A Problem for Historical-Jesus Deniers: St. Paul Knew His Brothers: Do Mythical Characters Have Real Kin?

The Apostle Paul, Rembrandt and Studio, c. 1657

In every generation there are a few writers who say that Jesus went to India, or that he married Mary Magdalene, or was it Mary, or Martha, or maybe even all three, or that he survived the crucifixion and lived to a ripe old age somewhere, or that he simply never existed. Most often the proponents of these views aren't scholars, or at least not New Testament scholars.  Quite often they explain that those of us who are New Testament scholars, who have doctorates in that field, actually face an impediment to right understanding due to the inevitable prejudices imposed upon us by our educations, our religious affiliations, etc.  Prejudices from which they declare themselves free of by virtue of the fact that they have not studied, or don't believe in God, leaving them at liberty, they feel sure, to "follow truth, wherever it leads." It's an old story and an old formula.  

In addition, most generations also toss up a writer or two who make such claims despite actually having doctorates, sometimes even doctorates in the field of New Testament studies. 

In this post however, I am interested in only one of the theories mentioned above, namely the idea that Jesus never existed, and that only from a single angle: the problem posed to their denial of the Historical Jesus by the existence of the Historical Paul.  

To be sure many who would deny Jesus existed might wonder at this, regarding Paul as a convenient asset to their argument as "the man who invented Christianity," or at least the one who spread the idea of the invented Jesus. But the situation is not so simple.  

The problem for such a view emerges from incidental remarks in Paul's letters which reveal that he knows and speaks familiarly not only of the Peter (whom he sometimes refers to by his Aramaic name Cephas), who was the head of the historical Jesus's circle of followers, but also of actual members of Jesus's family, in particular his brothers. 

In Galatians 1:19 Paul speaks of how he met Peter and "James the Lord's brother."

And then, to give just one more example, in 1 Corinthians 9:5-6, Paul writes: 

"Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?"

In both cases, Paul's comments are off-hand and it is obvious he is taking for granted his readers will know and recognize who it is he is talking about.

Both these remarks take place in what are generally referred to as the "undisputed" letters of Paul. 

So, if you want to dispense with a historical Jesus, it behooves you also to come up with a way to dispense with the historical Paul as well, or at least with the above references, especially in relation to Jesus' brothers, because, as we all know, non-existent people seldom have real brothers. Few historical Jesus deniers, however, have proved ambitious and thoroughgoing enough in their arguments to follow through and come up with ways to deal with the evidence of Paul.  One who actually does is the very ingenious Robert M. Price, who claims that Paul too never existed. 

But, of course, New Testament scholars have not gotten on board with Price's arguments nor will they.  One of the reasons is that Paul's existence is too well attested too early.  Here we shall focus on the testimony of the first-century writer Clement of Rome, who is credited with writing a letter on behalf of the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth sometime during the final decades of the first century. 

Traditionally, the Clement credited with authoring this letter is understood to be the associate of Paul mentioned in Philippians 4:3, whom Roman Catholic tradition comes to identify as the third Pope.  That Clement was in leadership in the Roman Church is not disputed, but most scholars, including a good number of Catholic ones, would dispute that Rome had a single bishop in Clement's day, suggesting instead that he was one of a group of multiple elders or overseers.*  In any case the letter isn't written in Clement's name, which does not appear in the text of the letter, but in the name of the Church of Rome.  Still given Clement's prominence in the early Church, the attribution of the letter is widely accepted.

In the fifth chapter of the letter, Clement counts himself and his readers as part of the generation that lived through the persecutions of the Emperor Nero (54-68 AD) by urging his readers to consider examples "that belong to our own generation."  In the context he describes first the martyrdom of Peter and then that of Paul.  Here is what he says about the latter:

"Because of jealousy and strife Paul showed the way to the prize for patient endurance. After he had been seven times in chains, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, and had preached in the east and in the west, he won the genuine glory for his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and having reached the farthest limits of the west. Finally, when he had given his testimony before the rulers, he thus departed from the world and went to the holy place, having become an outstanding example of patient endurance." (1 Clement 5:5-7)

Later in the letter he urges the Corinthian Christians to remember what Paul had written them in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians:

"Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the apostle. What did he first write to you in the beginning of the gospel? Truly he wrote to you in the Spirit about himself and Cephas and Apollos, because even then you had split into factions." (1 Clement 47:1-3).

