Here we have a historian of the right kind, living so near the time that he must have seen and conversed with those who had seen and known Christ and his disciples. How are we to regard his silence? Had Christ been the character which many suppose he was, a teacher endowed beyond all other men, with a divine genius to declare the doctrines which are to govern man in his relations towards the Creator and towards each other, we can well understand why, in A.D. 93, when Josephus wrote the history of the Jews, he failed to notice him. His ministry extended through a period of only one year, at a time when the Jewish people were chafing under the yoke of the Romans, and were preparing for a final struggle with the conquerors. At such a time, the presence of such a person as Christ, who taught men to forgive their enemies, to love their neighbors as themselves, and to cultivate feelings which dispose mankind to peace and charity, would most likely pass unnoticed. If Christ was more than a great teacher—if he were the second person in the Godhead, who condescended to visit the earth to instruct mankind, and while here performed the wonderful works spoken of in the Gospels, then there is no way in which we can account for the silence of the Jewish historian. We are forced to admit that the Son of God, who took up his abode among men to convince and instruct them, failed to make his presence known and felt so as to attract the notice of him who undertook to give a minute account of what happened at the time, and in the country where he preached and taught.
The attempt in the fourth century to force into history, between the regular course of events, a passage intended to break the force of total unconsciousness on the part of Josephus that there was such a person as Christ, to the eye of the critic is infinitely more damaging than complete silence. A quarrel, which led to a sedition, sprang up in Jerusalem, about the use made by Pilate of sacred money, to bring water into the city. "About the same time, also, another sad calamity happened, which put the Jews into disorder." A Roman woman called Paulina, through the connivance of some of the gods of Isis, was seduced by a person of the name of Mundus. (Antiq., book xviii. chap. 3.) Between these two events, is wedged, or forced in, a paragraph which contains all the great historian has to say of Christ, and the events of his life. Twenty-nine lines are taken to tell about the troubles growing out of the misapplication of the sacred money; one hundred and thirty-one about Paulina and her misfortunes, and sixteen are all that the historian requires to inform us of all he knows about Christ. Much better had he said nothing.
If Josephus makes no mention of Christ and his miracles, where must we look? It is in vain to search among the writers of Greece and Rome. Out of the nine reasons given by Dr. Lardner for believing the passage from Josephus in relation to Christ spurious, the first is sufficient: it was never quoted, or referred to, by any writer previous to Eusebius, who wrote in the fourth century.
CHAPTER XXV.
Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews.
THIS epistle has been the source of more controversy than any other book of the New Testament. It has been the cause of much useless labor and unprofitable research. In the first place, was Paul the author? Tertullian ascribes it to Barnabas; Grotius to St. Luke, and Luther the reformer thought it was written by Apollos, mentioned in the Acts; but the testimony of ecclesiastical antiquity is all in favor of Paul as the author. Allusions are made to it in the epistles of Ignatius about A. D. 107. It is also referred to by Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna in the year A. D. 108.
Internal evidence, supplied by the epistle itself, is conclusive that Paul was the writer. No one better than he understood the veneration in which the Levitical law was held by the Jewish people, and the tenacity with which they adhered to it. As he believed that this law had passed away, and that the Lord had made a new covenant with the Jewish nation, it was natural for him to labor to open the eyes of his countrymen, and bring them under the light of the new dispensation. It was for this reason, when he entered into a place for the first time, that he always began to teach in the synagogue. If Paul wrote to the Hebrews at all, it would be just such an epistle as the one ascribed to him, except certain portions, which were clearly written after the Pauline period of Christianity had passed away.
Again, it has been a question as to the language in which this epistle was first written. At the time of Paul, the original Hebrew was understood by few, and had ceased to be the language of the Jews. The original Hebrew was broken in upon by several dialects—such as the East Aramæan, or Chaldee, and the West Aramæan, or Syriac. The universal language of the day was Greek, and no doubt Paul adopted it in writing to the Hebrews, who were dispersed over Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa.
As the initiatory formula usual in the epistles of Paul is wanting in this, it has been questioned whether it was really an epistle, or only a discourse intended for the general reader. The want of the usual formula can be easily accounted for, when the mind becomes convinced that the first chapter is not the production of Paul. That it was written as it now stands by the forgers of the second century admits of no doubt. The design of the writer is exposed in the very first and second verses of the first chapter. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds."