JESUS
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JESUS
does not necessarily imply that Josephus regarded
Jesus as the Jewish Messias; but, even if he had been
convinced of His Messiahship, it does not follow that
he would have become a Christian. A number of
possible subterfuges might have supplied the Jewish
historian with apparently sufficient reasons for not
embracing Christianity.
The historical character of Jesus Christ is also at- tested by the hostile Jewish literature of the subse- quent centuries. His birth is ascribed to an illicit (■'Acta Pilati" in Thilo, "Codex apocryph. N. T.", I, 526; cf. Justin, " Apol.", I, 35), or even an adulterous, union of His parents (Origen, " Contra Cels.", 1, 28, 32). The father's name is Panthera, a common soldier (Gemara "Sanhedrin", viii; "Schabbath", xii; cf. Eisenmenger, "Entdecktes Judenthum", I, 109; Schottgen, " Horae Hebraicae", II, 696; Buxtorf, "Lex. Chald.", Basle, 1639, 1459; Huldreich, "Se- pher toledhoth yeshila" hdnnac^eri", Leyden, 1705). The last work in its final edition did not appear before the thirteenth century, so that it could give the Pan- thera-myth in its most advanced form. Rosch is of opinion (Studien und Kritiken, 1S73, 85) that the myth did not begin before the end of the first century. The later Jewish wTitings show traces of acquaintance with the murder of the Holy Innocents (Wagenseil, "Confut. Libr. Toldoth", 15; Eisenmenger, op. cit., I, 116; Schottgen, op. cit., II, 667), with the flight into Egypt (cf. Josephus, " Ant.", XIII, xiii), with the stay of Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve (Schottgen, op. cit., II, 696), with the call of the disciples ("San- hedrin", 43a; VVagenseil, op. cit., 17; Schottgen, loc. cit., 713), with His miracles (Origen, "Contra Cels., 11,48; Wagenseil, op. cit., 150; Gemara " Sanhedrin" fol. 17; "Schabbath", fol. 104h; Wagenseil, op. cit., 6, 7, 17), with His claim to be God (Origen, "Contra Cels.", I, 28; cf. Eisenmenger, op. cit., I, 152; Schott-
fen, loc. cit., 699), with His betrayal by Judas and His eath (Origen, "Contra Cels.", II, 9, 45, 68, 70; Bux- torf, op. cit., 1458; Lightfoot, " Hor. Heb.", 458, 490, 498; Eisenmenger, loc. cit., 185; Schottgen, loc. cit., 699-700; cf. "Sanhedrin", vi, vii). Celsus (Origen, "Contra Cels.", II, 55) tries to throw doubt on the Resurrection, while Toldoth (cf. Wagenseil, 19) re- peats the Jewish fiction that the body of Jesus had been stolen from the sepulchre.
C. Christian Sources. — .4mong the Christian sources of the life of Jesus we need hardly mention the so- called Agrapha and Apocrypha (see Agrapha and Apocrypha). For whether the Agrapha contain Loqia of Jesus, or refer to incidents in His life, they are either highly uncertain or present only variations of the Gospel story. The chief value of the Apocry- pha consists in their showing the infinite superiority of the Inspired Writings by contrasting the coarse and erroneous productions of the human mind with tlie simple and sublime truths written under the inspira- tion of the Holy Ghost.
