Titus Flavius Josephus was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who lived from 37-100 AD. He was a respected figure in the Roman Empire due to a friendship/counselor relationship with Emperor Vespasian. Shortly before he died he made a 20-volume historiographical work on Jewish history known as “Antiquities of the Jews“. In Chapter 3 of book 18 Josephus focuses on Pilate’s time and this noticeable passage is in it.
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
Can the fact this man who lived all but within Jesus lifetime and is recounting as a outside historian Jesus and in beat for beat is repeating the main claims of the Bible show that there could be truth to Jesus existence and possibly his divinity?
