Why the new Quests will rehabilitate John in Historical Jesus Studies.

For those that read my new paper discussed below, will see lots of examples where the Synoptics suppress the historical memory and it is John that brings what actually happened out in the open.

The political realism contained in John only started to be noticed in the third quest and offer a correction to the Synoptics – Gerd Thiessen and Annette Merz noted that Jesus’ first disciples belonging to John the Baptist (1:35–40), the Jewish leaders had political motivations for seeking Jesus’ death (11:47–53; 19:12); the so-called Jewish trial was actually just a hearing before the Sanhedrin (18:19–24); and the date of the crucifixion was probably 14 Nisan (18:28; 19:35). [1] The Jesus Seminar took very little out of John also (as reported by Paul Anderson)

Saying it considered plausible to Jesus in John is the reference to the prophet not receiving honour in his homeland (Jn. 4.44), and the only actions receiving the status of plausible or probable confidence are the inferences that Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist (and that his disciples had also been John’s followers, (Jn 1.35-42), that Jewish leaders accused Jesus of being uneducated (Jn. 7.15), that Annas was the father-in-law of Caiaphas (Jn. 18.13), from whose home Jesus was taken to the Governor’s residence (Jn. 18.28), and that Jesus was beaten and turned over by Pilate to be crucified (Jn 19.1, 16, 18). [2]

E.P. Sanders in regard to the non trial by the Sanhedrin stated “John was just more astute with regard to realpolitik than were the other evangelists, and so wrote a story with greater verisimilitude”.[3]

In the new quests (Fourth and “Next”) and using memory studies will make better use of this verisimilitude, and bring out the realpolitik as I have in my paper called Jesus realpolitik (see below). The other quests went wrong expecting literal history and actual sayings. As I examined John 18:33-34 in my paper “Jesus realpolitik”, I have showed it does not matter whether Jesus said the extra bit John added ““or did others talk to you about me?” (18:34) – it’s how the evangelist recognised what actually happened to the Jesus movement. It’s about the memory John is conveying- namely that the Jesus movement like all the Sign Prophet movements were riddled with spies and the govenors got informed of the movements’ plan of action and were able to send cavalry and troops out against these movements. (Ant. 18.87; 20.97, 171; War 2.260). Note John mentions a speira (cohort) and chiliarchos (Commander) in John 18:12, a likely memory of footmen sent by Pilate. This is where the new quests will go light years ahead of the old quests. Actual history will be churned out.

A new paper of mine-

David Allen, “Memory studies and the realpolitik in John’s Gospel (memories we can determine from Josephus)” in Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds) – Will be published in John, Jesus and History volume 7, SBL, (I was too late for volume 6)

In my research I found that, as I say in my conclusion, “This paper shows that the memories John uses to craft his narrative, are much closer to the historical surface than that of the Synoptics. The Synoptics while crafting their narratives attempted to suppress the historical memories of the Jesus movement whereas John uses the political realism of these memories, thus providing a much more valuable set of memory studies in Historical Jesus research.”

It is much like my Jesus realpolitik paper but shows why John is much more valuable in memory studies. Memory studies in a nutshell are how the gospels understood Jesus and then proceeded to build stories around those memories. Getting behind the memory contained in those stories is where history is at. In Jesus realpolitik I examined John 18:33-34, but in this paper I give the same treatment to many more verses in John which we can extract real history from. I’ll link my Jesus realpolitik paper to give you an idea what my new paper is like.

https://www.academia.edu/126227357/Jesus_realpolitik

One beauty is how the gospels try to handle the Temple incident, historically speaking Jesus caused his own arrest by his action in the Temple. Jesus like other Sign Prophets, tried to force the end- that is start a new age of the Kingdom of God. This is not necessarily a violent zealot movement as “forcing the end” is hoping God and his angels would turn up. “Force the end” does not mean a revolt, just a gathering of a crowd whom the Sign Prophets promised Gods liberation. (Example: The Sign Prophets under Festus “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)). This usually made the Roman governor nervous suspecting revolt. (Example: “Felix thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt” (War 2.260) or “Herod, who feared lest the great influence John [the Baptist] had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion” (Ant. 18.118). Josephus distinguishes between the Sign Prophets and Zealots when he said they were “not so impure in their actions” like the Sicarii and Zealots (War 2.258). The Sign Prophet movements were like “proto Christians” as Zeitlin had noticed in the 1920’s talking about a group whom we now recognise as a Sign Prophet movement in modern scholarship. [4] This action similar to other Sign Prophets resulted in their deaths or being hunted down (The ‘Egyptian’ was one of the few that had actually escaped).

Some scholars have noticed a Luke – John connection, where Luke seems to agree with John against Mark. [5] (eg Foot anointing may have been Luke’s influence but John has other instances more primitive such as the differences and rivalries between the Baptist movement and Jesus movement. Then we have instances that may have been influenced by Josephus from Luke onwards. John seems to adapt Josephus better. Even so, the fact that the evangelists seemed to identify best with the Sign Prophets is very telling in what sort of movement Jesus led. I don’t claim John is independent of the Synoptics, in fact I say that he interacts with the Synoptics throughout my paper. What I say is that John is much more out in the open with what actually happened. It is the Synoptics that try to suppress historical memories and not John.

Here’s an extract

“Again the Temple scene in John is not taken as what actually happened or in the chronological order it happened. More likely John moved the Temple scene simply because he wanted to take this action away from the cause of Jesus crucifixion. Mark had tried the same but did not quite succeed as he did not move it far enough from the arrest scene. Historically Jesus was probably arrested immediately after the Temple scene, the historical Jesus was hoping for an apocalyptic inbreaking of the kingdom of god, a new age initiated. As Paul Anderson noticed “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.” [6] By doing this John is taking away the cause of Jesus crucifixion from an action taken by Jesus himself. All the Sign prophets attempted a re-enactment of some scriptural event hoping God would turn up. Theudas splitting the Jordan (Ant. 20.97) or the Egyptian saying the walls would fall (Ant. 20.170)”

While John may have taken the main event (Temple scene) as the cause of the High Priest to inform on Jesus, he instead comes up with a different event. Narratively speaking John 11:45-53 uses the raising of Lazarus as the cause of Jesus’ crucifixion by making the High Priest network plot against him. By raising Lazarus Jesus would win the crowd over and have more influence than the High Priest. The Romans would see that as a threat to Roman security. That would have put Jesus on the radar to be watched as a future trouble maker. His major event in the Temple could then have a pre- emptive prevention- the Roman governor would be ready for him (and had known in advance what Jesus was up to).

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. [7] This is what happened the Jesus movement.

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[1] Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus, (Augsburg Fortress, 1998), p.36.

[2] Paul Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus, p. 20; Works edited by Funk and others (1993,1998), as well as his own monograph (1996).

[3] E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, 1993, p.72

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

[5] Paul Anderson, “Acts 4:19-20—An Overlooked First-Century Clue to Johannine Authorship and Luke’s Dependence upon the Johannine Tradition” retrieved here:

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/acts357920

[6] 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, Glimpses of Jesus through  the Johannine Lens, (2016, SBL), p.43.

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

T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ, (Oxford, 2025).

This is coming out soon and am looking forward to it. Schmidt is right to say that when Josephus says “first men among us” he would have known of them, which brings Josephus himself closer to the Jesus case. In my own research I found that that line is about the only line not tampered with. Good catch Schmidt!

https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780192866783/josephus-and-jesus

Here is the line

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

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. [1]

I also found Schmidt is right to say that when Josephus says “first men among us” he would have known of them which brings Josephus himself closer to the Jesus case. [2] Here is the quote from page 6 of his new book;

 For Josephus does not simply say in the TF that it was the ‘first men’ (πρώτων ἀνδρῶν) who accused Jesus, but that it was the ‘first men among us’ (παρ’ ἡμῖν). This is an important clue, since, as it turns out, the phrase ‘among us’ (παρ’ ἡμῖν) is common in Josephus’ writings, where it is used fifty-one other times. And combing through every one of these fifty-one instances makes it plain that the phrase marks a subject with which the speaker was directly familiar. In other words, Josephus appears to be claiming in the TF that he actually knew some of those who accused Jesus.

One would be hard-pressed to believe such a thing based on a single point of linguistic data, but compelling support for this conclusion exists in several other statements where Josephus confirms that he did in fact know the ‘first’ men (πρῶτοι) of Jerusalem beginning in 51/ 2 ce. And it is only likely that some of those ‘first’ men of Jerusalem would have also been numbered with ‘the first men among us’ whom Josephus says accused Jesus twenty or so years before.

And this is from page 7:

All this occasions some further, significant discoveries. After analyzing Josephus’ social network, it becomes possible to actually identify the names of certain of Josephus’ acquaintances who were likely partisans in the trial of Jesus. The most probable candidate is the High Priest Ananus II. He was the brother-in-law of the High Priest Caiaphas and the son of the High Priest Ananus I (Annas in the Gospels), both of whom put Jesus to death. As the reader will see, Ananus II had good reason to be in attendance at Jesus’ trial and Josephus did know Ananus II directly. And there are several other candidates too, whom Josephus also knew and who were in all probability also at the trial of Jesus.

John 11:47-50 reflects the collaborating High Priest’s fear of the danger posed by a messianic figure.

Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation. (John 11:47-50)

This is also backed up in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15:

For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s Assemblies in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those Assemblies suffered from the Judeans…..

The Dead Sea Scrolls mention an earlier high priest, seen as a collaborator, whom they dubbed the “Wicked Priest,” (“cohen resha” mentioned in 1QpHab; cf 4QpPsa) which shows one need not read the Josephus business about priestly involvement in Jesus’ execution as a product of vilification by Christian interpolators.

