[troutman]

http://atheism.about.com/gi/dynamic/...o%2Fsupp10.htm


JOSEPHUS UNBOUND
Reopening the Josephus Question



Although it may well be that we owe Josephus’ survival through the Middle Ages to the unknown Christian interpolator who gave us the Testimonium, it is time to release Josephus from his Christian captivity—and from the bonds of those who continue to claim him as a witness to the existence of an historical Jesus. But if the weight of argument would impel us to acknowledge that Josephus seems to have made no reference at all to Jesus, what implications do we draw from this?

Here is a Jewish historian who was born and grew up in Judea shortly after Pilate’s tumultous governorship, with its presumed crucifixion of a Jewish sage and wonder worker, a man whose followers claimed had risen from the dead and who gave rise to a vital new religious sect. Here is an historian who remembers and records in his work with staggering efficiency and in voluminous detail the events and personalities and socio-political subtleties of eight decades and more. Can we believe that Josephus would have been ignorant of this teaching revolutionary and the empire-wide movement he produced, or that for some unfathomable reason he chose to omit Jesus from his chronicles?

Destroying the credibility of the Josephus references inevitably places a very strong nail in the coffin of the historical Jesus.

Tacitus et al debunked:

http://atheism.about.com/gi/dynamic/...y%2Fchap5.html

Contrary to what some apologists (not necessarily McDowell or Wilson) have suggested, it is not just 'Christ-mythicists' who deny that Tacitus provides independent confirmation of the historicity of Jesus; indeed, there are numerous Christian scholars who do the same!