There is a valuable new study by Chrissy Hansen, “Josephus and the Murder of James: An Argument Against Some Common Wisdom,” in the new journal Studies of Biblical Interest 2 (2025). I don’t agree with its conclusion but I think it’s a quality study worth considering. Here I’ll explain what I mean.

The Eristic Upshot

Hansen’s piece reminds me of a similar study on Thallus by Jobjorn Boman in Liber Annuus. Both argue a similar but different thesis than mine. Boman argues that Thallus never mentioned Jesus because Thallus lived and wrote before Jesus, in the first century B.C., in contrast to my argument in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ) that we probably have a quotation of Thallus in Eusebius showing that Thallus wrote in the second century A.D. and merely abbreviated Phlegon, where neither mentioned Jesus. Boman’s study is rich with valuable data and analysis and though I don’t believe his case is stronger than mine (it suffers a number of weaknesses), it is nevertheless credible. If I’m wrong, the next most likely hypothesis is that Boman is right, and therefore the probability that Thallus mentioned Jesus is simply too low to credit.

So even though Boman is technically arguing against me, he is thereby actually proving my same point: Thallus does not attest Jesus. By the law of conjunctive probability, while Boman and I cannot both be right, the existence of both our arguments, two independently strong cases, increases the probability of our common conclusion. Because the probability that we are both wrong must necessarily be lower than the probability that either of us is. So the probability that one of us is right must necessarily be higher than the probability that either of us is alone. This means that the existence of both of our studies, even though they cannot both be correct, increases the probability that Thallus never mentioned Jesus. (On this point of logic see my discussion of method in Stephen Davis Gets It Wrong. The point only holds for strong cases, not frivolous ones. A thousand frivolous arguments are collectively worth less than one strong argument and thus add no meaningful weight to it.)

Hansen has now done the same thing with the James reference in Josephus. I just described my case this month in T.C. Schmidt on James in Josephus: Apologetics vs. History so I won’t reiterate it here. The gist is that I believe “the one called Christ” is a scribal note accidentally interpolated in the Christian library in Caesarea sometime between Origen (c. 250 AD) and Eusebius (c. 310 AD). I published this result in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (also reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ) and have added to it since (most especially in The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus). It may likely (though need not necessarily) have replaced “the one of Damnaios” (which means in English “the son” of Damnaios), the corrector mistaking the duplication of this from three sentences later as a common scribal mistake and mistaking “the one called Christ” as the accidentally omitted text (the “correction” to the error).

Hansen sides instead with Ken Olson, arguing that the whole clause “the brother of Jesus the one called Christ” is an interpolation, and indeed a deliberate one, likely by Eusebius. Hansen smartly catalogs evidence that Eusebius would indeed do something like that. And I do suspect Eusebius of both interferences in the manuscripts of Josephus, to justify or support his use of Josephus in his other works. But I also allow the possibility that this interference occurred at the hand or direction of Pamphilus, his tutor and predecessor, who had control of that library in between Origen and Eusebius.

Hansen’s case relies on the premise that the interpolation of “the brother of Jesus the one called Christ” presumes knowledge of the forged Testimonium Flavianum. Which makes for an internally coherent theory. But if Pamphilus forged the TF, then Pamphilus could also have doctored the James passage, by Hansen’s own reasoning. I don’t think we can know either way, and Eusebius is as likely the culprit, so there isn’t that much to dispute here. Ultimately Hansen makes a good case, and there’s just no way to reject our conclusion in common without refuting both her case and mine. As with Boman, our two results cannot both be true; but it’s less likely both are false than that either one of them is. So Hansen’s study only makes more probable the conclusion we hold in common, which is that Josephus never mentioned our Jesus here. It therefore reinforces my case even as it argues an alternative to it.

The Principal Defect in Hansen’s Case

I actually think Hansen makes a decent case. So by pointing to where I disagree, I am only documenting where we differ. You should not get the impression that there aren’t good arguments in her case as well, or that you shouldn’t examine and consider the whole thing. Moreover, my arguments against Hansen here won’t help apologists who want this passage to be authentic, because the only way to agree with me against Hansen is to agree with me about this passage, which eliminates it as a reference to the Christian Jesus. But with those caveats, here are the principle problems I have with it.

The central and repeated defect across Hansen’s paper is the lack of any plausible reconstructed text of Josephus. Hansen rightly agrees that the phrase Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, Iakôbos onoma autô, literally [James] [the name] [for whom], or simply “whose name was James,” is from the hand of Josephus. Although this is unusually in the dative, referencing James with an indirect, rather than a direct, pronoun or relative clause. Hence we could translate it more literally as “the name for whom was James.” This is a Josephanism. Not uniquely. It’s common in Greek. But with a brief search I found at least six other “the name for whom” phrases across Josephus, and that may be an undercount. And these are peculiarly the distinctive words not found in Origen, so we know Origen was not quoting the Josephan text.

The problem with this is that it means there was some other word in the text to which this was referring. And Hansen provides no suggestion for what that deleted word was or how or why it was deleted. My theory is that the word was not deleted, so my theory has a simplicity that Hansen’s lacks. “The brother of Jesus” is then the noun clause that the clause “James for him the name” relates to. But Hansen is proposing those words weren’t there. Yet then the sentence lacks a noun for this pronoun clause to develop. In Josephus’s story Ananus “brought to the court the brother” for whom the name was James (παραγαγὼν εἰς αὐτὸ τὸν ἀδελφὸν, paragagôn eis auto ton adelphon). If we remove “the brother,” then “for whom” was the name James? Who (grammatically) did Ananus bring to court that had this name?

For example, in Life 207 Josephus says “they all went to the great plain where I resided; its name is Asochis” (ἧκον οὖν πάντες εἰς τὸ μέγα πεδίον, ἐν ᾧ διέτριβον Ἀσωχίς ἐστιν ὄνομα αὐτῷ), lit. “Asochis is the name for it.” What does the pronoun “it” refer to? The “plain” (pedion). In Antiquities 18.196 Josephus says, Germanus saw “the soldier who was in purple and learned his name was Agrippa” (…τὸν στρατιώτην … καὶ μαθὼν μὲν Ἀγρίππαν ὄνομα αὐτῷ), where the pronoun “for him” (hence in English “his”) refers to “the soldier” (ton stratiôtên). In Antiquities 17.62, an Arabian woman brews a love potion, “for that is what it is named” (φίλτρον γὰρ δὴ ὄνομα αὐτῷ εἶναι), where again “the name for which was” refers to the potion (philtron). In Antiquities 17.25 Saturninus gave “a man” (a “Jew from Bayblon” with a sizable force) some land, the “name for whom was Ulatha” (ἄνδρα … Οὐλαθὰ ὄνομα αὐτῷ). And in Antiquities 1.284 Jacob chose a town to name Bethel (τὸ χωρίον ὄνομα αὐτῷ Βηθὴλ θέμενος), where again τὸ χωρίον (“the town”) is the referent of the pronoun in “the name he gave for it.”

As in all these cases, when we have a pronoun in the dative like this, it always must be referring to a previously stated noun. But what noun could it be referring to in Antiquities 20.200? Hansen has deleted any possible noun. And evidently she (and, just as evidently, her peer reviewers) forgot about this. She would need to speculate on some “lost” noun there (as well as explain how it disappeared). One might think it was something generic like “a man” or “a certain someone.” But those are ruled out by what follows the name of James: “and certain others” (καί τινας ἑτέρους), which also comes from Josephus. It would be awkward to say “someone and some others.” Usually you would just say “some guys” or the like, and not bother naming any of them. That Josephus said “the name for whom was James and some others” therefore suggests that the missing noun was more substantive than just another “someone,” something that explains why this one guy is being named and not the others. Put a pin in that.

The most important example is Antiquities 11.198, where Josephus describes “a certain maiden in Babylon” (τις ἐν Βαβυλῶνι κόρη) who was an orphan but was being raised “by her uncle, whose name was Mordecai” (παρὰ τῷ θείῳ Μαρδοχαίῳ), and her name we learn in the following sentence is Esther (indeed the Esther). This is actually overlooked by Hansen as the most apposite passage that is written in the most similar way and with the most similar function as the James passage. The subject of this story starts unnamed (a “girl”) and she is identified by her “uncle,” still also unnamed. Then we get his name—but not hers. And only a whole explanation later do we learn her name–even though she (not Mordecai) is the actual main character of this whole story. So we get “a girl … raised by her uncle Mordecai, for this was the name for him” (κόρη … παρὰ τῷ θείῳ Μαρδοχαίῳ, τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα αὐτῷ, τρεφομένη), and later we learn she’s named Esther, much like we get “the brother of Jesus, the name for whom was James,” and only later do we learn who this Jesus was (Jesus the son of Damnaios).