 Other examples of early references to Paul could be cited, but here we have focuses on this important first-century reference by Clement of Rome. 

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*In my view. it remains possible that Clement was the single bishop governing the Church of Rome, although by no means the Pope in the sense in which that would be understood today.

Not only did Jesus not exist, he was also a lying bastard! The implications of Robert M. Price’s appeal to the 2nd Century writer Celsus.

Robert M. Price

I have to admit that I don't like debates very much. Too often they represent two guys who may or may not know what they're talking about presenting evidence to an audience that is not well enough informed on the subject to know whether what the guys are saying has any validity to it or not. Very often they represent nothing more than displays of confident assetion and rhetorical posturing.

Unlike atheist/mythicist debaters like the late Christopher Hitchens, Dan Barker, and Richard Dawkins, all of whom sometimes very dramatically display (or displayed) their ignorance of the basic facts relating to what they assert, [1] Robert M. Price actually knows his stuff. Still when I look at Price's arguments, I very often feel that he is rubbing the evidential fur the wrong way.

In a debate with Bart Ehrman, Robert M. Price begins his opening salvo (36 minutes) by attempting refute the following statement from page 96 of Bart Ehman’s 2012 book, Did Jesus Exist:

“The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents.”

Price's quotations include one from the second-century, anti-Christian philosopher Celsus that he puts forward as denying Jesus existence:

“It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie, and that your fables have not been well enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction.”[2]

But Price's quotation doesn't do justice to Celsus' position, or if it does then we must argue that Celsus not only denied that Jesus existed, but that also he held that this non-existent Jesus added insult to injury by lying about having been virgin born!

Fact: Celsus did accuse Jesus of lying but he did not accuse him of not existing.

Celsus, in the process of making his attempted rebuttal to Christianity, invents a Jewish character which he presents as debating with Jesus about his claims. Celsus' work survives only in the form of lengthy quotations in Origen's refutation of it in the book Contra Celsum.

Celsus claims, first of all, that Jesus actually invented the story about his being born of a virgin. The reality, he says, was that Jesus' mother had been a poor Jewish woman who scraped a living from her spinning and who had been turned out of her home by her husband, a carpenter, after he had discovered that she had committed adultery with Jesus' "real" father, a soldier named Panthera.

Celsus' Jesus in poverty ends up hiring himself out as a servant in Egypt, where he eventually learned the magic arts before returning to his homeland and presenting himself as someone important (1:28-32). Eventually, Celsus claims, Jesus was punished for his crimes by the Jews (2:4,7).

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1. See, for example, "On Christopher Hitchens' not knowing the difference between a 'Synoptic' and a 'Canonical' Gospel; "Soundings from the Rubbish Stream: Atheist Dan Barker, in good Mythicist tradition, petends he's familiar with the writings of Philo of Alexandria"; "Why Does Richard Dawkins Think The Council of Nicaea Chose The Gospels When He Might Easily Have Been Better Informed?"

2 This quotation from Celsus has been circulating for a long time among mythicist writers without any indication as to its context.  Its actual source is Joseph Hoffman's reconstruction in Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians (trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 64, based on Contra Celsum 2.26 (ANF 4.442).  Roger Pearce over at www.tertullian.org has done a good job tracing this erroneous mythicist commonplace here.

Soundings from the Rubbish Stream: Atheist Dan Barker, in good Mythicist tradition, petends he's familiar with the writings of Philo of Alexandria

John M. Remsburg (d. 1919)

Mythicists often make statements about books that demonstrate they haven't read them. In his book Godless, Dan Barker, Christian music man turned Atheist, repeats a passage from another Mythicist about the first-century Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. In the process it becomes clear that both he and the author of the quotation lack basic essential knowledge of Philo and his writings.  Barker writes:

"One of the writers alive during the time of Jesus was Philo-Judaeus (sometimes known as Philo of Alexandria). John E. Remsburg, in The Christ, writes:

'Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion, with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead and [254] in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not.'"

