A SMALL SAMPLING OF SOME CORRELATIONS BETWEEN THE
WORKS OF FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
(By Roman Piso, compiled from earlier notes - 08/03/00)
Hello, I’d like to give you a brief preface for this work. 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 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
you can find the works of Flavius Josephus as translated by Whiston into English
online at…
(Keyed to Whiston's English Translation of Josephus)
(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] (W. of
the Jews, b. I, ch. XIII, v. V)
(7) "My Father's house has many Mansions" [John 14:2] (W. 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)
(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)
(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, 1947. 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)
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