This result was an entirely unexpected by-product of a two-year research effort to catalog the parallels between 'War of the Jews' and the Gospel of Luke. Some parallels were already known about, but little independent research had been done, suggesting it was a ripe area to explore.

I had certainly not expected to discover that Josephus Flavius' own life is written as a parable, or parody, of Jesus Christ, not least since Josephus is widely assumed to be a reputable historical writer. The document in question - 'War of the Jews' - is the official roman government's account of the war, which Josephus prefaces by explaining that he had been given authorization to write it on behalf of the Roman government, and it is widely cited as one of the most important historical documents of that era, so for him to insert his life story in a manner designed to parallel Jesus' life is strange to the point of extraordinary. 

What makes this all the more astonishing, is that Josephus' seemingly 'innocent' and 'in-passing' references to Jesus Christ in his publication 'War of the Jews', are widely cited as offering the only independent and contemporary evidence that Jesus existed. So discovering that Josephus' life story, as described in the same document, is a cleverly hidden, yet very detailed parody of Jesus Christ's story, should make us question whether those references to Jesus' story were in fact 'innocent' or 'in-passing'.

Incredible claims require incredible evidence, so it seems reasonable for me to include the evidence - i.e. the parallels between the two stories - right here, on this webpage, directly below.

Skeptical readers are encouraged to fact-check them; the Gospel of Luke is obviously trivial to find online, however 'War of the Jews' is also easily accessible in English, on a variety of independent websites - for the famous and widely read version* just type 'War of the Jews, Josephus Flavius, full text' into any search engine. 

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Before I list the parallels, I would like to draw attention to some curious aspects of Josephus Flavius' story of his life and capture, which is found in the middle of the roman account of the war; 'War of the Jews':

As most historians will know, Josephus Flavius was originally called Josephus Matthias, and he writes that he had become the Jewish religious leader, their military general, and the supreme commander of the Jewish forces, and had frustrated the Roman invasion until his defeat at the siege of Jotapata, after which he switched sides and became accepted into the Roman ruling family - the Flavians. If you say it quickly enough, it doesn't sound that strange.

But his story is not only famous - it is quite suspect. And here are four reasons:

1. In the middle of 'War of the Jews', Josephus moves on from describing the previous century of conflict, and  recounts his capture by the Romans. Strangely, he claims that he, as their general, had not only predicted that they would be defeated, but also had prophesied  - correct to the day - that it would happen after 47 days. Now, unless you believe Josephus benefited from divine inspiration - which neither Christians nor Jews do - to correctly make such a prediction is truly implausible. But, in addition, it would be unthinkable for a general who is trying to rally his troops, to issue such a prophecy - or, put differently, it is implausible that a general could remain in charge of his troops, having prophesied defeat would occur in a specified number of days.

2. 'War of the Jews' which has Josephus as it's stated author, continues his story - which for this middle section is essentially autobiographical - saying that as the Romans came in and slaughtered the city, he had taken refuge in an underground den, with 40 others, all of whom wanted to commit mass suicide, and had threatened to kill him when he suggested to surrender instead. But then he recounts that he agreed to the mass-suicide bid, but said they should play a game of drawing straws to decide who should kill who. 

So far the story is perhaps believable. The 40 men take turns drawing lots for who was to be killed next, and on each of the 38 times that they drew lots, Josephus didn't get chosen. Yet somehow these 40 'eminent' men duly killed each other one by one, with nobody saying 'hey, shouldn't we make sure that the one person that was going to weasel out of it, doesn't get to go last?'. It's not implausible that Josephus was in the final two who then failed to kill each other - it's the idea that 40 'eminent' men of the city, would kill themselves to achieve a mass-suicide bid, without noticing that the one objector among them - who they had threatened to kill for his objections no less - was being left to last. 

3. A third example is where Josephus (again correctly) prophesied that the Roman Generals responsible for the invasion, would become emperors. To correctly identify that those two men (rather than other generals such as Placidus and Cerealis, say), were 'fated' to become emperors, is highly implausible per se. But it is also implausible he would say such a dangerous thing, since it puts Vespasian and Titus in the position that they must either punish him for saying it, or else risk being seen as enemies of the current emperor, Nero. 

4. Having made this wonderfully accurate prophecy, Josephus recounts that he got adopted by the emperor to be a family member and thus a royal, as a result, being given tax free status and lands too. The result was that Josephus went from being a royal of one side of the war, to being adopted into the royal family of the opposing side, in the space of a few years. 

To appreciate how absurd this is, we must understand that this was no minor revolt being suppressed. It was a crushing invasion of Judea, replete with ethnic cleansing and genocide, the rulers of the two sides hated each other with vengeance.

Indeed, at the time it was very much the 'mother of all wars'. If we measure it by the proportion of the world's population directly killed, it was more bloody than World War One and World War Two - put together. 

History is always written by the victor, so can you imagine a scenario where a World War ends with the leader of the victorious side adopting the leader of losing side into his inner political circle, and then putting him in charge of their political narratives and publications regarding the war itself? If not, then surely this was equally impossible in the 1st Century AD?

At some point, 'Didn't happen' has to cross the mind of the reader.

But that's enough background - Below I set out the evidence that Josephus wrote his own life story so as to contain a detailed series of parallels with the story of Jesus Christ. 

(Click here to view this table as plain text)

Evidence that Josephus wrote his own story to parallel that of Jesus: