CHAPTER XIII
Testimonium Flavianum Fraud
The fall of Jerusalem was in a way due to the expectation of a Messiah, as the same Josephus tells us: “Now, if any one consider these things, he will find that God takes care of mankind, and by all means possible foreshows to our race what is for their preservation, but that men perish by those miseries which they madly and voluntarily bring upon themselves; for the Jews, by demolishing the tower of Antonia, had made their Temple four-square, while at the same time they had it written in their sacred oracles that 'then should their city be taken, as well as their holy house, when once their Temple should become four- square.’ But now, what did most elevate them in undertaking this war was an ambiguous oracle, that was also found in their sacred writings, how ' about that time one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.' The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea. However, it is not possible for men to avoid fate, although they see it beforehand. But these men interpreted some of these signals according to their own pleasure, and some of them they utterly despised, until their madness was demonstrated, both by the taking of their city and their own destruction.'' (Book of the Wars, book vi. chap. 5. § 4)
It was, then clearly the expectation, not the advent of a Messiah, which drove the Jewish people to such desperate course. It was the new religion founded by Judas of Galilee which deluded the younger generation into the expectation of a divine deliverance that ended in the destruction of their city and the massacre of their people. This was, unfortunately the clearest proof which could be desired that no Messiah had appeared, and that the prediction, on the ground of which the expectation of his coming was based, had not been fulfilled. Josephus would never, in connection with these events, have said that the only sect that arose in his day taught the expectation of a Messiah, if another existed that affirmed in the face of the world he had come. The allegation of the existence of such a sect is demonstrably false, as the historian would never have denied the fact with communities all round who could have contradicted him to his face.
If Paul, as is alleged, wrote his series of epistles in the days of Claudius Caesar (41-54CE) and Nero (54-68CE,) his writings must have been extant during the early life and manhood of Josephus, and yet this historian denies the existence, root and branch, of the Christian religion and its founder, and repeats that denial in the fifty-sixth year of his life as follows: — "And now it will not be perhaps an invidious thing, if I treat briefly of my own family, and of the actions of my own life, while there are still living such as can either prove what I say to be false, or can attest that it is true; with which account I shall put an end to these Antiquities, which are contained in twenty books, and sixty thousand verses. And if God permit me, I will briefly run over this war again, with what befell us therein to this very day, which is the thirteenth year of the reign of Caesar Domitian, and the fifty-sixth year of my own life." (Antiquities, book xx. chap. 1 1 § 2)
Here, indeed, we have Josephus, half a century after the recall of Pontius Pilate, challenging his contemporaries to deny anything he had written up to that period, and among the statements challenged are those which affirm that no other sect had arisen in his day except that of Judas of Galilee, no other ascetic corresponding to John the Baptizer except Banus, and no other Jesus of a public character except the meek one of Jerusalem and the violent Galilean, whose activities he first and last gives any historical notice. Nowhere in all his writings is there mention of Jesus the Christ or his sect, except one clumsy reference inserted in his pages after his decease by a daring interpolator. The mention, we refer to is made in the Antiquities of the Jews, book xviii. chap. 3 § 3, and occurs in the following terms: —
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
The first objection to the genuineness of the paragraph is that it is a gratuitous interruption of the stream of the narrative, and has no connection with the paragraphs which precede and follow.
The second objection is that it is out of place, and not in the historian's manner, to make mention of the Christian tribe as “not extinct to this day” in a paragraph referring to the time of Pilate’s procuratorship, when as the Evangelists show, the name and sect did not exist.
The third objection is that in no case could Christians be called a tribe by Josephus, but a sect. That would certainly not be a proper designation for a sect of philosophy, and one, as even the four Greek writers allow, first established only long afterwards.
The fourth objection to this paragraph being genuine is that Josephus was committed, as the professed historian of the period, to refer to at least some of the ten thousand wonderful things concerning him, had they had any reality.
The fifth objection lies in the fact that in that passage of his history in which he gives an account of the pretender of the Pilate period he says nothing of this far more remarkable figure, who, it is alleged, suffered under the same administration a similar fate.
The sixth objection we make to the genuineness of the paragraph in question is that Josephus, in describing the new religion of Judas of Galilee, expressly asserts that no other arose in that time.
The seventh objection we have to offer to this impious fraud is that when Josephus accounts for the obstinacy of the Jews at the siege of Jerusalem by reference to a widespread expectation that a Messiah was coming, he says nothing at all then of a Messiah having come and risen from the dead, "as the divine prophets had foretold." That expectation was simply represented as arising from an ambiguous oracle that was found in their sacred writings, how about this time one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.
Now the perpetrators of this forgery, or pious fraud, as it is more mildly called, must have seen the necessity of some confirmation from the pen of the historian of the period of the wonderful events which the later Greek writers believed had taken place in those preceding years but in their haste to commit the fraud, — which is not found in every copy of Josephus, — they did not reflect upon the fact that Josephus had already and elsewhere referred to an insignificant prophet of the time, and never mentioned the name of Jesus of Nazareth. They did not reflect that he had already named all the sects that had appeared in Judea fifty-six years after Pilate's recall, and had nowhere spoken of the sect of the Christians, but by implication asserted their non-existence. They did not reflect that his testimony in regard to the non-existence of Christianity was confirmed by another historian of the period, Justus of Tiberias, whose only quarrel with Josephus respected not a historical but a political question, and hinged on the charges each brought against the other of having accelerated the ruin of the country (this is borne out in Heinrich Luther’s Doctoral Thesis in Halle, 1910.) They did not reflect that Josephus had furnished an account of another Jesus, who was instinct with the same spirit, had uttered the same woes, and suffered the same fate, amid similar miraculous attendant circumstances. They did not reflect that the historian - whom in their interpolation they make skip over all the ten thousand wonderful prophetic fulfilments in the career of the traditional Jesus - is the very man who historically relates all these so-called wonderful fulfilments and refers them to the proper period of their occurrence, towards the fall of Jerusalem. And finally, these interpolators were not aware that Luke, by unconsciously referring the time of the birth of Jesus to the period of the Cyrenian taxation, overrides the anachronism which fixes the death of Jesus at the period of the Pilate procuratorship. But the pious fraud practiced by these forgers, history tells us, was part of a system which had the sanction of the early Church.
