CHAPTER IV
Four unknown Greek Writers
To the Greeks alone belongs the distinction of having first published to the world the several versions accepted by Christians of the life of the founder of their religion (although some scholars have argued that parts as Matthew were written in Hebrew and other segments in Aramaic.) What is noteworthy, though, is that they were the only people who, before these writings were produced, were cognizant of the works of Josephus. No others could read these works, for they were written in Greek; and they relate, as we have said, all that happened in the so-called Messianic age, from the time of Herod the Great to the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, and later. In no other tongue are earlier versions of these Gospels to be met with, and these were first presented to the Hellenized Roman Empire world in Greek, and not to the Jewish world in Hebrew or Aramaic. The story of the incidents recorded in the Gospel history was confessedly imported from the land of their occurrence to a foreign land, and it first saw the light under the guise of a foreign language. The historical groundwork of this story, as we inferred, is to be found in the writings of Josephus.
That historian's account of the incidents very closely agrees with theirs, only they have brought within a short space of time a variety of events which he refers to as having happened over a more extended period, and as matters of history rather than as facts in illustration of a peculiar philosophy. If no other land produced the Gospel writings, it is because no other land had at that time the writings of Josephus. If the Greeks had been as ignorant as the rest of the world of these writings, they would not, and could not, have composed the four Gospels. As it is, the Apostolic books are grounded partly on traditional reports and partly on historical statements found in Josephus; only the traditional element has overborne and obscured the historical, and has no doubt caused the statements of these books to be conflicting and contradictory. And they are so conflicting and so contradictory that, as has been often remarked, one author not only disagrees with another, but each separate account is full of inconsistencies.
No writings, save and except those of the Hebrew Bible, have ever made such an impression upon the Western world as these have; and yet no writings contradict the Bible more, while they at the same time affect to be its fulfilment and confirmation. They bear testimony in words to the truth of the Bible, while they advance a philosophy which is quite different from it. That such should be the case, however, is not surprising when we consider that the authors of the second “Testament” were obscure, at any rate unknown, personages, who were probably Greeks by birth as well as Greeks by language, and that the scenes of their narrative lay not in Greece but in the land of Judea. The story they tell was composed of elements which came to them through the distorting medium of traditional reports and sustains a philosophy born of the political situation of a foreign country at odds with the Greco-Roman culture.
As we have seen, the historian of Judea mentions the existence among the Jews of his day of a class of men who stirred up the people against their rulers on the pretense of a commission from the Almighty — mere worthless impostors, who deluded and carried away multitudes, more particularly of the younger and more fiery spirits of the nation. They professed to be animated by a greater reverence than others for God, a holier zeal for the law, and a more genuine patriotism; and all pointed to some great biblical prophecy about the latter days as either fulfilled or on the eve of fulfilment, and that in circumstances favorable to foster and promote the work of the deceiver.
For everything conspired to favor the delusion imposed upon the age that preceded the period referred to in the Apostolic writings: The religion of Judas of Galilee was embraced by multitudes. The enthusiasm with which this fourth sect was accepted was based on appeals to the patriotism of the people, and this was wrought upon by certain political schemers to compass their own ambitious designs. Nor were the arguments with which these crafty men plied the mob of the day without foundation. The theocracy of the Jews, as established by Moses, was, it was alleged, a purely divine institution, and the establishment of a merely human authority within it was regarded as an innovation (Josephus’ term,) which amounted to its subversion. A kingdom of God upheld only by sacerdotal authority was indeed the Mosaic ideal, and this Mosaic institution underwent a change when a king was chosen (King Saul) and appointed to rule instead of the priesthood, Moses being simply the mouthpiece and minister of this divine order. The philosophy of Judas of Galilee, which reverted to this original idea of the Jewish state as a pure theocracy, could not fail to find among the followers of Moses sincere adherents, and it soon took practical shape in a combined determination to shake off the yoke of Roman domination and authority. And the Roman procurators of Judea, by their rapacity and criminal injustice, did what they could to encourage popular revolt and render the public mind a prey to superstitious delusions. A king of righteousness, of the seed of David, it was proclaimed, was coming to reign over the habitable earth, and all mankind should one day bow before his sovereign authority. All the nations of the earth were about, as predicted, to acknowledge the one true God, and the Jewish people must now, if never before, stand true to their sacred destination, and sternly refuse homage to an earthly lord (the Roman overlord), still more a foreign despot (the Illegitimate Herod family.)
