Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

A 1631 Testimonium with commentary

The Testimonium Flavianumin appears in the Greek version of the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 3, 3) by Flavius Jsephus and refers to Jesus. According to Josephus scholar Louis Feldman, the Testimonium is the most discussed passage in Josephus and perhaps in all ancient literature.

The Testimonium refers to Jesus as follows:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Scholars have differing views on the authenticity of the Testimonium. The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to interpolation.

Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

The first person to cite this passage of Antiquities was Eusebius, writing in about 324. In his Demonstratio Evangelica, he quotes the passage in essentially the same form (he has πολλους των Ιουδαιων instead of πολλους Ιουδαιους, and inserts απο before του Ελληνικου).

As is common with ancient texts, The Antiquities of the Jews survives only in medieval copies. The manuscripts, the oldest of which dates from the 11th century, are all Greek minuscules, and all have been copied by Christian monks. Jews did not preserve the writings of Josephus because they considered him to be a traitor. The text of Antiquities appears to have been transmitted in two halves i.e. (books 1–10 and books 11–20). Other ad hoc copies of the Testimonium also survive, as a quotation in the works of Christian writers.

Recent scholarly discussion has favoured partial authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum. Louis Feldman counts 87 articles published during the period of 1937-1980, "the overwhelming majority of which question its authenticity in whole or in part".

Géza Vermes offers a speculative reconstruction of the original text of the Testimonium Flavianum, removing later Christian additions, indicating deletions with "…":

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, […] for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him [both] many of the Jews [and many of the Gentiles?]. He was [called] the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; […] And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Arguments in favor of authenticity or partial authenticity

Until the 16th century, Christian writers took the position that Josephus wrote the Testimonium in its current form. Many modern scholars do claim that Josephus did write something about Jesus which has been corrupted, to an unspecified degree, in the surviving Greek text.

Arabic version

In 1971, Shlomo Pines, a Jewish professor, published a translation of a different version of the Testimonium, quoted in an Arabic manuscript of the 10th century. The manuscript in question appears in the Book of the Title written by Agapius the historian, a 10th-century Arabic Christian and Melkite bishop of Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij). Agapius' version of the Testimonium reads:

For he says in the treatises that he has written in the governance of the Jews: "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders." - Shlomo Pines' translation, quoted by J. D. Crossan

The text that Pines gives is mainly derived from the quotation of this portion of Agapius in the later Arabic Christian historian, Al-Makin, which contains extra material not found in the Florence manuscript that alone preserves the second half of Agapius.

Pines suggests that Agapius' Testimonium may be a more accurate record of what Josephus wrote, lacking as it does the parts which have often been considered to have been added by Christian copyists. He argued that this would add weight to the argument that Josephus did write something about Jesus.

But, Pines' theory, that Agapius' text largely reflects what Josephus wrote, has not been widely accepted. As the title of Josephus's work is inaccurate in this version suggests that Agapius is paraphrasing his source, which may explain the discrepancies with the Greek version. Agapius explicitly claims that he used a lost, older Syriac chronicle by Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785) to write his chronicle. This suggests that his Testimonium is also a paraphrase of a Syriac version. Because of some linguistic parallels between Agapius' Testimonium, the Testimonium of Michael the Syrian (see above and below) and that of the Syriac translation of Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiasica, Alice Whealey has argued that Agapius' passage is a paraphrase of a Testimonium taken from the Syriac translation of Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica that differed from the textus receptus in several ways, but most significantly in reading "he was thought to be the Christ."

Whealey has suggested that Agapius' statement that Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified "and to die" was a response to the Muslim belief that Jesus did not die on the cross. This aspect of Agapius' Testimonium is not unique, since a similarly enhanced reference to Jesus' death independently appears in Michael the Syrian's Testimonium and in one other Syriac Testimonium deriving from the Syriac translation of Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica. This parallel is one more piece of evidence indicating that Agapius' text is an Arabic paraphrase of a literal Syriac translation of the Testimonium.

