>>It seems to me that Josephus is entirely unreliable as a source of information regarding Jesus since we don't know where his simpathies lay but we can strongly suspect he had some kind of an agenda.<<

This is, by far, the most sensible post here. Yes, he had an agenda. And no, he was entirely unreliable. His Masada account is ridiculous. The Romans breach the walls of the fortress and then turn around and go back down the ramp they'd built and decide to sack the place in the morning. RIGHT!!! Let's give the Jews the chance to mount a suicide charge down the ramp. Get real. As soon as you gain access to the fortress, you swarm in and lay it waste. Everybody knows you do it that way. Then while the Romans inexplicably go back down the ramp and get some shut eye, the Jews in Masada draws lots and kill themselves and Josephus gives us a touching account of it. There's only one problem. THERE WERE NO EYEWITNESSES!!! How could Josephus know how it was done??? He couldn't. Isn't odd too that Josephus wrote his Masada account in Rome while Flavius Silva was also living at the time? Silva, as we know, conducted the Masada campaign. Yet, did Josephus--writing this account at the behest of the Flavians--ever go talk to Silva and get his side of things? No. He never spoke to him, never interviewed him. We have two possibilities to account for that: Josephus lied and Silva was not the general that campaigned against Masada or Flavius Josephus WAS Flavius Silva.

>>On top of that it seems he has been tampered with. When, by whom, for what reason and which passages we can only guess at.<<

Well, we know the Jesus quote everybody resorts to prove Josephus wrote about him was forged. But, yes, certainly more would have likely been tampered with.

>>It seems that he wrote before the gospellers<<

Depnds on what ou mean. by the standard chronology, he wrote after. His earliest work was the Jewish Wars which was supposedly composed around 75-80 CE. Mark and Matthew were already written. Jewish Antiquities that contains the spurious Jesus quote was supposedly written about 90-93 CE. By then, all four gospels were already supposed to have been composed or close to it, maybe John was still being written. So if he wrote before the gospel writers, then the standard chronology is wrong. Indeed, many scholars think the gospels are much later--no earlier than 140 CE. No one mentioned all four until Irenaeus aroudn 180-185 CE.

>>but what he actually wrote and for whom he wrote it is anybody's guess. Did you consider that the gospellers and He may have both plagiarised a third source?<<

Well, we have supposition about Q documents and such. Hard to say. But, sure, there could be other sources also. The Nag Hammadi Library being discovered buried inthe deserts of Egypt indicates that they were being hidden. From whom? From someone looking to destroy them. My guess would be the Roman army. They didn't want competitors. This is borne out by the fact that the Nag Hammadi Library are the ONLY Gnostic writings available to us. Had it not been discovered we would have only Irenaeus's "Against Heresies" which provided only quotes he chose to dispute. Obviously, someone got rid of them all--or so they thought. What was destroyed that we will never know about?