Slavonic Josephus

As is common with ancient texts, however, there are no surviving extant manuscripts of Josephus' works that can be dated before the 11th century, and the oldest of these are all Greek minuscules, copied by Christian monks.

[5] According to Van Voorst, Creed, and a narrow group of researchers, the references to Jesus by Josephus found in Book 18 and Book 20 of the Antiquities of the Jews do not appear in any other versions of Josephus' The Jewish War except for a Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavianum (at times called Testimonium Slavonium) which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.

[11] At about the same time as Sreznevsky, the subject was also studied by E. Barsov and by the end of the 19th century knowledge of the existence of the documents was established in the west via its listing by Niese and Destinon in 1894.

[7] The Estonian scholar Alexander Berendts published a German translation in 1906 and proposed the theory that the Slavonic version had been derived from the original Aramaic of Josephus.

[13] Robert Van Voorst states that apart from Eisler's controversial book and Williamson statements, "no strong defense has been made" for the authenticity of the Slavonic Josephus.

[11] Van Voorst states that the contents of the passages in the Slavonic Josephus show that "they are Christian compositions and that they do not provide an authentic textual alternative to the main Testimonium Flavianum.

[13] Louis Feldman states that the question "is Josephus the author of the additions and modifications in the Slavonic version" has usually received a negative answer.