Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/688

 658 JESUS the most foolish legends and calumnies about the origin and early history even of the Jews. 1 His contemporary Suetonius evidently held the same opinions. He seems to regard Nero as a public benefactor because he punished the Christians, &quot; a class of men of a strange and pestilent superstition.&quot; 2 In his life of Claudius, as we have already seen, he ignorantly confuses Christ with some Chrestus whom he supposes to have been at that time living at Rome. 3 From the younger Pliny, who wrote to the emperor Trajan for advice how to deal with Christians, 4 we learn the valuable fact that they lived lives confessedly innocent, since he was unable to establish against them any crime beyond that of the belief which, like his contem poraries, he regarded as a perverse and extravagant super stition. We learn also from this celebrated letter that nothing could shake the allegiance of Christians to Christ, and that they were accustomed to meet early in the morn ing to celebrate Him as God with hymns of praise. Later in the 2d century the scoffer Lucian, in his Death of Pere- grinus, and his Fhilopseudes, 6 spoke with bitter sneers both of Christ and Christians. He alludes to the fact of the crucifixion of Christ, to His miracles, to the mutual love and help which prevailed among His followers, and their j belief in Him as a divine person. Passing over the asserted allusions to Christ by Numenius, 6 to His parables in Galerius, and to the earthquake at the crucifixion in Phlegon, 7 we come to the &quot; True &quot;Word &quot; 8 of Celsus the Platonist, towards the close of the second century. We only know this by the quotations and refutation of Origen, but it furnishes us with indisputable testimony that in his day the facts of the Gospels from first to last were current in the exact form in which we now possess them (see CELSUS). Thus, from the scanty notices of heathens even, we can derive a confirmation of the main external facts in the life of Christ : His miracles, His parables, His cruci fixion, His claim to divine honour, the devotion, innocence, heroic constancy, and mutual affection of His followers, and the progressive victories won by His religion in despite of overwhelming opposition alike physical and intellectual. 2. From Jewish writers we can glean similar confirmation of the gospel story. Philo indeed is silent. The legends preserved by Eu&ebius 9 that Philo had met St Peter in Borne during his mission to the emperor Caius, and that in his book on the contemplative life he is describing not the life of the Essenes and Therapeutic, but those of the Christian church in Alexandria founded by St Mark 10 are valueless. It is extremely probable that Philo had scarcely heard either of Christ or of the Christians. 11 He died after 40 A.D., but at that period Christianity had hardly emerged into the recognition claimed by prominent historical pheno mena. The writings of Philo are valuable, not for any light which they throw on the gospel histories, but for the evidence which they afford of prevalent modes of thought and phraseology, in which some even of the apostles shared. When, however, we turn to Josephus, we find in his writ ings, as now extant, no less than three allusions to events in the gospel history. It cannot be decided with certainty whether two of these passages are genuine as they now stand, but modern opinion tends to the view that in each of the actual allusions to Jesus there is a genuine basis with later Christian interpolations. The passage in which I Tac., Hist., v. 3, 4. 2 Suet., Nero, 16. 3 Suet., Claud., 16. 4 Pliny, Ep., x. 97, 98. 5 See Philops., 13, 16, which have been thought to imply ridi cule of Christian miracles. 6 In Origen, Cont. Gels., iv. 51. ~ Ibid., ii.14. 8 A^yos dA.7)0yjs. 9 Euseb., H. E., ii. 4. 10 Sec also Pliotius, Bibl., cod. cv. ; Jerome, Cat. Script. Eccl.; and Suidas. II Philo only mentions a single visit which he paid to Jerusalem (in a fragment ap. Euseb., Prsep. Evang., viii. 14). he speaks of the preaching and execution of John the Baptist is not disputed, 12 and it is very important as show ing that Josephus must have been perfectly well acquainted with the facts of Christ s life, and that he has passed them over, in his usual unscrupulous way, with a reticence due only to dislike or perplexity. For in speaking of St John s preaching he deliberately, and it must be feared dishonestly, excludes the Messianic element from which it derived its main power and significance. In another passage he mentions with strong disapproval the judicial murder by the younger Annas of James the Just, &quot; the brother of Jesus, called the Christ.&quot; 13 The passage was early tampered with by Christian interpolators who wished to make it a more emphatic testimony in favour of Christ, but in its present form its genuineness is undisputed. 14 Respecting the third passage, in which Josephus speaks directly of Jesus, the only question is whether it be partly or entirely spurious. Placing in brackets the words which are undoubtedly inter polated, it runs as follows : At this time appeared a certain 15 Jesus, a wise man [if indeed He may be called a man, for He was a worker of miracles, 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 at the instigation of our chief men Pilate condemned Him to the cross, those who had first loved Him did not fall away. [For He appeared to them alive again on the third day, according as the holy prophets had declared this and countless other marvels of Him.] To this day the sect of Christians, called after Him, still exists.&quot; 16 That Josephus wrote the whole passage as it now stands no sane critic can believe. Vespasian, not Jesus, was the Messiah of the &quot;ambiguous oracle&quot; of that apostate Jew. 17 There are, however, two reasons which are alone sufficient to prove that the whole passage is spurious, one that it was unknown to Origen and the earlier fathers, the other that its place in the text is uncertain. It is now found after the historian s notices of Pilate, but the remarks of Eusebius show that in his time it was found before them. 18 We must conclude then that Josephus preserved a politic silence respecting Christ and the Christians, confining himself to remote allusions ; and this was quite possible, because he was writing mainly for Greeks and Romans who were profoundly ignorant of the whole subject. That Josephus knew a great deal more than he chose to say is evident. There is reason to suspect that his account of his own juvenile precocity before the leading teachers of his nation is borrowed from the Gospels/ 9 and that his account of his shipwreck on the journey to Rome is not un coloured by the facts of St Paul s shipwreck about that very time. 20 But the most striking indication of his hostile reticence is found in the chapter of his Antiquities which follows the supposed allusion to Jesus. 21 He there breaks his narrative in the most arbitrary manner to drag in a disgusting story of a trick played by the priests of Isis on a Roman lady ; and no one who is acquainted with the Jewish calumnies about the incarnation can doubt that in this story we have an oblique and malignant an ticipation of the falsehood which ultimately took form in the Talmud and the anti-Christian writings of the later Jews. From other Jewish sources not a single fact about Jesus can be gleaned. In the unexpurgated editions of the J2 Jos., Ant., xviii. 5, 2. 13 Ant., xx. 9, 1. 14 Origen, C. Gels., i. 47 ; Euseb., //. E., ii. 23. 15 irjcroDs rts is the reading in Euseb., i. 11 ; and, if the passage be genuine at all, there can be no doubt that this is the true reading. 16 Ant., xviii. 3, 3. 17 Jos., B. J., vi. 5, 4, a passage which, as Hausrathsays (Ncutesl. Zeitgesch., iv. 4), must have been penned at a peculiarly shameless hour. 18 Euseb., ii. 6. See Keim, Jesu von Nazara, i. 19 Vit., 2. 20 Vit., 3. - 1 Ant., xviii. 3, 4.