The pages of Edward Gibbon will supply evidence in confirmation: — "The 'Apology' of Tertullian” (Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, c160-225CE,) he says, "contains two very ancient, very singular, but at the same time very suspicious, instances of imperial clemency; the edicts published by Tiberius and by Marcus Antoninus, and designed not only to protect the innocence of the Christians, but even to proclaim those stupendous miracles which had attested the truth of their doctrine. The first of these examples is attended with some difficulties which might perplex the skeptical mind. We are required to believe that Pontius Pilate informed the Emperor of the unjust sentence of death which he had pronounced against an innocent, and, as it appeared, a divine person, and that without acquiring the merit he exposed himself to the danger of martyrdom; that Tiberius, who avowed his contempt for all religion, immediately conceived the design of placing the Jewish Messiah among the gods of Rome; that his servile senate ventured to disobey the commands of their master; that Tiberius, instead of resenting their refusal, contented himself with protecting the Christians from the severity of the laws, many years before such laws were enacted, or before the Church had assumed any distinct name or existence; and, lastly, that the memory of this extraordinary transaction was preserved in the most public and authentic records, which escaped the knowledge of the historians of Greece and Rome, and were only visible to the eyes of an African Christian, who composed his Apology, one hundred and sixty years after the death of Tiberius. The edict of Marcus Antoninus is supposed to have been the effect of his devotion and gratitude for the miraculous deliverance which he had obtained in the Marcomannic war [166-180CE]. The distress of the legions, the seasonable tempest of rain and hail, of thunder and lightning, and the dismay and defeat of the barbarians, have been celebrated by the eloquence of several pagan writers. If there were any Christians in that army, it was natural that they should ascribe some merit to the fervent prayers which in the moment of danger they had offered up for their own and the public safety. But we are still assured by monuments of brass and marble, by the imperial medals, and by the Antonine column, that neither the prince nor the people entertained any sense of this signal obligation, since they unanimously attribute their deliverance to the providence of Jupiter and to the interposition of Mercury. During the whole course of his reign, Marcus despised the Christians as a philosopher and punished them as a sovereign." (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, chap, vi)
From this it will be seen that these pious frauds were perpetrated as early as a hundred and sixty years after Pontius Pilate's recall, who, if he underwent a trial at all, must have done so before the tribune of Caius Caligula, Tiberius' successor. When the Christian religion was fairly before the world, and the report of the four Greek writers respecting its origin challenged general regard, the necessity of affording some contemporary confirmation must have been felt, and the story of these two palpable frauds gives an idea of the underhand maneuvering which would without scruple be resorted to. That mankind have in this matter been imposed upon is beyond all doubt, and it is for the historical student to inquire when and how the Pontius Pilate chronology was foisted upon the world by the Church.
The chief drawback is that to the great mass of the people, questions of this nature are not deemed very important, as they will not be persuaded that the main point is grounded in deception. Nevertheless many of our readers may have remarked that while we have argued for the late origin of the Gospels, we have said nothing bearing upon the date of the epistles of Paul, and we will now show that they were written after the fall of Jerusalem. In proof of it we will commence with quoting from Paul's alleged writings (I Thess. 2: 14-16): — “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus; for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway; for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost”
Paul evidently alludes here to the destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings of the population. The wrath cannot be said to have come upon them to the uttermost until the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. See again in the epistle to the Hebrews, chap. 12: 24-28: — “And to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earthy much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, ‘Yet once more,' signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot he shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot he moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." (KJV)
Again in Hebrews 13: 12-14: — "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come."(KJV)
No one can fairly come to any other conclusion than that this epistle, too, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is to the Hebrews Paul is here addressing himself, and not to the Gentiles; and this language could not be used by him if the Temple and the city of Jerusalem had been still in existence. Notwithstanding the numerous attempts to falsify it, history proves this fact beyond all doubt, that Christianity had no existence prior to the reign of Domitian (81-96CE,) nor was it until long after this reign that it made any progress in the world. And one of these epistles, ascribed to Paul, bears evidence of having been written when there were Christians in Caesar's household.
In Phil. 4: 2, 21, he writes as follows: — "I urge Euodias, and I urge Syntyche, to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement, and the rest of my coworkers, whose names are in the book of life. (…) Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The friends who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of the emperor’s household.” (NRSV)
Clement, as far as research has ascertained, was none but Titus Flavius Clemens, a nephew of the Roman Emperor Vespasian. He was the son of Titus Flavius Sabinus, consul in 52CE and praefectus urbi during the reign of Nero, and a brother of Titus Flavius Sabinus, consul in 82CE. Nero was the Caesar immediately prior to the fall of Jerusalem, and surely no one will be so foolish as to persuade us that there could be Christians in the household of Nero, of Vespasian, or of Domitian. History, too, points to a much later period, when Caesar's household consisted chiefly of the saints known to Paul; and as the declaration is made by Paul himself, it is surely not too much to expect that our version of the chronology should be regarded as fully borne out by an array of proofs all leading to the conclusion that the new dispensation was conceived after the fall of Jerusalem.