Allen’s reconstruction:

So Pilate sent forces, footmen to slew them and seize a number of them along with the certain imposter.[23] (με τον γόης τις)

Any movement that gathered a crowd initiated a sending out of troops by the Roman governor. (Example: Ant. 18.87; 20.98,271,188; War 2.260). In the words of Dale Allison:

“the expectation of an eschatological prophet like Moses, founded upon Deut. 18:15 and 18, was not little known, or just the esoteric property of the Qumran coventile and Jewish-Christian churches.  It was instead very much in the air in first-century Palestine and helped to instigate several short-lived revolutionary movements. Jesus was far from being the only individual thought of as the eschatological fulfillment of Deut.18:15 and 18. Indeed, there were several men who bravely, if in the event foolishly, set out to hasten divine intervention by imitating Moses in their deeds. Which is to say: emulation of the lawgiver was not limited to literature: it was also a fact of extratextual experience.” [24]

On the one hand we have a detractor, Josephus who noticed all the Sign Prophets fancied themselves as the second Moses. Then we have protagonists, the evangelists who saw particular Sign Prophets (that is Jesus and John the Baptist) as a second Moses. In fact in John we have a distinctive Moses typology where he sees Jesus as the new Moses and not a second Moses. To do this he removes the transformation scene and takes away this typology from John the Baptist.[25] Having detractors and protagonists are ideal conditions for assessing history, we get both perspectives from both sides of the coin. These Sign Prophets (including Jesus) offered eschatological hope to oppressed conquered people. Social conditions ensured “why so many hundreds, even thousands of Jewish peasants, were prepared to abandon their homes to pursue some prophet into the wilderness, or to rise in rebellion against their Jewish and Roman overlords when the signal was given by some charismatic “King” or to flee to the hills to join some brigand band. Peasants generally do not take such drastic action unless conditions have become such that they can no longer pursue traditional ways of life.”^[26] Greame Lang had noticed that “Jesus himself is recorded as expressing some rather strong opinions about the wealthy. After meeting the rich young man who sadly declines to sell all he has and give the money to the poor, Jesus tells his disciples that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god” (Mark 10:23-25). Many attacks in the Jewish war were carried out by the poor against the upper classes. Ananias’ palace and Herodian palaces were burnt down; all of the debt records were destroyed (War 2.17.6). The Dead Sea Scrolls offer a window into the minds of these Jews and in the scroll 4Q171 describes “the time of testing” doing a pesher on psalm 37. It uses the typology of testing on Exodus and Wilderness. All this together with the reversal of fortunes expected at a realized eschatology meant….. “some of [Jesus’] rhetoric certainly would have been received without much argument by some of the revolutionaries described by Josephus.”[27]

David Fiensy noted that leaders of mass peasant movements rarely came from those that were on the bottom rung of social class.[28] In Marks gospel Jesus is referred to as a τέκτων – tekton (‘artisan’) (Mark 6:3) although this is often translated as a carpenter, tekton can mean any sort of artisan. Jesus being an artisan helped in his rise, being an exorcist/healer would explain a further exaltation of Jesus among his own people. Jesus would have belonged to a class of charismatic Jews such as Honi or Ben Dosa performing thaumaturgic actions.[29] Jesus being a faith healer would have given pretext to his enemies to call him a goēs.

Although the gospels only want Jesus, using John the Baptist as the testifier to Jesus instead of a Baptizer, they do show an awareness of other Sign Prophet groups. The evangelists tried to disassociate Jesus from his own type, that is the sign prophets who were described by Josephus in the lead up and during the Great Revolt (66-74 CE) by the Jews :

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many … For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time. “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. (Matt 24.11,24-26; cf.Mark 13.22)

Luke goes so far as to name drop these other Sign Prophets into his narrative, where Paul gets mistaken for the ‘Egyptian’ (Acts 21:38).  Morton Smith observed that Acts 5:33-39 gets its history wrong putting Theudas before Judas and also takes liberties with history giving Paul the great Pharisaic teacher Gamaliel, yet this pales in comparison to realizing “Even this Christian propaganda (i. e. Acts) shows that the Christians themselves expected Jesus to be seen as the same social type as Judas and Theudas.” (Emphasis is Morton Smiths).[30]

Referring to many of these Sign Prophets as goētes, “may also reflect claims they made to be Moses redivivus, who was expected by many. Moses had often been described as a goēs because of his miracles, a description Josephus vigorously combats (Ap II, 145, 161).”[31] As seen from Morton Smith comment, depending on being a protagonist or a detractor determined your descriptive of your hero/anti hero, he was a miracle worker or he was a goēs. Even within the gospels we have a tension combatting accusations against Jesus to warnings about other false prophets. You either, depending on your view, were a miracle worker or a magician. Both were descriptives of the same person from two sides of the same coin. From an outsiders point of view Jesus was one of the goētes, one of many false prophets, from a historical insiders point of view Jesus was an eschatological prophet.

---

Here are some views of my friends on this blog:

Dr Richard Miller, author of Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, (Routledge, 2015).

