In this intriguing book, F. B. A. Asiedu argues that Josephus’ reticence about Christianity (what J. B. Lightfoot once described as his ‘stolid silence’), especially as this relates to Paul but to other matters as well, is deliberate. Such deliberate silence is evidenced elsewhere in Josephus' oeuvre, sometimes in contexts relevant to Christianity (his almost complete failure to say anything substantive about Caiaphas, who was the longest-serving high priest in the period following the deposition of the client king, Archelaus), and sometimes in contexts which are not so (his failure to say much that is substantive about the Flavian period, in particular the ‘terror’ associated with Domitian, which plays a significant part in the works of Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Dio of Prusa and Plutarch; and his failure in the Contra Apionem to address directly the critics of Jews in Rome, like Martial, whom Josephus must have known, and his decision to associate such criticism with figures from Egypt, all of whom were dead). The latter examples add weight to the idea of Josephus as someone who intentionally omits things (he knows, after all, of other historians who have done the same, as he records at the beginning of his Contra Apionem), while also contributing to a less than flattering picture of the former general and author, who emerges, inter alia, as self-serving and crassly insensitive to the fate of his own people under the Flavians (aside from his account of the triumph in 71, he barely addresses their fate in Rome or more widely in the empire). Josephus’ deliberate silence about Christianity, supported by direct and indirect evidence, is explained, so Asiedu contends, by his desire to exclude Christians from membership of the Jewish people, in spite of the fact that he knew Christians like Paul to be Jews and was conversant with the Jewish character of Christianity as witnessed in a document like 1 Clement, which demonstrates the significant and confident presence of Christians in Rome, possibly in the Transtiberim area, where the Jewish community of Rome was located. Josephus’ silence is the equivalent of an historical ostracism, excluding ‘the Christian Jews from the archive of Jewish life in the first century’.

These are the bare bones of a carefully argued thesis. Asiedu succeeds in making a good case for the deliberate silence of Josephus about Christianity. Some of the arguments are well known; others are not. Asiedu is convincing in positing likely knowledge of Paul, not simply because Paul was a well-known Pharisee and a contemporary of Josephus’ father, and Josephus had himself been a Pharisee, but also because Paul was known to people known to Josephus, including the Herodians and Agrippa ii, Drusilla and Berenice, and had himself caused a disturbance in Jerusalem at a time when people were sensitive to such things. In this context he makes much of the response of the authorities to Jesus ben Ananias in 62, recorded by Josephus in BJ 6.300f. Asiedu is more speculative when he argues that the story of the conversion of the house of Adiabene, recorded in AJ 20.17–96, betrays knowledge of issues relating to the Pauline mission to the Gentiles, but makes the good, though contestable point, that the subject of the story, what constitutes a proper conversion to Judaism, was central to Pauline activity in the Diaspora, rendering silence about the latter strange. Some arguments, which are better known, are pressed home effectively (for example, the implications for knowledge of Christianity in Jerusalem of the story of the murder of James in 62 ce, implying the significance of Christians to the social politics of Jerusalem at a time when Josephus was resident in the city; and whose execution was ordered by the High Priest Ananus, for whom Josephus had particular respect; and the striking absence of any mention of the fire at Rome, which, pace Tacitus, led to the persecution of the Christians, and which occurred when Josephus was probably resident in the city as part of a Jewish delegation). Josephus’ omission of other events and phenomena are used provocatively to support the notion of deliberate silence; and Asiedu, in a way rarely witnessed before, shows up the strange lacunae in Josephus’ account of his life in Rome following the revolt, making the controversial observation that his Vita hardly corresponds with the work promised at the end of his Antiquities. In asserting that Josephus’ silence is akin to a form of ostracism of Christian Jews, who had as much right to be a part of Judaism as any of the sects that Josephus describes, Asiedu chimes with the increasingly popular school of thought which would assert that the ways, understood anachronistically as Judaism and Christianity, did not part for some time. In this context he rejects D. R. Schwartz's claim that the reason Josephus does not say more about the Christians is because he did not see them as Jewish (for Schwartz, Josephus’ description of the Christians in AJ 18.64 as a tribe [phulon] implies separation). For Asiedu Josephus was well aware of Christian claims to be Jewish but sought, by ignoring them, to deny such a claim.

Inevitably, there are questions and criticisms. Some are technical. The bibliography omits some important contributions, which needed to be acknowledged and indeed argued with (see, especially, A. Paul, ‘Flavius Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews”: an anti-Christian manifesto’, New Testament Studies xxxi [1985], 473–80; C. Pharr, ‘The testimony of Josephus to Christianity’, AJPh xlviii ([1927], 137–47; and Richard Carrier's interesting article, ‘Origen, Eusebius, and the accidental interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200’, Journal of Early Christian Studies xx [2012], 489–514, which questions the authenticity of the account of James's death; and others could be mentioned). Others concern themselves with the balance of the book. Chapters iii and iv, which deal with Josephus and Martial, and with Pliny, Martial and Tacitus, focusing on their response to Domitian's terror, are perhaps overly long and labour points which detract from the main argument of the book, at least as the present reviewer conceives that (they become chapters about Josephus himself, rather than simply supporting planks in an overall set of arguments about Josephus’ tendency to deliberate omissions). While Asiedu makes telling observations in support of Josephus’ deliberate silence about Christians, he perhaps takes insufficient account of the relative absence of much reference to the latter in pagan texts, while still using these texts (after all, the first known pagan author to take the Christians to task in any detailed way is Celsus, possibly writing as late as the third quarter of the second century). It is telling also that few of the pagan authors who do mention Christians betray knowledge of Christian association with Judaism (Celsus is in fact the first to do this at length; and Tacitus’ association of Jesus with Judaea lacks much explicit engagement with the relationship; and in his extensive account of Judaism in Histories 5, he never associates Christians with Jews, though he knew of both of them. Pliny and Suetonius betray no knowledge of such an association). This becomes important because if Josephus, through his silence about Christians, was seeking to ostracise the latter from Judaism, a central claim of the book, for whom was he doing this? For a mooted pagan audience apparently unconcerned with that association? For himself? For other Jews? And why was silence a better way of arguing the case than argument? Related to the point of silence, it is an oddity of this book that very little is said about the Testimonium Flavianum, that is AJ 18.63-4 where Josephus supposedly refers to Jesus (p. 46 is an exception but the comments relate mainly to how Josephus viewed the Christians as a group among Jews). How do Asiedu's views about Josephus’ silence affect the way he would emend this text? Surely in a negative way, as opposed to the kind of neutral emendations, which were popular until quite recently? Or would his argument about Josephus’ silence force him to dispense with the passage altogether? After all, Josephus was under no obligation to mention Jesus at all. Just as he omits any reference to contemporary Roman critics of Judaism in the Contra Apionem, could he not have omitted all reference to Jesus and his followers, except perhaps the reference to the death of James in AJ 20.200, which played a necessary role in his narrative? If the use of ‘tribe’ as a way of describing the Christians is in fact genuine, does it support the view that Josephus saw Christians as non-Jewish? The book cries out for some judgement on such matters but there is none, at least explicitly. Another point relates to the use in the book of 1 Clement. Asiedu's claim that this text proves the strength of the Christian presence in Rome at the time of Josephus, and a presence which is strikingly Jewish, is well made (in this context more of a contrast could have been set up between 1 Clement and the Epistle to the Hebrews); but perhaps more consideration could have been given to the possibility that Josephus would have found much to agree with in 1 Clement, a point, interestingly, made a long time ago by David Flusser, and so his reaction would not have been as rebarbative as Asiedu implies. There could, after all, have been some Christians whom Josephus felt less inclined to ostracise. Finally, there is a sense in which Asiedu thinks that Josephus has performed a disservice by failing to give a more detailed account of Christianity (on pp. 321–2 he gives an imagined description of what such an account might have looked like) and that his act was consequential. His claim in the penultimate paragraph of the book that had he included Christians among the Jewish sects, the rabbis would not have been able to treat the Christians as heretics or ‘minim’ is eccentric to say the least, especially when we remember that the rabbis are strangely silent about Josephus.

This is a stimulating book about which much more could be said. It is necessarily speculative, as are many arguments about silence, but it explores Josephus’ silence in sometimes arresting ways. Few will agree with all its conclusions but all should profit from reading it.