EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
[Evidence of Josephus] It remains to examine how this school
of writers handle the evidence with regard to the earliest
church supplied by Jewish or Pagan writers. I have said enough
incidentally of the evidence of the Talmud and Toldoth Jeschu, but
there remains that of Josephus. In the work on the Antiquities of
the Jews, Bk. xviii, 5, 2 (116 foll.), there is an account of John
the Baptist, and it is narrated that Herod, fearing an insurrection
of John's followers, threw him in bonds into the castle of Machaerus,
and there murdered him. Afterwards, when Herod's army was destroyed,
the Jewish population attributed the disaster to the wrath of God,
and saw in it a retribution for slaying so just a man. [35] On the
whole, Josephus's account accords with the picture we have of John
in the Synoptic Gospels, except that in the Gospels the place and
circumstances of his murder are differently given. This difference is
good evidence that Josephus's account is independent of the Christian
sources. Nevertheless, Dr. Drews airily pretends that there is a
strong suspicion of its being a forgery by some Christian hand. As
for John the Baptist as we meet him in the Gospels, he is, says Drews,
no historical personage. One expects some reason to be given for this
negative conclusion, but gets none whatever except a magnificent hint
that "a complete understanding of the baptism in the Jordan can only
be attained, if here, too, we take into consideration the translation
of the baptism into astrological terms" (Christ Myth, p. 121).
[The astral John Baptist] And he proceeds to dilate on the thesis that
the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan was "the reflection upon earth of
what originally took place among the stars." This discovery rests
on an equation--pre-philological, of course, like that of "Maria"
with "Myrrha"--of the name "John" or "Jehohanan" with "Oannes" or
"Ea," the Babylonian Water-god. However, this writer is here not a
little incoherent, for only on the page before he has assured us,
as of something unquestionable, that John was closely related to the
Essenes, and baptized the penitents in the Jordan in the open air. Was
Jordan, too, up in heaven? Were the Essenes there also? Mr. Robertson,
of course, pursues the same simple method of disposing of adverse
evidence, and asserts (p. 396) that Josephus's account of John "is
plainly open to that suspicion of interpolation which, in the case
of the allusion to Jesus in the same book (Antiq., xviii, 3, 3),
has become for most critics a certainty." He does not condescend
to inform his readers that the latter passage [36] is absent from
important MSS., was unknown to Origen, and is therefore rightly
bracketed by editors; whereas the account of John is in all MSS.,
and was known to Origen. But as we have seen before, Mr. Robertson is
one of those gifted people who can discern by peculiar intuitions of
their own that everything is interpolated in an author which offends
their prejudices. He has a lofty contempt for the careful sifting of
the textual tradition, the examination of MSS. and ancient versions
to which a scholar resorts, before he condemns a passage of an ancient
author as an interpolation. Moreover, a scholar feels himself bound to
show why a passage was interpolated, in whose interests. For, regarded
as an interpolation, a passage is as much a problem to him as it was
before. Its genesis has still to be explained. But Messrs. Robertson
and Drews and Smith do not condescend to explain anything or give
any reasons. A passage slays their theories; therefore it is a "vital
interpolation." It is the work of an ancient enemy sowing tares amid
their wheat.
[Josephus's reference to James, brother of Jesus] John the Baptist
having been removed in this cavalier fashion from the pages of
Josephus, we can hardly expect James the brother of Jesus to be left,
and he is accordingly kicked out without ceremony. It does not matter
a scrap that the passage (Antiquities xx, 9, 1, 200) stands in the
Greek MSS. and in the Latin Version. As Professor W. B. Smith's
argument on the point is representative of this class of critics,
we must let him speak first (p. 235):--
Origen thrice quotes as from Josephus the statement that the
Jewish sufferings at the hands of Titus were a divine retribution
for the slaying of James.
