The historical references to the events of Jesus' mission do not necessarily negate the hypothesis that they were fabricated. Doubts as to the authenticity of classical texts arise not only in relation to religious writings--historical literature also may be unreliable to a much greater extent than it is commonly supposed.

Only a small number of works by early authors are extant today. Could some of those works, with significance for Christians, have been tampered with? Quite possibly.

There were workshops specializing in forged texts. How can forged texts be identified? By font? But it was easy to find the one matching ancient manuscripts. Binding? It was easy to replicate. Cross-references to other books? Creative scribes could make insertions step by step in different texts, and the changes were then passed on. Style? Some gifted writers were involved; remember the vague claims that Petrarch ran a large forgery shop. Basically, it is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to uncover a good literary forgery. We must not suppose that all forgers were as clumsy as the author of the Gospel of Pilate (which, by the way, many people considered authentic), whose story of Pilate's repentance  may have been useful to the Church but was totally unbelievable.  It was easy in those days with a minimal circulation of books for scribes to supplement the texts with paragraphs, episodes and entire chapters, introducing the required content into earlier texts. Thus, much of the historical literature supporting the Christian story may be inauthentic, inaccurate or just an outright forgery.

Much of early Christian history depends on the writings of the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, which are often the only source of our knowledge of Judaism in the first century CE. First, let us look at the man himself. Who was he? How credible? His biography is puzzling. In The War and the Life of Josephus, he gives varying accounts of his career. Moreover, providing a detailed narration of one's own life is very unusual for an ancient author. It might have been used in order to bolster the "historical reality" of a pseudo-author. Josephus makes some mistakes in his own genealogy in his Life. He first relates his Asamonean descent by his mother's lineage and then proceeds to prove it by his father's descent. Considering that his Life was written as a polemic against critics of The War, we would expect that Josephus would clear up earlier errors instead of heaping on new ones.

This mistake in genealogy is curiously reminiscent of a similar problem with the life of Jesus, whose Davidic descent in Matthew is built upon his father's, who theoretically, according to the Virgin Birth myth, was not related to him. Luke, correcting Matthew's error, established his messianic lineage through the mother. The correlation between Josephus and Luke's Jesus does not end there. As was the case with Jesus in Luke's Gospel, Josephus lectured the rabbis even while in childhood, although this is implausible.

Josephus claims that Vespasian captured him and  took him as a captive to Rome. Why would he do that?  Josephus asserts that Vespasian didn't believe in his prediction that Vespasian would be emperor and even forgot about this prophecy. Did he keep Josephus for triumph? But this action was a revolt more than a war and he could not anticipate a triumph. Moreover, Josephus wasn't noble enough for triumph as a special captive.

If Josephus had been held for ransom, perhaps not by Vespasian but by a soldier of lesser rank, he would not have been held for long. This is an important point: according to Judean Law, captives should be ransomed on a priority basis. Josephus was supposedly from a well-off family and, not being important for triumph, he would have been bought back quickly.

Although Vespasian and Titus were the most famous members of the Flavius clan, there were undoubtedly other branches of the family as well from whom Josephus could have acquired this surname in circumstances other than what he depicted. Later he might have connected his story to Vespasian. Quite possibly Josephus' affiliation was made up after that of Tacitus, who owed his status to the Flaviuses: Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

Also note that Julius Caesar disposed of a certain tribune Flavius. As a tribune represented the people, it seems that this clan wasn't aristocratic. On the contrary, Vespasian Flavius would probably have been of noble birth in order to receive command of an army.

There is not a single reference to Josephus in the Talmud, although it mentions Roman emperors, sectarians and apostates, and the rabbis hardly would have omitted Josephus from their list of apostates out of sheer hatred as someone they considered a military traitor. The rabbis could have considered him to be yet another invention of the Christians.

Josephus gained popularity in the tenth century when Jews became acquainted with his works in a Hebraic edition. Significantly, this edition, Josippon, included only 16 books of The Antiquities of the Jews, omitting its historical section. It wasn't that history approximately contemporary with the life of Jesus was not interesting to Jewish scholars, they read, for example, The War in the same collection. It may well have been that the rabbis had doubts about the authenticity of Josephus' writings. It is a challenge to find another explanation for omitting such a large part of Josephus' works in the first Hebrew edition.

