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!