Josephus and his Testimony.
The controversy over the authenticity of the passage in
the eighteenth book of the Antiquities (or Archaeologia)
of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ is one of the longest
debated of all the disputes in the history of criticism. It
is not necessary to recapitulate the points that were said
to be conceded by the Jewish historian. They were
important for the Christian world as constituting the first
evidence of the existence of Christ and the Christian
Faith outside the Christian documents properly so called.
What strikes the student who goes over the records of
the controversy, say from its great revival in the eighteenth
century down to the present time, is the singular change
which comes over the minds of the critics as they express
from time to time the results of their enquiry, and after
having positively affirmed that the passage in the
Antiquities cannot be genuine, because it is too Christian
for a Jew to have written, then turn upon themselves
and say the very opposite, affirming on the ground of
internal evidence and closer scrutiny of words, that it
is certainly the language of Josephus, and not the product
of a later age nor of a Christian hand. One of the most
interesting of these critical repentances was the case of
the French scholar Daubuz, who, having in the eighteenth
century convinced himself and done his best to persuade
others that Josephus cannot have been the author,
reconsidered his opinion and made a splendid defence
of its authenticity; many of his arguments will be found
to reappear in recent times, when the genuineness of the
Flavian Testimony has been re-affirmed by Harnack,
by Professor Burkitt, and by his colleague Professor
Emery Barnes. It is an unusual phenomenon to find what
is something like a stampede on the part of the critics
from one opinion to the opposite, especially when the
first opinion was so naturally attractive that it could
hardly be resisted except by those who are supposed to
be subject to hereditary prejudice.
In all such matters we expect a change of opinion,
if
opinion has be changed, to arise either from closer
reasoning or from the accumulation of further evidence.
It is under the second of these heads rather than the
former that an acute situation has recently been produced;
fresh documentary evidence was said to be forthcoming,
had in fact actually been produced, which affects the
whole of the controversy and may, perhaps, lead to a final
decision. This fresh evidence is the discovery of a Russian
version of the Jewish War of Josephus, which contains the
disputed passage in a new form different from what is
commonly edited, as well as a good deal of fresh matter
bearing on primitive Christianity, and on the relations of
John the Baptist to Jesus and conversely. Thus the
Testimonium has turned up not only in a new language,
but also in what is an earlier documents for while the
Jewish War was produced almost immediately after the
fall of Jerusalem, the Antiquities belong to near the close
of the first century, when Josephus had been for many
years domiciled in Rome, under distinguished patronage
and in close touch with the Imperial Household. Did the
Testimonium really belong to the earlier document, or did
it form a part of the narration in the Antiquities, and has
it been lifted from the latter work into the former by
Russian translators or scribes; or perhaps it may have
belonged to both?
The new evidence was at once acclaimed as genuine
Josephus by Dr Robert Eisler and by Vacher Burch, who
followed the first publication of the text in Germany by
Berendts and Grass by treatises upon it. In the first
instance an attempt was made to show that the ancestry
of the Russian text ran back into an Aramaic version of
the Jewish War, which Josephus tells us thathe had made
for his compatriots in Northern Mesopotamia, but it
soon became evident that the thesis of direct derivation
of the Russian text from a lost Aramaic Josephus could
not be sustained, and that the Russian text was descended
from a Greek original. This original text varied much
from what we may call the canonical Josephus. Were
its variants trustworthy? Did they go back to Josephus
himself? Dr. Eisler studied the whole question afresh in
a volume of nearly 1500 pages of astonishing erudition,
in which the story of Jesus, now concede to be historical,
was re-written in a manner that was startling indeed to
the Christian historians, however grateful the latter
might be for Eisler's assistance in disposing, perhaps
finally, of the theorists who had talked of a mythological
Christ. If they had escaped from Scylla, it looked as
if they were going to be plunged into Charybdis; for
the recovered Jesus was one of a series of unsuccessful
revolters against Roman rule, who operated from a
pacifist foundation, and finding it untenable, led his
followers into an armed rising, which was promptly
quelled by the combined forces of the Jewish priesthood
and the roman governor. Eisler found at first a strong
supporter, and loyal friend, in our greatest Josephus
scholar, St John Thackeray, the editor of Josephus in
the texts and translations of the Loeb Library. "You
have convinced me," he is reported to have said, "but
against my will." From this almost absolute surrender
he seems to have receded into a position of suspense of
judgment, if we may judge from the Loeb volumes,
and from a splendid series of lectures which he
delivered in New York before his lamented removal
from amongst us. These lectures contain his last and
best work. The Antiquities are shown to have been
reduced to the form in which we have them by the
aid of a number of learned Greek amanuenses, one of
whom can be detected by his imitations of the style of
Thucydides, and another, more poet than historian or
philosopher, borrows terms of speech from Sophocles
and Euripides, including under the latter head a loan
from Euripides' lost play, the Ino.
It is easy to see what a loss has befallen the
world of
classical and Biblical learning by the migration of this
great scholar, whose final opinion upon some of the
points at issue would almost have been of the nature of
a verdict.
Now let us return for a moment or two to Dr
Eisler's
treatment of the current text of the Flavian Testimony.
It was necessary for Eisler to show that if the Testimony
was authentic hit had been through Christian hands to
make it presentable. The first step in this direction had
already been taken many years since, by Heinichen in
his edition of Eusebius where Josephus is quoted. The
current text tells us that Jesus was a teacher of those who
receive the truth with gladness, (Greek), which Heinichen
detected that (Greek) was a correction of (Greek), a
favorite term in Josephus for the disorders of his time,
so that a text was suggested which changed "people who
receive the truth with gladness" to "people who gladly
take up with innovations." The inference is that a
Christian hand has deleted the fondness for disorder
and replaced it by a love of truth. It would only mean
a change of a single letter. From this point Eisler
proceeds to amend the current text so as to bring it into
a form which would consist with a Josephan authorship.
He found that the author of the Apocryphal Acts of
Pilate had made use of theTestimonium, and proceeded
to restore several missing lines which he thought could
have been preserved in that quarter. I do not think that
he strengthened his case by his interpolations. Apart
from the new discovery of the Russian text, he seems
to have made too many changes to secure conviction,
and most students will feel that he has handled his text
too roughly in turning it back from an almost Christian
statement of doctrine into the record of a Jewish historian.
If Christian changes have been made, they must surely
have been slight, like the one which Heinichen suggested.
It may, however, be conceded that Eisler went to work
in the right way, apart from any new textual finds, to
recover a possible Jewish form which might have been
subject to Christian manipulation; for the analysis of the
language in the current text certainly suggests Josephus.
Let us see if we can assist him in his reconstructions.
We are sketching very rapidly the opening section
of Eisler's work, because we have important additions
to make to his argument, which take us away from
conventional rivalry. We draw fresh attention to
Heinichen's emendation of the text of Josephus, because
it gives us the key to Eisler's first arguments, and will
equally, in our judgment, supply the necessary clue to
the understanding of Josephus himself. If Heinichen
is right, Jesus, in Josephus' point of view, takes his
place in a series of innovations and revolutionaries
whom Josephus wishes to denounce and on whom he
lays the blame for all the troubles that befell the Jews
in their relations with Rome: it was not only when
writing what was to be read in Rome: he was, as a
Pharisee, hostile to the movements among his excitable
compatriots which could not be kept within bounds
or make to harmonise with the ideas of settled
government. That Jesus should be classified with
Theudas and Judas and the mad Egyptian, apart from
chronological sequence, was natural enough for a
historian who was also a champion of public order.
"He stirreth up our nation," according to the charge
against Jesus in the Gospel, was a sufficient reprobation,
apart from the question whether that included a
"forbidding to give tribute to Caesar." The emendation,
then, of Heinichen, which Eisler rightly adopts, is
fundamental to the understanding of the subject,
quite apart from the discovery of a Russian Josephus.
Jesus was one of the "disorderly"; that is a long step
towards the vindication of the authenticity of the great
passage. It was what Josehus ought to have said and
did say. So much by way of preliminary. We have
laid emphasis on the most important word in the current
text.
Our next direction of enquiry relates to the
Russian
text of the Testimonium, from which we propose in the
first instance to take a single clause, which we shall
tentatively add to the canonical text, reserving the rest
of the Russian document for future sturdy. If there is
anything in that new evidence that is genuine Josephus,
it must be the statement that "I will not call him an
angel," which falls naturally into sequence with the
existing statement "if one must call him a man" or "if
indeed it is right to call him a man." The statement
as generally interpreted is taken to be Josephus'
admission that Jesus was more than a man, or else to
be a Christian interpolation qualifying the statement
that Jesus was a wise man. The hypothesis that the
words "I will not call him an angel" follow on from
the previous statement as to calling Jesus a man,
excludes the idea of a Christian interpolation.
Whatever it means it is Josephan, with a slight margin
for Christian modification, but no room for deliberate
glossation by an added clause. Josephus says, "I will
call him a man but I cannot call him an angel." The
origin of this statement, whatever be its primitive
form, is what we have to go in search of. In order to
make the quest successfully, we must now leave on
one side both Eisler and e Russian text, and take a
path which at first will appear to be outside the area
of regular criticism and to lead nowhere, as far as
the question of the Flavian Testimonium is concerned.
Dr. Plooij has been emphasising the importance of
what I have called Testimony Book (an early
Christian collection of Messianic and other prophecies),
for the understanding of the origin and evolution of
Christian doctrines and beliefs. I hope that the
multiplicity of the illustrations which he gives will
not obscure the emphasis which he is desirous of
expressing. He carries on the arguments by which I
had maintained the antiquity of the earliest collection
of Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ, and
the evident absorption of certainTestimonies and
groups of Testimonies by New Testament writers. It
is surprising that this should ever have been doubted,
it is regrettable that it has in some quarters been
grudgingly conceded. Dr Plooij shows more than I
had imagined to be the case with the primitive
Testimony. Book; he proves that it was Palestinian
in origin, Aramaic indiction, and that it has connecting
links with the Targums on the Old Testament. In some
ways this is more important than my own suggestions
that Paul was using the Testimonies against the Jews
in the ninth and tenth chapters of the Epistle to the
Romans, or that the Epistle to the Hebrews was using
it from the first verses onwards. I do not think, as
far as I remember, that it had occurred to me to
assume or define closely an Aramaic original beyond
an occasional suggestion; from such an Aramaic
original the priority of the collection of Testimonies
to the rest of the New Testament follows almost of
necessity; the local origin accentuates the antiquity.
We are on Palestinian or Syrian soil for certain. Not
only so, but with the proof of Targumic influence
before us we are either actually in the Synagogues
where Christianity had its origin, or not so far from
the doors of the Synagogue that we cannot hear them
disputing inside over the meaning and applicability of
certain Old Testament passages. The disputes naturally
resulted in the transition to the Dialogue form, in
which representative leaders on either side discussed
the statements contained in the challenging Testimonies;
for it is certain that the extant Dialogues betweens Jew
and Christian go back tot a very much earlier date than
is commonly supposed, even if we do not possess them
in Aramaic but only in Greek or Latin. We are indebted
to Dr. Plooij for having brought so much fresh evidence
to bear upon the question. The headings of the separate
sections under which Testimonies are grouped are shown
to be as early as the texts that are actually quoted, and
although some changes are made both in the texts and
their headlines by the time we come tot he age of Cyprian,
we are surprised to observe how few are the changes
that have actually been made. Now let us return to
Josephus and the Russian version: the statement "for I
cannot call him an angel" implies two things; first, that
someone has been calling him an angel; second, that he
has been called something else, a statement which is the
proper antecedent to what we have quoted. This suggests
at once a complete statement something like this: "I will
call him a man, but I really cannot call him an angel."
Where shall we find or to whom shall we refer the
statement that Christ was Man and Angel? The answer
to this is that it stood so in the Testimony Book. We can
see this in two ways: first of all Cyprian in his Testimonies
has a section headed, "that Christ is Angel and God,"
which is an obvious modification by a Christian hand of
an earlier statement that "Christ is Angel and Man." Next
we find the very combination "Man and Angel" in Justin
Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (ch 128): the language of
Justin is as follows:
Christ (or "the Messiah") being Lord and
existing as
God the Son of God,appeared aforetime in power as
Man and Angel:
(Greek). The (Greek) ("aforetime") refers
to the Old
Testament from which the evidence comes for the
identification of the Messiah under either head. The
language of Justin with regard to Man and Angel is, then,
Testimony language. We have recovered the same
Testimony heading as we suspected to underlie the
language of Cyprian.
This being established, since we have the same
combination involved in the language of Josephus, we may
say that Josephus has before him a Testimony Book, or an
extract from the same, with which he is partly in accord
and partly in disagreement. As a Jew he had no objection
to Christ being called Man (whether the statement be
buttressed from the Old Testament or not), but he declines
to call him Angel on any terms.
We may say that in the statement, "A man but
not an
angel," Josephus is tilting at the Testimonies. We can
easily reinforce the separate statements for Christ as Man
and Christ as Angel; indeed Dr Plooij has gone far with
the proof of both; but without expanding the argument,
and perhaps throwing it out of focus, let us observe that Dr
Eisler had come to a similar conclusion with ourselves; he
had also detected the origin of Joshephus' testimony in a
group of other testimonies but without perceiving that
there was an actual Testimony heading extant by implication
in his test; but here is his very language; we quote it at
length, on account of its importance, but as regards
Josephus and as regards the Book of Testimonies, which
are now seen to reinforce one another, the genuineness of
one being conceded along with the antiquity of the other:
The appeal to the fulfilled predictions of the prophets
in the mouth of Josephus is not only unprejudiced
(einwandfrei), but constitutes in fact a Testimony of the
first importance for the fact that to him the Christian
statements with regard to the Life, Death and Resurrection
of Jesus were known in a form which laid the greatest
weight on the fact that every peculiarity in the narration
presents itself as the fulfillment of some sort or other
of
Messianically implied prophecy of the Scripture. To put
it somewhat differently, he is tilting (polemisiert) against
the very same collection of prophetical Testimonies, at
which already in the time of Claudius, in the year A.D.
62, the Samaritan chronicler Thallus had been dealing
blows - the very same collection in fact to which Papias
bore witness, which had been recognised by Gregory,
Burkitt, Selwyn and Rendel Harris as a series of Oracles,
which were the Matthaean Logia of the life of Jesus.
This is a great concession, a great discovery we may say,
on his part and on ours, for, as we have seen, we came
at it independently; it establishes finally, as one may
reasonably suppose, the authenticity of Josephus'
Testimonium and the antiquity of the collection of
Oracles which are implied in the Testimonium, to which
the writer refers. According to Eisler,and here again he
seems to be quite correct, this collection is earlier than
the year A.D. 62 (more correctly A.D. 52) when it
provoked the criticism of a learned Samaritan, who had
migrated, as literary men were wont to do, to Rome, but
who was, of course, perfectly familiar with the
Testimonies even if they should be written in Aramaic
or glossed from the Targum. We are in possession,
then, through the evidence of Josephus, as rightly
interpreted by Eisler, or a series of statements,
concerning Christian beliefs at least as early (may
we not say?) as the middle of the first century.
To Josephus also it must be conceded that he
was
dealing with a real person; when he said Man. His
Messiah of whom the Christians affected to speak in
language borrowed from the prophets, was a real person.
The prophets expressly said Man.
It is interesting to note in this connection that
when
Josephus begins by saying that Jesus was "a wise man"
(Greek), in which connection the question of "man or
angel" arose, he is giving the first place to the idea of
Wisdom as the Testimonies do, which begin with the
heading that "Christ is the Wisdom of God," a term
with which we are familiar in St Paul. We hesitate to
correct this as Eisler does to (Greek) "a Sophist man";
(Greek) is not an adjective, and could be written without
an explanatory (Greek) (man): but as we have seen the
"Man" is necessary to the argument. Indeed it does
not seem that very many changes are necessary to
carry back the canonical Josephus to this original form.
The might works (Greek) must stand, and the prophets
who foretold everything cannot be dismissed. A very
little change will put the whole text right. We will
return later to define more closely what changes are
necessary. Meanwhile we reserve the question of the
(Greek).
We have now reached conclusions of the first
importance in which, quite independently of Dr Eisler,
but concurrently with him, we have vindicated the
genuineness of the Testimony of Josephus, with a
certain modification by Christian hands, and have
shown that Josephus himself has in his eye, with
doubtful friendliness, an earlier document which we
call the Testimony Book. This book is the credential
of a real person, who is held to have been the Messiah.
It is unthinkable that Josephus recorded his opinion
about a myth or a spectre. He allows him to be "a
man" but denies that he is rightly described as "an
angel." So now we must assist him in his scrutiny
of the document and see what can be said further
about the Testimony Book considered as an original
source of history, composed in the first instance in
Aramaic and circulated in its first form in Palestine.
We have established Josephus in the witness box,
and we have accepted the Slavonic text of his
Jewish War, so afar as to take its most striking
statement about Jesus and to annex it, in its proper
place, to the canonical Testimonium Flavianum.
It is not to bethough that this is all that the Slavonic
text has to say; it has many confusions, but cannot
be treated as altogether outside history.
Our real concern, in pursuing the investigation
from Josephus to the Christian Messianic texts to which
he refers, is to see whether we can turn the Testimonia
adverus Judaeos back into history.
The statement that Christ is both Man and Angel
has
been shown to be a primitive combination, attested in
part by Cyprian and in completeness by Justin Marytr.
It is parallel in its duality to many other statements in
the Testimony Book and in the New Testament, as for
instance in the case which Dr Plooij threw so much light
on, that Christ is the "Angel and High Priest," or that
passage in Hebrews where Christ is called the "Apostle
an High Priest." It is evident, however, that even if the
duality of a pair of associated titles is conceded to be
early, the separate members of the dual combination must
be earlier still. People must have said, He is Man and
Angel. What then did they mean by calling him either
the one or the other? Dr Plooij has shown that the Angel
comes from a passage in Exodus (23.20) treated Messianically.
The other half of the Testimony is more difficult. Were
shall we find tin the Old Testament and Oracle, or Pseudo-
Oracle connecting Jesus as "Man" with the Messiah?
The answer is that when we call him The
Man we can
find him in one of the most strongly accentuated Messianic
Oracles in the Prophets. In Zechariah (6) we have the story
of the fortunes of Joshua the son of Jozedek the High Priest.
To the early Christians and first followers, this Joshua is
a Jesus. Concerning him the Lord of Hosts declares, "Behold
the man whose name is Branch; it is he who shall build the
temple of the Lord." On this great oracle the Targum explains:
"This Man, Messiah is his name." In Hebrew this oracle
opens with:
(Hebrew) ("Behold the Man").
in the Aramaic Targum as commonly edited, it is
(Aramaic) where we must clearly read (Aramaic)
for (Aramaic) i.e., "Behold the Man (gabra) (Greek))
whose name is Messiah.
Here then is the Man whom the Testimonies matched
with the Angel (the Apostle of Hebrew 3:1).
The importance of this identification lies in
the fact that
we have recovered a Messianic slogan of the time of Jesus
Himself; and this is true whether we read the Targum as "He
is the Man" or as "Behold the Man." That the latter is the
preferable explanation is clear from the fact that it throws
light on an obscure passage in the Forth Gospel, and in the
exact Biblical form.
