Jewish Antiquities

Flavius JosephusAD 93–94

A history of the Jewish people in twenty books, from the creation to the eve of the revolt of AD 66, finished at Rome in AD 93–94. Its last books are the fullest account from outside the New Testament of Judaea in the time of Jesus and the apostles.

Josephus was born in Jerusalem in AD 37 or 38 into a priestly family. He commanded Jewish forces in Galilee at the start of the revolt against Rome, surrendered in 67, and spent the rest of his life at Rome under the patronage of the Flavian emperors. He says at the end of the Antiquities that he finished it in the thirteenth year of Domitian, which is AD 93–94. The first half retells the biblical history. The later books draw on writers now mostly lost and, for the first century, on what Josephus knew from his own country. He was not yet born when Pontius Pilate governed Judaea, and he writes of those years about six decades later.

Three passages bear directly on Christian origins: the notice of Jesus at 18.63–64 (18.3.3 in Whiston’s numbering), the account of John the Baptist at 18.116–119 (18.5.2), and the death of James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ”, at 20.200 (20.9.1). The wording of the first is disputed. As it stands in the Greek manuscripts it calls Jesus the Christ and says that he appeared alive on the third day. Most scholars think that a Christian copyist added to what Josephus wrote or reworded it; some regard the whole notice as an insertion, and a few defend it as it stands. The other two passages are generally accepted as his.

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