What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

It doesn't even make it that far, Nestor.

Josephus' TF is so over the top, it's not even subtle about being a Christian insertion. Reading the previous and next paragraphs, it's clear the TF sticks out like a sore thumb. The paragraph itself reads like a frantic bullet point list of all the salient Christian beliefs fired off in rapid succession to cram it into one paragraph.

The "Jamesian Reference" spells out who it is: Jesus Bar Damneus. (son of Damneus)

Jesus was a common name.

So based on wikipedia, there are three references. Everybody agrees that TF is at least partially forged, but the other two references are generally accepted. I don't pretend to know more than what I read on wikipedia. I'm just including this for background to the discussion.

(1) James the brother of Jesus

Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" and has rejected its being the result of later interpolation. Moreover, in comparison with Hegesippus' account of James' death, most scholars consider Josephus' to be the more historically reliable. However, a few scholars question the authenticity of the reference, based on various arguments, but primarily based on the observation that various details in The Jewish War differ from it

(2) John the Baptist

Almost all modern scholars consider this passage to be authentic in its entirety, although a small number of authors have questioned it. Because the death of John also appears prominently in the Christian gospels, this passage is considered an important connection between the events Josephus recorded, the chronology of the gospels and the dates for the ministry of Jesus. A few scholars have questioned the passage, contending that the absence of Christian tampering or interpolation does not itself prove authenticity. While this passage is the only reference to John the Baptist outside the New Testament, it is widely seen by most scholars as confirming the historicity of the baptisms that John performed.

(3) Testimonium Flavianum

While before the advent of literary criticism most scholars considered the Testimonium entirely authentic, thereafter the number of supporters of full authenticity declined. However, most scholars now accept partial authenticity and many attempt to reconstruct their own version of the authentic kernel, and scholars such as Geza Vermes have argued that the overall characterizations of Jesus in the Testimonium are in accord with the style and approach of Josephus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus