I was challenged here by the testimony of Richard Carrier that Josephus's two passages about Jesus are both forgeries, via some literary analysis by Paul Hopper. I conclude that Carrier is an extreme outlier who is handling the data with thorough bias. The process strengthens my belief that Josephus's passage is essentially authentic in all details.

First, Dr. Carrier has quite an interesting self-written bio:

Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.

From Hong Kong to Poland, just wow.

Further, he's a contributor to John Loftus, Christianity is Not Great, The End of Christianity, and The Christian Delusion. And author of Why I Am Not a Christian, Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Revised Edition), Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus, Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ, and Hitler Homer Bible Christ (he'd fit right in here).

He did the meme!

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such films as ....

Oolon Colluphid is the author of the "trilogy of philosophical blockbusters" entitled Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?. He later used the Babel Fish argument as the basis for a fourth book, entitled Well, That About Wraps It Up For God.

Methinks he has a bit of axe to grind and is a great segue from the concept I pointed out to u/ExpressionOfTheSoul about unnoticed bias toward atheistic higher critics.

Second, Carrier's evidence, the Hopper report, is an outlier in a steady stream of consensus that the Josephus passage is essentially authentic, either in its core or in all but 2-3 words. Carrier says that "You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014" (Hopper), which is a neat way of excluding all contrary evidence, but interestingly most all opinions after Hopper continue the same track of trusting Josephus even recognizing Hopper's opinion.

Here's the textual analysis. Textual evidences to favor Jewish outsider vs. Christian insider:

1. Passage exists in all Greek manuscripts.

2. Josephus is noted noted for any other interpolation (both he and Eusebius are conservative copyists).

3. "Wise man" is outsider language and used by Josephus (Luke 24:19 "prophet").

4. "If indeed one ought to call him a man" is a natural introduction to state merely that Jesus's wonders were unexplained without taking a position why.

5. "Wonder worker" is an outsider concept (albeit "worker"/poietes aka Oseh/Essene is an internal word taken from Luke 24:19 "mighty in deed").

6. "Teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly" is outsider language (Luke 24:19 "and word before ... all the people").

7. "Jews" and "Greeks" is outsider language, especially in that later insider language doesn't focus on Jewish followers but only Gentile (Luke 24:19 "all the people").

8. There was no polemic reason against reading "He was 'the Christ'" as an outsider quotation of others (i.e. most notable Christ to that point; Luke 24:26 "the Christ").

9. "He was 'the Christ'" is the more unexpected text, indicating "He was thought to be the Christ" is the later variant; editing in the opposite direction toward greater polemic is silly because Eusebius would be disposed to keep a text about Christ pure.

10. The "first men" "among us" is outsider language and used by Josephus for his personal contacts in the Sanhedrin and priesthood (Luke 24:20 "the chief priests and our rulers").

11. "Condemned him to a cross" adds detail to Luke 24:20 "condemned to death".

12. Those who loved him not ceasing is consistent with Luke 24:21 "we were hoping that it was He".

13. "Spending a third day restored to life" is consistent with Luke 24:21 "today is the third day"; this is described by Josephus more distantly as "appeared".

14. The prophets foretelling these and a thousand wonders is consistent with Luke 24:25 "all that the prophets have spoken" and 27 "all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself".

15. "Tribe" is outsider language and used by Josephus (Van Voorst).

16. Mention of "Christ" is further consistent with Josephus's desire to explain the origin and currency of the name "Christian".

17. The entire passage is consistent with paraphrase of Luke 24 (Goldberg), which would have been accessible to Josephus and paraphrased by him like many other sources.

18. Passage omits deicide or Jewish blame, indicating outsider status.

19. The dissimilarity of the passage with its context indicates reliance on a Lukan source and supports authenticity.

20. Josephus 20:9:1 "who was called Christ" presupposes he testified of Jesus earlier.

21. Origen (on Matthew 10.17 and Celsus 1.47) read Josephus and found his testimony not accepting Jesus as what Origen understood Christ fully to be, which is consistent with the paradigm of Josephus paraphrasing Luke 24 but remaining neutral about its conclusions (i.e. the interpretation that "the Christ" is a quotation of others), not consistent with complete forgery. Though Origen created ripples of doubt that extend to the present, the simplest resolution is that Josephus was rightly understood as passing on the testimony without agreeing with it.

22. Eusebius quotes accurately and total forgery would upend his entire purpose of scrupulous history.

23. Arabic version by Agapius, 10th century, is admitted by Whealey and Carrier to derive from Eusebius, because they think this supports Eusebian origin, but since it actually removes variants from the pre-Eusebian strain it strengthens Josephan originality and Eusebian trustworthiness.