It will be remembered (the Gospel in Art will
remind us if
we have forgotten it) that Pilate brings Jesus out of the
Praetorium to the mob and appeals to them with the words
Ecce Homo. It is difficult, in the
ordinary exegesis, to
explain what Pilate meant. Was he thinking to move the
compassion of the crowd? Would he be likely to do so?
Suppose, however, that he had simply repeated the slogan
of the followers of Jesus, which we have shown to be itself
derived from the prophet Zechariah, we can understand
that it was an appeal, away form the priests to the people,
something like the suggestion "Your King! Shall I crucify
your king?" by which Pilate thought to provoke a reaction
on the part of the multitude against the Jewish officials.
"Ecce Homo" was, from this point of view, entirely
sympathetic. Even the traditional exegesis assumes that;
it becomes adroit as well as sympathetic when we know
that it meant in the ears of the people.
At this point we may have to move cautiously;
we are
not only trying to interpret an expression in the Testimony
Book by putting it against a historical background, but we
are bound to ask whether this background can be trusted.
The Fourth Gospel is commonly held to be, in parts at
least, of an (201) unhistorical character. In the case before
us Christ crowned with thorns is Synoptic: it has a parallel
in Zechariah where a crown is set on the head of Joshua the
High Priest; but there is no reference to the Ecce Homo
incident in Mark. All that we can say is that the Johannine
incident becomes luminous enough, if we read it as
parallel to the appeal "Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate is
speaking in either case sympathetically, not ironically. The
Gospels are clear as to the general statement that Pilate
was on the side of Jesus. The Slavonic Josephus with its
suggestion that Pilate had received thirty Talents to make
away with the agitator, appears to be out of court and to be
derived from, or connected with, the thirty pieces of silver
for which Judas sold his Master. We shall assume then
tentatively, that we have recovered a popular slogan of
the Messianic party, which they applied to Jesus. It must
have been applied to Jesus, for it was derived from the
Oracle about Jesus the High Priest in Zechariah.
We shall see the importance of this, and may be sure
that we are writing history, if we reflect that a similar title
was applied to John the Baptist. If Testimonies about
Christ and slogans based on Testimonies were current, to
some extent at least, in our Lord's lifetime, it is highly
probable that similar Messianic proofs were extant
concerning John the Baptist. Jesus was not only possible
Messiah, whose marks of identification had to be tested.
There was a competitor. "All men mused in their hearts
of John whether he were the Messiah or not." One of the
things that were disputed concerned this very title of
Angel. To the followers of Christ this title is his by
virtue of an Oracle in Exodus. One is surprised to find,
that what seems an easier proof-text in Malachi ("my
Angle") was not applied to Christ. It was, perhaps, so
applied. If so, it passed, by Christian concession, to
John the Baptist. Either of them, however, was
Messianically identified with the "Angel." The same
thing appears to have been true of the "Man." Eisler is
probably right in this respect also in suggesting that
the Baptist, as well as Jesus, had been identified with the
Son of Man (=the Man) in the Vision of Daniel. In the
Fourth Gospel we have the Baptist as "a man sent from
God." If this could be clearly made out, the competition
between Jesus and the Baptist over the titles Man and
Angel would stand out on the first page of their history
with fresh suggestiveness. It is reasonable to believe that
if the Testimonies on behalf of Jesus go back in part at
least to his own lifetime, or to the time immediately
subsequent to his death, there were similar and rival
Testimonies in circulation with regard to the Baptist.
After, all, as Dr Plooij clearly brings out, they had
nothing except the Old Testament out of which to
develop history, or by which to illustrate it, until the
actual Gospels arrived; and, as we have shown
elsewhere, these were supported on the Testimonies
as their foundation. How far these Testimonies will
disclose actual historical details in the life of Christ
requires further and closer study. Some of them may
reduce to mere illustrations. In the same way the
Slavonic expansions to the text of Josephus require
further and closer study: some of them may turn out
to be mere romance, but this can hardly be the complete
explanation. The conflict, for instance, between
John the Baptist and Simon the Essene has every
appearance of being genuine history. Less certain is
the story that Jesus had healed Pilate's wife. On all
these points we must wait for further illumination.
Meanwhile, we have gone a long way with Josephus,
and some distance with Dr Eisler. The whole situation
has been changed by the intrusion of the Book of
Testimonies.
Note on Christ not Called Angel
Mr. H. G. Wood has drawn my attention to the
fact that in the Epistle to the Hebrews there seems to
be a definite avoidance of the term Angel as applied
to Christ. It is said that "he taketh not on him the
nature of angels, but he taketh on him the seed
of Abraham." So here we have another writer from
an opposite view saying "I will not call him Angel,
but I will call him man." It has, however, been clearly
proved from many aspects that the Epistle to the
Hebrews is following the line of the Testimony
Book. If he has dropped the Angel from this text,
the natural explanation, is that a Docetic use has
been made of the term. That Hebrews is an anti-
Docetic document may be seen from its reference
to the "strong crying and tears" of the Redeemer
when anticipating his suffering and rejection.
It may also be remembered that in another
passage of the Epistle, Christ is spoken of as "a little
lower than the angels; a passage on which stress could
hardly be laid if the writer wished to say that Jesus
was the Angel of Jahweh.
On a Supposed Florilegium Employed by ST Paul
In the foregoing enquiry we made our point of
departure from thehypothesis of a primitive Christian
book of anti-Judaic Testimonies, which hypothesis)
had received recently remarkable confirmation from
researches of Dr Plooij, who showed that the nucleus
of such a collection of Old Testament proof-texts was
of Palestinian origin, of Aramaic diction, and earlier
in date than the canonical Christian Literature.
Anticipating the complete statement and publication
of Dr Plooij's important results, we went on to show
that the much-debated Testimony of Josephus
concerning Jesus Christ had just such a collection in
view, and was antagonising the same, at least in part,
thought the statement of Josephus had undergone
some slight modification by Christian hands, before
it reached the form in which it has come down to us.
In connection with the foregoing assumption
and
its important extension and verification by Dr Plooij,
a ray of further illumination has recently been cast
over the whole question of Judaean and Christian
controversies in a paper published by Professor Cerfaux
of the University of Louvain. The title of this paper is,
Vestiges d'un Flogilege dans I Cor. 1.19-3.21, to
which the writer modestly attaches an unnecessary note
of interrogation. The origin of this paper and the
suggested Florilegium is as follows: M. Cerfaux found
in the course of his public lectures on the First Epistle
to the Corinthians that the Biblical passages cited by
St Paul had an internal nexus which suggested that they
were taken form a collection of texts grouped and
classified together with the intention of showing
the fallaciousness of human wisdom. Such a
collection would, according to M. Cerfaux, constitute
a broadside of the orthodox Rabbinic school against
the importation and the seductions of Greek learning.
