Chapter V EXTERNAL EVIDENCE

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.1 On the whole, Josephus’s account [155]accords with the picture we have of John in the Synoptic Gospels, except that in the Gospels the place and circumstances of his murder are differently given. This difference is good evidence that Josephus’s account is independent of the Christian sources. Nevertheless, Dr. Drews airily pretends that there is a strong suspicion of its being a forgery by some Christian hand. As for John the Baptist as we meet him in the Gospels, he is, says Drews, no historical personage. One expects some reason to be given for this negative conclusion, but gets none whatever except a magnificent hint that “a complete understanding of the baptism in the Jordan can only be attained, if here, too, we take into consideration the translation of the baptism into astrological terms” (Christ Myth, p. 121).

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 [156]heaven? Were the Essenes there also? Mr. Robertson, of course, pursues the same simple method of disposing of adverse evidence, and asserts (p. 396) that Josephus’s account of John “is plainly open to that suspicion of interpolation which, in the case of the allusion to Jesus in the same book (Antiq., xviii, 3, 3), has become for most critics a certainty.” He does not condescend to inform his readers that the latter passage2 is absent from important MSS., was unknown to Origen, and is therefore rightly bracketed by editors; whereas the account of John is in all MSS., and was known to Origen. But as we have [157]seen before, Mr. Robertson is one of those gifted people who can discern by peculiar intuitions of their own that everything is interpolated in an author which offends their prejudices. He has a lofty contempt for the careful sifting of the textual tradition, the examination of MSS. and ancient versions to which a scholar resorts, before he condemns a passage of an ancient author as an interpolation. Moreover, a scholar feels himself bound to show why a passage was interpolated, in whose interests. For, regarded as an interpolation, a passage is as much a problem to him as it was before. Its genesis has still to be explained. But Messrs. Robertson and Drews and Smith do not condescend to explain anything or give any reasons. A passage slays their theories; therefore it is a “vital interpolation.” It is the work of an ancient enemy sowing tares amid their wheat.

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):—

    Origen thrice quotes as from Josephus the statement that the Jewish sufferings at the hands of Titus were a divine retribution for the slaying of James.

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 [158](ch. xlvii) by saying that Celsus “somehow accepted John as a Baptist who baptized Jesus,” and then adds the following:—

    In the Eighteenth Book of his Antiquities of the Jews Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says, nevertheless—although against his will, not far from the truth—that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus called Christ, the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his righteousness (i.e., strict observance of the law).

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 Matthew xiii, 55, we have a like statement that the sufferings of the Jews were a punishment for the murder of James the Just.

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:—

    The passage is still found in some Josephus manuscripts; but, as it is wanting in others, it is, and must be, regarded as a Christian interpolation older than Origen.

[159]

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:—

    Now, since this phrase is certainly interpolated in the one place, the only reasonable conclusion is that it is interpolated in the other.

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 [160]

    subjected to most exquisite tortures those whom, hated for their crimes, the populace called Chrestians. The author of this name, Christus, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate; and, though repressed for the moment, the pernicious superstition was breaking forth again, not only throughout Jud?a, the fountain-head of this mischief, but also throughout the capital, where all things from anywhere that are horrible or disgraceful pour in together and are made a religion of.

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 [161]mutilation of texts which no critical historian has ever called in question is a flagrant form of such cookery. In the hands of these writers facts are made to fit theory, not theory to fit facts.

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 πολ? πλ?θο?, 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 [162]Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (written about 407) by some clever forger, probably Poggio, who smuggled it into the text of Tacitus, “a writer whose text is full of interpolations.” It is hardly necessary to inform an educated reader, firstly, that the text of Tacitus is recognized by all competent Latin scholars to be remarkably free from interpolations; secondly, that Severus merely abridged his account of Nero’s persecution from the narrative he found in Tacitus, an author whom he frequently copied and imitated; thirdly, that Poggio, the supposed interpolator, lived in the fifteenth century, whereas our oldest MS. of this part of Tacitus is of the eleventh century; it is now in the Laurentian Library. I should advise Dr. Drews to stick to his javelin-man story, and not to venture on incursions into the field of classical philology.

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 [163]day to partake of a meal, which, however, was of an ordinary and innocent kind.

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 C?sar, 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 C?sar? Of course he would not. If this letter were the sole [164]record in existence of early Christianity, we might perhaps hesitate about its implications; but it is in the characteristic Latin which no one, so far as we know, ever wrote, except the younger Pliny, and is accompanied by Trajan’s answer, couched in an equally characteristic style. It is, moreover, but one link in a long chain, which as a whole attests and presupposes the reality of Jesus. Mr. Smith, however, does not seem quite sure of his ground, for in the next sentence he hints that after all Pliny’s letter is not genuine. These writers are not the first to whom this letter has proved a pons asinorum. Semler began the attack on its genuineness in 1784; and others, who desired to eliminate all references to Christianity in early heathen writers, have, as J. B. Lightfoot has remarked (Apostolic Fathers, Pt. II, vol. i, p. 55), followed in his wake. Their objections do not merit serious refutation.

