John the baptist’s appearance in Josephus.

During the Jewish War of 66-70CE, a Pharisee militia leader named Joseph bar Matthew, based on his own wonky studies of the End Times, came to the conclusion the commanding general on the Roman side, Titus Flavius Vespasianus (whom historians call “Vespasian”) was Messiah. Or at least that’s what Joseph told Vespasian after he was captured.

Vespasian was amused, and kept Joseph around as a slave and translator. That is, till he realized he had a really good chance to be emperor, seized it, and left Joseph in Judea with the new commanding general, his son Titus Flavius Vespasianus Junior (“Titus”). Titus is the guy who had Jerusalem burnt down and the temple destroyed in 70, and nine years later became emperor himself. He freed Joseph, and after gaining Roman citizenship, Joseph renamed himself Flavius Josephus after Titus’s family.

We best know Josephus as an historian, mainly for two of his Greek-language books: The Jewish War, a history from Herod the Worst to the end of the war, and his memories of it; and Jewish Antiquities, a history of Israel and Judea. It’s in The Jewish War, book 18, where he makes mention of John the baptist in a chapter about Herod Antipas’s war with Aretas, king of Arabia. (My translation.)

116Some of the Judeans are thinking Herod’s army’s destruction was from God, and rightly so—as punishment for his revenge on John, called “the baptist.” 117Indeed Herod murdered this good man. John was commanding the Judeans to be virtuous towards one another and pious towards God. He was using baptism to help them understand, for this ritual washing was acceptable to God—it will appear to him, not like a certain sin-offering, nor a prayer one could use, but like purifying the body. Therefore before one could be righteous, a soul was cleaned out. 118Those who gathered together to hear John were pleased at much of the teachings they heard. Herod feared John’s strongly persuaded people, lest some of them trigger a revolt, for everyone accepted and followed John’s counsel. Herod considered it better to do this before some new follower of John came to imagine a change in the system, and try something. 119On Herod’s suspicion, John was preemptively made a prisoner, and sent to the fortress Maherús to kill him. In the Judeans’ opinion, the destruction of the army became God’s punishment; he wanted to do evil to Herod.

We have no idea whether Josephus ever read the gospels, all of which had been written by the time of the war. Clearly he didn’t believe Jesus is Messiah… although some overzealous Christian got hold of Antiquities book 18, and altered the one passage which had anything to say about Jesus. Probably he found it blasphemous. Well now it’s not; it now says this, and is obviously not Josephus.

63At this time comes Jesus, a wise man—assuming it’s right to say “man,” for he’s a doer of paradoxical works; a teacher of people who are pleased to get the truth, who drew many Judeans and many Greeks. This man is Christ. 64On the evidence of the head men among us, Pilate ordered him to the cross. Not that those who first loved him stopped following, for he appeared to them alive again on the third day. The divine prophets had foresaid this, and other countless wonderful things about him. To this day the “Christians,” named for him, have not fallen as a tribe.

So it’s not outside the realm of possibility the bit about John the baptist was also altered, or inserted by Christians who wanted to make sure one of our prophets is in Josephus’s history.

The Essenes.

It’s largely from Josephus that we know about a first-century Jewish sect he called the Ἐσσηνοί/Essiní, called the Essenes. (Dead Sea Scrolls translator Geza Vermes speculated the name comes from the Syriac word ܚܣܐ/essa, “mercy.”) Josephus discusses them a few different times in his works. In Jewish War book 2, he describes them as ascetics who shunned pleasure, practiced physical and emotional self-control, and shared all their property—which was supervised by elected leaders. They prayed every dawn, facing the sun. Every day before noon, they baptized themselves, put on white linen, their priest prayed a blessing, and they ate together; then another blessing, then they put their regular clothes back on and went back to work. At evening they did the same for dinner.

They revered Moses, studied the scriptures, studied medicine, and refused to swear oaths because “one who has to swear to God to be believed is already condemned.” War 2.135 One of their sects shunned marriage, and shunned other people’s children—they didn’t trust women to not lead ’em astray—but another sect thought this was ridiculous; if you don’t marry and procreate humanity goes extinct. But because they shunned pleasure, they tried to make sure the sex was no fun, and solely for procreation. Gee, they sound swell.

They believed, Josephus said, that matter is corrupt and passes away, but their souls are immortal, live forever, and when they die they go across the ocean (to the Americas?) to someplace with nice weather. Unless they’re evil; then they go to a place of never-ending punishments. They believed in angels, and in prophecy, and Josephus noted their prophecies were pretty accurate. They sent gifts to the temple, but they didn’t do any of their ritual sacrifices there because they considered the temple unclean.

They believed in hospitality, but only to fellow Essenes: If you didn’t share their convictions you weren’t welcome. But in every city they figured they’d find fellow Essenes, who’d house them and care for them with their common property.

There’s more, but because Essenes did baptism, you’re gonna find some Christians who wonder whether John the baptist was Essene. Or they state, flat-out, he was Essene. Based on what? Again: Baptism. And the fact he rebuked Judean religious leaders for being hypocrites… same as Jesus did, and Jesus wasn’t Essene.

Baptism is a silly thing to point to, because everybody did baptism. Ritual purification was mandated in the Law of Moses. You had to be ritually clean before going to temple; you had to wash yourself and your clothes (and typically they did this by wearing their clothes into the baptismal), then wait till sundown. Pharisees mandated you had to be ritually clean before going to synagogue, and if you ever set foot into a first-century synagogue, you’d quickly find yourself surrounded by wet Jews. Everybody got baptized. And if your job was in temple or synagogue, you got baptized daily.

In any case when you find Christians who insist John was probably Essene… yeah, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They read it somewhere, believed it, and teach it, and think it makes ’em wise. No; it makes it obvious they don’t bother to fact-check themselves.