tians, who were named from him, continue in being unto this day.

About A. D. 1360. Nicephoras Callistus Hist. Eccles. lib. i. p. 90, 91.

Now this [concerning Herod the tetrarch] is attested to, not only by the book of the holy gospels, but by Josephus, that lover of truth; who also makes mention of Herodias, his brother's wife, whom Herod had taken away from him, while he was alive, and married her, having divorced his former lawful wife, who was the daughter of Aretas, king of the Petrean Arabians. This Herodias he had married, and lived with her: on which account also, when he had slain John, he made war with Aretas, because his daughter had been dishonourably used; in which war he relates, that all Herod's army was destroyed, and that he suffered this on account of the most unjust slaughter of John. He also adds, that John was a most righteous man. Moreover he makes mention of his baptism, agreeing in all points thereto relating with the gospel. He also informs us, that Herod lost his kingdom on account of Herodias, with whom also he was condemned to be banished to Vienna, which was their place of exile, a city bordering upon Gaul, and lying near the ute most bounds of the west.

About A. D. 1450. Hardmanus Schedelius Chron, p. 110.

Josephus, the Jew, who was called Flavius, a priest, and the son of Mattathias, a priest of that nation, a most celebrated historian, and very skilful in many things; he was certainly a good man, and of an excellent character, who had the highest opinion of Christ.

About A. D. 1480. Platina de Vitis Pontificum in Christo,

I shall avoid mentioning what Christ did until the thirtieth year of his age, when he was baptized by John, the son of Zacharias, because not only the gospels and epistles are full of those acts of his, which he did in the most excellent and most holy manner, but the books of such as are quite remote from his way of living and acting, and ordaining, are also full of the same. Flavius Josephus himself, who wrote twenty books of the Jewish Antiquities in the Greek tongue, when he had proceeded as far as the government of the emperor of Tiberius, says, There was in those days Jesus, a certain

wise man, if at least it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, and a teacher of men, of such especially as willingly hear the truth. On this account, he drew over to him many, both of the Jews and Gentiles; he was Christ. But when Pilate, instigated by the principal men of our nation, had decreed that he should be crucified, yet did not those that had loved him from the beginning forsake him: and, besides, he appeared to them the third day after his death, alive, as the divinely inspired prophets had foretold, that these and innumerable other miracles should come to pass about him. And the famous name of Christians, taken from him, as well as their sect, do still continue in being.

The same Josephus also affirms, that John the Baptist, a true prophet, and on that account one that was had in esteem by all men, was slain by Herod, the son of Herod the Great, a little before the death of Christ, in the castle Machaerus; not because he was afraid for himself and his kingdom, as the same author says, but because he had incestuously married Herodias, the sister of Agrippa, and the wife of that excellent person his brother Philip.

About A. D. 1480. Trithemius Abbas de Scriptor. Eccles.

Josephus, the Jew, although he continued to be a Jew, did frequently commend the christians; and, in the eighteenth book of Antiquities, wrote down an eminent testimony concerning our Lord Jesus Christ.

OBSERVATIONS

FROM THE FOREGOING EVIDENCE AND CITATIONS.

I. THE style of all these original testimonies belonging to Josephus, is exactly the style of the same Josephus, and especially the style about those parts of his Antiquities wherein we find these testimonies. This is denied by nobody, as to the other concerning John the Baptist, and James the Just, and now is become equally undeniable as to that concerning Christ.

II. These testimonies, therefore, being confessedly and undeniably written by Josephus himself, it is next to impos

sible that he should wholly omit some testimony concerning Jesus Christ; nay, while his testimonies of John the Baptist, and of James the Just, are so honourable, and give them so great characters, it is also impossible that his testimony concerning Christ should be other than very honourable, or such as afforded him a still greater character also. Could the very same author, who gave such a full and advantageous character of John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus of Nazareth, all whose disciples were by him directed to Jesus of Nazareth, as to the true Messias, and all whom became afterwards the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, say nothing honourable of that Jesus of Nazareth himself; and this in an history of those very times in which he was born, and lived and died, and that while the writer lived but a little after him in the same country in which he was born, and lived and died? This is almost incredible. And further, could the very same author who gave such an advantageous character of James the Just, and this under the very appellation of James the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, which James was one of the principal disciples or apostles of this Jesus Christ, and had been many years the only Christian bishop of the believing Jews of Judea and Jerusalem, in the very days, and in the very country of this writer; could he, I say, wholly omit any, nay, a very honourable account of Jesus Christ himself, whose disciple and bishop this James most certainly was? This is almost incredible. Hear what Ittigius, one of the wisest and learnedest of all those who have lately inclined to give up the testimony concerning Christ, as it stands in our copies for spurious, says upon this occasion: "If any one object to me, that Josephus hath not omitted John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, nor James, the disciple of Christ, and that therefore he could not have done the part of a good historian if he had been entirely silent concerning Christ, I shall freely grant that Josephus was not entirely silent concerning Christ; nay, I shall further grant, that when Josephus was speaking of Christ, he did not abstain from his commendation; for we are not to determine from that inveterate hatred which the modern Jews bear to Christ, what was the behaviour of those Jews, upon whom the miracles that were daily wrought by the apostles in the name of Christ imprinted a sacred horror."

