APPENDIX OF ADDITIONAL NOTES
I. Note on § ([24]). Quirinius
P. Sulpicius Quirinius, a native of Lanuvium, was consul in 12 B.C.; some years later was sent on an expedition against the Homonadenses, a mountain tribe in Cilicia, and was awarded a triumph for his successes; accompanied Gaius Cæsar, grandson of Augustus, to the East in A.D. 2 as his tutor; and in A.D. 6 was appointed Governor of Syria as legatus of the Emperor, and in that capacity took over Judæa on the deposition of Archelaus, and made the valuation of the newly-annexed district here described by Josephus. Towards the end of his life he caused some scandal at Rome by the divorce of his wife Lepida, whom he accused of attempting to poison him. He remained in favour with Tiberius, who, on his death about A.D. 21, secured him a public funeral. A mutilated inscription found near Tivoli (Tibur) seems to prove that he was twice governor of Syria. (Tacitus Ann. III. 48 and 22; Suet. Tib. 49 ; art. in Encycl. Bibl.).
This is not the place to discuss the formidable difficulties arising from St. Luke’s reference (ii. 1 ff.) to “the decree from Cæsar Augustus” and “the first enrolment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” These are set out in full in Schürer’s Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ, i. 2, pp. 105-143; on the other side should be read Sir W. M. Ramsay’s Was Christ born at Bethlehem? (1898). It has been held that St. Luke is guilty of an anachronism in making the birth of Christ contemporary with the well-known enrolment under Quirinius (Acts v. 37), which took place ten years after the death of Herod, and that other features in his account, which lacks external support, render the whole narrative incredible. Those who argue that the Evangelist is guilty of such gross error must at least admit that he had not read the last books of the Antiquities of Josephus (see [Note IV] below). But it is difficult to believe that a historian generally so careful has erred in this way. Since Schürer’s indictment was written, Ramsay has adduced important new evidence from the papyri, proving that in Egypt from the time of Augustus a periodic census or “enrolment by household” took place every fourteen years; he has further given reason for thinking that this system applied to other provinces and dependencies of the Roman Empire, and that Judæa under Herod was not exempt, although a concession was made to local prejudice in the manner of the enrolment; he concludes that the “first” enrolment under Quirinius and the birth of Christ fell in the year 6 B.C. He has not quite removed all difficulties. In particular, it seems impossible to find room within the lifetime of Herod for the first governorship of Quirinius, unless the ἡγεμονία mentioned by St. Luke refers to his appointment as a special lieutenant of Augustus to conduct the war against the Homonadenses, while Quintilius Varus administered the ordinary affairs of Syria. But why in that case does St. Luke connect the census with the military commander Quirinius, rather than with Varus?
II. Note on § ([26]). The alleged witness to Jesus Christ
Recent literature:—
(a) For the authenticity of the whole section.
F. C. Burkitt; in Theologisch Tijdschrift, Leiden, 1913, pp. 135 ff.
A. Harnack in Internat. Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik, 1913, pp. 1037 ff. (I have, unfortunately, been unable to see this, and only know it through Norden’s rejoinder, which seems conclusive.)
(b) For partial interpolation.
Th. Reinach in Revue des Études Juives, tom. xxxv, 1897, pp. 1 ff.
P. Corrsen in Zeitschrift für die N.T. Wissenschaft, 1914, pp. 114 ff., Die Zeugnisse des Tacitus u. Pseudo-Josephus über Christus (thinks the interpolation has probably replaced a genuine statement of Josephus about Christ).
(c) Against the authenticity of the whole section.
E. Norden in Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, vol. xxxi, 1913, pp. 637 ff., Josephus u. Tacitus über Jesus Christus und eine messianische Prophetie.
E. Schürer, Hist. of Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ, 1898, I. 2, pp. 143 ff. (where the older literature is quoted).
(d) For the passages in the Slavonic version of the B.J.
A. Berendts in Texte und Untersuchungen, N. F., Bd. XIV, 1906.
In this much debated passage Josephus appears to speak of Jesus Christ as one of more than mortal nature, as a wonder-worker and a teacher of men who receive “the truth” with pleasure, and as gaining many adherents among Jews and Greeks. Then comes the explicit statement, “This was the Christ.” The writer proceeds to mention His crucifixion by Pilate “on the indictment of our principal men,” His resurrection and appearance to His followers on the third day, and the survival at the time of writing of “the tribe” of Christians who took their name from Him.
