JOSEPHUS DISPROVES GOSPELS RELIABILITY ACCOUNT OF THE BAPTIST PROVES THERE WAS NO JESUS

Flavius Josephus was the first century author of Jewish Antiquities. He was a Jewish historian.
 
As Josephus never mentioned Jesus Christ, the early Church inserted a reference to him which is a blatant forgery.  The absence of Jesus in the works of a prolific writer about Palestine would be akin to a history of London not mentioning the Ripper murders of 1888.

 

The absence of Jesus can only mean Josephus thought he didn't exist or perhaps that his story was not well enough established as true.

 

Seneca wrote a book on religious superstition and even the Jewish religion got a debunking in it. But Christianity is conspicuous by its absence. Gallio his brother is mentioned in Acts 18 which makes it even more conspicuous. Gallio supposedly knew Paul. Another issue is why Paul’ mission spread so well through the empire yet he gets no mention in Josephus. Agrippa, Josephus’s close friend, is supposed to met Paul according to Acts 25 and 26.

 

Some say the absence of Paul does not mean Paul was thought to be fiction so it could be the same for Jesus.  It is so odd that it must be that Rome hated those men and Josephus or Seneca could not afford to even allude to them.  That would mean that the alleged references to Jesus in Josephus are insertions.
 

Josephus stated that John the Baptist was a good man and that it was a just vengeance when Herod and his men did not fare well after his demise at their hands. Josephus would not have stated such a thing had the gospel claim that John was the precursor of Jesus and the one without whom Jesus had to be a fraud for he staked so much on his testimony been true. And the Jews would not have been fans of John for that for they regarded Jesus as a fraud. Josephus is definitely hinting that either there was no Jesus for John to be linked to or there was a Jesus and Christians invented the link. The former is the most likely to be the case because Josephus would have found the need to divorce John from Christ in order to praise John especially if he had really written about Jesus before. Josephus would have believed that if Jesus used false prophets or perverted the teachings of true prophets to make it seem as if they predicted him then it would be clear that the resurrection would have to have been a hoax and that any evidence for it was a matter of luck even if there was no way of figuring out how Jesus pulled it off.
 
Josephus has John the Baptist dying about 36 AD. The huge problem with this is that it flatly and completely contradicts the gospels which have John dying before Jesus was crucified in 33 or so AD. Herod Antipas married the wife of his brother Herod Philip after the death of this brother in 34 AD. The gospels say that John the Baptist condemned Herod Antipas for this marriage so this detail from the gospels backs up the year of John’s death given by Josephus.
 
Christians however prefer to say Josephus was the one that was wrong and the gospels were right. They have no evidence for this but they just assume it for they don’t want to admit their religion can be wrong. Josephus should be regarded as more reliable firstly because he was a professional historian and the gospellers didn’t claim to be professional historians. Josephus used records and we know he knew Jewish history well. We can’t say these things about the gospellers.
 
When the gospels lied that Jesus was alive when John died perhaps they lied about his entire connection to John. John may never have heard of him. They lied either because Jesus never existed and they wanted it to look like he did or because they wanted to take the crown of Messiah ship from the Baptist and give it to Jesus instead. They wanted to fake evidence that John looked up to Jesus and approved his mission.
 
Josephus wrote that King Herod had John sent to Macherus and executed there for he had a huge following and Herod was afraid of an armed rebellion and wanted rid of John before it was too late. Josephus wrote that Herod wanted John dead urgently for as long as he was alive there was the chance of a rebellion. This contradicts the gospels which say that it was a girl who made Herod kill John, after having him in the dungeons for a while, against his will. In Josephus, Herod wanted rid of him for he was suspicious of him. If he feared a rebellion naturally he would have John killed quickly in case his followers would plot to save him so John was probably just tried at Macherus and then slain all in the space of a few days at most. Otherwise there would have been no need to kill him at all. The gospels lie that it was a longer time between his incarceration and his jailing. Why was Herod afraid when the omnipotent Romans would have helped stamp out the rebellion had it taken place? When he was so paranoid why was Jesus not sent to Macherus as well? Because the gospels lie that Jesus and John were playing for the same team and that Jesus had a huge following too like John. Josephus is disproving the gospels and yet they are the source of his Testament so he never wrote it. Josephus says Herod was paranoid about John and wanted him dead for peace of mind which contradicts the gospels which have us believe that John was arrested angering his many followers and Herod had to be blackmailed into slaying him. Josephus said Herod was horrified that the people were ready to do whatever John said and that was why he struck. This would have been even more true of Jesus had he really lived for he claimed to be the Son of God and indicated that he was the saviour and Messiah and did miracles unlike John. What Josephus writes about John is strong evidence that Jesus didn’t exist. He wrote that John did baptism not for repentance but for those who were already purified in soul so that their bodies might be ritually clean. The gospels have it that the baptism was for repentance and that John was reluctant to wash the allegedly sinless Jesus which contradicts Josephus. And if Jesus opposed the idea of bodies having to be washed to please God which all Christians say then it gets worse. Then John the final prophet who came to prepare Israel for the Messiah contradicted Jesus’ theology meaning Jesus was a fake.
 
