ABSTRACT.
After a thousand years of editing Josephus, his work became standardised, and all previous copies seem to have been destroyed, so all our versions come from 11th century copies. But then in the 18th century suddenly they saw some document that must have made them scramble for their scissors. So what in Josephus had caused this alarm? It was this: “Menahem, son of Judas the Galilean.’ What could be wrong with that? Christian scholars began to suggest Josephus should have said ‘grandson’, not ‘son’.
The earliest suggestion that something was wrong was Christian scholar Emil Schürer, who wrote in his history of the Jews about Menahem, ‘perhaps rather grandson’ And from that point on scholars have been agreeing and giving motives as to why Josephus wrote ‘son’ (e.g., McLaren, Gunnar Haaland) argue Josephus had rhetorical reasons to blame Judas (scapegoating). In other words, he had a reason to lie. But did he lie, or are they desperate to accuse him of lying for some strategic reason?
THEORY
Suddenly in the 19th century Menahem is unlikely to be the son of Judas the Galilean, so he must be the grandson. Why? Because the Galilean was alleged to have died in 6 AD during the revolt against the census, and that would make Menahem too old to be leading a band up the slopes of Masada and defeating the Roman garrison in 66 AD.
The trouble is Josephus does not report the death of Judas the Galilean, which is either because he died in his bed or because his death was cut out, as it is very unlikely he forgot to mention the death of the person he blames for the war that his ‘War’ book is about. So why suggest the Galilean died in 6 AD? Obviously, if he died later, then Menahem could be his son. While Josephus does not tell us when the Galilean died, perhaps this verse in the Bible does.
‘Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.’ (Acts 5:36)
This is the only reference to Judas the Galilean dying anywhere, but it is also one of the strangest verses in the Bible because whereas there are contradictions between one Gospel and another, this is a total mess within itself. It is supposed to be an account of a speech made by a Pharisee named Gamaliel to the Sanhedrin when Peter is arrested. Extraordinarily, he refers to the revolt by Theudas and, after him, another led by our Judas the Galilean. The trouble is, this speech by Gamaliel is supposed to be happening around AD 35, but Josephus places Theudas’ revolt under Fadus, who became governor in AD 44, so the Theudas’s revolt had not yet happened when Gamaliel was supposed to be speaking. Also, the revolts of Judas and Theudas are mistakenly reversed; Judas should come first and then Theudas. This weird, anachronistic verse from the Bible is supposed to be proof that Judas died at the time of the census. But it has placed Judas’s revolt after Theudas’s in 44 AD. So how can it prove he died in 6 AD? The only thing this verse proves is that either the person writing this has messed up, big time, or perhaps he is right. Judas arose at the time of the census, and his movement was still functioning after Theudas’s revolt in AD 44, which we know it was. It clearly does not actually say that Judas died at the time of the census.
Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. Full stop, which could mean any amount of time before: ‘He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.’
So even this verse does not tell us when Judas died, yet it is often quoted as saying just that. Look at this:
‘JUDAS OF GALILEE Mentioned in Acts 5:37 as the leader of an insurrection occasioned by the census of Quirinius in 6 A.D. He, and those who obeyed him, it is said, perished in that revolt. (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)
‘It is said, perished in that revolt! Said by whom? It does not even appear in Acts, or are we supposed to gather it from the mess that is supposed to be the speech by Gamaliel? Checking the original text in Greek, AI states the text just says, ‘He appeared in 6 AD and died sometime when his followers were scattered,’ which, from what Josephus reports, did not happen until the War of 66 AD. Furthermore, the first scholar to even suggest such a date as 6 AD for the death was not until Emil Schürer, a 19th-century German theologian who obviously was trying to fit history into the Bible timeline.
As we have no actual report in Josephus or any reliable primary source as to when the Galilean died, is there a way we can extrapolate from the information we do have the date of his death? Yes, there is. What we have is information about his three sons. Firstly, these two:
‘The sons of Judas of Galilee [James and Simon] were now slain: I mean of that Judas who caused the people to revolt, when Quirinius came to take an account of the estates of the Jews, as we have shown in a foregoing book.’
