Joseph of Tiberias

A prominent Jew of Tiberias who became a Christian. Around 355, at Scythopolis, he hosted the exiled bishop Eusebius of Vercelli; Epiphanius heard him tell his own conversion. Skarsaune treats him as firsthand evidence of Jewish believers with Nicene Christology.

Epiphanius gives a firsthand account of meeting, at Scythopolis (Beth Shean) around 355 CE, Joseph of Tiberias, a prominent Jew converted to Christianity, then at least seventy years old and holding the rank of 'count'. In a city dominated by the Arian bishop Patrophilus, Joseph was the only public Nicene Christian; there was also a younger Jewish believer who visited him secretly. Skarsaune stresses that Epiphanius is unsurprised by Jewish believers with 'orthodox' Christology integrated into mixed churches.1 In this strand, 'Jewish believers in Jesus' means people Jewish by birth or by conversion who, somehow, held Jesus to be their savior. The criterion is ethnicity, not a single package of theology or praxis. That includes both those who kept a Jewish way of life and those who assimilated into mixed communities with a Gentile majority.2