The Gospel According to Josephus: A Conversation with Thomas C. Schmidt, Part 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Gospel According to Josephus: A Conversation with Thomas C. Schmidt, Part 1"

Podcast: New Books Network (Madison's Notes, James Madison Program) Host: Ryan Schinkel
Guest: Professor Thomas C. Schmidt (Fairfield University)
Date: April 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is the first of a two-part series diving into the life, works, and historical significance of Flavius Josephus, with a focus on his intersection with early Christianity and the historical figure of Jesus. Professor Thomas C. Schmidt, a scholar of New Testament and early Christian history, discusses his recent book, "Josephus and Jesus" (Oxford University Press, 2025), exploring Josephus both as a pivotal historian of first-century Judaism and as a critical non-Christian witness to the life and era of Jesus.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Background of Thomas C. Schmidt (00:10–03:25)

• Academic path: PhD from Yale, specializes in early Christianity, the New Testament, and Eastern church history.
• Personal Story: Influenced by his grandfather, Edward M. Kaufman, a military historian and storyteller, whose tales connected him to living history.

  "He would tell me about how growing up in Kentucky in the 30s that he met two different Civil War veterans. ... And here I was talking with my own grandfather who was telling me about people who fought in the Civil War." (02:07, Tom)

• Early interest in ancient texts: Schmidt’s drive to study the New Testament and early Church led to learning Greek, Latin, and eventually becoming a translator.

2. The Extraordinary Life of Josephus (04:13–13:00)

• Birth and Lineage: Born Josephus ben Matthias in 37 AD in Jerusalem to an aristocratic family -- priestly on his father's side, royal on his mother's.
• Religious Investigation: As a youth, Josephus investigated Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, ultimately joining the Pharisees (though with some scholarly debate about the extent of this affiliation).

  "He joins the Pharisees, but he seems to really wish he could join the Essenes. But that politically, for a young aristocrat, is untenable." (07:02, Tom)

• Early Achievements: By 25, Josephus was a Temple priest and a Roman ambassador, successfully negotiating for the release of Jewish priests from the empress Poppaea in Rome.
• Narrow Escapes: Notably survived a deadly shipwreck in the Adriatic—paralleling Paul’s shipwreck in Acts.

  "He Gets shipwrecked. And this is interesting.... hundreds die, right? Yeah. And he survives." (09:27, Tom & Ryan)

3. The Political Cauldron of First-Century Judea (11:05–14:59)

• Roman Oppression: The region was rife with tension leading up to the revolt of 66–73 AD.
• Factionalism: Josephus’ accounts and Monty Python references illustrate the deep infighting among Jewish sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, etc.).

  "Josephus, as he narrates, that the Jews descended into factions, there's tons of infighting, there's people jockeying for position." (14:59, Tom)

4. Siege of Jotapata and Josephus’s Capture (15:28–19:06)

• General of Galilee: Josephus appointed as general and governor—commanding the defense at Jotapata, a key siege in the Jewish War.
• Notorious “Josephus Problem”: When besieged and facing starvation, Josephus and his companions decide to cast lots to kill each other to avoid Roman capture, but Josephus negotiates survival for himself and one other.

  "The lots are cast and people are dying, and eventually there's only two left and it's Josephus and one other man... He negotiates with him and convinces him that they should give themselves up to the Romans." (18:32–18:45, Tom & Ryan)

• Prophecy to Vespasian: Josephus claims prophetic inspiration, predicting that Vespasian will become emperor, which later occurs—leading to Josephus’ survival and new status as a client of the Flavian dynasty.

5. Destruction of the Second Temple & Aftermath (22:39–28:33)

• Temple’s Fall: Josephus witnesses (and attempts to prevent) the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD under Titus.
• Historical Consequence: The Temple’s destruction fundamentally transforms both Judaism (shifting focus from Temple to Torah and rabbinical tradition) and early Christianity.
• Perceived Betrayal: Josephus is later seen as a turncoat by some Jews, but Schmidt defends his pragmatic decision, noting Judaism’s debt to Josephus’ preservation of Jewish history.

  "If he had not done that, he would have just died in that cave, and we would not have had one of the finest historians in the world preserve so much of Jewish history." (27:28, Tom)

6. Josephus’s Works and Historical Value (29:23–33:11)

• Writings: "The Jewish War" (ca. 75 AD) detailing recent events, and "Antiquities of the Jews" (330,000 words, covering from creation to the present); also wrote "Against Apion" and other apologetic works.

  "...he knows that there are Jewish traditions and stories that won't make his people look good in the eyes of the Romans. And so he tries to portray these stories in as friendly light as possible..." (32:25, Tom)

• Illumination of the New Testament Context: Josephus’s writings offer crucial extra-biblical insights; for instance, many “failed Messiahs” referenced in Acts, as well as details about key historical figures.

  "He speaks about Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, ii Herodias the woman who asked for the head of John the Baptist. He talks about John the Baptist. He talks about James, the brother of Jesus. He mentions Pontius Pilate..." (34:38, Tom)

7. The Testimonium Flavianum and Non-Christian References to Jesus (37:45–42:42)

• Testimonium Flavianum (Antiquities 18.63–64): The most famous and hotly debated non-Christian ancient reference to Jesus.

  "...this paragraph that Josephus writes about Jesus is often said to be the most famous and most written about paragraph of text outside the Bible in all of human history." (38:27, Tom)

• Significance: If authentic, it would be the earliest non-Christian description of Jesus.
• Other Ancient References: Besides Josephus, only Tacitus, Suetonius, and (possibly) Mara bar Serapion provide non-Christian attestations of Jesus from antiquity, all later than Josephus.
• Debate on Authenticity: The ongoing scholarly debate over Christian interpolations in the Testimonium and its implications for historical Jesus research.