Strangely, we are told nothing about what these two sons did to get themselves slain, and they do not even appear in the ‘foregoing book’. But there must have been more since you will see their names are inserted [James and Simon] because the previous paragraph about their activities, when removed, removed their names! And some texts do not have their names. So they had to be added into the following text by someone who had the previous text available to read the names but still thought it advisable to exclude the full paragraph! An interesting fact in itself.
But what is important to us at this point is that this event is happening around 47 AD, so if Judas died in 6 AD, then the youngest of the two could, at best, be 41 and the other 42 or older. Is this age a little unlikely for an active revolutionary?. You could argue that perhaps these ages are possible for revolutionaries. Okay, but now just consider the third brother, Menachem. How old was Menachem when he led his band up to the heights of Masada to attack the Romans? We can only guess at an age for such an active leader as anywhere between 22 to 56. Taking the oldest figure of 56, then, as this event is occurring in 66 AD, he must have been born around 10 AD. This means that Judas the Galilean did not die in the revolt against the census in 6 AD as claimed by the encyclopedias, because it would surely make Menachem too old to be clambering up the steep slopes of Masada and whacking the Romans. And if we give Menahem a more likely age of, say, 36, as even 56 seems just too old, then the Galilean must have still been alive around 30 AD to impregnate his wife. The fact that Judas the Galilean was alive in 30 AD begins to raise some very serious questions, so serious that we have the refusal to accept what is written in Josephus! Menahem was the son of Judas the Galilean, and he should know, as they were both leaders in the war against the Romans, and ‘son’ was accepted for over a thousand years.
But then, as mentioned, in the 19th century, suddenly academics began to write that Josephus was wrong; Menahem was not the Galilean’s son, he was his grandson! Not only that, but actual motives were given as to why Josephus lied about it. What happened? Why did this attack on Josephus’ integrity suddenly appear? Why did it matter so much if he was the son or the grandson? I suspect that this was a time when people were investigating historical documents, and the church in fact created a movement to counteract these historians, called the modernists. It then closed them down because they too were coming up with some unfortunate truths.
One famous clerical modernist who was an expert on ancient foreign languages was Canon Alfred Lilley, the Canon of Hereford Cathedral. He had been asked to go to Paris to translate a document found in the Church of St Sulpice. We have records of him going to Paris and having intimate contact with French modernists. He returned back to England and told his equally well-educated friend, Rev. Douglas Bartlett, that he had seen a document that seemed to prove Jesus was alive after Pilate left Judea and died at the age of 45. He thought it had come from the Cathars but was older, and after the demise of the Cathars, it had been held in Switzerland. It subsequently disappeared, and Lilley thought it had been acquired by the Vatican and destroyed.
While this is hearsay evidence from a conversation with Bartlett after Lilley’s death, it does show the mood of investigation at the time. So something seems to have come up that required the Galilean to die in 6 AD, so Josephus had to be accused of being a liar, calling Menahem a son instead of a grandson.
If you accept that James and Simon, who died in 47 AD, are the sons of Judas the Galilean, then you already have a problem chronologically since it makes them 41 and 42, so adding Menahem as a son who was clambering up the slopes of Masada in 66 AD is not that big a jump. But too big for some because the implications appear to be shattering.
‘He, [the Galilean] and those who obeyed him, it is said, perished in that revolt.’ (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)
No, it is not said! And as yet we only have a possible date of his death, somewhere around 30 AD, but no actual method. The only argument that could explain Josephus’ lack of reporting his death is that he died in his bed of old age. But this would actually leave us with no actual explanation. There has to be something more to his story yet to be discovered, and this must be to do with the Gospel story.
So now, we need to ask, in what important way does the Galilean’s story contradict the biblical story when, superficially, there does not appear to be any link between the two characters, other than that Jesus has sometimes been referred to as the Galilean? I think you might already know the answer to that question even if you still can’t quite believe it. I must admit that as I was researching, I could hardly believe what was unfolding.
