Lena Einhorn wrote:
In conclusion: ... the parallels between Jesus and the messianic leader whom Josephus calls "the Egyptian" are so numerous that it is very hard to attribute it to coincidence.
... I believe Jesus may have been identical to "the Egyptian" -- a messianic leader Josephus claims emerged in the 50s
It seems at least one other author agree with Lena:
.
Barbelo: The Story of Jesus Christ by Riaan Booysen, 2014
In this treatise it will be shown that, following his recovery from the crucifixion, Christ left Israel to continue leading his revolution under the guise of the biblical Paul of Tarsus.
8 It will also be shown that
Josephus knew him very well [see below], but referred to him
as the Egyptian who led a failed uprising against the Romans,
9 an accusation brought against Paul during his final arrest.
10 This 'Egyptian' has been identified by several scholars as the person known in apocryphal literature as Simon Magus.
11-13
In other words, it will be argued that Jesus Christ, Paul of Tarsus, ..Simon Magus
[and "the Egyptian"
] were all one and the same person.
.. the theory presented in this treatise is that the person known as Jesus Christ was born from a brief affair between Herod’s treasurer Joseph and Mariamne I, Herod the Great’s Hasmonean wife [Herod dared not touch Joseph as he was married to a powerful Roman official at that time]. Mariamne I escaped from Herod through a staged execution and raised her son outside Israel, most likely in the East and later in Egypt. When Mariamne I and her son returned to Israel after Herod’s death, her son was about thirty years old and had already earned himself the reputation of being a magician, Simon Magus by name.
Simon Peter was Josephus’s Simon bar Gioras, and John the Beloved was John of Gischala,
16 the most savage of all the Jewish rebels, who attempted to drive the Romans from Israel.
I will also show that Joseph, the father of Christ, later married Mariamne II after Herod divorced her, and that she became the biblical Mary Magdalene.
17,18 Through Josephus’s own genealogy, I will endeavour to prove that he not only knew Christ very well but that he was, in fact,
Christ’s half-brother by Joseph (the father of Christ) and Mariamne II (ie.
Josephus was the brother of Christ, interchangeably called Jose, Joseph, and Josephes in the New Testament and apocryphal texts). Most of the early disciples of Christ were impressionable young teenagers when he appeared on the scene, as was Josephus when he was first introduced to Christ. As he grew older, however, Josephus saw through the deceptions and later did everything in his power (and his works) to disassociate himself from Christ.
-
http://www.riaanbooysen.com/barbelo
.
It should be noted that
Josephus "introduces himself, in Greek, as Iōsēpos (Ιώσηπος), son of Matthias, an ethnic Hebrew. He was the second-born son of Matthias. His older full-blooded brother was also called Matthias. Their mother was an aristocratic woman who descended from the royal and formerly ruling Hasmonean dynasty. Josephus's paternal grandparents were Josephus and his wife—an unnamed Hebrew noblewoman, distant relatives of each other and direct descendants of
Simon Psellus ...
[Josephus
] descended through his father from the priestly order of the Jehoiarib, which was the first of the 24 orders of priests in the Temple in Jerusalem
[9]. Josephus was a descendant of the high priest Jonathon
[9]."
9. Fergus Millar, Emil Schurer & Geza Vermes (1973)
The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175
BC – AD
135),
Continuum Int. Pub'g Gp, pp. 45–46
.