OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FOREGOING EVIDENCE AND CITATIONS

I. The style of all these original testimonies belonging to Josephus is exactly the style of the same Josephus, and especially the style about those parts of his Antiquities wherein we find these testimonies. This is denied by nobody as to the other concerning John the Baptist and James the Just, and is now become equally undeniable as to thatconcerning Christ.

II. These testimonies therefore being confessedly and undeniably written by Josephus himself, it is next to impossible that he should wholly omit some testimony concerning Jesus Christ; nay, while his testimonies of John the Baptist and of James the Just are so honorable, and gave them so great characters, it is also impossible that this testimony concerning Christ should be other than very honorable, or such as afforded him a still greater character also. Could the very same author, who gave such a full and advantageous character of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth, all whose disciples were by him directed to Jesus of Nazareth as to the true Messias, and all whose disciples became afterwards the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, say nothing honorable of that Jesus of Nazareth himself?—and this in a history of those very times in which he was born and lived, and died, and that while the writer lived but a little after him in the same country in which he was born, and lived, and died. This is almost incredible. And further, could the very same author, who gave such an advantageous character of James the Just, and this under the very appellation of James the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, which James was one of the principal disciples or apostles of this Jesus Christ, and had been many years the only Christian bishop of the believing Jews of Judea and Jerusalem, in the very days and in the very country of this writer;—could he, I say, wholly omit any, nay, a very honorable account of Jesus Christ himself, whose disciple and bishop this James most certainly was? This is also almost incredible. Hear what Ittigius, one of the wisest and learnedest of all those who have lately inclined to give up the testimony concerning Christ, as it stands in our copies, for spurious, says upon this occasion:—“If anyone object to me, that Josephus hath not omitted John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, nor James the disciple of Christ, and that therefore he could not have done the part of a good historian, if he had been entirely silent concerning Christ, I shall freely grant that Josephus was not entirely silent concerning Christ; nay, I shall further grant, that when Josephus was speaking of Christ, he did not abstain from his commendation; for we are not to determine from that inveterate hatred which the modern Jews bear to Christ, what was the behavior of those Jews, upon whom the miracles that were daily wrought by the apostles in the name of Christ imprinted a sacred horror.”

III. The famous clause in this testimony of Josephus concerning Christ. This was Christ or the Christ, does not mean that this Jesus was the Christ of God, or the true Messiah of the Jews; but that this Jesus was distinguished from all others of that name, of which there were not a few, as mentioned by Josephus himself, by the addition of the other name of Christ; or that this person was no other than he whom all the world knew by the name of Jesus Christ, and his followers by the name of Christians. This I esteem to be a clear case, and that from the arguments following:—

(1) The Greeks and Romans, for whose use Josephus wrote his Antiquities, could not otherwise understand these words. The Jews indeed, and afterwards the Christians, who knew that a great Messias, a person that was to be Christ, the anointed of God, and that was to perform the office of a King, a Priest, and a Prophet, to God’s people, might readily so understand this expression; but Josephus as I have already noted, wrote here not to Jews or Christians, but to Greeks and Romans, who knew nothing of this: but knew very well that an eminent person, living in Judea, whose name was Jesus Chrest, or Jesus Christ, had founded a new and numerous sect, which took the latter of those names, and were everywhere, from him, called Chrestians, or Christians; in which sense alone they could understand these words of Josephus, and in which sense I believe he desired they should understand them; nor does Josephus ever use the Hebrew term Messiah in any of his writings, nor the Greek term Christ in any such acceptation elsewhere.

(2) Josephus himself as good as explains his own meaning, and that by the last clause of this very passage, where he says the Christians were named from this Christ, without a syllable as though he really meant he was the true Messiah, or Christ of God. He farther seems to me to explain this his meaning in that other place, where alone he elsewhere mentions this name of Christ; that is, when upon occasion of the mention of James, when he was condemned by Ananus, he calls him the Brother of Jesus, not that was the true Messiah, or the true Christ, but only that was called Christ.

(3) It was quite beside the purpose of Josephus to declare himself here to be a Christian, or a believer in Jesus as the true Messiah. Had he intended so to do, he would surely have explained the meaning of the word Christ to his Greek and Roman readers; he would surely have been a great deal fuller and larger in his accounts of Christ, and of the Christian religion; nor would such a declaration at that time have recommended him, or his nation, or his writings, to either the Greeks or the Romans; of his reputation with both which people he is known to have been, in the writing of these Antiquities, very greatly solicitous.

