Honest question: Where did the idea that Josephus was born "40 years" after Jesus' crucifixion come from?

I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong.

I was doing the math based on 0 AD, forgetting that the crucifixion supposedly took place ~33 years after (Christ was supposedly 33 at the time).

Most sources I can find show Josephus born in 37 CE. Given an error spread of +/- 4 years as to the year the crucifixion took place, Josephus would have been born the year of the crucifixion or eight years afterward.

In either case, any knowledge he had of the event would have been second-hand, leaving us (still) with no corroborated first-hand accounts.

Because a lot of people believe Jesus was crucified in yr 1. Others actually think he was born in yr 1 (CE - AD for those of you who aren't up on the modern lingo)

I don't know of any scholar or historian which would claim Jesus was crucified "40 yrs" before Josephus was born. Most guestimations put Jesus' birth around 4 - 6 BCE and his death approx 30 yrs later. Which puts his death close to 25 CE, rather than 1CE. It probably also has to do with the fact that the "40 yrs" is a biblical #, one which many Christians take literally, but very few jews I know do.

I don't know, he was born just a few years after Jesus died. However

1. He was not a witness to anything Jesus did or did not do

2. He never endorsed the gospels or the claimed miracles. He simply stated that a man named Jesus lived and had a following.

3. There is at least one passage allegedly by Jocephus that most scholars agree was forged by christians centuries later. In one and only one passage Jocephus refers to Jesus as 'the christ'. Given that Jocephus was a jew and died a jew, it would have been blasphemy for him to call Jesus the christ.

So what I don't get is why christians even cite him as a source?

Josephus is generally believed to have been born in 37 or 38AD, so that would be approximately 7 or 8 years after the crucifixion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/306479/F...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm

Edit: Could they be confusing him with Suetonius, who was born around 70-75AD?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius

Well actually it's in Josephus' own autobiography. Born in 37 A.D.

Of course, he was a chronic liar so who knows what's what with him.

wait.

if he was born in 37 or 38AD, and Jesus was born in 4 AD, then Jesus would have died in 37 AD.

that can't be 40 yrs.

Can I ask another honest question, and I, in no way, being patronizing:

Why does it matter? 4 years or 40 years...What is the significance of that?

he was supposedly born at least 5 years after the supposed event. he was not alive when jesus was alive.

Absurd claims are made regularly and no evidence to back them up is offered.

"The ark, was built big enough and strong enough to hold 2 of every kind of animal, including dynosaurs. Looking at the dimensions, scientists have determined that it could hold all of them." - fundie quote

yahoo answers probably

or Wiki