Flavius Josephus: How History Is Doctored To Prove Mythical Creatures!!!

Flavius Josephus

                                                              

Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

                                                      -The Antiquities of the Jews,  Testimonium Flavianum.
I must confess when I first wrote a refutation on the above so-called proof of Christian apologists regarding the existence of Jesus, the matter owing to its technical detail  went out of  radar signals of most of Christians folks. Many Christians were not even aware of what the crap I was writing. So I have decided to give a brief background on the above historian called Josephus and why I m writing this stuff.

Flavius Josephus is a highly respected & much quoted  Romano-Jewish historian. Josephus's two major works are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews.

Mermaid

Christian Apologists for past 1600 years are trying to convience  innocent people of existence of a highly mythical creature called Jesus Christ who is no more real than equally mythical creatures like Mermaids & Goblins ,by quoting the above passage from the works of  Flavius Josephus.
                                                                               
Im going to give my arguments against this alleged  so-called Passage of Jesus inn a simple language, point by point.

1.  Josephus’s Birth:-

·         Flavius Josephus was born on 37A.D, so he automatically disqualifies to even write about the historicity of Jesus because he was not a contemporary of Jesus.

·         Philo Of Alexandria , another prominent historian was the real contemporary of Jesus from 47 A.D - 53A.D, yet surprisingly he never mentions any thing regarding Jesus or Darkness over sky  when Jesus was hung up on the cross.

2.  A single paragraph Proof:-

Interestingly , Josephus confirms every Christian creed in just one passage, in just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – What  a miracle!

·         If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'The Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph.

·         In fact, Josephus relates much more aboutJohn the Baptist than about Jesus! 

St Origen

·         He  reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed 'Egyptian Jew' messiah. Yet mysteriously ,he sums up in just 127 words about the his most revered and blessed savior for whom he and the whole word has waited since the Dawn of civilization.

                                                          

3.  Above Passage not known before 4^rd  Centurary:-

Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes  not a single reference to Josephus’s works.

·         Origen did not quote the Said paragraph because this paragraph had not yet been written.

·         "The passage [Testimonium Flavianum] seems to suffer from repeated interpolations."

                                                                         -The Catholic Encyclopedia

·         Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD. This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.

4. Josephus: An Orthodox Jew:-

How could Josephus claim that Jesus  was the promised Messiah and yet remain orthodox Jew?

·         If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph.                                        

·         No jew  ever even to this day say the Jesus was the Messiah.

·         It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing that is not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.

5.  A Historian must have objectivity:-

The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian, and by the way how Josephus introduces Jesus Christ:

"... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him."

Hyperbole Graphically

                                                                        

The quoted passage alone is the proof that it was forged by the lying scribers under the auspices of Noble Pope and holy Chruch Fathers. Because its language is Christian. No honest historian shall utter such a crap that prophets spoke 10,000 wonderful things about Jesus. This bogus passage is clearly a deviant invention of   Catholic priests  using concepts like PIOUS  FRAUD .

6. The Context:-

Chapter 2 - it gives an account of a Jewish sedition which was suppressed by Pilate with great slaughter. The account ends as follows:

“There were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded; and thus an end was put to this sedition.” 

Chapter 4- begins with these words:

 “About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder.”

 One section naturally and logically follows the other. Yet between these two closely connected paragraphs the one relating to Christ is stuffed just like a Chicken Roll or a Hamburger ; thus making the words, “another sad calamity,” refer to the advent of this wise and wonderful being(Jesus).

At this point the paragraph about Jesus is introduced!

There is no way that Josephus, who remained an orthodox Jew all his life and defended Judaism would have thought that the execution of a messianic claimant was "another terrible misfortune" for the Jews. This is the hand of a Christian writer who himself considered the death of Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy.

With paragraph 3 removed from the text the chapter, in fact, reads better. The "aqueduct massacre" now justifies "another terrible misfortune."

Not Extinct !!

                                                                          

7. Final Assertion:-

The final assertion, that the Christians were "not extinct at this day," confirms that the so-called Testimonium is a later interpolation. Christianity did not establish itself until the 2nd century. This is just a  Christian propaganda.

·         no doubt that Christians existed, from the early years of the second century certainly, and – as heretical Jews or Essenes. But belief in a celestial Christ does not equate to belief in a flesh-and-blood 'Jesus of Nazareth'.

·         Even a belief in  'Jesus of Nazareth' does not make him a reality –Because  it is just a belief that he is a real & no objective impartial & independent proof.

"Festus was now dead, and Albinus was put upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, (or some of his companions). And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned."

                                                                 -Josephus (The Antiquities of the Jews,Book 20, Chapter 9)

This is Flavius Josephus’s another passage that Christian apologist’s claim prove existence of Jesus. However, even this falls flat on two accounts:

Fact 1: It is dependent upon the earlier (false) reference for explanation .

Fact 2: To identify the James of Falvius Josephus with James the Just( brother of Jesus), is to reject the accepted history of church which declares that James the Just died in 69 A.D., seven years after the James of Falvius Josephus  [see the above quote] was condemned to death by the Sanhedrin. 

Additional Information:-

                                                                                         

      A]                                                             Justus of Tiberias

St Photius

Justus was also an historian, a rival to Josephus, and from the same region. Perhaps his work was not as easily doctored – his histories did not make it through the Christian Dark Age and are – as they say – "lost to us"!                

" I have read the chronology of Justus of Tiberias ... and being under the Jewish prejudices, as indeed he was himself also a Jew by birth, he makes not one mention of Jesus, of what happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did."

