Flavius Josephus

(Joseph ben Matthias)

 Jerusalem, 37 A. D. – Rome, ± 100 A. D.

 VITA

From my Life

 
English translation, from the Greek, by William Whiston (1667 – 1752)

INTRODUCTION:

 

Flavius Josephus and the History of the Jews

 

In the summer of the year 71 the citizens of Rome turned out in large numbers for the great procession whereby their former emperor Vespasian and his son Titus added luster to their triumph they achieved in their war against the Jews from Judah and Galilee, which had been occupied by the Romans for more than fifty years. That war started in the summer of 66, after Jewish religious leaders decided, after a period of increasing tensions, to exclude non-Jews from offering service in the Temple in Jerusalem. Also — and especially — offerings on behalf of and in favor of Romans and the emperor were refused.

 

The Jewish resistance had an obvious religious character. It looked to a great extent like a messianistic movement, but it wasn’t for essentially it was only meant to restore the old balance of power. Actually is was absolute reactionary. That the rebellions had fought with such a unprecedented and bewildering persistence, is related to the fact that they were truly convinced that God was on their side and that, first having put his people thoroughly to the test in their allegiance and willingness to fight for him, God would take measures by himself and would lead his faithful followers to victory. With that intervention of God the Romans and everybody collaborating with the Romans would be annihilated, the dominion of the emperor would make way for the dominion of God, who would help himself with a messiah, a king, who on behalf of him would put into practice that dominion and bring peace on earth.

 

An attempt of the Romans to get the uprising Jerusalem under control again resulted in a failure. Upon that pro-Roman Jews abandoned the city or would let anti-Roman Jews persuade them to join the uprising. The total war became inevitable. At the distribution of the leading positions and military duties the young Joseph ben Matthias — at that moment 27 or 28 years old — was charged to lead the Jewish military operations in Galilee. That he later would be known under the Roman name Flavius Josephus, was certainly not expected in that summer of 66. As a descendant from a prominent priest family he belonged to the hereditary nobility of Jerusalem. Military experience he had none, though he did write about himself that he yet on a youthful age enjoyed the reputation of having a high intelligence.

The Roman reaction initially came at a delay. But once the war-machine was running, the Jews despite of their tough resistance didn’t stand a chance. Yet in the summer of 67 Joseph ben Matthias was made a prisoner of war by the Romans. Galilee got burned to the ground. Another year later the community of Qumrân, probably one of the centers of the religious resistance, a small 15 km south of Jericho, was by Vespasian — at that time not yet an emperor — captured and destroyed. However, not everything was lost in the flames: the monks of Qumrân, members of the sect of the Essenes, just in time had managed to put their library in safety. Eleven caves in the neighborhood became the — surely meant as temporal — storerooms of hundreds of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek handwritings. In the years of 1946-1956 they were found back piece by piece and are now known as the “Dead Sea scrolls”.

 

The Roman warfare experienced unexpected delay when in the summer of 68 emperor Nero, dispelled from Rome, brought an end to his life. In the subsequent battle for the vacant throne, another year later in the summer of 69, Vespasian was proclaimed an emperor by the gathered Roman legions in the East. For Vespasian Rome was more significant than Jerusalem, and thus he shifted his attention to Rome. The command of the Roman troops around Jerusalem he handed over to Titus, his son. He himself managed to eliminate the general, who in the meanwhile was appointed by other army groups as the new emperor, and make his entry into Rome, in the fall of the year 70. The exact date of his entry is unknown, but it is a fact that at that moment the fall of Jerusalem had happened. In the Jewish calendar the destruction of the Temple is traditionally commemorated on the ninth of the month Av. That is in the summer, July/August. There is a reason to assume that the actual destruction took place on the 29th or 30th of August of the year 70. It is one of the most important dates in Jewish history ànd in history of Christianity.

The pagan Rome celebrated the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple with the above-mentioned imperial triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus in June of the year 71. That day the captive Joseph ben Matthias was in Rome standing in the crowd. By then he hadn’t been a prisoner of war for two years and he could even enjoy himself in a personal favor of the emperor and even more in the favor of his son Titus. He even took upon himself their family name — Flavius —: Joseph ben Matthias was called Flavius Josephus now.

