The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

elates [in] 17.328 how the false Herod gains followers after his landing: οὐκ ἠτύχει καὶ τοὺς
τῇδε Ἰουδαίους ἀφ’ ὁμοίας ἀπάτης προσαγαγέσθαι. From where did this come? αἴτιον δὲ ἦν
τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ ἡδονῇ δεχόμενον τοὺς λόγους. Are these not the analogous
concepts? Is the author at work here not ranging within similar formations of thought
[Gedankenbildungen]? Since Jesus was a διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδον῀ι τἀληθῇ
δεχομένων, that is why πολλοὺς μὲν Ἰουδαίους, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ ἐπηγάγετο.
The details of the situations are different, and the [similarity] does not touch every word either
– that would bespeak a copyist – rather, it is obvious that here one and the same author is
speaking to us, who is portraying two parallel incidents from a similar basic outlook
[Grundanschauung].
Indeed, the idea of the Christian interpolation emerged basically only because it was
considered impossible that a Jew could have composed the Testimonium. But precisely that
which appeared impossible ensued for us as an inevitable consequence from Josephus’
character and course of life; [just] as he once wished to make his Antiquities palatable to the
Jews by his attack on Agrippa, so he now could salvage this, his great lifework, all the more by
virtue of supplying it to the Christians. Josephus did not become a Christian as a result, but by
virtue of inserting into his work what the Christians wished to have recognized as the
substance of their belief, he has made it possible for the Graeco-Roman readership to continue
reading the work even though it had become unusable as a Jewish [writing]. And so the
theologian should not view the Testimonium as a Jewish testimony about Christ, but indeed as a
document that can indicate to us the way in which the Christians around 110 CE wished to
have Jesus’ activity presented. By means of the fixed point in time that we can determine for
the Testimonium – it can be a matter only of a range of about 10 years, [278] so that we enter
approximately into the time of the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan – its formulation
of the Christian sacred facts [Heilstatsachen] is perhaps suitable for becoming the corner stone
of further research.
Not long afterwards Josephus must have died; his work, however, was preserved,
perhaps not the least precisely because of the Testimonium. It was this that endeared the
Antiquities to the Christians; so in the final battle it is Josephus, after all, who remained the
victor over Justus, who inevitably spurned it for its entire way of thinking and who also had no
upon all the details.
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