Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/438

 JESUS

876

JESUS

Christ is the Jewish iiistorian Flavius Josephus; born A. D. 37, he was a contemporary of the Apostles, and died in Rome a. d. 94. Two passages in his "Antiq- uities" which confirm two facts of the inspired Cliris- tian records are not disputed. In the one he reports the murder of "John called Bapti.st" by Herod (Ant., XVIII, V, 2), describing also John's character and work; in the other (Ant., XX, ix, 1) he disapproves of the sentence pronounced by the high-priest Ananus against "James, brother of Jesus Who was called Chri.st". It is antecedently probable that a writer so well informed as Josephus, must have been well ac- quainted too with the iloctrine and the history of Jesus Christ. Seeing, also, that he records events of minor importance in the history of the Jews, it would be surprising if he were to keep silence about Jesus Christ. Consideration for the priests and Pharisees did not prevent him from mentioning (lie judicial murders of John the Baptist and the Afxistlc James; his endeav- our to find the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies in Vespasian ditl not intluce him to pass in silence over several Jewish sects, though their tenets appear to be inconsistent with the Vespasian claims. One natu- rally expects, therefore, a notice about Jesus Christ in Josephus.

Ant., XVIII, iii, .3, seems to satisfy this expecta^ tion: — "About this time", it reads, "appeared Jesus, a wise man (if indeed it is right to call Him man; for He was a worker of astonishing deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with joy), and He drew to Himself many Jews (and many also of the Greeks. This was the Christ). And when Pilate, at the denun- ciation of those that are foremost among us, had con- demned Him to the cross, those who had first loved Him dill not abandon Him. (For He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the holy prophets having foretold this and countless other marvels about Him.) The tribe of Christians named after Him did not cease to this day."

, A testimony so important as the foregoing could not escape the work of the critics. Their conclusions may be reduced to three headings: First, there are those who consider the whole passage as spurious. To tliis class belong: Eichstadt, " Flaviani de Jesu Christo testimonii avBevrla, quo jure nuper defensa sit quaest. I-VI", 1813-41 ; " CJuaestionibus sex super Flaviano de Jesu Christo testimonio auctarium I-IV", 1841^5; Lewitz, "Quaestionum Flavianarum specimen", 1835; Reuss in "Nouvelle Revue de Theologie", 1859, 312 sqq.; Gerlach, "Das angebhche Zeugniss von Christo in den Schriften des Fl. Josephus", 1863; Hohne, " Ueber das angebliche Zeugniss des Jo.sephus", 1871; Schiirer, "Geschichte des judischen Volkes", I, Leip- zig, 1901, 544-49; Farrar, art. "Jesus Christ" in "Encyclopaedia Britannica", 9th ed. The principal reasons for this view appear to lie the following; Jose- phus could not represent Jesus Clu-ist as a simple moralist, and on the other hand he could not empha- size the Messianic prophecies and expectations with- out offending the Roman susceptibilities; again, the above cited passage from Josephus is said to be un- known to Origen and the earlier patristic writers; its very place in the Josephan text is uncertain, since Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., II, vi) must have found it be- fore the notices concerning Pilate, while it now stands after them. But the spuriousness of the disputed Josephan passage does not imply the historian's igno- rance of the facts connected with Jesus Christ. Jose- phus's report of his own juvenile precocity before the Jewish teachers (Vit., 2) reminds one of the story of Christ's stay in the Temple at the age of twelve; the description of his shipwreck on his journey to Rome (Vit., 3) recalls St. Paul's shipwreck as told in the Acts; finally his arbitrary introduction of a deceit practised by tlic priests of Isis <]n a Honum liidy, after the chapter contaiiiiii;; his supposed allusion to Jesus, allows a disposit ion to explain away the virgin birth of

Jesus and to prepare the falsehoods embodied in the later Jewish writings.

