Evidence · Case 02 · Resurrection of Christ
Josephus, Antiquities 18.63
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Josephus was a first century Jewish historian. In a passage often called the Testimonium Flavianum he reports that Pilate “condemned him to be crucified.” The same passage as it has come down to us also calls Jesus the Messiah and says he rose on the third day, but most scholars, including many Christian ones, judge those particular lines to be later additions by Christian copyists, since a non-Christian Jew would not have written them. A tenth century Arabic version of the passage, preserved by the historian Agapius of Hierapolis around 942 AD, lacks those lines, and this was once cited as evidence of a more original, less-Christianized wording underneath the Greek text. That argument has not held up. Alice Whealey’s 2008 study traced Agapius’s version to a Syriac chronicle that was itself translating Eusebius’s Greek quotation of Josephus, with Agapius taking his own liberties along the way, several steps removed from Josephus’s own manuscript tradition rather than an independent witness to it. The case for a genuine, unedited core to the passage rests on the Greek text’s own internal features, not on the Arabic.
Sources
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 (Loeb 18.63), Whiston translation (CCEL) (opens in a new tab)
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 18, chapter 3, section 3. Discussion of the Christian additions at NAMB, “Josephus and Jesus” (namb.net/article/josephus-and-jesus).
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XVIII.63–64, XX.200; scholarly consensus on partial authenticity. - Testimonium Flavianum - reception/consensus:
Overview of the ‘new consensus’ (partial authenticity):
Objections & responses
- If Christians tampered with the Testimonium at all, why trust any of it? Once a passage is known to be doctored, shouldn’t the whole thing be thrown out?
That is a legitimate minority position, held by Ken Olson among others. The majority view among Jewish, Christian, and secular Josephus scholars is partial authenticity, for concrete reasons: the passage’s vocabulary and syntax are Josephan, and it sits naturally in a sequence of Pilate-era disturbances Josephus is otherwise narrating. The Arabic version once seemed to back this up, but Alice Whealey’s 2008 study showed it descends from a Syriac intermediary translating Eusebius, not from an independent line to Josephus, so it’s no longer treated as corroborating evidence. Textual criticism routinely separates a core from later accretions using internal evidence like this rather than discarding everything. And even if the Testimonium is set aside entirely, the crucifixion still rests on Tacitus, Paul, Mark, and the James passage in Antiquities 20.