He then proceeds to quote the text of Origen, Against Celsus, i, 47,
giving the reference, but mangling in the most extraordinary manner
a text that is clear and consecutive. For Origen begins (ch. xlvii)
by saying that Celsus "somehow accepted John as a Baptist who baptized
Jesus," and then adds the following:--
In the Eighteenth Book of his Antiquities of the Jews Josephus
bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising
purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer,
although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the
cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple,
whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was
the cause of these calamities befalling the people since they put
to death Christ, who was a prophet, says, nevertheless--although
against his will, not far from the truth--that these disasters
happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the
Just, who was a brother of Jesus called Christ, the Jews having
put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for
his righteousness (i.e., strict observance of the law).
In a later passage of the same treatise (ii, 13), which Mr. Smith cites
correctly, Origen refers again to the same passage of the Antiquities
(xx, 200) thus: "Titus demolished Jerusalem, as Josephus writes,
on account of James the Just, the brother of Jesus, the so-called
Christ." Also in Origen's commentary on Matthew xiii, 55, we have a
like statement that the sufferings of the Jews were a punishment for
the murder of James the Just.
Origen therefore cites Josephus thrice about James, and in each
case he has in mind the same passage--viz., xx, 200. But Mr. Smith,
after citing the shorter passage, Contra Celsum, ii, 13, goes on
as follows:--
The passage is still found in some Josephus manuscripts; but,
as it is wanting in others, it is, and must be, regarded as a
Christian interpolation older than Origen.
Will Mr. Smith kindly tell us which are the MSS. in which are found
any passage or passages referring the fall of Jerusalem to the death of
James, and so far contradicting Josephus's interpretation of Ananus's
death in the History of the Jewish War, iv, 5, 2. Niese, the latest
editor, knows of none, nor did any previous editor know of any.
Mr. Smith then proceeds thus:--
Now, since this phrase is certainly interpolated in the one place,
the only reasonable conclusion is that it is interpolated in
the other.
But "this phrase" never stood in Josephus at all, even as an
interpolation, and on examination it turns out that Professor Smith's
prejudice against the passage in which Josephus mentions James, is
merely based on the muddle committed by Origen. Such are the arguments
by which he seeks to prove that Josephus's text was interpolated by
a Christian, as if a Christian interpolator, supposing there had
been one (and he has left no trace of himself), would not, as the
protest of Origen sufficiently indicates, have represented the fall of
Jerusalem as a divine punishment, not for the slaying of James, but
for the slaying of Jesus. Having demolished the evidence of Josephus
in such a manner, Mr. Smith heads ten of his pages with the words,
"The Silence of Josephus," as if he had settled all doubts for ever
by mere force of his erroneous ipse dixit.
[The testimony of Tacitus] The next section of Professor Smith's work
(Ecce Deus) is headed with the same effrontery of calm assertion:
"The Silence of Tacitus." This historian relates (Annals, xv, 44)
that Nero accused the Christians of having burned down Rome. Nero
subjected to most exquisite tortures those whom, hated for
their crimes, the populace called Chrestians. The author of this
name, Christus, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by
the Procurator Pontius Pilate; and, though repressed for the
moment, the pernicious superstition was breaking forth again,
not only throughout Judæa, the fountain-head of this mischief,
but also throughout the capital, where all things from anywhere
that are horrible or disgraceful pour in together and are made
a religion of.
In the sequel Tacitus describes how an immense multitude, less for the
crime of incendiarism than in punishment of their hatred of humanity,
were convicted; how some were clothed in skins of wild beasts and
thrown to dogs, while others were crucified or burned alive. Nero's
savagery was such that it awoke the pity even of a Roman crowd for
his victims.
Such a passage as the above, written by Tacitus soon after A.D. 100, is
somewhat disconcerting to our authors. Professor Smith, proceeding on
his usual innocent assumption that the whole of the ancient literature,
Christian and profane, of this epoch lies before him, instead of a
scanty débris of it, votes it to be a forgery. Why? Because Melito,
Bishop of Sardis about 170 A.D., is the first writer who alludes to
it in a fragment of an apology addressed to a Roman Emperor. As if
there were not five hundred striking episodes narrated by Tacitus,
yet never mentioned by any subsequent writer at all. Would Mr. Smith
on that account dispute their authenticity? It is only because this
episode concerns Christianity and gets in the way of his theories,
that he finds it necessary to cut it out of the text. You can prove
anything if you cook your evidence, and the wanton mutilation of
texts which no critical historian has ever called in question is a
flagrant form of such cookery. In the hands of these writers facts
are made to fit theory, not theory to fit facts.
