College Professor Says New Evidence Supports Authenticity of Josephus' Account of Jesus: 'That's Where the Evidence Led Me'
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One college professor, Dr. Thomas C. Schmidt, has what he believes is compelling evidence regarding the extra-biblical writings of a historian about Jesus Christ, writings whose authenticity and accuracy have been debated by scholars.
Schmidt, an associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, spoke with CBN News about his new book, “Josephus & Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ,” which he believes verifies the writings of the first-century Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.
“Josephus is one of the most important sources we have on the New Testament because he mentions so many people that are discussed in the New Testament, folks like Herod the Great, Herodias, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod Agrippa, John the Baptist,” Schmidt said of the Jewish historian. “He talks about all these people, and he also talks about Jesus.”
However, despite the historian's writings, which mention many people we also encounter in the Bible, Schmidt states his accounts have often been considered "controversial."
"But the passage is very controversial," he said. "Because scholars, though they've known about the passage for centuries, have been very suspicious about whether it's authentic or not. They thought that Christians tampered with it later on. They thought that Josephus didn't actually write this."
While the authenticity of Josephus' writings had been hotly debated, something happened that began to alter how some people viewed the historian's writings that mention Jesus Christ.
“But then this brilliant scholar who was translating Josephus’ works, he started noticing that there were just many phrases in this account of Jesus that are odd phrases, but that Josephus himself uses many times elsewhere,” he said. “The scholar’s name was Henry Thackeray, and he turned the tide of arguments so that scholars started thinking, ‘Well, OK, clearly Josephus did say something about Jesus, but maybe Christians doctored it later on,’ because the belief by scholars was that what Josephus said was just too positive, too glowing to be written by a non-Christian.”
Schmidt added that scholars in the 21st century revisited the authenticity of Josephus's writings, this time using technology. They found further parallels between accounts of Jesus and Josephus’ other writings. Schmidt also found some interesting findings after conducting his own investigation for the book.
“I exhaustively leverage these databases, and I show that every single phrase in the paragraph can be indexed back to Josephus in some way or another,” he said. “In other words, the paragraph looks exactly like Josephus would say. It sounds exactly like him. The turns of phrase, the vocabulary, everything sounds like Josephus.”
Schmidt states that the writings make it clear Josephus was unsure where Christ received his power and how He performed these miracles.
“Josephus says that Jesus worked miracles,” he said. “But the original Greek word is not quite so positive. It does mean ‘supernatural deeds’ but maybe we could better translate as ‘paranormal deeds.' In other words, Josephus is acknowledging that Jesus worked supernatural deeds, but he's unclear where the source of Jesus' power is coming from. He doesn't know if it's malevolent, demonic, divine. In other words, Josephus looks like he's assessing Jesus the same way the non-Christian Jews in the gospels are responding to Jesus' miracles."
He added that he did not intend to write a book that would confirm the historian's writings, but that things changed. He simply followed where he was led throughout his investigation.
“Josephus didn’t just know people who knew the apostles; he knew people who knew Jesus, who were at his trial,” Schmidt said. “That’s the argument I make towards the end of my book. … I did not intend my book to be an argument in favor of Josephus’ passage being totally authentic, but that’s where the evidence led me.”
To read Schmidt’s book, "Josephus & Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ," click here. It's available for free download.
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Originally published November 10, 2026.