A protest of this kind, amounting almost to an official
denunciation, could hardly be credited to Alexandria,
and found its natural home in Jerusalem. The subject
of the protest was necessarily early in date, and the
protest itself referable to the time when Wisdom and
Anti-Wisdom were matters of practical politics. So
M. Cerfaux concluded that his supposed Florilegium
was of Palestinian origin and earlier in date than St
Paul and his letter to the Corinthians. I hope I am
summarising his conclusions rightly, and with a due
regard to the modesty of his note or interrogation.
The student who will now turn to the marginal
references of his New Testament will be able to pick
up some, at least, of the threads which M. Cerfraux
was spinning into a Florigegium. For instance, he
will at once detect that in 1 Cor. 1.18-19 there was a
profusion of Old Testament matter. Isaiah 29.14 was
quoted for the destruction of the Wisdom of the Wise,
and a composite references are the safest guides one
can have for the detection of a Florilegium. The
references might easily be expanded, and M. Cerfaux
makes a careful linguistic study of them, and shows
that to some extent his Florilegium is independent
of the translation of the LXX. The suggestion was
natural that we had recovered a fragment of a tract,
which might be entitled Testimonia adversus Sapientes.
At this point I turned to my marginal notes, and found
that I had already staked out a claim or the use by St
Paul of some of these passages of primitive Christian
Testimonia adversus Judaeos. First of all it was noted
that Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho (ch.
78) had actually quoted Isaiah 29.13, a passage used
by Our Lord Himself, as we learn from Mark 7.6 in
denunciation of the Jews.
Many references may be given to Justin to show
that he is using the anti-sophist texts of Isaiah and
elsewhere in an anti-Judaic sense.
The actual text of ch. 78 is as follows:-
This grace (the Divine grace) has been transferred to us
(the Christians), as Isaiah says, speaking on this wise:
This people draw nigh to me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me; and in vain do they worship,
teaching the ordinances and teachings of men. And
therefore I will further add to remove this people, and
I will remove them, and will destroy the wisdom of their
wise, and the intelligence of the men of understanding I
will reject.
Concerning which extract from Justin I note
further that
it is not only anti-Judaic in every respect, but that in the last
clause the word (Greek) ("their intelligent men") has dropt
from the text. That it belongs there may be seen from the
parallel usage of the text in Tertullian, as follows:
auferam, inquit, sapientiam sapientum illorum, et
prudentiam prodentium eorum abscondam ... Sapientibus
eorum, id est scribis, et prudentibus eorum, id est,
pharisaeis - Tert. adv. Marc. iii. 6.
It is needless to repeat that these references
are conclusive
as to the use of the passages quoted by M. Cerfaux. [We
shall get the inserted (Greek) once in Justin, Dial. 23, where
again in the same passage the anti-Judaic reference is clear]
His Florilegium is the same as our Liber Testimoniorum.
If further confirmation were desired, it could be found in
the fact that when Bar Salibi produces in Syriac a volume
of definite Testimonies against the Jews, the crucial passage
from Isaiah finds its place among the rest (see Bar Bar Salibi
adv. Jueaeos,in the edition of de Zwann, 7, 10). We shall
conclude, then, provisionally and with every appreciation of
M. Cerfaux' work, in the equivalence of he supposed
Florilegium and the Book of Testimonies so freely elsewhere,
as in Romans 9, for example, by sending him down the
ages with a Testimony Book under one arm and a Florilegium
anti-Hellenisticum under the other.
There is no finality in the problems that we
have been
discussing. The reader will already have been saying to
himself the question, whether the supposed antiquity,
Aramaic origin and Palestinian location of the nucleus
of the Testimonies does not involve the Master Himself
in their authorship, especially when we have the definite
employment of such passages as he one quoted by Mark,
and the oracle of the Rejected Stone, etc. We have long
had our attention fixed on such a possibility. If it could
be verified, it would give us a new direction for the
quest of the Gospel according to Jesus.
John the Baptist
When we examine the story of John the Baptist in the
Russian text of the Jewish War, we find ourselves in some
difficulty. We have now three accounts of the ministry
of the Baptist; one is the evangelist's, which is familiar
enough; the second is that of Josephus himself who has
a good deal to say on John and on the public opinion of
him, as well as of his untimely end; and then, last of all,
we have the Slavonic story in which the Baptist appears
as a wild man clad in skins, a sort of Indian fakir or fanatic,
fearing the faces of none, whether of prince or priesthood,
denouncing sin in high places, and calling for individual
and national righteousness and repentance. This last
account differs much from what we find in the canonical
Gospels or in the canonical Josephus. It has one striking
expansion, which describes a public quarrel between the
Baptist and an Essene leader named Simon. The story is
so vivid that it must be genuine history. No motive can
be assigned for its fabrication. Then there are curious
divergences from, and convergences with, the text of the
Gospels. For example, the Synoptic statement that, at
the preaching of John, "others went out to him all Judea
and the county round about Jerusalem, is repeated almost
verbatim in the Russian text; this coincidence is held to
be a contamination of the Russian text from the Gospels.
But then the same account gives a different story both
of the dress and the diet of the Baptist from what we find
in the Gospels. In the latter we have a coat of camel's hair
and a leathern belt, in the former we have a curious
statement that the wild man had covered the non-hairy
part of his body with skins of beasts.
Similar divergence may be note in the matter
of the
Baptist's diet. The Gospel tells us that it was "locusts and
wild honey": the Russian text makes the Baptist say that
"I live on cane (?sugar cane) and roots and fruits of the tree."
A further notice says that he would not eat bread; and that
he would not allow wine or strong drink to be brought
nigh him, and that he abhorred animal food, and that the
fruits of trees served him for his needs. Here again we
have what looks like a reference to the Gospel of Luke
with regard to the Baptist's abstinence from intoxicating
liquors. The divergence of the account from the Gospel
should be noted as well as the occasional agreement. The
Russian diet seems more likely than that in St Mark; but
how are we to explain these curious variations?
