Evidence of Josephus It remains to examine how this school of writers handle the evidence with regard to the earliest church supplied by Jewish or Pagan writers. I have said enough incidentally of the evidence of the Talmud and Toldoth Jeschu, but there remains that of Josephus. In the work on the Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. xviii, 5, 2 (116 foll.), there is an account of John the Baptist, and it is narrated that Herod, fearing an insurrection of John’s followers, threw him in bonds into the castle of Machaerus, and there murdered him. Afterwards, when Herod’s army was destroyed, the Jewish population attributed the disaster to the wrath of God, and saw in it a retribution for slaying so just a man. The astral John Baptist And he proceeds to dilate on the thesis that the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan was “the reflection upon earth of what originally took place among the stars.” This discovery rests on an equation—pre-philological, of course, like that of “Maria” with “Myrrha”—of the name “John” or “Jehohanan” with “Oannes” or “Ea,” the Babylonian Water-god. However, this writer is here not a little incoherent, for only on the page before he has assured us, as of something unquestionable, that John was closely related to the Essenes, and baptized the penitents in the Jordan in the open air. Was Jordan, too, up in Josephus’s reference to James, brother of Jesus John the Baptist having been removed in this cavalier fashion from the pages of Josephus, we can hardly expect James the brother of Jesus to be left, and he is accordingly kicked out without ceremony. It does not matter a scrap that the passage (Antiquities xx, 9, 1, 200) stands in the Greek MSS. and in the Latin Version. As Professor W. B. Smith’s argument on the point is representative of this class of critics, we must let him speak first (p. 235):—
He then proceeds to quote the text of Origen, Against Celsus, i, 47, giving the reference, but mangling in the most extraordinary manner a text that is clear and consecutive. For Origen begins
In a later passage of the same treatise (ii, 13), which Mr. Smith cites correctly, Origen refers again to the same passage of the Antiquities (xx, 200) thus: “Titus demolished Jerusalem, as Josephus writes, on account of James the Just, the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.” Also in Origen’s commentary on Origen therefore cites Josephus thrice about James, and in each case he has in mind the same passage—viz., xx, 200. But Mr. Smith, after citing the shorter passage, Contra Celsum, ii, 13, goes on as follows:—
Will Mr. Smith kindly tell us which are the MSS. in which are found any passage or passages referring the fall of Jerusalem to the death of James, and so far contradicting Josephus’s interpretation of Ananus’s death in the History of the Jewish War, iv, 5, 2. Niese, the latest editor, knows of none, nor did any previous editor know of any. Mr. Smith then proceeds thus:—
But “this phrase” never stood in Josephus at all, even as an interpolation, and on examination it turns out that Professor Smith’s prejudice against the passage in which Josephus mentions James, is merely based on the muddle committed by Origen. Such are the arguments by which he seeks to prove that Josephus’s text was interpolated by a Christian, as if a Christian interpolator, supposing there had been one (and he has left no trace of himself), would not, as the protest of Origen sufficiently indicates, have represented the fall of Jerusalem as a divine punishment, not for the slaying of James, but for the slaying of Jesus. Having demolished the evidence of Josephus in such a manner, Mr. Smith heads ten of his pages with the words, “The Silence of Josephus,” as if he had settled all doubts for ever by mere force of his erroneous ipse dixit. The testimony of Tacitus The next section of Professor Smith’s work (Ecce Deus) is headed with the same effrontery of calm assertion: “The Silence of Tacitus.” This historian relates (Annals, xv, 44) that Nero accused the Christians of having burned down Rome. Nero
In the sequel Tacitus describes how an immense multitude, less for the crime of incendiarism than in punishment of their hatred of humanity, were convicted; how some were clothed in skins of wild beasts and thrown to dogs, while others were crucified or burned alive. Nero’s savagery was such that it awoke the pity even of a Roman crowd for his victims. Such a passage as the above, written by Tacitus soon after A.D. 100, is somewhat disconcerting to our authors. Professor Smith, proceeding on his usual innocent assumption that the whole of the ancient literature, Christian and profane, of this epoch lies before him, instead of a scanty dÉbris of it, votes it to be a forgery. Why? Because Melito, Bishop of Sardis about 170 A.D., is the first writer who alludes to it in a fragment of an apology addressed to a Roman Emperor. As if there were not five hundred striking episodes narrated by Tacitus, yet never mentioned by any subsequent writer at all. Would Mr. Smith on that account dispute their authenticity? It is only because this episode concerns Christianity and gets in the way of his theories, that he finds it necessary to cut it out of the text. You can prove anything if you cook your evidence, and the wanton Testimony of Clement agrees with Tacitus I hardly need add that the narrative of Tacitus is frank, straightforward, and in keeping with all we know or can infer in regard to Christianity in that epoch. Mr. E. G. Hardy, in his valuable book