III. The famous clause in this testimony of Josephus concerning Christ, This was Christ, or the Christ, did not mean

that this Jesus was the Christ of God or the true Messias of the Jews, but that this Jesus was distinguished from all others of that name, of which there were not a few, as mentioned by Josephus himself, by the addition of the other name of Christ; or that this person was no other than he whom all the world knew by the name of Jesus Christ, and his followers by the name of Christians. This I esteem to be a clear case, and that from the arguments following:

(1.) The Greeks and Romans, for whose use Josephus wrote his Antiquities, could no otherwise understand these words. The Jews indeed, and afterwards the Christians, who knew that a great Messias, a person that was to be Christ, the Anointed of God, that was to perform the office of a King, a Priest, and a Prophet, to God's people, might readily so understand this expression; but Josephus, as I have already noted, wrote here, not to Jews or Christians, but to Greeks and Romans, who knew nothing of this, but knew very well that an eminent person living in Judea, whose name was Jesus Chrest, or Jesus Christ, had founded a new and a numerous sect, which took the latter of those names, and were every where from him called Chrestians, or Christians; in which sense alone could they understand these words of Josephus, and in which sense I believe he desired they should understand them: nor does Josephus ever use the Hebrew term Messiah, in any of his writings, nor the Greek term Christ in any such acceptation elsewhere.

(2.) Josephus himself as good as explains his own meaning, and that by the last clause of this very passage, where he says the christians were named from this Christ, without a syllable, as though he really meant he was the true Messiah, or Christ of God. He farther seems to me to explain this bis meaning in that other place, where alone he elsewhere mentions this name of Christ, that is, when upon occasion of the mention of James, when he was condemned by Ananus, he calls him the brother of Jesus, not that was the true Messiah, or the true Christ, but only that was called Christ.

(3.) It was quite beside the purpose of Josephus to declare himself here to be a christian, or a believer in Jesus as the true Messiah. Had he intended so to do, he would surely have explained the meaning of the word Christ to his Greek and Roman readers: he would surely have been a great deal fuller and larger in his accounts of Christ, and of the christian religion: nor would such a declaration at that time have re

commended him, or his nation, or his writings, to either the Greeks or the Romans; of his reputation with both which people he is known to have been, in the writing of these antiquities, very greatly solicitous.

(4.) Josephus's usual way of writing is historical and declarative of facts, and of the opinions, unless we prudently gather it from what he says historically, or as the opinions of others. This is very observable in the writings of Josephus, and in particular as to what he says of John the Baptist, and of James the Just; so that this interpretation is most probable, as most agreeable to Josephus's way of writing parallel

cases.

(5.) This seems to be the universal sense of all the ancients, without exception, who cite this testimony from him ; and though they almost every where own this to be the true reading, yet do they every where suppose Josephus to be still an unbelieving Jew, and not a believing christian: nay, Jerom appears so well assured of this interpretation, and that Josephus did not mean to declare any more by these words than a common opinion, that, according to his usual way of interpreting authors, not to the words, but to the sense, (of which we have, I think, two more instances in his accounts out of Josephus, now before us,) he renders this clause credebatur esse Christus, i. e. he was believed to be Christ. Nor is the parallel expression of Pilate to be otherwise understood, when he made that inscription upon the cross, This is Jesus the king of the Jews;* which is well explained by himself elsewhere, and corresponds to the import of the present clause, What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? And we may full as well prove from Pilate's inscription upon the cross, that he thereby declared himself a believer in Christ, for the real king of the Jews, as we can from these words of Josephus, that he hereby declared himself to be a real believer in him, as the true Messiah.

IV. Though Josephus did not design here to declare himself openly to be a christian, yet could he not possibly believe all that he here asserts concerning Jesus Christ, unless he were so far a christian as the Jewish Nazarenes or Ebionites then were, who believed Jesus of Nazareth to be the true Messiah, without believing he was more than a man; who also believed the necessity of the observation of the cere

* Matth. xxii. 31.- + Ibid. xxvii. 17. 22.