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.3 Itacism or interchange of “e” and “i” being the commonest of corruptions in Greek and Latin MSS., we may fairly conjecture Christo in the source used by Suetonius, who wrote about the year 120. Christo, which means Messiah, is intelligible in relation to Jews, but not Chresto; and the two words were [165]identical in pronunciation. Drews of course upholds Chresto, and in Tacitus would substitute for Christiani Chrestiani; for this there is indeed manuscript support, but it is gratuitous to argue as he does that the allusion is to Serapis or Osiris, who were called Chrestos “the good” by their votaries. He does not condescend to adduce any evidence to show that in that age or any other Chrestos, used absolutely, signified Osiris or Serapis; and there is no reason to suppose it ever had such a significance. He is on still more precarious ground when he surmises that Nero’s victims at Rome were not followers of Christ, but of Serapis, and were called Chrestiani by the mob ironically, because of their vices. Here we begin to suspect that he is joking. Why should worshippers of Serapis have been regarded as specially vicious by the Roman mob? Jews and Christians were no doubt detested, because they could not join in any popular festivities or thanksgivings. But there was nothing to prevent votaries of Serapis or Osiris from doing so, nor is there any record of their being unpopular as a class.

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 [166]Chrestos or “good”—Chrestiani, because they were precisely the contrary.4 Tacitus does not say that Nero’s victims were so called because of their vices. That is a gloss put on the text by Drews. We only learn (a) that they were hated by the mob for their vices, and (b) that the mob at that time called them Chrestiani. His use of the imperfect tense appellabat indicates that in his own day the same sect had come to be known under their proper appellation as Christiani. In A.D. 64, he implies, a Roman mob knew no better. [167]

1 The passage in which Josephus mentions John the Baptist runs as follows: “To some of the Jews it seemed that Herod had had his army destroyed by God, and that it was a just retribution on him for his severity towards John called the Baptist. For it was indeed Herod who slew him, though a good man, and one who bade the Jews in the practise of virtue and in the use of justice one to another and of piety towards God to walk together in baptism. For this was the condition under which baptism would present itself to God as acceptable, if they availed themselves of it, not by way of winning pardon for certain sins, but after attaining personal holiness, on account of the soul having been cleansed beforehand by righteousness. Because men flocked to him, for they took the greatest pleasure in listening to his words, Herod took fright and apprehended that his vast influence over people would lead to some outbreak of rebellion. For it looked as if they would follow his advice in all they did, and he came to the conclusion that far the best course was, before any revolution was [155]started by him, to anticipate it by destroying him: otherwise the upheaval would come, and plunge him into trouble and remorse. So John fell a victim to Herod’s suspicions, was bound and sent to the fortress of Machaerus, of which I have above spoken, and there murdered. But the Jews were convinced that the loss of his army was by way of retribution for the treatment of John, and that it was God who willed the undoing of Herod.” ↑

2 The suspect passage in which Josephus refers to Jesus runs thus, Ant. xviii, 3, 3: “Now about this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one may call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive what is true with pleasure, and he attracted many Jews and many of the Greeks. This was the ‘Christ.’ And when on the accusation of the principal men amongst us Pilate had condemned him to the cross, they did not desist who had formerly loved him, for he appeared to them on the third day alive again; the divine Prophets having foretold both this and a myriad other wonderful things about him; and even now the race of those called Christians after him has not died out.”

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 Matt. i, 16, and in the passage, undoubtedly genuine, in which Josephus refers to James, Ant., xx, 9, 1. Here Josephus relates that the Sadducee High-priest Ananus (son of Annas of the New Testament), in the interval of anarchy between the departure of one Roman Governor, Festus, and the arrival of another, Albinus, set up a court of his own, “and bringing before it the brother of Jesus who was called Christ—James was his name—and some others, he accused them of being breakers of the Law, and had them stoned.”

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.” ↑

3 So in Acts xviii, 12, we read of faction fights in Corinth between the Jews and the followers of Jesus the Messiah; Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia, who cared for none of the matters at issue between them, is a well-known personage, and an inscription has lately been discovered dating his tenure of Achaia in A.D. 52. ↑

4 Tacitus very likely wrote Chrestiani. He says the mob called them such, but adds that the author of the name was Christ, so implying that Christianus was the true form, and Chrestianus a popular malformation thereof. The Roman mob would be likely to deform a name they did not understand, just as a jack-tar turns Bellerophon into Billy Ruffian. Chrestos was a common name among oriental slaves, and a Roman mob would naturally assume that Christos, which they could not understand, was a form of it. ↑