(4) Josephus’s usual way of writing is historical and declarative of facts, and of the opinions of others, and but rarely such as directly informs us of his own opinion, unless we prudently gather it from what he says historically, or as the opinions of others. This is very observable in the writings of Josephus, and in particular as to what he says of John the Baptist and of James the Just; so that this interpretation, is most probable, as most agreeable to Josephus’s way of writing in parallel cases.

(5) This seems to be the universal sense of all the ancients, without exception, who cite this testimony from him; and though they almost everywhere own this to be the true reading, yet do they everywhere suppose Josephus to be still an unbelieving Jew, and not a believing Christian; nay, Jerome appears so well assured of this interpretation, and that Josephus did not mean to declare any more by these words, than a common opinion, that, according to his usual way of interpreting authors, not to the words but to the sense (of which we have, I think, two more instances in his accounts out of Josephus now before us), he renders this clause, Credebatur esse Christus, i.e., He was believed to be Christ. Nor is the parallel expression of Pilate to be otherwise understood, when he made that inscription upon the cross, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews (Matt. 27:31); which is well explained by themselves elsewhere, and corresponds to the import of the present clause, What shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ(Matt. 27:17, 22)? And we may full as well prove from Pilate’s inscription upon the cross, that he hereby declared himself a believer in Christ for the real King of the Jews, as we can from these words of Josephus, that he thereby declared himself to be a real believer in him, as the true Messiah. . . .

VII. The second author I have alleged for it is Justin Martyr, one so nearly coeval with Josephus, that he might be born about the time when he wrote his Antiquities: he appeals to the same Antiquities by that very name; and though he does not here directly quote them, yet does he seem to me to allude to this very testimony in them concerning our Savior, when he affirms, in this place, to Trypho the Jew, that his nation originally knew that Jesus was risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, as the prophecies did foretell was to happen. Since there neither now is, nor probably in the days of Justin was, any other Jewish testimony extant which is so agreeable to what Justin here affirms of those Jews, as it this of Josephus the Jew before us; nor indeed does he seem to me to have had anything else particularly in his view here, but this very testimony, where Josephus says, “That Jesus appeared to his followers alive the third day after his crucifixion, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.”

VIII. The third author I have quoted for Josephus’s testimonies of John the Baptist, of Jesus of Nazareth, and of James the Just, is Origen, who is indeed allowed on all hands to have quoted him for the excellent character of John the Baptist, and of James the Just; but whose supposed entire silence about this testimony concerning Christ is usually alleged as the principal argument against its being genuine, and particularly as to the clause, This was the Christ: and that, as we have seen, because he twice assures us that, in his opinion, Josephus himself did not acknowledge Jesus for Christ. Now, as to this latter clause, I have already shown that Josephus did not here, in writing to Greeks and Romans, mean any such thing by those words as Jews and Christians naturally understand by them: I have also observed, that all the ancients allow still, with Origen, that Josephus did not, in the Jewish and Christian sense, acknowledge Jesus for the true Messiah, or the true Christ of God, notwithstanding their express quotation of that clause in Josephus as genuine; so that unless we suppose Origen to have had a different notion of these words from all the other ancients, we cannot conclude from this assertion of Origen, that he had not those words in his copy, not to say that it is, after all, much more likely that his copy was a little different from the other copies in this clause, or indeed omitted it entirely, than that he, on its account, must be supposed not to have had the rest of this testimony therein, though indeed I see no necessity of making any such supposal, at all. However, it seems to me that Origen affords us four several indications that the main parts at least of this testimony itself were in his copy:—

(1) When Origen introduces Josephus’s testimony concerning James the Just, that he thought the miseries of the Jews were an instance of the divine vengeance on that nation for putting James to death instead of Jesus, he uses an expression no way necessary to his purpose, nor occasioned by any words of Josephus there, That they had slain that Christ which was foretold in the prophecies. Whence could this expression come here into Origen’s mind, when he was quoting a testimony of Josephus concerning the brother of Christ, but from his remembrance of a clause in the testimony of the same Josephus concerning Christ himself, that the prophets had foretold his death and resurrection, and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him?

(2) How came Origen to be so surprised at Josephus’s ascribing the destruction of Jerusalem to the Jews’ murdering of James the Just, and not to their murdering of Jesus, as we have seen he was, if he had not known that Josephus had spoken of Jesus and his death before, and that he had a very good opinion of Jesus, which yet he could learn no way so authentically as from this testimony? Nor do the words he here uses, that Josephus was not remote from the truth, perhaps allude to anything else but to this very testimony before us.

