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Internal evidence

(1) Context.—The latest advocates of the authenticity of the statement have judged it on its merits, apart from its context, from which it cannot be isolated. As Norden has convincingly shown, it breaks the thread of the narrative, the framework of which at this point consists of a series of “tumults” or “disturbances” (θόρυβοι). This framework seems to have been taken over from an older authority, and so mechanically that disturbances which occurred at different dates are treated as contemporaneous. We have:—

First θόρυβος (XVIII. 55-59).—Pilate introduces the Emperor’s busts into Jerusalem and threatens the Jewish petitioners with death “if they did not desist from turbulence” (θορυβεῖν 58).

Second θόρυβος (60-62).—Pilate appropriates the Corban money for building purposes. His soldiers overpower the insurgents (τοὺς θορυβοῦντας 62), “and so the sedition (στάσις) was quelled.” (See § 25 of the translation for these two θόρυβοι).

[Here (63-64) comes the passage about Christ.]

Third θόρυβος (65-84).—Two scandalous events at Rome leading respectively to the crucifixion of the priests of Isis and to the banishment of the Jews (for the second of these see § 27). These paragraphs open with the words “Now about the same time another calamity disturbed (ἐθορύβει) the Jews.”

Fourth θόρυβος (85-87) in Samaria, introduced by the words “The Samaritan race also was not exempt from disturbance” (θόρυβος), while the next paragraph begins “When the disturbance (θορύβου) was put down.”

It will be seen that this scheme is interrupted by the Christian περικοπή. The opening of 65 connects the third “disturbance” directly with the second (62). The mention of Pilate naturally led the interpolator to insert his statement at this point; but the structure of the original narrative leaves no room for it.

(2) Style.—Notwithstanding its brevity (it comprises only three sentences in Niese’s text) the paragraph is long enough to betray in its language the hand of the forger. The style is not quite so “neutral” as Harnack suggests.

Here, again, regard must be had to the immediate surroundings. The style of Josephus is variable, now easy and flowing, now extraordinarily difficult. The testimony to Christ is imbedded in a portion of the Antiquities (XVII. 1-XIX. 275) which contains some of the hardest Greek in our author. The language throughout this group of nearly three books is distinguished by some well-marked characteristics, e.g. a large use of periphrastic expressions. The simple verb is replaced by the combination of the nomen actoris in -τῆς with καθίστασθαι, γίγνεσθαι, εἶναι or the like (thus κριτὴς εἶ αι = κρίνειν XIX. 217); μὴ ἀπηλλαγμένος with inf. (ibid. “not incapable,” “competent”) is a similar mannerism of constant occurrence in these books and is based on Thuc. I. 138. Χρῆσθαι is used with extraordinary frequency in periphrases. Other peculiarities are the use of the neuter participle with article as an abstract noun (Thucydidean), of οὐδὲν (μηδὲν) εἰς ἀναβολὰς for “quickly” (after Thuc. VII. 15), and of ὁπόσος (100 examples in these books) for ῞ὅσος in other parts of Josephus. The departure from the author’s normal practice extends to the spelling; the double σ (of Thucydides) in words like πράσσειν in these books replaces as a rule the so-called “Attic” ττ employed elsewhere in the Antiquities. Imitation of Thucydides, found sporadically in other parts, here reaches its climax. This practice largely accounts for the cumbrous phrases and involved periods prevalent in these books. The style is artificial and imitative and does not lend itself readily to imitation by another, The sources of this portion of the work are mainly, if not entirely, Roman, notably the narrative of the accession and (at quite disproportionate length) the death (XIX. I. 275) of Caligula; and I can only account for the phenomena by supposing that the author here handed over entirely to one of his literary collaborateurs or συνεργοί (cp. Ap. I. 50), who had hitherto rendered only occasional aid, the task of translating his Latin authorities. On the accession of Claudius, when the centre of interest shifts from Rome to Palestine, the normal style is resumed (at XIX. 276).

