ANTIQUA MATER:

~ c!tUlJ~ of @tbristian erigins.

C He had an earnest intention of taking a review of the original principlesof the primitive Church: believing that every true Christian had no bettermeans to settle his !'pirit, than that which was proposed to .iEneas and hisfollowers to be the end of their wanderings, A"tiqlltUn eXfJllirite Matr"".

Tlu Lift ofMr. A. CO'Wley, by n.-. SPRAT.

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CON T.EN TS.

PREFACE

~att I.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY.

I. PAGAN SOUROES-THB REIGN OF TRAJAN - PLINY AND

TAOITUS ON THE OHRISTIANI AND OHRISTUS-SUETONIUS

-THE 'AUTHOR OF THE OHBISTIAN NAME'

ix.-xx

PAOE

II. BEPERBNOES TO THE JEWS IN THB ROMAN LITERATURE OF

THE SECOND CENTURY 20

III. CHRISTIAN SOUBOES-JUSTIN MARTYR 32IV. CHRISTIAN SOUBOES-THE 'H&RETIOS' (OR SEOTABIA..~S)

DURING THB FIRST HALF OF THE: SECOND OBNTURY 44

~att II.

THE INTERNAL HISTORY.

I. TUB BAGIOI, APOSTLES AND PROPHETS-THE OHRISTIANOS

AND TUB OBBISTBKPOROS 52IL TUB ECOLESIA- CTHB VINB' 6g

IIL BITES 0.. THB HAGIOI 78

viii CONTENTS.

CHA~ PAGE

IV. TBlI: NEW CREATION, THll: OW PEOPLE, AND THll: NEW LAW 94v. TBll: SEAL OF THE NEW OOKKUNITY 107

VL KOBAL TBAOHING AKONG THE HAGIOI-THE 'TWO WAYS' 131VII. THll: ll:VANGELION AND THE EVANGBLIS'l'S 151

VIII. THE IDEAL AIrIONG JEWS AND GENTILES 189IX. TID GNOSTIO THEOLOGY 213x. THB CBITICS AND THlll APOLOGJl:TES 0 .. OHRISTIANITY 243

XL OBLSU8 AND OBIGEN 272

ADDENDA 303

INDEX 305

PREF ACE.

THE present tract has been written in answer to thefollowing inquiry :-

, What may we learnr-apart from the books of theNew Testament-from the old Ohristian and the Grmco-Roman literature of the second century, in. respect totke origin aM the earliest development of Ohristianity 1'

It seemed to the writer convenient, and even'n~ceBBary for the sake of clearness, to understand thequestion as referring to the origin and early historyof the people called Christiani, and of their beliefs andpractices. The term Christianity seems of too 'v8~eand vast an import to be fitted for introduction intoa historical investigation of this kind; moreover, itis something of an anachronism to use so abstracta denomination in connection with' the new-formingreligious life of the second century.

Now, on examining the literary evidence of thefirst two centuries on this question, one searches firstfor certain historic data of time, place, and persons;and speedily discovers how few these data are, andhow slight the information they can be said, in anysense, to yield on the subject of our inquiry. If one

x PREFACE.

has approached the literature of the period with theassumption that something definite could be made outrespecting the lives of Christ and the apostles inde-pendently of the New Testament, one assuredly hasbeen brought, sooner or later, to the consciousness ofa complete illusion. The pagan writ~s betray noknowledge of such particulal'S, nor can they be foundin the writings of the so-called 'apostolic fathers.'What has long been admitted with' reference to theso-called epistles of 'Barnabas' and 'Clement,' andthe apocalypse of 'Hermas,' is that they' are for usanony'f1UJ'it8 documents. What must further be ad-mitted is, that they are absolutely undated documents,and t~at learned guesses at their dates are of no ser-vice, but the contrary, to scientific inquiry. As forthe literature inscribed with the names of ' Ignatius'

. and ' Polycarp,' there seems little reason for dating itin the second century rather than the third or thefourth. These documents, moreover" are open to thesuspicion of serious interpolation or corruption. Truthis still truth, though it be but negative in quality;and we venture a strong protest against the practiceof using materials so uncertain, for the purpose offavouring any assumed historical result whatever. Thecase with Justin Martyr is somewhat different. The.Apology in his name contains a date, on the ground ofwhich his literary activity may be ascribed to aboutthe middle of the second century'.(I47-I67). The

,result of our examination of the sources is this: that,apart from the New Testament, the historical origin

PREFACE. xi

, of the new faith must be sought primarily in JustinMartyr's accepted works. We know no othe-r datedChristian literature so early as those works, to whichwe invite. our readers' careful attention. They areaccessible in 8t tolerable translation to those who readouly in English. Any person of ordinary clear-headed-ness has the materials of judgment before him; and ifhe takes the usual view of what Evidence is, and otwhat is not Evidence, he will, as we believe, come tothe conclusion that Justin of Flavia Neapolis had noexact knowledge, whether of the 'Apostles J in general,or of him whom he calls the 'Apostle of God.' Hehad an Idea before his mind, but not actual Persons,of whose life and teaching any accurate particulars hadbeen recorded.

If we extend the examination to Irenmus and Ter-tullian, we find that they were unable 00 supply thelacu'IUB in Justin's knowledge. ~he Twelve Apostlesremain for them a legendary group, whose existence

belo~ to the shadows of the Old Testament, and hasno basis in historic data of our era. .And with regardto Paul, Tertullian is our witness that, apart from theNew Testament books, nothing authentic was knownabout him. It is that Father himself who raisesdoubts about the 'Apostle of the Hmretics' whichcannot easily be dispelled. The bare result of thewhole examination is, that from some time unknown,the statement that Jesus Christ had been crucifiedunder .Pontius Pilate, was repeated as a formula inconnection with the rites of Exorcism and Baptism,

xii PREFACE.

and that coooval with this belief, was that in Hisresurrection, ascension, and second coming. With

w~om did this tradition originate? While the oldCatholic fathers figure to themselves Twelve Apostles,founders of true or apostolic churches, without beingable to authenticate those Apostles, they unanimouslyrefer the origin of the powerful Gnostic schools orchurches which dissented from the' great church,' toSimon of Samaria, called by them a ~Iage, and saidto have flourished in honour at Rome in the reign ofClaudius. We consider this to be the most distinct .and most remarkable fact that can be elicited fromthe evidence before us. We see the figure of the

.Samaritan through a distorting medium of envy andfantastic exaggeration, and no defence of their Masterby his numerous followers has come down to us. Yet,on the reluctant testimony of his passionate opponents,he stands forth as the truly original spirit of the firstcentury, the great Impulsor of the religions movementfrom which Christendom arose. And the manner inwhich the commanding figure of the Paul of modernimagination, flits before us in the Clementine romanceas a sort of alter ego of Simon, though the writer nameshim not, is a point that must arrest attention,. untilthe historic truth beneath these representations shallat last be laid bare.

We hold that the Christian world has for ages beencontent for the most part, and is still content, to begthe question of the historical origins of Christianity,under the influence of the' old Catholic fathers;' that

PREFACE. xiii

is, under the influence of men who were ignorant ofi . the history of the Ecclesia or Ecclesire, which they

administered with so much skill; men who were con-tent to fill the void in their knowledge with poeticalfancies, and who probably encouraged the circulation

: i of historical fictions, which tended to support their, apostolical ' pretensions with their flocks. Those towhom the great principles of Protestantism are dear,can no longer, when once their eyes are opened, consentto abet these delusions. The so-called Hmretics, thatis, the Dissenters from the 'great church,' were inreality before the Catholics, both in point of time andof originality. It is in the Gnosis and among theGnostics that we must seek above all for the distinctivenotes of Christianity as a Religion distinct from Judaismand from the decaying forms of heathendom. And ifthis be so, then our ecclesiastical histories and ourapologies-if, indeed, they be necessary-should be re-written from this standpoint. And it will be a greatgain ifsnch a reconsideration of the subject shall lead tothe disappearance of old hates and prejudices from thefield of letters, and if those whose dearest memoriesare bound up with the Christian name shall be ablegratefully to recognise their debt in just proportionsalike to Jew, Greek, and Roman, for the rich experi-ences which they have contributed to the commonreligion of civilisation. Certain it seems, that thegreat complex we call 'Christianity' can be traced tono mere local Qrigin, to no village idylls, but only tothat great world of religious passion and imagination

xiv PREFACE.

revealed to us in the study of the letters of the first I'two centuries of our era.

But the reader may ask, Of wJui.t value can deduc- Itiona be, which ez lvgpothesi exclude the New Testa- i ~ment books as evidence? Though this question is notstrictly our business, we cannot refrain from saying aword about it, because clearly our results are all butworthless, if it can be shown that the New Testamentbooks are older sources than. the rest of our earlyliterature. But here again we have suffered ourselvesto become the victims of age..~ong delusions. Withpatient toil, the author of ' Supernatural Religion' hasexamined and stated the evidence upon this subject.One may perhaps venture the criticism that he hasrather overdone than underdone his work; for bymassing so formidable an array of references to modernwriters, he has perhaps excited a diffidence in theordinary reader, who may suppose that he is not com-petent to judge of the merits of the question unlesshe has spent laborious years upon the 'critics.' Thisis not so. The question really lies within a narrowcompass. The reader may practically confine himself toJustin of Neapolis as a dated witness from the middleof the second century. He knows no authoritativewritings except the Old Testament; he had neither .our 'Gospels' nor our Pauline writings; his imagina-tion was a blank where our own is filled with vividpictures of the activity of Jesus and of Paul.1

1 The late Bruno Bauer, who has long been treated by the theo-logical world &8 an outcast, but who has been recently vindicated in amost cedid spirit by Professor A.D. Loman (Theol. Tijd,ehr., 1882-3),

pREFACE. xv

Professor Harnack of Marburg, in his lately publishedc Handbook of the History of Dogmas ' (1886), has withgreat candou-r sketched the true history of our NewTestament literature, according to the scientific pro-babilities of the case; only, his admissions seem torequire the rewriting of the ea!lier sections of hiswork. These writings were originally anonymous, thedeposit of anonymous sayings; only gradually wereauthors found for them, whose names, when found,were wafted over the world by the breath of ' Tradition.'The Professor has dwelt upon the sudden appearanceof the' Canon' at the end of the second century, onthe ignorance of any New Testament until after themiddle of that century, and the want of a universalrecognition of such a Testament even at the beginningof t~e third century.

