But the point is.........had Jesus been who the Bible says he is, Josephus would have given him a little more "air" time than he did. He gave him nothing.... at least anywhere near what his followers claimed of him....that is, if he truely spoke of him at all.
This is a great topic and a good point, but this is also where you "separate the men from the boys".
You must remember the historical and social context in which Josephus wrote this, namely, a suppressed subculture. Thus just like the slaves in the Americas could not use their own languages or their drums to communicate, they found other ways to do so, primarily in fables which had representations of real events or people. The Jews had to do the same thing. So thus as I said, if you're taking Josephus for "face value" you'll get a different read on the purpose of his history.
With regard to Jesus himself though, your point is well taken, but only if Josephus was not a political secular Jew but a converted Christian or unbiased historian. It seemed clear to me after reading Josephus extensively that he was typically anti-Christian and thus would have purposely avoided any references to Jesus. That's how you obliterate a historical personage you want to suppress, don't mention them at all. Thus I believe (and I think it has been proven and is the WT's view) that the references in Josephus about the Christ are additions that are not his. But I wouldn't expect a secular Jew to mention Jesus in particular itself in negative terms, but the most profound historical way to do so is not to mention him at all as if he didn't exist. Then later on, depending upon how much other historical information is suppressed you could try to claim "historical Jesus didn't exist" or something like that.
Thus the critical non-mention of Jesus only shows Josephus did know about him but felt he threatened secular Judaism.
Now this is not an absolute answer, but it is one of the considerations you must consider for answering your very relative question about why Josephus didn't mention Jesus or the Christian movement. Josephus would not be a pro-Christian writer, and is known to be very pro-secular-Judaism, even being at political odds with some of his fellow Jews. He wanted the Jews to get along with the Romans and the other Jews wanted to break away from Rome. Thev validity of secular Judaism post-Messiah, of course, would require the suppression of the claim Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth made to being the Messiah. Plus remember, some of the secular Jews knew and believed quite well that this was the promised Messiah but preferred their own position in the current Jewish culture and didn't want changes. You know, the poor and suppressed wanted to be freed so they welcomed the Messiah, but the oppressors didn't want this, they were having the good life. Josephus would be definitely one who wanted to the secular life to continue and his critical omission of takling about the Christian movement would to me confirm that. So one must not consider Josephus non-biased; he definitely is, and some of what he wrote had to be "encrypted" since had he wrote anything contradicting the "official" popular opinion then his works would have never survived. The choices back then were to write the truth and not be published, write the lies of the popular history and surive, OR do a bit of both. Write something that looks like it fits the popular chronology and then tell little meaningless "stories" in your commentary that hold secrets to what really happened and thus some of the true history survives.
Case in point was Josephus' mention of an eclipse event at the time of Herod's death. Herod's death had been moved back 3 years historically for some reason, not sure why. Josephus knew this and reflected this superficially. But for those who knew better, he provided this eclipse event to correctly date Herod's death in the true year. Thus he came up with this story about the executions, which I'm not sure is really true or not, since it provided far too many details about how to date the eclipse. The story was that these two rabbis rebelled at the time of an annual Jewish Fast. Of all times to rebel. But that provides you with one critical date reference. There are only 4 Jewish fasts and the one occurring closest to Herod's death has to be the 10th of Tebet. The rabbis then get executed a few nights afterward when an eclipse occurred. Again, likely the only reason for mentioning that story and the eclipse was that it could only happen in 1BCE, dating Herod's death on Shebat 2, 1AD.
And some of it is somewhat entertaining if you read between the lines, which is another rather "Jewish" habit they seem to enjoy. Stretching the imagination of the gentiles. The premise that he gives, for instance, for Herod getting off his death bed, was to deal with the dismissal of the high priest who asked his brother to officiate for him because he had had a dream about a "conversation with his wife" the night before. Now why would that outrage Herod and others? Because this priest was old and here he was having "wet dreams". The Jewish law made you unclean if you spilled semen that day. So it has a comical underpenning to it, that is, this old priest having this wet dream and the populace being outraged by this, so much so that they wanted this priest out! You know, no oversexed high priests for this crowd! Yet, I'm wondering if this is true or whether Josephus just needed to be interesting. To outsiders this just reads normally, but for a Jew it might be funny. At any rate, you have an eclipse event which usually always is inserted in the text to provide secret dating of something associated with Herod's death, which was revised, so clearly Josephus is playing what I call the "Double Dating Game". Turns out, this eclipse confirms Herod died in 1AD just when the Bible indicates he did.
So, depending upon how you read Josephus determines what you can get from him. I don't believe the story necessarily about what happened with the rabbis or the priest, but I do understand Josephus was trying to secretly date Herod's death to 1AD in contrast with his own textual reference to only a 34-year rule of Herod instead of 37 years, etc.
So, as you can see, lots of opinions and a complicated mess. But I get LOTS from Josephus on the backside, not as much up front.
But for sure, he's still enough of a problem that he is now, in my opinion, being "suppressed" as much as possible by the powers that be. Articles to discredit him or why one should ignore him seem a bit too frequent now not to presume he's problematic to the false chronology and history being promoted, which is correct. Josephus has been IGNORED up until now but since he has come into focus of late, likely there will be lots of arguments trying to dismiss him.
And why? Because as of now, he is the secular source that completely contradicts the reduced Neo-Babylonian revised chronology that reduces that period by 26 years! It's so amazing when he just comes right out and says 70 years from the last deportation to Cyrus! It's such a direct contradiction it's funny, but it REQUIRES the examination of the secular Neo-Babylonian chronology which is what the anti-Biblicalists don't want! So it's kinda comical but expected, certainly.
Canon