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 to 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).[3]

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

[2] T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for The One called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), pp.6-7.

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

(Updated 10 July 2026)

This debate is over. Good luck to those still clinging onto the Hypothesis- “Eusebius wrote it.” Your day is gone.

One super skeptic, Hansen doesn’t even think the Baptist passage existed but not to worry, I wiped Hansen off the floor when I caught she didn’t even read the manuscripts of the Slavonic, she claimed Jesus was named when he actually wasn’t! the so called “expert” was not only wiped by me but Schmidt also wiped her off the floor in his appendix of his book- Hansen didn’t even realize Muslims actually believe in Jesus as messiah. Anyway all that is old history, luckily she’s moved her burnt hands off the TF. Then we have Ken Olson was wiped by Paget who had already pointed out his arguments do not support the arguments Eusebius was trying to make and Eusebius found it difficult to make use of the TF. That is not the sign of somebody who was supposed to Gabe wrote it! Whealey reiterated the same. Then Inowlocki showed Olson’s arguments are not what Eusebius actually did with quoted passages,
I even showed Olson made a false analogy by comparing a speech to a quoted passage. I mean it was common Greco-Roman practice that historians just made up speeches. This made Olson’s analogy false.

Here is the abstract to my latest paper, there is actually no need to debate those guys who say Eusebius wrote it- that is debunked.

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

Abstract

This paper does not intend to interact with the “creatio ex nihilo by Eusebius” hypothesis for the composition of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) such as put forward by Ken Olson reviving Samuel Zeitlin’s thesis. 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. 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 circulating at that time as his source.

There was an earlier form of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF). The one that existed before it was tampered with. We know this from the variants of the TF alone and in one of my papers I show a pre-Eusebian strata. The paper is “Exposing the Pre-Eusebian Strata of the Testimonium Flavianum” JHC 20, (2025, forthcoming). I demonstrate through variants earlier versions of the TF. The arguments of the ex nihilo guys only work off of the textus receptus found in all the Greek manuscripts of Antiquities. That was only the latest layer of the TF. These same arguments don’t work against the earlier form of the TF as seen from the centuries earlier Syriac and Latin manuscripts.

I also wish to note that I also show another transmission line went east that influenced the Slavonic, so this counteracts Carrier’s claim that everything we know came from one manuscript in Caesarea. [*] That is not so. In the words of T. C. Schmidt:

Carrier neglects to consider the sixth-century Latin translation of Cassiodorus, which also contains the extant reading. He also does not realize that the three earliest manuscripts of Antiquities books 18–20 consistently differ from Eusebius’ quotation of the TF in two locations, suggesting that that the extant manuscripts descend from an exemplar different from that used by Eusebius. … [*1]

Another different variant reading of a ‘certain man’ in a Syriac translation of Eusebius shows Eusebius working off of an original TF. [*2]. Eusebius would never have said ‘certain man’ if he made up the TF from scratch. The variant “certain man” is witnessed by the following manuscript: 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. 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.

John Curran who examined the Latin texts of the TF, has shown a more primitive version of the TF went east and made little impression on a whole clatter of church fathers. ^[1] I see the more primative version of the TF made its way east and influenced the insertions of the Slavonic. It is difficult to explain why the Slavonic TF dropped the name Jesus and title Christ in the exact passage if this passage derived from the Greek TF or if it was created by Eusebius (Christian’s don’t downgrade you know!). The ‘certain man’ instead of ‘Jesus’ reading of the Slavonic matches a very early variant of the TF witnessed by a Syriac manuscript – MS British Library Add. 14,639. The Russian chronographer was highly educated and had lots of sources. One of the sources was a pre-Eusebian manuscript that went east.

I also counter Hansen’s claim and show that Jesus was not named in the exact Slavonic TF passage:

Hansen goes on to say:

The first [argument made by Dave Allen] is mitigated by the fact that while the Separated Edition (i.e., the later redaction of the Church Slavic War) omits Jesus’ name, the older editions of the Church Slavic edition retain it (Leeming and Leeming 2003, 261 note for 174b).^[2]

On inspection of these manuscripts and the footnote of Leeming and Leeming’s book for 174b, it shall be noted that Jesus was not named in the exact passage- it clearly says that it was only in the heading before the passage that the following was written: “Josephus writes about Christ.” (No Jesus mentioned here!) The reason the chronographer had to put in that heading before the passage is that the name “Jesus” was missing from the passage!

And I also counter Ken Olson imported argument that Origen wanted to find a non Christian to support his argument, therefore he emphasised that Josephus did not believe Jesus was the messiah for this effect. It was common knowledge that Josephus was non Christian so there is no need for Origen to do this. More than likely what happened is that Origen digressed onto the TF.

In order to make his argument Olson uses Cels. 6.41 to equate this with the statement “although not believing in Jesus as the christ” with “Moiragenes … , who is not a Christian, but a philosopher^[3].”

Let us examine this passage in detail

“Origen is trying to argue against the following accusation by Celsus:

having become acquainted with one Dionysius, an Egyptian musician, the latter told him [Celsus], with respect to magic arts, that it was only over the uneducated and men of corrupt morals that they had any power, while on philosophers they were unable to produce any effect, because they were careful to observe a healthy manner of life. (Origen, Cels. 6.41)

Origen answers with the following:

that any one who chooses to inquire whether philosophers were ever led captive by it [i. e. Magic] or not, can read what has been written by Moiragenes regarding the memoirs of the magician and philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, in which this individual [Moiragenes], who is not a Christian, but a philosopher, asserts that some philosophers of no mean note were won over by the magic power possessed by Apollonius, and resorted to him as a sorcerer; and among these, I think, he especially mentioned Euphrates and a certain Epicurean. (Cels. 6.41)

There is no such argument in Cels. 1.47 to argue against like we have in Cels. 6.41, on why Origen should bring up the phrase “not believing in Jesus as the Christ.” In Cels 6.41 Origen had to state Moiragenes was not a Christian and was a philosopher to counteract Celsus and break Celsus’ argument! Celsus would have seen Christians as uneducated, so Celsus is throughly debunked by Origen. The imported interpretation of Olson is that Origen stated he was not a Christian as a “by the way” whereas he had to state this as an integral argument against Celsus. Origen stated Moiragenes was not a Christian as a “by the way” whereas Origen had to state this as an integral argument against Celsus. Origen has to state that Moiragenes is not a Christian to counteract the accusation of Celsus [that Christian’s are easily taken in by magicians] and so Moiragenes is not “one of those easily taken in Christians” and reports on philosophers that were taken in by Apollonius of Tyana. This shows Celsus was wrong, and uses a person “who was not a Christian” to prove his case. This is not what’s going on in Cels. 1.47. And what’s going on in Cels. 6.41 is not what is going on in the Commentary on Matthew either. This is why Feldman noted the following, “More­ over, it makes no sense for Origen to express wonder (Commentary on Matthew 10:17) that Josephus did not admit Jesus to be the messiah if Josephus did not even mention him^[4].”

Of course this is backed up when we realize that the Christian Pseudo-Hegesippus probably using the same source TF made the same complaint. A Christian author like Pseudo-Hegesippus would consider Jesus the Messiah, having the phrase missing from his source (probably the same TF Origen saw), shows it was missing from a copy of the TF still circulating.

Now let us produce the extract- showing how we actually know there was an earlier form of the TF and why this position is held by the majority expert TF scholars:

On this layer alone (the textus receptus/final redaction of the TF as witnessed in all Greek Manuscripts of Antiquities) it would be forgiven to come to the conclusion that the TF is a wholesale creation by later Christian scribes. This is certainly the main argument of those proponents of the creatio ex nihilo hypothesis. Most scholars of the ex nihilo hypothesis only test their arguments off of the textus receptus without ever recognizing the earlier forms of the TF as shown in this paper. Those arguing for the creatio ex nihilo hypothesis think its lack of use by church fathers before Eusebius proves it was written by Eusebius. Paul Hopper is an example who only tests the textus receptus, he also uses Louis Feldman arguments to say the silence of the Fathers is a reason to suspect the TF^[5]. Yet as Jossa says, “Josephus’ judgment of Jesus could not satisfy the Christian readers (which explains both the silence of the Fathers before Eusebius and the intervention of the unknown interpolator)^[6].” Alice Whealey observed that no Christian before Origen apparently found it worthwhile to cite Josephus as a relevant authority on anything in the New Testament including figures such as John the Baptist, King Herod or indeed Jesus^[7]. Jossa goes on to say , “If one removes the three clearly interpolated passages, it is clear that the text could not but appear insufficient to a Christian reader. That is why the fact that it did not earn much attention is easily explainable^[8].” Jossa like most scholars is in agreement here with the likes of Louis Feldman and John P. Meier in seeing the following lines as interpolated: “if indeed one should call him a man”, “He was the Messiah “ and “For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him^[9].” Fernando Bermejo-Rubio shows that the passage is not homogeneous and betrays a number of hands in its creation^[10]. Hopper comes at this from a linguistics point of view shows the anomalies with this passage and other Pilate passages^[11]. It is obvious that the textus receptus is the odd ball with the other Pilate passages but this is because of the tampering. It is the Textus Receptus that is an oddball, any earlier form of the TF would not be an oddball, this is how easy it is to counteract Hooper’s arguments. In agreement with Hopper the textus receptus probably used Christian creeds to overwrite what was originally there^[12]. In fact one of Goldberg options that a Christian scribe used the Emmaus passage in Luke for the overwrite is likely^[13]. Hopper suggests the brevity of the TF also raises suspicion but a proper comparison with other messianic figures or Sign Prophets shows this is clearly not the case. In a comparison study with other Sign Prophet passages David Allen has shown that this passage is no shorter or longer with other Sign Prophet passages and compares well with them^[14]. Although Hoopers paper comes from a linguistics point of view and is important for showing substantial tampering his study misses many factors such as a possible earlier form of the TF, explored by Allen in examing the variants of the TF^[15]. A much wider read scholar of the ex nihilo hypothesis was Ken Olson who revived Solomon Zeitlans proposal that Eusebius wrote it.^[16] In order to do this Olson tested the wording of the TF in a Eusebian framework^[17]. Yet Olson thesis suffers from refusing to recognize the earlier forms of the TF. While some of the wording of the TF is clearly Eusebian, not all of it is^[18]. Some phrases may have been added by Eusebius but as you go through the layers provided in this paper, you will come to see that tampering happened before, by, and after Eusebius. The passage was multiply tampered as we will see as we dig down deeper into each layer.

