It was under this conciliatory feeling that I think it probable the interpolation was made, at first by a Jew, but afterwards it was amplified by a Christian. I think this probable, from the fact of its not being the only interpolation of the sort effected. Suidas has an article on the name Jesus, in which he tells us that Josephus mentions him, and says that he sacrificed with the priests in the temple. He quoted from an interpolated copy of Josephus, and this interpolation could not have been made by either a Gentile or a Nazarene Christian: not by a Gentile, for such a statement would have been pointless, purposeless to him; and it could not have been made by a Nazarene, for the Nazarenes, as will presently be shown, were strongly opposed to the sacrificial system in the temple. The interpolation must therefore have been made by a Jew, and by a Jew with a conciliatory purpose.
It is curious to note the use made of the interpolation now found in the text. Eusebius, after quoting it, says, When such testimony as this is transmitted to us by an historian who sprang from the Hebrews themselves, respecting John the Baptist and the Saviour, what subterfuge can be left them to prevent them from being covered with confusion?21
There is one other mention of Christ in the Antiquities (lib. xx. c. 9):
Ananus, the younger, of whom I have related that he had obtained the office of high-priest, was of a rash and daring character; he belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, which, as I have already remarked, exhibited especial severity in the discharge of justice. Being of such a character, Ananus thought the time when Festus was dead, and Albinus was yet upon the road, a fit opportunity for calling a council of judges, and for bringing before them James, the brother of him who is called Christ, and some others: he accused them as transgressors of the law, and had them stoned to death. But the most moderate men of the city, who also were reckoned most learned in the law, were offended at this proceeding. They therefore sent privately to the king (Agrippa II.), entreating him to send orders to Ananus not to attempt such a thing again, for he had no right to do it. And some went to meet Albinus, then coming from Alexandria, and put him in mind that Ananus was not justified, without his consent, in assembling a court of justice. Albinus, approving what they said, angrily wrote to Ananus, and threatened him with punishment; and king Agrippa took from him his office of high-priest, and gave it to Jesus, the son of Donnæus.
This passage is also open to objection.
According to Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian, who wrote a History of the Church about the year A.D. 170, of which fragments have been preserved by Eusebius, St. James was killed in a tumult, and not by sentence of a court. He relates that James, the brother of Jesus, was thrown down from a wing of the temple, stoned, and finally despatched with a fuller's club. Clement of Alexandria confirms this, and is quoted by Eusebius accordingly.
Eusebius quotes the passage from Josephus, without noticing that the two accounts do not agree. According to the statement of Hegesippus, St. James suffered alone; according to that of Josephus, several other victims to the anger or zeal of Ananus perished with him.
It appears that some of the copies of Josephus were tampered with by copyists, for Theophylact says, The wrath of God fell on them (the Jews) when their city was taken; and Josephus testifies that these things happened to them on account of the death of Jesus. But Origen, speaking of Josephus, says, This writer, though he did not believe Jesus to be the Christ, inquiring into the cause of the overthrow of Jerusalem and the demolition of the temple says, These things befel the Jews in vindication of James, called the Just, who was the brother of Jesus, called the Christ, forasmuch as they killed him who was a most righteous man. 22 Josephus, as we have seen, says nothing of the sort; consequently Origen must have quoted from an interpolated copy. And this interpolation suffered further alteration, by a later hand, by the substitution of the name of Jesus for that of James.
It is therefore by no means unlikely that the name of James, the Lord's brother, may have been inserted in the account of the high-handed dealing of Ananus in place of another name.
However, it is by no means impossible to reconcile the two accounts. The martyrdom of St. James is an historical fact, and it is likely to have taken place during the time when Ananus had the power in his hands.
