Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Josephus' Report About How First-Century Christians Defined Jesus' Resurrection

I've said a lot about Tom Schmidt's book on Josephus and Jesus that came out last year. You can read it for free by accessing it at the page just linked.

See the range of possible translations of Josephus' passage about Jesus on pages 138 and 204, for example. In all of the translations, Jesus is referred to as being thought to be "alive again" just after his crucifixion is referred to. The crucifixion context suggests a physical resurrection of the same body that died, and the term "again" does as well.

Similarly, see the apparently first-century Jewish material Justin Martyr cites in section 108 of his Dialogue With Trypho. I discussed it in a post several years ago. That first-century Jewish material likewise assumes a Christian view of the resurrection that involves the return to life of the body that died.

So, we have multiple first-century Jewish sources telling us how the early Christians viewed the resurrection. They didn't think it was spiritual rather than physical. They didn't think it involved a new body instead of the one that died. Rather, they thought it was a resurrection of the dead body.

These Jewish sources were in a good position to know what the earliest Christians said about the subject, and it was in their interest to notice and make an issue of a change in the Christian view over time, if there was a change. Read Schmidt's material on Josephus' sources, for example.

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