24. James Dunn reviews "broad consensus" on John Meier's reconstruction.

25. Robert Van Voorst says most modern scholars agree.

26. Bart Ehrman and John Meier believe the original was neutrally toned, consistent with my proposal he is quoting Luke, with Ehrman saying Meier's version is the most accepted.

27. Geza Vermes reconstruction is consistent with Meier.

28. Garry Goldberg: Luke 24:19-21, 26-27 "more closely resembles the Testimonium in its phrase-by-phrase outline of content and order than any other known text of comparable age" (related in origin).

29. T. C. Schmidt 2025 finds the language is statistically Josephan; Andreas Kostenberger agrees more generally.

Arguments to reject the whole passage:

1. Silence in Jewish Wars (no parallel passage).

2. Silence about any broader scope of the single paragraph about Jesus compared to other Josephan sketches.

3. Silence in 12 mentions of Josephus prior to Eusebius that don't mention this paragraph.

4. Silence between Eusebius and Jerome.

5. Silence in selective contents of Josephus written ca. 500.

6. Silence in Photios's 9th-century broad review of Josephus.

7. Kenneth Olson finds similarity between the testimony and Eusebius in Demonstrations of the Gospels.

8. Louis Feldman argues, with challenged methods, that three clauses of the testimony appear only in Eusebius (but "wonders" and "tribe" are common enough in variation and "still to this day" is very generic).

9. Finally, Paul Hopper 2014 argues for creedal style rather than historiographic style. Carrier's blog indicates (1) aorist verbs feel different from other Josephus, which is explicable by Lukan source hypothesis; (2) obliquity of reference to Pilate feels different, which is consistent with Lukan source and with the historical fact that Pilate's known reticence about Jesus (cf. Talmud) is not his ordinary brash character as e.g. in the Golden Eagles incident; (3) event structure feels different, which is consistent with the data being only a Lukan source and a later extant "Christian" people; (4) absence of plot, again consistent with the idea that Josephus is avoiding Luke's greater plot while using the historical data from it; (5) dissimilarity to Josephus's purpose, except it's perfectly fitting for a brief gloss on Luke that indicates the historical artifact of Christians existing by reference to his knowledge of Pilate and the Sanhedrin. That is, all Hopper's points are well-explained by Goldberg's responsive Lukan hypothesis and Schmidt's statistical confirmation thereof. Carrier is so skeptical he introduces the novel theory that Josephus's other reference to James and Jesus is wholly forged too!

TLDR: I appreciate the challenge! Conclusion, Josephus paraphrased a version of Luke 24, accounting for all slight style differences, and he toned down the polemic to attempt neutral description that Jesus was "surprising", took the name "Christ", and "appeared" after death. Josephus's testimony then is entirely consistent with communicating (1) Christians exist, (2) Jesus founded them, (3) Jesus's narrative is unexplained and his meaning in history unknown, (4) Christians are distinct from primary Jewish sects and thus need no more special treatment than any other unexplained claims. It comes from his Pharisee and Sanhedrin sources and from a version of Luke 24, paraphrased like his other sources. The problem arises because, via later distance, people read his intent as more startling and less neutral than his context clearly intended, and people read Origen's distaste for him as more divisive than Origen indicated. If it's more startling to us, that's better evidence it's original and we just misunderstood it. "He was the Christ" was not an endorsement but a claim in process: later Christians read it as a make-or-break testimony, but Josephus intended it merely as journalistic reportage of others' testimony and his own permission that Christ did so many wonders he must have been specially "anointed" to do them. At that time acceptance of a Jewish Jesus as someone special was not regarded as a hardline boundary between peoples, because the character of Jacob the Healer in the Talmud is very similar: Jacob lived c. 100 and healed in Jesus's name but was accepted as a marginal Jew in relatively good standing, because nobody had yet made confession of Jesus a boundary on either side of the divide. The same is true of Josephus. All data for the passage being completely spurious amount to either argument from silence or speculation from cherry-picked similarities that don't account for the whole context.

To Soul, I say thank you for strengthening my faith in the Josephus testimony! Before this analysis, I had previously believed the original was the minimalist core of about half the text, but now I believe, because I have much more evidence, that this centrism was proposed as a feint and the original was so close to Eusebius's words as to be regarded as fully authentic (i.e. only with quibbles about two words that don't affect sense). I appreciate your allowing me the opportunity to add all this evidence to my understanding.