In the meantime, some arguments provided by leading TF scholars (with the exception of Olson) will show that the TF was not as useful as it would have been had Eusebius wrote it ex nihilo. As Olson says, “Eusebius is carrying on an extended defense of the incarnation and answering the charges of critics of Christianity. One of these is Porphyry’s argument against the divinity of Jesus^[19].” In Proof  (Dem. ev.) Eusebius defends Jesus of being a wizard but does not pick out the phrases Olson suggests such as Jesus being a wise man or his disciples receiving the truth with pleasure but picks out the problematic phrase, Jesus attracted to himself “many of the Jews and many of Greek element.” That was –

… to prove that ‘he must evidently have had some extraordinary power beyond that of other men’. In fact Eusebius appears to realize that such an assertion about Jesus is problematical, not least because it points to a reality which did not pertain either at the time Eusebius was writing or in Jesus’ ministry. Hence he seeks to support the assertion by reference to the Acts of the Apostles and what was known about Christianity up to the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt^[20].

Paget goes on to ask, “If Eusebius was the forger of the TF why would he have chosen not to emphasize those parts of the passage which Olson highlights as central to his concerns, emphasizing instead a part of the TF which appeared historically problematic^[21]?” In section three of my paper I show both Pseudo-Hegesippus and Eusebius inherited that phrase about Jesus leading the Jews and Greeks from a particular copy of the TF circulating at that time. Jesus leading Jews and Greeks is extremely unlikely. Steve Mason observed in the run up to the war, the era was marked by “the appearance of charismatic prophets, militants, and sicarii; … [and] deteriorating relations with Greek cities^[22].” It’s unlikely Josephus wrote that phrase so I show in the third section an early Christian scribe did write that phrase to make this movement sound universal. The motivation for this was that the majority of Christians were more gentile based.

Allen noticed a gap in Olson’s thesis where he failed to test his arguments in Josephan framework^[23]. If you test Olson’s arguments critically in both the Eusebian and the Josephan framework, his arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny. By testing both these frameworks it becomes obvious that Eusebius did not write the TF ex nihilo, in fact it becomes obvious that he had something to work with. In one example on the Josephan framework it would be easier to explain why Josephus placed the TF before the Baptist passage instead of the order found in the gospels^[24]. This Josephan framework favors a Josephan provenance. On the Eusebian framework it is hard to explain why Eusebius had not inserted it in the War (where Jesus is not named) instead of Antiquities^[25]. Eusebius in History cites the War instead of Antiquities to showcase the miseries of the Jews under Pilate and this all happened because of the murder of Jesus (HE 2.6.3). If Eusebius forged the Testimonium he would have put it in the War. John Meiers noticed especially in light that Eusebius could have written anything yet he made an “imperfect estimation of the God-man^[26].” Again Olson’s argument falls down in tte Eusebian framework. Inowlocki has examined every quotation in his Proof and Preparation and found that Eusebius did often manipulate quotations but did not find any case where he made them up wholesale. In one clear cut example in Preparation on Phaedo 114 c she states that “Plato’s manuscripts read that these souls will live without bodies whereas Eusebius’ manuscripts read without sufferings, preserving the dogma of the resurrection of the bodies. (Eusebius, P.E. 2.38.6)^[27].”

This argues for Eusebius as textual manipulator but not as a wholesale forger of quoted passages as Olson’s thesis argues. It was Eusebian practice to manipulate existing passages such as the TF. Olson attempts to equate a quoted passage with a speech because he noticed that Eusebius made up a speech for Licinius^[28]. Yet this is very different from a quoted passage because it was common knowledge that all ancient historians just made up speeches, an author often attributed speeches composed by him to generals or other characters. So Eusebius making up a speech actually proves nothing as this was common practice on all Greco- Roman Historians. Whealey highlighted a fault in Olson’s logic on Eusebius use of quotes: “The attempt to use texts apologetically does not indicate that the texts were forged. Eusebius quotes numerous passages of Plato in Books XI – XIV of Preaparatio Evagelica (Preparation) in order to illustrate Christianity’s similarity to Platonic ideas, but no scholar would argue that Eusebius created these passages of Plato ex nihilo simply because he tried to use them apologetically^[29].”

Anyway all this aside, the textual variant ‘certain man’ found in a very early MS of the Syriac translation of Eusebius shows us that this phrase was in Eusebius, originally before the Greek MSS were tampered with. This proves that Eusebius used a more primitive TF circulating at that time that did not name Jesus but referred to him as a ‘certain man.’ This is exactly how Josephus would have described Sign Prophets and other messianic figures. Oh by the way, here’s the paper:

https://www.academia.edu/124894274/_Forthcoming_EXPOSING_THE_PRE_EUSEBIAN_STRATA_OF_THE_TESTIMONIUM_FLAVIANUM

If you like this blog, here are links to a bunch of other blogs like this.

 

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[*] Carrier states this in his blog and not in his book On the Historicity of Jesus. That particular claim would not have passed peer review for which he prides his book. The blog title is “The Josephus Testimonium: Let’s Just Admit It’s Fake Already”.

[*1] T.C.Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence for the One Called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), p.243.

[*2] MS British Library Add. 14,639, cit. op. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.47, n.57.

[1] John Curran, “‘To Be or to Be Thought to Be’: The Testimonium Flavianum (Again)’, NovT 59 (2017), pp.71-94.

[2] Christopher M. Hansen, “Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum: An Evaluation of the Independent Witnesses to Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum”, New England Classical Journal 51/2, (2024), pp.50-75 (65); 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, n.174b

[3] Ken Olson, “Why Origen said Josephus was unbelieving in Jesus as Christ.” retrieved from link here:

https://kenolsonsblog.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/why-origen-said-josephus-was-unbelieving-in-jesus-as-christ/

[4] Louis Feldman, Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, Hata and Feldman (eds),(Detroit: Wayne Stste University Press, 1987), p.56.

[5] Paul Hopper,  “A Narrative Anomaly, Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63.” in Monika Fludernik and Daniel Jacob (eds), Linguitics and Literary Studies: Interfaces, Encounters, Transfers. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), pp.147-169 (150-151); Louis H. Feldman, trans., Josephus: Jewish Antiquities Books XVIII-XIX, Leob 433, (Harvard University Press,1965).p.49; Louis H. Feldman,  “Josephus (c. 37–100 CE).” in W. Horbury, W. D. Davies and J. Sturdy, (eds), The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 3: The Early Roman Period, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999),  pp.911-12.

[6] Giorgio Jossa,  “Jews, Romans, and Christians: From the Bellum Judaicum to the Antiquitate”, in Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi (eds), Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 104, (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2005), p.342.

[7] Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: Historical Criticism and the Testimonium Flavianum, Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times, (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1998), p.13.

[8]  Jossa, “Jews, Romans, and Christians”, p.342, fn 18

[9] Feldman, Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, pp.48-51; J. P. Meier, Rethinking the Historical Jesus: A Marginal Jew. Volume 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person (5 vols.; Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp.60-61.

[10] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, “Was the Hypothetical Vorlage of the Testimonium Flavianum a “Neutral” Text? Challenging the Common Wisdom on Antiquitates Judaicae 18.63-64’, JSJ 45 (2014),pp.127-154(329).

[11] Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly”, pp.147-169.

[12] Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly”, p.166.

[13] G. J. Goldberg, “The Coincidences of the Emmaus Narrative of Luke and the Testimonium of Josephus’, JSP 13 (1995), pp. 59-77; G. J. Goldberg, “Josephus’s Paraphrase Style and the Testimonium Flavianum’, JSHJ 20 (2022), pp.1-32(2).

[14] David Allen, “How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus”; Revista Bíblica 85/3-4, (2023b), pp.333-358; Hopper “Narrative Anomaly”, p.149

[15] David Allen, “A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus would have realistically written about Jesus”, JGRChJ 18, (2022), pp.113-143.

[16] Solomon Zeitlan, “Josephus on Jesus”, Jewish Quarterly Review 21/4 (1930), pp.377-417.

[17] Ken Olson, “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum”,  in A. Johnson and J. Schott (eds.), Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations, Hellenic Studies Series 60; (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013), pp. 97-114; Ken Olson, “Eusebius and the Testimonium Flavianum’, CBQ 61, (1999), pp.305-22.

[18] For an excellent study on the wording of the TF see Carleton Paget, “Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity”, JTS 52 (2001), pp.539-624.

[19] Olson, “A Eusebian Reading”, p.101

[20] Paget, “Some Observations”, p.562.

[21] Paget, “Some Observations”, p.562.

