The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

wonder that he now did something seemingly outrageous in order to salvage the Antiquities,
which seemed doomed. [He] has the Christian creed dictated by a Christian and he inserts it
into Ant. 18.63 - 64.
This and only this is signified by the interminably treated and just as often mistreated
testimony of Christ, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum. Torn away from the context of
Josephus’ personality and activity, it has always been investigated solely with respect to its
authenticity, and no one has yet entertained the question of what the testimony then [275]
means historically, and every passage, even every interpolation, does indeed have its [own]
historical background. To this, however, the answer is that it means that the work intended
by a Jew as the book documenting Judaism [Urkundenbuch des Judentums] no longer
belonged to the Jews but to the Christians. This change, however, set in directly after
the completion of the Antiquities, when Justus’ attack occurred, i.e. in Josephus’ lifetime. And
this business-oriented and unscrupulous Josephus was to stand by and watch this calmly? He
was to have tolerated the threatening destruction of his work? Whoever has grasped Josephus’
personality along with us can hardly even take such a thought into consideration. But it is still
good that we can adduce the philological proof that indeed no one other than Josephus has
inserted the Testimonium.
The author of the passage is a Jew and it accords with this that he speaks about the Jews
as “our” people and [that] the Christians are placed in contrast to this. But he is just as
obviously Christian, or better, he gives such a presentation of Jesus’ activity that, if he felt it
inwardly, he can only be a Christian. When Harnack believed that from the wording of the
entire passage he detected a tone that was slightly dismissive of Christianity, then this
impression is indeed subjective and cannot at all stand up to the conclusion of Norden, who
attested the Christian sacred facts [Heilstatsachen] so compellingly, that only a Christian can be
behind the passage. So herein lies the problem: a Jew reports quite plainly the Christian
sacred facts and as far as the profession of Christianity is in question, he of course does this
[using] expressions that are suited to Christianity. But even here the Jew betrays himself again.
In the phrase οὐκ ἐπαύσαντο οἱ τὸ πρῶτον ἀγαπήσαντες [the verb῏ ἀγαπᾶν is commonly
translated by “to love”; but this is incorrect. If the author had intended to say: “those who had
loved him initially, did not stop (continuing to do this)”, then we would have to wonder that
there was no talk at all of loving in the report of Jesus’ beginnings, [which states] they have
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