Now, the mannerisms of Ant. XVII-XIX. 275 recur with wearisome iteration; it is rare to find a sentence which does not contain one or more of them. Thus in the paragraphs immediately preceding the passage about Christ we find three examples of periphrasis with χρῆσθαι (58, 60, 62); in the paragraph which follows two examples of οὐκ ἀπαλλάσσεσθαι (65, 68). But the passage itself contains none of the really distinctive features; one phrase alone (ἡδονῇ δέχεσθαι) gives us pause. The following details may be noticed.

“A doer of wonderful works.” In compiling a Greek index to Ant. XVI.-XX. I have not noticed another instance of παράδοξος.

“Men who receive the truth with pleasure.” “The truth” (τἀληθῆ). The crasis is in the style of Jos., but the phrase is again unexampled, at least in this portion. On the other hand, “to receive with pleasure” (ἡδονῇ δέχεσθαι) recurs in XVIII. 6, 59, 70, 236, 333; XIX. 127, 185 and similar phrases (ἡδονῇ φέρειν, χαρᾷ φέρειν or δέχεσθαι) elsewhere in this portion of the work. I account for this, with Norden, by supposing that “the interpolator knew his author.” He knew him just well enough to employ the crasis in τἀληθῇ and a phrase which he found twice in the immediate context (59, 70).

“The Greeks” (τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ). The neut. may be paralleled by B.J. II. 268, but is not uncommon outside Josephus.

“Our principal men.” Norden notes that, whereas “the first” or “principal men” (οἱ πρῶτοι) is frequent in Ant. XX. (2, 6, 53, 119, 123, 135, etc.), it never has the personal note (“our”) attached to it.

“Those who first loved (him).” Ἀγαπᾶν in Jos., never, according to Norden, has the Christian meaning of “love,” but only its classical sense of “be content”; an instance occurs in the previous paragraph (60, cp. 242).

“On the third day.” The phrase (τρίτην ἡμέραν ἔχων) is again unexampled in Jos.; the N.T. yields the nearest parallel (Lk. xxiv. 21, τρίτην ταύτην ἡμέραν ἄγει).

“Alive again” (πάλιν ζῶν). Jos. writes elsewhere of a future life ἀναβιοῦν (Ant. XVIII. 14) and γενέσθαι τε πάλιν καὶ βίον ἀμείνω λαβεῖν (Ap. II. 218); he does not use ζῆν or ζωή in this connexion.

“And to this very day” (εἰς ἔτι τε νῦν). The phrase is foreign to Jos., who commonly writes ἔτι καὶ νῦν, occasionally καὶ μεχρὶ τοῦ νῦν and the like, never εἰς ἔτι (Norden).

Jos. is scrupulous in avoiding a harsh hiatus—the juxtaposition of unelided vowels at the end of one word and the beginning of the next. The interpolator writes τἀληθῆ correctly, but, as Norden notes, he has in these few lines introduced three glaring examples of hiatus: Ἑλληνικοῦ ἐπηγάγετο, σταυρῷ ἐπιτετιμηκότος, Πιλάτου οὐκ.

(3) Contents.—Our decision must rest primarily upon the arguments already adduced from context and style. But the whole tone of the passage suggests a Christian hand. It is the eulogy of a devotee masquerading under the mantle of the Jewish historian, rather than what we should expect, the bare chronicle, if not the bitter invective, of the priestly historian himself. “If one should call him a man”; “this was the Christ.” Could Josephus have so written? Even Jerome found this last phrase incomprehensible on such lips and altered it in his translation to “credebatur esse Christus” (De vir. ill. 13). Prof. Burkitt ventures to uphold the authenticity even of these words. The passage, he argues, was penned at a time when Christianity had not yet become a formidable foe to Judaism, and was intended as an answer to Jewish expostulations on the subject of the coming of Messiah. This is how he paraphrases it: “Yes, the Christ was to come and indeed did come. That very estimable person who met with his death some time ago was the Christ. As in the case of so many other personages in our divinely chosen nation, there were some wonders and prodigies told about him. Even now there are some who revere him. They are good harmless folk like their master. But they are quite unimportant and no danger to the State; when you hear of ‘Christ’ it is no future Hannibal or Spartacus, but a good man who is dead and gone” (loc. cit. p. 140 f.). The reader must be left to estimate the value of this interpretation of the historian’s character and language in the light of the other evidence.

