Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Well, AI may have just solved an ancient puzzle.

For his new book, Josephus and Jesus, new evidence for the one called Christ, Dr. T.C. Schmidt used AI, among other methods, to test something that's long been in dispute.

What the first century historian actually said.

Flavius Josephus was also a Jewish scholar, priest, and military leader whose work has provided

essential understanding into Jewish life, both during his time and before.

He personally knew figures who appear in the Bible, like King Agrippa, which is mentioned in Acts 26,

and while he wrote about many of them, including John the Baptist and James the Brother of

Jesus, his most famous and controversial passage was about Christ himself.

Though the section on Jesus runs less than 100 words, it describes how he

was viewed by Jews while the apostles still lived. Josepha said that Jesus was a wise man,

who performed amazing acts, taught people looking for truth, gained many followers, was accused by

the leadership, executed by Pilate, and after three days appeared to his disciples. He also called

him the Christ and wondered if Jesus should be called a man. Making these claims even more remarkable

is that Josephus was plainly not a Christian himself and had no reason to exaggerate. Now,

two Christians, these claims are almost too good to be true, and that's the problem. Such a strong corroboration

of Christian doctrine from such an unlikely source has led most scholars, even most conservative ones,

to assume that at least these sections of Joseph's writings are a partial or total forgery.

Whatever he might have written, someone else probably added that pro-Christian

stuff. That assumption is what Schmidt's book undermines. Among other methods, Schmidt used AI to

analyze the language of Josephus, relying on an official Greek language thesaurus to conduct

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