Part 15
In connexion with the passage in _Ant._, the very curious additional matter in the Slavonic version of the _Jewish War_ (edited with a German translation by Berendts, _v. supra_) must be briefly mentioned.
Of the eight passages the first three relate to the Baptist. (1) A description of “the savage” (_Wilder_) and his baptism, of his being brought before Archelaus and how Simon the Essene disputed with him; (2) his interpretation of a dream of Herod Philip; (3) his rebuke of Herod (Antipas) for marrying Herodias his brother Philip’s wife _after_ the latter’s death (“for thou dost not raise up seed to thy brother, but gratifyest thy fleshly lusts and committest adultery, since he has left four children”), and his abstinence, even from unleavened bread at the Passover season. Then follows (4) a description of Christ, beginning in the same way as our passage, “At that time there arose a man, if it is right to call him a man,” but with much greater detail: his miracles wrought by a mere word (this is twice repeated); the current belief that he was “the first lawgiver risen from the dead”; his resort to the Mount of Olives; his 150 disciples (_Knechten_); and how Pilate, whose dying wife he had healed, released him upon the first hearing, but was subsequently induced by a bribe of thirty talents from the Jews (a curious distortion of the Gospel story!) to deliver him to them for crucifixion. No. (5) tells of the persecution and dispersion of the early Christians, who were drawn from the lower classes, shoemakers and labourers; (6) of an additional inscription round the outer wall of the Holy Place (cp. _B.J._ V. 5. 2 [193 f.]), “Jesus did not reign as King; he was crucified by the Jews because he announced the destruction of the city and the desolation of the Temple”; (7) of the rending of the veil of the Temple and current views upon Christ’s resurrection, “Some report that he rose from the dead, others that he was stolen by his friends. I know not which are right ...”; (8) of the oracle concerning the world-ruler who was to come from Judæa (see § 50 in the translations), “Some understood that it referred to Herod, others to the crucified wonder-worker Jesus, others to Vespasian.”
The actual MSS containing these extraordinary passages are not earlier than the fifteenth century; the translation can be dated back to the thirteenth century at latest. The earlier history of the additions is lost in obscurity; they have left no trace in the extant Greek MSS. Berendts boldly maintains their authenticity, believing them to be fragments of the original Aramaic edition of the _Jewish War_ written for Syrian readers (§ 38), which were eliminated when the later Greek version, addressed to a wider and more critical circle, was produced. This daring theory has met with little support; but the origin of the passages remains a mystery, no final solution of which is possible pending the publication of a complete text from the Russian MSS. The remarkable facts about them are their _Jewish_ appearance, their independence (in part) of the Gospel narrative and the impression which they make of being derived from oral tradition. Parallels to a few of the statements (the bribery of Pilate, the healing “by a word”) occur in the Christian apocryphal _Epistle of Tiberius to Pilate_ (ed. M. R. James in _Texts and Studies_, vol. V. p. 78, 1899); compare also the apocryphal _Acts of Pilate_ (Tischendorf, _Evangelia Apocrypha_, Leipzig, 1853, p. 292), where Joseph of Arimathæa, addressing the body of Christ, uses the words “if it be right to call thee a man,” recalling the phrase common to the fourth Slavonic passage and the “testimony” in the _Antiquities_.
III. Note on § (29). THE FIRST HUSBAND OF HERODIAS
Josephus calls the injured husband simply Herod. The first two Gospels give him the name Philip (“Herodias his brother Philip’s wife,” Matt. xiv. 3, Mark vi. 17). The name stands in all the MSS in Mark; in Matthew it is omitted by the “Western text” (cod. D and Latin versions); in Luke (iii. 19) it is absent from all the best MSS and in those which insert it is undoubtedly an interpolation from the other Gospels. It is clear from Josephus that the first husband of Herodias was not Philip the Tetrarch, but his half-brother who paid the penalty for his mother’s complicity in a plot by having his name removed from Herod’s will, and lived as a private individual, apparently in Jerusalem (cf. _B.J._ I. 30. 7 [600]). Either then Herod the Great had two sons named Philip (1) by Mariamne II (daughter of Simon the High Priest), the husband of Herodias, and (2) by Cleopatra, Philip the Tetrarch, who married Salome the daughter of Herodias; or, more probably, the name Philip in the first two Gospels is a primitive error, due to confusion between the husband and the son-in-law of Herodias. That two sons should have borne the name Philip is improbable; no argument can be drawn from the appropriation of the dynastic or family name Herod by more than one member of the family. The omission of the name Philip by St. Luke, who shows special acquaintance with the Herodian court, is very significant. The confusion with Philip the Tetrarch appears elsewhere, notably in the eccentric account of the Baptist’s denunciation of the second marriage of Herodias in the Slavonic version of the _Jewish War_ (Note II above).