Barker goes on to elaborate:

"Philo might be considered the investigative reporter of his day. He was on location during the early first century, talking with people who should have remembered or at least heard the stories, observing, taking notes, documenting. He reported nothing about Jesus."

John E. Remsburg’s book The Christ was published in 1909.[1] From this quotation, and much of what else was said in the book, it is clear that Remsburg was not a scholar of religion.

By the time I came across this passage in Barker, its problems had already been pointed out by others, including the late Maurice Casey, Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the University of Nottingham, who accused Barker of “...taking a typical mythicist path of quoting a scholar who was no good when he wrote long ago, as well as out of date now.”[2] Casey’s remark is perfectly just but perhaps too generous, first in referring to Remsburg, as a “scholar,” which, if by that we mean someone with advanced degrees in the subjects he’s writing about, he never really was, and second, in saying he is “out of date now.” Undoubtedly that is the case, but it should be stressed that Remsburg was out of date even in his own day. The brutal fact is that Remsburg was never “in date,” because his writings were simply rubbish, as we shall see illustrated in the present case.

Casey goes on to correctly sum up what Remsburg said as “a gross mixture of [14] events which did happen (the triumphal entry, crucifixion), and events which did not happen. Philo was nowhere near at the time, and had no reason to hear of the events that did happen.”[3]

It is actually quite rare for scholars to comment on the claims of writers like Barker, for the simple reason that they are generally too ill informed, too filled with outdated and erroneous information, to spend time that might be employed more usefully in engaging people who actually know what they are talking about. So it is quite understandable that after making the comment above, Casey excuses himself from engaging Barker further on the grounds that “His book is important to this discussion for one reason only: it can be taken to show the damaging effect of the fundamentalist mindset upon attempts at critical enquiry, that it can result in a merely different kind of preaching, which still takes notice only of its own traditions.”[4]

While all that may be true, it doesn’t help the general reader understand the basis of Casey’s saying that Philo “was nowhere near at the time, and had no reason to hear of the events.” So that is part of what I intend to clarify here.

To begin with the reader needs to understand that what Remsburg says, and Barker says in expanding on it, reveals their essential ignorance of who Philo was and what he did. Following are some corrections of the erroneous statements of the two authors:

(1) Philo didn’t live in or near Jerusalem, nor even in Palestine. Rather he lived in Alexandria Egypt, where he was a prominent member of the Jewish Community. We know very little about his life, but we do know that he went to Jerusalem on at least one occasion during his life, because of an incidental reference to something he once saw, while on his way “to our ancestral temple to offer prayers and sacrifices” (On Providence 2.64). But the passage provides no clue as to the time-frame of the incident.

(2) Philo never “wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth.” In fact, he never wrote any kind of history of the Jews at all. Philo was not a historian nor was he much interested in the historian’s task. He was a philosophical and mystical interpreter of the Biblical text. The closest he ever came to writing anything like history is in his accounts of a pogrom against the Jews in Alexandria and his experiences in that connection as a representative to Rome of the Alexandrian Jewish Community.

The word “Jerusalem” occurs only seven times in the writings of Philo (On Dreams II 250; Embassy to Gaius 278, 288, 312, 313, 315).[5] Only the first is from Philo’s own hand, the other six are in a letter from Agrippa I to the Emperor Gaius, which Philo copied into his account.

The name “Pilate” only appears twice in Philo, but again not because Philo uses it, but because it too was included in the same Agrippa I letter mentioned above (Embassy to Gaius 299, 304).

In the letter Philo copied, Agrippa I also mentions his grandfather Herod the Great four times (Embassy to Gaius 294, 296, 297, 299), but apart from this Philo never mentions him at all. He does, however, uses the name Herod once when referring to Agrippa I as “Herod Agrippa (Flaccus 25).

Agrippa I, whose death is reported in chapter 12 of the New Testament Book of Acts, is mentioned several times in Philo, due to the part both Agrippa and Philo played together in their attempt pacify the Emperor Gaius when he’d taken out against the Jews (Embassy to Gaius 179, 261, 263, 268, 269, 291, 294, 325, 331, 333). Philo also mentions Agrippa I in connection with a visit he made to Alexandria (Flaccus 25, 39, 103).