The passage largely accounts for the high esteem in which Josephus was held by Patristic writers. Since the revival of learning the question of its authenticity has been the subject of keen controversy. Until recently few scholars of weight have ventured to maintain that the paragraph as it stands can have been penned by the Jewish historian; the point on which opinions have diverged has been whether the whole is an interpolation or whether a genuine brief statement of Josephus about Christ has been expanded and emended by a Christian hand. In recent years the question has been reopened in two ways, by the conversion of two authorities of the first rank to the rejected view and by the discovery of new materials. Professor Burkitt in this country and (following him with a little hesitation) Harnack in Germany have pronounced in favour of the genuineness of the passage. The existence has also been brought to light of other passages in the Slavonic version of the Jewish War relating to John the Baptist, Christ and the early Christians. The Slavonic matter may be treated independently; it has no attestation in the Greek MSS, and, whatever its origin, lacks the authority with which the present passage comes before us. Harnack has been answered in a masterly article by one of his own countrymen (Norden), and, notwithstanding the weight attaching to the names of its recent supporters, the arguments against the authenticity of the passage (at least in its present form) appear overwhelming. The really decisive factors in the problem must be sought rather in the relevance of the passage to its context and in the style than in any subjective considerations as to what Josephus could or could not have written.
External evidence
The passage, it is true, stands in all our MSS, but this tells us little, since the oldest of them (Niese’s P) is not earlier than the ninth or tenth century. Eusebius quotes it (H.E. i. 11, cf. Dem. Ev. iii. 3. 105 f.), thus attesting its existence in the fourth century. On the other hand, it is practically certain that Origen in the preceding century did not find it in his text. He knows the allusions to John the Baptist in the same book of the Antiquities (§ [29]) and to James the Lord’s brother in the twentieth book (§ [37]), but of any mention of Christ he has no word. Nor are we confined to this argumentum e silentio; his language makes it impossible to suppose that he found the statement “This was the Christ.” “The wonder is,” he writes, “that, though he (Josephus) did not admit our Jesus to be Christ, he none the less gave his witness to so much righteousness in James” (Comm. in Matt. x. 17); and again (writing on John the Baptist) “although he (Josephus) disbelieved in Jesus as Christ” (c. Cels. i. 47). The passage about James as cited by Origen differs, indeed, from the normal text; according to Origen, Josephus regarded the destruction of the Temple as a punishment for the murder. Prof. Burkitt thinks that Origen may have “mixed up in his commonplace book the account of Ananus’ murder of James and the remarks of Josephus on Ananus’ own murder” (§ [45]); but it is difficult to believe, as the Professor appears to suggest, that his familiarity with the Antiquities was so slight that he could have missed the statement in XVIII. 63 f. and written as he did if it stood in his text. The real importance of Origen’s evidence is that it seems to supply the date when our passage was interpolated by a Christian reader, viz. towards the end of the third century, between the age of Origen and that of Eusebius.
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.
III. Note on § ([29]). The First Husband of Herodias
Josephus calls the injured husband simply Herod. The first two Gospels give him the name Philip (“Herodias his brother Philip’s wife,” Matt. xiv. 3, Mark vi. 17). The name stands in all the MSS in Mark; in Matthew it is omitted by the “Western text” (cod. D and Latin versions); in Luke (iii. 19) it is absent from all the best MSS and in those which insert it is undoubtedly an interpolation from the other Gospels. It is clear from Josephus that the first husband of Herodias was not Philip the Tetrarch, but his half-brother who paid the penalty for his mother’s complicity in a plot by having his name removed from Herod’s will, and lived as a private individual, apparently in Jerusalem (cf. B.J. I. 30. 7 [600]). Either then Herod the Great had two sons named Philip (1) by Mariamne II (daughter of Simon the High Priest), the husband of Herodias, and (2) by Cleopatra, Philip the Tetrarch, who married Salome the daughter of Herodias; or, more probably, the name Philip in the first two Gospels is a primitive error, due to confusion between the husband and the son-in-law of Herodias. That two sons should have borne the name Philip is improbable; no argument can be drawn from the appropriation of the dynastic or family name Herod by more than one member of the family. The omission of the name Philip by St. Luke, who shows special acquaintance with the Herodian court, is very significant. The confusion with Philip the Tetrarch appears elsewhere, notably in the eccentric account of the Baptist’s denunciation of the second marriage of Herodias in the Slavonic version of the Jewish War ([Note II] above).