IV. Note on § (35). THEUDAS AND JUDAS
This passage has been often quoted as convincing proof that St. Luke had read the _Antiquities_ of Josephus, or at least the twentieth book. On this view the date of the _Acts_ must be brought down to the close of the first century. The Evangelist is at the same time accused of the grossest carelessness.
Gamaliel in his speech in the Sanhedrin adduces two instances of insurrectionary movements which came to nought in the chronological order: (1) Theudas, (2) Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 36 f.).
The date when Gamaliel is represented as speaking must have been some time in the early “thirties.” The revolt of Theudas, according to Josephus, occurred in the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus (about 44-46 A.D.), at least ten years later. The revolt of Judas in “the days of the enrolment” was in 6 A.D. Thus the events appear to have been transposed in the speech and one of them to have been still in the womb of the future!
The error, if it is one, is commonly explained as due to a cursory reading and inaccurate recollection on the part of the Evangelist of the passage in the _Antiquities_ which alludes to the fate first of Theudas and then of the _sons_ of Judas under the procuratorship of Tiberius Alexander (about 46-48 A.D.), the latter notice leading to a brief mention of their father. This view has been supported by Burkitt (_Gospel History and its transmission_, pp. 106 ff.), Krenkel (_Josephus and Lucas_), Schmiedel (art. in _Encycl. Bibl._) and many German commentators. It has been rejected, among others, by Schürer, Blass, Harnack (_Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels_, p. 115), Stanton (_Gospels as Historical Documents_, pt. II, p. 272), and most recently by Prof. C. C. Torrey (_Composition and date of Acts_, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1916). Cf. also an art. on “St. Luke and Josephus,” by the Rev. J. W. Hunkin, in the _Church Quarterly Review_ for April 1919, pp. 89-108.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there has been error on the part of some one responsible for putting the speech into the mouth of Gamaliel. The attempts which have been made to remove the apparent anachronism are unconvincing. Either an earlier unknown Theudas is postulated (but one would expect the person named by Gamaliel along with the notorious Judas to have been of sufficient importance to be mentioned by Josephus); or the mistake as to the date of Theudas is shifted to Josephus; or the name Theudas is regarded as a Christian interpolation in the _Antiquities_ (Blass).
But that the passage in _Acts_ is to be explained by a casual perusal of Josephus by St. Luke is highly improbable for the following reasons:—
(1) St. Luke gives the number of the followers of Theudas as “about four hundred”; Josephus writes “most of the common people.” Clearly St. Luke had access to some source other than Josephus.
(2) The carelessness attributed to St. Luke in the supposed use of Josephus is not what we should expect from the professions of the writer of the prologue to the third Gospel and from the handling of his sources in the earlier work.
(3) If there has been error, it is older than St. Luke and goes back to his authority. Torrey in the above-mentioned work seems to have proved conclusively that Acts i-xv is based on an Aramaic source, to which St. Luke was “singularly faithful.” “He disliked to alter, even slightly, the document in his hands, even where he believed its statements to be mistaken, and where he found himself obliged to contradict them” (p. 40). On the alleged use of Josephus in Acts v., after referring to the horror which must have been aroused in Judæa by the crucifixion of the _sons_ of the insurgent Judas, he adds: “Any history dealing with this period would have been pretty certain to mention Theudas and Judas at this point, and in this order, although the revolt under Judas really happened much earlier. From some history of the kind, in which the facts were not clearly stated, the author of Luke’s Aramaic source obtained his wrong impression of the order of events” (p. 71).
