Steven Carr

'Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had killed this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God.....'

As we all know, John the Baptist was a relative of a crucified criminal.

And John the Baptist was proclaiming that this man was the one who was to come.

How could Josephus have thought of John the Baptist as a good man, when John the Baptist had allegedly championed the cause of one of those failed Messianic candidates, who as a group had led Israel to destruction?

Toto

Josephus doesn't seem to have known that John was the relative of a crucified criminal. Luke was the first one to figure that out.

aa5874

The very passage you quoted about John the Baptist in "Antiquities of the Jews" does not claim that John the Baptist was a relative of a crucified criminal and it does not claim that John the Baptist was proclaiming that the supposed future crucified criminal was to come.

And, the information about John the Baptist helps to show that Josephus was completely unaware of any character called Jesus of Nazareth who was deified in Jerusalem, the most unlikely place for deification of a man on the face of the earth in the 1st century.