IV. Note on § ([35]). Theudas and Judas
This passage has been often quoted as convincing proof that St. Luke had read the Antiquities of Josephus, or at least the twentieth book. On this view the date of the Acts must be brought down to the close of the first century. The Evangelist is at the same time accused of the grossest carelessness.
Gamaliel in his speech in the Sanhedrin adduces two instances of insurrectionary movements which came to nought in the chronological order: (1) Theudas, (2) Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 36 f.).
The date when Gamaliel is represented as speaking must have been some time in the early “thirties.” The revolt of Theudas, according to Josephus, occurred in the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus (about 44-46 A.D.), at least ten years later. The revolt of Judas in “the days of the enrolment” was in 6 A.D. Thus the events appear to have been transposed in the speech and one of them to have been still in the womb of the future!
The error, if it is one, is commonly explained as due to a cursory reading and inaccurate recollection on the part of the Evangelist of the passage in the Antiquities which alludes to the fate first of Theudas and then of the sons of Judas under the procuratorship of Tiberius Alexander (about 46-48 A.D.), the latter notice leading to a brief mention of their father. This view has been supported by Burkitt (Gospel History and its transmission, pp. 106 ff.), Krenkel (Josephus and Lucas), Schmiedel (art. in Encycl. Bibl.) and many German commentators. It has been rejected, among others, by Schürer, Blass, Harnack (Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, p. 115), Stanton (Gospels as Historical Documents, pt. II, p. 272), and most recently by Prof. C. C. Torrey (Composition and date of Acts, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1916). Cf. also an art. on “St. Luke and Josephus,” by the Rev. J. W. Hunkin, in the Church Quarterly Review for April 1919, pp. 89-108.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there has been error on the part of some one responsible for putting the speech into the mouth of Gamaliel. The attempts which have been made to remove the apparent anachronism are unconvincing. Either an earlier unknown Theudas is postulated (but one would expect the person named by Gamaliel along with the notorious Judas to have been of sufficient importance to be mentioned by Josephus); or the mistake as to the date of Theudas is shifted to Josephus; or the name Theudas is regarded as a Christian interpolation in the Antiquities (Blass).
But that the passage in Acts is to be explained by a casual perusal of Josephus by St. Luke is highly improbable for the following reasons:—
(1) St. Luke gives the number of the followers of Theudas as “about four hundred”; Josephus writes “most of the common people.” Clearly St. Luke had access to some source other than Josephus.
(2) The carelessness attributed to St. Luke in the supposed use of Josephus is not what we should expect from the professions of the writer of the prologue to the third Gospel and from the handling of his sources in the earlier work.
(3) If there has been error, it is older than St. Luke and goes back to his authority. Torrey in the above-mentioned work seems to have proved conclusively that Acts i-xv is based on an Aramaic source, to which St. Luke was “singularly faithful.” “He disliked to alter, even slightly, the document in his hands, even where he believed its statements to be mistaken, and where he found himself obliged to contradict them” (p. 40). On the alleged use of Josephus in Acts v., after referring to the horror which must have been aroused in Judæa by the crucifixion of the sons of the insurgent Judas, he adds: “Any history dealing with this period would have been pretty certain to mention Theudas and Judas at this point, and in this order, although the revolt under Judas really happened much earlier. From some history of the kind, in which the facts were not clearly stated, the author of Luke’s Aramaic source obtained his wrong impression of the order of events” (p. 71).
V. Note on § ([45]). The Blood of Zacharias
This incident is of interest to the N.T. student because of the suggestion, made long ago and recently revived by Wellhausen, to identify the Zacharias of Josephus with the “Zachariah son of Barachiah” of Matt. xxiii. 35. “Son of Barachiah” is a well-known crux in that passage, but, pace Wellhausen, there is little or no doubt that our Lord there referred to the murder of Zechariah son of Jehoiada described in 2 Chron. xxiv. 19 ff.
The theory of Wellhausen and others evades the difficulty of an apparent confusion in Matthew between the pre-exilic prophet and the prophet of the Restoration, but introduces far greater difficulties. The text of Josephus just fails to supply the desired evidence. The name of the father of the Zacharias of Josephus resembles, but, it will be observed, only resembles, the Βαραχίας of the N.T. There is a variety of readings, but Βαρίσκαιος (LMmg) has the appearance of being what Josephus wrote or at least the nearest approximation in the MSS to the original name. Βάρεις of most MSS is a corruption of this. The reading “Baruch” (the nearest approach to “Barachias”) is doubtless a correction; it occurs only in cod. C which in other instances replaces an unfamiliar by a Biblical name (Niese, vol. VI, p. xxxix), and as an alternative to “Bariscæus” in cod. M.
Again, it may be urged in support of this theory that the two murders mentioned in Matthew are cited as the first and last of a series, and that as that of Abel was the first recorded in Biblical history, so that of Zachariah ben Bariscæus was the last outstanding murder of a Jew by his own countrymen before the Fall of Jerusalem, which is the culminating event in the mind of the Speaker in Matt. xxiii. The contemporaneous murder of Ananus is regarded by Josephus as the beginning of the end.
The obvious difficulty of this identification is that in the mouth of our Lord the words must be prophetical, whereas the past tense is used in both reports of the words (“whom ye slew,” Matt., “who perished,” Luke xi. 51).
The passage in Matthew and the parallel passage in Luke are both derived from an older source, an early collection of the Sayings of Jesus (commonly called “Q”); and behind that again apparently lies a still older source, an apocryphal Wisdom book from which Christ is quoting (“Therefore also said the Wisdom of God,” Luke xi. 49). Luke does not insert the words “son of Barachiah,” and it is therefore doubtful whether they stood in Q; Harnack (Sayings of Jesus, p. 104) concludes that they did not. But that they belong to the original text of the first Gospel and are not a later interpolation there seems no reason to doubt. If the error originated with the Evangelist himself, we may compare the rather similar confusion (“Jeremiah” for “Zechariah”) in Matt. xxvii. 9; if, as seems more probable, he has taken it over from Jewish tradition, it is natural to find such influence in this particular Gospel.
The three persons bearing the name of Zacharias who come primarily[[431]] into the question are:—
(1) Z. ben Jehoiada, murdered in the first Temple (2 Chron. xxiv.).
(2) Z. ben Berechiah ben Iddo, the prophet of the Restoration (Zech. i. 1).
(3) Z. ben Bariscæus, murdered in Herod’s Temple (Josephus).
There is every reason for identifying the Zacharias referred to by our Lord with the first of these, whether we look at the original text of Chronicles or at the Jewish Haggadah which grew up round it.
(i) With the words of Christ, or of the personified Wisdom in the work from which He quotes, “I send unto you prophets” (Luke “I will send unto them prophets”) compare 2 Chron. xxiv. 19, “Yet he sent prophets to them to bring them again unto the Lord.”
(ii) With St. Luke’s twice repeated “may (shall) be required of this generation” (xi. 50 f.) cp. the dying words of Zechariah, “The Lord look upon it and require it,” as also Abel’s blood “crying from the ground” (Gen. iv. 10).
(iii) Turning to Jewish tradition, we find that legend has been active in connexion with the murder in the Temple of a pre-exilic Zachariah who can be no other than the son of Jehoiada. And it is noteworthy that the two points dwelt on are just those which appear in the N.T. passage, viz. (a) the exact spot in the Temple where the murder occurred (cp. the precise localisation “between the sanctuary and the altar”) and (b) the crying out of the blood from the ground for vengeance, like that of Abel, and the terrible expiation required to still it. “R. Johanan said,” we read,[[432]] “‘Eighty thousand of the flower of the priesthood were slain on account of the blood of Zachariah.’ R. Judan asked R. Aha ‘Where did they kill Zachariah? In the Court of the Women or in the Court of Israel?’ He answered, ‘Neither in the Court of the Women nor in the Court of Israel, but in the Court of the Priests.’” The legend goes on to tell how the murder was rendered more heinous by being committed on a sabbath and that the Day of Atonement, and how Nebuzaradan when he entered the Temple saw the prophet’s blood welling up from the floor, and of the holocaust of priests which hardly availed to quench the stream.
(iv) Furthermore, there is evidence to show that the Rabbis, like the author of the first Gospel, confused or, disregarding chronology, identified the pre-exilic victim with Zechariah the prophet of the Restoration. The Targum on Lam. ii. 20 (“Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”) runs, “Is it also fit that they should slay a priest and prophet in the Temple of the Lord, as ye slew Zacharias the son of Iddo ... in the house of the Sanctuary, on the day of Expiation?” (Lightfoot l. c.). The Midrash (tr. Wünsche) interprets the same passage of Lam. of Zechariah son of Jehoiada.
(v) What is the intended series or line of which Zechariah is the last representative? Abel is naturally the first, but, chronologically, Z. ben Jehoiada was not the last prophet whose murder is recorded in the O.T.; Uriah (Jer. xxvi. 20 ff.) was later. The usual explanation that his murder stands last in the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible with Chronicles at the end is unsatisfactory; the books of the O.T. still circulated separately in the first century of our era. Moore’s answer is “It is not because the death of Z. was the last crime of the kind in Jewish history that it is named in the Gospel, but because it was in popular legend the typical example of the sacrilegious murder of a righteous man, a prophet of God, and of the appalling expiation God exacted for it.” But the identification of the victim with the prophet of the Restoration suggests another answer. Zechariah ben Berechiah did in fact stand chronologically at the end of the prophets; as Josephus writes (§ [63]), the succession failed after Artaxerxes (i. e. Ahasuerus). The context in Matthew relates to the ancient prophets; the later generation that built the prophets’ tombs is set over against that of the forefathers who murdered them. That the final instance of such murder should be drawn from recent (to say nothing of future) history would be inappropriate. The son of Bariscæus was no prophet or priest and “as a layman would have no business in the part of the court between the temple and the altar” (Moore).
For the opposite view see Wellhausen Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, ed. 2 (1911), pp. 118 ff. His main points are that Chronicles was a learned, not a popular, book and not likely to have been known to or quoted by Christ (but Christ is apparently quoting at second hand from one of those apocryphal books which were essentially popular), and that the rabbinical legend is in its origin unconnected with the story in Chronicles and really an echo (Nachklang) of the episode in Josephus, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans having here, as elsewhere, been confused with the earlier destruction by the Babylonians.
VI. Note on § ([50]). Portents and Oracles
With this passage should be compared the following allusions in Roman writers:—
Tacitus Hist. V. 13. “Portents had occurred; but that nation, at once a prey to superstition and an enemy of religious rites, regards it wrong to avert such omens by sacrifices or votive offerings. There were visions of armies joining battle in the heavens with armour glowing red,[[433]] and the Temple in an instant was all lit up with fire from the clouds. The doors of the sanctuary opened of a sudden and there was heard a voice of superhuman strength saying that the gods were departing, and at the same moment a mighty commotion of departing beings. Yet few saw a fearful meaning in these things. Many were firmly persuaded that their ancient priestly lore contained a prediction that at that very time the East was to wax strong and persons proceeding from Judæa were to become masters of the world. This enigmatic utterance had foretold of Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, with the usual ambition of humanity, read it as predicting this high destiny for themselves, and even disaster failed to bring home to them its true meaning.”
Suet. Vesp. 4. “An ancient and rooted belief had spread throughout the whole of the East that persons proceeding from Judæa were destined at that time to become masters of the world. The prophecy, as after events proved, had reference to the Roman Emperor, but the Jews appropriated it to themselves and plunged into revolt.”
For interesting discussions on Josephus and Tacitus and the (Messianic) prophecy the reader is referred to the articles by Norden and Corrsen mentioned at the head of [Note II].
VII. Note on § ([63]). The Twenty-two Books of Scripture
This passage is important in connexion with the history of the O.T. canon. The language of Josephus implies that the canon had long since been closed, the test of canonicity being antiquity. Nothing written later than Artaxerxes (i. e. Ahasuerus) has full credentials. The mention of Artaxerxes must refer to the book of Esther, which Josephus thus regards as the latest addition to the collection. The statement differs in some respects from what is believed to be the oldest Palestinian tradition, but there is no reason to doubt that the unnamed 22 books are other than those comprised in the modern Hebrew Bible.
(1) The number 22 as the total of the books of Scripture is here met with for the first time, but reappears as the dominant reckoning in early Eastern Church writers (Melito, Origen, etc.), who connect it with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As these writers were in touch with Palestinian tradition and Melito expressly states that he derived his information from the East (ap. Eus. H.E. IV. 26), it seems that this reckoning had the support of at least one section of the synagogue. The normal tradition, however, made the total 24, a number which first appears in a work almost contemporary with the Contra Apionem, 2 Esdras (or the Apocalypse of Ezra) xiv. 45 (Oriental text). The smaller number was reached by treating Ruth and Lamentations as supplements respectively to Judges and Jeremiah. The arrangement in 24 books possibly arose in Babylonia.[[434]]
It is uncertain which of these two reckonings is the older, but in favour of the priority of the number 24 it may be said that (i) the equation with the number of Hebrew letters is artificial and therefore likely to be late, although as Josephus does not allude to this it may be an after refinement; (ii) it is easier to understand the subsequent attachment of Ruth and Lamentations to prophetical books with which their contents or supposed authorship connected them than how, having once gained admission among the Prophets, they could afterwards be relegated to the lower category of “Writings,” in which they now stand.
A third and later arrangement names 27 books, a number arrived at by dividing the double books, while the parallelism with the Hebrew alphabet is retained by reckoning separately the “final” forms of those letters which possessed them. Jerome in his preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings shows acquaintance with all three systems.
(2) Josephus presents a tripartite arrangement (5 + 13 + 4 books), but not the normal one (5 + 8 + 11: Law, Prophets, Writings). His third group is reduced to 4 by the transference to the “Prophets” of a number of books commonly included in the “Writings.” The normal arrangement, which reflects the stages in the formation of the canon and places, e. g., Daniel in the third group because of the late date at which it gained admission, is clearly the more ancient. Josephus as a Greek historian writing for Greek readers neglects this and follows the example of the translators of the Greek Bible in grouping all the historical and prophetical books together. A close parallel to his third class (“hymns to God and practical precepts for men”) may be found in the description of the sacred books of the Therapeutæ in Egypt in the De Vita Contemplativa ascribed to Philo, “Laws and oracles delivered by prophets and hymns and the other (works) by which knowledge and piety are promoted and perfected” (ed. Conybeare p. 61).
(3) The constituent books doubtless here, as with the Christian writers who name 22 as the total and enumerate the books (cp. Origen in Eus. H.E. VI. 25), coincide with the normal Hebrew canon. Dr. Ryle (Canon of O.T. p. 165 f.) concludes that the 13 books of the Prophets are probably (1) Joshua, (2) Judges + Ruth, (3) Sam., (4) Kings, (5) Chron., (6) Ezra + Nehemiah, (7) Esther, (8) Job, (9) Isaiah, (10) Jeremiah + Lamentations (11) Ezekiel, (12) Minor Prophets, (13) Daniel; while the group of four will comprise (1) Psalms with (2) Song of Songs, constituting the “hymns,” and (3) Proverbs with (4) Ecclesiastes, the “practical precepts.” The view of Grätz that Josephus omitted Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, as not having yet been admitted to the canon, has not met with acceptance.
(4) The canon here laid down has not governed the historian’s practice. He does not scruple to draw upon apocryphal books like 1 Maccabees, nor does he hint that the authorities used in the latter part of the Antiquities, for the period subsequent to “Artaxerxes,” are less trustworthy than the rest; he implies, on the contrary, that the whole work is in accordance with “the holy books” (cp. Ant. I. 17; XX. 261).
The reader may consult in particular the works on the Canon of the O.T. by Ryle (pp. 160-66) and Buhl and the article “Bible Canon” in the Jewish Encylopædia.