It is possible that the divergence of the accounts
is
due to two separate attempts made to write up a history of
which the nucleus is common to both. In that case the
nucleus must be the hairy integument of the prophet,
whether natural or artificial. That takes us at once to
the account in the first chapter of the Second Book of
Kings, where Elijah the prophet sends to the King of
Israel to denounce his disloyalty to the God of Israel
and to announce his death. "What kind of a man?" the
King asks. The reply was that "he was a hairy man, and
girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." The Hebrew
text is ambiguous, it says "A lord (Baal) of hair. What
does this mean? [We may compare the description of
Joseph as a dreamer (Gen. 37.10), "master of dreams" or
"the bird of the air" as a winged creature (Prov. 1.17),
"lord of wing."] The Authorized Version has an alternative
rendering "a man with a garment of hair," which is not
quite the same thing. Just as the modern divines varied
in their explanation of the "lord of hair," so it seems did
early interpreters. The Gospel explains by means of hair
from a particular quarter, to wit, the camel; the Russian
text has two interpretations involved in it, one that the
man was hairy, at least in part; the other that he was
covered in skins of beasts, where not already covered by
his own hairy skin. All these explanations go back to the
Old Testament and are bent on clearing an obscure text.
Their underlying object is to show that John the Baptist
is Elijah. It has been observed that St Mark begins his
Gospel on this very note, with a string of Testimonies,
from which we infer that the involved Testimony Book
had a section especially devoted to John the Baptist and
his relation to the Elijah of the Old Testament.
We have shown then that the confusion in the
Slavonic
account is due to an attempt to combine two explanations
of the "Lord of Hair" in the Old Testament. We may
further note that since there is no reference anywhere in
the Old Testament account to a camel's hair garment, that
the story in the Gospel is probably correct in this respect,
there being no motive for the intrusion of the camel. The
reference to the "locusts and wild honey" is also, as far
as we can see, without a definite suggestion in the ancient
text. The real reason for such an impossible diet is
obscure; and if we are to make intelligibility our criterion,
the Russian text has the right of way.
Enough has been said to advise caution in the
use of
these early narratives, and certainly the Russian story must
not be relegated en bloc to the synagogues of the Middle
Ages.
The Christian Alterations in the Testimonium Flavianum
Assuming, as I think we now may, the substantial
accuracy of Thackeray's defence of the Flavian Testimony,
we must still ask what further changes are due to a
Christian hand, as well as examine further the form which
the Testimony takes in the Russian text. For it is clear that
even Thackeray's concessions with regard to the actual
authorship do not land us in a final text of what Josephus
meant to say: and it is further becoming more and more
clear that there are some elements in the Russian text
which come from an Aramaic original. In the latter case
we must allow for the possibility that there is a
Testimonium Flavianum in the Jewish War as well as in
the Antiquities. It is the Russian text, moreover, which
gives us the clue to the changes which Christian hands
have made in the text of the Antiquities. Firstof all, we
have the description of Jesus, without a name, as the Wonder-
worker. This is evidently the Greek (Greek), and itinvolves
the favorite Jewish description of Christ's works as due to
jugglery or magic. If this word had stood in Josephus' text,
no Christian reviser would have tolerated it; he would have
replaced it, to avoid the suspicion of magic, by some such
term as (Greek), which we actually find in the Antiquities,
and which is so unlike the speech of Josephus, for whom
(Greek) is always "a poet," that Eisler deletes the word from
the text and connects the (Greek) with the following (Greek).
But this will not do; the Russian text shows that (Greek)
is necessary. We must delete the whole expression and not
merely the first word. It is the regular title of Christ and
must be allowed to stand. The "doer of marvellous works"
is a Christian emendation.
Further than this, the Russian text shows that
the
marvellous works were the cause of the hesitation of
Josephus, in debating whether to use the term "Man" or
"Angel." Was it right to call him a man, whose works
were super-human? At all events, says Josephus, I will
not call him an Angel.
It is necessary, then, to retain in the Antiquities
the
reference to the "does of marvellous works" and not to
delete, as Eisler does, the word (Greek) as being offensive
to a Josephan vocabulary; the whole of the expression
must be linked up with the hesitation about calling him
a man, who did such deeds. We notice in passing that
Josephus has no doubt about the miracles, whatever
hesitation he may have had concerning the worker.
We come, now, to a more difficult point.
We have
already touched on the use which Eisler has made of a
passage in the Acts of Pilate in which another Josephus
(he of Arimathea) addresses Jesus as "most astonishing
of men, if indeed one ought to call thee a man who didst
such marvels as ever man hath wrought"; (Greek)
(Tischendorf: Acta Pilati, B. 314).
Now if we assume with Eisler that this is under
the
influence of Josephus, we must recognise in the language
the traces of the (Greek), disguised as (Greek) and also
the (Greek) of the Christian corrector in (Greek). We
restore these words as stated above to the text of the
Testimony, without transferring en bloc the parallel
which Eisler detected in the Acts of Pilate.
And now we find ourselves in a serious difficulty.
For in the farewell discourse of Jesus in the fifteenth
chapter of John, we find as folows: "If I had not done
among them the works which none other did, they
would not have had sin" (John 15.14);(Greek) ...
The language differs from that in the Acta Pilati,
but the sense is the same: cf. the Acta Pilati as quoted
above, (Greek),and the suspicion arises that both these
passages depend upon the Flavian Testimony. In that
case the Johannine discourse is artificial, and has made
Jesus quote Josephus.
The whole section in the Gospel where these words
occur is anti-Judaic in character, and supports its
statements by means of Testimonies. We escaped from
Scylla in company with Dr Eisler, and now find ourselves
in the grip of Charybdis. Perhaps we have made too
many changes in the text of the Testimonium. We shall
see.
For the rest of the passage the text is fairly sound.
We
restore (Greek) before "Christos," the so-called Messiah,
for this is the correct usage of Josephus elsewhere, and it
would be natural for Christian readers to delete the word.
It does not appear to have been deleted in the time of Origen,
who is careful to state that Josephus did not believe Jesus
to be the Messiah. On the whole, as we have said, the
Christian changes in the text of the Testimony are slight;
Josephus is almost a believer, as it used to be said of him,
and he remains a credible historian , so far as his Testimony
is concerned. Other matters reported in the Russian text
are a problem of another colour.
A Further Note on John the Baptist
Before leaving this question of the diet and drink of the
Baptist, on which there is certainly room for further research
and discovery, we may draw attention to one curious
expression in the Russian document.
We are told that John was such a sound and ardent
Prohibitionist that he would not allow wine and spirits to
be brought near him. Now this is certainly queer language.
It does not express a natural situation. Who wanted to
bring them near him in the woods or wastes that he
frequented? It is hardly English or sense to talk that way.
What one expects in the connection of the chronicle of
John's habits and way of life, is a statement that he himself
would not allow himself to touch wine nor spirits. His
maxim with regard to them would be "touch not, taste not."