Syriac version

Pines also refers to the Syriac translation of the Testimonium cited in the 12th century by Michael the Syrian in his World Chronicle. It was left to Alice Whealey to point out that Michael's text is identical with Jerome's translation of the Testimonium at the most contentious point ("He was the Christ" becoming "He was believed to be the Christ"), establishing the existence of a variant that must go back to a Greek manuscript. Latin and Syriac writers did not read each others' works in late antiquity, but both commonly read and translated Greek Christian texts.

Origen

In his surviving works, Origen does not mention the Testimonium Flavianum, although he was familiar with the Antiquities of the Jews. Origen makes mention of the second passage about Jesus in Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews (xx.9) as well as Josephus' reference to John the Baptist, which occurs in the same chapter (xviii) as the Testimonium. Origen states that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ", but the Testimonium declares Jesus to be Christ. This is why modern scholars suspect the original Testimonium was worded "he was called Christ" rather than "he was the Christ." According to Alice Whealey, this original version was also probably what Eusebius had at his disposal. Whealey has argued that the wording of Michael the Syrian's Testimonium in particular, which employs the word mistabra, meaning "was supposed," has a skeptical connotation, as evidenced in the Syriac New Testament where it is used to translate Greek enomizeto of Luke 3:23. She has argued that Origen's probable exposure to a reading like Greek enomizeto (corresponding to the Syriac mistabra) in the original version of the Testimonium would readily explain Origen's statement that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ.

Literary connection with the Gospel of Luke

In 1995, G. J. Goldberg, using a digital database of ancient literature, identified a possible literary connection between Josephus and the Gospel of Luke. He found a number of coincidences in word choice and word order, though not in exact wording, between the entire Josephus passage on Jesus and a summary of the life of Jesus in Luke 24:19-21, 26-27, called the "Emmaus narrative":

And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. ... Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Goldberg points out explicit similarities in the Greek text, including a grammatical form of "the third day" which exists only in these two texts, and nowhere else in Christian literature; an unusual introduction of the first-person plural; as well as other consistent peculiarities of order and style that, he argues, have no parallel in other Jesus descriptions. From these, Goldberg writes, "The conclusion that can therefore be drawn is that Josephus and Luke derived their passages from a common Christian (or Jewish-Christian) source." Goldberg points out that Josephus' phrases: "if it be lawful to call him a man," "He was [the] Christ," "he appeared to them," and "And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day," have no parallel in Luke's passage, and takes this to support the position that the first two short phrases are Christian additions, while the latter two form the context of the Emmaus text and so were available to be transmitted by Josephus. Luke contains the phrases "but besides all this," four sentences on the women who witnessed the tomb, and "the Christ should suffer," for which there is no counterpart in Josephus' text; unless referred to in the summary "these and countless other marvelous things about him".

An alternate theory has been argued by Steve Mason, who proposes that Luke-Acts may have used Josephus as a source.

Arguments against authenticity

Early Christian writers other than Origen

It has been suggested by older scholarship that since Justin Martyr makes no mention of the Testimonium in his efforts to persuade the rabbi Trypho in the Dialog With Trypho the Jew, the text must not have existed, since it would have been an "extremely effective answer" to Trypho. However, there is no evidence that Justin Martyr knew Josephus' works: Josephus is never mentioned in his genuine works. There is no evidence that any early Christian apologists used Josephus' works in apologies directed at Jews. Early writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome do not draw on the Testimonium for anti-Jewish apologetic reasons; rather, they use the text for anti-pagan apologetics. The earliest use of the Testimonium for anti-Jewish disputation appears in an anonymous late 4th-century Latin text, known conventionally as Pseudo-Hegesippus's 'De excidio Hierosolymitano.'.