Christianity and the Roman Government (London, 1894, p. 70), has pointed out that “the mode of punishment was that prescribed for those convicted of magic,” and that Suetonius uses the term malefica of the new religion—a term which has this special sense. Magicians, moreover, in the code of Justinian, which here as often reflects a much earlier age, are declared to be “enemies of the human race.” Nor is it true that Nero’s persecution as recorded in Tacitus is mentioned by no writer before Melito. It is practically certain that Clement, writing about A.D. 95, refers to it. He records that a p??? p?????, or vast multitude of Christians, the ingens multitudo of Tacitus, perished in connection with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. He speaks of the manifold insults and torments of men, the terrible and unholy outrages upon women, in terms that answer exactly to the two phrases of Tacitus: pereuntibus addita ludibria and quaesitissimae poenae. Women, he implies, were, “like Dirce, fastened on the horns of bulls, or, after figuring as Danaides in the arena, were exposed to the attacks of wild beasts” (Hardy, op. cit., p. 72). Drews on Poggio’s interpolations of TacitusHowever, Drews is not content with merely ousting the passage from Tacitus, but undertakes to explain to his readers how it got there. It was, he conjectures, made up out of a similar passage read in the Pliny’s letter to Trajan Having dispatched Josephus and Tacitus, and printed over their pages in capitals the titles The Silence of Josephus and The Silence of Tacitus, these authors, needless to say, have no difficulty with Pliny and Suetonius. The former, in his letter (No. 96) to Trajan, gives some particulars of the Christians of Bithynia, probably obtained from renegades. They asserted that the gist of their offence or error was that they were accustomed on a regularly recurring day to meet before dawn, and repeat in alternating chant among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by a holy oath not to commit any crime, neither theft, nor brigandage, nor adultery, and not to betray their word or deny a deposit when it was demanded. After this rite was over they had had the custom to break up their meeting, and to come together afresh later in the In this repast we recognize the early eucharist at which Christians were commonly accused of devouring human flesh, as the Jews are accused by besotted fanatics of doing in Russia to-day, and by Mr. Robertson in ancient Jerusalem. Hence Pliny’s proviso that the food they partook of was ordinary and innocent. The passage also shows that this eucharistic meal was not the earliest rite of the day, like the fasting communion of the modern Ritualist, but was held later in the day. Lastly, the qualification that they sang hymns to Christ as to a God, though to Pliny it conveyed no more than the phrase “as if to Apollo,” or “as if to Aesculapius,” clearly signifies that the person so honoured was or had been a human being. Had he been a Sun-god Saviour, the phrase would be hopelessly inept. This letter and Trajan’s answer to it were penned about 110 A.D. Of this letter Professor W. B. Smith writes (p. 252) that in it “there is no implication, not even the slightest, touching the purely human reality of the Christ or Jesus.” Let us suppose the letter had referred to the cult of Augustus CÆsar, and that we read in it of people who, by way of honouring his memory, met on certain days and sang a hymn to Augustus quasi deo, “as to a God.” We know that the members of a college of Augustals did so meet in most cities of the Roman Empire. Well, would Mr. Smith contend in such a case that the letter carried no implication, not even the slightest, touching the purely human reality of the Augustus or CÆsar? Of course he would not. If this letter were the sole Evidence of Suetonius There remains Suetonius, who in ch. xxv of his life of Claudius speaks of Messianic disturbances at Rome impulsore Chresto. Claudius reigned from 41–54, and the passage may possibly be an echo of the conflict, clearly delineated in Acts and Paulines between the Jews and the followers of the new Messiah. In his life of Nero, Suetonius, amid a number of brief notices, apparently taken from some annalistic work, includes the following: “The Christians were visited with condign punishments—a race of men professing a new and malefic superstition.” On this passage I have commented above (p. 161). Origin of the name “Christian” Characteristically enough, Dr. Drews assumes, without a shadow of argument, that the famous text in Acts which says that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch is an interpolation. It stands in the way of his new thesis that the Roman people called the followers of Serapis—who was I have italicized such clauses as have a chance to be authentic, and as may have led Origen to say of Josephus that he did not believe Jesus to be the Christ. For the clause “This was the Christ” must have run, “This was the so-called Christ.” We have the same expression in In the History of the Jewish War, iv, 5, 2, Josephus records his belief that the Destruction of Jerusalem was a divine nemesis for the murder of this Ananus by the Idumeans. There is not now, nor ever was, any passage in Josephus where the fall of Jerusalem was explained as an act of divine nemesis for the murder of James by Ananus. Origen, as Professor Burkitt has remarked, “had mixed up in his commonplace book the account of Ananus’s murder of James and the remarks of Josephus on Ananus’s own murder.” |