Who Was Josephus and Can We Trust Him? (6 of 9)

Almost everything we know about first-century Judea as a place, its rulers, its factions, its taxes, and its war, comes from a man who commanded troops against Rome, surrendered, and spent the rest of his life writing under the patronage of the emperor who defeated him.

That is an uncomfortable combination and it is also the situation. There is no replacement for him.

Who Was Josephus?

Born in Jerusalem around AD 37 into a priestly family, with Hasmonean descent on his mother’s side.

He was given command in Galilee when the revolt against Rome broke out in 66. His forces were besieged at Jotapata and defeated. He surrendered, was taken to Vespasian, and, by his own account, predicted that Vespasian would become emperor. Vespasian did. Josephus was freed, attached himself to the Flavian house, took their family name, and lived out his life in Rome writing history.

His works are the Jewish War, a much longer Antiquities of the Jews completed in the 90s, an autobiography, and a defence of Judaism against a critic named Apion.

Why Does Josephus Matter So Much?

Because without him the period has almost no narrative.

The Gospels and Acts assume a world of Herods, procurators, high priestly families, revolutionary movements, and temple politics, and they assume their readers know it. Josephus is where that world gets described.

Herod the Great’s reign, the succession fights among his sons, the Roman governors including Pilate, the tax system, the factions, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple: the detail for all of it is substantially his.

He is also the main source on the movements behind Simon the Zealot’s title, and on the founding of what he calls the fourth philosophy under Judas the Galilean.

What Does Josephus Say About Jesus?

Two passages, and they are not in the same condition.

The shorter one, in the twentieth book of the Antiquities, mentions the execution of a man named James, described as the brother of Jesus who was called Christ. It is brief, incidental, and in the standard idiom of the work. It is generally accepted as authentic, and its offhandedness is part of why.

The longer passage, in the eighteenth book, is a different matter. As it stands in the surviving manuscripts it calls Jesus a wise man, says he was perhaps more than a man, states that he was the Christ, and reports that he appeared alive on the third day. A Jewish writer under Roman patronage did not write that as it stands.

The mainstream position is not that the passage is wholly invented but that an original notice has been embellished by later Christian copying. What the original said, and how much of the present text belongs to it, is argued and not settled.

That is the honest version, and it is stronger than either of the confident alternatives. Treating the passage as untouched testimony overstates it. Treating it as pure forgery ignores the reasons scholars think something stood there.

What Are Josephus’s Biases?

Three, and they are not hidden.

He is justifying himself. He surrendered while others died, and he writes about his own conduct in Galilee at length and favourably. His autobiography is largely a defence against a rival’s accusations.

He is writing under Flavian patronage. The family that crushed the revolt paid his way, and the war narrative assigns blame in ways that serve them. Rome acts reasonably; the disaster is credited largely to Jewish factions and fanatics.

And he is presenting Judaism to a Greek and Roman readership as ancient, philosophical, and respectable. That shapes how he describes Jewish groups, often in terms his audience would recognise from their own schools of philosophy.

None of that means he invents. It means his emphasis, his blame, and his framing are steered, and a reader should ask what a given passage is doing for him.

Where Is Josephus Most Reliable?

On things he had no reason to shape, and on things he could be checked on.

Administrative detail, geography, building projects, chronology of rulers, the mechanics of institutions: this is where he is strongest, because his audience included people who knew. Archaeology has repeatedly confirmed his descriptions of places and structures.

He is weakest where the material touches his own conduct, the culpability of his patrons, or the reputation of the groups he blames for the war. Troop numbers and crowd sizes in the war narrative, as with most ancient authors, are not to be taken as counts.

Used with that division in mind he is indispensable rather than merely unavoidable.

Part of a series on the ancient witnesses behind what we know about the early church. See the overview of the witnesses.

Sources

Josephus, The Jewish War, books 1 to 7. Supports the account of the revolt, the factions, and the fall of Jerusalem. In my Logos library in English and Greek.

Josephus, The Life and Against Apion. Supports the self-defence and the presentation of Judaism to a Greek readership. In my Logos library.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 18 for the passage concerning Jesus and for Judas the Galilean, and book 20 for the death of James. Widely available in translation.

Where the sourcing stops: the summary of the debate over the longer Jesus passage describes a broad scholarly consensus about interpolation without adopting any particular reconstruction of the original wording. The division between where he is strong and where he is steered is my own framing of a common assessment.

Footnotes

1. The prediction that Vespasian would become emperor is reported by Josephus about himself, which is exactly the sort of claim that benefits the man making it. It secured his release and his career. Whether he said it before or discovered he had said it afterward cannot be established from the text.
2. His description of Jewish groups in philosophical terms, presenting them to outsiders through categories those outsiders already used, is a recurring source of distortion. It flattens differences that were religious and political into something more like schools of thought, which is part of why his account of the revolutionary movements needs careful handling.