Later, in the time of Gaius’s successor Claudius, Philo’s nephew Marcus Julius Alexander would marry Agrippa I’s daughter Bernice, who we meet in Acts 25, where she and her brother Agrippa II visit the Roman official Festus in Caesarea and hear the preaching of the apostle Paul. But it is not Philo who tells us that his nephew married Bernice, it was the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 19.5.1 [276-277]). So far as I have been able to discover, Philo doesn’t mention a number of other first-century Jerusalem luminaries, including, for example, the prominent teachers Hillel and Gamaliel and the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas.

All of this simply underscores the silliness of Barker’s attempt at driving home the erroneous claims he had uncritically taken over from Remsburg:

"Philo might be considered the investigative reporter of his day. He was on location during the early first century, talking with people who should have remembered or at least heard the stories, observing, taking notes, documenting."

By saying this, Barker merely showcases his basic unfamiliarity with Philo and his work, his unquestioning faith in writers from his own camp, and his willingness to pretend to knowledge he doesn’t have.

Barker is typical in the way he uncritically repeats what he finds in other writers. Curiously, this has been a persistent feature of writers calling themselves “Free-Thinkers.” So, we are not surprised to find this same passage from Remsburg being uncritically regurgitated in the books of other Mythicists as well. We also find it, for example, in C. Dennis Mckinsey’s Biblical Errancy: A Reference Guide (2000),[6] and Victor J. Stenger’s The New Atheism. Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (2009). [7] For a discussion of the latter’s use of the passage, see “Stegner fails on Philo,” at the Philonica et Neotestamentica blog.[8]
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[1] John E. Remsburg, The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (New York: Truth Seeker Company, [1909]), 25-26.

[2] Maurice Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument Or Mythicist Myths (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2014), 13.

[3] Ibid., 13-14.

[4] Ibid., 14.

[5]  Numbers of occurrences of words derive from Peder Borgen, Kåre Fuglseth, and Roald Skarsten, The Philo Index: A Complete Greek Word Index to the Writings of Philo of Alexandria (Grand Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans / Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2000).

[6] C. Dennis Mckinsey, Biblical Errancy: A Reference Guide (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 317-18.

[7] Victor J. Stenger’s The New Atheism. Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), 58.

Josephus's Testimonium Flavianum, Origen’s Contra Celsum, and Dan Barker's Confusion

The text of Antiquities, written by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, contains, as it stands, two references to Jesus.  The first and most important, often referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum, appears in Antiquities 18.63 (Whiston: 18.3.3) and is translated as follows in the Loeb Classical Library (LCL) edition:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.  For he was one who wrought surprising feats 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 Messiah.  When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him.  On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him.  And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."[1]

The first Christian author to quote the above passage is Eusebius of Caesarea.  He does so at the beginning of the 4^th century in his Ecclesiastical History 1.11.7[2]  Many have wondered why it would take so long for such an important passage to be quoted.  Mythicists often feel sure that Eusebius made it up himself, a view most scholars would dismiss, and something in any case that can’t be proved either way.  Part of the mythicist argument is that several earlier Christian authors cited Josephus, but without mentioning this passage, which they surely would have if it had existed. In the process they frequently exaggerate how often Josephus was actually mentioned in earlier Christian writers, and especially in one in particular, Origen of Alexandria (d. c. 254).  A classic example of this in relation to Origen is given to us by ex-Christian music man turned angry Atheist apologist Dan Barker:

"The paragraph [i.e., the Testimonium] is absent from early copies of the works of Josephus. For example, it does not appear in Origen's second-century version of Josephus, in Origen Contra Celsum where Origen fiercely defended Christianity against the heretical views of Celsus. Origen quoted freely from Josephus to prove his points, but never once used this paragraph, which would have been the ultimate ace up his sleeve" (italics in the last sentence mine).[3]

As is typical of Barker when venturing beyond his ken, this passage bristles with errors in every line, implying perhaps that Barker has no direct familiarity with the work.  These, in the interest of clarity and correctness, I briefly take note of before returning to my main point: 

(1)  The Testimonium was not “absent from early copies of the works of Josephus.” Rather “the manuscript tradition...is unanimous in including it.”[4]

(2)  Does Barker imagine that Origen produced an edition of Josephus?  If so, he is wrong.  Origen never did.

