Written account of Jesus rising from the dead identified in 2,000-year-old manuscript, study suggests

The Bible says Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to his followers nearly 2,000 years ago.

Now, a researcher has identified wording in later versions of a nearly 2,000-year-old text that he argues may preserve a first-century report of Jesus appearing alive after his crucifixion.

The disputed passage is attributed to Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who was not Christian and who completed his original work around AD 93 to 94.

Known as the Testimonium Flavianum, the passage appears in Jewish Antiquities, his history of the Jewish people. It states: ‘He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having foretold these and countless other wonders about him.’ Josephus’s original manuscript does not survive.

Independent researcher Jesús Fernández-Pedrera Correa from Spain compared Greek, Latin, Arabic and Syriac versions preserved through later copying, quotation and retelling to investigate which wording may have come from the original.

The Latin, Arabic and Syriac versions all describe Jesus appearing alive to his followers after his crucifixion.

The surviving Greek account states that Jesus appeared alive on the third day and links the event to biblical prophecy, while the Latin states that ‘he appeared to them the third day alive.’

The Arabic account specifically presents the appearance as something the disciples reported.

Fernández-Pedrera Correa suggested that wording could preserve an earlier passage in which Josephus recorded what Jesus’s followers said they had seen, before later Christian alterations turned their reports into a direct declaration that the resurrection happened.

The preprint study compares four versions of the passage, preserved in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Syriac through centuries of copying, quotation and retelling.

The Latin account dates to the late fourth century, while the Arabic and Syriac accounts come from the tenth and twelfth centuries.

The study examines later copies and retellings of Josephus’s work, rather than a surviving manuscript from his lifetime.

Comparing them gives researchers clues to how the passage changed as it was copied and retold.

Fernández-Pedrera Correa’s new analysis revisited the translated versions and argued that their differences offer clues to the passage’s earlier form.

One clue, the researcher argued, is wording that sounds more like Christian preaching than a non-Christian historian’s account.

The surviving Greek version states: ‘He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having foretold these and countless other wonders about him.’

Fernández-Pedrera Correa singles out the reference to fulfilled prophecy as particularly Christian language, raising questions about whether Josephus would have written the sentence in that form.

Elsewhere, Josephus recorded the beliefs and reports of Jewish religious groups without necessarily accepting them himself.

Fernández-Pedrera Correa argued that he could have treated the experiences similarly described by Jesus’s followers, recording their reports of seeing him alive after his crucifixion.

Later Christian copying may have expanded that report into a direct statement that Jesus rose from the dead and fulfilled biblical prophecy.

However, the researcher considered this reconstruction plausible rather than established. The surviving versions cannot determine exactly how much of the resurrection reference Josephus originally wrote.

Scholars have long questioned other statements in the passage that appear to express Christian beliefs, raising suspicions that they were added after Josephus wrote.

The clearest case concerns the declaration that Jesus ‘was the Christ.’

The Latin describes Jesus as having been believed to be the Messiah, the Syriac says he was thought to be the Messiah and the Arabic cautiously suggests he was ‘perhaps’ the Messiah.

The researcher also pointed to Origen, an early Christian writer who said Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Together, he argued, those clues provide the strongest evidence that the direct declaration was not the passage’s original wording.

Another disputed phrase questions whether Jesus should even be called a man, implying he was more than human. It is absent from the Arabic account but survives in the Latin and Syriac versions.

The researcher argued that its absence could reflect Agapius shortening the passage, leaving less direct evidence that the phrase was a later addition.

Fernández-Pedrera Correa is more confident about the closing statement that Jesus’s followers continued to exist in the historian’s own day.

Its wording and subject fit Josephus’s writing habits, he argued, and the versions show no comparable disagreement at that point.

Written account of Jesus rising from the dead identified in 2,000-year-old manuscript, study suggests

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