Evidence · Case 01 · Historical Jesus

Josephus, Antiquities 20.200

One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.

Flavius Josephus was a first century Jewish historian writing for a Roman audience. Around 93 AD, while describing the death of a man named James, he identifies him as “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James.”

Sources

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 (Loeb 20.200), Whiston translation (CCEL) (opens in a new tab)
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, chapter 9, section 1. Discussion at NAMB, “Josephus and Jesus” (namb.net/article/josephus-and-jesus).

Objections & responses

Couldn’t “who was called Christ” be a copyist’s marginal note that slipped into the text? And James was a common name, so this may be a different James.: The interpolation theory has been examined and rejected by nearly all Josephus specialists. The phrasing is exactly how Josephus disambiguates common names elsewhere, it is neutral rather than reverential (called Christ, not who was the Christ), and Origen quotes the passage in the third century, before any plausible Christian editing of Josephus. On the different-James point: the identifier only works if readers already knew of a Jesus called Christ, which is itself the evidence this exhibit points to.

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