Although some Christians before Origen had read parts of 'Jewish War' and 'Against Apion,' it is not clear that any Christian before Origen had read 'Antiquities' at all, and none before Origen makes any clear reference to Book 18 of Antiquities, where the Testimonium appears. Against this, Feldman had written that "no fewer than eleven church fathers prior to, or contemporary with, Eusebius cite various passages from Josephus (including the Antiquities) but not the Testimonium". Both Michael Hardwick and Alice Whealey have conducted a closer reading of ante-Nicene Christian texts that cite or have been assumed to cite 'Antiquities' than Feldman and other earlier scholars, and both conclude that some prior assumptions that 'Antiquities' is cited are mistaken or debatable. For example, Hardwick has shown that Tertullian (ca. 193) had read Josephus' 'Against Apion' rather than 'Antiquities', as is sometimes assumed. Tertullian's reference to "antiqitatum Judaicarum" (Apol. 19) is not a reference to 'Antiquities,' but rather a reference to 'Against Apion,' which in ancient times was known as "The antiquity [i.e. ancient-ness] of the Jews." Hardwick argues that contrary to the assumption of some older scholars, not only is it not clear that Tertullian had ever read 'Antiquities' but it is not clear that any other writer of the Western church other than Tertullian was directly acquainted with any of Josephus' works at all.

Whealey expresses more skepticism than Hardwick about Christians before Origen citing 'Antiquities'. For example, she argues that the authenticity of one catena fragment citing Book 2 of 'Antiquities' attributed to Irenaeus is debatable because catenae were often miscopied. She has pointed out that even if the attribution to Irenaeus is accurate, it is clear that he was unfamiliar with Book 18 of 'Antiquities' since he wrongly claims that Jesus was executed by Pilate in the reign of Claudius (Dem. ev. ap. 74), while Antiquities 18.89 indicates that Pilate was deposed during the reign of Tiberius, before Claudius. As for writers of the Eastern church, Clement of Alexandria vaguely refers (Stromata 1.147) to Josephus' historical writings in a way that indicates that he knew directly or indirectly the claim of The Jewish Wars 6.440 that there were 1179 years between David and the second year of Vespasian. Direct familiarity with 'Antiquities' is, however, unclear in this passage. Clement's claim that there were 585 years between Moses and David may be based on Antiquities 8.61, which says that there were 592 years between the Exodus and the Temple, if one assumes that he subtracted the four years of Solomon's reign, and that a copying error was responsible for Clement's text reading 585 instead of 588. But what this conjectural explanation for Clement's claim about 585 years shows (a figure that does not explicitly appear in Antiquities) is that it is far from clear that Clement had direct acquaintance with Josephus' Antiquities.

Vocabulary and style

It has been claimed that some of the passage fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not otherwise used by Josephus; for example, the Testimonium uses the Greek term poietes with the meaning "doer" (as part of the phrase "doer of wonderful works"), but elsewhere Josephus only uses the term poietes to mean "poet," while it is Eusebius who uses poietes to mean "doer of wonderful works" when referring to Jesus. However, it has been argued that Eusebius' use of the term "doer of wonderful works" for Jesus (and in later works for God) is evidence of the influence of the Testimonium's vocabulary on his own vocabulary about Jesus (and by extension about God in later works), rather than evidence of his fabrication of the Testimonium.

On the other hand, John P. Meier states that "the vocabulary and grammar of the passage (after the clearly Christian material is removed) cohere well with Josephus' style and language...almost every word in the core of the "Testimonium" is found elsewhere in Josephus---in fact, most of the vocabulary turns out to be characteristic of Josephus". C. Guignebert has claimed that Josephus's style is not difficult to imitate, so that vocabulary proves little one way or the other.

The brief and compact character of the Testimonium stands in stark contrast to Josephus' more voluminous detailing of other individuals, even including those of minor importance; for example, Josephus' account of John the Baptist and his death, describes his virtues, the theology associated with his baptismal practices, his oratorical skills, that John's influence was so great that Herod was afraid of John's ability to incite the people to rebel against his regime, the circumstances of his death, and the belief that the destruction of Herod's army was a divine punishment for Herod's slaughter of John.