Among the Sacred Books of the New Testament, it is especially the four Gospels and the four great Epis- tles of St. Paul that are of the highest importance for the construction of the life of Jesus. The four great Pauline Epistles (Rom., Gal., I and II Cor.) can hardly lie overestimated by the student of Christ's life: they have at times been called the " fifth gospel"; their authenticity has never been assailed by serious critics; their testimony is also earlier than that of the Gospels, at least most of the Gospels; it is the more valuable because it is incidental and undesigned; it is the testimony of a highly intellectual and cultured writer, who had been the greatest enemy of Jesus, who writes within twenty-five years of the events which he relates. At the same time, these four great Epistles bear witness to all the most important facts in the life of Christ: His Davidic descent, His poverty. His Messiahship, His moral teaching. His preaching of the kingdom of God, His calling of the apostles, His
miraculous power, His claims to be God, His be-
trayal. His institution of the Holy Eucharist, His
pa-ssion, crucifi.xion, burial, resurrection. His repeated
appearances (Rom., i, 3, 4; v, 11; viii, 2, 3, .32; ix, 5;
XV, 8; Gal., ii, 17; iii, 13; iv, 4; v, 21; I Cor., vi, 9;
vii, 10; xi, 25; xv, passim; II Cor., iii, 17; iv, 4; xii,
12; xiii, 4; etc.).
However important the four great Epistles may be, the Gospels are still more so. Not that any one of them offers a complete biography of Jesus, but they account for the origin of Christianity by the life of its Founder. Questions like the authenticity of the Gospels, the relation between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth, the Synoptic problem, must be studied in the articles referring to these respective subjects.
III. Chronologt. — What has been said proves not merely the existence of Jesus Christ, but also the historicity of the main incidents of His life. In the following paragraphs we shall endeavour to establish their absolute and relative chronology, i. e. we shaU show first how certain facts connected with the history of Jesus Christ fit in with the course of universal history, and secondly how the rest of the life of Jesus must be arranged according to the inter-relation of its single elements.
A. Absolute Chronology. — ^The incidents whose ab- solute chronology may be determined with more or less probability are the year of Christ's nativity, of the beginning of His public life, and of His death. As we cannot fully examine the data entering into these sev- eral problems, the reader ought to compare what has been said on these points in the article Chronology, Biblical.
(1) The Nativity. — St. Matthew (ii, 1) tells us that Jesus was born "in the days of king Herod". Jose- phus (Ant., XVII, viii, 1) informs us that Herod died after ruling thirty-four years rfe facto, thirty-seven years de jure. Now Herod was made rightful King of Judea A. u. c. 714, while he began his actual rule after taking Jerusalem a. u. c. 717. As the Jews reckoned their years from Nisan to Nisan, and counted fractional parts for entire years, the above data will place the death of Herod in a. u.c. 749, 750, or 751. Again, Josephus tells us that an eclipse of the moon occurred not long before Herod's death ; such an eclipse occurred from 12 to 13 March, .\. u. c. 7.50, so that Hero<l must have died before the Passover of that year which fell on 12 April (Josephus, "Ant.", XVII, vi, 4; viii, 4). As Herod killed the children up to two years old, in order to destroy the new-born King of the Jews, we are led to believe that Jesus may have been born a .u. c. 747, 748, or 749. The enrolment under Cyrinus men- tioned by St. Luke in connexion with the nativity of Jesus Christ, and the remarkable astronomical con- jimction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in Pisces, in the spring of A. u.c. 748, will not lead us to any more definite result.
(2) Beginning of the Public Ministry. — The date of the begimiing of Christ's ministry may be calculated from three different data found respectively in Luke, iii, 23; Josephus, "Bel. Jud.", I, xxi, 1; or "Ant.", XV, ii, 1; and Luke, iii, 1. The first of these passages reads: "And Jesus himself was beginning about the age of thirty years." The phrase "was beginning" does not qualify the following expression " aliout the age of thirty years," but rather indicates the com- mencement of the public life. As we have found that the liirth of Jesus falls within the period 747-749 A. u.c. His public life must begin about 777-779 A. u. c. Second, when, shortly before the first Pasch of His public life, Jesus had cast the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, the Jews said: "Six and forty years was this temple in building" (John, ii, 20). Now, ac- cording to the testimony of Josephus (loc. cit.), the liuilding of the Temple began in the fifteenth year of Herod's actual reign or in the eighteenth of his reign de jure, i. e. 732 A. u.c; hence, adding the forty-six