When we state the case like that, the Syriac scholar will
see at a glance what has happened. The Aramaic root q r b
means "to come near, to approach, to touch." In the passive
form it is "to be brought near, to approach, to touch." So
the suggestion arises that, after all, there is an Aramaic
element somewhere behind the Russian text; and it is
surprising that we should be able to detect it, after the
original has passed successively through the media of
translations into Greek, Slavonic, and English. Certainly
we must be careful not to conclude hastily that the theory
of an Aramaic Josephus can be definitely discarded: on that
note of caution we may, for the present, suspend our
enquiries as to the Russian story of the Baptist, with the
usual petition of more light and further study: for it does
not seem that the reference to drinking wine or strong
drink came from the Gospel of Luke.
Now let us return to the Flavian Testimony about
Christ and the changes which it has undergone.
A Semitic Element in the Flavian Testimony
There is still one curious expression in the Testimony of
Josephus as contained in the Antiquities, which seems to
point toan Aramaic original. We refer to the statement
near the close that the divine prophets had spoken all these
and ten thousand other marvellous things concerning him.
It is the exaggerationof the statement that attracts our
attention. Josephus can hardly be held responsible for an
exaggeration of a statement which he had an interest in
reducing to modest dimensions. Was he, then, reporting
the extravagance of Christians' beliefs that they could find
all about their Master in the prophets? Even in that case
the "ten thousand other things" could hardly have been
gathered from the pages of the Testimony Book. It may,
conceivably, be scornful, but the explanation does not
seem adequate. If, however, we say "many other marvels"
instead of "ten thousand other marvels," we have a case
similar to that which we unearthed in an article which I
wrote some years since on a Midrash on the Blessings of
Isaac. The paper referred to was an explanation of the story
which Papias puts into the mouth of Jesus with regard to
the fertility of the earth in the World to Come. Ten
thousand branches to the vine, ten thousand twigs to the
branch, ten thousand clusters to the twig, ten thousand
grapes to the cluster: similar abundance in the ripened grain.
We were able to show that this was a Midrash on the
"abundance of corn and wine" which Isaac promised
prophetically to his son Jacob, the Hebrew word rob
(abundance) being read as ribbu (ten thousand). It is
customary to ridicule Papias for telling this tale, because
it makes Jesus ridiculous, but as the midrash has since
turned up in the Book of Enoch, the ridicule is misplaced.
The story is part of the millennial currency.
If such an explanation cleared up the meaning of
an
otherwise rather childish story, may it not be that a similar
explanation will bring the Flavian Testimony within the
bounds of reasonable speech, whether for himself or for
the Christians whose opinion he is quoting? That is to say,
Josephus may have meant to say "very many" and been
erroneously transcribed as "ten thousand." This would
require us to admit that the Testimony in the Antiquities
goes back, as does the Russian story of the Baptist, to an
Aramaic original, viz., to the book which Josephus wrote
for his compatriots in Northern Mesopotamia. The
argument, however, is not as convincing as in the Russian
case, where we are obliged to concede Aramaic elements
in the story, quite against our first impressions. So we
will leave the "ten thousand" prophetical Testimonies in
a measure of uncertainty.
Justin Martyr and Josephus
We now propose to show that Justin Martyr was
acquainted with the Flavian Testimony in the form
in which Josephus wrote it, and before it had undergone
the slight transformation at Christian hands which
gave us a canonical text. We have shown that the
principle changes were, (i) to get rid of the offensive
(Greek) or "Magician"; (ii) the deletion of the word
(Greek) before the name of Christ, although it must
be remembered that this is for certain Josephus' term,
being attested elsewhere by his reference to James,
the brother of the so-called Christ; (iii) we may imagine
that before the string of prophetical Testimonies from
the prophets, there stood some such words as, "and they
say, etc." Now let us turn to Justin Martyr and try to
realise the situation in which he found himself, when
he proposed to address the Senate of Rome and the
Imperial Household on the question of the Christian
Faith. It will be remembered that, ever since the war
with the Jews, Josephus had found his works officially
canonised in the State Library at the Capitol, where they
could, of course, be referred to as authoritative. Now
Justin Martyr coming to Rome with his Book of
Testimonies, which he means to throw at the heads of
the Roman State, has always had something of an
irrational or fanatical appearance, but perhaps he was
not quite the fool that some people have taken him to
be. Before he took up his parable in dead earnest, to
show that the Divine Prophets had foretold the Divine
Christ, he asked himself the question what kind of missile
was likely to be thrown at him in return. Let us then see
how he safeguards himself in his Apology and how he
unmasks the fire of his battery of Biblical quotations.
The matter is so important for the restoration of the
environment of the courageous missionary that we
must quote one passage at length.
In case any one should oppose us and say "What is to hinder
the belief that our so-called Christ (Greek) being a man
sprung from the human race, wrought by magic art the might
works of which you speak and on that account appeared to be
Son of God?" We will now make our demonstration, not putting
our faith in people who are mere talkers, but being persuaded
of necessity by those who prophesy of events before they
happen, etc. - Apol., i.30.
Now here we are struck both by the language and by the course
of the argument. Jesus is a man who works by magic, whom
deeds of power reveal to be Son of God, so they say; but we
prefer to follow the prophets who spoke of things before they
occurred. This prepares the way for the introduction of the
Testimonies. The supposed objector refers to the so-called
Christ; that is the language of Josephus about the man who
was a thaumaturge or wonder-worker, who led people to a
false opinion about him; that is the Josephan doctrine
uncorrected, as we have seen, which makes the Christ a
Magician. Finally, we have the challenge to refer disputed
matters to the prophets. It is natural to assume that this
section of Justin has its motive in the Testimonium Flavianum,
which follows that manner of presenting the subject; Justin
must have known that the statements of Josephus were
officially recognised in Rome as historical verity, just as
his account of the Jewish War was accepted. He would have
to face Josephus, and does it by the simple method of writing
a short section, expressing the thought that "perhaps some one
will say," the some one in that case being Josephus himself.
The statements about Man, Magic, the so-called Messiah and
the prophetical Testimonies are all alluded to, as they occur
in Josephus, and show that a Christian hand had not meddled
with the historian's statements. Justin goes on to explain to
the Senate who these "prophets of God" were, who told thing
in advance. His eye is on the "divine prophets" of Josephus.
This, however, is not all that we learn as to Justin's
knowledge of Josephus. It will be remembered that Eisler,
against the judgment of almost all critics, restored to his
Josephan text the form (Greek) "a Sophist" instead of
(Greek), a "wise man." I must admit that this at first seemed
to be a wanton and unnecessary alteration; it was, however,
defended by Eisler as a term which Josephus uses elsewhere
of people who seem to be wise, and are thought to be so on
account of their much speaking. Now it will be remembered
(for the passage has often been quoted in debate between
the Synoptics and the defenders of the Fourth Gospel), that
Justin actually protests against this description of Jesus as
a Sophist. "Short and concise," he says, "were all this
discourses; for he was not a Sophist, but his discourse was
the Power of God" (Apol., i. 14).