The first clue comes from Suetonius’ book ‘The Twelve Caesars’; his chapter on Claudius has this:
‘Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestos, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.’ (Suetonius)
Most present-day scholars consider this genuine because a Christian interpolator would be unlikely to call Jesus ‘Chrestos’ or a ‘troublemaker’. But many think Suetonius was talking about Christ and got the spelling wrong. I am afraid this is very unlikely. Could Jesus have influenced Jews in Rome to commit misdemeanours as early as 49 AD? In fact, when Paul arrives in Rome twelve years later, in 62 AD, at his first visit to a synagogue, the Jews say they have heard of Jesus but don’t have much idea what he was about.
Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews is actually mentioned in the Bible, and it does not associate the expulsion with Jesus.
‘There he (Paul) met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.’ (Acts 18:2)
So there was a Jew, called ‘Chrestos’, not Christos, who was influential amongst Roman Jews, causing them to revolt in the seat of Roman power. But Chrestos is not a name; it actually means ‘auspicious’. So this person who was causing the Jews to make trouble is considered by the Jews to be auspicious!
The followers of Chrestos must have been doing something serious to get the whole Jewish community expelled. Perhaps we are talking about someone like Osama bin Laden, who influenced Muslims in America to cause enough trouble for President Trump to consider banning the entry of Muslims into the United States. Whoever this person called Chrestos was, he was obviously very famous to the Jews, someone as famous as, if not more famous than, Jesus, but clearly functioning before Jesus for his fame to reach Rome by 49 AD. So why don’t we know his name? Josephus writes about several minor misdemeanors by Jews in Rome but never mentions Chrestos or this major expulsion of Jews from Rome! The event must have been right in the middle of his ‘War’ book. But it is not there! Was the event removed with the actual name of Chrestos?
The second clue is that in 34/35 AD, after the death of Philip, his brother Herod Antipas married Philip’s wife, Herodias. To do that, he divorced his first wife, who was the daughter of King Areta of Petra. John the Baptist complained about the marriage and was arrested and later beheaded. Herod’s first wife went home crying to her father, King Areta, who raised an army and attacked Herod, totally destroying his army in 36 AD. Josephus reports that the population thought the destruction of Herod’s army was punishment from God for recently killing the Baptist. If Jesus was active for two years after the Baptist, he could not have been killed by Pilate in 32 AD, as that date has been suggested for over a thousand years. Furthermore, we have hearsay evidence from Conon Alfred Lilley that he had seen a document in St Sulpice that said just that.
So to sum up at the moment, we have attempts to have the Galilean die in 6 AD, which caused a problem with his relationship with Menahem (son or grandson). We have an important Jewish rebel called Chrestos who was famous enough to cause some sort of serious trouble in Rome that resulted in the Jews being ejected. And we have Jesus alive after the death of John the Baptist in 36 AD, which might even suggest Jesus was alive after Pilate left Judea in 36 AD! And we have a strange silence in Josephus about the death of the Galilean and a strange silence about the expulsion of the Jews from Rome and even a strange silence from Suetonius as to what caused this expulsion of the Jews. Not to forget a strange silence about who Chrestos was?
Now perhaps we can find the answer in a version of Josephus called the Slavonic Josephus that, while it has sections inserted by Christians, also has sections that are not Christian, that do not appear in our version of Josephus. Here is a section which has been doctored to appear like Jesus but is so bad it is easy to spot the original from the fake.
I will put in bold the Christian interpolations, which you will see are the silly bits.