Josephus' Jewish credentials are very doubtful. Contrary to the available evidence of the existence in the first century CE of the Greek translation of the Scriptures (which Paul regularly cites, for example, and which was needed for proselytes), Josephus, in The Antiquities, asserts there was none and closely narrates the Scriptures. This act by an educated Judean is inexplicable. To be sure, the Scriptures' narration might have been interpolated into The Antiquties later. But perhaps the author simply didn't know of the Septuagint and other translations.

Let us now consider Josephus' manner of writing history and some of the mistakes he makes. Josephus describes the Herod family in detail. Many scholars believe he was largely drawing on a source, perhaps Nicolaus of Damascus' Universal History. But is it possible that an educated person from the ruling elite was not familiar with his country's history  of the preceding hundred years? This era was at a time when there were fewer disciplines and local history was an important subject alongside religion and philosophy.

Josephus writes that millions of Jews gathered in Jerusalem at Pesach.[i]  Such a number is neither confirmed by the excavations in Judea nor, more importantly, by the size of the area defined today as ancient Jerusalem. This number even exceeds the current population of the city, which lives in multi-story buildings in an area much larger than in antiquity. The impossibility of such density is clear not only from the archeological finds but for many other reasons; for example, given the absence of effective medical treatment, any epidemic would have destroyed the whole population.

Generally, such preposterous exaggerations regarding population are characteristic of ancient authors and some medieval ones, but usually in describing foreign territories. Josephus, on the other hand, should have been acquainted with Jerusalem firsthand. His Against Apion confirms the existence of critics. Romans, who had just won the war in Judea, would hardly have believed that this city was so much larger than their own, so, the exaggerated population could not have been produced by a contemporary author knowledgeable about Judea and in a work intended for Romans.

In the foreword to The War, Josephus asserts that the Aramaic original (in my opinion, non-existent) was written for the Parthians and Babylonians. However, the contemporary history does not indicate that they had any interest in the events in Judea. It is odd that he would write for such a minor audience--if it existed at all --while this saga was evidently so useful as Roman propaganda. Note that the Roman Empire depended on cultural appeal to a great degree, and there was state propaganda, though perhaps not as a conscious concept.

Then there is the question of Josephus' style. It does not make sense to assume that the first edition of The War was addressed to anyone except a large Greek-speaking audience. Would not his poor Greek, for which the euphemism original was employed, shock the aristocrats and philosophers for whom Josephus was writing? Can the story about a translation of the Josephus' original into Greek have been invented in order to explain its rough language? Really, is it possible that highly educated Josephus was unable to judge the Greek translation of his own book? Is it not odd that the writing style veers  repeatedly from sometimes reasonably good literary language to a primitive one?

Supposing Josephus wrote for Roman audience, why in Greek and not Latin? He claimed he read many Roman sources; thus, he knew the language well. Why was the Latin translation not done immediately? It is hard to agree with many historians that ancient Romans, at least the upper classes, were sufficiently educated to read Greek easily, especially considering that at the time literacy itself wasn't widespread.

Josephus' repeated use of the pronoun "their" concerning Judeans ("their holy scriptures," "their country," etc.) also raises doubts about his origins. If this usage were a means to distance himself from Judeans, who recently staged a revolt against Rome, he wouldn't have written as an apologist of the Jews. Of course, third-person address was common, but it might also mean that the author was a Gentile.

With a less significant text, scholars might have conceded long ago that work such as Josephus' was a compilation from various sources. Could the writings of Josephus in whole or in part be pseudepigrapha from the second and third centuries? In that case, we would know practically nothing about Judea in Jesus' times. This lack of knowledge would be odd, for we know of other provinces from many independent sources.

The modern view that Josephus borrowed extensively from the extant writings of others indirectly confirms the hypothesis that his texts are spurious. He need not have been an eyewitness, and the author of books attributed to Josephus just as well have could been writing in the third and fourth centuries, if not even later. A few references by Christian authors of the second and third centuries, even if not forged, do not allow us to ascertain whether the text of Josephus, which existed then, is the same as the modern one. The earliest extant copy of his writings dates from the ninth century.

Moreover, Josephus' attitude towards the Zealots and other rebels who led Jews into the catastrophic rebellion against Rome has been the accepted rabbinical opinion, as expressed in the Talmud, from only the third century onward.