The numerous biographies of Jesus and the ' Acts'of apostles must have been mainly composed duringthe age of the Antonines, and were doubtless calledforth by a public need in the churches, analogous tothat which has called forth a multitude of Lives ofChrist during our own time. There was an intensecraving, both in the interests of spiritual satisfactionand in that of controversy, to emerge out of the atmos-phere of vague intuition and reminiscence into thedaylight of historic portraiture. And, frankly, there isin the nature of things, little more reason for approach-ing these documents with an awe-struck respect, as fordates the New Testament literature in the period 130-170. Cf. on hisviews the testimony of H. Schiller, Gack. d. ROm. KaiBeruitw 1883.p. 446 See also Graetz, Ot8C"'. d. Jude"", 2. Auft., 3. '2.'2.~.

xvi PREFACE.

something of Divine inspiration in a special sense, thanfor 80 approaching the 'Lives' which have proceededfrom the pens of our modem evangelists and historiansof the 'apostles.' What have the latter, especiallyErnest Renan, done for ns? They have brought usnearer and yet nearer to two great Figures, J esos Iand Paul. They have perform~d the same kind ofservice for early Christian traditions, that our immortaldramatist performed for the early traditions of ourEnglish kings. But for the most part this has beendone at the expense of that strong supernatural elementin which our New Testament literature is steeped. Inspite of all the efforts of the Evangelists of the secondcentury 00 humanise Christ, to bring Him into intimaterelations with flesh and blood, the outline of the story

. remains ghostly, spiritual, supernatural in the propersense-the story that could alone, as we hold, havestirred the pulse of mankind. Working our wayback through the fascinations of Art to that primebasis of religion, Belief, from which all great artsprings, we find that it was the Gnostics, from Simon toMarcion, who truly grasped the principle that the newReligion was the revelation of a Mystery, and referredto relations between Heaven and Earth and Hades, notto be detected by the eye and ear of sense-a spiritualrevelation made to the spiritual part in man.

We have striven to write with coldness on a subjectwhich demands coldness in the inquirer all the more,if there is no subject in which his interest is moredeeply engaged. We promise ourselves correction and

PREFACE. xvii

enlargement of oar views from the judgment of others.I But, whatever mi"stakes we may have, nay, must have; fallen into, in matters of detail, there can, in our: humble opinion, be no mistake so wholesale and so

stupendous as that of seeking to extract an accuratehistory of their past from the Christian writers of thesecond century. The first thing to be ascertained inmatters of evidence is the character of the witnesses ;and witnesses more passionate and more fanciful, lessinformed, or less scrupulous as to matters of fact, canbe hardly found. Those who beg a good character fortheir witnesses at the outset beg the whole questionat issue; and unfortunately, this is the common pro-ceeding of Writers who do not enjoy or do not exercisethe freedom of their thoughts in these matters.

Not but that we keenly sympathise with those whocannot willingly part with the illusions of ages. Butto surrender illusions on any vital subject means amomentary pain exchanged for a perma~ent good.What is life but an 'education by illusion?' Whatis the pursuit of -Truth but the pursuit of light,through all eclipses never quenched? Veritas, laborans""imis 8f1?1JJe, eg;tinguitur'll/u/nquam. When once the NewTestament books shall be assigned the place in litera-ture and in ecclesiastical history which belongs to them,their varied contents will assume a new significance,and receive a crit~cal appreciation denied to them, solong as the artificial assumptions as to their date andcharacter continue.

It seems hardly an honest question to ask wh.ethe~

, xviii PREFACE.

our religion can continue to hold its ground in thefaith and affections of the people, if the negative truthconcerning its early literary records be candidly avowedby Christian teachers. Probably, however, the ques-tion has vexed the mind of many of our eminent menof letters since the time of the poet Cowley. Andcertainly it is a question that must be faced sooner orlater by serious men. Some interesting discussionson this point have been held of late years by Bome

Dutc~ theologians, mainly in consequence of thepublication of Professor A. D. Loman's researcheson Pauline questions. For ourselves, if we ever feltin early years that there was something in the Chris-tianity ofthe heart that defied alike assault and defence;if we have observed with others that our religion con-tinues to survive the apologies offered for it, and toflourish upon free cri~icism of its documents and theinstitutions connected with it, we have been confirmedin such persuasions by the results of our presentinquiry. Our interest is in spiritual and enduringrealities rather than in names and labels; and abetrer confession than that of (Jhristianus BUm inTertullian's sense is that of Homo BUm in the senseof Seneca and the gentle emperor, Marcus Aurelius.Citizens of a greater empire than even the Roman, itis well if we can understand that the religion we haveinherited from our forefathers, was not in its inceptionprovincial, and should now be interpreted, according toits history and genius, as the humane and the universalfaith.

xixPREFACE.

Be this as it may, .we share strongly the feelingsof some Churchmen of our time,-that the habit of

". cultivating critical acumen to. the highest degree, inreference to classical letters and history, in our schoolsand universities, and of blunting its edge when broughtto bear on Chnstian letters and history, is the sourceof great moral evil in the educated world. Ecclesi-astical institutions are on their trial in our time; andto us it seems that they cannot retain their hold onthe conscience and affections of the people by thepromotion of chastity, temperance, thrift, and every

I possible virtue-except candour and truthfulness inthe treatment of the documents and history of theChristian religion.

The history of the Church and of its dogmasproperly begins with the period of the Antonines,I 38-180 A.D. Here we find ourselves still in themidst of a legendary atmosphere. The foundationsof the 'Ecclesia,' in the new sense, are being laidupon Rock-man, and the college of Hierosolymiteapostles. The counter-legend of Paulus is being elabo-rated from opposite polemical standpoints. Amidstthe haze stands oat with clearness the historicalfigure of Marcion alone. The name of Irenmus isof significance only as the reputed author of 8 workagainst the Hmretics, which is 8 monument of theirinfluence as the first Theologians of the Innovation.Clement of Alexandria already adopts the broad prin-ciples of the Gnosis.

The study of the. Hooretics and of the sources of

xx PREFACE.

their Doctrines leads to far-reaching perspectives, andbrings to light the wide basis of ancient spiritualBelief on which the new Creed and Rites were built.In short, the Innovation resumed and purified the reli- fgious life of the great peoples of antiquity. Egyptians,.Persians, the mixed populations of the Levant, theGreeks, and the Romans all contributed to. it. Notwithout reason does the writer or the 'Acts of theApostles' give so extensive a map of the area affectedby this great revolution.

Its history, we repeat, is no provincial tale. Thereis a, true sense, as Augustine remarked in his Retrac- .tationes, in which the Religion existed from the

. beginning. According to our modem way of speaking,it is the great expression of the ideal life in mankind, ,not to be confounded with particular and positive ~facts, but lending an. undying cha~ to the poor and ~sorry chronicle of those facts.

'La mere, c'est la T19aditi()'fl, m~me,' said the brilliantauthor of La Bible de rHumanite. And. in the poeticalsenSe it is true that the modern quest of the .'ancient IMother' means the renewed study, not so much of theantiquities of this or that people, as of the commonheart of Humanity which throbs in all.

\\

ANTIQUA MATER.

~art I.THE EX,TERNAL HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

PAGAN SOURCES-THE REIGN OF TBAJAN-PLINY ANDTACITUS ON THE CHRISTIANI AND CHRISTUS-SUETONIUS-THE C AUTHOR OF THE CHRISTIANNAME.'

DURING the reign of Trajan (98-117), Tacitus waswriting his ..Annals, Suetonius was composing 'hisMemoirs of the Emperors, J uvenal his Satires. Plinythe younger was 'legatus pro prretore ' of the provinceof Pontus and Bithynia under the same emperor.

Plutarch (ob. c. 125), whose writings contain so richa mine of moral and religious lore, flourished duringthis and the following reign.l

Pliny is supposed to have written his famous letter..~ Trajan in the autumn or winter of A.D. 1 1 2.2 'He

was then proprretor of Pontus' and Bithynia. In the1 Mtiller and Donaldson, Hilt. of Lit. of Ancient Greece, 3 179.S Mommsen, Bermu iii. 53, for 1869. See Ep. 10, 28. Bruno

Bauer, CA.,...,.tad die Ciiltwe'A, 2 autl., 1879, 'P. 2.6~ i.

2 ANTIQUA MATER.

year 93 ot 94 he had been prretor at Rome, butnever having been present at judicial inquiries con-ceming Christians, he says that he was ignorant ofwhat was customary in respect to the trial or punishment of them.! He has great hesitation as to whethe~he should make some distinction in point of the ageof the accused or not, whether those of tender andthose of robust years should be placed on onefooting. Ought the convicted to be pardoned onrepentance? Or was no indulgence to be shownto those who had once been Christians, and thenhad desisted from their profession ? Was he to punishthe mere name of Cliristian, though dissociated from.crime, or only 'the crimes that might be associatedwith the name? 2

Pliny goes on to describe the procedure he hadhitherto adopted towards those who were brought be-fore him on this charge. Thrice he put the questionto them, with threats of punishment: Were theyChristians 1 If they persevered in the affirmativeanswer, he ordered them to be led away to execution.For he felt assured that, whatever the nature of theirbelief might be, 'their pertinacity, their inflexibleobstinacy,' ought to be punished. Some of thosesenseless fools, he adds, were Roman citizens, and,on that ground, he marked them out to be sent toRome.

But soon, as the governor found, accusations in-creased, and that in consequence of his own action inthe matter. An anonymous libel was brought to his 'notice, containing the names of many persons. Different

1 Cf. Plini et Trajani Epp. 10. 96, 97, ed. Keil, Lips. 1870-2 The resemblance of this argument (under the form of inquiry) to

Justin Martyr, Apol. I. 4, should be noticed. Cf. also Athenag, Leg.p-o CArUt., z; Tertull.Apol. 3; Lactant. 4- 7.