V. Note on § (45). THE BLOOD OF ZACHARIAS
This incident is of interest to the N.T. student because of the suggestion, made long ago and recently revived by Wellhausen, to identify the Zacharias of Josephus with the “Zachariah son of Barachiah” of Matt. xxiii. 35. “Son of Barachiah” is a well-known _crux_ in that passage, but, _pace_ Wellhausen, there is little or no doubt that our Lord there referred to the murder of Zechariah son of Jehoiada described in 2 Chron. xxiv. 19 ff.
The theory of Wellhausen and others evades the difficulty of an apparent confusion in Matthew between the pre-exilic prophet and the prophet of the Restoration, but introduces far greater difficulties. The text of Josephus just fails to supply the desired evidence. The name of the father of the Zacharias of Josephus _resembles_, but, it will be observed, only resembles, the Βαραχίας of the N.T. There is a variety of readings, but Βαρίσκαιος (LMmg) has the appearance of being what Josephus wrote or at least the nearest approximation in the MSS to the original name. Βάρεις of most MSS is a corruption of this. The reading “Baruch” (the nearest approach to “Barachias”) is doubtless a correction; it occurs only in cod. C which in other instances replaces an unfamiliar by a Biblical name (Niese, vol. VI, p. xxxix), and as an alternative to “Bariscæus” in cod. M.
Again, it may be urged in support of this theory that the two murders mentioned in Matthew are cited as the first and last of a series, and that as that of Abel was the first recorded in Biblical history, so that of Zachariah ben Bariscæus was the last outstanding murder of a Jew by his own countrymen before the Fall of Jerusalem, which is the culminating event in the mind of the Speaker in Matt. xxiii. The contemporaneous murder of Ananus is regarded by Josephus as the beginning of the end.
The obvious difficulty of this identification is that in the mouth of our Lord the words must be prophetical, whereas the past tense is used in both reports of the words (“whom ye _slew_,” Matt., “who _perished_,” Luke xi. 51).
The passage in Matthew and the parallel passage in Luke are both derived from an older source, an early collection of the Sayings of Jesus (commonly called “Q”); and behind that again apparently lies a still older source, an apocryphal Wisdom book from which Christ is quoting (“Therefore also said the Wisdom of God,” Luke xi. 49). Luke does not insert the words “son of Barachiah,” and it is therefore doubtful whether they stood in Q; Harnack (_Sayings of Jesus_, p. 104) concludes that they did not. But that they belong to the original text of the first Gospel and are not a later interpolation there seems no reason to doubt. If the error originated with the Evangelist himself, we may compare the rather similar confusion (“Jeremiah” for “Zechariah”) in Matt. xxvii. 9; if, as seems more probable, he has taken it over from Jewish tradition, it is natural to find such influence in this particular Gospel.
The three persons bearing the name of Zacharias who come primarily[431] into the question are:—
(1) Z. ben Jehoiada, murdered in the first Temple (2 Chron. xxiv.).
(2) Z. ben Berechiah ben Iddo, the prophet of the Restoration (Zech. i. 1).
(3) Z. ben Bariscæus, murdered in Herod’s Temple (Josephus).
There is every reason for identifying the Zacharias referred to by our Lord with the first of these, whether we look at the original text of Chronicles or at the Jewish Haggadah which grew up round it.
(i) With the words of Christ, or of the personified Wisdom in the work from which He quotes, “I send unto you prophets” (Luke “I will send unto them prophets”) compare 2 Chron. xxiv. 19, “Yet he sent prophets to them to bring them again unto the LORD.”
(ii) With St. Luke’s twice repeated “may (shall) be required of this generation” (xi. 50 f.) cp. the dying words of Zechariah, “The LORD look upon it and require it,” as also Abel’s blood “crying from the ground” (Gen. iv. 10).
(iii) Turning to Jewish tradition, we find that legend has been active in connexion with the murder in the Temple of a pre-exilic Zachariah who can be no other than the son of Jehoiada. And it is noteworthy that the two points dwelt on are just those which appear in the N.T. passage, viz. (_a_) the exact spot in the Temple where the murder occurred (cp. the precise localisation “between the sanctuary and the altar”) and (_b_) the crying out of the blood from the ground for vengeance, like that of Abel, and the terrible expiation required to still it. “R. Johanan said,” we read,[432] “‘Eighty thousand of the flower of the priesthood were slain on account of the blood of Zachariah.’ R. Judan asked R. Aha ‘Where did they kill Zachariah? In the Court of the Women or in the Court of Israel?’ He answered, ‘Neither in the Court of the Women nor in the Court of Israel, but in the Court of the Priests.’” The legend goes on to tell how the murder was rendered more heinous by being committed on a sabbath and that the Day of Atonement, and how Nebuzaradan when he entered the Temple saw the prophet’s blood welling up from the floor, and of the holocaust of priests which hardly availed to quench the stream.