8. Dating of the New Testament and Josephus’s Timelines (42:42–44:58)

• Gospels’ Composition: Letters of Paul (earliest, 48–62 AD), Gospels written between 60–90 AD, with differing scholarly views on specific dates.
• Contemporaneous Testimony: Relevance of Josephus as an eyewitness or near-contemporary to the events and people mentioned in the Gospels.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Josephus’s Life:

  "He has this brilliance to him and a knack for being the center of the activity." (10:01, Tom)

• On the ‘Josephus Problem’:

  "This is an actual problem in game theory and mathematics called the Josephus problem, which is, in this kind of situation, how do you make sure you're one of the last survivors?" (18:32, Ryan)

• On the destruction of the Temple:

  "This huge crucial event is the destruction of the temple... It is massively transformative of Judaism, but as you say, also Christianity." (24:30, Tom)

• On why Josephus matters:

  "We know 300 times more about Herod the Great from Josephus than we do from the Gospel of Matthew. And we know 10 times more about Pontius Pilate from Josephus than we do from the Gospels." (29:41, Ryan, paraphrasing Paul Maier)

• On the Testimonium Flavianum:

  "...if this passage about Jesus that Josephus writes, if this passage is authentic, it would be the earliest description of Jesus by a non Christian." (38:15, Tom)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Schmidt’s background — 00:10–03:25
• Josephus’s early life and career — 04:13–10:38
• Political context and Jewish factions — 11:05–14:59
• Siege of Jotapata, capture, surrender — 15:28–19:06
• Destruction of the Second Temple & its significance — 22:39–28:33
• Josephus’s writings and historical importance — 29:23–33:11
• Josephus in relation to the New Testament world — 33:11–37:45
• The Testimonium Flavianum & Jesus outside Christian texts — 37:45–42:42
• Dating the Gospels & Josephus’s contemporaneousness — 42:42–44:58

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Tone & Style

The conversation is thorough, historically rich, and occasionally humorous (e.g., Monty Python references and “Josephus Problem” in mathematics). Both host and guest express passion for the subject, blending scholarly rigor with accessible storytelling. The tone is approachable for both lay listeners and those with historical background.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a lively and insightful exploration of Josephus’s extraordinary life and writings, laying strong groundwork for understanding his unparalleled value as a source on Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. The stage is set for the next episode to grapple with the Testimonium Flavianum and its role in both historical and theological debates.

Next Episode Teaser:
Tune in for Part 2, which promises a deeper analysis of Josephus’s testimony about Jesus and its implications—including recent textual scholarship from Professor Schmidt’s new book.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the new books network.

[B]

Welcome to Madison's Notes, the official podcast of the James Madison Program in American ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. I'm your host, Ryan Schinkel. This episode is the first part in a two part series called the Gospel According to Josephus. Today, as we continue season five, I have with us as our guest, Professor Thomas C. Schmidt. Professor schmidt is a 2025, 2026 visiting fellow at the James Madison Program. Having earned his PhD from Yale University, he is the Associate professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, where he focuses on New Testament patristics and early Christian history. A widely published academic, he is the author, co author and translator of five books, including the Book of Revelation and its Commentators, 2021 with Cambridge University Press, and recently the 2025 monograph Josephus and Jesus with Oxford University Press, available in academic publishing as well as online for free via the book's website. Professor Schmidt, welcome to Madison's Notes.

[A]

Ryan. It's a great pleasure to be here and call me Tom.

[B]

Okay, Call me Ryan. Professor Tom, tell me a bit about yourself.

[A]

You mentioned a lot already. I study early Christianity. I'm fascinated by the world of the New Testament and by the world of the early church and also the world of the church, the kind of undiscovered, relatively unknown part of Christianity that flourished in what is today Iraq and Iran, Persia, the ancient Middle East. I study those things and of course I'm very interested in the person of Jesus and the study of the historical Jesus, and that's what my most recent book is about.

[B]

How did you get into history?

[A]

I come from a historiographical family. My grandfather was a military historian at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years in American history. I grew up. He was a great storyteller, and I spent a lot of time with him. He would just tell me stories that he experienced as a soldier, but especially stories of people he knew and he knew. It felt like everybody as a little boy, and this two stories that were most striking to me as both a younger and older boy was he would tell me about how growing up in Kentucky in the 30s that he met two different Civil War veterans. And he took pictures of these gentlemen and would show me these pictures of these guys. And it just seemed the Civil War seemed like an eternity another world ago. And here I was talking with my own grandfather who was telling me about people who fought in the Civil War that he knew. And I thought that was amazing. Of course, I ended up going a different route. I became a Christian in college. I couldn't get enough of the New Testament. I wanted to read it in Greek. I started taking Greek and Latin and then pretty soon I wanted to read early church writings. And then I was reading all I could of early church writings in chronological order from the beginning 190 or 90 A.D. 100 A.D. and I came to the early 200s and there were writings that hadn't been translated into English yet. So I started translating them. And pretty soon I realized I should maybe pursue doctoral studies. So I ended up at Yale University and did my dissertation on the reception of the Book of Revelation in the Eastern churches in the Middle east and recently have turned my hand to the study of the historical Jesus.

[B]

And your grandfather's name, full name, Edward M. Kaufman.

[A]

And if your listeners are interested, the final book he published, the Embattled Past, has those two pictures of those Civil War veterans published in this book. And I just checked and on Google Books via the preview, you can still see the pictures for free. So you can go on there and check that out. The Embattled Past by Edward Emcoff.

[B]

And he's still published even as late

[A]

as, let's see, 2014. I think it was 2014. Yeah. He was still alive when I was a PhD student. So he was delighted to see that happen.

[B]

Excellent. And today we are going to talk about your book, Josephus and Jesus. Now, many people will be familiar with second name, not as many people would be familiar with the first. Josephus, however, is one of the most fascinating figures in in all of ancient history and he led an incredible life. Please tell us about it.