\

J THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. . J

! ~ kinds and degrees of this widespread criminality wereascertained. Some denied that they were or had beenChristians. In the presence of the governor 1 they

.: called on the gods, made supplication to the image ofthe emperor~ which had been placed for that pur-'pose among the simulacra of the deities, with offeringsof incense and wine. They invoked maledictions onChristus, such as no real Christians could be forcedto utter. T~ey were then dismissed. Others whohad been named by an informer confessed they wereChristians, but presently denied the- same; they hadbeen such, but several years ago, in one case so farback as twenty years, had abandoned their confession.-All these were put to the same test before the imageof the emperor and the simulacra of the gods.

So far then as this testimony goes, if it be genuine,'.we learn that the Christian name and confession had

been known in Asia Minor about as early as the year90. The genuineness is, however, mere matter ofopinion. For the moment we will assume it. A fewyears later than Pliny's testimony comes that of hisfmnd Tacitus, who is writing (c. 1 12-1 IS) a narrativeof the great fire at Rome, which occurred in the reignof Nero, when the annalist was about ten years ofage. To divert from himself the suspicion of havingcaused the conflagration, Nero arraigned and cruellypunished 'those called by the common folk Christiani,hated because of their flagitia.' 2 Suetonius, a con-temporary of Tacitus, writing perhaps some yearslater, simply tells us that the Christiani, a 'genusbominum superstitionis novre ae maleficm,' wereseverely punished in the reign of Nero.S

1 He dicta.ted the words' (prmeunte, cf. Ell. 10. OO~.2 ~nn. 15. 44- a Net'. 1().

4 ANTIQUA MATER.

The important question here ;arises, What is theexact value of this testimony in reference .to the riseof the generic name (Jh,ristiani 1 It is certain only.that Tacitus when he wrote knew the name, anattached to it the same odious and contemptibl.significance that was current among Romans of hiclass. He had been a Roman magistrate in Doipil ,tian's reign (81-96) 1 when Jews were persecuted,but not-so far as we can ascertain-Christians as a'class of men' distinct to the Roman eye from Jews..Tacitus must have known of the condemnation of.Flavius Clemens and Domitilla, the relatives of Domi- .tian; and there is no proof that this pair were brandedby the Romans with the name ClvriBtiani." They wereconverts to Judaism, according to Dion Cassius, whileSuetonius only characterises Clemens .as a man of'contemptible sloth.' The relatives of Domitian may,for aught we know to the contrary, have been, nayprobably were, believers in the Messianic parousia andkingdom, and hence in part drew suspicion and accusa-tion upon themselves.s The listlessness towards mun-dane business, said to be so disgraceful in Clemens,might well be, as with others, the effect of hisenthusiasm. But he, with others, is not charged withChristianity, but with atkeotes, and divagation to thecustoms of the Jew3. 4 . There is absolutely no evidencein the historians that during the fifteen years ofDomitian's rule there was any animadversion against

1 Teuffel, G~h. d. Riin&. hU., 332 ft., ad. 3.t DiODe, 67. 14; cf. H. Schiller, Guch. d,. Rom. Kailerzeit, 1883. Pp.

537, 577 The real motive of the condemnation was doubtless politicaL On

the turbulent Cynic mob orators ~f the time, and the atmosphere ofoonspiracy in which the Flavian emperors lived, Suet. Yesp. 13; Tacit.Dial. tU Orat. 10; Suet. Dome 10.

t Xiphilinus (Dion. Cal,. 67. 14).

\

THE .EXTERNAL HISTORY. 5

~he Nome"", which to confess and persist in confessing,was an offence punishable with death in the eyes ofrrajan and of Pliny.

Ignore for a moment the disputed places .in Tacitusmd Suetonius, it then becomes apparent from theconcurrence of evidence in Pagan with Talmudicwriters, that it was not till near the close of thefirst century that a schism among Jews of the Circum-cision and new religionists, never thenceforth to ber:losed, began to be revealed. The weight of evidenceis therefore overwhelming against the assumption that10 early as the reign of Nero (54-68) the ~'l" andilie stigma existed, the origin of which is one of themain points of our inquiry.

But is there any fair and reasonable explanationor what was in the minds of Tacitus and Suetoniuswhen they iInagined Ohristia""i to have existed inl:ome in Nero's reign? We believe there is. Tacituswas aware that the designative word was derived[rom the name OhristU8. To speak of Christianswas to speak of the followers of the .A.mtor Nominis

~U8, who suffered death under the procurator PontiusPilate, in the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus says nothing ofJesus: Christ is the proper name with him of the Headof the Christians. In the Histories Tacitus had givena strangely fabulous and vague account of the earlyhistory of the Jews, taken probably from unfriendlyGreeks of Alexandria. He could have known nothingof the distinction between believers in a Messiah, andbelievers in tke Messiah, Jesus. In writing of theevent oC the year 70, he enables us to understand howthe Messianic expectation shaped itself to the thoughtof a Roman. C Many (at Jerusalem) were persuaded

~hat in the ancient books of the priests it was con-

6 ,ANTIQUA MATER.

tained, that the Orient should prevail at that time,and those who went from Judea.' 1 While the Jewsinterpreted the ambages in their own favour, the eventshowed that Vespasian and the Flavian house wereintended.2 So Romans reasoned, having no inklingof that great struggle for empire over the imaginationiof mankind, signified by the opposition of Christ andAntichrist, which was going on, in scenes remotefrom the battlefield and' the popular tumult. Butif at that epoch and long before there glowed inmultitudes of Jewish breasts a proud and triumphantfaith in the Anointed of the Lord, in the King seatedon Zion's sacred hill, to whom the heathen had beendecreed as His inheritance and the whole world forHis possession, and who should dash His enemies topieces as a potter's vessel, what wonder if such faithbroke forth into irrepressible and exultant self-manifestation, when Rome was in :flames, and thebeginning of the end seemed to be near at hand?Now, in a single day, the superb queen of the SevenHills had been smitten with death and mourning andhunger, and should be burned with fire according tothe fiat of the mighty divine Judge. Such beliefmust necessarily appear to every loyal Roman to bethe' effects of an ezitiabilis superstitio, and the feelingsreflected therefrom must bear the colour of a 'hatredof the human race.'

Our explanation then of the passage in Tacitus isthat the term Christiani had for him a value altogetherdifferent from that which it has long borne for us andfor the history of the world since the great Messianic

1 Rist. 5. 13.2 Cf. Suet. Vesp. 4; Joseph. B. J. 6. 5. 4- Dion. (Xiphilinus) 66. 4,

7, 8. [Holtzmann, Judenth. u. Chriltenth.479.]

\\

7THE EXTER-NAL HISTORY.~. illusions faded away, toward the end of the second

century. The sufferers under Nero were Messianists,.'Fifth Monarchy men,' it might almost be said, ofwhom a large number were probably proselytes toJudaism, and who were inflamed with those ardentand passionately confident hopes of the downfall ofthe Roman empire and of the establishment ofthe kingdom of the Hagioi and the Elect, whichare reflected in the Book of Enoch and in theApocalypse.

What the Neronian government struck at with aseverity so appalling was a political creed and apolitical faction, to which modern Fenians, Anarchists,or Nihilists, furnish a certain analogy; only that anintense religious zeal supplied fuel to the Messianicpolitics in a manner or degree unparalleled in ourtimes. That the Ohristiani who were first seizedadmitted their guilt,! that they informed against others,and that a vast multitude were convicted, not so muchon the charge of incendiarism as of hatred of man-kind, Tacitus further tells us. Nor is there anythingincredible in this, when we compare the history ofepidemics of enthusiasm. By no means easy ofcredence, on the other hand, is the part assigned toNero in this horrible drama. 2 It is for us a soberinference that here as elsewhere the imagination ofTacitus, who was a great poet, but a timid man, hasprojected those horrible representations of a mad

1 Qui jateba,ntur may of course be understood of their confession of'ncendiGriam, or of being OAriatitJni. We take the latter view, on thebasis of the evidence as a whole. The\word seems copied from Pliny'sletter; and the obscure use of it is a strong ground of suspicionagainst the passage.

2 Cf. the silence of Josephus, no friend of Nero, .Ant. 20. 8. 2, 3.He Schiller, Nero, 425, cf. his remarks on Tacitus, 16. Joel, Blicke. 2.143. who cites Stahr in WeStermann's M()III,(J,e,l&efte, 1875. 583.

8 ANTIQUA KATER.

tyrant upon a canvas, on which he works with' th Ipeculiar zest of an historical artist.

We cannot presume positively to assert at this stag', of the inquiry that Tacitus and Suetonius ante-date'

the use of the name Ohristiani from the reign 0Trajan into that of Nero,! but only that both at thelater and earlier epoch the name was a vulgar desig-nation of a faction on whose lips, whether they usedGreek or Latin, the name (Jhristus or Okrestus wasfrequently sounded, and who connected with thatname a superstitio novel and of deadly tendency inrelation to the order and stability of the empire. I

We pass upward from the reign of Nero to that 'ofClaudius (41-54). Here a brief notice of Suetoniusinforms us that the Jews, incessantly rioting under theimpulsion of Ohrestus (if such be the true reading),'were expelled from Rome. But Josephus has noreference to this matter; and Dion says that the Jewswere forbidden to meet together and practise theirrites, but that they could not be expelled because oftheir great numbers. Under this conflict of testimonylittle stress can be laid upon the passage in Suetonius.It iq not certain that he meant by the instigator of theriots the auctor nominis Okriltiani;l but if he did hemust have imagined him as a Roman Jew, and allthat can be safely inferred from his statement, if itshistorical character be not questioned, is that theMessianists and their preaching e~cited the jealousyof the Roman authorities, and called for the inter-ference of the police. It is known that about this

1 ~t is, from the mere language they employ.S Cf. Renan, L'..Antichrilt, 160, for the obscurity of the evidence.a Only one MS. has this form. Others, OkerutUll, &0.4 The word impullor implies continued action. H. Schiller, Guch.

d. Rom. Kaileruit. 1883, p. 447, note.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 9

~time the Clubs (ltetmriai, sodalitia, thiasoi, sy'1tOds,klinQ/I,) were suppressed both at Rome and at Alex-andria.1 And in that fact we may find a suggestivehint of the manner in which the order of the empirewas being undermined by forces which worked all themore dangerously in repression and in secret.

