fter Exposing T.C. Schmidt’s Oxford Apologetics for the Testimonia Flaviana altogether (and his fellow Christians failed to rescue him), I now shall address his appendix on my case against Josephus referring to the Christian Jesus when relating the execution of a certain “James, bother of Jesus.” For those who want to catch up on my case, it was first published a decade ago in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (available now in Hitler Homer Bible Christ), but summarized in Historicity of Jesus and expanded in Obsolete Paradigm. Those are really the only places to consult if you want to engage with all the evidence and argument, but you can get a quick summary in Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014.

Here I will advance the thesis that Schmidt is lying through his teeth. But I acknowledge that every single example I will present here of him spinning false narratives could be explained alternatively by Schmidt being extraordinarily incompetent. So you, the reader, can choose your adventure: either Schmidt is wrong because he’s a liar, or he’s wrong because of a catastrophic cascade of mistakes. Either way, he’s wrong. I just personally don’t buy the latter hypothesis at this point. But maybe that’s just me.

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T.C. Schmidt on James in Josephus: Apologetics vs. History