[A]

You are right. Josephus had an extraordinary career. He was born in Jerusalem in 37 AD to an eminent aristocratic Jewish family.

[B]

Son of Matthias. But he came from his mom's side, a royal house.

[A]

Yes. So on his mother's side there was royalty and on his father's side there was a high priest descent. He was raised to be a priest. And so he tells us in his own words he was not only born in Jerusalem, he was raised in Jerusalem. And then at about the age of 16, he started investigating the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. He said he did that for three years. Those names may be familiar to those who read the Gospels. The Pharisees come up all the time. The Sadducees come up all the time. The Essenes aren't mentioned by name in the New Testament, but John the Baptist shares a lot of characteristics with the Essenes.

[B]

So just to give a little context, Josephus, his full name when he's born

[A]

is Josephus ben Matthias.

[B]

Josephus ben Matthias, he's born in 37 AD. So this is four years after Jesus is crucified. There is no state of Israel, but the kingdom of Judea is living under Roman control. But there is local self governance. The Herodian dynasty is ruling over them. And the current establishment, which would be the religious center in Jerusalem, would be the main governing body. The Sanhedrin, that is made up of different parties, among whom are included the Pharisees, which is the more mainstream interpreter of the law, and priests. And then you also have the Sadducees. And the Sadducees are known for believing not in the whole of the Tanakh of the Old Testament. Instead it's just the Torah of the first five books. They don't believe in the resurrection. When you often see them interrogating Jesus in the Gospels, sort of saying, how can there be a resurrection? And I think Jesus replies, well, if God is, Yahweh is the God of Abraham, he's the God of the living, not of the dead. So that's the Sadducees example. The Pharisees would be the ones who's usually arguing over the interpretation of Mosaic law about proper ritualistic habits, whether you can work on the Sabbath or heal on the, whether you should be eating with this group of people. That group of people and the Essenes, as I recall from my high school New Testament history class, were a group of purification. This is why we think John the Baptist might have been one of these figures. But they lived in sort of groups of bodies of people. And while say, like later Christian monks were more individual going out in the desert kind of deal. And John the Baptist as an Essene, he would have been seeking to have gone in the wilderness, lived more like the Jews would have lived during the 40 years out in the wild, right?

[A]

Precisely.

[B]

And Josephus, he's not a very modest young boy, but at 14 he later writes that all the different interpreters of the law, the doctors and lawyers, would come and argue with him and seek his advice and counsel on how to understand it. It's like he's a savant, this little genius who's telling them, here's how to understand this and that. And so he grows up and he's trained to become a priest. And he investigates these different groups and which one does he join?

[A]

He joins the Pharisees. He joins the Pharisees, but he seems to really wish he could join the Essenes. But that politically, for a young aristocrat is untenable. We're reading between the lines here. Because he becomes a Pharisee, or some scholars will argue, he doesn't technically become a Pharisee, he instead obeys Pharisaic law. I think he did become a Pharisee, but either way, he knew the Pharisees inside and out.

[B]

Yeah. One doesn't just become a Pharisee. There's a whole boot camp. You gotta send in the forms online, but you also gotta know someone.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You gotta find out the secret places where they hang out. At one point, he is sent over to Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero. So this is when he's in his 30s, but it's before the great Jewish revolt. It's before the fall of Jerusalem. Tell me a bit about that story.

[A]

A bit of background to that is before he does that, he becomes a priest and serves in the Temple.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I think that's important to emphasize that Josephus has insider knowledge about the upper echelons of Jewish religion and religious circles. He served in the Temple alongside his father. And then at some point when he's about 25, it was actually before he was 30, his standing is evidently of such heights that he is appointed as an ambassador to go to Rome and to intercede for some eminent Jewish priests who are being held captive by the Empress. So he travels to Rome and he meets with the empress, and he is successful in his attempts already at the age of 25, he's a priest, he's a Pharisee, he's an ambassador. A successful ambassador meeting with the empress, the most powerful woman in the world at that time. He returns to. And this is about 62, 63 A.D.

[B]

this is during the reign of Nero. And he befriends the Empress Poppaea. And also while speaking before Nero on behalf of it was a Jewish leader who was being put on trial. And he was there to make an appeal to the emperor on his behalf. He also got to know the empress through the help of a local Jewish actor who was living in Rome. And so it's one of those situations in which Josephus keeps finding himself at the center of some very elite cadre of society, whether it is in or whether it's in Rome. And he keeps going back and forth of being at the center of some story, both by his wits and strategic brilliance, as well as luck and providence as he might have it. Now, when he's sailing on the Mediterranean, heading over to Rome, he has what is one of the first of as many narrow escapes in his life. Tell me about that story.

[A]

He Gets shipwrecked. And this is interesting.

[B]

There's a big shipwreck in the Adriatic, right?

[A]

Yes, I think it was the Adriatic. Somewhere in the middle, hundreds die, right? Yeah. And he survives.

[B]

And only 60. They're all swimming for the whole night.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And over 540 don't make it. But 60 are able to swim the whole night towards one ship that they see at dawn. Right. And they get onto the ship. This is the first of one of his many different escapes where there's some high tense situation in which he's probably going to die. And somehow he continues and lives long enough to be able to write about all of these incidents.

[A]

I know sometimes we can be skeptical when he self reports that when he was 13 or 14 there was these illustrious Jewish teachers coming to him for advice or for consultation. But I have to say if anybody would do that, it would be Josephus. He does have this brilliance to him and a knack for being the center of the activity. I will also note that his shipwreck is parallel to the Apostle Paul's shipwreck in the book of Acts, that they both are shipwrecked in the Mediterranean. Shipwrecks are not an uncommon thing in the ancient world. And Paul reports that he spent a day and a night in the depths.

[B]

Is this in Malta or.