[22] Steve Mason, (ed.), Flavius Josephus: Judean War 2, translation and commentary, Volume 1b, Boston 2008, p.xv.

[23] Allen, “Model Reconstruction”, pp.114-116.

[24] Paget, “Some Observations”, pp.600-1

[25] Étienne Nodet, “Jésus et Jean Baptiste selon Josephus”, RB 92, 1985, pp.321–348, (340); Serge Bardet, Le Testimonium Flavianum:  Examen historique, considérations historiographiques, Paris 2002, p.85.

[26] John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus I, The Roots of the Problem, (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1991), p.64.

[27] Sabrina Inowlocki, Eusebius and the Jewish Authors: His Citation Technique in an Apologetic Context Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 64, (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p.87.

[28] Olson, “A Eusebian Reading”, pp.97-98.

[29] Alice Whealey, “Josephus, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the Testimonium Flavianum”, in C. Böttridge and J. Herzer (eds), Josephus und das Neue Testament, (Tübingen 2007), pp.73-116 (106).

I have a number of blogs on the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) and have decided to put all links to all these blogs in one place. Many of these blogs have been updated to include my latest research.

Part 1 The Original Testimonium Flavianum

Part 2 The evidence of the Variants of the TF

Part 3 Analysis of the Testimonium Flavianum

Part 4 The Layers of the Testimonium Flavianum

Part 5 Wanna know what Josephus originally wrote about Jesus?

Part 6 Exposing the Pre-Eusebian Strata of the TF

Part 7 Why we know there was a Testimonium Flavianum.

Part 8 Jesus or John were not named in the earlier form of Antiquities.

Part 8 Another nail in the Testimonium skeptics coffin: Implications of the Syriac translation.

Part 9: The Testimonium Flavianum among the Sign Prophet passages.

Part 10 Eusebius did not write the Testimonium Flavianum- The smoking gun!

Part 11 The use of the Testimonium Flavianum by anti-Christian polemicists.

Part 12 Whose name was Jesus/ named Jesus- TF variants.

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

All Sign Prophets movements were feared of revolt (the Jesus movement was no exception). Let’s view this history from the governors (client tetrach, prefect or procurator) point of view- it’s important to look at history from all angles.

Let’s show a few examples:

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)

As Amy-Gill Levine comments, “Antipas is mentioned in the Gospels for his execution of John the Baptist (Mark 6, Matthew 14, Luke 9; cf. Luke 3). Whether the execution was prompted by John’s condemnation of Antipas’s incestuous marriage to Herodias (so the Gospels), or whether Antipas had engaged in a preemptive strike against the popular teacher (so Josephus, Ant. 18:118–19), the execution does indicate that gathering crowds in Galilee, or speaking of alternative rules to that of Rome and its local representatives [“innovations” is the word Josephus used for this], was a very dangerous enterprise.” [1] Not only in Galilee but to gather a crowd anywhere under Roman occupation (directly or indirectly) would have been a dangerous enterprise.

Theudas movement must have been suspected as Fadus sent a troop of horsemen to cut them down (Ant. 20.97-99). Fadus displayed Theudas severed head in Jerusalem. A deterrent like crucifixion against leading a revolt.

With the unnamed prophets under Felix, Josephus said 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)

The Samaritan figure:
“But the nation of the Samaritans did not escape without tumults. The man who excited them to it was one who thought lying a thing of little consequence, 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”
(Ant. 18.85-86)

The embassy that complained Pilate to Vitellius said “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) shows us that originally Pilate had wrote in his report to Vitellius that he had suspected this crowd of a revolt.

With the Egyptian sign prophet, Felix had failed to prevent the revolt and it had actually “came to a battle” (War 2.263), although due to informers Felix was ready for him. (Ant. 20.171)

Festus also suspected the “certain impostor, who promised them deliverance and freedom from the miseries they were under” (Ant. 20.188). These govenors were always suspecting revolt and sent out cavalry and footmen against them.

So what were all these Sign Prophets doing? Gathering a crowd, re-enacting some great spiritual event [eg Theudas splitting the Jordan (Ant. 20.97) or the Egyptian saying the walls would fall (Ant. 20.170)] where God would turn up (according to the scriptures- you know like God helping out in the Exodus, well the crowd were convinced by these self styled prophets that the same thing was about to happen at their respective gatherings.[2] Not only were they convinced God would turn up but they saw it as an eschatological moment in line with their apocalyptic worldview- “the Kingdom of God” in the new age would start, it just needed a little push or as the disapproving rabbis said centuries later, they were trying to “force the end”.[3] As Horsley noted the first century prophets were “Focusing on a new/eschatological act of God conceived after the pattern of great historical acts of deliverance, these prophets and their followers themselves took action in anticipation of the divine action. [4] The problem was that all these movements were riddled with spies and easily cut down. [5] So Jesus much like his comparable figures- namely the Sign Prophets was easily picked up by the ruling governor- in this case Pilate, and crucified as a deterrent to revolt. Why I named this blog- Jesus set himself up for the cross- is that he left himself wide open to being caught- the delusion was that God would turn up- hence Mark 15:34/ Matthew 27:46 quoting the Psalm 22:1 – “My God, My God why have you forsaken me.” Jesus gathered a crowd at the Temple- that’s what got him crucified!

To conclude the movements gathered by various Sign Prophets (including Jesus) made the govenors nervous- all suspected revolt – this is why Jesus ended up in a cross- just gathering a crowd was enough- did not matter how harmless you were. We see in the gospel of John, a narrative in John 11:45-53 where he uses the raising of Lazarus as the cause of Jesus’ crucifixion by making the High Priest network plot against him. By raising Lazarus Jesus would win the crowd over and have more influence than the High Priest. The Romans would see that as a threat to Roman security. John hides the real historical reason and introduces his own.

Also Paula Fredrikson objection of Jesus crucified alone suggesting his group was not like the others is false as we have historical examples that this was nothing new, [6] – Theudas head was displayed alone in Jerusalem.

We actually have historical examples of what and why things happened to Jesus.

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[1] Amy-Jill Levine, “Introduction” in The Historical Jesus in Context, Princeton Readings in Religions 27, (Princeton, 2006), p.19.

[2] David Allen, “How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus“, RevBíb 85.3-4, (2024), pp.339-334.

[3] Martin Hengel, The Zealots, Investigation into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I to 70 AD (translation by David Smith), Edinburgh 1989, p.124.

[4] Richard Horsley, Popular Prophetic Movements at the Time of Jesus, their Principle Features and Social Origins”, JSNT 26 (1986), pp.3-27 (9).

[5] David Allen, “Jesus realpolitik”, JHC (2025), forthcoming.

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

I have given Robert Price 10 papers of mine that will be coming out over the coming issues of the Journal of Higher Criticism. The reason for this is to bring my scholarship to the popular market. Here I will provide links to these papers.

Two just released on JHC 20.1 (2025)

Another paper just released here on JHC 20.2 (2025).

https://www.academia.edu/124894274/_Forthcoming_EXPOSING_THE_PRE_EUSEBIAN_STRATA_OF_THE_TESTIMONIUM_FLAVIANUM

https://www.academia.edu/127947848/Want_to_know_what_Josephus_originally_wrote_about_Jesus_Before_it_was_overwritten_I_mean

Jesus realpolitik is one of my best and most popular!

https://www.academia.edu/127297672/The_Mystery_of_Paul_and_his_sales_pitch_You_want_a_new_body

https://www.academia.edu/127297869/Paul_Lone_Wolf_or_Good_Shepherd

https://www.academia.edu/127297951/The_Markan_Jesus_and_Devilled_Ham

https://www.academia.edu/142976048/Josephus_on_Jesus_New_Evidence_for_the_one_called_a_certain_man_

https://www.academia.edu/129526162/Sign_Prophet_Hypothesis_for_Jesus

This is my profile

https://ucc-ie.academia.edu/DavidAllen

These are my peer review papers:

My paper in the JGRChJ 

http://www.jgrchj.net/volume18/JGRChJ-18_Allen.pdf

Revista Bíblica 85 1-2:

Vista de Tres estratos redaccionales para el Testimonium Flavianum. Una propuesta

Revista Bíblica 85 3-4:

Vista de Cómo veía Flavio Josefo realmente a Jesús

These are other interesting papers I brought out on the JHC over the years:

https://www.academia.edu/122178154/Jesus_and_the_Sign_Prophets

https://www.academia.edu/47243189/The_Use_of_the_Testimonium_Flavianum_by_Anti_Christian_Polemicists

Also watch out for a coming issue of John, Jesus and History series (SBL) by Paul Anderson where I have a fascinating paper on memory studies and the gospel of John.

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

Spies!

And there were spies set every where, both in the city, and in the roads: who watched those that met together. Nay it is reported that he [Herod] did not himself neglect this part of caution; but that he would oftentimes himself take the habit of a private man, and mix among the multitude, in the night time; and make trial what opinion they had of his government. And as for those that could no way be reduced to acquiesce under his scheme of government, he prosecuted them all manner of ways. (Josephus, Ant.15.366-367)

We can actually extract real history from the gospels by applying the new quests to this area of history. Yes you heard me right – applying new QUESTS (plural). Firstly the application of the 4th quest (The gospel of John’s grasp on historical reality- this quest was launched by Paul Anderson ),[1] and also the application of the ‘next quest’ using background history (this quest was launched by Chris Keith and James Crossley). A Roman historian Fergus Miller has shown that it is actually “John can bring us closer to the historical context and overall pattern of Jesus’ activities than the other [gospels]”.[2]Also memory studies such as those espoused by the leading scholar Alan Kirk (part of the next quest) and Tom Thatcher (very much involved with the fourth quest) are extremely valuable. As Chris Keith said, the memory technique[3] as espoused by scholars such as Alan Kirk[4] are far superior (or at least should be the framework for criteria) to the historical criteria tools that were the major part of the third quest. A new quest for the historical Jesus is now launched and dubbed the “next quest.”[5] As memory studies underpin both Quest, now is the time that both quests are amalgamated.

