Welcome to the New Books Network.

Welcome to Madison's Notes, the official podcast of the James Madison program,

in American ideals and institutions at Princeton University.

I'm your host, Ryan Schenkel.

Okay. University. I'm your host, Ryan Schenkel. This episode is the first part in a two-part series called The Gospel According to Josephus.

Today, as we continue season five, I have with us as our guest, Professor Thomas C. Schmidt.

Professor Schmidt is a 2025-2020s visiting fellow at the James Madison program.

Having earned his PhD from Yale University, he is the associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, where he focuses on New Testament,

patristics, and early Christian history.

A widely published academic, he is the author, co-author, and translator of

five books, including the Book of Revelation and its Eastern Commentators, 2021 with Cambridge University

Press, and recently the 2025 monograph, Josephus and Jesus, with Oxford University Press,

available in academic publishing, as well as online for free via the book's website. Professor Schmidt,

welcome to Madison's Notes. Ryan, it's a great pleasure to be here and call me Tom.

Okay, call me Ryan. Professor Tom, tell me a bit about yourself. You mentioned a lot already.

I study early Christianity. I'm fascinated by the world of the New Testament and by the world

of the early church and by the world of the early

church and also the world of the Eastern Church, the kind of undiscovered, relatively unknown,

part of Christianity that flourished in what is today, Iraq and Iran, Persia, the ancient Middle East.

I study those things. And of course, I'm very interested in the person of Jesus and the study

of the historical Jesus.

And that's what my most recent book is about.

...