To resume the results of our inquiry up to thispoint: our two leading witnesses, such as they are,Tacitus and Suetonius, carry back their reminiscencesof the Ohristia""i to no earlier date than about 64,on the occasion of the fire at Rome. Their sufferings,as a sound historic criticism of the passages in questionshows, were the result, not of a religious persecution,but of a 'police prosecution. At the time of theirwriting our witnesses certainly knew that Ohristian"were in some sense distinct from Judan j but it by no'means follows that at Rome fifty years before, that dis-tinction was recognised outside the circle of Orientals.Tacitus in advanced life was probably aware that theB'Uptrstitio was of J udrean origin, and was also awarethat the fire in the time of his boyhood began in thequarter of the Orientals at Rome.2 It is thereforehighly probable that he connected these two facts inhis ~d, and transferred the Christian appellation byan anachronism to the year 64. And this conclusionbecomes almost a moral certainty when we examine ourother witnesses from the reigns of Trajan and of Hadrian.Plutarch, who was learned in Greek and Roman religion,touches on Jewish abstinence in food, and on the' mys-teries of the Hebrews,' S'but is silent as to Christians.

1 Tao. A. 14, 17; DioD C. 60. 8. On Judaism at Rome in general,cf. Baur,.Die CAriltJ,. KircM, 60; Hausrath, NtJ,. ZtgUCA. I. 84-

I H. Schiller, Nero, 435 11:a Sptpol. 4- 4- 4; of. S. I ; 6. 12; Tacit. H. S. S, 23; Levit. 23. 40.

10 ANTIQUA MATER.

Pausanias has some vague knowledge of the Jews, bu .is silent as to Christians, whether at Corinth or else-rwhere. Juvenal, amidst several striking pictures of'Jewish life and manners at Rome,l would certainlyhave introduced the Christians if their beliefs hadmade any noise in his time, but he too is silent aboutthem.2 Epictetus has but a single contemptuous refer-ence to the obstinacy of the C Galilmans ;' it is likean echo of Pliny's sentiment. Pliny himself is as-sumed, as we have seen, to have been in sore need ofa precedent for dealing with the Christians; how couldhe have been ignorant of precedents,S had cognitiunaconcerning their religious opinions been held, when hewas prretor, or before 1 And how can the silence ofa man in high place like Seneca, Nero's minister, aboutChristians, be explained, if they had made any im-pression on the social and public life of Rome 1

It is just conceivable that theirs was a secret exist-ence, and that they were secretly leavening the massof Jews amongst whom they were lost to the Romaneye. But we wait for clearer and more abundantdateable evidence from subterranean Rome than baayet been supplied to the historical.stu~ent! Nor untilwe have ascertained the phrenom~na of the daylight,as described by contemporary witnesses, should weamuse our fancy with speculations upon burial clubs(collegia funeraticia) and their supposed analogy to thefirst Christian communities.1i

As the question at present stands, it cannot be too

1 Satt. I. 155 ; 3. 13 ; 6. 390, S42; 14- 97.2 Cf. Merivale, Hut. of Roman" 6. 277.a Cf. his boasts of experience in Ep. I. 20.4 The oldest Christian inscription is said to date from 71 A.D. De

Rossi, [""cr., I ft'. This is doubtfulI H. Schiller, Oe,c1&. d. Rom. Kailerzeit, 448.

~," 1

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. Il

firmly stated, that the Christians as a distinct religiouscommunity, Christianity as a religion distinct fromJudaism and from Paganism, stand out to the gaze of

, the world for 'the first time in the second decade ofUle second centliry. And for this conclusion we havebut two doubtful texts.

What was then known by Romans of "the author-ship of the Christian name? The answer runs inTacitus' words: A.uctor nominis ejus Oh'Jistus Tiberioimperitante per procuratore1n Pontium Pilatum supplicioaffectus erat.1

The statement as to the 'authorship' is vague, becausethere is no other evidence to show that in the earliesttime Christ gave this name to His followers, or thatthey adopted it for themselves.2 Setting aside theNew Testament, there is evidence that the earliestCatholic Christians loved to call themselves, even asthe Hellenist Jews of Alexandria, by such names asHagioi and Eklektoi, and Brethren; and where thename Christianos appears, it is in some connectionwhich hints that the new people are accommodatingthenlSelves to it, as the characteristic name alonerecognised of their profession in the Roman world.In the IJidachf! (Doctrina .Apostolorum),S the nameonly once occurs, and then with a kind of slur, as ifthe reproach of inertness had fastened on the ' Chris-tians J in the midst of a poor and hard-working com-munity. , This part of the tract, according to theaverage opinion of critics, belongs to the later half ofthe second century. Justin Martyr, writing during

1 AJlA. 1S. 44.t The name is probably of Roman origin, like Herodianoi, and was

originally BOunded Chrt!stiani, nay, was still 80 pronounced in Lac-tantiua' time.

12. 4- 'Il'pO "O*,"ClTt, 'l"Wf p.-I] d.nof p.e8' up.w" .t~CTeTctL xpLaTLctJlOs.

12 AXTIQUA KATER.

the same period, plays upon the name, and endeavo11lSlto make some capital out of thg resemblance in soundof xpUTTl.aJlo; to xp'P'Tt.aJloi.1 Apparently he recogniseSno earlier name of the people whose cause he hasundertaken to defend. He charges the Jews with .having' chosen out select men' (a~par aASCToW) andbaving sent them forth from Jerusalem into the wholeworld to declare that a godless lImresis (alp 0.801') ofClLriatia'TIA had arisen; and that this was said by allwho were not acquainted with the (}kristW/M.1

This statement is illustrated later by Tertullian S andby Eusebius! The Apostles of the Sanhedrin, fur-nished with epistles or encyclic letters, went, it is said,everywhere through the world, denouncing the teach-ing of Christ as a new and godless heresy. c Apostles,' .in Jewish definition, were still, in Eusebius' time andlater, those who were supplied with such encyclicletters from 'the Rulers.'

At what time were these Jewish missionaries sentforth by the Sanhedrin? Neither Justin Martyr norEusebius fix the date: the former says it was 'afterthe resulTection and ascension was known to the Jews; Jthe latter says merely that he had found the statementin the 'writings of the ancients,' but mentions noepoch.'

But here Jewish scholars, students of the Talmud,1 3tTfW 'Yt iK 'ToO Ka.'T'lfYOpovphov .qJl- dJl6JU1.'TOf, 'XP"PTlYra.'TOl. iJr6.pxop,o

.Jpol. L 4. . 2 Dial. c. Trypk. 17 j cf. 108, 117- .Ad NQ/,ion. I. 14; Ad",. Marc. 3. 23; .Adf1. Jtul. 13; Apol. 16-4 Euaeb. in Ju. xviii. I, p. 424; Epipb. H. I. 2. 4; cf. Graetz, 4-

304, 476.I It fa not proved by Justin's statements, nor by those of later writers,

that the Jewish heretics (Minim or Nazarenes) of 80-100 were thespiritual progenitors of the Ohri6tiam. The Gnostics, 88 we .hall _later, were not only the great Anti-nomians, but the great; Anti.Dationaliatl from the beginning of Hadrian'. reign.

I,

I

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 13

come forward to assure us that no division respectingthe Messianic queStion or the Law so irreconcilable asthat above indicated, occurred in the Jewish camp; nofatal quarrel, no C rent in the family table-cloth,' untilthe time of, Trajan.1 Here we have (according to Joel)a date sufficiently precise, the cessation of the feast-day called CJom Trajanus' by the J ews.1 Thisevidence we are bound to respect and receive, until itbe convincingly rebutted. And thus we are broughtto the same historic result as before. The epoch atwhich the C godless Heresy' of the Christians or theirprecursors is revealed to the view of the J amniaSanhedrin is a little earlier than the epoch at whichthe same movement presents itself as a novel, extra-vagant, and mischievous superstitio to the observationof Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius. The seed-bed of thenew religion is to be found in the spiritual conditionsof the world, especially in Syria and Asia Minor, atthe close of the first and the beginning of the secondcentury of our era.

But now it must follow that if the name of the newpeople was not an object of public knowledge untilthat epoch, neither could a historic founder have beenthe object of public knowledge before that epoch, whobore the proper name C Christus.' For in l'acitus thisis a proper name. He does not think of the Auct~ras an ideal being, both human and divine, like anAsklepios, the' auctor of the Asklepiads, or other

1 Graetz, OucA. d. JudeA, 4. 104 fl. Joel, Bliclce, I. 14 fl., 2. 87 fl.Derenbourg, Ai, 408, 422.

I A.gaiDat Joel's view that Christianity was at first a Jewish nationalmovement, lee Oort, TMoL Tijd"ch., 1883, p. 509. He admits, however,that the diaension between the orthodox Jews and the heretics whoclaimed freedom in the interpretAtion of the Law dates from GamalielIL, ~117: See Addenda, I.

14 ANTIQUA KATER..

eponymous founders, but 6imp~y as a man who hadsuffered, through the agency of the Roman procurator,in Tiberius' reign. He ignores the name Jesus; and tyet surely had any authentic records of Pilate's pro..ceedings existed among the Roman archives, theAuctor would have been described as Jesus, who wascalled Christ or King of the Jews. The title wouldnot have been given as the proper name. But thereis no proof, as is well known, that any genuine ' Acts ofPilate' ever existed.l Whence then did Tacitus derivehis information ? Was he acquainted with J osephnBpersonally or with his Antiquities 1 Either he hadseen the passage in that work relating to the goodman who had suffered under Pilate, or he had not. Ifhe had seen it, he must have known that His namewas Jesus, or must have rejected the passage asspurious. If he had not seen it, he must have in-formed himself from some other source, Jewish orChristian. An anti-Christian Jew would not havegiven him Christus as the proper name of the Auctor,for this was to ignore the titular use of the word.Tacitus' source then was probably Christian.! In anycase, his omission 'of the name Jesus shows howdistant and inaccurate was his view of the fact of thedeath of the Founder, as compared with the represen-tations in our Gospels.

1 Cf. on the Gula, Pilati or Gospel of Nicodemus, BupernatuNl Rtlig.(6th eeL 1875, I. 32 5, 338).

I Since writing the above, and after much consideration and recon-8ideration, we are constrained to express a strong doubt as to thegenuinen888 of the passages in Pliny and Tacitus. Wbetherderived fromChriatiani, or Christian interpolations, their value as evidence is muchthe 8aD1e. Dr. A. Pierson, DU Bergrede, 87 fl., thinks these accounteinterpolationa. The student should consider above all whence and atwhat time the &elf-damning boast ChriMiGn1l8 'tim I is said to baveariIeD.

~, THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. IS: It is most disconcerting to our prepossessionswhenfor the first time we realise that the all-stupendousEvent of the Passion, on which Christendom has forso many ages fixed its devout gaze, has for its realityas distinct from its ideality no earlier literary evidencethan the bald statement of one so little exact in hisinformation as Tacitus. Had he read our Gospels, oreven been acquainted with the conciliatory tempermanifested in them towards the Romans, he couldnever have denounced the Christians in the terms hehas used. Yet were those details of the Passion inthe Gospel causing multitudes of hearts to vibrate all

.. around him when he wrote, and he wholly ignorant ofthem? We cannot but remind ourselves in passingthat the date of the New Testament books is the greatque"stion really sub judice in such inquiries.. Omitting those books, we inquire what particularswere known to the world concerning the life and deathof the ' Auctor,' at the beginning of the second cen-'tury ? The loss of the books of Tacitus referring tothe period after 29 is lamentable and irreparable,and excites suspicion no less than regret. How-ever, there is no reason to suppose that they con-tained any ampler account of Christian origins thanthat which lies before us in his later page. Possibly,in those lost Annals he c traced, in a few burningtouches, the fierce unyielding character of that mar-vellous people to whom, as the surest of humandepositaries, were committed the oracles of God;' andgave more particular details concerning C the false andoffensive statements regarding the origin of the in-truders from Palestine, which circulated among theirenemies, and which, as we discover from the allusionof Tacitus himself at a later period, were accepted by

16 ANTIQUA MATER.

the Romans with the prone credulity of, nation~exasperation.' 1 It is our Jewish brethren wh~must most keenly feel that literary and historic~10ss.2

But to return to the passage in the Annals (xv. 44~It is the part of the historical student to. discovardates if possible, but not to invent them. After all.the labours of chronologists, the year of the Passionremains unknown, and the date of the birth of J esus.1The conjectural dates assign~d to the Crucifixion vary,ranging from 27 to 33. The statement of Tacitus isno more than the statement of the C Apostles' Creed,'concerning the Founder. C He suffered under PontiusPilate.' And this statement dates from nearly threehuman generations after the presumed event~ .

Jewish sources (we may hardly cite the question..able passage in Josephus as evidence) contain none ofthose events which are supposed during 30-70 tohave agitated the Orient. At the latter date, as wehave seen, an expectation of something. ,great fromthe Orient prevailed. From the year 80 only, asTalmudists assure us," is there evidence of disputes inthe interior of Judaism with the Minim 6 and De-nunciants, as the heretics and apostates were called.At the end of another generation, in the reign of

1 Merivale, HiBt. of the RcYIIUJ/u, 5. 414-2 Cf. Joel, BUcke, 2. 96.I V. Clinton, PtUti Ro., and the works of Sanclemente, Ideler, and

A. W. Zumpt (1869) ; H. Schiller, OeBch. d. RlJm. Kailtrze;", 1883, p.460; Merivale BiBt. o/the Roma,m, v. 351.

4 Cf. Loman. Theol. TijdBchr., 1882. Joel, Blic1ce, I. 30; Graetz, Oesch. d. J 'Uden, 4-e Joel would explain this as =01 'I1'Lnol, which is doubtful Jerome

identifies (Ep. a,d, Aug.) the Mina!i with Nazarei as Jewish hereticaof the Eastern Synagogues of his time. The word Christian is anathema-tised as Nazarene. lb. c. s; v. 18. Toland, Naza,renu,8, c. viii. ; SeIdell,de 81JneM. I. 8.

,. ,".,)

.;.. , : THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 17

.Trajan, these controversies reached their acme. TheSanhedrists forbade the instruction of the youth inGreek, and officially opposed the new translation ofthe Scriptures by Aquila to the Septuagint, whichthey considered to be a garbled version; and theirApostles went forth through the Diaspora upon theirerrand ot warning and of repression. Thus again weretum to the time when Tacitus was listening fromIris study window to the ominous sounds which wereheginning to fill the air. A sect was being everywherespoken against, was bringing bitter discord into thebosom of Jewish households, because of its attacksupon the Law and the Temple, was becoming theobject of official prosecution at the hands of thel:om8DS. The peQuliar and essential dogmas of a sectare never sharply defined, until it is attacked and itsexistence threatened. In the case of the Jews andthe Denunciants the strongest causes of antipathybetween men and men were at work; for the fate ofJudaism itself, its national customs with that simpleand sublime Theology on which those customs werebased, was at stake. The controversy was embitteredby the fact that both parties appealed to the samesacred Scripture, and used the like weapons of contro-versial exegesis.1 The Romans, on the other hand,faced the new Power with a weakened religious con-science; and perhaps dimly perceived in the spiritualHead of the Christians a rival to the emperor.

So far we have reached a negative result, but oneof great importance. There is no reference in theliterature of the first century to (Jhristiani at allAnd of the literature of the earlier years of the second

cen~ury, the .only historical or quasi-historical passage,J Joel, Blicke, 2. 48 fl. ; Oort, u...

B

18 ANTIQUA MATER.

that in Tacitus, yields no proof that the Christi.existed as a religious sect distinct from the Jews; CIhad been exposed to religious persecution in the timeof Nero, or at any time before the reign of Traja.The so-called persecution under Nero was but a con-tinuation of 'the measures taken against Orientals undeiTiberius and Claudius.l .

Nor have we a single notice of the Founder of the(Jhristiani, or their supposed Founder, until the sameepoch. His proper name was unknown to the Romans;and there is no dateable repetition of the statementby the Roman writer that he suffered under PontiusPilate, until it is met with again in the writings ofthe Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, c. 147. Butthe Simonians, and other sects of Gnostic ChriBtio/",~were before Justin. If we can trust his statement(repeated by Irenreus) that their legendary head, SimonMagus of Gitton in Samaria, flourished in honour atRome so early as the time of Claudius, then Gnosticmysteries, magic, and theosophy,-a system first de-veloped in Samaria byteachers imbued with Alexandrianor Platonic wisdom, and which thence spread throughSyria and Asia Minor to the shores of the Euxine,- Iwas the real beginning of the Christian revolution.The Gnostics appear to have had from the first atradition of a crucifixion of Jesus, though they deniedthat their Ckristus, a spiritual and impassible being,could be subject either to birth or death. This novelcultus was that which Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetoniuscorrectly described, from a Roman standpoint, not as 8Mos, but a Superstitio, the introduction of the worshipof a new god. ,.

And now we take the unusual course of t~g. .1 Of. SchillerJ Guck. d. Rom. Kailerzeit, 449.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. l' 19

back upon ourselves and criticising our own arguments.The k~dly reader will not accuse us of C recklessness'in our treatment of the much-disputed passages inPliny and Tacitus. We have endeavoured, on theassumption of their genuineness, to ascertain theirpurport; but must now remark that these texts cannotbe made to yield anything certain or even probable,in point of historical information. And so far we

. will anticipate, and say, as the result of our wholeinquiry, that the notion of a C name J and the C con-fession' apart from any other guilt as punishableby the Roman government, seems an absurdity onthe face of it. Further, that the original namescurrent with the Greek and Roman vulgar were(Jkrestiarwi, (Jhrestus, connected with the use of thewords TO XP7JUTOJl, XP7JUTO~, XP7J(TTOT11~; and that theassumption of the form Ohristianoi, with the clumsy andself-betraying attempts to explain it as connected withthe wnction of Christians, or with the Jewish Messiah.,were part of that great usurpation of Old Testamentantiquity which began, on the part of the 'greatchurch,' in the latter half of the second century.l

1 The embarrassed attempts of the Fatbers to explain tbe nameCbrestiani, or Cbristiani, are remarkable. Cf. Jerome on 'XP'ItfT6rtJr inGal v. 22. Those wbo have believed on Christ are "XP'1fTToL' Thequestion ari.,. :whether Oh,-e6I,o" as name of the Auctor, the ' Good ' or'Bleued One' (like MClKc!pLOf). was not earlier than Christos,-anepithet of tbe 'good God' believed by the Gnostics.-Chrestos: aReligious Epithet. By J. B. Mitchell, M.D., 18So.

( 20 )

CHAPTER IT.

REFEREXCES TO THE JEWS L'i THE ROHAN LITERATUUOIr THK SECOND CDTURY.

BUT now, that we may have a distincter view of thelimits of Roman knowledge of the sources of our reli-gion at the era beginning with Trajan, let us cast arapid glance at those pictures of Jewish life in Romewhich we find in the Satires of Juvenal, and else-where.

From 63 B.C., when Judrea was subdued by Pompey,and many Jews were carried to Rome as slaves~ wemay date a quiet but considerable influence exerted bythem in the affairs of the city.1 Their numbers, theirconcord amongst themselves, and their influence inpublic meetings, are dwelt upon by Cicero in his orationfor Flaccus, delivered in B.C. 59.2 On the other handthere must have been counter influences at work uponthem in their exile from Jerusalem, which tended torelax the strictness of their religious practice and oftheir principles.8 After 35 B.C., when Sosius had taken

1 From this period dates the Messianic PMilter of 8olomo'A. Eder-Iheim, Life of JtlU', I. 31 I. 74; CkriBtol Kyriol, Ps. 17- 36. Of.Lament. Jer. 4- 20, LXX.