Let us now show a demonstration of these Quests in motion-

Pilate then went back inside the Praetorium, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”Jesus answered, “Do you say this yourself or have others spoken to you about me?” (John 18:33-34)

There is a lot behind these verses- you could say this verse more than any verse in the NT sums up the historical times of Jesus. Here is the result of applying the “4th quest-“ – It is the added bit to this narrative by John added on to what the Synoptics said, that shows John is more in tune with historical reality: “or have others spoken to you about me?”

Jesus answer tells a lot (whether Jesus said this or not does not matter – it’s how the fourth evangelist understood the situation which reflects actual history:

“Do you say this yourself or have others spoken to you about me?”

Who are the OTHERS…

Now let us apply the “next quest” i. e. memory and background history:

Here is an extract from my new paper [Jesus realpolitik] exposing the OTHERS.

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.

[This tracking was enabled by OTHERS, spies and informers that were in the govenors pocket]

Let us examine other Sign Prophet movements also stopped in their tracks where the Judaea governor seemed to be one step ahead.

In the group of the Samaritan that had gathered in Tirathaba, Pilate was ready to prevent them gathering at Mt. Gerizim:

So they came thither armed, and thought the discourse of the man probable; [the ‘Samaritan had told them Moses vessels were buried there] and as they abode at a certain village, which was called Tirathaba, they got the rest together to them, and got ready to go up the mountain in a great multitude together; but Pilate prevented them, however, by seizing the roads with a great band of cavalry and infantry (Ant. 18.86-87)

Fadus was fully aware of Theudas plan to gather at the Jordan in order to split the river (like Moses):

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. (Ant. 20.98)

Felix prevented a gathering by a Sign Prophet in the wilderness:

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 2.259-260).

Felix also knew of the plans of the ‘Egyptian’ Sign Prophet:

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. (Ant. 20.171)

So also with the Jesus movement, Jesus simply got caught with a little help from informers and got handed over. Paul reports after Jesus’ last Supper he got handed over. (1 Cor. 11:23-25). As Burton Mack says, “In this case the mythic features are that Jesus himself explained the symbols and that it happened ‘on the night he was handed over.’ Handed over was a term taken from the history of warfare and used in martyrologies to indicate the shift in power that set the situation up for a martyrdom. It did not need any narrative elaboration.”[6] The etymology of the term paredideto- παρεδίδετο is to “give over something that you posses (even if it is yourself) against your will. (against = παρά, give = δίδω). It is used for “deliver over” and for a militaristic “surrender.”

We can sense the danger in the gospels especially the “interest” in preventing the appearance of “messiahs” who could stir up the people during the festive season converges among all three involved. We see many examples of this, for example with the passage on the tax to Rome and also when the Pharisees themselves tell Jesus, “Go away, Antipas wants to kill you.”

Memory studies in a nutshell are how the gospels understood Jesus and then proceeded to build stories around that. In this case the gospels knew the Jesus movement was riddled by spies and built the Judas Iscariot story around this.

I show in my paper, that Paul is unaware that Judas did it.[7]

Here’s an extract:

Bart Ehrman says Paul uses handed over [by God, to face death] and that this “passage that might suggest that Paul did not know about Judas and his betrayal.”[8] Gary Greenberg says Paul or his followers are unaware of Judas betraying Jesus, it is only the gospel of Mark is the first to say so. Jesus’ post crucifixion appearance to Judas is relayed here – “and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve,” (1 Cor 15:5). Greenberg observes “If Paul consciously intended his reference to ‘The Twelve” to mean that Jesus made a post crucifixion to all twelve disciples at the same time, including Judas, it would strongly suggest that at about 56 CE, twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus, Judas had not yet been identified as a villain within the mainstream Christian community.”[9] Tom Dykstra sees Judas used by Mark (Mark being a Paulinist downplays Jesus’ family and the twelve) to emphasize the 12 before Paul were inferior. “The most straightforward interpretation is that the evangelist wanted to place extra heavy emphasis on the fact that Judas was one of the twelve; or, in other words, he wanted to leave no possibility that his hearers would miss the point that one of the twelve betrayed Jesus. The reader must naturally infer that mere membership in the ranks of “the twelve” – or, in the context of a Pauline epistle, mere status as one of “the apostles before me” -should not automatically confer authority on anyone.”[10]

Many scholars today think that Iscariot means “man of Kerioth,” as the “Is” in Hebrew means “ish” in English, implying Judas was Keriothish (transliteration of IsQeriyot). It can also be a  Greek rendering of the Sicarii, (an assassin group who had small daggers under their clothing on the pretense of a sacrifice), this implying the name meaning “man of the daggers.” Judah Sicarii became Jude Iscariot, then Judas Iscariot – sicarii after their knife (sicae-Latin/ sikkah-Aramaic)^[11] Jesus betrayed by his own disciple “Judas”, who shares the name of the patriarch who gave his name to the whole nation of Judea ie the Jews. In this scenario Iscariot can also denote the sicarii. Robert Gough explains, “The same Greek word for handed over is used in the Greek translation of the book of Genesis where it mentions the betrayal of Joseph by his brothers, and guess who comes up with the betrayal idea – Judah, the patriarch after whom the province of Judah and the Jews is named.  This suggests  Judas is a literary character.”[12]

This blog does not argue for the ahistoricity of Judas, in the words of Helen Bond, “just because the disciples have counterparts in the real world does not mean that they are any less Markan creations. They are still “paper people,” cut by our author to fit the needs of his literary product.” [13] Rather this blog argues that we had more than one informer, that the nameless informers did not suit Marks genre of bios, that it was much better for Mark to create a named villain as this pinned the success of his narrative. The memory studies unlock the actual history- namely that the Jesus movement was riddled with Pilate’s spies (probably both Pilates network of spies and the network of spies from the Sanhedrin) and Mark used this memory to build his own gospel story.

This post is taken from my new paper:

https://academia.edu/resource/work/126227357

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[1] Paul Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered, (2006).

[2] Fergus Miller, “Reflections on the Trials of Jesus”, chapter 7 in Rome, the Greek World, and the East volume 3 of The Greek World, the Jews, and the East, Fergus Millar, Edited by Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers, (North Carolina Press, 2006), p.140

[3] Chris Keith, Jesus Against the Scribal Elites, The Origins of the Conflict, (T & T Clark, 2020), p.83

[4] Alan Kirk, Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory and Gospel Writing: The Long Search for the Authentic Source (Eerdmans, 2023).

[5] A bunch of essays applying the next quest are contained in the following book: James Crossley and Chris Keith (eds), The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, (Eerdmans, 2024).

[6] Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, (HarperCollims, 1996), pp.91ff

[7] David Allen, “Jesus realpolitik”, JHC 2025 forthcoming.

[8] Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas, A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed, (Oxford, 2006), p.16.

[9] Gary Greenberg, The Judas Brief, Who Really Killed Jesus?, (Continuum, 2007), p.136

[10] Tom Dykstra, Mark Canonizer of Paul, (Ocabs Press 2012), p.117.

[11] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: the Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 118 ff.

[12] Robert Gough, Messianic Mania: How Jesus became messiah, A Commentary of the Life of Jesus the Nazarene (2024). 

[13] Helen Bond, The First Biography of Jesus, Genre and Meaning in Mark’s gospel, (Eerdmans, 2020), p.263.

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

The governors of Judaea often knew what was going down, not just from their own informers but from the informers of their collaborators – that is the network belonging to the collaborating High Priest, an office controlled by the governors. The High Priest had been controlled since Herod the Great and the Romans, this was done by placing their special vestments under lock and key:

when Herod came to be king, he rebuilt this tower, which was very conveniently situated, in a magnificent manner; and because he was a friend to Antonius, he called it by the name of Antonia. And as he found these vestments lying there, he retained them in the same place, as believing, that while he had them in his custody, the people would make no innovations against him. The like to what Herod did was done by his son Archelaus, who was made king after him; after whom the Romans, when they entered on the government, took possession of these vestments of the high priest, and had them reposited in a stone-chamber, under the seal of the priests, and of the keepers of the temple, the captain of the guard lighting a lamp there every day; and seven days before a festival they were delivered to them by the captain of the guard, when the high priest having purified them, and made use of them, laid them up again in the same chamber where they had been laid up before, and this the very next day after the feast was over. (Josephus, Ant. 18.92-94)

It was Fergus Millar, a Roman historian that showed that it was the gospel of John, as opposed to the Synoptics that was most in touch with historical reality of the times. As Millar says, “Caiaphas makes his first appearance, described as ‘‘archiereus [high priest] of that year,’’ and utters the proposition that one man should die for the sake of the people.”[1]

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” (John 11:47-50)

This reflects the precarious position of the High Priests, either do the Romans bidding or lose your job by violent force.

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. Let us examine other Sign Prophet movements also stopped in their tracks where the Judaea governor seemed to be one step ahead.

In the group of the Samaritan that had gathered in Tirathaba, Pilate was ready to prevent them gathering at Mt. Gerizim:

So they came thither armed, and thought the discourse of the man probable; [the ‘Samaritan had told them Moses vessels were buried there] 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 file roads with a great band of horsemen and footmen (Ant. 18.86-87)

Fadus was fully aware of Theudas plan to gather at the Jordan in order to split the river (like Moses):

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. (Ant. 20.98)

Felix prevented a gathering by a Sign Prophet in the wilderness:

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 2.259-260).

Felix also knew of the plans of the ‘Egyptian’ Sign Prophet:

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. (Ant. 20.171)

So also with the Jesus movement, Jesus simply got caught with a little help from informers and got handed over. Paul reports after Jesus’ last Supper he got handed over. (1 Cor. 11:23-25). As Burton Mack says, “In this case the mythic features are that Jesus himself explained the symbols and that it happened “on the night he was handed over.” Handed over was a term taken from the history of warfare and used in martyrologies to indicate the shift in power that set the situation up for a martyrdom. It did not need any narrative elaboration.”[2] The etymology of the term paredideto– παρεδίδετο is to “give over something that you posses (even if it is yourself) against your will. (against = παρά, give = δίδω). It is used for “deliver over” and for a militaristic “surrender.” Bart Ehrman says Paul uses handed over [by God, to face death] and that this “passage that might suggest that Paul did not know about Judas and his betrayal.” [3] Ehrman uses a passage in Romans as an example:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son, but handed him over [paradidomi] for all of us—how will he not give us all things with him? (Rom. 8:32)

This would be a cute way of saying when Jesus was caught- that it really was gods plan where god had let it happen. Paul blamed his own people for the crucifixion of Jesus by Roman soldiers (1 Thess. 2:15). In the words of Michael A. Rydelnik:

A more plausible view is to see this passage in a narrow sense, condemning the Jewish leaders and their followers but not the Jewish people in general. Several facts support this view. First, the persecution spoken of in 2:14 was intraracial. Paul commended the Thessalonians because they were able to endure persecution at the hands of their “countrymen” even as the Jewish churches did at the hands of other Jews. The word συμφυλέτης, a hapax legomenon, is an ethnic term meaning “of the same tribe or race.[4]

I have shown before in one of my papers why 1 Thess. 2:14-16 is no longer seen as an interpolation, mainly because the wrath of God does not refer to Temple Destruction.[5] The authentic line in the Testimonium Flavianum meshes very well with this: “And when at the indictment of the first men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross.” (Ant. 18.64). The gospel of John also says Jesus suspected informers:

Pilate then went back inside the Praetorium, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this yourself or have others spoken to you about me?” (John 18:33-34)

Gary Greenberg says Paul or his followers are unaware of Judas betraying Jesus, it is only the gospel of Mark is the first to say so. Jesus’ post crucifixion appearance to Judas is relayed here –  “and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve,” (1 Cor 15:5). Greenberg observes “If Paul consciously intended his reference to ‘The Twelve” to mean that Jesus made a post crucifixion to all twelve disciples at the same time, including Judas, it would strongly suggest that at about 56CE, twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus, Judas had not yet been identified as a villain within the mainstream Christian community.”[6]

The kiss of Judas is only the dramatic story telling of Mark and Matthew. (Mk. 14:43–45 and par).  The only dealings the Roman administration would have with a movement like the Jesus movement is through the payment of informers, whether Judas is a literary invention or not – that is what he represents. The gospel of Matthew says Judas did it for the money (Mt. 26:15), Luke’s gospel says Satan uses Judas to get back at Jesus. (Lk. 22:3). In Johns gospel Judas comes with a cohort of soldiers. Tom Dykstra sees Judas used by Mark (Mark being a Paulinist downplays Jesus’ family and the twelve) to emphasize the 12 before Paul were inferior. “The most straightforward interpretation is that the evangelist wanted to place extra heavy emphasis on the fact that Judas was one of the twelve; or, in other words, he wanted to leave no possibility that his hearers would miss the point that one of the twelve betrayed Jesus. The reader must naturally infer that mere membership in the ranks of “the twelve” – or, in the context of a Pauline epistle, mere status as one of “the apostles before me” -should not automatically confer authority on anyone.”[7]

Many scholars today think that Iscariot means “man of Kerioth,” as the “Is” in Hebrew means “ish” in English, implying Judas was Keriothish (transliteration of IsQeriyot). It can also be a  Greek rendering of the Sicarii, (an assassin group who had small daggers under their clothing on the pretense of a sacrifice), this implying the name meaning “man of the daggers.” Judah Sicarii became Jude Iscariot, then Judas Iscariot – sicarii after their knife (sicae-Latin/ sikkah-Aramaic)[8] Jesus betrayed by his own disciple “Judas”, who shares the name of the patriarch who gave his name to the whole nation of Judaea i. e. the Jews. In this scenario Iscariot could denote the sicarii.

The best way to evaluate Judas Iscariot is through memory studies. Chris Keith claims that the memory technique[9] as espoused by scholars such as Alan Kirk[10] are far superior (or at least should be the framework for criteria) to the historical criteria tools that were the major part of the third quest. A new quest for the historical Jesus is now launched and dubbed the “next quest.”[11] This next quest will use everything such as background history but will also involve memory studies. Memory studies in a nutshell are how the gospels understood Jesus and then proceeded to build stories around that. They involve that many repeated claims, such as the re-occurrence technique used by Dale Allison (i. e. what keeps re-occurring such as Jesus as a prophet). Allison’s method consisted of what kept re-occurring in the gospels more than likely came from historical sources told in a literal and theological way in the gospels.[12]

Here by using the background history of small movements riddled with spies, the gospels are shown through memory studies to remember that the Jesus movement too suffered from such an infliction. This memory technique shows us that the gospels built a villain, in this case Judas Iscariot as the inside spy that gave the game away. Matthew’s gospel reflects how easy it was for governors to recruit informers- among poor people offering money for information was standard:

Then one of the Twelve who was called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and said, “What do you wish to give me, if I hand him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from then on he was seeking an opportunity to hand him over (Matt. 26:14–16).

The thirty pieces of silver alludes to Zech. 11:12-13, this in turn alluded to payment for killing a slave, Ex. 21:32.

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Some commentary from my FB Group-

Russell Gmirken:

Judas the informer’s fate: Hung himself in the throes of remorse (Matthew 27:3–5)? Disemboweled in a fall (Acts 1:18–19)? Divinely punished (Papias)? In any case, all accounts, however late their date, agree that the unfortunate yet well-deserved death of the Judas ensued almost immediately after his act of betrayal.

Call me a cynic, but there were a number of prominent traitors in antiquity regarding whom ancient or modern sources hotly disputed whether their subsequent fate was suicide or in fact murder: Demosthenes, Brutus, Mark Anthony, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, Seneca the Younger, among the most famous. One can extend this list with many other historical examples down to the near present when it was expedient to chalk up an act of violent political retaliation as an unfortunate case of suicide. An entertaining possibility in the NT which few, however, are willing to entertain.

My Answer (Dave Allen):

Russell Gmirkin as “Judas described” is an invention (whether there was a historical figure or not as I argue in my blog) – I’d be very willing to entertain what that description was based on. In the blog I see Judas as representing a historical memory of a movement full of informers and spies.

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[1] Fergus Millar, “Reflections on the Trials of Jesus”, chapter 7 in Rome, the Greek World, and the East volume 3 of The Greek World, the Jews, and the East, Fergus Millar, Edited by Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers, (2006, The University of North Carolina Press), p.146.

[2] Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, (HarperCollims, 1996), pp.91ff

[3] Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas, A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed, (Oxford, 2006), p.16.

[4] Michael A. Rydelnik, “Was Paul Anti-Semitic? Revisiting 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16”, BSAC 165.657 (2008),  p.63.

[5]David Allen, A Model Reconstruction of what Josephus really said about Jesus” JGRCHJ 18, (2022), p.138, n.76: Most of the arguments proposed for interpolation were done on theological grounds. Most of Carrier’s analyses are only applicable to the passage when ‘But wrath has come upon them at last!’ is applied to the Temple destruction (see Richard Carrier, Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995–2013 [Scotts Valley, CA: CreativeSpace, 2014], pp. 203-11). Yet that is only a retrospective fallacy as Jewett has shown many local catastrophes (see Robert Jewett, ‘The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation’, NTS 17 [1971], pp. 198-212 [205 n. 5], who writes, ‘Furthermore, Paul’s statement in I Thess. ii. 16, “but God’s wrath has come upon them at last”, may refer to the disturbance which occurred in Jerusalem during the Passover of 49 when twenty to thirty thousand Jews were supposed to have been killed. Cf. Josephus, Ant. 20.112 and War 2.2247. Since this disturbance was instigated by Zealots [War 2.225], Paul could well have interpreted the massacre as punishment for the persecution against the Christian in Judea’). This is not the only disaster as Judea also suffered famine in 45-47 CE (Ant. 20.49-53). For a full set of the arguments, see Matthew Jensen, ‘The (In)authenticity of 1 Thessalonians 2.13-16: A Review of Argument’, CBR 18 (2019), pp. 59-79.

[6]Gary Greenberg, The Judas Brief, Who Really Killed Jesus?, (Continuum, 2007), p.136

[7]Tom Dykstra, Mark Canonizer of Paul, (Ocabs Press 2012), p.117.

[8] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: the Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 118 ff.

[9] Chris Keith, Jesus Against the Scribal Elites, The Origins of the Conflict, (T & T Clark, 2020), p.83

[10] Alan Kirk, Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory, and Gospel Writing: The Long Search for the Authentic Source (2023).

[11] James Crossley and Chris Keith (eds), The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, (Eerdmans, 2024).

[12] Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth, Millenarian Prophet, (Augsburg Fortress, 1998).

