Corollaries Between Flavius Josephus & The New Testament

Transcription

1 Corollaries Between Flavius Josephus & The New Testament By Roman Piso August 2000 PREFACE This is what scholars consider solid evidence, but what one must also realize is that this means that this evidence is not arbitrary, but instead - deliberate. That is right. That this was there to be found means that it was done intentionally. And the purpose is obvious, and that is so that this could be discovered. There now is solid proof that there is indeed a connection between Flavius Josephus and the authorship of the New Testament. Remember, this is only a very small sampling of the correlations between the works of Flavius Josephus and the New Testament - there are many, many more. It is, in fact, truly overwhelming the amount of content that may be found in common between the works of Flavius Josephus and the New Testament. And, something else that this proves is that the mention of "Jesus" in the works of Flavius Josephus is NOT a latter addition, it could NOT have been when there is so much of the same content found in both of these works. This should put an end to that old and incorrect rumor. Flavius Josephus, as has been stated by several scholars was the creator of "Jesus who was called Christ." There are too many things in the works of Josephus that correlate to the New Testament for that to be in any way coincidence, including James the brother of Jesus, and John the Baptist. It would be a virtual impossibility for Christians to "add" all of these correlations to the works of Josephus at a later date as the removal of all of these would leave the works of Josephus like a deflated tire so much content would be gone that it would no longer make any sense! What would be left would be an unrelated mish-mash of things that don t even make any sense and cannot give an account in an understandable way. And that, most certainly, was NOT how Josephus wrote. And so, I sincerely hope that this has put an end to that old notion that the mention of "Jesus" in the works of Josephus was a later addition by Christians. That rumor was started, I believe, as a kind of strategy on the part of those who knew the truth of the matter - but whom, wanted to lead persons away from discovering all of the correlations between the works of Flavius Josephus and the New Testament, and knowing full well that atheists would grab hold of this rumor and spread it around like wildfire for the simple reason that most atheists at that time were entirely ignorant of how all of this really happened, yet wanted something, anything, to hold up to Christians as evidence on behalf of their own beliefs. You should be able to use and read "Roman numerals" to make use of this list, and if you do a diligent search, you should be able to find the works of Flavius Josephus as translated by Whiston into English online. My research notes & papers in this and related areas, are, as a general rule, nearly always keyed to the Whiston translation of Josephus; but always first read and checked in the Loeb Classical Library edition (published by Harvard University Press). Again, Keyed to Whiston's English Translation of the works of Flavius Josephus.

2 Corollaries Between Flavius Josephus & The New Testament 1. "Jesus, who was called Christ" [Matt. 27:17] (Ant. of the Jews, book XX, chap. IX, verse I). 2. "The Egyptian" [Acts 21:38] (Ant. of the Jews, book XX, chap. VIII, v. VI). 3. "Punishment of the Jews" [Matt. 24:21, Mark 13:19, Luke 21:23,24] (Wars of the Jews, Preface; Calamities of the Jews, book VI, ch. V, v. IV). 4. "Binding and Loosing" [Matt 16:19] (W. of the Jews, ch. V, v. II). 5. "The Weaker Sex" [1 Peter 3:7] (Wars of the Jews, b. I, ch. XVIII, v. II). 6. "Render unto Caesar..." [Matt. 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25] (Wars of the Jews, b. I, ch. XIII, v. V). 7. "My Father's house has many Mansions" [John 14:2] (Wars of the Jews, b. I ch. XIII, v. V. Note: same as above). 8. "The 'New' Testament" [Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24, 1 Cor. 11:25, Heb. 9:15] (Wars of the Jews, b. II, ch. II, v. VI and b. II, ch. II, v. III). 9. "Pilate" [Matt. 27:2, etc.] (W. of the Jews, b. II, ch. IX, v. II, misc. other places). 10. "Felix, Procurator of Galilee" [Acts 24:25] (W. of the Jews, b. II, ch. XII, v. VIII). 11. "Roman Jews" [Acts 22:25-29] (W. of the Jews, b. II, ch. XV, v. IX). 12. "King Agrippa's wisdom on the Jews" [Acts 26:28] (W. of the Jews, b. II, ch. XVI, v. IV). 13. "Public Mourners" [Matt. 12:17] (W. of the Jews, b. III, ch. IX, v. V). 14. "Zacharias, son of Baruch" [Matt. 23:35] (W. of the Jews, b. IV, ch. V, v. IV). 15. "Houses of Prayers" [Acts 16:13, 16, Luke 6:12] (W. of the Jews, b. IV, ch. VII, v. II). 16. "Blood of Josephus/Jesus" ("Take my own blood as a reward if it may but procure your preservation, i.e., 'save you'" - Wars of the Jews, b. V, ch. IX, v. IV). [John 6:56, "eat of my flesh, and drink my blood (to save you.")] 17. "Seven Lamps" [Rev. 1:13, etc.] (W. of the Jews, b. VII, ch. V. v. V. and other places).

