The passage is still found in some Josephus manuscripts; but, as it is wanting in others, it is, and must be, regarded as a Christian interpolation older than Origen.
Will Mr. Smith kindly tell us which are the MSS. in which are found any passage or passages referring the fall of Jerusalem to the death of James, and so far contradicting Josephus’s interpretation of Ananus’s death in the History of the Jewish War, iv, 5, 2. Niese, the latest editor, knows of none, nor did any previous editor know of any.
Mr. Smith then proceeds thus:—
Now, since this phrase is certainly interpolated in the one place, the only reasonable conclusion is that it is interpolated in the other.
But “this phrase” never stood in Josephus at all, even as an interpolation, and on examination it turns out that Professor Smith’s prejudice against the passage in which Josephus mentions James, is merely based on the muddle committed by Origen. Such are the arguments by which he seeks to prove that Josephus’s text was interpolated by a Christian, as if a Christian interpolator, supposing there had been one (and he has left no trace of himself), would not, as the protest of Origen sufficiently indicates, have represented the fall of Jerusalem as a divine punishment, not for the slaying of James, but for the slaying of Jesus. Having demolished the evidence of Josephus in such a manner, Mr. Smith heads ten of his pages with the words, “The Silence of Josephus,” as if he had settled all doubts for ever by mere force of his erroneous ipse dixit.
The testimony of Tacitus The next section of Professor Smith’s work (Ecce Deus) is headed with the same effrontery of calm assertion: “The Silence of Tacitus.” This historian relates (Annals, xv, 44) that Nero accused the Christians of having burned down Rome. Nero
subjected to most exquisite tortures those whom, hated for their crimes, the populace called Chrestians. The author of this name, Christus, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate; and, though repressed for the moment, the pernicious superstition was breaking forth again, not only throughout Judæa, the fountain-head of this mischief, but also throughout the capital, where all things from anywhere that are horrible or disgraceful pour in together and are made a religion of.
In the sequel Tacitus describes how an immense multitude, less for the crime of incendiarism than in punishment of their hatred of humanity, were convicted; how some were clothed in skins of wild beasts and thrown to dogs, while others were crucified or burned alive. Nero’s savagery was such that it awoke the pity even of a Roman crowd for his victims.
Such a passage as the above, written by Tacitus soon after A.D. 100, is somewhat disconcerting to our authors. Professor Smith, proceeding on his usual innocent assumption that the whole of the ancient literature, Christian and profane, of this epoch lies before him, instead of a scanty débris of it, votes it to be a forgery. Why? Because Melito, Bishop of Sardis about 170 A.D., is the first writer who alludes to it in a fragment of an apology addressed to a Roman Emperor. As if there were not five hundred striking episodes narrated by Tacitus, yet never mentioned by any subsequent writer at all. Would Mr. Smith on that account dispute their authenticity? It is only because this episode concerns Christianity and gets in the way of his theories, that he finds it necessary to cut it out of the text. You can prove anything if you cook your evidence, and the wanton mutilation of texts which no critical historian has ever called in question is a flagrant form of such cookery. In the hands of these writers facts are made to fit theory, not theory to fit facts.