For fifty years the pontificate had been in the same family, with scarcely an interruption, and Ananus, or Hanan, was the son of Annas, who had condemned Christ. They were Sadducees, and as such were persecuting. St. Paul, by appealing to his Pharisee principles, enlisted the members of that faction in his favour when brought before Ananias.23
The apostles based their teaching on the Resurrection, the very doctrine most repugnant to the Sadducees; and their accounts of visions of angels repeated among the people must have irritated the dominant faction who denied the existence of these spirits. It can hardly be matter of surprise that the murder of James should have taken place when Ananus was supreme in Jerusalem. If that were the case, Josephus no doubt mentioned James, and perhaps added the words, The brother of him who is called Christ; or these words may have been inserted by a transcriber in place of of Sechania, or Bar-Joseph.
This is all that Josephus says, or is thought to have said, about Jesus and the early Christians.
At the same time as Josephus, there lived another Jewish historian, Justus of Tiberias, whom Josephus mentions, and blames for not having published his History of the Wars of the Jews during the life of Vespasian and Titus. St. Jerome includes Justus in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, and Stephen of Byzantium mentions him.
His book, or books, have unfortunately been lost, but Photius had read his History, and was surprised to find that he, also, made no mention of Christ. This Jewish historian, says he, does not make the smallest mention of the appearance of Christ, and says nothing whatever of his deeds and miracles.24
II. The Cause Of The Silence Of Josephus
It is necessary to inquire, Why this silence of Philo, Josephus and Justus? at first so inexplicable.
It can only be answered by laying before the reader a picture of the Christian Church in the first century. A critical examination of the writings of the first age of the Church reveals unexpected disclosures.
1. It shows us that the Church at Jerusalem, and throughout Palestine and Asia Minor, composed of converted Jews, was to an external observer indistinguishable from a modified Essenism.
2. And that the difference between the Gentile Church founded by St. Paul, and the Nazarene Church under St. James and St. Peter, was greater than that which separated the latter from Judaism externally, so that to a superficial observer their inner connection was unsuspected.
This applies to the period from the Ascension to the close of the first century, to the period, that is, in which Josephus and Justus lived, and about which they wrote.
1. Our knowledge of the Essenes and their doctrines is, unfortunately, not as full as we could wish. We are confined to the imperfect accounts of them furnished by Philo and Josephus, neither of whom knew them thoroughly, or was initiated into their secret doctrines.
The Essenes arose about two centuries before the birth of Christ, and peopled the quiet deserts on the west of the Dead Sea, a wilderness to which the Christian monks afterwards seceded from the cities of Palestine. They are thus described by the elder Pliny:
2. And that the difference between the Gentile Church founded by St. Paul, and the Nazarene Church under St. James and St. Peter, was greater than that which separated the latter from Judaism externally, so that to a superficial observer their inner connection was unsuspected.
This applies to the period from the Ascension to the close of the first century, to the period, that is, in which Josephus and Justus lived, and about which they wrote.
1. Our knowledge of the Essenes and their doctrines is, unfortunately, not as full as we could wish. We are confined to the imperfect accounts of them furnished by Philo and Josephus, neither of whom knew them thoroughly, or was initiated into their secret doctrines.