[A]

I think. I think it's near Malta. Yeah. Which is similar to Josephus. This is a world where danger is everywhere. And even in times of peace, travel is extremely perilous. Yes. Yeah.

[B]

So he knows the Roman Emperor's court and he knows many of the leading Pharisees and many of the members of the Sanhedrin over in Jerusalem. Okay. So he comes back to Israel. What happens then?

[A]

At this time? The Jewish people are.

[B]

It's a really peaceful time. Right. There's no tensions whatsoever. Everyone's very relaxed. Everyone's agreeing on everything. Both in Rome. Right. Nero's not creating any kind of havoc. It's not on the precipice of a civil war. And Israel is not about to commit one of the most audacious revolts in Roman history. Right. None of this is going to happen. Spoiler alert. All that did happen.

[A]

Exactly. You see this presaged in the Gospels when Jesus is asked, should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? The implication is that the taxes are a big problem. They're oppressive. The Jewish people don't like being oppressed by the Romans. Who does? And you fast forward 30 years from that discussion that Jesus had and things have just increased the pressure in the pressure cooker has increased, the heat is increasing and war is afoot. Josephus returns to a land where war, rebellion seems like a very large possibility. And it might happen in an unplanned way. There could be these sects, these segments, these schismatics who will force war to happen by doing something so radical that the Romans are going to send legions to attack the Jews. So then the Jews are forced to rebel, they're forced to take sides, and they all presumably will choose rebellion. So Josephus is in this, it returns to this situation and he says he's concerned about it. And eventually, as it becomes clear that war is going to happen, he is appointed one of seven generals in the Jewish army. And this is an illustrious position. It's much than for instance, a general would be in World War II in the United States because it's a political as well as a military position. And Josephus is appointed to be general and governor of Galilee. So he goes to Galilee and begins gathering troops to defend against the Romans.

[B]

Now there is the siege of Jatapata, which the historian Barry Strauss says was second only to the siege of Jerusalem. It was even more important than the siege of Masada. Now as a little context, if you want to imagine the milieu that Josephus finds himself in, just go to that historical classic, Monty Pythons the Life of Brian, in which they made fun of the era of the people of the New Testament. Although if you read some of the scenes, it actually affirms the divinity of Jesus because there's a guy who's, there's one ex leper who's asking for alms and they ask him, ex leper? Well, I used to be a leper, but then this guy healed me and now I have no leprosy and I have lost my source of income, which is very funny. But that also then means that there was a guy who had healed him of his leprosy. And in the film there's really one figure who could have done that. Anyway, putting that aside, that Monty Python actually affirmed the divinity of Christ rather than denied it. They just made fun of the Christians in that film. All the different Jewish sects are fighting with other Jewish sects more so than they are fighting with the Romans. And they're always splitting apart from each other. So this is Monty Python making fun of a lot of left wing communist groups in this 1970s within the political left. However, they were also drawing from a lot of historical scholarship at the time, funny enough. And so you have the People's Front of Judea the Judean People's Front. There are lots of different plays on these names. They're always fighting with each other. One point, they're both trying to kidnap Pontius Pilate's wife. And then they realize they're both trying to do that, and then they start killing each other. And a man says, no, stop. Don't you know we should be fighting against the common enemy? And they just name and they all say in unison, some third group that is like the true enemy. One point, this third group shows up near the end of the film, and then they're all about to save Brian, who's been crucified, and. And instead they all just commit sepulchre. They just take themselves down. So there isn't really a united program among any of these people. And you think that if they could just concentrate all their energy together under one game plan, they might actually succeed, but instead they're always wanting to continue on the struggle rather than actually taking effective action with some strategic, concrete aim. Anyway. How close of that depiction is that to the context of the great Jewish revolt of 67 AD, is it?

[A]

There are many kernels of truth in that description. Josephus, as he narrates that the Jews descended into factions, there's tons of infighting, there's people jockeying for position. Josephus himself is betrayed by his own supreme commander and by the head of the Sanhedrin, where they try to trick him and get him arrested and remove him from his command unjustly. The zealots are at play. There's other folks that are happening, and things get worse and worse as the battle turns against the Jews.

[B]

And he's leading the garrison in where?

[A]

Jotapata at one point.

[B]

In Galilee. Yeah, right, Galilee, which is where Jesus spent a lot of his time.

[A]

Time, exactly. So some of your listeners might be noticing that Josephus is raised in Jerusalem, where Jesus preached often, and then he goes to Galilee, where Jesus was from and where he preached and had the epicenter, the focus of his ministry. So Josephus is tracing the footsteps of Jesus in many ways.

[B]

He would have been in Rome when Peter and Paul would have been there before they had been executed in the mid-60s.

[A]

Precisely. And not only that, Josephus mentions some villages in Galilee. Josephus visits Capernaum, which was the home of Jesus during his ministry. Josephus was in Cana of Galilee, where the Gospel of John says, Jesus turned water into wine. Josephus was stationed in Sepphorus, which is three miles down the road. And I mean that literally. There's an actual road that goes from Sephorus to Nazareth. So Josephus is in this community of people, many of whom would have remembered this Jesus preacher, this Jesus rabbi. And that's not to mention Josephus's father, who was a priest serving in temple. He was 25 years old when Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. His mother also would have been an adult. So we'll get into more of these connections later, I think. But Josephus is remarkably well connected with people who could have known about Jesus.

[B]

So Jatapata falls to the Romans, falls specifically to the general known as Vespasian. What year?

[A]

I think that was 67. 68.

[B]

67. 68 AD. When that happens, how does he survive?

[A]

It's this amazing story. He's trapped in a cave.

[B]

Another amazing story.

[A]

He's trapped in a cave with other of his compatriots.

[B]

Patriots, holding out. They held out Jada Pada for months, but they ran out of water, they ran out of food. There was a defector who betrayed them. The Romans got in once it fell. He's with a group of about 40 people in this cave. And what's the game plan?