(3)  Following up on the first two, Barker can’t know that the Testimonium did not appear in the version of Josephus that Origen knew.  Nobody can.

(4)  Origen didn’t write Contra Celsum in the second century, but in the middle of the third.[5]

(5)  It is not true that Origen “quoted freely” from Josephus in Contra Celsum.  Strictly speaking he quotes him at most only one time in the entire work (see below).  He does however cite him four times.

(6)  Celsus wasn’t a heretic, i.e., a “Christian” teacher propounding unorthodox doctrines, he was a Platonist Philosopher.

In the line that I have italicized in Barker’s quote, he gives the impression (1) that Origen frequently quotes Josephus against Celsus, which, as we have seen, is not true, , and (2) that had Origen known of the existence of the Testimonium he would have certainly quoted it, as the “ultimate ace up his sleeve.” 

But the question there is “ace up his sleeve” for proving what?  Mythicists often make the anachronistic assumption that the early Church was eager to prove the existence of Jesus, when in fact, that was something they simply took for granted, as did their opponents.[6]  As Bart Ehrman has noted: “The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents.”[7] The fact is that there is nothing in the Testimonium that Celsus denied.  He didn’t doubt that Jesus existed, nor that Christians believed him to be the Messiah,[8] nor that he was condemned and crucified by Pontius Pilate.[9]  He also accepted that Jesus, as the Testimonium attests, “wrought surprising feats,” but he accounts for them by asserting that Jesus had mastered the magic arts in Egypt.[10]

Contra Celsum is a large work in which Origen cites Josephus by name only four times in four of his 622 chapters.  Twice he refers the reader to “two books” by Joseph which prove the greater antiquity and therefore also the priority of the Mosaic teachings over those of other nations (Against Celsus 1:16 and 4:11).[11]  Twice again, to the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple being punishment for the murder James the Just, the brother of “Jesus (called Christ).” (Contra Celsum 1.47, 2.13 = Antiquities 20.200 [Whiston: 20.9.1]).[12]  In one of the latter two passages, Origen also briefly alludes to the fact that Josephus described John as a baptizer (Against Celsus 1:47 = Josephus, Antiquities 18:116 [Whiston: 18.5.2]). 

All together Origen cites Josephus eleven times in his extant works.[13]  Of these Alice Whealey argues that only one really qualifies as a quotation.[14] Nevertheless she grants that Origen’s ho adelphos Iēsou tou legomenou Christou (Contra Celsum 1.47 and Commentary on Matthew 10.17) is so close to Josephus’s ton adelphon Iēsou tou legomenou Christou (Antiquities 20.200 [Whiston: 20.9.1]), “that there must be some sort of literary dependence on Josephus.”[15] 

Eleven times quoting Josephus really isn’t that often given Origen’s voluminous output. Yet it is more frequent than all the other Christian authors before Eusebius combined.  Apart from Origen, Josephus is cited by name only seven times in six passages by six other pre-Eusebian authors. [16]  In only one of these cases is he actually quoted.[17] The rest are general allusions to, or paraphrases and summaries of what Josephus said.  All together then Josephus is inconspicuously quoted on any subject only four times prior to Eusebius.  Two of these have to do with “James the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ.”

The question is: given how infrequently Josephus is referred to at all by the early Church, is it really a reasonable surmise to suppose that the early Christian writer Origen somehow had to have cited or quoted the Testimoniam Flavianum if it had existed in his day?  Since Jerome, who was the second to quote the Testimonium after Eusebius,[18] cited Josephus no less than 90 times but the Testimonium only once,[19] is it really realistic to expect Origen to certainly cite it along with his eleven other citations in his all his extant works?


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[1] Josephus, Antiquities 18.63 (ET: Louis H. Feldman, Josephus (volume 9 of 10; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1965), 49 and 51.