                                                                            – Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 9th Century 

Christian apologists are shameless, for their own convenience, blur the distinction between evidence of Jesus and evidence of Christians.

B]                                     Josephus knows nothing of Christians

It was the around the year 53 AD that Josephus decided to investigate the sects among the Jews.  According to the gospel fable this was the period of explosive growth for the Christian faith: " the churches ... throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria ... were edified... and ... were multiplied." – Acts 9:31

·         This is also the time of the so-called "Council of Jerusalem" when supposedly Paul regaled the brothers with tales of "miracles and wonders" among the gentiles (Acts 15.12). And yet Josephus knows nothing about all that stuff, let’s see his own admission:

“When I was sixteen years old, I decided to get experience with the various sects that are among us. These are three: as we have said many times, the first, that of the Pharisees, the second that of the Saduccees, the third, that of the Essenes. For I thought that in this way I would choose best, if I carefully examined them all. Therefore, submitting myself to strict training, I passed through the three groups.”

·         Josephus elsewhere do record a "fourth sect of Jewish philosophy" but its got nothing to do with Christianity.

·         Josephus says not a word concerning existence of  twelve apostle . Nowhere  he breathes a word concerning the existence of Paul.

C]                                                Which Jesus is Real?

Josephus  describes two Jesuses, who are blended in the figure of our  Gospel Jesus:-

 a) The Jesus (WARS, VI, v, 3) who predicts "woe to Jerusalem"; is flogged till his bones show, but never utters a cry; makes no reply when challenged; returns neither thanks for kindness nor railing for railing; and is finally killed by a stone projectile in the siege; and

b) Jesus the Galilean (LIFE §, 12: 27), son of Sapphias, who opposes Josephus, is associated with Simon and John, and has a following of "sailors and poor people," one of whom betrays him (9 22), whereupon he is captured by a stratagem, his immediate followers forsaking him .

·         Before this point, Jesus has taken 70 of the Galileans with him (5 14) as hostages, and, making them his friends and companions on his journey, sets them "to judge causes." This is the hint for Luke’s story of the seventy disciples.

D]                                                       Talmud and Jesus

We have two Talmuds   “Jerusalem Talmud”  5 A.D & “Talmud of Babylon” 6 A.D.

By this date the only source of information about Jesus available to the rabbis was the Christians themselves! But far from confirming anything found in the gospels the rabbinic authors appear to have confounded at least two Jesuses – a 1st century BC Yeshu ben Pandira and 2nd century AD Yeshu ben Strada.         

·         According to Talmud Shabbat 104b, Sanhedrin 67a, Jesus is apparently the son of an adulterous hairdresser ('Miriam Megaddela') and is executed in Lud.

·         As per Talmud Sanhedrin 107b, Sotah 47a,  has the magician Jesus worshipping a brick during the 1st century BC reign of John Hyrcanus.

If the 3rd century Church Father Origen is to be believed (Contra Celsum 1.28) Celsus, the pagan opponent of Christianity, writing in the late 2nd century, had heard from Jewish sources the scandalous rumour that the  our Jesus Christ was the result of an illicit affair between Miriam, a young Jewess, and a Roman trooper called 'Pantheras.' The woman had been driven off by her husband when he discovered she had got herself pregnant by a soldier of the occupying power.

Tomb Stone At Romerhalle Museum,
 Germany

Indeed it comes as no surprise now  that while Mary stayed a big part of Jesus’s life, Joseph(Jesus’s dad) is completely absent in the latter years of Jesus’s ministry.

It becomes immediately apparent  that Joseph (Jesus’ dad)has been mysterious removed from getting mentioned in the passages of Gospels by Propaganda Chruch fathers when they were writing and editing four Gospels .Mary even went to Jesus’s grave (Luke 24:10). But because of, what I assume the result of adultery, Joseph left Mary sometime after the departure to Nazareth.

Interestingly, the Panthera’s tombstone is in the Römerhalle museum in Bad Kreuznach, Germany.

Conclusion:- Jesus Never Existed, not at least the Jesus whom we know through Gospels.

Following is a list of important Christian authorities who studied and/or mentioned Josephus but not the Bogus Jesus passage:

• Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165), who obviously pored over Josephus's works, makes no mention of the TF.
• Theophilus (d. 180), Bishop of Antioch--no mention of the TF.
• Irenaeus (c. 120/140-c. 200/203), saint and compiler of the New Testament, has not a word about the TF.
• Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-211/215), influential Greek theologian and prolific Christian writer, head of the Alexandrian school, says nothing about the TF.
• Origen (c. 185-c. 254), no mention of the TF and specifically states that Josephus did not believe Jesus was "the Christ."
• Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 235), saint and martyr, nothing about the TF.
• The author of the ancient Syriac text, "History of Armenia," refers to Josephus but not the Bogus fraud Jesus Passage.
• Minucius Felix (d. c. 250), lawyer and Christian convert--no mention of the TF.
• Anatolius (230-c. 270/280)--no mention of TF.
• Chrysostom (c. 347-407), saint and Syrian prelate, not a word about the TF.
• Methodius, saint of the 9th century--even at this late date there were apparently copies of Josephus without the TF, as Methodius makes no mention of it.
• Photius (c. 820-891), Patriarch of Constantinople, not a word about the TF, again indicating copies of Josephus devoid of the passage, or, perhaps, a rejection of it because it was understood to be fraudulent.

 

 Shalom,

Robert Mascharan!!!