(From the introduction of: Flavius Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Translated, introduced and supplied with notes by F.J.A.M. Meijer and M.A. Wes. Ambo | Amsterdam. 1996. ISBN 978 90 263 21009)

 

From Josephus’ own introduction for The Jewish War:

For that it was a seditious temper of our own that destroyed it, and that they were the tyrants among the Jews who brought the Roman power upon us, who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the burning of our holy temple, Titus Caesar, who destroyed it, is himself a witness, who, daring the entire war, pitied the people who were kept under by the seditious, and did often voluntarily delay the taking of the city, and allowed time to the siege, in order to let the authors have opportunity for repentance. But if any one makes an unjust accusation against us, when we speak so passionately about the tyrants, or the robbers, or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my affections herein, though it be contrary to the rules for writing history; because it had so come to pass, that our city Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews (3) are not so considerable as they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations.
__________________________________________________________________
 

PREFACE:

Entire libraries have been written down with interpretations of the statements in the Gospels. About the messenger, to whom those statements are attributed to there probably is written much more. And that despite of the fact that it is highly questionable that, next to all those other Jesusses – a boys name that in that time probably occurred as much as John now – there also existed someone that the gospels present to us. Actually that is totally irrelevant. Just as irrelevant as the mailman is for the content of the letter he delivers. The way the gospels are written are essentially nothing more than the packing, may it be at least an unfortunate one, of the Golden Rule. There have been many people, actually since the rise of Christianity, but intensified ever since Reimarus through Renan, Albert Schweitzer, the Dutch van den Bergh van Eysenga, Lehmann and many others till the present trends of Freke and Gandhi, Zeitgeist The Movie, and again many others who either showed there actually is no evidence (or highly questionable) for the existence of a historical Jesus, or tried to prove that the gospels are syncretic compositions of Hellenistic (thus pagan) and Old testament elements. None of all those writers asked oneself why the gospels were poured in such a strange shape and what was the reason for all the inconsistencies, contradictions, impossibilities, historical inaccuracies, exaggerations and wishful thinking that characterize the gospels. Then in 1976 a Dutchman Pierre Krijbolder wrote a most original and absolute brilliant book with the title: ‘Jezus de Nazoreeër. Een studie over de historiciteit van Jezus en de oorsprong van het christendom’. In English:” Jesus the Nazorian. A study on the historicity of Jesus and the origin of Christianity.”. He was no theologian or historian, but just a very curious communication scientist who was busy with the how’s and why’s of transferring messages. How to deliver a message, when you think you have something new and important to tell, when you want to market something, not different from advertising a washing powder nowadays. And applied to the time of the gospel-writers it meant that these literate people wanted show something absolutely new to a mostly illiterate population. Then you should make propaganda, think out an advertising message that is catchy, in which the receivers of that message recognize something. Then you should make it simple and pictorial. These days you would be making a comic story, like Donald Duck, where every characters is a personification of an amplified character. Scrooge mcDuck is a personification of greed, the beagle boys of evil, Huey, Dewey and Louie of cleverness and rescuers, and so on. Furthermore according to Krijbolder the gospels are novels with a key (and without the key you never will understand the message) which don’t refer to actual people, but to events. Or to be more concrete, they portray the events of an ideological, eschatological, messianistic movement, with a revolutionary message, that failed. The personification of conscience, that had been crucified and silenced for centuries, was crucified once more. The Kingdom did not come, a righteous world has not been achieved, a new heaven and a new earth.
Fascinating about the vision of Krijbolder, that after two editions only was found in the second hand bookshop and was forgotten, is that all the pieces fit together in that book. No more questions at the child murder in Bethlehem, at the miraculous bread multiplication, at the resurrection of Lazarus, at the miracles, and subsequently neither at the crucifixion.

That is what the next chapter is about. It is followed by ‘From My Life’ from Joseph ben Matthias, which gives a clear picture of murder and manslaughter, lie and deceit, terrorist assaults, power games, collaborations and treason, hope and despair, that afflicted Judah and Galilee and formed a fertile soil for a real messianistic movement, that was personified by the fairytale figure Jesus.
___________________________________________________________________

 
From: Jesus the Nazorian. A study on the historicity of Jesus and the origin of Christianity..

Pierre Krijbolder, Amsterdam 1976, Scientific Publisher

 

Around the year 100 in Rome, a famed man of Jewish lineage died in the domus privates of emperor Vespasian, who added to his Jewish name Joseph the family name of Vespasian, Flavius, as a sign that he as a slave of Vespasian was let free. His works, tree in number, were recorded in the state library. Who was that man?

There are actually only a few people about whom we are more informed than of this Flavius Josephus, because he added to the second edition of his greatest work, Jewish antiquities, some kind of autobiography. Some kind of autobiography because the large centre of this writing addresses only one year out of his life, namely when he was commander of Jewish resistance fighters in Galilee, from 66 till 67. Before and after this middle part he tells more like an introduction and conclusion about his youth and about his experiences during and after the capturing of Jerusalem in the year 70.

Josephus was born in Jerusalem in the year 37, the year of the death of emperor Tiberius and the accession to the throne of emperor Caligula. The year 37: that was four years after the ‘death’ of Jesus of Nazareth,  only one year after the conversion of Paul. Josephus’ father Matthias was a highly prominent citizen of Jerusalem and his mother was what we call noble: she was of the Hasmonians family, to which also belonged Mariam, the favorite wife of Herod the Great, and thus Josephus had a sideline kinship with the Herod-family.

Yet at the age of fourteen Josephus is so thoroughly steeped in the books of the Bible, that recognized rabbis asked him for advice. What that meant in that time can hardly be underestimated; Josephus must have been a celebrity at a youthful age, comparable with a child prodigy in our time. Although at this stage of my argumentation it will sound rather fantastic, I already want to express my conviction that Luke, from whose gospel and Acts of the Apostles at several spots appear that he must have known Josephus very well, must have been inspired by the precociousness of Josephus to write his well-known story about the twelve year old Jesus in the temple (2:40-52). This story could only be brought credible after the actions of Josephus. Obviously there’s nothing that can proven here.

At the age of sixteen Josephus finds himself experimentally examining the religious movements among his people. He consecutively joins the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes, ‘… these three, and there were no more, like I’ve said repeatedly’, thus Josephus in his autobiography (Vita 10). One realizes that Josephus describes the situation here as it was in the year 53. There is no reference at all to followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

When Josephus has went through the three schools, he is going to live with a hermit of some kind named Bannus for a few years, and returns to Jerusalem at the age of nineteen, where he joins the movement of the Pharisees. About his findings with the three movements he will be making extensively report in The Jewish war and in The Jewish antiquities. From these reports becomes evident his definite preference for the Essenes. Not only the length of the report about the Essenes bears no proportion to the reports of the Pharisees and Sadducees, to which two movements he barely spends a few lines. But he also expresses his admiration directly when he writes about the ideology of the Essenes: ‘These are the teachings of the Essenes about the human soul; it leaves an indelible impression with those who get to know their wisdom.’

Josephus’ family was very wealthy; it possessed a great estate outside Jerusalem. Father Matthias and also Josephus were priests and had a seat in the Sanhedrin. Because the Essenes demanded from their followers to abandon private property, and were seen by the leading sect of Pharisees as not-orthodox, the decision of Josephus to join the Pharisees had rather been out of opportunistic consideration than out of inner conviction. (compare the story about the rich young ruler!) Judging from his statements Josephus rather was a crypto-Essene.

Immediately after his twenty-sixth birthday Josephus is sent to Rome by unmentioned authorities to liberate, as he says, priests of his circle of acquaintances, who are imprisoned in Rome due to an action of the governor Felix. I don’t believe there is ever thought about the possibility that this is about the liberation of Paul, who among others is released in Rome with Aristarchus (Col. 4.10) in that same year. Paul was taken prisoner by governor Felix. His successor Festus let him ship to Rome because of his appeal to the emperor. One can read this all in Acts 22 and following. End 60 the company left. As a result of a shipwreck and hibernation on the island Malta they arrive in Rome just in March or April of the year 61. Paul stays there with others in some sort of house arrest for two years. ‘Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house’(Acts 28-30). So at the end of those two years we are in the year 63, when Josephus comes to Rome ‘to liberate priests of his circle of acquaintances’.

Two cases should be discussed here: what does Josephus mean with ‘priests’ and what is his ‘circle of acquaintances’? To start with the latter: when Josephus in his autobiography, which he writes in the nineties, talks about his acquaintances, in the light of his life, and especially in the light of his attitude during the Jewish war, that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the intelligentsia (the Pharisees) of Jerusalem, his hometown, it can mean nothing else but Essenes. This information is in relation to what comes later very fundamental. ‘Priests of my circle of acquaintances’ can be translated with: ‘Essenian priests’.

The second question is: who does Josephus call ‘priests’? To discover this one must know that the Jews call priests ‘sons of Aaron’. The word aaron means ‘mouth’; the meaning of ‘son of’ we have already discussed in chapter 2. The Jewish word for priest, son of Aaron, must be understood as ‘spokesman’, ‘preacher’; in a certain context one may certainly not exclude that it means a ‘sent out preacher’. Thus I translate the text of Josephus completely scientifically justified as ‘apostles [those who have been sent out] of the sect of the Essenes’.

Anticipating on the second part of this book, in which will be discussed that the ideology of which Jesus is the personification, is the ideology of the group that Josephus calls the Essenes, I come to the conclusion that Josephus is sent to Rome by the leaders of the Essenes to liberate Paul and his companions. With this, one can remember the family ties of Josephus with Herod. The grandson of Herod the Great, Agrippa I, has made a good impression on the members of the imperial family in Rome. His son Agrippa II is privileged by Nero with control over entire Palestine. In short, the Herod-family had at least ‘relations’ with the imperial clan in Rome. Therefore it is not strange that the Essenes send out Josephus, who in his turn had relations with the Herod-family, to bring about the liberation of the Essenian priest Paul.

There is a second aspect to Josephus’ journey to Rome in the year 63. Just as with Paul in 60 Josephus goes through a shipwreck. It is remarkable that the two well-known journeys from Palestine both end up in a shipwreck. Paul washes ashore on the island Malta end 60; Josephus had to save his life swimming on his journey to Rome in 63. Extraordinarily interesting is the number of fellow-seamen in both cases. Josephus mentions a number of five-hundred, in Acts Luke talks about approximately three-hundred. I will come back at this in Chapter 15.

Josephus’ mission to Rome is rewarded with success. He manages to penetrate into to the court of Nero and by mediation of his second wife, Poppaea, he receives the liberation of the priests in question. He even gets an overload of gifts from Poppaea. When one reads this, and later also what an impression Josephus makes on Vespasian, he must have been an impressive personality, not only mentally, but also physically.

When Josephus returns from Rome to Jerusalem, the organization of the uprising against the Romans is in full swing. In the year 66 Josephus is delegated with two other priests to Galilee to take on the lead of the uprising. With an action of the Romans in Jotapata he is taken prisoner. For him this means a radical change in his life. He manages to win the trust of Vespasian, to whom he predicts his upcoming emperorship – a fact that is also mentioned by Suetonius. He is released and from then on he joins the forces of the Roman commanders who suppress the uprising of the Jews and eventually destroy Jerusalem and the temple. During the siege that is lead by Titus, the son of Vespasian who has by then become emperor, Josephus functions as an interpreter and negotiator, something that is accepted gratefully by his fellow countrymen and party members, the Pharisees. Till the end of his life he will be disputing impeachments from that side.

After the capturing of Jerusalem, Josephus goes with Titus to Rome; As part of the loot he takes with him a treasure of books from the library of the temple and the Sanhedrin. In Rome he is installed in the domus privatus of the emperor Vespasian and he gets grants of the state for life. In the upcoming thirty years he writes his famous works, who have all been preserved till our time. Due to the books he took along from Palestine, and the access he had to the imperial archives and the for that time immense library of the Greek grammarian Epaphroditus, Josephus must have been one of the best informed writers of his time.

7 The works of Flavius Josephus and his sources

It was not long ago that a family in England that called themselves Christian was expected to have at least two books: a bible ànd a Flavius Josephus. How the matters stand in the Netherlands I don’t know. In earlier centuries there appeared splendid Dutch editions of Flavius Josephus and only recently a facsimile has been published, that however (unfortunately) only has bibliophilic value. Science has got to do with the well-known English edition in the Loeb Classical Library series.

The most important and at the same time first work of Josephus is undoubtedly The Jewish war, cited as BJ (Bellum Judaicum), that he must have completed before the death of emperor Vespasian in 79. A theory exists according to which Josephus first wrote an apologia for himself, which he later expanded with some information about his youth and his experiences during and after the capturing of Jerusalem. This work, that is known to be his autobiography, cited as V (Vita), he has added to the second publication of his The Jewish antiquities. His most extensive work appeared around the year 93. It is called The Jewish antiquities, cited as A (Antiquitates Judaicae) and describes the history of the Jewish nation since Adam and Eve; concerning the last part of this, it overlaps The Jewish War. Finally after critique on his The Jewish antiquities Josephus wrote an apologia for Judaism, Against Apion, cited as AP, that as for design and style is his best work. Josephus has had plans for two other works: a history of the Jewish nation after the destruction of Jerusalem and a largely planned work about the Jewish theology, but he could never realize those.

Both BJ and A as well as V are historical works that extend over a period of the Jewish history, in which also Christianity emerged and developed in Palestine and beyond; therefore it is most important what is to be found about it with Josephus. When we interpret the gospels and acts as linear, what they seemingly look like and what till the present day is taken as self-evident, then the answer is: nothing. It is true that in A there are two texts in which Jesus is mentioned, but I associate with the majority of the Josephus-experts who see these texts as later appendices. This also applies to a number of texts from later translations of BJ in the Slavic language. In the original Greek text of BJ no trace of any event narrated in the gospels is found; for example nothing about John the Baptist, nothing about the renting of vail of the temple at Jesus’ death, or about the child-murder in Bethlehem. This last case is the more astonishing because Josephus had access to the work of the court chronicler of Herod the Great, named Nicolas of Damascus. His work must have been with the loot of books that Josephus took with him from Palestine to Rome, because Josephus re-wrote almost the entire work of Nicolas.

This absolute silence of Josephus about Jesus of Nazareth one could explain out of lack of interest. But Josephus was certainly interested in the religious movements in his nation. He himself was yet on a very youthful age a priest and teacher, and in his works he devotes many pages to describing the sects within his nation. Why does Josephus, who in a professional way writes about the Jewish sects in his time, keep silent about Christianity that must have been the talk of the day in Palestine then, if the Jews of Rome already find it so sensational that the emperor evicts the disputatious Jews out of the city? On this question science still has not found an answer. As long as there is hold on to a linear interpretation of the gospels there can never be found an answer

Let us assume that the ‘Jesus-texts’ in A are authentic. Then the question arises, from which source does this information come. Josephus was born in 37 and participated from his nineteenth in the politics of his nation. Then we are in the year 56, twenty-two years after the ‘crucifixion’ of Jesus of Nazareth. Josephus was definitely no contemporary of Jesus. And he writes in the years 75 till 95 in Rome, far away from the place of evangelical events and completely alienated from his people (that he however, concerning his religious convictions, stayed true to until his death). Given all this, the question for the sources becomes very fundamental.

When we limit ourselves to the period that is covered by BJ and we divide the text of both BJ and A on a timescale, we quickly discover that both works are highly unbalanced. Especially of BJ one would expect that the amount of text would increase slowly every year to the climax of the outbreak of the war against the Romans. But nothing is less true. About seventy percent of the text discusses the actual war against the Romans, that is the period of 65 to 73 accordingly; twenty-five percent is about the period before the death of Herod the Great, accordingly till the year 4 before Christ; to the period from 4 before Christ till 65 after Christ only five percent is expended. And that five percent also partially consists of descriptions of things that are timeless, like a long-winded report about the Jewish sects. From the period after the banishment of Archelaus in 6 after Christ until the entitling to king of Agrippa I in the year 41, only several riots are mentioned between the years 26 to 36, the years that Pilate was procurator. In A, very unfortunately, the well-known text of Jesus is mangled in, so if we want to maintain the authenticity of that text, we have to acknowledge that Josephus added this only just in a second edition.

From the curious composition of Josephus’ work appears a lack of sources for the period after Herod’s death till the moment that he can draw from his personal experiences as an eyewitness. Up to Herod’s death he had at his disposal the work of Nicolas of Damascus, a Hellenistic historian at the court of Herod, who made an almost daily updated report of the government of Herod. After the year 41 there is a new member of the Herod-family at power in Judah and possibly because of his family ties Josephus gains a few more privileges. It seems evident that Josephus before the period of the Roman procurators had nothing else at his disposal but the in Rome present reports or acta. But deducing from that Josephus must have used everything he could find about that period. If in some report something was said about Jesus, he surely would have included that in BJ and the text in A would have been composed in a much more balanced way. But then there are not many sources left for the Jesus-text in A, besides oral information by Christians in Rome or a gospel. In both cases the Jesus-text in A is no independent source about the life of Jesus.