We take it that Justin was here replying to the
opening
word of the statement of Josephus about Christ, just in the
same way as elsewhere he protests against the explanation
of the works of Christ by making him a Magician.
On this account we withdraw any objection which
we
might have felt at first to the alteration which Eisler makes in
the canonical text of Josephus. The reference in Justin, taken
along with the rest of the objections which he refutes, implies
that Sophist stood in the original Josephan text.
The Testimony of Josephus to Jesus Christ Thackeray's Translation)
Now about this time arises Jesus, a wise man [read, a man,
a sophist], if indeed he should be called a man. For he
was a doer of marvellous deeds [read, a thaumaturge], a
teacher of men who receive the truth [read, who take up
disordres] with pleasure, and he won over to himself many
Jews and many also of the Greek (nation). He was the
[add, so-called] Christ. And when, on indictment of the
principle men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the
Cross, those who had loved (or perhaps rather "been content
with") him at the first, did not cease, for [they say that] he
appeared to them on the third day alive again, the divine
prophets having (fore) told these and ten thousand [read,
many] other wonderful things concerning him. And even
now the tribe of Christians, named after him, is not extinct.
The authenticity of the passage, or at least of its nucleus,
is
strongly supported by the consideration of style to which
Thackeray has given such close attention. The argument from
style is two-fold.
First of all there is the verification from the
other parts
of Josephus' writings that almost every word belong to that
writer's vocabulary. In this Thackeray has the advantage over
other critics that he had made for himself a Concordance to
Josephus, and so was able to illustrate words and turns of
speech as they recur, to a degree beyond that of previous
scholars. Next, and not less important, is the discovery of
Thackeray that the Testimonium shows occasionally the hand
of the Greed reviser whom Josephus employed in the
composition and correction of Books XVII, to XIX, of his
Antiquities. If this is a correct observation, it is vital and
final for the question of authenticity. To use Shakespearian
language, we have "two justices' hands to it." The passage
in the Antiquities belongs to the Antiquities; in its present
form it cannot belong to the Jewish War: that supposition
is excluded by the joint authorship of the historian and his
amanuensis.
Accordingly Thackeray was putting the case reasonably
when he says:
The criterion of style, to my mind, turns the scale in
favour of the authenticity of the passage considered
as a whole, if not in every detail. If the text has been
mutilated and modified, there is at lest a Josephand
basis (Thackeray: Lectures, p. 141).
If the reader should ask for further information with
regard to the hand of the assisting scribe, the following
observation of Thackeray may be useful, over and above
the general statement that Josehpus' second assistant,
whom he employed in this part of his book, was a Greek
scholar who affected the style of Thucydides:
The brevity of a passage of under a dozen lines does not
give much scope for the mannerisms of the secretary.
It
does, however, contain one of his characteristic phrases
not found in other parts of Josephus - the phrase, "to
receive with pleasure." I infer, says Thackeray, that
the
amanuensis is still lending his aid.
The argument, then, appears to be final. The passage in
dispute, allowing for some slight Christian changes, is genuine.
It belongs to the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, and shows
the hand of Josephus and a learned assistant. Whether there
was a similar passage in the Jewish War, as the Russian text
suggest, is another matter.
It requires no violent use of the imagination to
suggest
the manner in which the Testimonium was provoked. Josephus
was attached to the Imperial Court, which was in the time of
Domitian distracted by the invasion of a new religion. The
Christian Faith was openly confessed by two of the heads of
the Flavian clan, Titus Flavius Clements and Flavia
Domitilla his wife. Both of them paid the penalty of the
Christian confession, one by his life, the other by her
banishment. May we not then suppose that they had
presented the case for Christ to the great Jewish scholar
and politician, and could they have done it better than in
the style which Paul employed to Agrippa, "Josephus,
believest thou the prophets?" The Testimony Book is
of the prophets and de Christo. The situation is made
for what Eisler calls the polemics against the Testimonies.
Now let us turn back and see if we can get any clearer
light on the complication which was introduced into the
argument when Dr Eisler detected that the author of the
Acts of Pilate had been imitating the Flavian Testimony,
and when we observed further that there was a coincidence
in thought and to some extent in language between the Acts
of Pilate and the Fourth Gospel.
Three personalities are involved, whom we may call
A,
B, and C. Of these A (the Acts of Pilate), is under the
influence of B (the Josephan Testimony); the perplexity
arises as to the connection between A and B on the one hand
and C (the Fourth Gospel) on the other. Of these three
personalities, two are certainly persons of distinction in the
theological world; Josephus is eminent both theologically
and politically; if Judaism had a political and religious
leader in the latter part of the first century, it is Josephus.
His religious position is also representative; he declines
to admit the Messiahship of Jesus, but is a firm believer
in the divine prophets, and is quite persuaded of the
miraculous powers of Jesus, though he tries to find and
explanation for them as the work of a Magician.
Our second personality is much more obscure. He
represents the same doubts as to the real humanity of
Jesus as Josephus does, or affects to do, and is equally
persuaded with Josephus as to the reality of the miraculous
works.
Our third personality is evidently a person of great
authority in the early Christian community, whether he
be an apostle or not. He is anti-Judaist and uses prophetical
Testimonies against the Jews somewhat obscurely at times.
His position controversially is one of antagonism to those
who do not believe Jesus to be the Messiah, though they
have seen marvellous works done such as never man had
performed; and he confutes official Judaism which does not
believe in the Christ, by means of prophecies in which they
profess to believe, and scriptures which they spend their
time in investigating, as well by the miracles which they
admit to have seen. The complex of opinions which he
attacks is precisely that of the Flavian Testimony: and it
would seem natural to infer the priority or, at least, the
contemporaneity of the two writings. Compare the
language of the Gospel, "Ye do not believe that I am (the
Messiah)" (8:24); "though he had done so many miracles
before them, they did not believe in him" (12.37), in spite
of a prophetical Testimony on the point; "I did amongst
them works such as no other had done" (15.24). No
doubt the opinions of Josephus are representative of a
general Jewish attitude, but they are grouped together in
such a way as to make striking coincidence with the
Fourth Gospel. What all parties are agreed on is the
Miracles; what they differ on, is the nature of the Miracle-
Worker; the final Court of Appeal is to prophetical
testimonies. Dr Eisler's quotation from the Acts of Pilate
is in order, and may affect the final restoration of the
Testimonium to its non-Christian form.