It is this prophet, very apparently, whom the Apostolic accounts christen with the name of Jesus, and make the founder and author of a new religion, which they expound and allege to have been accepted by multitudes. Of this same person Josephus asserts that he was a deluder of the people and a false prophet, and he contradicts the assertion that he was the founder of a new religion by ascribing that honor exclusively to Judas of Galilee, who, as remarked, must have had a considerable following before the date of the birth of Jesus as given by Luke the Evangelist. So that if Luke's account, which ascribes the origin of one sect to Jesus, be as correct as that of Josephus, which ascribes another and prior sect to Judas, it follows, contrary to the express statement of the latter, that two new religions had been founded, and that both had originated in Galilee, which two religions were at the same time almost identical as regards dogma, each propagating a similar scheme of belief and practice, which culminated in one master-idea, that of the kingdom of God to be realized on earth as it is in heaven. For in these respects the teaching of Judas and the teaching of Jesus agree with each other and the original Messianic idea; only the expected Messiah, who was, under the providence of God, to appear on earth and rule, was, in Judas' eyes, to be a king of righteousness but not a god; whereas the Greek writers of a much later period, since called the Messianic, assert that the prophet who was slain was not only the Messiah, but the Son of God Himself; that he had lived on earth in Judea for some thirty-three years, and that the age and the district had been made famous both by the astounding miracles which he wrought himself and his followers in his name after him. They even give an account of signs and wonders, both on earth and in heaven, which accompanied his advent, and marked the period and place of his birth as notable before all other periods of history and places upon earth. Unlike the appearances of the Greek gods in the affairs of men, not his advent only, but his whole career was invested with a halo of divinity. A present God was proclaimed from the Temple, from the tops of the mountains, from the seashore, from cities and villages, in sacred places and secular, before high and low, among all ranks and classes of the Palestine world. At least so do four unknown Greek writers in an after age assert; and had they not done so— for Josephus says nothing of it, or any other contemporary — the world would to this hour have been equally ignorant of God’s visit to earth and of the form in which He presented Himself to the eyes of mortals.
These four Greek writers, along with another — Paul — who received a special visit from Jesus after he left the earth, are good enough to inform the world not only of all the particulars of his visit, but of the place it held and the purpose it fulfilled in the divine economy. God made a covenant with His Son to visit the earth in the form of man on a benevolent enterprise. To save mankind from perdition, it was necessary to break the power of the devil, and in order to achieve this purpose, and defeat and destroy the adversary, it was also necessary that God should assume man's nature and die in man's stead. God, being eternal, could not die, but He came in the human person of Jesus, who, it is alleged, founded this new religion; which yet can be historically proved to have existed before he saw the light. But these writers knew better, it seems, what took place in Judea than did the inhabitants of Judea at the time themselves; and yet there is nothing to show how they were better informed, except we assume that the very events occurred of which contemporary witnesses are altogether silent. These four Greek writers, however, it would appear, had some private and peculiar sources of information not accessible to the rest of the world. They knew what the devil said to Jesus and what Jesus said to the devil; what took place in secret between the high-priest and the Roman soldiers, — how the latter had been bribed by the former to say that the body of Jesus was taken away by his friends, to deceive the public into a belief that he had not risen, as if such a trick could not have been exposed at once by the reappearance of Jesus alive again in the midst of his enemies.; for it is not said that the high-priests had intimation that Jesus would after his resurrection hide himself from the public view, and only show himself again to a few Galileans. If these four Greek writers speak the truth, Josephus must have concealed from the world a multitude of events of which his very contemporaries were aware, and which his parents and their contemporaries actually witnessed. Josephus condemns the philosophy which has its apparent outcome in Christianity as propounded by Judas of Galilee, pronouncing it a madness, since it led to issues which were to be absolutely deplored, and gave rise to a delusion that provoked the multitude of the Jews to an insurrection which caused the destruction of the Temple and their city. No just reason can be given for his calling the founder of that philosophy Judas instead of Jesus, if he was not Judas. Can he be accused of having intentionally altered the name, or did he mistake the one for the other? If he committed such a mistake, had he not the power to rectify it? Was such a mistake likely to be made by him in the face of the Christian community, even that of Rome? Could he have committed it, had the Christian religion existed then, with its thousands of witnesses, to attest that not Judas but Jesus was the author of their faith? Could Christianity have had then any existence? Would not those who wrote at a subsequent period, when the living witnesses of the events were all dead, be more liable to commit this error? Either they or Josephus, therefore, misstate the facts. It is for the reader to judge whether they who were foreigners, and lived after the events, or he who was a native of the scene of them, and all but contemporary, was most likely to be in error. History is not history, if it be not true; and if it be not history, it is fable; and if fable, let it be treated as such.