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Addendum.

Although it was impossible through lack of time to refer to extra-Biblical testimonies in the preceding lecture, a word or two on the subject may be added here. Rationalists who admit a historical Jesus, base their belief in him now for the most part, not on the authority of the Canonical Gospels, but on the testimony afforded to that view by the two secular historians, Josephus and Tacitus. But the witness even of these writers will no longer bear investigation.

I Josephus. In the popular edition of this author, that of Whiston (1667 to 1752 A.D.), occurs a most direct and explicit testimony to the view we are combating. It is Ant. XVIII. 3.3., and runs as follows:—"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

The evidence obtainable from this paragraph would of course be overwhelming could the passage be only supposed to be the genuine writing of the Jewish historian, who, however, was not born till seven years after the date (A.D. 30) usually assigned to the Crucifixion. Notwithstanding, the passage is condemned as a later interpolation by every critic who has ever studied the question. Some of their reasons for so doing are as follows:—

1. If this passage were genuine Josephus must have been a Christian. The writer avows his own belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and even hints that he was more than human. He also admits the reality of the miracles ascribed to Jesus, and affirms his resurrection from the dead as a fact and the fulfilment of ancient Jewish prophecy. What more could a Christian assert? Yet to suppose Josephus was really a Christian is too absurd for argument, especially as he himself declares that he regarded the Roman Emperor, Vespasian, as fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. See "Wars" VI, 5.4.

2. The passage in question is not quoted by any of the Chritian Fathers before Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in the fourth century. Why were so many great Christian writers silent upon it for more than two centuries? And especially why was one of page 25 the most voluminous of them, Origen of Alexandria (A.D. 186 to to 255), silent upon it? It was not because he did not know of the works of Josephus, for he quotes them repeatedly. Moreover, this passage would have suited his purpose better than any other in Josephus, when writing against Celsus, yet he never quotes it. There is only one way of accounting for his silence;—the passage did not exist in his copy of Josephus. It was forged between his day and that of Eusebius, a view confirmed by the circumstance that Origin himself twice asserts that Josephus did not acknowledge Jesus for Christ, thus flatly contradicting the statement to the contrary in the disputed passage.

The only other reference to Jesus in Josephus is a very short and incidental one in Ant. XX. 9.1. The words are:—[Ananus] "assembled the Sanhedrim of Judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James."

But this must have been some other James, because James, styled the brother of the Lord, met his death on an entirely different occasion, and under quite other circumstances, as we learn from the "Commentaries" of the Christian historian, Hegesippus (see Eusebeus, p. 64.) It is therefore quite open to us to maintain that the words, brother of Jesus who was called Christ," are an interpolation. Indeed it would be quite sufficient if We restricted the interpolation to the latter phrase, "who was called Christ," as Jesus was quite a common name at this time (see Index to Josephus), one instance of this, Jesus, the son of Damneus, being mentioned at the close of this very section in Josephus.

We are confirmed in our rejection of this passage by the authority of Le Clerc, Lardner, and other scholars.

II. The passage in Tacitus is as follows:—"Nero . . . inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people who were held in abhorence for their crimes and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not only over Judea, the source of this evil, but reached the City (i.e. Rome) also."Annals XV. 44.

The writer is here alluding to the persecution of the Christians which is said to have followed the destruction of Rome by fire in the year 64 A.D.; and the passage, if genuine, was written about fifty years later. But is the passage genuine? In the view of the famous historian, Gibbon, it undoubtedly was, but later critics look upon it with very different eyes, and that for the following reasons:—

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1. The style of the whole chapter in which this passage occurs awakens suspicion, it being far coarser in expression than that to which Tacitus has everywhere else accustomed us.

2. The passage is found in one M.S. only, though that is true of the whole book in which it occurs, and indeed of the six last books of the Annals, which all exist in one M.S. only.

3. This M.S., strange to say, did not see the light till the fifteenth century of our era.

4. There is no mention of this disputed passage in any early Christian Father, or any writer of any age previous to the fifteenth century. Neither Tertullian (who mentions Tacitus by name and quotes him,) Origen, Eusebius, or any other of the famous Church writers of antiquity knows anything of it. This is the most strange in the case of Clement of Alexandria (d. 220 A.D.) who set himself to collect all the testimonies he could find relating to Christianity in pagan authors, but who yet managed to miss this one, the most valuable of all, the testimony of the greatest historian, bar one, of his own or any other age!

5. The persecution described in this chapter is probably itself fictitious, being inferentially denied alike by Tertullian and Melito, Bishop of Sardis towards the end of the second century, the latter of whom declares that up to his time there had been no persecution of the Christians.

Hence the circumstances of the case are altogether too suspicious, and the passage must now be looked upon as just another Christian forgery, manufactured, however, not in ancient but comparatively modern times. (See Taylor's "Diegesis," pp. 372 to 376.)'

And, finally; to the absolute and hitherto puzzling silence on the subject of Christ and Christianity maintained by the contemporary of the supposed Jesus, Philo of Alexandria, must now therefore be added the equally absolute silence of Josephus and Tacitus, and so of all the non-Christian writers of the same age A silence so unbroken not only confirms the argument of our preceding lecture but almost makes that argument unnecessary.