For fifty years the pontificate had been in the same family, with scarcely an interruption, and Ananus, or Hanan, was the son of Annas, who had condemned Christ. They were Sadducees, and as such were persecuting. St. Paul, by appealing to his Pharisee principles, enlisted the members of that faction in his favour when brought before Ananias.[23]
The apostles based their teaching on the Resurrection, the very doctrine most repugnant to the Sadducees; and their accounts of visions of angels repeated among the people must have irritated the dominant faction who denied the existence of these spirits. It can hardly be matter of surprise that the murder of James should have taken place when Ananus was supreme in Jerusalem. If that were the case, Josephus no doubt mentioned James, and perhaps added the words, “The brother of him who is called Christ;” or these words may have been inserted by a transcriber in place of “of Sechania,” or Bar-Joseph.
This is all that Josephus says, or is thought to have said, about Jesus and the early Christians.
At the same time as Josephus, there lived another Jewish historian, Justus of Tiberias, whom Josephus mentions, and blames for not having published his History of the Wars of the Jews during the life of Vespasian and Titus. St. Jerome includes Justus in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, and Stephen of Byzantium mentions him.
His book, or books, have unfortunately been lost, but [pg 011] Photius had read his History, and was surprised to find that he, also, made no mention of Christ. “This Jewish historian,” says he, “does not make the smallest mention of the appearance of Christ, and says nothing whatever of his deeds and miracles.”[24]
II. The Cause Of The Silence Of Josephus.
It is necessary to inquire, Why this silence of Philo, Josephus and Justus? at first so inexplicable.
It can only be answered by laying before the reader a picture of the Christian Church in the first century. A critical examination of the writings of the first age of the Church reveals unexpected disclosures.