One should note, too, that Eusebius hardly would have taken the risk of creating such significant interpolations as the Testimonies, if Josephus' works had been as well known as they should have been among early Christians. Scholars are in agreement about the existence of numerous interpolations in the Slavonic version of Josephus, using the present Western edition as a benchmark. But is it plausible that no one in Christian Europe wanted to amend Josephus? Likely there were quite a few takers. We just lack a redaction with which to compare the standard text in order to reveal the fabrications. Stylistic analysis does not always pinpoint small insertions in a poorly written, inconsistent narration. Besides, Josephus' various stylistic peculiarities could have been borrowed from lost prototexts and, therefore, do not reflect the insertions by scribes.

Josephus' attitude towards many figures is radically different in The War and The Antiquities. Ancient historiography was largely about moralizing; the accounts served to exemplify certain maxims and to present their authors' views. Since the  writer's convictions are usually relatively constant, his opinion about historical personages doesn't normally vary a lot. We know from the autobiographical Life  that Josephus had critics who should have immediately picked up on this and numerous other discrepancies.

Josephus' contradictions exceed even the loose standards  of Greek historiography. Although we admire the reasonably rigorous Thucydides, in fact, most ancient historians fit the facts, their explanations, and especially speeches to their own views and to the purpose of narration. (This practice is also the reason why it is foolish to honor Gospel speeches, dialogues and sermons, at least those longer than one sentence, which could have been passed on independently through the oral tradition.) However, such massive inconsistency in the same writer's books is quite unusual.

Josephus's aim evidently is to rehabilitate the Jews in Roman eyes, through ascribing the revolt and tumults to the cruelties of Roman prefects. However, the repressions that he depicts are not excessive by Roman standards. One needs only recall the charges laid down by Cicero against Verres, Roman viceroy of Sicily. Cicero argued in Milo's defense that robbers' attacks in Roman suburbs were common. We have no reason to suppose that things changed for the better towards the end of the first century CE. However, Josephus, who supposedly lived in Rome long enough while writing the books, bitterly describes the conditions in Judea, where-he claims-things became so bad that gangs appeared even in rural areas. Certainly, this explanation of the unrest in Judea wouldn't find much sympathy with Romans.

Josephus claims that 8,000 Roman Jews once approached Emperor Augustus.[1] Rome at that time was a small town by modern standards. Jews weren't a large portion of the local population. There is no doubt the figure of 8,000 is entirely mythical.

This figure leads to the wild supposition that Josephus didn't know the details of the Judean War. To put it another way, the author of the pseudepigrapha did not know of the situation in the backwater Roman province. And the real author of Josephus didn't know of the situation in Rome, either; he was accustomed to some safe area, perhaps a small Greek town.

Josephus almost justifies the Romans, treating the military intervention as a campaign to restore peace in a province whose inhabitants tended to unrest. This treatment is a standard explanation which morally justifies the aggression and to which many ancient historians resorted. Thus, Strabo lauds Roman aggression against Gaul, thanks to which the latter's inhabitants were able to live in peace.[2] It may be supposed that Josephus' attitude reflects the facts even less than this prevailing moral-historian convention. Even the title of his book, Judean War, seems to be chosen by analogy with the famous Gallic Wars, attributed to Caesar.

Early references to Josephus are almost entirely missing. The possibility cannot be dismissed that references to Josephus by Christian authors of the second and third centuries were interpolated to support his authority. In any case, the citations of Josephus by Origen and Eusebius are defective, which confirm his lack of contemporary reputation since, otherwise, readers easily would have spotted the mistakes in the quotations. For example, consider the probably distorted rendition of the execution of James, the brother of Jesus. According to Origen and Eusebius,[3] Josephus said that the destruction of Jerusalem was a punishment for James's death. However, there is nothing of the kind in Josephus. Curiously, it contradicts another statement by Eusebius, that the misfortune of the Judeans started with the execution of Jesus.[4]

Even the fourth-century official Latin version of Josephus, attributed to Hegesippus, extensively misrepresents the facts and judgments of the author. Evidently, no other edition was known, since the contradictions would have been noted. It is odd that variant manuscripts were not destroyed after the appearance of Hegesippus. This fact undeniably confirms Josephus' lack of influence and the absence of the commonly accepted version.

Eusebius asserts that he knows of Josephus' statue standing in Rome, but this scholar's accounts are not credible. Moreover, he had good reason to argue for Josephus' existence, since so much of the Christian story depended on him and since his testimonial accounts, which directly relate to Jesus, Eusebius in all probability forged himself.