[A]

They decide that instead of surrendering and instead of just slowly starving to death, they're going to commit mass suicide.

[B]

Like at Masada.

[A]

Yes, like at Masada, which was later.

[B]

Yes. Which is we'd rather destroy ourselves rather than have to surrender to the Romans and then suffer the punishment of that.

[A]

Right. Because it's possible they would have been tortured to death, but they would have been crucified. It is not simple fanaticism. There is some legitimate concern about what would happen.

[B]

We had Rhys Edmonds on a couple episodes ago, who's a local Princeton lecturer and is a Roman historian, and we went over Roman brutality. So if you want to get into why the Jewish rebels would have been very reasonably fearful of what the Romans would have done to them, listen to that episode, which is number two of season five.

[A]

Yes. Romans loved torturing people. It's the grim part of history. So Josephus agrees to this and they decide instead of killing, committing suicide, what they'll do is they'll kill cast lots so that whenever, wherever the lot falls, one man will kill another. And they'll keep casting these lots until there's only two left and one man will kill the other, there'll be one left, and then the final man will commit suicide. As Josephus tells the story, the lots are cast and people are dying, and eventually there's only two left and it's Josephus and one other man.

[B]

And this is an actual problem in game theory and mathematics called the Josephus problem, which is, in this kind of. Of situation, how do you make sure you're one of the last survivors? So what does Josephus do with this last guy?

[A]

He negotiates with him and convinces him that they should give themselves up to the Romans.

[B]

They're both pausing. It's like, wait a minute, everyone else is dead. We're the only guys left, so no one's watching us. Right. You know, Romans aren't all bad. Have you tried Italian food? It's really great.

[A]

I think that Josephus, he knew the Romans, he'd been to Rome. I think Josephus thought he could talk him his way out of the situation, which he does end up doing.

[B]

Okay. And specifically, he gets out of that cauldron, but then he jumps into the fire. And how does he get out of that fire? He surrenders before the general Vespasian. Right. He's in chains. And what does he say?

[A]

He says that he experiences this ecstatic prophecy, that he receives this prophetic message from God, that the man he's talking to, Vespasian the general, is going to become Emperor of Rome. And what ends up happening? Vespasian does become Emperor of Rome.

[B]

Basically, the Praetorian Guard revolts against the Emperor Nero in the late mid-60s. This is when Israel has almost fallen to the Romans and all that remains is Jerusalem. Then they have the year of the Four Emperors, where you have Otto and other emperors who I used to have remembered from my days of reading Tacitus.

[A]

Yeah. Otho Galva and Vitellius.

[B]

Yes. And then they all rapidly keep eating up the last guy, and the next guy gets eaten up by the next guy. And then the one who emerges triumphant and the the end of the civil wars is Vespasian. He's initially not wanting to be emperor. He's a bit old to become emperor, but the legions proclaim him such. He's out in Syria, eventually comes to Italy, secures his rule. Tacitus says that he's the one emperor who ever became better with power, rules for 10 years, and then he's followed by his sons, Titus and then Domitian. Dun, dun, dun.

[A]

Yeah, he's got a bad rap.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Like Commodus, after Marcus Aurelius is a bit of a decline. Now. Vespasian isn't the one who reconquers and ultimately sacks Jerusalem. It's Titus who does that. Now, Josephus prophesies that Vespasian will become emperor. When Vespasian does become emperor, he's then freed from his chains. Right. And he's made a client of his family, which are known as the Flavians. Right. And that's why he has Flavius added to his name. Now tell me a bit about him and his relationship with Vespasian and Titus, especially while he's seeing Jerusalem being destroyed.

[A]

Well, let me first just give the perspective of the Romans. Capture this guy Josephus. They don't know anything about him, but they quickly learn that this is one of the seven generals. He's one of the most powerful men in Judea. He's eminently well connected. He has been to Rome. He presumably knows Greek. He is willing to help negotiate with the Jews on behalf of the Romans. And that's what he ends up doing, is he serves as translator and negotiator. From Josephus perspective, if we switch to that point of view, Josephus realizes the Jewish cause is hopeless. There's overwhelming numbers they're facing. The Romans don't mess around. The Jewish people he knows are going to lose. And the best chance they have is if they have an orderly surrender that will save thousands of lives and the Jewish temple and Jerusalem will be preserved. That's Josephus goal. So he attempts to negotiate these things. Titus uses him. Titus is after his father. Vespasian goes to become emperor. Titus now has the command of the Roman legion legions in Jerusalem. And Josephus is urging the Jews to surrender, but they don't. Josephus is only able to rescue a small number. He rescues his family after the defeat, thousands have been crucified. And he notices some people that he recognizes on crosses and he is able to get them down from the crosses. So he fails in his attempt to save the temple and Jerusalem, but he succeeds in saving himself. And he goes on to do something on behalf of Judaism. He goes on for the next 20 years of his career to become a remarkable historian where he preserves so much of Jewish history.

[B]

In the fall of Jerusalem, one of the most epochal acts ever committed was the destruction of the second temple that had previously been built by Herod the Great. Right, the second temple, it was expanded

[A]

or rebuilt, depending how you want to take the statement by Josephus.

[B]

Originally there was Solomon's temple. King David had wanted to build a temple, but God said, no, you're going to have to stick with tents, but your son will be able to. Solomon then builds a magnificent temple that is destroyed by the Babylonians. By the Babylonians. Assyria takes up the lost tribes, takes up the northern kingdom, but Babylon comes in. Babylon absorbs everything, Judea and Assyria and destroys the temple. And then all the Jews are sent out towards Babylon in the exile and that temple is destroyed. Eventually, when Persia comes in and gobbles up Babylon, all these dinosaurs like, gobbling each other up, Cyrus comes in and gobbles up Babylon, lets the Jews go back west. They resettle. Eventually you have the miracle in which the menorah stays lit for the full days, which is also called the famous holiday Hanukkah.

