13. Josephus, Life, sec. 76
14. Matthew 5:17
15. Josephus, Life, sec. 27
16. Josephus, Wars, Book III, chapter 8, sec. 3, emphasis added.
17. Luke 2:41-48, emphasis added.
18. Josephus, Life, sec. 2, emphasis added.
19. Josephus, Life, sec. 2
20. Ibid.
21. Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus, ante, pp. 258-362.
22. See Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus, ante, esp. pp. 319-348.
23. Isaiah 40:3
24. John 1:23
25. Acts 23:6; Philippians 3:5
26. cf. 1 Corinthians 7:1-7 and Josephus, Wars, Book II, chapter 8, sec. 2 and 13.
27. Josephus, Life, sec. 2
28. Feldman, Louis, H., “Introduction,” and Feldman, Louis H., “Hellenization in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities: the Portrait of Abraham,” in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, ante, p. 31 and pp. 133-153.
29. Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII, chapter 1, sec. 3-5; Acts 23:8.
30. cf. Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII, chapter 1, sec. 1-6; and Wars, Book II, chapter 8, sec. 1-13, esp. 6 and 11; see also, Eisenman, Robert, “Confusions of ‘Pharisees’ and ‘Essenes’ in Josephus,” The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2014, http://blogs.jpost.com/content/confusions-pharisees-and-essenes-josephus
31. Josephus, Wars, Book II, chapter 8, sec. 10, emphasis added.
32. Josephus, Life, sec. 44
33. Josephus, Life, sec. 3, emphasis added.
34. Acts 27:27-44, emphasis added.
35. Acts 24:1-27
36. Sienkiewicz, Henryk, Quo Vadis?, 2006, Aegypan (orig. pub. in Polish, 1896).
37. NOTE: Professor Eisenman persuasively rejects the account in Acts as unhistorical. He has suggested that Paul was not even in Roman custody when James the Just was martyred. See James the Brother of Jesus, 1997, Viking, esp. pp. 521-597. The death of James may indeed have been the event that sent delegations to Rome from both sides, and this occurred precisely during the interval between the governorships of Festus and Albinus, according to Josephus.
38. Acts 5:36-8; Antiquities, Book XX, chapter 5, sec. 1-4.
39. Mark 6:17; Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII, chapter 5, sec. 4.
40. Josephus, Wars, Book III, chapter 8, sec.1, emphasis added.
41. As in Matthew’s account of the Resurrection, Josephus’s cave was carefully guarded. Matthew 28:1-10.
42. Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII, chapter 1, sec. 5, emphasis added.
43. Acts 4:32-35, emphasis added, cf. Acts 2:44-45.
44. Matthew 10:8-10. NOTE: As with his admiration for the Essenes’ approach to money, one might reasonably ask how any Romans or Roman sympathizer could have penned the strict regulations of divorce that we read in the New Testament. The Romans, after all, famously had very liberal and easy divorce laws. Josephus himself had divorced, according to his own report. However, it must be remembered that the letters of Paul and the Gospels were not written for a general Roman audience, and indeed, that each of the Gospels and Paul’s letters seem to have been written for a specialized audience. In this context, it is worth nothing that the New Testament is not entirely consistent on the subject. According to both Luke and Mark, Jesus flatly forbade divorce (Luke 16:18, Mark 10:2-12), while Matthew says “except for sexual immorality” (Matthew 19:2-12). This is interesting because, of course, under the Mosaic Law any adultery was to be punished with execution by stoning. Matthew’s divorce regulation appears to assume that the Mosaic Law is no longer being enforced in this respect. Paul says that divorce is not permitted but curiously adds that if a woman does divorce, she must not remarry (1Corinthians 7:1-28), again, a curious comment if any rule against divorce is actually being obeyed. In these same passages, both Jesus and Paul seem to go beyond such divorce laws and recommend complete celibacy for those who are able to do without sex. Under the Mosaic Law, divorce was permitted (Deuteronomy 24:1), but later Jewish thought was also divided on the subject. The Essenes seem to have practiced celibacy, while the early rabbis sharply differed on the question of whether divorce was permissible. These early Christian documents seem to reflect some of the same divisions of opinion that existed within Judaism at the time. As with a love of poverty, Romans could, and did, admire such rigorous moral practices without themselves adopting them. As we shall see, Josephus very much admired ideals he did not practice.
45. Mark 10:21; Matthew 19:21; Luke 18:22: 1 Timothy 6:10.
46. James 5:1-6; see also, Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus, ante, esp. pp. 496-502.
47. Josephus, Antiquities, Book X, chapter 11, esp. sec 7.
48. Daniel 7:13-14, emphasis added. NOTE: Christians later suggested that when Daniel spoke of “one like a Man” being given Dominion over the earth, this pointed to a Divine Messiah, a man-god like Jesus. Even though this work was written in an entirely Jewish context, by this logic, it seems to anticipate Christianity. However, this section of Daniel reports a dream by the prophet, one filled with a number of purely symbolic images, such as “beasts” who represent entire kingdoms. Thus, when “the people of the Holy Ones of the Most High” are also granted Dominion over the whole earth, the author is telling us that the Being “like a man” is actually a symbol for that same people. Scholars are almost universally agreed that the “Son of Man” in Daniel represented the “maskilim,” the very community responsible for the creation of Daniel. In the hands of later Christians, however, this passage was made to seem like a prophetic anticipation of the Gospels. But in Jewish literature there are no semi-divine humans of any kind—Judaism is a form of monotheism.
49. Mark 14:62; cf. Mark 13:26-27, Luke 21:27, Matthew 24:30-31. NOTE: a similar interest in Daniel is not evenly expressed throughout the New Testament.
50. Tacitus, Histories, ante, Book V, 13, emphasis added.
51. Josephus, Wars, Book VI, chapter 5, sec. 3.
52. Luke 23:34-36. NOTE: It is true that St. Stephen at his martyrdom also forgave his killers, but in this case, they were Jewish. However, in the narrative of Luke-Acts (they appear to be the same single work), by then, Stephen is simply imitating Christ in this conduct. Robert Eisenman has persuasively argued that the death of Stephen in the Book of Acts is merely a rewritten form of the death of the important James, a historical event recorded by Josephus, since it happened at the same place, in a similar manner, and James is said to have spoken the same words Stephen did at his martyrdom. (See, Eisenman, Robert, James the Brother of Jesus, ante, pp. 521-597.) Stephen’s very name means “crown” in Greek and early Christians regarded martyrdom as their own “crown,” making Acts’ account of Christianity’s first martyr highly dubious. If Eisenman is correct, however, the words Jesus spoke at the Crucifixion were actually first spoken by James and attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus forgives sins himself and does not merely ask God to do so, as James/Stephen does.
53. Josephus, Antiquities, Book III, chapter 7, sec. 4.
54. Josephus, Wars, Book IV, chapter 3, sec 7, and John 19:23-24.
55. Mark 11:15-17; Matthew 21:13. NOTE: Of note, at the very moment of Jesus’s death on the Cross the earth shook and the curtain of the Temple separating the inner sanctuary from the rest was miraculously torn in two, according to the Gospels. (Mark 15:37-39, Luke 23:44-46, Matthew 27:50-51). Similarly, shortly before the destruction of the Temple, its huge and heavy eastern gate opened by itself, according to Josephus, and at the festival of Pentecost, the earth shook and there was a great sound of voices heard to say, “Let us depart!” (Josephus, Wars, Book VI, chapter 5, sec. 3). Both the Gospels and Josephus depict God himself ominously signaling his departure from the Temple prior to its demise.