[2] See also his Demonstration of the Gospel 3.5 and Theophania 5.44.

[3] Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (fwd. Richard Dawkins; Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2008), 255; also the almost identical passage in idem, Losing Faith in Faith (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1992), 362.

[4] Louis H. Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1937-1980) (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 690.

[5] Origen, Contra Celsum (trans. & ed. Henry Chadwick; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953), xv.

[6] Sometimes mythicists attempt to deny this by imposing contextually dubious readings on Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho 8 and Contra Celsum 2:26, as Robert M. Price does, for example, in his 21 October 2016 debate with Bart D. Ehrman.

[7] Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exit (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 96.

[8] Contra Celsum, 4.2.

[9] Contra Celsum 2.34, 8.41.

[10] Contra Celsum 1.28

[11]In each case Origen gives the impression that he is referring to the Antiquities, but the arguments in the “two books” referred appear in the two books of Against Apion.  

[12] Curiously, our current editions of Josephus do not blame the fall of Jerusalem on the murder of James.

[13] Contra Celsum 1.16, 47; 2.13; 4:11; Selecta et fragmenta in Ieremiam 22:24-26 (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte = GCS 3, pp. 204-205, Nr. 14); Fragmenta in Lamentationes 4:10 (GCS 3, p. 273, Nr. 105), 4:14 (GCS 3, p. 274, Nr. 109) 4:19 (GCS 3, p. 275, Nr. 115), Commentarii in Canticum Canticorum 1:5 (Lib. 2, GCS 8, p. 116); Commentarii in Matthaeum 10.17 (GCS 10, p. 22); Fragmenta et selecta in Psalmos 73:5-6 (LXX), (Migne’s Patrologia Graeca 12,1529 D). See Wataru Mizugaki, “Origen and Josephus,” Josephus, Judaism and Christianity (eds. Louis H. Feldman & Hata Gohei; Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1987), 328.

[14] Frag. 109 on Lamentationes 4:14 = War 6.299-300 [Whiston: 6.5.3]).

[15] Alice Whealey, “Josephus, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the Testimonium Flavianum,” in Josephus und das Neue Testament: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen: II. Internationales Symposium zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisicum 25.-28. Mai 2006, Greifswald (WUNT 209; eds. Christfried Böttrich & Jens Herzer with Torsten Reiprich; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007): 75, n. 9.

[16] Josephus is named seven times in six other pre-Eusebian authors: (1) Theophilus of Antioch (2x in one passage), Ad Autolycum 3.23 (ANF 2.119); (2) Irenaeus (1x), Frag. 33 (ANF 1.573) = (Antiquities 2.238-53?); (3) Clement of Alexandria (1x), Stromata 1.147.2 (1:21 in ANF 2.324). = War 6.435-442 [Whiston: 6.10.1] and Antiquities 8.61-62 [Whiston: 8.3.1] cf. perhaps Antiquities 7.389. [Whiston: 7.15.2]; (4) Tertullian (1x), Apology 19.6 (ANF 3.33); (5) Minucius Felix (1x), Octavius 33.4-5 (ANF 4.193-194); (6) Methodius of Olympus (1x): De resurrectione 3:9 (2:18 in ANF 6:377) = Josephus, War 6:435-437 (Whiston: 6.10.1) (See Heinze Schreckenberg, “Josephus in Early Christian Texts,” in Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity (intro. David Flusser; ed. Heinze Schreckenberg & Kurt Schubert; Assen/Maastricht, NL: Van Gorcum / Minneapolis, MN Fortress, MN, 1992), 51-63. Other examples of possible dependence are sometimes mentioned, but in places where Josephus isn’t directly named or indisputably quoted.

[17] Methodius of Olympus, De resurrectione 3:9 (2:18 in ANF 6:377) = Josephus, War 6:435-437 (Whiston: 6.10.1).

[18] De Viris Illustribus 13.

[19] According to Louis H. Feldman, “On the Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum Attributed to Josephus,” New Perspectives on Jewish Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger (eds. Elisheva Carlebach & Jacob J. Schacter Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011): 16.