Of still greater interest, perhaps, to our readers must be the relation which Josephus, living as he did in the age of Christ himself, sustained towards Christianity. Some have gone so far as to assert not only the authen- ticity of passages in his writings alluding to Christ, etc. (see below), but have even made out of Josephus an Ebionite Christian (Whiston, Dissert, i). if not a true follower of Jesus the Christ. I'rof. Farrar (in Kitto), speaking on this point, says : " Nothing is more certain than that Josephus was no Christian {amarMV n^ Irj- (Tov wc Xpianij, Orig. c. Cels. i, 35) ; the whole tone of Ilia mind was alien from the noble simplicity of Chris- tian belief, anil, as we have seen already, he was not even a good Jew. Whatever, therefore, may be thought about the passages alluding to John tlie IBaptist {Ant. xviii, 5, 2), and James, ' the Lord's brother' (ihid. xx, 9, 1), which may possibly be genuine, there can be no rea- sonable doubt that the famous allusion to Christ (Ant. xviii, 3, 3) is either absolutely spurious or largely inter- polated. The silence [partial or total] of Josephus on a subject of such importance, and with which he must have been so thoroughly acquainted, is easily explica- ble ; and it is intrinsically much more probable that he should have passed over the subject altogether (as is done also by his contemporary, Justus of Tiberias, Phot. Cod. Bild. 33) than that he should only liave devoted to it a few utterly inadequate lines. Even if he had been induced to do this by some vague hope of getting something by it from Christians like Flavins Clemens, he certainly would not have expressed himself in lan- guage so strong {tlyt dvc(,a ni)Tov Xiynv XP'l), and still less would he have vouched for the Messiahship, tlie miracles, or the resurrection of Jesus. Justin, Ter- tuUiau, Chrysoslom, Origen, and even Photius, knew noilinig i,( ibt; passage, nor does it appear till the time ol Eus.bius (//!sl. Keel. \, 2; Dem. Evan;,, iii, 5), a man for whom Niobuhr can lind no better name tlian 'a de- tejitabh; falsilicr," and one whose historical credibility is well nigli given up. Whether Eusebins forged it him- selt or borrowed it from the marr/inalia of some Chris- tian reader cannot be determined, but that Josejihus did not write it [at least in its present form] may be re- garded as settled. Nay, the very next sentence {Ant. xvii,3. 4) is a disgusting story, whollv irrelevant to the tenor of the narrative, and introduced in all. probability lor the sole purpose of a blasphemous parodvon the mi- raculous conception, such as was attempted bv various Kabl.imcal writers (e. g. in the Sepher Tnledolh Jeshim ■ see W agenseil. Tela lynea SutuncB ; see Jiisus Ciiuist)'
That Josephus intended obliquely to discredit some of the chief Christian doctrines by representing them as having been anticipated by the Essenes seems by no means improbable (comp. De Quincey's Works, vol. ix, The Essenes)." For a compendium of the abundant lit- erature on these questions, see Gieseler, Eccl. Hist. sec. 34. The chief treatises are, Daubuz, Pro testimoniu Ft. Jos. de Jesu Christ (London, 1706) ; reprinted in Haver- camp; Bohmert, Ueber des Fl.Jos. Zeitgniss von Christo (Lpz. 1823) ; Le Moyne, Var. Sacr. ii, 931 ; Heinichen, ExcuTS. I. ad Euseb. II. E. iii, 331 ; comp. also Langen, Judenthuni in Paldstina (Freib. 1866), p. 440 sq. ; Stud, u. Krit. 1856, 840 sq.
It remains for us only to add a list of the worlcs of Jose- phus (here we mainly follow Smith \^Dict. Or. and Rom. Biog. s. V.]), which are, 1. .4 Historij of the Jewish War, {TTip'i Tov 'lovSaiKov TToXifxcv 1] lovvatKtig iffTopiag Tripi dXojfftcDc), in seven books. Josephus tells us that he wrote it first in his own language (the Syro-Chaldee), and then translated it into Greek, for the information of European readers ( War, i, 1). The original is no longer extant. The Greek was published about A.D. 75, under the patronage and with the especial recommendation of Titus. Agrippa II, also, in no fewer than sixty-two letters to Josephus, bore testimony to the care and fidel- ity displayed in it. It was admitted into the Palatine library, and its author was honored with a statue at Rome. It commences with the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C. 170 ; runs rapidly over the events before Josephus's o^vn time, and gives a detailed account of the fatal war with Rome (Josephus, Life, p. 65 ; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii, 9 ; Jerome, Catal. Script. Eccl. p. 13 ; Ittigius, Prolegomena ; Fabricius, Bihl. Grccc. V, 4 ; Vossius, De Hist. Grcec. p. 239, ed. Westermann) :— 2. Jewish Antiquities ('lovda'iKi'} apxntoXoyi'o), in twen- ty books, completed about A.D. 93, and addressed to Epaphroditus. The title, as well as the number of Ijooks, may have been suggested by the 'Pw/faVc/) dpxctto\oyia of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The work extends from the creation of the world to A.D. 66, the 12th year of Nero, in which the Jews were goaded to rebellion by Gessius Florus. It embraces, therefore, but more in de- tail, much of the matter of the first and second books on the Jewish War. Both these histories are said to have been translated into Hebrew, of which version, however, there are no traces, though some have er- roneously identified it with the works of the Pseudo- Josephus. See Joseph ben-Gorion: — 3. His Lij'e, in one book. This is an autobiography appended to the Antiquities, and is addressed to the same Eijaphroditus. It cannot, however, have been written earlier than A.D. 97, since Agrippa II is mentioned in it as no longer liv- ing (65) ; — 4. Kara 'Att/wi'oc (a treatise against Apion), in two books, also addressed to Epaphroditus. It is in answer to such as impugned the antiquity of the Jew- ish nation on the ground of the silence ol' Greek writers respecting it. The title, " against Apion," is rather a misnomer, and is applicable only to a portion of the second book (1-13). It exhibits considerable learning, and is highly commended by Jerome. The (ireek text is deficient at ii, 5-9 : — 5. The Fourth of Maccabees {elg MaKKaliaiovQ, J) nipt avTOKpdropoQ Xoyiaixov), in one book. The genuineness of this treatise has been called in question by many (see Cave, Hist. Lit. Script. Ec- cles. p. 22), but it is attributed to Josephus by Eusebius, Jerome, Philostorgius, and others (see Fabricius, Bibl. Grmc. v, 7 ; Ittigius, Prolegomena). Certainly, howev- er, it does not read like his works. It is an extreme- ly declamatory account of the martyrdom of Eleazar (an aged priest), and of seven youths and their moth- er, in the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes ; and this is prefaced by a discussion on the suprem- acy which reason possesses de jure over pleasure and pain. Its title has reference to the zeal for God's law displayed by the sufferers in the spirit of the Mac- cabees. There is a paraphrase of it by Erasmus, and in some Greek copies of the Bible it was inserted as the