The Jews could have used Herod to get rid of Jesus which is why the gospels must be lying when they say they went a strange way about killing Jesus and that they couldn’t execute him themselves. Trained killers among the Jews were not hard to come by. Again Josephus undermines the notion that the Jews brought Jesus before Pilate to twist Pilate’s arm so that Jesus would be crucified. Again he shows that he did not write the Testament which says the Jews got Pilate to nail Jesus. When John’s death made his followers harmless the Jews should not have cared how they got rid of Jesus as long as they got rid.
 
John never claimed to be a prophet. Josephus hints as much when he says that Herod’s plan to break up his movement succeeded. That would only happen if you had a good preacher who did not claim to be divinely inspired. If you have a prophet that means a sect that will survive his death and get even stronger for the prophet has become a martyr. The gospels lied when they turned John into a prophet and when they say that Jesus said he was the greatest prophet and the one sent to prepare the world for the coming of Christ. Josephus would not have called John a good man had he been a prophet or a preacher that said the kingdom of God was at hand and the Messiah was in the world and for people to go to the Messiah and that he would identify him and bear witness. Yet the gospels say all these things about John. Josephus knew that the Romans were offended by the kingdom reference as well as by Messianic claims. The gospels are lying. Josephus had no reason to lie.
 
Josephus said that John stressed that the soul must be completely clean and righteous before baptism. This contradicts Jesus who said that nobody is good but God alone and who said that nobody is worthy of salvation. This means that Josephus denied there was a link between John and anybody like Jesus. He denied that John was Jesus’ herald which means that a large chunk of Jesus’ teachings in the gospel and his actions is pure fiction.
 
It is entirely possible too that the gospellers stole the teachings and the stories of the deeds of the Baptist and said that Jesus gave and performed them. Josephus did say John was a powerful and wise teacher who had the crowds spellbound by his teaching. No independent corroboration exists for Jesus, just four contradictory anonymous gospels that stole from one another and it does for John so was the Sermon on the Mount etc really voiced by John himself?

 

The gospels say the Temple will be destroyed and Jerusalem will be rejected by God for being sinful and not listening to Jesus. Josephus says that the reason was lots of robberies had been taking place.  By some contortion of logic, he settled on God doing it to Jerusalem for that reason!

 

Jesus supposedly claimed to be a messianic channel for the word of God.  A gospel says Jesus IS the word.  Jesus claimed to be the son of God which certainly means he was claiming to reveal God to others - eg to be a prime megaprophet. So Jesus was implying new scriptures about him and maybe by him if he so wished must be added to the Jewish Bible.

 

Josephus stated that from the days of Artaxerxes to his own day there has been no reliable succession of prophets so any record from that time is not worthy of the same trust and confidence as say what is in the scriptures. That statement denies that Jesus could be a prophet or that he/his followers could add valid new scriptures to the scriptures as he would have listed them. He wrote: “We have not, therefore, a multitude of books disagreeing and conflicting with one another; but we have only twenty-two, which contain the record of all time and are justly held to be divine.”

 

The Messiah was to be a king succeeding King David.  Josephus tells us about Emperor Vespasian who sought to root out all trace of David’s line among the Jews to avoid any kingly aspirations. It may be telling that he does not mention how this went. If he mentioned James the royal brother of Jesus "the so called Messiah" in book 20 (which statement some question and think was a Christian insertion) why is there no mention of Jesus or his family here? The emperor’s persecution of the Jews went out of control over the issue of the bloodline. This does not fit well with the fear that reportedly led Vespasian to act in the first place. If you are afraid of Jews getting a king to lead them to war and turning violent then how is victimising them which is worse then them having forty kings at the one time supposed to help?  Vespasian seems to think that most Jews thought they had David's blood and lynched them.  This does not fit the assertion that James was Jesus the so-called Messiah's brother.  The Emperor was acting like Messiah implied violence.  It is true that Christians have redefined Messiah to mean a peaceful saviour when in fact the title is political and therefore bloody.

 

In his Antiquities 1:14, he writes, "I entreat those who will read these volumes to fix their thoughts on God, and to test whether our lawgiver has had a worthy conception of his nature and had always assigned to him such actions as befit the power of God, keeping his words concerning God pure of that unseemly mythology current among others."  This refers to his own works as informed by the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament.  It clearly excludes any new revelation and thus excludes Jesus.  No wonder some tried to get around this by inserting a creed about Jesus in his work.  Only the Bible as the Jews had it glorifies God and everything else is mythology.
 
Josephus undermines the gospels which means that the only real evidence for there having been a Jesus is eliminated for they are that evidence. They are the only accounts of Jesus’ life. Christians want him to be wrong when he contradicts the gospels but right when he seems to agree with them that Jesus was the Messiah and saviour and so on which is how the forgery presents him. They want to have their cake and to eat it.