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The fruition of my studies on both the Testimonium Flavianum and the Sign Prophet hypothesis for Jesus are examined in this open accesss peer review paper (it shows how Jesus was one of the Sign Prophets).

Here is the podcast of my paper from the academia site:

Today we have a thought provoking episode ahead as we explore a fascinating paper by David Allen titled “How Josephus really viewed Jesus.” Josephus, a Romano- Jewish first century historian is a key figure for anyone studying the historical Jesus and the context for early Christianity. His work provides a crucial link of Jewish history to early Christian writings. [(The same can be said of the Dead Sea Scrolls) Outside of Josephus mention of Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) these sets of literature are crucial in studying the mindset of these people and help to explain the rise of Christianity].

There is perennial debate in how Josephus depicted Jesus specifically in the TF, which is the key question here. Was Jesus seen as a radical eschatological figure? Was the passage tampered with by later scribes? And if so, to what extent? Why is this significant? Well Josephus’ writings contain one of the few outside the Bible references to Jesus from his time period. Understanding Josephus’ perspective helps us discern historical facts from later interpretations or embellishments that may have occurred as Christianity grew and spread. In this paper Allen tackles the TF with detective like precision dissecting text variants and historical context. 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.

Here’s the link:

https://www.revistabiblica.com/ojs/index.php/RB/article/view/364/411

After years of research (3 peer review papers and 3 popular market papers), this is my conclusion to what the Testimonium Flavianum (the passage Josephus originally wrote about Jesus) looked like.

Post updated 1 July 2025.

This is my latest model taking all factors into account including how Josephus described other figures that are comparable to Jesus.

Here is the Model Reconstruction of Ant. 18.63-64 that I provisionally accept for now:

Josephus’ Original Testimonium Flavianum:

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

Here is the appendix of the English and attic Greek.

A few notes on this model.

“There was about this time a certain man”

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)” [*] This reading is supported by a Greek variant in one of the Greek manuscripts of Eusebius – Codex A 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).”[*1] Having this phrase also in the Syriac translation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History makes it a certainty that this was the original reading. Having the variant “certain man” in a very early Syriac translation of Eusebius shows us that “certain man” was originally in Eusebius’s rendition. On the word tis (‘certain’) “It was probably common knowledge in Justin Martyrs time that Josephus did in fact use tis. Justin Martyr can imagine how Trypho would caricature Jesus, writing Iēsous tinos (Martyr, Dial. Trypho 108)^[1].”

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.

“A sophist and agitatior” 

Josephus usually uses the expression σοφὸς ἀνήρ ‘a wise man’, as his highest praise for people. 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).

He was a doer of strange works.

Geza Vermes argued in 2009 that the expression “surprising feats” (paradoxon ergon) (example used in Ant. 12.63) is repeatedly used by Josephus in his works to describe many miracles associated with the Old Testament (such as the burning bush and the miracles of Moses and Elisha). [*2]

So the word in itself is not negative (just like many words in English), but in context it can be negative. There is an example of this when Josephus describes the miracles of Pharoahs court magicians. Josephus “makes Pharaoh say that the ‘wise’ (σοϕῶν) magicians of Egypt employed their dark arts (μαγείας) to perform a παράδοξον before Moses by turning their staffs into snakes” (Ant. 2.285–6).[*3]

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. 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. [*4]

“A teacher of men who reverence truth.”

There is a variant in Eusebius Proof (Dem. Ev. 3.5) that has sebomenon σεβομένων (“who reverence”) instead of “hēdonḗ talēthē dechomenon (“who receive the truth with pleasure”), it is hard to decide whether the textus receptus or the variant is the earlier reading. “a teacher of men who reverence truth” sounds less theological than the textus receptus, “a teacher to those who receive the truth with pleasure”, as if Jesus was giving out the truth, something the Jew Josephus would probably not accept.

Latest: I think this is a creed added by Eusebius, in place of sophist. So I dropped it from the original TF.

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

The gospels all try to sanitize this prophecy, it is exactly like the promises made by a group of people in Josephus such as Theudas and the ‘Egyptian.’ Modern scholars refer to these people as Sign Prophets^[2]. The ‘Egyptian’ claims to make the “walls come tumbling down”  (Ant. 20.170) in Jerusalem which is a clear allusion to the battle of Jericho. (Joshua 6:20). Theudas’ claim to be able to divide the river (Ant. 20.97) is a clear allusion to Joshua 3.14-17, which has everything to do with the redemption of Israel. “Key moments in the birth of the nation, these signs prophets signalled the eschatological nearness of final redemption. … Scriptural authority undergirded not only their own message; it also supported the hopes and convictions of their followers^[3].” Taking the example of the ‘Egyptian’ Allen notes:

With the ‘Egyptian’ the great sign promised (and actually believed by his followers) was God would help with insurmountable odds, like penetrating the walls of Jerusalem. The world power of the Romans had a protracted siege in order to penetrate these, the Egyptian simply promised “at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down” (Ant. 20.170). From this you can see the scriptural fantasy of re-enactment, that people actually thought this could be replicated^[4].

The Sign Prophet (or Pseudoprophet as Josephus calls them) had a sway over the people and had convinced their following of their visions. Most had a vision influenced from great scriptural past happenings and thought they could replicate great moments instigated by great prophets. Nathan C. Johnson cannot see how the Egyptian thought he could actually succeed:  “On this account, it is unclear how exactly the Egyptian prophet envisioned succeeding: even with thirty thousand militants (a typical Josephan exaggeration), the walls of Jerusalem would have been all but impenetrable, as shown in the protracted, months-long Roman siege of the city a little over a decade later^[5].” Yet all the Sign Prophets thought they would succeed with Gods intervention. According to their beliefs, God had intervened for great prophets of the past.

Allen does a comparative study between Jesus and the Sign Prophets showing Jesus was one in a line of Sign Prophets^[6]. We see in the gospels the evangelists are uncomfortable with a typical sign prophet sign, that of the failed prophecy of Temple destruction in Jesus’ day (Mark 13:1-31)^[7]. A version of this prophecy unsanitized could have been original to the TF. Even though the promises of the Sign Prophets are absurd, we can see in Johns gospel an attempt to take the edge off this absurdity:

John’s understanding of Christian memory is perhaps most evident in the Fourth Gospels version of the temple incident, the story of Jesus’ disruption of animal vending and currency exchange in the temple courts during a Passover festival (John 2:13–22). John’s account of this episode portrays “the Jews” demanding a miraculous sign from Jesus to authorize his radical actions. Jesus responds by inviting them to “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it” (John 2:19). Here, as elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel, the Jews can only point out the absurdity of Jesus’ proposition: “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it in three days?!?” The denouncement of this heated exchange is, however, truncated, for the narrator is compelled to break in with an explanation of Jesus’ words: “But he said this about the ‘temple’ of his body. Then when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said these things, and they believed the Scriptures and the word that Jesus spoke” (2:21–22). From the perspective of narrative criticism, this explanation is entirely satisfactory, serving as a coherent foreshadowing of John 19:42–20:1. Jesus’ dead body will, indeed, lie in the tomb three days—from the Day of Preparation (Friday) until the first day of the week (Sunday)—before being “raised^[8].”

You can see that Johns gospel spiritualizes Jesus prophecy of Temple Destruction and Restoration. By spiritualising Sign Prophet claims, you counteract the obvious objections of the time, why these signs did not happen. As Thatcher pointed out the Jews from Johns gospel (i e the objections from the time), that the restoration of the Temple in three days was absurd. If you spiritualized all the Sign Prophet signs, these absurd objections disappear- you can explain why the Jordan did not split for Theudas or the walls did not fall for the ‘Egyptian’ or the Temple was not restored for Jesus in three days.

“Many of the Judaeans, and also many of the Galilean element, he led to himself in a tumult”

The most interesting line that was corrupted in the TF is “many Jews, and also many of the Greek element, he led to himself;” (Ant. 18.63). Both Greeks and Jews had deteriorating relations in the lead-up to the Roman Jewish War 66-70 CE. Here I believe some Christian scribe before Eusebius swapped out Galilaiou (“Galilean”) for Hellēnikou (“Greek”). Having ‘Greeks’ makes this movement sound universal. Christianity being predominantly gentile movement would have motivated a Christian scribe to include Greeks being part of the Jesus movement. This passage was also used by Eusebius throughout Proof (Examples: Dem. Ev. 3.5.109; cf 4.20.14, 8.2.109)^[9], although it was still problematic as it noted by Paget. Eusebius did notice the historical reality of the time and explained away this problem by seeking “to support the assertion by reference to the Acts of the Apostles and what was known about Christianity up to the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt^[10].”

The passages surrounding the TF had disturbances or thorubos (“tumult”) of one kind or another. I found that a derivative of the word thorubos best fitted here in this sentence as the Greek says Jesus led two groups, Jesus leading two groups at a highly dangerous time of Passover, an occasion that usually ended in riots of one kind or another. Some ruckus caused by the Jesus movement would have ended up in Jesus’ crucifixion. Here is my reconstruction of the original Josephus sentence: kai pollous men Ioudaious, pollous de kai tou Galilaiou epēgageto en thorubō. Both Norden and Schwartz noticed that Josephus often kept disparite passages together by using a leitmotif. In the Pilate and surrounding passages Josephus used the leitmotif of a tumult. “of Josephus’s reports about the days of Pontius Pilate use verbs or nouns of the Greek root thoryb‐, thus characterizing the events as ‘tumults’ (18.58, 62, 65, 85, 88)^[11].”   Norden noted that the section running from Ant. 18.55-90 was united not by chronology—the two events reported after the TF, the expulsions of the Isis cult and of the Jews from Rome, concern events traditionally held to have taken place in AD 19 (Tacitus Annales 2.85), some time before Pilate’s tenure of office in Judaea. Rather they are united by the fact that they all conform to disturbances or thorubos (‘tumult’)^[12].