The immensely learned Origen seems to be unacquainted with Josephus. Thus, he asserts in Contra Celsum that 42 years had passed between the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem. However, from 33  to 70 are 37 years, not 42. Significantly, Origen's statement appeared in a highly polemical tract, where any mistakes of this kind would have been immediately spotted.

Hyppolitus includes a description of Essenes,[5] agreeing with Josephus' text (extending it a bit), but without referring directly to him. Hyppolitus had no reason to leave out such reference, as it would add credibility to his account. Perhaps he either didn't believe in Josephus' authorship or he used the same anonymous source from which a parallel interpolation of Josephus was made.

Significantly, Tacitus, describing the Judeans in Histories V, at first does not reveal any knowledge of Josephus' works, although the latter wrote just a few years before him and was supposedly famous in Rome. It's not clear whether Tacitus' sources for the Judeans' historical origin are rumors or the works of other authors, but his views certainly are in accord with Manetho and critics such as Apion. Tacitus' pathetic anti-Judean rhetoric is suspicious. For all we know, Judaism was very respected in those days, with proselytes flowing to it. This ((respect?  influx?)) is probably because it closely resembled philosophical notions of Stoics, with an abstract God and rigorously organized life. There is not a single hint of his acquaintance with the extensive rebuttal by Josephus. A rampant critique of Judaism better suits a Christian editor who was interpolating text into Tacitus.

In commenting on historical events, Tacitus mentions what is otherwise found in Josephus, but takes these data from elsewhere. Thus he writes, "The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when Claudius entrusted the province of Judea to the Roman knights or to his own freedmen," i.e., he doesn't know whether there were kings in Judea alongside  the prefects, something that would be obvious to him had he been acquainted with Josephus' corpus or with any other Jewish author, for that matter.

The description of the Judeans in Tacitus is very unusual. Formally, he describes Titus' military operations, but the style is radically different from his normal one. Thus, the next episode--of Civilis' actions in Germany is literally crammed with details. Titus' actions, on the contrary, are not elaborated upon, but rather sketched in a few general strokes. At the most, only the first paragraph is devoted to Titus. The balance is a description of Judea, Jerusalem and the war with specific details mentioned by Josephus:  prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, Josephus' own predictions about Vespasian, and Titus' ascent to power, etc.

What is exceedingly important is that, if we remove this odd and seemingly forged short account, the Roman historian Tacitus says almost nothing of the supposedly famous war in Judea, so glorious that an arch was built for Titus in commemoration of his triumph.

A description of Judea is included in the fifth book, although it would naturally fit before: Judea as a military theatre is mentioned already in the second book. The topic should have been of considerable interest to Tacitus, who writes in Histories I that he owed his social status to the Flavius family-- Vespasian, Titus and Domitian--exactly as did Josephus. So, the actions of Vespasian should be extensively depicted, and Tacitus would not have forgotten to describe Judea in the second book. As he did not do so, the description of the province must have seemed unimportant to him.

Characteristically, digressing from his discourse on Titus, Tacitus writes that he is about to relate "the last days of a famous city," Jerusalem. This narration is far too high-flown a description for the Roman who deprecates foreign cultures. More importantly, how could he know that these were the last days (an apocalyptic idiom in itself) of the city? When he was writing, Jerusalem, although destroyed in 70 CE, had existed-and, probably, had been rebuilt, as was customary with cities of antiquity which were frequently destroyed. It was finally (in antiquity) destroyed later, after suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt, and even then continued as Aetolia Capitolina. The days of the city ended only from the Christian viewpoint; for both Jews and Romans it continued.

We may conclude that Tacitus or even his late Christian interpolator didn't know of the events depicted by Josephus, at least not of the events of any significance. Nor did he know of Josephus or his works.

Add the evident parallels between the Gospel of Luke and his Acts of the Apostles , and Josephus' works, as described in the analysis section of this book, and the similarity of style, the literary historiography, and the similar aims--praise of Judaism and Jews (in Luke's case, to establish a respectable basis for Christianity). It seems that the historian and the evangelist have more in common than mere incidental resemblances. Could they be the same person or could the same editor have extensively amended both? This would explain why the "Josephus" texts, although supposedly extant in the second century, were not known to the Romans but respected by Christians.