[A]

The Hanukkah miracle was a terrible tragedy under the Greeks.

[B]

Okay, so that was happening under the Maccabees during the Maccabean revolt.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, this is why I have you along to make sure all the facts are lined up. Eventually they rebuild the temple under Herod the Great. Right. So they have just like a remnant of it left. The Romans destroy it and all that's left is the Wailing Wall. And that creates a need to reinterpret both Judaism and then the way or the Church, the Christian sect within it, as its own sort of half gentile offshoot. And Christians reinterpreted it as Christ's body being destroyed. So that was the new temple. So this temple being destroyed is less significant for others. It's, we can't do temple sacrifices anymore, so we have to reinterpret it and base it around the Torah as the text. So you have rabbinical Judaism in the synag become more of the center. And that sort of then helps eventually, over the next couple centuries, split off the two religions. So this huge crucial event is the destruction of the temple.

[A]

Yeah, it is massively transformative of Judaism, but as you say, also Christianity.

[B]

And it makes Josephus somewhat of a turncoat in Jewish circles for the next several hundred years. Would that have been also among his peers?

[A]

It's difficult to know. Josephus is not discussed much in the Jewish sources that we have preserved from the early centuries. One can see why he would be thought of as a turncoat. He goes over to the Romans and helps them, in a sense. On the other hand, there is a great tradition of this in Judaism. The prophet Jeremiah, when the Babylonians were invading. Most of his prophecies are about how the Babylonians are going to win and that instead the Jews should surrender. And you could accuse him of being a turncoat. He was accused of that at the time. Josephus would probably put himself in the same category as Jeremiah.

[B]

Barry Strauss again says that Josephus writings are always dedicated to two things. To defending the intellectual high culture and the honor of Jews and the Jewish People and at the same time trying to warn them away from going on mad crusades like the Simon Barcakva Revolt, the late 20s. Okay, that was the one under Hadrian then. That was a later one. So it was warning against these kind of revolts when Titus destroys Jerusalem. The physical structure of Jerusalem has been decimated, but a lot of Jews still live in the area as the dominant population. It's when Hadrian puts down the Simon Barkokva revolt half a century later that he commits untold numbers of massacres. And that sends Jews scattering throughout and decimates the local population.

[A]

Correct. And Hadrian passed a law that Jews were not allowed to enter Jerusalem except one day a year where they were allowed to go in and mourn.

[B]

And Titus and Hadrian are extremely infamous in Jewish history, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. There's a famous arch in Rome which is known as the Arch of Titus, which shows his triumph from the sack of Jerusalem. And in it is included the famous menorah from the temple. It's almost like the Ark of the Covenant. It's the last picture we have of this lost historical item that we don't know if it still exists or where it would be.

[A]

Yes, I've seen that myself. It's amazing what condition that arch is still in. You can see the menorah very clearly, clearly being carried by the Roman legions. And I think Josephus tells us. I'm plumbing the depths of my memory here. I think he tells us that they were stored, the sacred vessels of the Temple were stored in the Temple of Jupiter in Rome. And then another historian mentions how that temple was destroyed in a fire or struck by lightning or something. And there are some folks who've tried to figure out if those vessels were brought elsewhere. Some people think they can trace it for a few hundred years, but eventually the trail grows cold.

[B]

Now, do you think Josephus was right to have surrendered and allied himself with the Romans as he did, or did he not really have much of a choice? Maybe not much of one at all.

[A]

I think he certainly made a very practical decision, and a decision that if he had not done that, he would have just died in that cave, and we would not have had one of the finest historians in the world preserve so much of Jewish history. So I think regardless of what he should or should not have done, the end result was that Judaism massively benefited from Josephus advocacy over 20 years as a writer, where he wrote half a million words. He wrote an apology of the Jews defending the Jewish faith. He Wrote, wrote a history of the Jews from the beginning up to about 66 A.D. he wrote a history of the Jewish war. All of this was designed to preserve Jewish culture and history, but also to help the Jews help their standing in the eyes of non Jews, the Greco Roman elite, so that the Jews were viewed admirably instead of derisively.

[B]

So he ping pongs back and forth between being within elite circles in Israel. He goes to the Roman court, gets to know the people there. What was the name of Nero's dynasty? It was the Julian Claudian dynasty. Falls, he comes back and he's at the center of another group in Israel that is about to fall with the failed revolt. And then he comes back to Rome and is at the center of a successful dynasty that lasts for 30 years. He's eventually made a Roman citizen, he's given a place to live, he's given basically scraps from the table from the conquest of Jerusalem. But he is able to live very well for himself. Marries several times, has a few kids, survived to adulthood, and he's able to write some of the most important historical works from the ancient world and some of the best well preserved. We don't have much lacunae in his works. We aren't missing a lot from it. We pretty much have all of it.

[A]

Would you say you're right? We do. There is some rumors that he might have written in one of his works. He says he intends to write an additional work that we don't have. But he says that at the end of his life when he's an old man. And so it seems probable that he never actually got around to writing it. So we think we have everything.

[B]

His writings are extremely helpful for understanding the world of the New Testament and the world of a couple centuries before and then a little bit after what happens in it. I think Paul Mayer said that we know 300 times more about Herod the Great from Josephus than we do from the Gospel of Matthew. And we know 10 times more about Pontius Pilate from Josephus than we do from the Gospels. He is essential for that. And often his works would have been put in say, some English library in the 1700s right next to a nice volume addition of the Bible. Tell me a bit about what his corpus is as he's writing. As I understand first the Jewish war, which is the more recent events, and then later on writes the Jewish Antiquities which covers everything from creation to the reign of Emperor Nero. More the past events which he wrote at a later date. But people usually read that first and then get to reading the Jewish War. If you're trying to read it in sequential order. Tell me a bit about those two works.