A second class of critics do not regard the whole of Josephus's testimony concerning Christ as spurious, but they maintain the interpolation of parts included in parenthesis. To this class belong such scholars as Gieseler, " Kirchengeschichte", I, I, 81 sqq.; Hase, "Leben Jesu", n. 9; Ewald, "Geschichte des Volkes Israel", V, 181-86; Paret in Herzog, "Realencyk.", VII, 27-29; Heinichen, "Eu,sebii scripta historica", III, 2nd ed., 623 sqq.; Midler, " Christus bei Josephus Fl.", Innsbruck, 1895; Reinach, " Josephe sur J^sus" in "Revue des Etudes juives", 1897, 1-18; "Revue bibhque", 1898, 150-52. The reasons assigned for this opinion may be reduced to the following two: Josephus must have mentioned Jesus, but he cannot have recognized Him as the Christ; hence part of our present Josephan text must be genuine, part must be interpolated. Again, the same conclusion follows from the fact that Origen knew a Josephan text about Jesus, but was not acquainted with our present reading; for, according to the great Alexandrian doctor, Jose- phus did not believe that Jesus was the Messias (" In Matth.", xiii, 55; "Contra Cels.", I, 47). Whatever force these two arguments have is lost by the fact that Josephus did not write for the Jews but for the Ro- mans; consequently, when he says, "This was the Christ", he does not necessarily imply that Jesus was the Messias expected by the Jews, but that Jesus was the Clu-ist considered by the Romans as the founder of the Christian religion.

The third class of scholars believe that the whole passage concerning Jesus, as it is found to-day in Jose- phus, is genuine. Among the authors belonging to this class we may mention: Bretschneider, "Capita theologia? Judaeorum dogmaticEe e Flavii Josephi scriptis coUecta", 1812, 59-66; Bohmert, "Ueber des Flavius Josephus Zeugniss von Christo", 1823; Scho- del, " Flavius Josephus de Jesu Christo testatus", 1840; Mayaud, "Le t^moignage de Josephe", Strasburg, 1858; Langen in "Tiibinger theol. Quartalschrift", 1865, i; Danko, " Historia revelationis divina> N. T.", I, 1867, .308-14; Daubuz, "Pro testimonio Y\. Josephi de Jesu Christo", London, 1706; "Studien und Kriti- ken", 1856, 840; Kneller, " Fl. Josephus iiber Jesus Christus" in " Stimmen aus Maria-Laach", 1897, 1-19, 161-74. The main arguments for the genuineness of the Josephan passage are the following: First, all codices or manuscripts of Josephus's work contain the text in question; to maintain the spuriousness of the text, we must suppose that all the copies of Josephus were in the hands of Christians, and were changed in the same way. Second, it is true that neither Ter- tuUian nor St. Justin makes use of Josephus's passage concerning Jesus; but this silence is probably due to the contempt with which the contemporary Jews re- garded Josephus, and to the relatively little authority he had among the Roman readers. Writers of the age of Tertullian and Justin could appeal to living wit- nesses of the Apostolic tradition. Third, Eusebius ("Hist. Eccl.", I, xi; cf. " Dem. Ev.", Ill, v), Sozomen (Hist. Eccl., I, i), Niceph. (Hist. Eccl., I, 39), Isi- dore of Pelusium (Ep. IV, 225), St. Jerome (Catal. script, eccles., xiii), Ambrose, Cassiodorus, etc., appeal to the testimony of Josephus; there nmst have been no doubt as to its authenticity at the time of these illustrious writers. Fourth, the complete silence of JosephiLS as to Jesus would have been a more eloquent testimony than we possess in his present text; this latter contains no statement incompatible with its Josephan authorship: the Roman reader needed the information that Jesus was the Christ, or the founder of the Christian religion; the wonderful works of Jesus and His Resurrection from the dead were .so inces- santly urged by the Christians that without these attri- butes the Josephan Jesus would hardly have been acknowledged as the foiuider of ( 'hristianity. All this