[Testimony of Clement agrees with Tacitus] I hardly need add that
the narrative of Tacitus is frank, straightforward, and in keeping
with all we know or can infer in regard to Christianity in that
epoch. Mr. E. G. Hardy, in his valuable book Christianity and the Roman
Government (London, 1894, p. 70), has pointed out that "the mode of
punishment was that prescribed for those convicted of magic," and that
Suetonius uses the term malefica of the new religion--a term which has
this special sense. Magicians, moreover, in the code of Justinian,
which here as often reflects a much earlier age, are declared to be
"enemies of the human race." Nor is it true that Nero's persecution
as recorded in Tacitus is mentioned by no writer before Melito. It
is practically certain that Clement, writing about A.D. 95, refers to
it. He records that a poly plêthos, or vast multitude of Christians,
the ingens multitudo of Tacitus, perished in connection with the
martyrdom of Peter and Paul. He speaks of the manifold insults and
torments of men, the terrible and unholy outrages upon women, in
terms that answer exactly to the two phrases of Tacitus: pereuntibus
addita ludibria and quaesitissimae poenae. Women, he implies, were,
"like Dirce, fastened on the horns of bulls, or, after figuring as
Danaides in the arena, were exposed to the attacks of wild beasts"
(Hardy, op. cit., p. 72). [Drews on Poggio's interpolations of Tacitus]
However, Drews is not content with merely ousting the passage from
Tacitus, but undertakes to explain to his readers how it got there. It
was, he conjectures, made up out of a similar passage read in the
Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (written about 407) by some clever
forger, probably Poggio, who smuggled it into the text of Tacitus, "a
writer whose text is full of interpolations." It is hardly necessary
to inform an educated reader, firstly, that the text of Tacitus is
recognized by all competent Latin scholars to be remarkably free from
interpolations; secondly, that Severus merely abridged his account
of Nero's persecution from the narrative he found in Tacitus, an
author whom he frequently copied and imitated; thirdly, that Poggio,
the supposed interpolator, lived in the fifteenth century, whereas
our oldest MS. of this part of Tacitus is of the eleventh century;
it is now in the Laurentian Library. I should advise Dr. Drews to
stick to his javelin-man story, and not to venture on incursions into
the field of classical philology.
[Pliny's letter to Trajan] Having dispatched Josephus and Tacitus,
and printed over their pages in capitals the titles The Silence of
Josephus and The Silence of Tacitus, these authors, needless to say,
have no difficulty with Pliny and Suetonius. The former, in his
letter (No. 96) to Trajan, gives some particulars of the Christians
of Bithynia, probably obtained from renegades. They asserted that
the gist of their offence or error was that they were accustomed on a
regularly recurring day to meet before dawn, and repeat in alternating
chant among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a God; they also bound
themselves by a holy oath not to commit any crime, neither theft,
nor brigandage, nor adultery, and not to betray their word or deny a
deposit when it was demanded. After this rite was over they had had
the custom to break up their meeting, and to come together afresh
later in the day to partake of a meal, which, however, was of an
ordinary and innocent kind.
In this repast we recognize the early eucharist at which Christians
were commonly accused of devouring human flesh, as the Jews are accused
by besotted fanatics of doing in Russia to-day, and by Mr. Robertson in
ancient Jerusalem. Hence Pliny's proviso that the food they partook of
was ordinary and innocent. The passage also shows that this eucharistic
meal was not the earliest rite of the day, like the fasting communion
of the modern Ritualist, but was held later in the day. Lastly, the
qualification that they sang hymns to Christ as to a God, though to
Pliny it conveyed no more than the phrase "as if to Apollo," or "as
if to Aesculapius," clearly signifies that the person so honoured was
or had been a human being. Had he been a Sun-god Saviour, the phrase
would be hopelessly inept. This letter and Trajan's answer to it were
penned about 110 A.D.
