Quote:The passage with the mention of Jesus does not fit. If it is removed, the preceding passage and the following passage make perfect sense without the Jesus passage.
Since the passage is interpolated ( i.e. a forgery) we do not know if it is a total insertion, IOW there was nothing between the two actual passages or if there was something there which triggered the forgery at that point.
The passage before deals with Pilate taking money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct. According to Josephus many tens of thousands of people rose up in protest and Pilate slaughtered a great many of them. Frankly, this sounds like typical Josephan exaggeration.
I bet the fucking priests were upset about having their precious treasure diverted to such a mundane purpose and Josephus was from a priestly family. The populace though rioting against an increased water supply? Not so likely.
As the sketch goes: What have the Romans ever done for us?
The Aqueducts?
So perhaps there was something about some crime committed by a Y'shua bar Yosep which resulted in a number of jews getting killed. Whatever it was did not attract the attention of Origen when he cited Book XVIII of Antiquites in Contra Celsus. There was nothing which led him to suggest that the jews were later punished for killing jesus, even though he wished for such a reference. Instead he invented a tale based on Book XX which claimed it was the death of James, brother of jesus, which caused the destruction of the city. The problem is that Josephus never said that. The upshot of James' sentence was merely the dismissal of the high priest who orchestrated it.
So the TF is most likely a total forgery and the lesser reference in Book XX is just a later xtian scribe seeing what he wished to see.
The idea that Josephus the Pharisee would equate some smelly jew from Galilee with a christos - an anointed king or high priest - is next to nil.