Interruption to the text

The paragraph before the Testimonium flows naturally into the paragraph after it, which might indicate either that the entire paragraph is a later insertion, or that it was substantially rewritten. As Guiguebert put it, "the short digression, even with the proposed corrections, interrupts the thread of the discourse into which it is introduced". On the other hand, this argument has been rejected as inconclusive or unconvincing by some modern scholars, who have argued that Josephus was a "patchwork" writer, who often employed such digressive techniques, inserting passages, sometimes based on barely revised sources, that do not fit smoothly with, and sometimes even contradict, surrounding narratives.

Josephus's faith

It is often argued that "He was [the] Christ" can only be read as a profession of faith, and Josephus was almost certainly not a Christian, instead remaining a conventional Jew; Josephus's lack of Christianity was mentioned by early Christian writers before Eusebius, such as Origen (as noted above). For example, John Dominic Crossan has put it this way: The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish.

Consequently, some scholars regard at least certain parts of the Testimonium as later additions. In particular three passages stood out:

• if it be lawful to call him a man …
• He was [the] Christ …
• for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him

The phrase "he was the Christ" has been viewed as particularly problematic because it seems to indicate that the author thought that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Some scholars have argued that Josephus thought that Jewish messianic promises were fulfilled in Vespasian, and view it as unlikely that Josephus would explain too clearly or underline too sharply the existence of alternative messianic fulfilments before Vespasian. In contrast, Meir has argued that the phrase "he was the Christ" was meant as an identification only, rather than an assertion of Jesus' Messiahship, since the audience for the work were Romans of the late 1st century, and the earliest extant Roman writers, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, writing shortly after Josephus in the early 2nd century, identify Jesus as Christus, rather than Jesus, without implying anything about Jesus' Messianic status.

Although the standard text says "he was the Christ", a recent study by Alice Whealey has argued that a variant Greek text of this sentence existed in the 4th century — He was believed to be the Christ; following Whealey's argument, the standard text would represent a corruption of the original, namely the loss of the main verb and a subsequent scribal "correction" of the prolative infinitive.

Interpolations

The entire passage is also found in one Greek manuscript of Josephus' earlier work, The Jewish War. (This Greek manuscript of "Jewish War" with an interpolated Testimonium is known as the "Codex Vossianus.") A passage about Jesus that appears to have been inspired by the Testimonium, but that differs widely from it in content also appears in an Old Russian adaptation of Jewish War written c.1250. The passage dealing with Jesus is not the only significant difference between the Old Russian and Greek versions of Jewish War. Robert Eisler has suggested that it was produced from one of Josephus's drafts (noting that the "Slavonic Version" has Josephus escaping his fellow Jews at Jotapata when "he counted the numbers [of the lot cast in the suicide pact] cunningly and so managed to deceive all the others", which is in striking contrast to the conventional version's account:

"Without hesitation each man in turn offered his throat for the next man to cut, in the belief that a moment later his commander would die too. Life was sweet, but not so sweet as death if Josephus died with them! But Josephus - shall we put it down to divine providence or just luck - was left with one other man....he used persuasion, they made a pact, and both remained alive."

Other unique passages in the Old Russian version of "Jewish War" include accounts of John the Baptist, Jesus's ministry (along with his death and resurrection), and the activities of the early church.

Alleged fabrication by Eusebius

Ken Olson has argued that the Testimonium was fabricated by Eusebius of Caesarea, who was the first author to quote it in his Demonstratio Evangelica. Olson argues that the specific wording of the Testimonium is closely related to the argument Eusebius makes in his Demonstratio, in particular that Jesus is a "wise man" and not a "wizard", as shown by the fact that his followers did not desert him even after he was crucified. Whealey rejects Olson's thesis of Eusebian fabrication based on a comparison of the Testimonium's style with that of Eusebius' undisputed works, and the fact that there is no known case of complete fabrication ex nihilo by Eusebius of any other text that he quotes in his works.

Modern stylometric studies, which use a concordance of Josephus' works that did not exist before the 20th century, has revealed some Josephan vocabulary and phrases (see above). As a consequence, it has more recently been argued that even "some proponents of the forgery thesis would agree that it is a good one" (i.e. good forgery).

See also

• Textual criticism
• Historicity of Jesus