The Essenes arose about two centuries before the birth of Christ, and peopled the quiet deserts on the west of the Dead Sea, a wilderness to which the Christian monks afterwards seceded from the cities of Palestine. They are thus described by the elder Pliny:
On the western shore of that lake dwell the Essenes, at a sufficient distance from the water's edge to escape its pestilential exhalations a race entirely unique, and, beyond every other in the world, deserving of wonder; men living among palm-trees, without wives, without money. Every day their number is replenished by a new troop of settlers, for those join them who have been visited by the reverses of fortune, who are tired of the world and its style of living. Thus happens what might seem incredible, that a community in which no one is born continues to subsist through the lapse of centuries.25
From this first seat of the Essenes colonies detached themselves, and settled in other parts of Palestine; they settled not only in remote and solitary places, but in the midst of villages and towns. In Samaria they flourished.26 According to Josephus, some of the Essenes were willing to act as magistrates, and it is evident that such as lived in the midst of society could not have followed the strict rule imposed on the solitaries. There must therefore have been various degrees of Essenism, some severer, more exclusive than the others; and Josephus distinguishes four such classes in the sect. Some of the Essenes remained celibates, others married. The more exalted and exclusive Essenes would not touch one of the more lax brethren.27
The Essenes had a common treasury, formed by throwing together the property of such as entered into the society, and by the earnings of each man's labour.28
They wore simple habits only such clothing as was necessary for covering nakedness and giving protection from the cold or heat.29
They forbad oaths, their conversation being yea, yea, and nay, nay.30
Their diet was confined to simple nourishing food, and they abstained from delicacies.31
They exhibited the greatest respect for the constituted authorities, and refrained from taking any part in the political intrigues, or sharing in the political jealousies, which were rife among the Jews.32
They fasted, and were incessant at prayer, but without the ostentation that marked the Pharisees.33
They seem to have greatly devoted themselves to the cure of diseases, and, if we may trust the derivation of their name given by Josephus, they were called Essenes from their being the healers of men's minds and bodies.34
If now we look at our blessed Lord's teaching, we find in it much in common with that of the Essenes. The same insisting before the multitude on purity of thought, disengagement of affections from the world, disregard of wealth and clothing and delicate food, pursuit of inward piety instead of ostentatious formalism.
His miracles of healing also, to the ordinary observer, served to identify him with the sect which made healing the great object of their study.
But these were not the only points of connection between him and the Essenes. The Essenes, instead of holding the narrow prejudices of the Jews against Samaritans and Gentiles, extended their philanthropy to all. They considered that all men had been made in the image of God, that all were rational beings, and that therefore God's care was not confined to the Jewish nation, salvation was not limited to the circumcision.35
The Essenes, moreover, exhibited a peculiar veneration for light. It was their daily custom to turn their faces devoutly towards the rising of the sun, and to chant hymns addressed to that luminary, purporting that his beams ought to fall on nothing impure.
If we look at the Gospels, we cannot fail to note how incessantly Christ recurs in his teaching to light as the symbol of the truth he taught,36 as that in which his disciples were to walk, of which they were to be children, which they were to strive to obtain in all its purity and brilliancy.
The Essenes, moreover, had their esoteric doctrine; to the vulgar they had an esoteric teaching on virtue and disregard of the world, whilst among themselves they had a secret lore, of which, unfortunately, we know nothing certain. In like manner, we find our Lord speaking in parables to the multitude, and privately revealing their interpretation to his chosen disciples. Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.37
The Clementines, moreover, preserve a saying of our Lord, contained in the Gospel in use among the Ebionites, Keep the mysteries for me, and for the sons of my house.38
The Essenes, though showing great veneration for the Mosaic law, distinguished between its precepts, for some they declared were interpolations, and did not belong to the original revelation; all the glosses and traditions of the Rabbis they repudiated, as making the true Word of none effect.39 Amongst other things that they rejected was the sacrificial system of the Law. They regarded this with the utmost horror, and would not be present at any of the sacrifices. They sent gifts to the Temple, but never any beast, that its blood might be shed. To the ordinary worship of the Temple, apart from the sacrifices, they do not seem to have objected. The Clementine Homilies carry us into the very heart of Ebionite Christianity in the second, if not the first century, and show us what was the Church of St. James and St. Peter, the Church of the Circumcision, with its peculiarities and prejudices intensified by isolation and opposition. In that curious book we find the same hostility to the sacrificial system of Moses, the same abhorrence of blood-shedding in the service of God. This temper of mind can only be an echo of primitive Nazarene Christianity, for in the second century the Temple and its sacrifices were no more.
Primitive Jewish Christianity, therefore, reproduced what was an essential feature of Essenism a rejection of the Mosaic sacrifices.
In another point Nazarene Christianity resembled Essenism, in the poverty of its members, their simplicity in dress and in diet, their community of goods. This we learn from Hegesippus, who represents St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, as truly an ascetic as any mediaeval monk; and from the Clementines, which make St. Peter feed on olives and bread only, and wear but one coat. The name of Ebionite, which was given to the Nazarenes, signified the poor.