“he was desirous of Kingship: Many were roused, thinking that thereby the tribe could free themselves from Roman hands.”

The Slavonic denied Jesus was desirous of Kingship thus perhaps preserving the earliest form of the phrase “he was the Christ”. The final redaction of the TF is the received text as found in all Greek manuscripts of Antiquities and is known as the textus receptus. (Ant. 18.63-64). This is the latest layer. Taking one phrase from the textus receptus,  “he was the Christ,” we will find that this phrase was written by a later redactor than Eusebius. Eusebius originally wrote: “he was thought to be the Christ”, the witnesses to this middle redaction of the TF are Jerome, Rufinus and Michael the Syrian recensions. The pre-Eusebian first redaction is shown from the following variants – Origen, the Slavonic and De Excidio. These variants are missing the example phrase taken in the final redaction and the middle redaction. They are missing the phrases, “he was the Christ” or “he was thought to be the Christ”. By denying it, it is the Slavonic that gives us a hint what the earliest phrase was- “he was desirous of Kingship”

 For the second line here “Many were roused, thinking that thereby the tribe could free themselves from Roman hands” also comes from the Slavonic.

“So Pilate sent forces, footmen to slew them and seize a number of them along with the certain imposter.” (γόητος τις )

Certain imposter or γόητος τις is the usual way Josephus described the Sign Prophets.

In an earlier form of the Testimonium Flavianum (the original TF) (Ant. 18.63-64) Jesus may have been described as a γόης –  goēs prompting 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.[13] This would have prompted Eusebius to change such a phrase containing γόητος τις –  goētos tis (‘certain sorcerer’) to παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής – paradoksōn ergōn poiētēs. (‘doer of astonishing works’).

The line about Pilate sending forces is more likely given what was written before and after the TF. See what was written before the TF: “Who laid upon them much greater blows …” (Ant. 18.62) and the see the line after the TF: “About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder” (Ant. 18.65). It is also more likely seeing how Josephus wrote about other Sign Prophets.

Any movement that gathered a crowd initiated a sending out of troops by the Roman governor. Here I will provide a few examples-

The first example was a movement other than Jesus’ that was put down by Pilate:

“but Pilate prevented their going up, [to Mt. Gerizim] by seizing upon file roads with a great band of horsemen and footmen, 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. 18.87)

Here Fadus sent out the horsemen against Theudas and his group:

However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt [Theudas splitting the Jordan], 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. (Ant. 20.98)

The Sign prophets under Felix met the same fate.

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 2.260)

The authentic part of textus receptus found in the manuscripts of Antiquities. Paul Winters notes:

The Egyptian who command the biggest group of these Sign Prophets, had to face the horsemen and footmen.

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. (Ant. 20.171)

And later 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).

The gospel of John reports an incident very similar to these:

Then a cohort (speira) with its commander (chiliarchos) and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. (John 18:12)

As noticed by Lena Einhorn, “a σπεῖρα (speira), that is a cohort consisting of 500 to 1000 Roman soldiers was sent out and John uses the word χιλίαρχος (chiliarchos), for their commander, this is a commander of one thousand (Jn. 18:12).^[14] Dale Martin consulting the gospel of Mark alone showed tte Jesus movement were lightly armed expecting a break in of a Yahweh intervention . ^[15] “At least one of Jesus’ disciples was armed when Jesus was arrested. The mistake made by most readers is to read the Gospel of Mark in light of the Gospel of Luke, which insists that only two swords were involved (Mk 14.47; Lk. 22.3638, 50). What happens if we read Mark’s account pretending we know nothing of how it is presented in the other Gospels?”^[16] This is similar to the Samaritan sign prophet whose movement were only armed for self defence. (Ant.18.86, 88). Josephus consulted the records under all the various governors of Judea, where footmen or cavalry had to be sent against any mass movement. This suggests just such an incident of footmen and cavalry were sent out for Jesus, this would generate such a report by the prefect (Pilate), a report that would ultimately be picked up by Josephus. Such incidents were picked up all over the place in Judea for Josephus’ books. Most of the Acta records which would have included orders for footmen and cavalry sent out, under each of  the governors of Judea were included in his book Antiquities.

It is most likely Jesus was crucified as being a threat to Roman security. Justin Meggit’s reason for Jesus ending up on a cross for simply being mad is a bit anachronistic as we do not talk for a rational age.^[17] He was right to say Pilate did not need much of an excuse or trial to have Jesus Crucified (Philo, Legat. 302).^[18] You could say all the Sign Prophets were mad as they went against yet odds expecting gods intervention but this was due to an apocalyptic age beliefs.

Another assumption by Meggit, that  Jesus was crucified alone is not to be taken for granted as Bermejo-Rubio argued those crucified with Jesus could have been his followers.^[19] Josephus refers to bandits as lestes (Greek for robbers), It’s hard to see why Jesus wouldn’t be seen as a bandit as he was crucified between two bandits. As Paula Fredrikson says, “Perhaps Jesus was arrested as a lestes: he was certainly executed as one, crucified between two others (duo lestai, 15:27); and he was charged with making a seditious claim, that is, that he was “The King of the Jews” (15:26)”^[20]

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

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^[21].

I also found Schmidt is right to say that when Josephus says “first men among us” he would have known of them which brings Josephus himself closer to the Jesus case. [*4]

John 11:47-50 reflects the collaborating High Priest’s fear of the danger posed by a messianic figure:

Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation. (John 11:47-50)

This is also backed up in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15:

For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s Assemblies in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those Assemblies suffered from the Judeans…..

The Dead Sea Scrolls mention an earlier high priest, seen as a collaborator, whom they dubbed the “Wicked Priest,” (“cohen resha” mentioned in 1QpHab; cf 4QpPsa) which shows one need not read the Josephus business about priestly involvement in Jesus’ execution as a product of vilification by Christian interpolators.

“Yet this tribe has until now not disappeared.”

As noted by Whealey and Paget, Josephus probably used the phrase “until now”, where Eusebius had changed this to his own idiosyncratic phrase “still to this day.”[22] At the time of writing Josephus must have been aware of Christians existing in Rome.

Here’s a bunch of blogs from the series:

Part 1 The Original Testimonium Flavianum

Part 2 The evidence of the Variants of the TF

Part 3 Analysis of the Testimonium Flavianum

Part 4 The Layers of the Testimonium Flavianum

Part 6 Exposing the Pre-Eusebian Strata of the TF

Part 7 Why we know there was a Testimonium Flavianum.

 

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

[1*] 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.

[*2] Geza Vermes, Jesus in the Eyes of Josephus (2009) https://standpointmag.co.uk/jesus-in-the-eyes-of-josephus-features-jan-10-geza-vermes/

[*3] Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, p.75.

[1] Allen,, “How Josephus Really viewed Jesus”, RevBíb 85.3-4, p.346. Tinos is the genitive feminine singular form of tis.

[*4] Thomas Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus, pp.74-76.

[2] The Sign Prophet category was established by earlier scholars such as P. W. Barnett,  “The Jewish Sign Prophets – A.D. 40-70, Their Intentions and Origin”, NTS 27 (1988), pp.679-697.

[3] Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews, The First Generation, (New Haven:Yale, 2018),, pp.177f.

[4] Allen, “How Josephus Really viewed Jesus”, p.343.

[5] Nathan C. JOHNSON, “Early Jewish Sign Prophets” in CROSSLEY, J. and LOCKHART, A. (eds.), CDAMM (2021) retrieved from here: https://www.cdamm.org/assets/articlePDFs/31519-early-jewish-sign-prophets.pdf

[6] Allen,  “How Josephus Really viewed Jesus”, p.346.

[7]  E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985, pp.61-76; 

[8] Tom Thatcher, “Why John wrote a Gospel: Memory and History in an Early Christian Community” in Kirk and Thatcher (eds), Memory, Tradition and Text, Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, 2005 SBL, p.82

[9] Olson, “A Eusebian Reading”, pp.105-108.

[10] Paget, “Some Observations”, p.562.

[11] Daniel Schwartz, “Many Sources but a Single Author Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities”, in Chapman and Rodger (eds.), A Companion to Josephus, (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World; Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016, p.45.

[12] Eduard Norden, “Josephus und Tacitus über Jesus Christus und eine messianische Prophetie”,  Neue Jahrbücher das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 31 (1913). pp.579-80.

[13] David Allen, “The Use of the Testimonium Flavianum by Anti-Christian Polemicists”, JHC 16.2, (2021), pp.42-105.

[14] Lena Einhorn, A Shift in Time, How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus, (Yucca, 2016), Premise Two.

[15] Dale B. Martin, “Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 37.3 (2014), pp.3-24.

[16] Martin, Armed and Not Dangerous, pp.4-5.

[17] 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

[18] Meggit, Madness,, p.380.

[19] 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.

[20] Fredriksen, Paula, From Jesus to Christ, The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus, 2nd Ed. (Yale, 2000), p.116.

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

[*4] T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for The One called Christ, (Oxford, 2025), pp.6-7.

[22] Alice Whealey, “Josephus, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the Testimonium Flavianum”, in C. Böttridge and J. Herzer (eds), Josephus und das Neue Testament, (Tübingen 2007), pp.73-116 (103); Paget, “Some Observations”, pp.574-575.