[A]

You're right. Once the Jewish war was over and things settled down. Josephus is in rome and around 75 A.D. he has finished writing this book called the Jewish War, the War of the Jews, which goes over the background to the Jewish war with Rome and the actual war itself. And he presents it to the emperor. He presents it to famous Herodian kings like Agrippa, Herod Agrippa ii, who's the last king of the Jews, who's alive still and in Rome. Rome. And this discusses in detail the Jewish War, but it jumps in the middle of the story. It starts probably 20 AD or even. I think it starts with Herod the great in the B.C. era and goes forward. So he's missing a lot of Jewish history here. He then takes his hand to writing a 330,000 word book called the Antiquities of the Jews, which he said modest,

[B]

modest book, book, not really ambitious, not covering that much. Very antiquarian. Just dealing with little, kind of idiosyncratic, this little niche over here.

[A]

Yes. And he begins with creation. He talks about the Jewish tradition of God creating the heavens and the earth. And he just progresses, talks about Abraham, Moses, all those people in the Old Testament and continues on up to his present day, up to about 66 AD. So there is some overlap between the Jewish War and the antiquity.

[B]

He reports a lot of the main essential episodes from the Old Testament, but at the same time he'll often change little details here and there. And he'll also have little aside saying, yeah, I'm reporting this doesn't mean I necessarily believe it or agree with it.

[A]

He's very concerned. He knows that there are Jewish traditions and stories that won't make his people look good in the eyes of the Romans. And so he tries to portray these stories in as friendly light as possible, which does entail some rewriting and retelling. He also adds additional materials that were missing, especially the intertestamental times. He has stories about Alexander the Great and the Jews and things like that. All of this is fascinating, but his real worth and value as a historian from a historical perspective come when he talks about what is going on in the first century ad. That is when he himself lived and when he knew people who lived during that time, like his parents and other people.

[B]

He is essential for understanding and makes sense of a lot that goes on that you wouldn't know otherwise in the New Testament. So for example, in Acts, when some of the Pharisees are debating what to do with some of the apostles, camelliel, who gets up and starts talking about the other failed messiah movements. And if you read Josephus, you realize, I think it's a little more than a dozen, maybe 15 or so both of failed messiah projects, including for a century before and then a century after Christ. And this is happening all the time. It's like the line in Monty Python, he's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy. Right. It's just these guys are happening all over the place, just popping up out of the ground. And if this one fails and if you've survived so you could just end up, you're also dead. If your messiah failed, as in he was killed, he died, I think according to N.T. wright, you would go home. Or you find a new Messiah entirely. Or if you're crazy enough to to keep sticking with this seed funding, startup investment, you find the next of kin. Look at the guy's brother. He'll be the new Messiah, right?

[A]

Yeah. And that passage from Acts, Josephus illuminates by talking about these other messianic movements, even some of the ones mentioned by name by Gamaliel, but he also talks about Gamaliel. And so just in that one little scene, Josephus illuminates so much and helps us understand. If you read the works of Josephus, the names of individuals in the New Testament stream off his pages.

[B]

Name some of them who would be the people he talks about in depth.

[A]

He speaks about Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, ii Herodias the woman who asked for the head of John the Baptist. He talks about John the Baptist. He talks about James, the brother of Jesus. He mentions Pontius Pilate. He talks about the high priest Caiaphas, who supervises the trial of Jesus, the high priest Annas, who also is high priest emeritus. When Jesus is brought to trial, he also talks about him. He mentions all sorts of governors of Judea, Festus and Felix that are mentioned in the Book of Acts, other figures, Berenice, Drusilla. He talks about all these places, these place names that come up. I already mentioned Capernaum and Cana, but so many others he speaks about. And he talks about cultural and political happenings like the issue of taxation. We know because Josephus tells us what a serious issue taxation was. And we see that in the Gospels. He talks about what the Pharisees believed and what the Sadducees believed. And it helps us to understand the dynamics of the religious elite in the Gospels. There's many more things I could mention, but this helps us not only understand the New Testament, but also understand that when the Gospels were written, regardless of what your own personal belief is about the Gospels and about Jesus and whether or not he was the Christ or the Son of God, the Gospels are written as history in and set in a historical time frame. All four of them are the people they mentioned really existed and the places they talk about really existed and what they talk about actually happened. Pontius Pilate really was the governor appointed by Rome at that time. Caiaphas was the high priest of the Jews. Herod Antipas was the king of the Jews at that time, according to Josephus.

[B]

Now, all these figures are mentioned in the New Testament, but in small snippets, right? There's one point in which Jesus is being sent back and forth between Pontius Pilate and Herod Agrippa.

[A]

Herod Antipas.

[B]

Herod Antipas. Thank you.

[A]

There's a lot of Herods.

[B]

Too many Herods for me. It's a very Herod hairy situation. But at one point, I think it's in Matthew where he says, and, oh yeah, Pilate and Herod Antipas, they became friends after that, became best buds. They set a new camaraderie with each other. And that's really historically interesting. And he never talks about it again. Right. It's just like little bits that are extremely suggestive and telling without ever. But it's part of some larger hole that you're missing. And Josephus helps fill in a lot of those gaps. And this is partly the reason why he has been so well preserved compared to other historians. Now, there's a very specific reason why Christians, who were, according to Geza Vermesh, the famous Jewish, also former Catholic priest, biblical scholar, the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on, was that Christians had an intense interest in this text generally. But the specific reason is that there are two mentions of Christ in the Antiquities of the Jews, which is in book 18, paragraph 63.

[A]

63 to 64.