Today, Josephus is the main and in many instances the only source of information for us about the Judea of those times. Had we alternate sources, numerous errors would be detected immediately in his works. Nonetheless, oddities can be spotted. One of the strangest is his account of the defense of Masada. In the narration, the Jewish heroes, entrenched in a well-fortified stronghold, opted for suicide instead of death in battle. Josephus apparently was striving to show the Jews to the best advantage, but the Romans would have considered this behavior cowardly. Even in the effete modern world, where sparing oneself pain of battle lacks the ancient tint of dishonor, Israeli historians describe such behavior during the 1948 Independence War with considerable contempt. The books of the Maccabees affirm that death in battle was an honor for Jews. Many people were doubtful about suicide, considering it an unreligious act.

The story of Masada has numerous parallels in Greek history: thus the Xanthians committed suicide during the siege of their city by Marcus Brutus. A still more precise parallel (although attributed to the later period) is the siege of the unassailable mountain fortress of Montsegur in France, where the army of the Inquisition besieged Cathar heretics after destroying their strongholds in Languedoc. They, too, committed suicide--quite contrary to reason. The story of Masada might be literary fiction; in any case, the historical record was heavily edited.

Committing suicide when faced with imminent death or losing one's honor was, of course, known and respected (recall Cato or Seneca), but for philosophers and non-military people. Applying this logic to the inhabitants of Masada, we would have to conclude that Josephus or his editor didn't think of them as militant zealots but as religious sectarians, perhaps modeled after early Christians, and the behavior Christian martyrs might have been displayed in this situation.

Having taken possession of Masada about 70 CE, the Siccarii[ii] found the stores of Herod the Great full and fresh, including oil and wine that had been kept for a hundred years.[6] This is an important point in Josephus' narration, proving the defenders' ability to survive for an exceedingly long time. However, Masada is not located high enough to provide for the aseptic storage of food.

Another strange fact is that mesad in Hebrew means fortress. The word is employed commonly with some geographical or other name, for instance, Mesad Hashavyahu. Knowing Hebrew, Josephus hardly would employ a common noun as a place name. It seems that the author of the Masada episode didn't speak Hebrew and took this word mesad, fortress, for the geographical name.

In connection with Masada, let me express puzzlement about Josephus' account of how easily the Romans constructed an earthen rampart to get into the fortress. Even under the less challenging conditions of Jerusalem, without steep mountains on every side, Titus with much larger forces didn't even attempt this task.

In this regard as well as others, Josephus' account of Jerusalem's destruction poses questions. He relates how the Romans surrounded the city with a siege wall. Significantly, a detailed reference to this episode is present in the Gospels in the form of Jesus' prediction of future destruction.

Even disregarding the obviously exaggerated description of Jerusalem by Josephus as a city with a population of a few million, it was still a large place. It would have been impossible to erect a wooden wall around it in a short time. Moreover, the construction could not be guarded effectively, especially considering the Roman practice of not posting a night watch outside the camp. In rare instances, Romans employed not a wall, but an embankment--as Antony did when besieging Phraata. Significantly, Plutarch stresses the huge effort needed for its construction.

Greeks commonly employed this tactic in their campaigns against small towns in the vicinity. Quite possibly, the description of the wall was derived from accounts of Greek wars. The analogy was found in a Biblical text popular with Christians, Micah 5, which begins, "Now you are walled around with [a wall]; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek." This military tactic was reasonable against the very small fortresses of Micah's time but not against the relatively large Jerusalem. The process of forgery seems clear: a Christian scribe found a suitable prophecy in the Bible, incorporated it in the Gospel as a prediction made by Jesus and it was supported by historical proof in Josephus.

According to Josephus, Romans employed a large army in Judea, strengthened with reinforcements from the neighboring protectorates. They normally did not resort to such force. For example, in Britain, Romans employed a single legion. A still smaller number would suffice for the siege of a city with a starving population and small-scale local operations. Actually, a long siege with numerous troops was perhaps economically impossible in a distant province.

The Roman tactics described by Josephus are unusual in the extreme. The Romans employed long sieges only a few times in their history, and only against strategic enemies. They considered it beneath their dignity to win through starvation rather than by force of arms. No other contemporary account mentions a siege of this magnitude.  

A siege several years' long is surely unrealistic. Even a well-prepared city could not stock food for more