That’s plausible. But there is no way to know.

The main reason we have no mentions is that we have almost no first century Jewish sources, and Christianity was insignificant even until Pliny a hundred years later. It appears to have only grown noticable during the second century (I show a mathematical demographic reason why that is entirely expected in chapter eighteen of Not the Impossible Faith). Additionally, Judea was destroyed and Jerusalem left a ruin in 70 AD, thus a substantial continued presence in that region would have been less likely; and Paul’s Gentile sect was far more successful than the Jewish mission (and thus it exploded outside Judea even if it began there). So we don’t expect mentions to survive. Thus we cannot use that silence for this thesis.

Direct contrary evidence also exists: Paul says the religion began, and its founders’ base of operations, was in Judea and Jerusalem, and that he had to go there to get approval for his foreign mission. This argues the religion did indeed begin in Judea and was based in Jerusalem (though notably, neither is Galilee, which Paul makes no mention of).

I agree with everything you have written. The notion that there existed an original “genuine” part is pure speculation, and we certainly have no evidence to support the claim that there was an original passage. I have read the narrative surrounding the passage many times, and the narrative clearly runs smoother without the Testimonium passage. When I rejected Christianity back in the 80s, it struck me how weak the case for historicity really is.

Richard, I love your work! I have long suspected that Christianity did not originate in Palestine, but rather in the Asia Minor region, among Hellenistic Jews who were heavily influenced by the Mystery religions in creating their synthesis of Messianic Judaism with savior god mythology. This would certainly explain why there are no contemporary Jewish mentions of a Jesus in the first century (because there was no Jesus and because Christianity originated in the Asia Minor Region). The fact that the earliest writings originated in this region supports my view.

I did not list opinions. I listed empirical data and studies aggregating that data.

I am arguing logically from evidence. I am not just “declaring opinions.”

If you don’t know how to tell the difference, your judgment cannot be reliable in this matter.

Fallacies like “possibly, therefore probably” belong to disingenuous apologetics, not objective scholarship.

I came here looking for facts. I got subjective opinions.

I can appreciate the grammatical analysis, but where’s the cold evidence?

Show the manuscripts.
Do we have ancient, earlier, in-tact, manuscripts that don’t include the references?
Just say that!
Are the remarks written into the margin and only found in later copies?
Show it!
Is it possible Josephus, not being a believer himself, included a quotation in someone else’s words to capture the sentiment about this Jesus of Nazareth?
… We wouldn’t know because the overwhelming bias of your opinions and lack of textual evidence made it impossible to discern what was true and what was opinion.
Secular academia is hardly agnostic on these matters. The bias is motivated and palpable.
Seeing the books you’ve authored below only confirms your extreme bias.

Readers don’t want opinions. They want facts, so they can come to their own conclusion.
Just give facts… you’ll be a much better academic.

No. We have no manuscript of Josephus earlier than the 10th century (none at all). This is typical for almost all ancient literature.

The internal textual evidence though does prove that all the manuscripts we do have (all late medieval) came from Eusebius (i.e. they are copies of copies etc. of the copy Eusebius used when composing his works), and derive from the manuscript(s) used by Origen (who did not see any such passage; he mistook a passage in Hegesippus as in Josephus, and assumed Josephus, per his Autobiography, was orthodox Jewish and thus not a Christian, but otherwise, Origen does not mention Josephus ever referring to Jesus). These points are proved in my study of this, which is reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ.

Your comment is unintelligible.

I cannot discern whose argument you are responding to, or what you mean by any of your apparent premises, or how your conclusion follows from them.

Please be more clear.

Here is the big problem with this methodology, he has NOT analysed other verses or books to see of this pattern is the same, ie he had just focused on the testimonium and pilate passages and found linguistic difference,but if he did the same with other verses, books he would find the same differences,ergo the pattern is not unique to pilate and TF but to all verses,by focusing on the most famous verses and neglecting all others, bad research,does not prove anything, and actually proves the TF is more genuine.

Interesting point offered is that “Pseudo-Hegesippus version would indicate that the Eusebius source was already a modification introduced by the early Messianic/Christian followers of Jesus “, supporting your possibilitier that Pampulas could have been responsible for the TF interpolation.

I didn’t find a bibliography for your “The End of the Arabic Testimonium” post summarizing Alice Whealey’s (2008) article: “The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic” . I think this is it:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f6af/9df7a4668bf26f8a78c2ac5cf57cc88fcf2a.pdf.