(3) How can the same Origen, upon another slight occasion, when he had just set down that testimony of Josephus concerning James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, say that “it may be questioned whether the Jews thought Jesus to be a man, or whether they did not suppose him to be a being of a diviner kind?” This looks so very like the fifth and sixth clauses of this testimony in Josephus, that Jesus was a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, that it is highly probable Origen thereby alluded to them; and this is the more to be depended on, because all the unbelieving Jews, and all the rest of the Nazarene Jews, esteemed Jesus with one consent, as a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary; and it is not, I think, possible to produce any one Jew but Josephus, who in a sort of compliance with the Romans and the Catholic Christians, who thought him a God, would say anything like his being a God.

(4) How came Origen to affirm twice, so expressly, that Josephus did not himself own, in the Jewish and Christian sense, that Jesus was Christ, notwithstanding his quotations of such eminent testimonies out of him, for John the Baptist his forerunner and for James the Just, his brother, and one of his principle disciples? There is no passage in all Josephus so likely to persuade Origen of this as is the famous testimony before us, wherein, as he and all the ancients understood it, he was generally called Christ indeed, but not any otherwise than as the common name whence the sect of Christians was derived, and where he all along speaks of those Christians as a sect then in being, whose author was a wonderful person, and his followers great lovers of him and of the truth, yet as such a sect as he had not joined himself to: which exposition, as it is a very natural one, so was it, I doubt, but too true of our Josephus at that time; nor can I devise any other reason but this, and the parallel language of Josephus elsewhere, when he speaks of James as the brother, not of Jesus who was Christ, but of Jesus who was called Christ, that could so naturally induce Origen and others to be of that opinion.

IX. There are two remarkable passages in Suidas and Theophylact, already set down, as citing Josephus; the former, that Jesus officiated with the priests in the temple; and the latter, that the destruction of Jerusalem, and miseries of the Jews, were owing to their putting Jesus to death, which are in none of our present copies, nor cited thence by any ancienter authors, nor indeed do they seem altogether consistent with the other most authentic testimonies. However, since Suidas cites his passage from a treatise of Josephus called Memoirs of the Jews’ Captivity, a book never heard of elsewhere, and since both citations are not at all disagreeable to Josephus’s character as a Nazarene or Ebionite, I dare not positively conclude they are spurious, but must leave them in suspense, for the farther consideration of the learned.

X. As to that great critic Photius, in the ninth century, who is supposed not to have had this testimony in his copy of Josephus, or else to have esteemed it spurious; because, in his extracts out of Josephus’s Antiquities, it is not expressly mentioned,—this is a strange thing indeed!—that a section, which had been cited out of Josephus’s copies all along before the days of Photius, as well as it has been all along cited out of them since his days, should be supposed not to be in his copy, because he does not directly mention it in certain short and imperfect extracts, no way particularly relating to such matters. Those who lay a stress on this silence of Photius, seem little to have attended to the nature and brevity of those extracts. They contain little or nothing, as he in effect professes at their entrance, but what concerns Antipater, Herod the Great and his brethren and family, with their exploits, till the days of Agrippa junior, and Cumanus, the governor of Judea, fifteen years after the death of our Savior, without one word of Pilate, or what happened under his government, which yet was the only proper place in which this testimony could come to be mentioned. However, since Photius seems therefore, as we have seen, to suspect the treatise ascribed by some to Josephus of the Universe, because it speaks very high things of the eternal generation and divinity of Christ, this looks very like his knowledge and belief of somewhat really in the same Josephus, which, spake in a lower manner of him, which could be hardly any other passage than this testimony before us; and since as we have also seen, when he speaks of the Jewish History of Justus of Tiberias, as infected with the prejudices of the Jews in taking no manner of notice of the advent, of the acts, and of the miracles of Jesus Christ, while yet he never speaks so of Josephus himself, this most naturally implies also, that there was not the like occasion here as there; but that Josephus had not wholly omitted that advent, those acts, or miracles which yet he has done everywhere else, in the books seen by Photius, as well as Justus of Tiberias, but in this famous testimony before us so that it is most probable, Photius not only had this testimony in his copy, but believed it to be genuine also.

XI. As to the silence of Clement of Alexandria, who cites the Antiquities of Josephus, but never cites any of the testimonies now before us, it is no strange thing at all, since he never cites Josephus but once, and that for a point of chronology only, to determine how many years had passed from the days of Moses to the days of Josephus,—so that his silence may almost as well be alleged against a hundred other remarkable passages in Josephus’s works as against these before us.