GIDEON MAGE wrote:
Per the Christians, this is basically the only contemporary reference to their savior god-man.


Josephus is not “contemporary” with the christian man-god; he wasn’t even born until 37CE (see below), by which time the man-god was certainly dead.


GIDEON MAGE wrote:
Let's close our eyes, just for a moment, and imagine that this is a coherent statement by a Jew (although considered an apostate by jews).


Josephus is not “considered an apostate”, although he definitely was a traitor: after being captured by the Romans at Yodfat (“Jotapata”) he defected and, as Mary Smallwood notes in her introduction to Geoffrey Arthur Williamson’s translation of Bellum Judaicum (“The Jewish War”, Penguin, New York, 1981, p. 24),

....he was guilty of shocking duplicity at Jotapata, saving himself by sacrifice of his companions; he was too naive to see how he stood condemned out of his own mouth for his conduct, and yet no words were too harsh when he was blackening his opponents; and after landing, however involuntarily, in the Roman camp, he turned his captivity to his own advantage, and benefitted for the rest of his days from his change of side.


His “Life of Flavius Josephus” (or “Vita”) is not so much an autobiography as an attempt to explain away his treacherous conduct at and after the time of his capture.


GIDEON MAGE wrote:
If Josephus wrote about him.... and Jews in the time knew him to be this immortal godman, why does Josephus use the past tense.


As previously mentioned, Josephus lived after the supposed time of the man-god and Antiquitates Judaicæ, in which the interpolated passage you quote appears (at Book XVIII, Chapter 3, Section 3) was completed in Cæsar Domitian’s “13th year”, i.e. 93/94CE, which was also “the 56th year of his own life” (establishing the year of Josephus’s birth as 37/38CE).


GIDEON MAGE wrote:
If the writings of Josephus so very much validate the New Testament, why did he not know that J-sus was still alive?


Even if J-sus had existed, he could not have been still living in 93/94CE.


GIDEON MAGE wrote:
Something is rotten in Israel, to paraphrase Hamlet!


Don’t you mean “Something is rotten in the state of christianity”? (And that line is spoken by Marcellus, not by Hamlet).


Sophiee1 wrote:
Gideon: Add to your list of questions "IF Josephus wrote the above (and it isn't a later forgery added by Christian scribes) why didn't he convert from Judaism to Christianity?


He included that one, Sophie:

Why didn't Josephus become a christian?

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