vy. THE ALLEGED WITNESS OF JOSEPHUS TO Curist. —The passage on which so much has been written occurs in Ant. XVIII. 63f. {iii. 3], and runs as follows: ‘ Now about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of marvellous works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure; and many of the Jews and many also of the Greeks did he win over to himself: this was the Christ. And when, on the indictment of the principal men among us, Pilate had sentenced him
JOSEPHUS
JOSEPHUS
to the cross, those who loved him at the first ceased not [to do so]; for he appeared to them on the third day again alive, as the Divine prophets had declared these and ten thousand other wonder- ful things concerning him. And even now the race (rd pi\ov) of Christians, which takes its name from him, is not extinct.’ The passage stood in the text of Josephus in the 4th cent., as Eusebius quotes it (HF i. 11; Dem. Ev. iii. 3. 105f., ed. Gaisford), and from that time down to the 16th cent. its genuineness was undoubted. Its exist- ence contributed largely to the high esteem in which Josephus was held by the Fathers. During the last 300 years a vast amount of literature has been written on the question of its authenticity. Very few critics at the present day accept the pas- sage as it stands as from the pen of Josephus ; but there is a division of opinion as to whether the whole is an interpolation, or whether Josephus did make a brief statement about Jesus Christ, which was afterwards augmented by a Christian hand.
(1) As to the external evidence, it is true that the passage occurs in all the MSS. But this is of comparatively little weight, as none of the Greek MSS containing Book xvi. of the Antiquities is older than the 11th century. The old Latin version carries us much further back, to the time of Cassiodorus (beginning of the 6th cent. ), and the quotation in Eusebius attests the existence of the passage still earlier, in the 4th century. On the other hand, it is practically certain that Origen in the preceding century did not find it in his text of Josephus. For, while he is aware of the passage in Josephus concerning James, the Lord’s brother, he says: ‘The wonder is that though he did not admit our Jesus to be Christ, he none the less gave his witness to so much righteousness in James’ (Comm. in Matt. x. 17); elsewhere Origen, collecting all the indirect evidence for Christianity which he can find in Josephus, is silent on the above passage, and again states that J osephus ‘disbelieved in Jesus as Christ’ (e. Celsum, i. 47). This is a case where the negative evidence practi- cally amounts to a positive proof that the passage was unknown.
(2) The internal evidence is decisive against the genuineness of the passage as it stands. The style affords no certain clue: it isnot markedly different from that of Josephus in this part of his work: it may be granted that the interpolator has done his work with some skill. But the contents are not such as Josephus could have written. He is elsewhere, as was seen, silent on the subject of a Messiah. The sentence ‘this was the Christ’ (jv, not évoulfero) can have come only from a Christian pen, and it is certain that Josephus was not a Christian, The same may be said of the phrases ‘if one should call him a man,’ ‘the truth,’ and the statement about the appearance on the third day. Zahn has adduced an interesting parallel to the first of these phrases and the following words ‘for he was a doer,’ etc., from a Christian work, the Acta Pilati (quoted in Schiirer), The passage is owt of place, and breaks the sequence of the narrative, It is interposed between an account of the disturbances in Judsea caused by Pilate’s disregard of Jewish scruples (55-62), and an account of scandals con- nected with the worshippers of Isis and the banish- ment of Jews from Rome (65-84). The opening of XVII. 65, ‘And about the same time another calamity disturbed the Jews,’ connects that section directly with the section about Pilate. The men- tion of Pilate has of course led to the insertion of the passage at this point. The fact that the passage interrupts the sequence of the narrative is an argument for its spuriousness as a whole. Moreover, as Schiirer has pointed out, a careful
analysis of the section, eliminating all that must be of Christian origin, leaves practically nothing behind. ‘The theory of partial interpolation is unsatisfactory. :
Two other passages have to be taken into account in the discussion: (a) that concerning the death of ‘John surnamed the Baptist’ (Ant. xvut. 116- 119), who is described as a good man who bade the Jews practise virtue and be baptized, and who was put to death by Herod because he feared that John’s influence over the people might lead to a rebellion ; (6) that concerning the death of James, ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,’ whom Ananus the high priest caused to be stoned (Ant. xx. 200f.). Origen refers to both these passages. There is no reason why the former should not be accepted as genuine. The style is distinctly that of Josephus [N.B. the form auaprds in xviii. 117]. The historian could refer to the preaching and baptism of John without giving offence to his Roman readers; he could not without personal risk allude to Messianic expectations at a time when the spirit of the Jewish revolt against Rome, the strength of which lay in those expectations, had not been completely quelled. The language of the second passage is not inconsistent with its authenticity. There is a marked difference be- tween the words ‘who was called Christ’? and ‘he was the Christ.’ But since Origen, in referring to the passage (c. Celswm, i. 47), says that Josephus attributed the outbreak of the war to the putting to death of James (a statement which does not occur in our text), there is good reason to believe that here, too, there has been interpolation. This has taken various forms, one of which is that given by Origen.