JOSEPHUS’ SILENCE WAS
DEAFENING1
If
the defenders of the historicity of the gospel Jesus would stand by Josephus, the
historian of Jewry in the first Christian century, they would have to admit
that he is the most destructive of all the witnesses against Jesus.
It
is not merely that the famous interpolated passage (19 Antiq.
iii, 3) is obviously bogus in every aspect― in its impossible context;
its impossible language of semi-worship; its "He was (the) Christ";
its assertion of the resurrection; and its allusion to "ten thousand other
wonderful things" of which the historian gives no other hint—but that the
brazen shout brings into deadly relief the absence of all mention of the
crucified Jesus and his sect where mention must have been made by the historian
if they had existed. In other words, why didn’t Josephus write about crucifixion
and Jesus’ resurrection?
If, to say nothing of "ten
thousand wonderful things," there was any movement of a Jesus of Nazareth
with twelve disciples in the period of Pilate, how came the historian to ignore
it utterly? If, to
say nothing of the resurrection story, Jesus had been crucified by Pilate, how
came it that there is no hint of such an episode in connection with Josephus'
account of the Samaritan uproar in the next chapter?
And if a belief in Jesus as a slain and returning Messiah had been long on foot
before the fall of the Temple, how comes it that Josephus says nothing of it in
connection with his full account of the expectation of a coming Messiah at that
point? By every test of loyal historiography, we are not merely forced to
reject the false passage as the most obvious interpolation, forgery in all literature: we are bound to
confess that the "Silence of Josephus"
is an insurmountable negation of the gospel story.
For
that silence, no tenable reason can be
given, on the assumption of the general historicity of the gospels and Acts.
Josephus declares himself to be in his fifty-sixth year in the thirteenth year
of Domitian. Then he was born about the year 38. By
his own account (Life, § 2), he began at the age of sixteen to "make trial
of the several sects that were among us" --the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
and the Essenes-- and in particular he spent three
years with a hermit of the desert named Banos, who
wore no clothing save what grew on trees, used none save wild food, and bathed
himself daily and nightly for purity's sake. Thereafter he returned to
In
the ANTIQUITIES, after describing in detail the three sects before named, he
gives an account of a fourth "sect of Jewish philosophy," founded by
Judas the Galilean, whose adherents in general agree with the Pharisees, but
are specially devoted to liberty and declare God to be their only ruler, facing
torture and death rather than call any man lord.
On
what theory, then, are we to explain the total silence
of Josephus as to the existence of the sect of Jesus of Nazareth, if
there be any historical truth in the gospel story? It is of no avail to suggest
that he would ignore it by reason of his Judaic hostility to Jesus. He is hostile to the sect of Judas the
Galilean. There is nothing in all his work to suggest that he would have
omitted to name any noticeable sect with a definite and outstanding doctrine
because he disliked it. He seems much more likely, in that case, to have
described and belittle or denounced it. And here emerges the hypothesis that he
did belittle or denounce the Christian sect in some passage that has been
deleted by Christian copyists, perhaps in the very place now filled by the spurious
paragraph, where an account of Jesuism as a calamity
to Judaism would have been relevant in the context.
This
suggestion is nearly as plausible as that of Chwolson,
who would reckon the existing paragraph a description of a Jewish calamity, is
absurd. And it is the possibility of this hypothesis that alone prevents an
absolute verdict of “non-historicity” against the gospel story in terms of the silence of Josephus. The biographical school may
take refuge, at this point, in the claim that the Christian forger, whose passage was clearly unknown to Origen, perhaps eliminated by his fraud a historic testimony to the historicity of
Jesus, and also an account of the sect of Nazaraeans.
But that is all that can be claimed. The fact remains that in the LIFE, telling
of his youthful search for a satisfactory sect, Josephus says not a word
of the existence of that of the crucified Jesus; that he nowhere breathes a
word concerning the twelve apostles, or any of them, or of Paul; and that there
is no hint in any of the Fathers of even a hostile account of Jesus by him in
any of his works, though Origen
makes much of the allusion to James the Just, also dismissible as an
interpolation, like another to the same effect cited by Origen,
but not now in existence. There is therefore a strong negative presumption to
be set against even the sad hypothesis that the passage forged in Josephus by a Christian scribe ousted
one that gave a hostile testimony.
Over a generation ago, Mr. George Solomon of Kingston, Jamaica, noting the
general incompatibility of Josephus with the gospel story and the unhistorical
aspect of the latter, constructed an interesting theory, 3 of which I have seen
no discussion, but which merits notice here. It may be summarized thus:
1. Banos is probably the historical original
of the gospel figure of John the Baptist.
2. Josephus names and describes two Jesus’es, who are blended in the figure of the gospel
Jesus: (a) the Jesus (WARS, VI, v, 3) who predicts "woe to
Jerusalem"; is flogged till his bones show, but never utters a cry; makes
no reply when challenged; returns neither thanks for kindness nor railing for
railing; and is finally killed by a stone projectile in the siege; and (b)
Jesus the Galilean (LIFE §, 12: 27), son of Sapphias,
who opposes Josephus, is associated with Simon and John, and has a following of
"sailors and poor people," one of whom betrays him (9 22), whereupon
he is captured by a ploy, his immediate followers forsaking him and flying.
Before this point, Josephus has taken seventy of the Galileans with him (5 14)
as hostages, and, making them his friends and companions on his journey, sets
them "to judge causes." This is the hint for Luke's story of the seventy
disciples.
3. The "historical Jesus" of
the siege, who is "meek" and venerated as a prophet and martyr, being
combined with the "Mosaic Jesus" of Galilee, a disciple of Judas of
Galilee, who resisted the Roman rule and helped to precipitate the war, the
memory of the "sect" of Judas the Gaulanite
or Galilean, who began the anti-Roman trouble. Judas the Gaulanite
or Galilean is also transmuted into a myth of a sect of Jesus of Galilee, who
has fishermen for disciples, is followed by poor Galileans, is betrayed by one
companion and deserted by the rest, and is represented finally as dying under
Pontius Pilate, though at that time there had been no Jesuic
movement.
4. The Christian movement, thus
mythically grounded, grows up after the fall of the
The fact that he confuses Jesus the robber captain who was betrayed, and whose
companions deserted him, with Jesus the "Mosaic" magistrate of Tiberias, who was followed by sailors and poor people, and
was "an innovator beyond everybody else," does not exclude the
argument that traits of one or the other, or of the Jesus of the siege, may
have entered into the gospel mosaic.
Given the clear and undeniable forgery of this Josephus passage, no one,
including any Christian, can say that the Christian Church cannot and did not
forge historic documents. The fact that Christians do not generally use this
passage is testimony to the fact that the guilt of the Church has been
recognized. Given all this, what reason do we have for supposing that the
second alleged mention of Jesus by Josephus is any more reliable? And if this
first passage has been "retired", how long will it take before we see
the inevitable demise of the second?
1
The Silence of Josephus, by
J.M. Robertson