2 Cf. Tacit. Ann. 2. 8S; Philo. Leg. ad Oai., 2. 568. On the POAIJud(B()'Mllf1l" Graetz, 3. 142, ed. 2, cites Basnage, Hi,t. au Juif'. 4. 1047;Frankt'l, Mcma,Uchr., Jahrg. J. 437.

a Vide the tractat. Pesachim, 53a, 6a, 70b., cited by Graetz, u. Ie

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 21

Jerusalem, the number of Jews in Rome must haveincreased In the quarter called the Vicns Tuscus wefind them settled in the time of Horace; and in theengaging companionship of the poet and his friend, theInan of letters, Aristius Fuscus, we may gaze upon aSabbath Bcene similar, perhaps, to that which presentsitself in the Ghetto at the present day.l Horace termsthe holiday the 'thirtieth Sabbath,' thus evincing buta confused acquaintance with Jewish customs. Yet itis remarkable that he should, even in jest, representhis friend as C one of many' who had scruples aboutoffending the curti Judmi by disregard of the sacredday. In another satire he alludes to their cogent zealin controversy; they prevailed by turbulence and num-bers;2 and in another he has a sketch of a superstitiousmother who vows that her sick boy, if he recovers,shall on the fast-day (probably the Monday or Thursdayfast of the Pharisees) stand naked in the Tiber. Inanother place he alludes to the superstitious credulityof the Jew Apella, probably a freedman. Horace him-self is not impressed by respect for the people;8 yet 'wemay well suppose that there were many, even amongeducated Romans, who were struck by their disdainfulattitude toward the pagan deities, and by their unbend-ing character amidst the spiritual decrepitude whichprevailed.

A letter or Augustus (in Suetonius) makes a con-fused allusion to Ii sa1Jbatis jejunium of the Jews;6 and

18at. I. 9. 70; cf. Dernburg, Dle lnatitutionem du Gai'IU, 1869, p. 18.I Sat I. 4- 142; d. Friedlind9r, Da.rateU. iii. 509I B. Bauer, however, somewhat fancifully finds hiB co"wnion in Oar.

J34-4 Gens contumelia numinum insigniL-Plin. N. H. 13. 4 (9), 46 Octav. 76; cf. 93, and Justin, 36. 2. The Day of Atonement is

perbape meant, Levit. 16. 31 ; Joel, Blic1ct, 2. 133.

22 ANTIQUA MATER.

it seems questionable whether either Suetonius orTacitus, or Seneca drew always clear distinctions be-tween Egyptian rites of Isis and those of the J eW8 :the phrase 'that superstition' covers them both. Theywere in common suppressed by a senatus COnsultUlll, in tthe reign of Tiberius, and the sacred utensils andvessels were burned. Jewish freedmen to the numberof 4000 were enlisted in the army and transportedto Sardinia and other unhealthy regions; whilethose who continued their 'profane rites J werethreatened with expulsion from Italy by a fixeddate (A.D. 19).1

In the East, although Syria and J udrea were weariedwith their burdens, and had prayed for the remissionof the tribute (A.D. 17),2 there was, says Tacitus, 'restunder Tiberius;' 8 and he makes no allusion in thishis earlier historical work to Christ or His followers,about whom Philo is also silent. Josephus has thesuspect passage.'

The accession of Gaius (Caligula), and the attemptto set up his effigy in the temple, provoked the peopleto arms; the commotion ceased with the emperor'sdeath. And one cannot but demand, if the sect sup-posed to have lived in amity with the Romans duringthe previous reign were increasing in J udrea in thetime of Gaius, what part did they take in this com-motion, and where is the record of it 1 The testimonyof Tacitus has been destroyed, and the resentment ofthe Hagioj against the worship of the emperor has

1 Tacit. Ann. 2. 8S; Suet. Tib.36. Cf. Senec. Ep. loS; Philo, lAg. adOai. 24; Joseph. Ant. 18. 3 S.

2 Tacit. Ann. 2. 42. 3 Hilt. S. 9-4 Ant. 18. 3. J. For the discussion of it recently, cf. G. Volkmar,

JeBu, Na,za,renUl, 1882; J. H. Scholten, Thed. TijdBCk,., 1882; B.Bauer, ClwUtUl, 8.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 23

possibly found expression in tIle undated C Wisdomof Solomon,' as well as in Josephus and Philo.

When the broken narrative of Tacitus is resumedin Claudius' reign, there comes before us the figure ofAntonius Felix (A. 12. 54), whom he had painted inthe Histories in strong contrasted colours as a man whowielded the power of a monarch in the spirit of a slave,a man cruel and vicious to the last degree. He musthave tyrannic;ed in Judrea for many years; but Tacitusis silent as to any religious disputes which might havecome before him, while he notices the guerilla warfarewhich went on between the Galilreans under VentidiusCumanus, and the Samaritans under Felix, and theintervention of Quadratus, governor of Syria (A.D. 52).He knows of no stream of Ohristiani, nor any apostleof their creed passing Romewards.1

To revert to Rome. Already we have seen thatthe Jewish riots at Rome a year or two before (c. 48)cannot, by any fair interpretation, be understood tollave had reference to Christians. Much more probablydistress or outrage was the cause, or most probably atoo great confidence in their numbers, and a desire toquell those hopes of sovereignty over Jerusalem andthe East, which dazzled the upper classes, and wereencouraged by mercenary astrologers.

But as to the distress and poverty of the Jews atthis period, the picture in Persius, drawn from thelife, stands before us en evidence,-the picture ofC Herod's Day.'!

In the reign of Nero, the city, according to Tacitus,J Cf. Joseph. .Ant. 20. 6 if. He names Simon a Mage in the

reign of Claudius, but makes him a Cypriote Jew, 20. 7. 2. Cf. theCypriote Mage, 'a Jew,' in Acts 13. 6 ft. The encounter seems ,a re-flection of that in chap. 8. (the two Simons)

.1 Sat. S. 180. Cf. Sen. Ep. 95 ; Juvena.l 3. 141 6. S4\'1.

24 . ANTIQUA MATER.

.., .

had become a sink of atrocity and shame. And whothat recalls the splendid commonplace (HO'fIUi sufi.,&c.) with which the world has been thrilled from theRoman stage; who that feels the realno les8 than thenominal nexus of ' humanity' with the Latin tongueand institutions, but must sympathise with the gene-rous dismay of enlightened Romans if they discoveredafter the fire that the city harboured vast numbers"vho hated Rome's noblest ideal? But how couldsuch a phrenomenon have escaped the notice of Juvenaland of Seneca? How is it that no particulars are

I given of the forms which this misanthropy assumed?If there is no 'substantial evidence' that Tacitus washere guilty of an anachronism, there is 'substantialevidence' that he had a very lax conception of theduties of a historian,l and no substantial evidence thata notice is correct and unconfused, which stands outisolated amidst the silence of his predecessors andcontemporaries.

Here the notices in J uvenal, who also wrote duringTrajan's reign, may be introduced.! He refers to thepunishment of the Tunica molesta in connection withattacks on Tigellinus, which was also the punishmentof incendiaries; so do Martial and Seneca; S but thereis not a word in either to connect this punishmentwith the Christiani.

Then we have the picture in Juvenal of the settle-ment of Jews-

"Quorum cophinus frenumque supellex,"in the grove Egeria, close to the Porta Capena, duringthe reign of Domitian. To this reign also belongs the

1 See NipperdE'y's Introduction to the Annall.I I. 155, 8. 235. a A'p. 14; De Ira, 3 3.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY.

notice in Suetonius 1 of the severity with which thePoll-tax was, levied upon the Jews through the empire,and of the outrages to which they were thereby sub-jected. Nor do our accounts of this period from writersof the third and fourth century establish that the Chris-tians were distinguished from Jews in the persecution ofthe latter. It is idle, when we are asking for evidenceon certain questions of fact, and when we have ascer':'tained that the evidence is small in amount anddubious or negative in effect, to insist that this orthat may have been known or may have occurred.}'or the Flavian period our pagan sources are silent as

-to Christians, and our late Christian witness, Eusebius,is a man who contradicts himself and cannot be trusted.2Writing in the reign of Constantine, he was naturallyeager to claim for the new religion the gentle world-wearied spirits of Domitian's time as confessors andmartyrs. They had much in common with the pureand peaceable spirit that we love to associate withChristianity, but to call them Christiani is an as-sumption and an anachronism. Once more the courseof our inquiry has brought us back to the reign ofTrajan and to the standpoint of J uvenal He, withTacitus, had a distinct knowledge of some of theexternal peculiarities of the Jews. He alludes toOriental kings observing the Sabbath feast, with barefeet; to the begging Jew at Rome who interprets thelaws of Jerusalem and the will of highest heaven; toJews who sell for a trifle whatever dreams you will;to those who adore naught but the clouds and thespirit of the sky, and who think that swine's flesh is

1 Dom. 12.t On the Flavian period and the influence of refined Judaism at

Rome in conjunction with ascetic Stoicism, see B. Bauer, Ch,1-iatu8 in. diet ala,em, 240 if.

26 AXTIQUA MATER.

of the same value with human flesh. He alludes tocircumcision, to the contempt of the Ro~an laws, tothe reverence for the Law handed down in a mysteriousvolume by Moses, which they have by heart. Hesays that they will not show the way except. to afellow-worshipper, and that they lead the circumcisedalone to the fountain sought; where, says a scholiast,they are baptized.

Tacitus,l after a legendary account of supposed Jew-ish migrations, tells us that Moses instituted newrites, contrary to those of other mortals. C Withthem all things that with us are sacred are profane;allowed among them those which with us are polluted.'He adds fables about the worship of the ass, and thecause of their abstinence from the swine and othermatters on which we need not dwell Amongst vari-ous calumnies he bears witness to their 'persistentgood faith, and their ready compassion amongst oneanother;' to all others they cherish the hatred ofenemies. It will be noticed how closely this corres-ponds to the account of the Ol~ristiani in the Annals.Tacitus goes on to speak of the lustfulness of the Jewe,sothat though they abstain from intercourse with strangerwomen, inter se nihil inlicitum,. of their separatenessfrom others, of the institution of circumcision, theobject of which is to distinguish them from others,and which is adopted by those who pass over to theirMos (transgressi in morem eorum), of the first prin-ciples in the instructions of these proselytes. To con-temn the gods, to lay aside patriotism, to hold parents,children, brothers cheap. They aim at the increase oftheir numbers. To slay a kinsman is forbidden; andthe souls of those who perish in battle or by the exe-

I 1Iilt. S. I ff.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 27

cutioner are believed to be eternal. Hence their loveof offspring and their contempt of death. They aredistinct with the Egyptians in their disposal of thedead, practising burial rather than cremation; theyhave the like belief concerning the infernal powers.As to the celestial powers, while the Egyptians wor-ship animals and effigies formed by art, the Jews be-lieve with the mind alone, and own one DivinePower; 1 think them profane who fashion after thelikeness of human beings and with perishable material,images 'of the gods; that supreme and eternal spirit,they say, can neither be imitated, nor be subject todestruction. Therefore they set up no simulacra in.their cities, much less their temples. Not to kings dothey render this flattery, nor this honour to Cresars.Some, continues the historian, have. thought, becausetheir priests sung to the flute and the drums andcrowned themselves with ivy, and because a goldenvine was found in the temple, that they worshippedFather Liber, the subjugator of the Orient.! But theinstitutes are widely different. Liber appointed festiveand joyous rites; but the Mos of the Jews is absurdand sordid.

