JOSEPHUS AND CHRISTIANITY.
By Charles W. Smiley
As Josephus was born in Jerusalem four years after the date assigned for the crucifixion, was thoroly educated, and became both a scholar and public official in Jerusalem as well as in Galilee, and finally, after the city was destroyed, wrote a minute history which covered all of that century and more, all the world naturally turns to his histories to learn something about Jesus and Paul and the rest. This man had no religious prejudices. He describes with equal fairness the Pharisees, the Saducees, and the Essenes. The latter he could not find out much about because they were a secret and ascetic order of Jews. He describes trivial disorders in Jerusalem at times when we suppose disciples of Jesus to have lived there, but he never describes any of the events of which we read in the Gospels or in the Acts. To judge by what he wrote, he never heard of any New Testament character or event. He never mentions Christians nor any person whom we consider to have been Christians. He makes no allusion to the observance of the first day of the week as a "Sabbath." He can not be appealed to on the first-day question, nor upon any "baptisms" in which one person "baptizes" another. He wrote in Greek. He was an excellent Greek scholar. Whatever New Testament Greek writings existed at the time were kept so secretly [or within so limited a circle, ED. S. OF T.] that neither Josephus or presumably any of his acquaintances ever saw them or heard anything of their contents. He says that the Essenes had secret writings, but he mentions no other people as having such writings. Every one ought to read carefully his eighth chapter of his second book of the "Antiquities of the Jews," in which the descriptions of the Essenes may easily remind us of the Gospel people. Writing in Greek he uses the word baptizo which occurs so often in the Gospels. But by it he meant that practise which the Jews had observed from time immemorial in ceremonial purification. It was an immersion of the entire body, stripped naked, and was performed secretly and alone. It was a religious observance, but never were two people involved as must be the case to constitute Christian baptism. Wherever Josephus uses the word baptizo he clearly means that Jewish ceremony. At least, is this true outside of Antiquities XVIII, 5: 2. In this paragraph there is mention of "John who was called the Baptist," if we trust current editions. But this can not be done as we shall see later. Then we shall see that Josephus never heard of "John's baptism." Turn back a few pages to XVIII, 3: 3, where we find the barefaced forgery which Christians of the fourth century, that is to say, Roman Catholics, basely interpolated into the then existing manuscripts. That this is a forgery, all Protestants and many Catholic scholars now boldly admit and prove. See especially the article on Josephus in "McClintock & Strong's Biblical Encyclopedia" where the reasons are recorded. The strongest is that none of all the second and third century writers ever quoted it, tho hard pressed for just such materials, and next to this, the fact that in those days of Eusebius and of the Council of Nice, Christians made great numbers of just such forgeries. Eusebius himself, bishop of Cæsarea (314 A.D.), was quite equal to this rascality. The passage of one hundred twenty-five words begins: "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man." That a Pharisee, which Josephus was, should admit any such "if" into his writings is absurd. But that we have a sandwich here is evident from the ragged edges above and below the interpolation. Notice the connection which the interpolator has broken. Josephus wrote:9 "There were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. [Interp.] About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practises happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome." The "sad calamity" would mean Jesus' crucifixion if the interpolation is put in, and Josephus the Pharisee would never have called it such. It was the killing and wounding in the sedition which he calls the "sad calamity," but this shuts out the forged paragraph. On these grounds we say that Josephus makes no allusion to "the tribe of Christians." In a like manner the paragraph about "John who was called the Baptist" was fraudulently inserted. The connection is as follows: "Tiberius wrote to Vitellius to make war upon Aretas and either to take him alive, . . . or to kill him and send him his head. This was the charge that Tiberius gave to the president of Syria. [Interp.] So Vitellius prepared to make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men." The only allusion to the work of "John who was called the Baptist," coming thus only ten pages after a forgery of the rankest sort, and put in between two parts of the account of the doings of a military man, and the use of baptizo in an entirely new sense, all stamp this pretended history as part of the universal lying and fraud which Christian Catholics said was justifiable for the good of the cause and to help the church to acquire the rule of nations as well as souls. It is out of that very time of forgery that come the oldest and best codexes that we possess of New Testament Greek (300-350 A.D.). That helps to explain the differences between them. If these palpable forgeries be conceded to be such, we then have the strange fact that a boy grew up in Jerusalem right after the crucifixion and never saw or heard of anything worthy to record in history of a new and strange sect. This has always been a tough problem. Christians have tried to alleviate it, first by forgery, later by accusing Josephus improperly. The only wise or safe thing is to admit the intense secrecy which enveloped the movement, and then seek to so live as to come into the perfect knowledge of the "mystery of godliness," which experience explains all such difficulties to the entire satisfaction of whoever has "Christ formed within." He who knows the indwelling knows why the secrecy. He has the only possible key to the meaning of the Scriptures. He cares not that Josephus knew nothing of Christ or of Christians. He will not lie about Josephus nor even abuse a faithful historian.
CHAS. W. SMILEY, A. M.
Berkeley, Cal.