“He was clearly unfamiliar with Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews which mentions Jesus.”
Jesus is mentioned in Josephus, but that section was at least altered later by others, so it is impossible to know exactly what Josephus originally wrote.
It’s unfortunate that some felt the need to go back and edit these documents, because we might have had a great piece of evidence, but now it will always be under a cloud.
Strictly speaking, Josephus was not a contemporary—he was born several years after the latest possible date for the Crucifixion.
That is no longer true - There was a recent find which shows what is more likely to be the original wording... Lemme see if I can dig that up...
***Jesus is mentioned in Josephus, but that section was at least altered later by others,***
How did they alter it? Did they erase the ink and write something else?
Did they write between the lines?
Did they splice the scroll to add a piece and move all the letters down?
They did not have “word wrap” so knowing how they managed to get a new paragraph in the text is something everyone would like to know.
Another thing is Origen wrote that Jesus was mentioned in the Roman historical writings. Since the libraries at that time were under Pagan Roman administrators how did some Christian manage to get in and make a changes in the text?
What about the other libraries? Alexandria was not the only one. Were those also changed?
The only way it could have been done was when some monk was transcribing a new text many years later, after Origen had died and the libraries were under Christian control. If so, why did not the overseeing monk catch the error?