The key lesson here is that when Josephus does this, the named person is not relevant to the story—they are incidental. That is why they are introduced this way. They only matter because of their relation to the person the story is actually about. In this case, that’s the girl Esther; in the other case, it’s Jesus the son of Damnaios. So there are two things here that my theory explains and Hansen’s does not: why Josephus said “the name for whom was James” (because James is incidental; someone else in this sentence is the actual point of the story) and what the noun is that that pronoun refers to (it’s “brother” and hence Jesus). In other words, Josephus’s construction (“the name for whom was James and some others”) entails some noun preceded that identifies the actual reason James is being mentioned here, like someone who must be the actual protagonist of the story. There is only one available protagonist—the only reason Josephus is telling this story at all: to explain why Jesus the son of Damnaios succeeded Ananus, indeed after just three months in office (and further explaining why the father of that disgraced Ananus is trying to buy off this Jesus in the next scene).

This means what is in the text (“the brother of Jesus”) has to be original. Otherwise there is no plausible explanation of (1) what other noun or noun phrase was supposed to be here that Josephus references with his subsequent dative pronoun, (2) why Josephus is identifying James at all (rather than just saying “some guys” for example), and (3) why Josephus is identifying him so obliquely (implying someone else was introduced here who is actually more important to the story). There is also left no explanation of who Jesus the son of Damnaios is. Without the story actually being about him, he just shows up suddenly as the guy chosen to replace Ananus, with no explanation of who he was, or why he was being chosen, or why Ananus’s father should then be lavishing him with money. In other words, my theory makes immense grammatical and narrative sense. Hansen’s (and likewise Olson’s) theory makes no grammatical or narrative sense.

And that, in my opinion, kills the Hansen-Olson thesis. It’s not impossible. We can imagine, for example, that Eusebius erased some noun here, replacing it with “the brother of Jesus called Christ.” Perhaps it was “a certain Pharisee” or “a rabble rouser” or even (less likely) just “a man.” Who knows what. That could happen. But this suffers all the other explanatory problems. Which range beyond what I just pointed out. The list of evidence for my take is large, although a lot of it does support both our theories equally. And that is why I don’t think I’ve “refuted” Hansen’s thesis. It’s just a lot less likely than mine, as mine has greater exlpanatory power and scope, and is simpler (since my two-step emendation is no more complex than Hansen’s has to be). Hansen’s proposal is still a far better explanation of all the evidence than the apologetical one (and not just for the reasons I gave last time; Hansen adds to that case). But it’s just not likely to be correct compared to mine, which fits far more of the evidence with less fudging.

Lesser Problems

There is also a statistical methodological problem in Hansen’s case that I see commonly in similar scholarship. She often argues from what Josephus “usually” does to argue that he can’t have done something here, but forgets that those examples often are not apposite enough to carry as much weight as she gives. Josephus is doing something unusual here, so we should expect him to do it unusually—we should not expect him to conform to his practice in very different contexts. This point is clear from the Esther story, where everything Hansen tries to argue Josephus would never do, he nevertheless does. And he does it precisely when the same unusual context occurs: he needs to mention someone incidentally, when really they only matter because of their relationship to someone else more central to the story. And he fully names this central person last. And after identifying them by their relationship to the incidental person (“a girl raised by her uncle, whose name was Mordecai” / “the brother of Jesus, whose name was James”).

Notice that the story as Josephus tells it cannot start with introducing Jesus ben Damnaeus. Because Jesus isn’t being hauled into court and killed. The story begins with his brother, whose only role in the story is to explain how Jesus gets involved. So Josephus has to introduce this incidental plot-driving victim as “the brother” of the main character Jesus, a main character whose significance becomes evident a few sentences later, at the “surprise” conclusion of the story: Ananus’s obsessive sense of justice ironically ends up placing his enemies in power. This is entirely a story about Jesus. It starts with Jesus (through his brother) and ends with Jesus (as Ananus’s successor). This unusual story structure is what causes Josephus to reverse his usual pattern, and introduce Jesus by his brother, and only fully identify him at the climax. It is also possible, again, that he did fully name him here, since my scribal emendation theory entails it would be replaced by the marginal note, and thus does not require that ad hoc. But it’s also possible, as in his Esther tale, that he withheld the full name to heighten the surprise ending. To a Greek reader it would be obvious something was up about this guy Jesus, because the grammatical structure signals the connection will become important.

