Years ago when I first found out about the Internet I would go online to Usenet and IRC and argue for hours with other people about Christianity. Unfortunately Google archives a lot of that stuff and so you can go on Google Groups and search and find several of my snotty and arrogant posts. Well, I was young and foolish and had very little sense, but I thought I knew so much and everyone I argued with was exactly the same way so we would mock and scoff at each other and even through all of this God thought it worthwhile to teach me a few things even as unteachable as I was making myself to be.
In one particular heated argument I brought up Josephus as an extra-biblical source for Jesus since in Book 18 and Chapter 3 of The Antiquities of the Jews we find this:
Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Well, that just caused a great deal of mocking from the learned of the Internet who pointed out to me that nobody who knew anything thought that passage was original (that is, written by Josephus) but had rather been proven a forgery added later by Christians.
For a long time afterward I thought maybe they were right and after all, they spoke with such authority that there must be something to what they said so I didn't use that passage again, but just this past week I was reading The History of the Church by Eusebius and he mentions this very passage in Book 1 (11.7f) - he quotes it exactly. Now, what is so interesting about this? Well, Eusebius wrote early in the fourth century, just before the First Council of Nicea in 325 so we know that the supposed Christian addition to Josephus must have happened before that. I wondered what the translator of Eusebius had to say about this so under the heading of Josephus in the Who's Who in Eusebius section at the back of the book I found this:
Josephus is Eusebius' main source for the history of the first century A.D. Eusebius is also fond of showing how Josephus supports the history presupposed by the various writings of the New Testament. These citations raise various problems. At I. 11. 7f. Eusebius quotes Antiquities, XVIII. 3. 3, a passage that refers to Christ as "a very gifted man - if indeed it is right to call him a man." All the manuscripts we have of the Antiquities agree with Eusebius' reading here: but it is hard not to think that it has been subject to some Christian interpolation.
I put the last part in bold myself so that you could really chew on exactly what is being said there. What the translator of Eusebius is telling us here is that all of the available evidence we have - every manuscript and every quote of Josephus - has this statement about Jesus in it but we think it was a forgery because it is hard not to think that it has been subject to some Christian interpolation. That is incredible. So I was lectured that the particular section in Josephus that provides extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus is clearly a forgery and everybody knows that but the reason that it is considered a forgery is because it is just hard to believe. That's it, it is just hard to believe. There is no evidence for it being a forgery (in fact there is quite the opposite as all of the hard evidence says that it is not an addition) but because "scholars" find it hard to believe it is therefore considered a forgery.
There are many lessons here, but the one that really strikes me the most is that whenever you hear something pronounced with great authority (and little else) you should look it up for yourself so you can make up your own mind based on some actual facts (note that I didn't do this originally and I am not the better for it). Also it seems that this "Believe what I tell you because I know" is extremely prevalent in Biblical scholarship and your faith is the last place where you should ever be placing your confidence in some person who actually knows nothing beyond his own confidence.