‘They bade him enter the city, kill the Roman troops and Pilate and reign over us. But he did not care to do so. When knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they gathered together with the High priest and spake: “We are powerless and weak to withstand the Romans. But as withal the bow is bent, we will go and tell Pilate what we have heard, and we will be without distress, lest if he hear it from others, we be robbed of our substance and ourselves be put to the sword and our children ruined.” And they went and told it to Pilate. And he sent and had many of the people cut down. And brought in the wonder-doer. And when he had instituted a trial concerning him, he perceived that he is a doer of good, but not an evildoer, nor a revolutionary, nor one desirous of kingship, and set him free. He had, you should know, healed his dying wife. And they gave 30 talents to Pilate that they should kill him. And he took it and gave them liberty to carry out their wishes themselves. And they sought out a suitable time to kill him. For they had given Pilate 30 talents earlier, that he should give Jesus up to them. And they crucified him against the ancestral law; and they greatly reviled him. (Slavonic Josephus)
This is what is written in Slavonic Josephus’ version of the ‘War’ book, and obviously the whole piece could not be a Christian interpolation because it makes no sense and in fact contradicts the Gospel story. It has to be about an armed leader of a rebellion, and the Jesus inserts have been slipped in by a complete idiot. For instance, they inform Pilate about this bad person to save further bloodshed. Pilate’s cohort of soldiers then cut down many of this person’s followers. But when this person is brought to trial, Pilate finds him innocent! This makes the whole event crazy because handing him over, by the Jewish authorities, to save further bloodshed, was a complete waste of time as Pilate has no interest in him because he had done nothing wrong. And even more ridiculous is the bribing of Pilate so that the Jews can crucify Jesus themselves ‘against ancestral law’. This was so silly that it was discarded in our final orthodox version of Josephus’ ‘War’ book, and I am not surprised. I must say I particularly like the little bit about Jesus having popped in to cure Pilate’s wife. Sadly, in the Bible she just has a boring dream.
The section has got to be about Judas the Galilean, not Jesus, because ‘they bade him (Jesus or Judas?) to enter the city, kill the Roman troops and Pilate and rule over us.’ Surely this could not be about Jesus and there is no event in the Jesus story that has ‘And Pilate sent and had many of the people cut down.’ But it does fit perfectly into the Acts story that the Galilean was killed when his followers were “scattered”! The encouragement by the Jews to kill Pilate makes total sense since he had outraged the Jerusalem population by his ruthless behaviour.
A very interesting point is that whoever made these insertions did not know the right way to blame the Jews instead of the Romans for Jesus’ death. What do I mean by that? Obviously the Barabbas story is the present way of blaming the Jews, with Pilate wiping his hands of the affair and the Jews insisting on his crucifixion. This means that this insertion occurred around 100 AD, as our earliest Gospel with the Barabbas story is dated at around 150 AD. So doctoring documents was already occurring at very early dates.
So, here is the section as it probably appeared without the silly bits.
‘They bade Judas the Galilean to enter the city, kill the Roman troops and Pilate and reign over us. When knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they gathered together with the High priest and spake: “We are powerless and weak to withstand the Romans. But as withal the bow is bent, we will go and tell Pilate what we have heard, and we will be without distress, lest if he hear it from others, we be robbed of our substance and ourselves be put to the sword and our children ruined.” And they went and told it to Pilate. And he sent and had many of the people cut down. And brought in the Galilean. And when he had instituted a trial concerning him, he found him guilty of rebellion and sentenced him to die.
This ties in perfectly with the quote from the Bible where Caiaphas suggests getting rid of one to save the many. This surely has to be where Josephus described the capture and death of Judas the Galilean by Pontius Pilate in 32 AD.
Now it all becomes clear as to why Christian scholars had to kill the Galilean off in 6 AD and rename the relationship between Menahem and his father to grandfather! And has it now become obvious who Chrestos was, who caused all the problems in Rome and in fact caused another problem by his followers fanning the flames of the Great Fire of Rome, which occurred in 62 AD yet was unreported by Josephus?
Now here is important confirmation of the truth about the Galilean from the very document used to verify the crucifixion of Jesus by Pilate. It is the statement by Tacitus in Annals of Imperial Rome that Nero persecuted the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome:
‘Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition was thus checked for the moment.’
Firstly, George Andresen noticed in the earliest extent, eleventh century, copy of Tacitus, Annals. After the ‘i’ in Christians there is a strange gap suggesting that the text had been altered, from an ‘e’. At first this was ridiculed as nonsense, but then using ultra-violet examination of the manuscript the alteration was conclusively shown.
So it looks like Tacitus used a different name, and somebody felt the need to change it. Why? Because that name matches Suetonius’ trouble maker, Chrestos. But now I need to employ an expert on Roman history to identify the person who ‘suffered the extreme penalty’ at the hands of Pontius Pilate, so I turn to the most famous source book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, who corrects for us the Tacitus statement.
‘Although the genuine followers of Moses [Jews] were innocent of the fire of Rome, there had arisen among them a new and pernicious sect of Galileans, which was capable of the most horrid crimes.’ (Edward Gibbon: “Decline and fall…” vol:1ch:16)
Gibbon follows that statement, making it absolutely clear that, because the term ‘Galileans’ had been used, Tacitus confused followers of Jesus with those of Judas:
‘Under the appellation of Galileans, two distinctions of men were confounded, the most opposite to each other in their manners and principles: the disciples who had embraced the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, and the zealots who had followed the standard of Judas the Gaulonite. The followers of Judas, who impelled their countrymen into rebellion, were soon buried under the ruins of Jerusalem, whilst those of Jesus, known by the more celebrated name of Christians, diffused themselves over the Roman Empire. How natural was it for Tacitus, in the time of Hadrian, to appropriate to the Christians the guilt and the sufferings, which he might, with far greater truth and justice, have attributed to a sect whose odious memory was almost extinguished.
Gibbon had no idea that in the future I would make such an outrageous suggestion that it was Judas the Galilean who was killed by Pilate in 32 AD, not Jesus, but with no axe to grind, he has unwittingly backed me up by writing that those who fanned the flames of the Great Fire of Rome were called Galileans, and the person these Galileans were following was Judas the Galilean, making him the person who was killed by Pontius Pilate. So Tacitus’ statement should read:
Chrestos [Judas the Galilean] suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment.’ (Tacitus)
Perhaps this is why Tacitus was never quoted by Christians as proof of the Bible story till they had doctored it in the fifteenth century. But now Tacitus is quoted everywhere as the first non-Christian to mention the crucifixion of Jesus by Pilate. But he does not actually mention Jesus or crucifixion at all, just someone very famous, called Chrestos, an auspicious person, who was killed by Pilate. And that person almost certainly was Judas the Galilean.
Is that still a bit too big a jump of logic for you? Well, just remember, when Josephus mentioned the appointment of Joseph ben Caiaphas as High Priest, just before the time of Pilate, he added:
‘Caiaphas became a high priest during a turbulent period.’ (Josephus Antiquities)
So the ‘turbulent period’ seems to have been brought to an end after Caiaphas became high priest. How? By the appointment of a military prefect, Pontius Pilate, who did something to bring it to an end. And how did Pilate bring this turbulent period to an end? By crucifying the peaceful Jesus? Obviously not! It had to be the destruction of the rebel army and the capture and killing of their leader, Judas the Galilean. And how did Pilate capture Judas? Look at this statement in the Bible:
‘It was Caiaphas who had advised the Jewish leaders that it was expedient for one man to die for the people.’ (John 18:14)
This is interpreted as Caiaphas recognising that Jesus was going to die to save our souls, but that is a most unlikely explanation, as it makes Caiaphas recognise Jesus as some sort of God-like figure. A much more likely interpretation is the sort of dilemma that faced village leaders in occupied France during the Second World War: either to sacrifice one resistance fighter or have twenty villagers shot. So it looks like Caiaphas is going to betray Judas to the Romans, which would result in the peace that the Jewish authorities required and the peace that Jesus the prophet seemed to be functioning in.
© Julian Doyle IOW 2025. Author of ‘Who Killed Jesus?” https://www.amazon.com/dp/1068436964