ynquirer

Those are two questions and not just one. To the first, my answer is: of course, Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, since the notion that a human being could possibly be the Son of God is specifically Christian, and Josephus was not a Christian by faith.

As regard the second question, I think that Josephus’ religious beliefs plus political agenda allowed him altogether to say that Jesus was the messiah (and performed many miracles) and still not be a Christian.

That ancient historians were as interested in miracles as modern historians can be is anachronism. Just recall that Josephus himself in War of the Jews speaks of wonders worked by God to help Vespasian and Titus destroy the Jewish revolt.

Regardless, your remark that Josephus too shortly deals with Jesus the Christ might be relevant if Josephus was a historian without a definite purpose, both political and religious; an aimless historian, so to say, who wandered across characters and facts. Provided that he did have such a purpose, he would have written on Jesus according to which he thought fit, neither more nor less.

See above.

Johnny Skeptic

But that does not explain why no first century historian documents the miracles of Jesus in detail. If, as the texts claim, Jesus performed many miracles in Jerusalem, throughout all Galilee, and throughout all Syria, and also performed many miracles that were not recorded, he would easily have been a unique many in all of human history. He would have been a big celebrity. However, only the Gospels make a big deal out of the miracles that Jesus perform. It is worth mentioning that only the Old Testament mentions anything about the Ten Plagues in Egypt. If the Ten Plagues in Egypt occured, it is very probable that there would be some non-biblical historical records about them.

If Jesus performed miracles, and if the Ten Plagues occured, those events would easily have been unprecedented in human history, and it much too convenient and suspicious that only the Bible has much to say about such newsworthy events.