I think you are doing important work, David. We see a social scale for pharmakia (alchemy) -> goetic (sorcery) -> magian (magic) -> and theurgic (divine powers), that is ranging from untrustworthy occultists to the variously more respected end of the spectrum in Roman urban culture. Jesus in the Gospels appears to move between being a magus and a theurgic wonder-worker. Often the later ranged into philosophy and ability to see into the mysteries underpinning the cosmos. I have an essay (a book chapter really) on this. I shall be sure to draw in this interesting observation with Josephus, which may suggest that these themes reach back to the earliest movement.. at least in its perception.. with the Gospels endeavoring to sanitize.. as they do with his zealotry and prosecution and execution etc.

 Dr Robert M. Price, author of two classic books- Christ Myth Theory and its problems and Deconstructiong Jesus.

Of course I want to use this! Thanks!

Bob is going to print this in his Journal of Higher Criticism, Bob deserves a boost after all the abuse he had to take from certain trolls, the same troll also was using harassment techniques against me but I take no notice as this was a very sick individual.

---

[1] Crossley and Myles, Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict, (Zero, 2024), p.5.

[2] Solomon Zeitlin, “The Christ Passage in Josephus”,  Jewish Quarterly Review XVIII (1928),  p.236.

[3] Richard Horsley, “Popular Prophetic Movements at the Time of Jesus, their Principle Features and Social Origins”, JSNT 26 (1986), pp.3-27, (8)

[4] Nathan C. Johnson, (2021) Early Jewish Sign Prophets In James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds.), CDAMM retrieved from here: https://www.cdamm.org/assets/articlePDFs/31519-early-jewish-sign-prophets.pdf

[5] David Allen, “The use of the Testimonium Flavianum by Anti-Christian Polemicists” JHC 16.1 (2021), pp.42-105.

[6] David Allen, How Josephus really viewed Jesus, RevBíb 85.3-4 (2923), p.342

[7] Simon j. Joseph, Jesus and the Temple, p.115

[8] Johnson, Early Jewish Prpphets.

[9] Clare K.Rothchild, “Echoes of a Whisper: The Uncertain Authenticity of Josephus’ Witness to John the Baptist”, in D. Hellhom et al. (eds), Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity (3 vols.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), I, p.262.

[10] David Allen, “Exposing the Pre-Eusebian Strata of the Testimonium Flavianum”, JHC (2025), Section 4, forthcoming

[11] James McGrath, John of History, Baptist of Faith, The Quest for the historical Baptist, (Eerdmans, 2024), ch.5.

[12] Matthew Theissen, Jesus and the Forces of Death, The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity Within Fordt- Century Judaism, (Baker, 2020) , p.23.

[13] Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, The Evidence from Josephus, Oxford 1993, p.135

[*] Otto Betz, “Miracles in the Writings of Flavius Josephus” ch.9 in Feldman and Hata (eds) Josephus, Judaism and Christianity, (Wayne State University Press, 1987), p.230.

[14] Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures, p.143.

[15] Morton Smith, “The Occult in Josephus” ch. 10 in Feldman and Hata (eds) Josephus, Judaism and Christianity, (Wayne State University Press, 1987), p.250.

[16] P. W. Barnett, The Jewish Sign Prophets -A.D. 40-70, Their Intentions and Origin, NTS 27, (1988), p. 681.

[17] Dale Allison, The New Moses: A Martian Typology, p.82.

[18] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, (Barnes &Noble, 1978), pp.31-33. Quote at 32.

[19] Peter Schafer, Jesus in the Talmud, pp.8-10

[20] Simon J Joseph, Jesus and the Temple, p.21.

[21] David Allen, “The use of the Testimonium Flavianum by Anti-Christian Polemicists” JHC 16.1 (2021), pp.42-105.

[22] Ken Olsen, , “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum” in Eusebius of Caesarea Tradition and Innovations, Edited by Aaron Johnson and Jeremy Schott, (2013), p.103.

[23] David Allen, Want to know what Josephus Original  no ally wrote about Jesus. JHC Forthcoming .

[24] Dale Allison, The New Moses p.83

[25] Paul Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus, Modern Foundations Reconsidered, (t & t Clark, edition 2007), p.51.

[26] Richard A.Horsley and John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs, Popular Movements in the time of Jesus, (Winston Press, 1985), p.50

[27] Greame Lang, “Oppression and Revolt in Ancient Palestine: The Evidence in Jewish Literature from the Prophets to Josephus, Sociological Analysis 49.4 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 325-342, first quote at 327, second quote at 329.

[28] David Fiensy, Leaders of Mass Movements and the Leader of the Jesus Movement, JSNT 74, pp.3-27

[29] Gaza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, chapter 3, especially p.58 and 69; Honi the Circle-Drawer by the rabbis (y. Taanit 16a–b;  b. Taanit 19a; 23a) and Onias the Righteous by Josephus. (Antiquities 14.2.1-21). Hanina Ben Dosa (example Ta’anit. 24b–25a; Berakhot 34b.

[30] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, (Barnes &Noble, 1978), p.20.

[31] Morton Smith, “The Occult in Josephus”, p.251