One could imagine that Josephus for the sake of the Christians in Rome, who could have pointed him at the absence in the first publication of A, added the Jesus-text in his second publication. In BJ this addition was not possible anymore, because this book was already widely distributed for that time, among several significant Romans, including emperor Vespasian and Titus, and also Agrippa II in Palestine. But even if this all is possible, there still remains the problem of the content of the Jesus-text. In the next part of this book I will cite altogether the various versions of the text in question. It would be enough for me to note that Jesus is portrayed in it according to an image of him that one formed many years later, and at a great distance. An image that could never be originated from a contemporary document. The writer of the text, whoever it may have been, draws from information that is of a much later date than the time in which the described events have happened. And what then is the value of the text for a linear historiography! Entire libraries have been written down since the time that Scaliger in the sixteenth century brought up the authenticity of what is called the testimonium Flavianum for the first time. The arguments pro and contra may be in equilibrium, but truly relevant towards the in this book defended proposition the matter of authenticity is not. What counts is the question how the writer of this message got his information. The answer to this question can only be: an oral or written gospel.

The conclusion is: outside of the gospels there is not a single text to be found that convincingly confirms the biological existence of Jesus. The hypothesis that Jesus is a personification, is not refuted by a single text outside of the gospels.

8 Joseph of Arimathaea

One who studies the so-called synopsis of the four gospels, quickly discovers that there are only a few events in Jesus’ life that are told by all four evangelists in about the same wording. These are in particular the story about the multiplication of bread, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the Judas treason and the denying of Peter, Jesus’ arrest in the olive garden, Jesus in front of the judgment seat of Pilate and the confrontation with Barabbas, and finally the flogging, crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Except for the last happening, the crucifixion and everything concerning it, we actually do not need a biological Jesus to get to a convincing reconstruction of what has actually happened in a linear sense. But to ‘de-biologise’ the crucifixion story or, what others do, reject it as fictional does not seem sensible. That this is a matter of a truly happened, biological crucifixion one generally deems elevated beyond all doubt. It is the realistic portrayal of Jesus’ death and burial, that brought the most radical critic of the evangelic sources, Bultmann, ultimately to the proclamation:’ …to doubt if Jesus has really existed is unfounded and is not worth any word of refutation. That He is the founder of the historical movement is completely clear,’ And Dahl: ‘In the life of Jesus there is one single thing that is indisputably fixed: that is his death…’ And Wellhausen: ‘…without his death He wouldn’t have been historical altogether…’ And once again Dahl: ‘…the historical research must be started with the death of Jesus, if it not only will ask for the preaching, but also for the life of Jesus…’

As a starting-point for further research I have chosen the text of John 19:18 and following, because this makes the impression of being an eyewitness report. The Evangelist writes: ‘ There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between… Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit… So the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who were crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe… After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body. Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds of weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.’ Mt 27-60 adds to this part that the garden and the new tomb were the possessions of Joseph of Arimathea.

Who was Joseph of Arimathea? Apparently he lived in or near Jerusalem and so ‘of Arimathea’ could indicate the place where he was born, as with Jesus of Nazareth or Mary Magdalena. With these examples we already saw that the geographic names are not used to refer to a real place of origin but since they offer the opportunity to make a wordplay or meaning-association. From now on we will come across many examples of that: Betlechem, Bethsaida, the lake of Gennesaret, Kerioth, Bethany. Why wouldn’t Arimathea also be chosen because of the possibility to make a wordplay? In the linear historiography it does not occur that someone is called after the place of birth; only with Jews who are in Palestine from the Diaspora, the land of origin is placed behind the name, as with Silas the Babylonian or, in Matthew’s or Mark’s gospel, Simon of Cyrene. A name-indication like Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus of Nazareth or Mary of Magdala never occurs in the entire oeuvre of Josephus. The normal name-indication is the first name, followed by ‘son of’ (ben) and the name of the biological father: Simon ben Gamaliel, or Joseph ben Matthias, like Flavius Josephus originally was called.