[B]

63 to 64. And then also book 2, 20, paragraph 200. So it's 1863 and then 2200. Those are the two mentions. The first one is very famous and very controversial. And that is largely the core of your book, Josephus and Jesus, available at Academic Press and Amazon and also online pd, which is available for free, which I highly recommend people get. This is a very pivotal, absolutely fascinating book of scholarship, in my opinion. Not that you needed the endorsement.

[A]

Thank you, Ryan.

[B]

But tell me a Bit about this first mention. It has a very specific name.

[A]

Yes, this paragraph that Josephus writes about Jesus is often said to be the most famous and most written about paragraph of text outside the Bible in all of human history. And if this passage about Jesus that Josephus writes, if this passage is authentic, it would be the earliest description of Jesus by a non Christian. And we're not talking about just any old regular non Christian here. We're talking about an exquisitely well connected Jewish priest and Pharisee and general who grew up in Jerusalem in the 30s, 40s and 50s, was governor of Galilee for a time. So this is not someone who would be writing based on distant hearsay. This is someone who would know what he's talking about. This means that what Josephus says about Jesus would be of extreme historical worth, I should say. The paragraph is often called the Testimonium Flavianum, which is just a fancy testimony of Flavia. Josephus and Flavius is the name Josephus inherited from the Flavian dynasty in Rome.

[B]

Now, as additional context, Jesus also Pontius Pilate are mentioned together, but Jesus specifically by other ancient Roman historians outside of Christian writers, either the authors of the New Testament or say like the letters of Clement of Rome or the Apostolic Father. This would be in Tacitus, who's writing in the 120s. 120s under the emperor Trajan. He's mentioned by Tacitus, he's mentioned by Suetonius, he's mentioned by Pliny the Younger in one of his letters to Trajan. But that when he's discussing the Christian sect and how he should or should not persecute them and how he should handle them. But that is all in the early second century ad in the early one hundreds. We don't have much outside of Christian literature outside of the New Testament Apostolic Fathers from the first century. Except for Josephus.

[A]

Right, exactly. But this is typical of ancient history. If you look at the period of roman history from 30 A.D. to 90 A.D. or 100 A.D. and you look at our Roman historians that we have preserved who talk about that time frame.

[B]

Frame.

[A]

The Roman historians we have preserved that talk about that time frame are Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius and Diocasius who wrote much later in the third century. And so when we say that, well, our sources on Jesus outside of Christian sources are Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius, what we're really saying is the three early Roman sources that talk about first century Roman history all talk about Jesus.

[B]

There's also some obscure Poet in the late first or early second century who mentions Christ, but he's alluding to him though, the guy who was the Messiah who was killed by the Jewish people and he compares it to the death of Socrates.

[A]

I think you're speaking about Mara Bar Serapion, who was a Syriac writer and philosopher. And he could, I mentioned Josephus would be the early Marabar. Serapion could be dated to the 70s AD so he could be earlier, but there are other folks that date him later in the second century. Either way, he's very early. He doesn't mention Jesus by name, but he clearly is talking about Jesus.

[B]

But Josephus, we would be knowing for sure that he's writing in the first century. So the Gospels are written according to modern day date between the 70s to the 90s A.D. the letters of Paul would be the earliest New Testament writings that we have, starting with Romans, which is in 55 or so A.D. probably

[A]

Galatians, Galatians or first Thessalonians.

[B]

First Thessalonians, that would be in the early 50s.

[A]

48.

[B]

48, 48, okay, that early 48. So that's 15 years after the crucifixion of Christ all the way through the early 60s for Paul. Right. And then Mark is possibly written in 60s or 70s A.D. luke and Matthew would be in the 70s, 80s, I

[A]

would put them earlier, but the consensus would be or has been, the field is split basically. Some more conservative scholars will date Mark and Matthew and Luke before 70 AD in the 50s or 60s. And then John would be in the 70s or 80s or 90s. Other scholars, more liberal scholars or secular scholars will date everything after the 70s. So all four Gospels are between 70 and 90. Mark is almost always sought or they

[B]

mention or don't mention the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem, whether they include that prophecy or not. Now the Gospel of John would be written in the 80s or 90s, probably whether by him or whether by his followers is continuing this testimony. As I recall Eusebius, the church historian who's writing in the early 300s, he says that John had read the other gospels and said that these guys are all correct, but they had only focused on one year of Jesus life while he was then deciding to focus on three years of Jesus life instead of the final year of the ministry. And so I think Eusebius also says that Mark was supposed to be the translator for and he remembered everything Peter said. He just mixed up the order a lot because Peter's just speaking expressly different groups of people. Peter wasn't putting it in some formal order meant to be written down. And Luke was possibly the author of both the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. And he was a follower of Paul, he was a doctor and accompanied Paul on some of his journeys. There's three times in the the Book of Acts in which he starts speaking in the third person plural, as in we went here, we went there. And that's the idea. That was when he was joining Paul. And we connect the two because besides the similar style and the traditional attribution, it's that each of them begins with a similar dedication to Theophilus, who's supposed to be the patron who's paying for these texts to be written in which Luke talks about the eyewitnesses who are putting this together. And then also right where the Gospel ends, Luke then begins Acts at that very moment and then Matthew is attributed to the apostle Matthew, Matthew the Levi. Alright, so those are the gospels. Josephus is writing contemporaneous pretty much as this is being formed.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so he would be drawing from a different but adjacent group of eyewitnesses, according to your interpretation. All right, Professor Schmidt, Tom, thank you for joining us on the Madison's Notes podcast to talk about the Gospel According to Josephus. Have a happy Holy week week. Have a happy Passover to everyone. Thank you for listening. That was part one of a two part episode. Please tune in next week for more on the Gospel According to Josephus with Thomas Schmidt. A transcript for this interview will be made available on the new Madison's Notes substack page along with a copy of the audio recording. If you desire further Madison's Notes content, please check our episode catalog and subscribe to receive future ones ones we are always grateful for any likes and positive ratings. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time on the Madison's Notes podcast.