Ca 72 CE

The Palestinian Samaritan Christian ‘Slavonic Josephus’ was edited into the Aramaic corpus of Josephus’ ‘The Conquest of Jerusalem’ by a Samaritan Christian who wanted to give his viewpoint a free ride on the back of Josephus by speaking in his name.  It was later translated into Greek and Slavonic, and discovered in Russia in the nineteenth century.  It was obviously published before Mark was published Ca 74 or before Mark was circulated openly which may have not been not until Matthew was published in the early 80’s CE.  It has all the Herodians, High Priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, and even the fundamentalist Essenes and “Jews” in general coming off looking rather badly while John the Baptist is portrayed in the role of a wandering Greek Cynic-type who ‘told truth to power’ and Jesus is shown in the mode of a divine wonder worker. The Slavonic Josephus may have been the model for the Synoptic Gospels since it does a fabulous job of trashing its opponents while down-playing the following of John and including obviously legendary material.  It is incongruent with the Roman Gospels, however, in revealing a very long career for John and stating that Jesus had one hundred and fifty disciples.  It does back up the Samaritan Massacre story of Josephus, though, that is reflected around the Barrabas incident in Mark which actually referred to the butchery by Pilate of the Samaritan disciples of Jesus/Simon.