Bart’s video embedded below provides a 25 minute or so conversation with Megan Lewis hitting the high points of where Josephus mentions Jesus and James his brother. Text below the embed is from the transcript of this video that is in the Scholars/Bart Ehram directory in DropBox.
All italicized text below was said by Bart. This is included here for my personal use and is not to be copied in any way.
- Josephus was a Jewish author, historian. He was born four or five years after Jesus died and he lived until the year 100. He was an elite. He was from a priestly family. He was one of the wealthy elites in Israel. And so he was well-educated. …At this point we’re at about the year 68 or so.
- in the year 69, sometimes called by Roman historians, the year of the four emperors. Finally, Vespasian became the emperor and Josephus had predicted it.
- Vespasian gave over the command of the troops to go on with the war in Israel to his son Titus. And he went back to Rome and was the emperor. Josephus was used to the end of the war as a translator because the people in Israel were speaking Aramaic. Jerusalem was leveled and the temple was burned. And many, many, many people were crucified by the Romans.
- Josephus was taken back to Rome and Vespasian appointed him as a court historian. He lived out his life in Rome writing books as a historian. And so he wrote a six-volume work of the Jewish war that he had just participated in.
- Josephus mentions Jesus in Chapters 18 and 20. The text in 18 sounds very messianic; i.e. unlikely for a devout Jew. So is it authentic? Chapter 20 relates the murder of James the “brother of Jesus the one known as the Messiah”.