Here Tacitus seems at his best, enjoying 'that pecu-liar power of characteristic remark in which he excelsfar more than in the accurate narration of distant facts.In his time Jewish writings were widely diffused;and it is probable enough that he had read the protestagainst the idolatry of the Gentiles in the Wisdomof Solomon.1 The calumnies which he repeated were,

1 "Mente BOla unumque Dumen intelligunt."I See this view in Plutarch, Symp. 6, referring as it seems to the use

of wine at the Feast of Tabernacles.J Chaps. 13. 14-

.ANTIQCA }lATER.

on the other band, doubtless derived from Greeksof. the type of Lysimachos and Apion. Still, it isobservable, be expresses only distaste for the" CwJ.tom" of the Jews j he does not brand their belief 88 adeadly superstitio. Nor does he make the slightestallusion to the Messianic hope. Incidentally he notelthe fact that the Jews made proselytes j and onother grounds it may be believed that they werenumerous, in the lower if not in the higher ranks ofsociety.

And now once more we return to the famous pas-sage in the .AfI/M18, which came late from the pen ofTacitus. Only by repeated glances at the horizon ofthis writer and his contemporaries, only by noticingthe light and shade, the eminences and the hollows ofthe scenery, 80 to speak, can we be fitted to give thecorrect importance to his testimony concerning theChristiani and ChristU& We hold that he could havemeant no more than that a new clasS of men, Messia-nists, followers of Messiah, whom he believed to bean individual, were then, in Trajan's time, about I 16,1making themselves felt in the empire; that the ~aarscoff-name Christiani then current, marked them offfrom the J'lJilari,; and that Tacitus transferred thename, on the ground of an identical hatred to man-kind, to the reign of Nero, and to the Messianistzealots who took part in the burning of Rome. Thewhole review tends to warn us against the illusion andfallacy of giving precise meanings upon terms v&cauelyused by our witnesses. The name Christianus ofitself conveyed nothing which an orthodox Jew might

1 Of. B. Bauer, (Jhridu, ck., ISJ. The criticisms of Gibbon,!rIerivale, Schiller, Keim, &CO, aJ.l show how impossible it is to findlUtorg in the puDg8.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY.

not accept, until it came to connote beliefs incompa-tible with reverence for the Law and the Temple audwith strict monotheism. And since it is the object ofour inquiry to trace the early history of beliefs whichinspired and consoled, in other words, to obtain if pos-sible a real definition of the contents of a creed antilife vaguely labelled by Romans Ohristian, it is wellto revert to the other and earlier names by which thenew people were recognised among one another, beforethe breach with Judaism was observed.

We have dis~ed of the solitary passage in Gree1\:and Roman writers of the second century wbich seemsto favour tb6 assumption that Christians as distinctfrom Jews were known and marked before the reignof Trajan. For the letters of Pliny and Trajan,externally unattested, unquoted by Justin Martyr (a8ilence that tells most gravely against them),! awaken,on internal grounds, dOllbts too serious and toonumerous in the historical student to be repressed.It is needless to press the point, because when it isonce realised how wanting in the external notes ofgenuineness those documents are, the band of anapologist becomes at once apparent, skilfully contrivingto represent the Christians in the most amiable lightto the Roman governor, the governor and the emperorin the most amiable light to the Christians~2 This isa ' subjective' reason for refusing to accept the lettersas evidence upon a point of chronology; for it is acontroversy which must turn upon subjective grounds

1 As to Tertullian, Apol. c. 2, it cannot be said that be "attests"these letters, &8 Bishop Lightfoot, ApOlt. Father" 2. I. 55, says. Onthe contrary, he speaks of Pliny as having degraded some of theCbristiana,-which is not in the letter.

S Anal( gously, Tertullian, -Apol. 21, makes Pilate a Christian 'inhis very coDecience.'

3 ANTIQUA MATER.

only. The simple truth is, that the MS. is non-extant,and that the letters were first published in Franceat the beginning of the sixteenth century.! Underthose conditions Tertullian must be regarded as thefirst witness, not to the letters before us, but to thefact of a letter relating Pliny's dealings with theChristians; 2 and in this witness there is little or nomore value than in that of Justin Martyr to non..extant ' Acts of Pilate,' the existence of which Ter..tullian also assumes. Writers who are so delighted withthe verisimilitude of the letters in question that theyrequire no further proof of their genuineness, certainlyexhibit a charming naivete; but they appear to forgetthat fictitious art is very poor unless it can give life-likeness to its creations; and that a romancer of evenmoderate genius was quite capable of framing apastiche of the kind from the slight data of a corres-pondence believed to have taken place between Plinyand Trajan, and which may actually have taken placein respect to Ohristiani. As the matter stands, theburden of proof rests upon those who maintain, no~upon those who doubt, the authenticity of the letter&in question, as they now stand.

The general silence of the classical writers isinfinitely more significant than the ambiguous voicesfrom which we have in vain sought to wring a certainmeaning. And if at this point we glance forward,

1 Bishop Lightfoot, Apo8t. Palterl, 2. I. 54 (1885), after asserting thatforgery is here' inconceivable,' says in the next sentence that it is 'ex..tremely improbable,' a curious anti-climax. If the reader has a clearnotion of what evidence is, the matter may be safely left to his judg-ment. Cf., however, in addition to Aube, BiBt. deB Per8ecutimu. 215 If.(1875); Havet, Le OhriBtianilme, 4- 42 5 (1884), whose critique seem.to us to be that of mere common sense; B. Bauer, OhrUtUB, 268.

2 Cf. Apol. 5. The expression about Christ as 'God,' also savoursoJ Tertulliau, .Jpol. C. 21.

THE EXTERNAL HIST.ORY. 31

from Tacitus to Lucian, over an interval of half acentury, the slight reference of the latter to the 'poorwretches' in Syria and Asia, the victims of impostorswho trade on their illusions, who still believe in theimpaled one of Palestine, is one of the most valuableindirect criticisms upon any accounts we have frombefore this time.!

1 We have allowed what we have written on the passage in theA ftnall of Tacitus to stand. But the evidence against its genuinenessseems overwhelming. I. Clement of Alexandria has not the pasMgeamong his collections from pagan writers. 2. Nor has Tertullian, whocites with an instructive comment the passage from the Hiltoriu, andwho roundly calls Tacitus a prating liar, Apolog. 16. 3. Sulpiciu8Severus, Hilt. Sacr. 2. 29 (0. 422, A.D.)-nomen et omen I-has adescription of the tortures of the Christians almost word for wordidentical with that in Tacitus. This was probably the source of theinterpolation. 4- Eusebius has not the passage in his miscellaneouscollection of 'evidences.' s. Our knowledge of the MS. depends onJ oh. de Spire, 1468, who dates that which he published at Venicefrom the eighth century only.

The manner also in which the reference to the (Jhri,tia",i and theirtortures under Nero is inserted amidst irrelevant matter in Suetonius,Nero,o. 16, betrays interpolation. Cf. c. 12, as evidence against thecharge of wanton cruelty on the part of the emperor.

.-.....

( 32 )

CHAPTER III.

CHRISTIAN SOURCES-JUSTIN 1tIARTYR.

JUSTIN is our earliest known or onomast witness fromamong those who bad accepted the designation (Jhristiani.1 His first Apology probably dates from aboutthe year 147, or some thirty years after the muchdiscussed passage of Tacitus. What the latter didnot know with respect to the nomen, we must look tofind supplied in Justin; for we know of no other dateddocument of the second century in which the nameoccurs.2

What has Justin to say of the rise of the Name?He says that Christiani are so named from their'Teacher who is the Son of the Father of all and LordGod, and His Apostle, Jesus Christ.' 8

Omitting the theological statement, we here learnfor the first time that the Teacher of the Christianswas J esllS, surnamed Christ, designated also Apo~tleof God.

What did Justin know of the life of Jesus ? Weomit for the present the theological and supernaturalstatements. He says that Joseph, the betrothed of

1 Cf. Supernate Relig., voll.S Bishop Lightfoot has begged a date for the Ignatian epistles (cf.

Hamack, Expo,itm, 1886) where the name occurs; as aI80 CAn,-tianismo,. 8 Apol. I. 12.

j

THE. EXTERNAL HISTORY. 33

Mary, who was known by him to be pregnant byanother, set out, at the time of the first census inJudrea under Cyrenius, from Nazareth where he lived,to Bethlehem, .because he was of the tribe of Judahby blood, and this tribe dwelt in the country of Beth-lehem. In an incoherent sentence Justin proceeds:'The child was born in Bethlehem, and since Josephhad no place in the village to lodge in, he took up hisquarters in a cave close to the village, and when theywere there, Mary brought forth the Christ and placedHim in a manger, where He was found by the magescoming from Arabia.' 1 The time of the birth wascIS 0 years before' that of Justin in writing the firstApology.! As the Apology is not dated, so neither isthe birth of Jesus.

Further, Justin says that Jesus was hid from othermen until He came to manhood; He was then believed .to be a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, Joseph. ..In fact, He made ploughs and yokes. He was baptized,and His baptism was attended by prodigies, which neednot here be related; because such witness is of nomore historical value than that of Livy to prodigieswhich occurred at about.an equal distance of time fromhis own during the second Punic war.

Christ had a brief and concise mode of teaching:He was not a sophist,8-as, it may be added, theauthor of the Apologia, whether consciously or un-consciously, was.