3 18. "Seven Heads" [Rev. 13:1, 17:3, 7] (Jewish Antiquities, b. III, ch. VII, v. VII). 19. "Twelve Stones" [Rev. 21:16 & 19-20] (W. of the Jews, and Ant. of the Jews). 20. "John the Baptist" [Matt. 3:4, Mark 1:6] ('Banus' in Vita and Ant. of the Jews, b. XVIII, ch. V, v. II, etc.). 21. "Hairs of your head" [Matt. 10:30, " even the very hairs of your head are numbered."] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XI, ch. V, v. III, etc.). 22. "Eating 'Common' things" [Acts 10:14-15, 28; 11:8-9, Rom. 14:14] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XI, ch. II, v. VII). 23. "Grace at Meal" [Mark 8:6, John 6:11, 23, Acts 27:35] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XII, ch. II, v. XII). 24. "Ointment in alabaster box" [Luke 7:37. Also see Mark 14:3 & Matt. 26:7] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XVII, ch. IV, v. II). 25. "Judas/Theudas" [Acts 5:36-37] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XVII, ch. X, v. V and b. XX, ch. V, v. I) 26. "Glad Tidings", "The Gospels" or "Good News" [Luke 2:10 & 1 Th. 3:6] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XIX, ch. VIII, v. II). 27. "Only Begotten Son" Used to say the wrong thing in Ant. of the Jews, which was their way of annotating certain things. And the reason is that the phrase "Only Begotten Son" does NOT mean that literally, it was a figure of speech that was used as a term of endearment. It was a phrase that was said to a favorite son out of more than one by the father or mother of that son. So, there is really a joke here by the use of that phrase, a joke that was put there by the author of the Gospel of John himself. [John 3:16, "For god so love the world that he gave his "only begotten son". Be sure to read our full true translation of this elsewhere.] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XX, ch. II, v. I). 28. "Famine" [Acts 11:28] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XX, ch. II, v. V). 29. "Simon the Magician" [Acts 8:9] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XX, ch. VII, v. II). 30. "Our Father (Abba) who art in Heaven" [Mark 14:36, Rom. 8:15, Gal. 4:6] Josephus says 'Aaron' died in the month called 'Abba' by the Hebrews. (Ant. of the Jews, b. IV, ch. IV, v. VII) And, "O Father (Abba), why hast thee forsaken me?" Josephus: "One man will be obliged to hear the voice of his son imploring help of his father, when his hands are still bound." (Wars of the Jews, b. VII, ch. X, v. VII).

4 31. "Tomorrow ye shall be with me in heaven" [Luke 23:43] and "Tomorrow thou shalt be with me in hades" (Ant. of the Jews, b. VI, ch. XIV, v. II). 32. "Beaten with 40 stripes, save one" [2 Cor. 2:24] (Ant. of the Jews, b. IV, ch. VIII, v. XXI). 33. " Gold, Incense, and Myrrh" [Matt. 2:11] (Ant. of the Jews, b. III, ch. VIII, v. III). 34. "For we do not follow cunningly devised fables" [2 Peter 1:16], "And hath not preserved his writings from those indecent fables..." and, "he might have securely forged such lies" (Ant. of the Jews, Preface, v. IV), "They followed fables..." (Ant. of the Jews, Preface, v. IV). 35. "Babylon the Great" [Rev. 17:5, etc.] (Ant. of the Jews, b. VIII, ch. VI, v. I). 36. "666" [Rev. 13:18] (Ant. of the Jews, b. VIII, ch. VII, v. II). 37. "False Prophets" [Mark 13:22] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XIII, ch. XI, v. II, and Ant. of the Jews, b. VIII, ch. IX, v. I). 38. "Filthy Lucre" [1 Tim. 3:3, Tit. 1:7, 1 Pet. 5:2] (Ant. of the Jews, b. VI, ch. III, v. II, and, Ant. of the Jews, b. XV, ch. VII, v. IX). 39. "Age 30" In Josephus' Vita (verse 15, page 5, Whiston's), and in Luke 3:23, is Arrius hinting at himself being "a person in great authority" at age 30 (which, he would still be, into the year 68 C.E.)? Was he Fasti Consular P. Galerius Trachalus and/or C. Bellicus Natalis in 68? He WAS Fasti Consular in 69 C.E. as Arrius Antoninus. Ref. 'Inscriptiones Italiae', vol. XIII, fasc. I, A. Degrassi, Rome, Perhaps the single most important thing that happened for Arrius Piso when he was age 30 is that in 68 CE he got Nero off of the royal throne of Rome and caused his death. Which was the revenge that he sought for Nero forcing his father to commit suicide. 40. "James, the brother of Jesus" [Mark 6:3, Matt. 13:55, Acts 12:17, 15:13, 21:18, 1 Co. 15:7, Gal. 1:19, 2:9, 2:12, Jas. 1:1] (Ant. of the Jews, b. XX, ch. IX, v. 1).

5 CONCLUSION Apparently, there are still many people out there who do not know about all of the various corollaries between the works of Flavius Josephus (aka Arrius Calpurnius Piso) and the New Testament texts. In my earlier works and examinations of these texts, there were over 100 such examples found and at least as many more which were noted, but not yet explored. The 40 examples shown here, as well as most of the others, are very specific. So, there is no chance that these were not deliberate and/or do not refer to exactly what they appear to refer to. As an unbiased (objective) scholar or researcher, you cannot simply pick and choose what items you would like to believe to have been added to these texts later on. It does not work that way. If you, for instance, say or claim that the mention of 'Jesus' was a later addition by some Christian scribe, you must also include the other instances of corollaries between the works of Flavius Josephus and the New Testament texts. And with there being hundreds of them, you would virtually be rendering those works useless as any kind of reference. And it just so happens that the works of Flavius Josephus are essential to any real and meaningful understanding of the people, places and events of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. REFERENCES 'The Greek/English Interlinear New Testament', by George R. Berry, Zondervan (publisher), Grand Rapids, MI. 'The True Authorship Of The New Testament', Abelard Reuchlin, 'Piso Christ', Roman Piso, with Jay Gallus, 'The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus', translated by Whiston. 'Flavius Josephus' (in several volumes, in the original Greek with English on opposing pages), Loeb Classical Library edition, published by Harvard University Press.