Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus

[Minimalist]

This thread has been derailed by some angry posters.  Too bad.  I was enjoying this thread.

Let's forget the phony "atheist" and get it back on track then:

It would seem highly unlikely that a historian, let alone a Jewish historian, would hint that Jesus was divine, that he was resurrected, and would call him “Christ”. Scholars see this passage as fraudulent, in whole,[85] or in part.[86] One reason is that early Christian theologian Origen, writing after Josephus, claimed that Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Christ.[87] Historians might also expect Origen to make use of this Josephus quotation, if it existed during his lifetime – it probably did not. Other early Christian apologists, such as Justin Martyr, also fail to quote this passage. Highly respected Josephan scholar, Louis Feldman, discusses the historical silence surrounding the Testimonium Flavianum:

 

We may remark here on the passage in Josephus which has occasioned by far more comment than any other, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum (Ant. XVIII.63-4) concerning Jesus. The passage appears in all our manuscripts; but a considerable number of Christian writers – Pseudo-Justin and Theophilus in the second century, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen in the third century, and Methodius and Pseudo-Eustathius in the early fourth century – who knew Josephus and cited from his works do not refer to this passage, though one would imagine that it would be the first passage that a Christian apologist would cite. In particular, Origen (Contra Celsum 1.47 and Commentary on Matthew 10.17), who certainly knew Book 18 of the Antiquities and cites five passages from it, explicitly states that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as Christ. The first to cite the Testimonium is Eusebius (c. 324); and even after him, we may note, there are eleven Christian writers who cite Josephus but not the Testimonium. In fact, it is not until Jerome in the early fifth century that we have another reference to it.

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And RR,

His motives are of no importance as well.

That's a ridiculous statement.  Even you should know that.