However, it is significant that Origen, writing in about AD 240, fails to mention it, even though he does mention the less significant reference to Jesus as brother of James, which occurs later in Antiquities of the Jews (bk. 20, ch. 9). Origen also states that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ" (Cels, bk. 1, ch. 47) "he did not accept Jesus as Christ" (Comm. Matt. X.17), and "he says nothing of the wonderful deeds that our Lord did" (Stromateis II.2) but the testimonium declares Jesus to be Christ. Starting in the 17th century, this has given rise to the suggestion presented by Protestant philologists that the Testimonium Flavianum did not exist in the earliest copies, or did not exist in the present form.
Many modern historians reject the passage as an interpolation, on other grounds, for several reasons inherent in the text. In its context, passage 3.2 runs directly into passage 3.4, and thus the thread of continuity, of "sad calamities," is interrupted by this passage. The context, without the testimonium passage, reads:
So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome.
The passage 3.3 also fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not otherwise used by Josephus, according to the Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus, edited by K. H. Rengstorff, 2002. It is also argued that "He was [the] Christ" can only be read as a profession of faith. If so, this could not be right, as Josephus was not a Christian; he characterized his patron Vespasian as the foretold Messiah.
The deepest concerns about the authenticity of the passage were succinctly expressed by John Dominic Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991, ISBN 0060616296): "The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish." Three passages stood out: "if it be lawful to call him a man . . . He was [the] Christ . . . for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." These seem directly to address Christological debates of the early 4th century. Consequently, most secular historians (and even many Christian scholars) dismiss the Testimonium as an interpolation.
The entire passage is also found in one manuscript of Josephus' earlier work, The Jewish War. Lower Criticism has concluded that this is an interpolation as other extant manuscripts do not contain it, and reflect the modern standard text of The Jewish War.
Besides that...If he did believe in Christ don't you think he would of dedicated at least a chapter........not a paragraph that when you read it in whole, you can see how it breaks the flow of this thought.......He was talking about wars, then [insert], then talks about wars...If you take out the inserted paragraph, it flows more naturally....