Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/194



"And to this very day" ([Greek: eis eti te nyn]). The phrase is foreign to Jos., who commonly writes [Greek: eti kai nyn], occasionally [Greek: kai mechri tou nyn] and the like, never [Greek: eis eti] (Norden).

Jos. is scrupulous in avoiding a harsh hiatus—the juxtaposition of unelided vowels at the end of one word and the beginning of the next. The interpolator writes [Greek: talêthê] correctly, but, as Norden notes, he has in these few lines introduced three glaring examples of hiatus: [Greek: Hellênikou epêgageto], [Greek: staurô epitetimêkotos], [Greek: Pilatou ouk].

(3) Contents.—Our decision must rest primarily upon the arguments already adduced from context and style. But the whole tone of the passage suggests a Christian hand. It is the eulogy of a devotee masquerading under the mantle of the Jewish historian, rather than what we should expect, the bare chronicle, if not the bitter invective, of the priestly historian himself. "If one should call him a man"; "this was the Christ." Could Josephus have so written? Even Jerome found this last phrase incomprehensible on such lips and altered it in his translation to "credebatur esse Christus" (De vir. ill. 13). Prof. Burkitt ventures to uphold the authenticity even of these words. The passage, he argues, was penned at a time when Christianity had not yet become a formidable foe to Judaism, and was intended as an answer to Jewish expostulations on the subject of the coming of Messiah. This is how he paraphrases it: "Yes, the Christ was to come and indeed did come. That very estimable person who met with his death some time ago was the Christ. As in the case of so many other personages in our divinely chosen nation, there were some wonders and prodigies told about him. Even now there are some who revere him. They are good harmless folk like their master. But they are quite unimportant and no danger to the State; when you hear of 'Christ' it is no future Hannibal or Spartacus, but a good man who is dead and gone" (loc. cit. p. 140 f.). The reader must be left to estimate the value of this interpretation of the