The theory of partial interpolation, held by those who reject the obviously Christian phrases but believe that Josephus made some statement about Christ, is unsatisfactory. In so far as it is supported by any solid arguments, it is based partly on the few phrases for which parallels can be found in his writings, partly on the assumption that the other mention of “Jesus who was called Christ” (Ant. XX. 200) implies a fuller statement elsewhere. But the elimination of all that is suggestive of Christian origin leaves practically nothing behind. We may well follow Norden in declining to discuss what he calls the “transcendental” question whether the interpolation may have ousted a genuine statement of the historian about Christ, now lost beyond recovery; merely adding that the argument that the paragraph interrupts the sequence of the narrative is an argument for its spuriousness as a whole.

In connexion with the passage in Ant., the very curious additional matter in the Slavonic version of the Jewish War (edited with a German translation by Berendts, v. supra) must be briefly mentioned.

Of the eight passages the first three relate to the Baptist. (1) A description of “the savage” (Wilder) and his baptism, of his being brought before Archelaus and how Simon the Essene disputed with him; (2) his interpretation of a dream of Herod Philip; (3) his rebuke of Herod (Antipas) for marrying Herodias his brother Philip’s wife after the latter’s death (“for thou dost not raise up seed to thy brother, but gratifyest thy fleshly lusts and committest adultery, since he has left four children”), and his abstinence, even from unleavened bread at the Passover season. Then follows (4) a description of Christ, beginning in the same way as our passage, “At that time there arose a man, if it is right to call him a man,” but with much greater detail: his miracles wrought by a mere word (this is twice repeated); the current belief that he was “the first lawgiver risen from the dead”; his resort to the Mount of Olives; his 150 disciples (Knechten); and how Pilate, whose dying wife he had healed, released him upon the first hearing, but was subsequently induced by a bribe of thirty talents from the Jews (a curious distortion of the Gospel story!) to deliver him to them for crucifixion. No. (5) tells of the persecution and dispersion of the early Christians, who were drawn from the lower classes, shoemakers and labourers; (6) of an additional inscription round the outer wall of the Holy Place (cp. B.J. V. 5. 2 [193 f.]), “Jesus did not reign as King; he was crucified by the Jews because he announced the destruction of the city and the desolation of the Temple”; (7) of the rending of the veil of the Temple and current views upon Christ’s resurrection, “Some report that he rose from the dead, others that he was stolen by his friends. I know not which are right ...”; (8) of the oracle concerning the world-ruler who was to come from Judæa (see § 50 in the translations), “Some understood that it referred to Herod, others to the crucified wonder-worker Jesus, others to Vespasian.”

The actual MSS containing these extraordinary passages are not earlier than the fifteenth century; the translation can be dated back to the thirteenth century at latest. The earlier history of the additions is lost in obscurity; they have left no trace in the extant Greek MSS. Berendts boldly maintains their authenticity, believing them to be fragments of the original Aramaic edition of the Jewish War written for Syrian readers (§ 38), which were eliminated when the later Greek version, addressed to a wider and more critical circle, was produced. This daring theory has met with little support; but the origin of the passages remains a mystery, no final solution of which is possible pending the publication of a complete text from the Russian MSS. The remarkable facts about them are their Jewish appearance, their independence (in part) of the Gospel narrative and the impression which they make of being derived from oral tradition. Parallels to a few of the statements (the bribery of Pilate, the healing “by a word”) occur in the Christian apocryphal Epistle of Tiberius to Pilate (ed. M. R. James in Texts and Studies, vol. V. p. 78, 1899); compare also the apocryphal Acts of Pilate (Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, Leipzig, 1853, p. 292), where Joseph of Arimathæa, addressing the body of Christ, uses the words “if it be right to call thee a man,” recalling the phrase common to the fourth Slavonic passage and the “testimony” in the Antiquities.