re: #463 Learned Mother of Zion

The alleged reference to Jesus in the works of Josephus is widely considered to be bogus, inserted centuries later by monk copyists who were offended that Josephus didn’t mention their guy. Everything that Josephus wrote was to flatter the Roman nobility who were his patrons. He didn’t give a flying fuck about the Galilean peasantry.

Not entirely correct.

There are two mentions of Jesus in Josephus manuscripts. One is a shorter one, which mentions “James, the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ”. For obvious reason (the non-Christian appellation) this is unlikely to be an interpolation. So it’s a good evidence of the existence of Jesus as a person, which is actually tied to another living person, James, and not simply as a guy in whom Christians believed.

The larger mention - the Testimonium Flavianum - is obviously interpolated, since it contains Christian theological elements, but it doesn’t mean that it was entirely inserted, in fact, there is another version without Christological elements.