Of this letter Professor W. B. Smith writes (p. 252) that in it
"there is no implication, not even the slightest, touching the purely
human reality of the Christ or Jesus." Let us suppose the letter had
referred to the cult of Augustus Cæsar, and that we read in it of
people who, by way of honouring his memory, met on certain days and
sang a hymn to Augustus quasi deo, "as to a God." We know that the
members of a college of Augustals did so meet in most cities of the
Roman Empire. Well, would Mr. Smith contend in such a case that the
letter carried no implication, not even the slightest, touching the
purely human reality of the Augustus or Cæsar? Of course he would
not. If this letter were the sole record in existence of early
Christianity, we might perhaps hesitate about its implications;
but it is in the characteristic Latin which no one, so far as we
know, ever wrote, except the younger Pliny, and is accompanied by
Trajan's answer, couched in an equally characteristic style. It is,
moreover, but one link in a long chain, which as a whole attests and
presupposes the reality of Jesus. Mr. Smith, however, does not seem
quite sure of his ground, for in the next sentence he hints that
after all Pliny's letter is not genuine. These writers are not the
first to whom this letter has proved a pons asinorum. Semler began
the attack on its genuineness in 1784; and others, who desired to
eliminate all references to Christianity in early heathen writers,
have, as J. B. Lightfoot has remarked (Apostolic Fathers, Pt. II,
vol. i, p. 55), followed in his wake. Their objections do not merit
serious refutation.
[Evidence of Suetonius] There remains Suetonius, who in ch. xxv of his
life of Claudius speaks of Messianic disturbances at Rome impulsore
Chresto. Claudius reigned from 41-54, and the passage may possibly
be an echo of the conflict, clearly delineated in Acts and Paulines
between the Jews and the followers of the new Messiah. [37] Itacism
or interchange of "e" and "i" being the commonest of corruptions in
Greek and Latin MSS., we may fairly conjecture Christo in the source
used by Suetonius, who wrote about the year 120. Christo, which means
Messiah, is intelligible in relation to Jews, but not Chresto; and the
two words were identical in pronunciation. Drews of course upholds
Chresto, and in Tacitus would substitute for Christiani Chrestiani;
for this there is indeed manuscript support, but it is gratuitous
to argue as he does that the allusion is to Serapis or Osiris,
who were called Chrestos "the good" by their votaries. He does not
condescend to adduce any evidence to show that in that age or any
other Chrestos, used absolutely, signified Osiris or Serapis; and
there is no reason to suppose it ever had such a significance. He is
on still more precarious ground when he surmises that Nero's victims
at Rome were not followers of Christ, but of Serapis, and were called
Chrestiani by the mob ironically, because of their vices. Here we
begin to suspect that he is joking. Why should worshippers of Serapis
have been regarded as specially vicious by the Roman mob? Jews and
Christians were no doubt detested, because they could not join in
any popular festivities or thanksgivings. But there was nothing to
prevent votaries of Serapis or Osiris from doing so, nor is there
any record of their being unpopular as a class.
In his life of Nero, Suetonius, amid a number of brief notices,
apparently taken from some annalistic work, includes the following:
"The Christians were visited with condign punishments--a race of men
professing a new and malefic superstition." On this passage I have
commented above (p. 161).
[Origin of the name "Christian"] Characteristically enough, Dr. Drews
assumes, without a shadow of argument, that the famous text in Acts
which says that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians
in Antioch is an interpolation. It stands in the way of his new thesis
that the Roman people called the followers of Serapis--who was Chrestos
or "good"--Chrestiani, because they were precisely the contrary. [38]
Tacitus does not say that Nero's victims were so called because of
their vices. That is a gloss put on the text by Drews. We only learn
(a) that they were hated by the mob for their vices, and (b) that
the mob at that time called them Chrestiani. His use of the imperfect
tense appellabat indicates that in his own day the same sect had come
to be known under their proper appellation as Christiani. In A.D. 64,
he implies, a Roman mob knew no better.