This calls attention to other, lesser methodological errors:

Arguing that the adelphonym (naming Jesus in respect to his brother) only makes sense if the person adding it knows about the TF two volumes earlier brings its own problems to get around (the TF never says Jesus had brothers or that they were Christians), but more importantly ignores the narrative point in the alternative theory: Josephus naming Jesus in respect to his brother is exactly what we would expect him to do if this is indeed what happened. In other words, it was the brother of Jesus’s death that precipitates the entire sequence of events. So obviously Josephus would have to introduce him that way. There is no need of assuming the TF.

In fact assuming the interpolator is reacting to the TF raises questions like why would whoever added this clause not then make it more explicitly refer to the TF? Or add to the TF a reference to James being his brother and follower? Not that these were sure to happen. Careless or sparing or sneaky forgers might choose not to. But these still become more likely then, and their absence is therefore at least a small hit to the probability of Hansen’s overall thesis. Whereas my theory makes what we have more natural and expected. Likewise for the emendation: the reason “called Christ” slips into the text here is not because of the TF, but because this is where the marginal note was—and that’s because this is where it had to be, because this is the only “brother of Jesus named James” near the destruction of Jerusalem (Hansen herself makes a strong case for that, even just from the name James; her same argument becomes stronger if the original text read as James the brother of Jesus).

Similarly, Hansen dislikes the idea that the text originally read “the brother of Jesus son of Damnaios whose name was James” but Hansen’s entire argument actually increases its probability: if it were true (as already noted above, it’s not; but if it were) that Josephus “always” and thus “would always” fully identify his characters at the start and not the end of stories about them, then this entails he wrote “the brother of Jesus son of Damnaios whose name was James.” You can’t have it both ways. Either Josephus always does that or he doesn’t. The one entails the other. Hansen is making my own case for me here.

It’s not true anyway. Josephus doesn’t do it for Esther. So we can’t say he would do it for Jesus. But if we say, perhaps, that Josephus “would more likely” do it that way here, then this also still argues that’s then more likely what he did. And so the insertion of “the one called Christ” resulted from mistaking “the one of Damnaios” as an accidental duplication from the “the one of Damnaios” a few lines down and the marginal note “the one called Christ” as the correction. They are, after all, very similar: both start with Jesus and add tou damnaiou (τοῦ Δαμναίου) or tou legomenou (τοῦ λεγομένου). Readers of Greek might notice how much alike delta is in appearance to lambda in the uncial script this would then have been in (Δ-amnaiou / Λ-egomenou), more easily convincing a corrector that an error occurred. Readers of Greek might also notice that the closing line reads Iêsoun ton tou Damnaiou (Ἰησοῦν τὸν τοῦ Δαμναίου), rather than simply Iêsoun tou Damnaiou. The addition of an accusative definite article implies something like “Jesus, the one who was the son of Damnaios,” which looks like a back reference to an introduction of Jesus before as the son of Damnaios. All these coincidences seem unlikely on any other interpretation of events. And yet we don’t even need to suppose this to make sense of what Josephus wrote.

Conclusion

In result, I don’t think Hansen has presented the most likely explanation of events. But she still has presented a more likely explanation of events than the apologetical camp. And her theory is worth considering and comparing. And even if her conclusion is not the most likely, she documents a lot of useful information informing of all theories not just hers. For example, she presents a lot more evidence of Origen (and other Christians) using legomenos reverently (and not “distant and skeptically” as apologists falsely claim) and more examples (and scholarship) documenting Origen’s sloppiness with citing or paraphrasing Josephus generally, evincing his reliance on what was evidently an often shaky memory. And a great deal else—including material further refuting T.C. Schmidt, even though she probably submitted this paper to review before Schmidt published. So however you cut it, this is a valuable contribution to Jesus studies.