As we have seen, Justin agrees with Tacitus inasserting that the Author of Christianity was put todeath under Pontius Pilate; but we are ignorant of

1 Dial. c. T"7fPA. c. 78. Cf. .Apol. I. 3+ t .Apol. I. 46.I Lucian, in the Plilopleudu 16, refers to the Syrian BophiBt from

Palestine who exorcised demoDS.c

34 ANTIQUA MATER.

any genuine document from which the informationcould have been derived. After all discussion, thebare fact that Tacitus' work contains this statement,unconfirmed by his predecessors or contemporaries,about eighty years after the time of Pilate, is all thatremains. And since Tacitus knows no proper nameof the Founder, we must take his statement, iteratedby Justin, to prove no more than the existence of anidea or opinion in the mind of Tacitus that the Founderhad so suffered under Pilate. And in the absence offurther historical evidence, we must already come tothe probable conclusion that the belief of the Christiansin the middle of the second century rested upon afoundation purely Ideal. This is no hasty and rash con-clusion; though it is one which constrains every thought-ful mind to a long pause of silence and of reflection.

There is no need for us to tread over again groundso thickly marked and perhaps obscured by the foot-prints of modern scholars. There is good reason whywe should abstain from overloading our pages withreferences to their writings, and so lend any furthercountenance to the notion that no man is competentto form a judgment on these questions until he shallhave perused a whole library of learned letters. Thedata are few; the scope of the investigation is withinthe range of every clear-thinking person.

Justin cites certain 'Memorabilia of the Apostles.'The Memorabilia do not coincide on their contentsas a whole with any work that has come down to us;nor are' the Apostles' identifiable with any knownhistorical persons.! As we have seen, the termApostle (""ru) is of Jewish origin; 2 and the

1 Supernat. R"ligiOft. I.I In Greek Silu, which becomes a proper name in the logOl 01 the

, Aota of t~e ApostleL'

THE EXTER~AL ijISTORY. 3SMemorabilia are generally moral sayings, the likeof which, as may be gathered from other sources,constituted the doctrinal stock, in great part, of thewandering teachers of the Diaspora.

Neither in these Memorabilia, nor elsewhere inJustin, is any historical statement of the origin ofChristianity to be found. For the five generationswhich lie between him and the supposed ~ate of~ Jesus' birth-so far from their being any unbroken

claim of testimony to that or any event of Jesus' life-Justin, through all his laboured Apologia and IlisDialogue, has no individual nameable witness forthe historical reality of his assertions at all. Hissilence about Paul,1 when he had every reason to citehim in his anti-Judaistic reasonings, is a silence thatspeaks-a void that no iteration of unattested state-ments, no nebulous declamation, can ever fill. Justinis one of those men who, incapable of sound dialectic,imagines that others must be blind to the truth if theydo not start with the same ideal premises with him-self; and who is the very type of that kind of reasonerwho would persuade himself and others by mere in-cessant repetition of the same thing, over and overagain. His method can only be convincing to thosewho have been convinced beforehand. All this isinstructive, because it brings to light the process bywhich the popular mind has, since Justin's time, beenbrought into that fixed attitude of awful reverencetoward the Ideals of Christendom, which is commonly,but erroneously, confused with Belief in the 'factsof the Gospel.' The Ideals commend themselves as-

1 We can neither admit guesses as to the reason of his silence, norcorrespondences with 'Pauline' passages as evidence of anything, soIODg .. it ~maiD8unproved thAt the Pauline epistles are excepti.nsfrom the pseudepilraphic character of second cen~ury literature.

ANTIQUA MATER.

sublime and beautiful to common intuitions and feel-ings, and therefore as 'true,' in the sense in whichdreams are true, while they last. Here the tacitassumption creeps in that what is thus ideally c true'must have been historically , real '-an amiableassumption often, but which the slightest attentionto common experiences suffices to dispeL The idealtruth of painting or of poem teaches us nothing ofitself as to the reality of the persons, acts, andsufferings that may be there painted or described.All that the noblest work of art can accomplish i~ toset before us the likeness of life, in general forms ofintuition and modes of feeling-that life being eithernatural and open to common perception, or super-natural, and revealed only to the intuition of poeticphantasy. We may admire and love the representa-tion, but cannot be said to 'believe' it, without a con-fusing abuse of words. If we say, without evidence,that we believe the representation to be that ofhistoric fact, we simply mean that we prefer an easyacquiescence to a troublesome dispute.

Justin accepted tales afloat in his time concerningJesus on no evidence

'Worthy to warrant the large word-Belief.'!Still less can we.

What deprives Justin of all credit as a historian ofChristian origins, apart from his ignorance of sources,is the habit he has of inventing facts to correspond.with poetic ideals. This is the reverse of the scientificprocess, which seeks to ascertain the origin of poeticideals in the pathos with which human nature investsthe common facts of life and spiritual experience.

1 Robert Browning, Feri8htak'8 Fa,'fI,ciu, p. 18. The whole ~bleis full of point.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY. 37

Justin assumes the Hebrew prophetic Scriptures tobe anomatic-above all demonstration; an assump-tion which ignores the plastic quality of poetry, andthe- fluid nature of poetic thought. Such materialadmits still less than wax or clay of precise definitiop ;it may be shaped into any form, ,at the pleasure ofthe. exegete, as the famous allegorising fancies of Philohad shown. The nobler prophetic oracles of Israelcontain adumbrations of a Coming One, undefined asto the epoch, and the place (unless with one excep"tion) of his origin. Justin, assuming the authority ofthese oracles, assumes further that they must havebeen fulfilled in a precise manner, and further, thatthey must have been fulfilled about a century and ahalf before his time. .A. -prophet makes distinguished _lnention of Bethlehem in this relation; therefore theChrist Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem.And because in a passage of the same prophet, mis-translated by the Greeks, 'He shall dwell in a loftycave of a strong rock,' and misunderstood by Justinof the Messiah, a reference was supposed to acave,-Jesus niust have been born in a cave. Thisstory, which doubtless flattered Justin, owing toits resemblance to stories of the births of 1\fithrasor of Greek gods and heroes, by which he is somuch influenced, is repeated by subsequent writers.!It is found in two evangelia, 'apocryphal' socalled.! The difference, however, between C apocry-phal' and 'canonical' is to the' critical studentmerely ecclesiastical, as the ecclesiastical distinctionitself is founded on interested considerations. We are

1 Apol. I. 34; Tryph. 70.' 78; Origen c. Oell. i. 5I ; Micah s. 2;Isa. 33. 13 fl.

t ProtetJ. JaA. 18; Ev. In/ant. Arab. 2, 3 ; Hilt. JOB. 7; De Nativ.Mar. 14; Origen c. Oell. I. 51, Jerome to Sabinian.

ANTIQUA MATER.

entitled to assume that the idea of the cave birthplacewas the current idea in Justin's time, and that theomission of it belongs to a later epoch.1

Because Justin found in Ii Psalm the description,'They opened their mouth against me as a raginglion,' be thinks that this must have .been 'Herod,King of the Jews,' successor of that Herod whodestroyed the babes born near Bethlehem.' about thattime;' or els.e-the devil. (Justi~ is ignorant of thedistinctive name Antipas.) Similarly, the massacreof the babes is made to tally' with an oracle inJeremiah I about Ramah, connected in a fancifulmanner with one in Isaiah about Damascus andSamaria.s

The prophet speaks of his mystic child namedC Speed-spoil-Hasten-booty.' 'Before he shall ha~eknowledge to cry, My father and my mother, theriches of Damascus and the' spoil of Samaria shall becarried away before the king of Assyria.' Justinfinds this fulfilled in the coming of the 'Magi fromArabia' at the birth of 'our Christ.' The king ofAssyria stands for Herod, on the ground .of his wicked-ness. Samaria means the sinful power; Damascusthe seat of the wicked doomon who was to be over-come by Christ as soon as he was born,-it wasformeJ;ly in Arabia, though now in Syrophrenfcia.The Magi themselves are the spoils signified. Theyshowed by coming to Christ that they had revoltedfrom the dominion of the evil one in Damascus.Tertrillian, with amusing wit, makes use of the passagein a similar way against Marcion.'

Without commenting on the remarkable feat of1 Cf. Supernate Relig. I. 312a Isa.8. 4; Tryph. 78, 103.

t Jer. 31. IS. J. 13, cf. aafl. J"fi. 6.

THE, EXTERNAL HISTORY. 39

exegesis, we may remark, especially as Justin so fre-quently thrusts Greek parallels before us, that theidea of the dispossession of the evil power from his oldseat by the new-born god, strongly resembles thatof Apollo dispossessing the Pythian fiend from theManteion at Delphi. The' Magi from Arabia' havea close relation to the origin of the new religion; andSamaria and Syrophrenicia were among its earliestseats, as we believe subsequent inquiry will m~keprobable.

Who does not applaud the retort of the indignantTrypho, C The words of God are holy, but your inter-pretations are artificial, or rather blasphemous.' 1 Attimes, indeed, one is tempted to suppose that in puttingforth such nugatory stuft: Justin was indulging inelaborate irony against the sophistical interpretationof Scripture, of which Philo is the great master.Certain it is, that Trypho appears throughout in amore respectable light than his opponent. It is need-less to make an inventory of the passages in whichJustin begs or borrows his 8:Ssertions of fact from theimagery of the prophets. If his writings are not anelaborate piece of satire, then they are an elaboratepiece of sophistry.

~rypho says such interpretations are artful andblasphemous. It seems still impossible to determinewhether the hallucinations Justin seeks to propagateare shared by himself or not; for we know too littleof the author to form a correct impression of hischaracter.' He seems, however, to stand alone among.Christians of that early time in the exercise of this

1 f'ryp& 79-t It is difficult to believe in the sincerity of Tertullian, a man of

really vigoro1l8 understanding. We cannot shake off strong suspicionsas to the pDUmeDe&B of the 'Justin' we have before us.

peculiar craft, in which he has never, we believe, beenexcelled.

Perhaps a moment's attention will not be wasted onhis account of the death of Jesus, since this is thesolitary fact of which Tacitus was, or appears tohave been, cognisant. Justin speaks of Pilate 88Epitropo, in J udrea in the times of Tiberius Cmsar.1This is the proper Greek term for prOC'lJ,rator. Thefirst and third of our gospels employ the termHegemon for Pilate's title, which is also given toFelix and to Festus. Epitropos is never used fora procurator in the New Testament. Plainly, there-fore, Justin is not following our New Testament, bu'ordinary Greek usag