Joseph of Arimathea could be a wordplay of Joseph ben Matthias. We know now that similar wordplays occur more often in the gospels. But furthermore the evangelists had every reason to conceal the true identity of the one who took away Jesus from the cross and buried him. What the evangelists probably didn’t reckon was that Joseph ben Matthias, accordingly Flavius Josephus, would write an autobiography in which the shocking events about the cross-removal and the burial are mentioned. The story of Joseph ben Matthias is found in Vita 420-422 (edition Loeb). We are in the year 70, and to be precise in September. Jerusalem is captured by Titus, and during the months of siege Josephus has functioned as an interpreter and negotiator between Titus and the Jewish leaders of the city. Josephus writes: ‘And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered.’  

This text actually really gets interesting because of what follows. To estimate the true value of that continuation one should know that the crucifixion in question must be localized along the way that Josephus went from Thecoa via Bethlechem to Jerusalem, and it was so on a field that was better known as the valley of Rephaim. Josephus continued: ‘But when Titus had composed the troubles in Judea, and conjectured that the lands which I had in Judea would bring me no profit, because a garrison to guard the country was afterward to pitch there, he gave me another country in the plain.’ With other words: Josephus possessed an estate near the place of the crucifixion that he obtained only a short while ago.

Why does Josephus tell the history with his estate in it, that chronologically happened at least a year sooner, directly after the story of the crucifixion? And why does the history with the estate in it textually connect even as bad to what follows? One is inclined to assume a psychological relation. When Josephus in the nineties, twenty years after the events, remembered the crucifixion, he was confronted by the ties he had with ‘his’ people. He used his friendship with the Roman commanders to help the ‘acquaintances’ among that people. One senses some kind of defense towards his ambivalent attitude in those days. But the fact that Josephus after the story of the crucifixion immediately switches to his new estate can then only be explained when that new estate had something to do with the crucifixion.

When the linear structure of the crucifixion stories is put together, one would get the following:

1. Jesus is crucified with two other men.
2. Joseph of Arimathea approaches and sees his (secret) friends hanging on the cross.
3. He goes to the Roman commander and expresses his complaint.
4. In the meanwhile the legs of two crucifiers are broken; the third seems to have died and, for more certainty, a lance stitch is given to him.
5. The Roman commander gives Joseph of Arimathea the order to take away the bodies.
6. Joseph of Arimathea has a newly acquired estate nearby.
7. He takes the body from the cross and brings it to his estate.
8. This Joseph of Arimathea is, as far as he is described in the gospels, completely identical to Joseph ben Matthias, but known as Flavius Josephus. Matthew describes him as following: A rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who had become a disciple of Jesus. (27:57)
   Mark writes: ‘…Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God…’(15:43) Luke: ‘And a man named Joseph, who was a member of the Council, a good and righteous man - he had not consented to their plan and action - a man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for the kingdom of God; this man went to Pilate…’(23:51) For what John writes, see above. In short: Joseph was a rich man, member of the Council, a secret follower of ‘Jesus’; he owned a new estate in a plain outside Jerusalem; near that estate the crucifixion took place with which he got involved because it were his friend hanging from the cross
9. Both Josephus and the evangelists mention the presence of a doctoe. With John he is called Nicodemus.
10. In both cases one of the three survives the crucifixion.

One could call this all coincidental. Against coincident thinkers I have no defense. With the argument ‘by chance’ one can torpedo every evidence. For the matter-of-fact thinker the chance that Josephus and the four evangelists report two different events is as big as the chance that somewhere in the universe a second earth exists with the only difference that on that other earth the tower of Pisa stands upright. In history there are very striking examples of coincidence, but they emerged thanks to a multitude of information from all sides. That a case of crucifixion in the beginning of our era, a period about which we to our standards are little informed, is reported by four evangelists and one unmistakable historian, makes it chance-technically impossible to believe that this is a matter of two different events. Thus with almost mathematical certainty it is fixed that the only biological element of the evangelic life of Jesus of Nazareth, that up to now one deemed to maintain as a fact, is derived from an event from the year 70 after Christ. The important question, how it is possible that already long before the year 70 there is being talked about a crucified Jesus, is discussed in chapter 18.

---