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 even mentioned by early Christian writers before Eusebius, such as Origen
[63] (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.
[64]
Consequently, some scholars regard at least certain parts of the Testimonium as later additions. In particular three passages stood out
[64]:
- 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,
[65] and view it as unlikely that Josephus would explain too clearly or underline too sharply the existence of alternative messianic fulfilments before Vespasian.
[66] In contrast, it has been argued by some
[67] 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.
In addition, 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;
[68] 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.