(iv) Furthermore, there is evidence to show that the Rabbis, like the author of the first Gospel, confused or, disregarding chronology, identified the pre-exilic victim with Zechariah the prophet of the Restoration. The Targum on Lam. ii. 20 (“Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”) runs, “Is it also fit that they should slay a priest and prophet in the Temple of the Lord, as ye slew Zacharias _the son of Iddo_ ... in the house of the Sanctuary, on the day of Expiation?” (Lightfoot _l. c._). The Midrash (tr. Wünsche) interprets the same passage of Lam. of Zechariah son of Jehoiada.
(v) What is the intended series or line of which Zechariah is the last representative? Abel is naturally the first, but, chronologically, Z. ben Jehoiada was not the last prophet whose murder is recorded in the O.T.; Uriah (Jer. xxvi. 20 ff.) was later. The usual explanation that his murder stands last in the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible with Chronicles at the end is unsatisfactory; the books of the O.T. still circulated separately in the first century of our era. Moore’s answer is “It is not because the death of Z. was the last crime of the kind in Jewish history that it is named in the Gospel, but because it was in popular legend the typical example of the sacrilegious murder of a righteous man, a prophet of God, and of the appalling expiation God exacted for it.” But the identification of the victim with the prophet of the Restoration suggests another answer. Zechariah ben Berechiah _did_ in fact stand chronologically at the end of the prophets; as Josephus writes (§ 63), the succession failed after Artaxerxes (_i. e._ Ahasuerus). The context in Matthew relates to the _ancient_ prophets; the later generation that built the prophets’ tombs is set over against that of the forefathers who murdered them. That the final instance of such murder should be drawn from recent (to say nothing of future) history would be inappropriate. The son of Bariscæus was no prophet or priest and “as a layman would have no business in the part of the court between the temple and the altar” (Moore).
For the opposite view see Wellhausen _Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien_, ed. 2 (1911), pp. 118 ff. His main points are that Chronicles was a learned, not a popular, book and not likely to have been known to or quoted by Christ (but Christ is apparently quoting at second hand from one of those apocryphal books which were essentially popular), and that the rabbinical legend is in its origin unconnected with the story in Chronicles and really an echo (_Nachklang_) of the episode in Josephus, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans having here, as elsewhere, been confused with the earlier destruction by the Babylonians.
Footnote 431:
Tradition also connects Z. ben Jeberechiah (Isa. viii. 2) and Zacharias, father of John the Baptist, with the N.T. passage.
Footnote 432:
Translated from _T.J., Taanith_ iv. 5, by G. F. Moore in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol. xxvi. (1906), pp. 317 ff.; cf. Lightfoot _Horæ Hebraiacæ_ on Matt. _l. c._
VI. Note on § (50). PORTENTS AND ORACLES
With this passage should be compared the following allusions in Roman writers:—
Tacitus _Hist._ V. 13. “Portents had occurred; but that nation, at once a prey to superstition and an enemy of religious rites, regards it wrong to avert such omens by sacrifices or votive offerings. There were visions of armies joining battle in the heavens with armour glowing red,[433] and the Temple in an instant was all lit up with fire from the clouds. The doors of the sanctuary opened of a sudden and there was heard a voice of superhuman strength saying that the gods were departing, and at the same moment a mighty commotion of departing beings. Yet few saw a fearful meaning in these things. Many were firmly persuaded that their ancient priestly lore contained a prediction that at that very time the East was to wax strong and persons proceeding from Judæa were to become masters of the world. This enigmatic utterance had foretold of Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, with the usual ambition of humanity, read it as predicting this high destiny for themselves, and even disaster failed to bring home to them its true meaning.”
Suet. _Vesp._ 4. “An ancient and rooted belief had spread throughout the whole of the East that persons proceeding from Judæa were destined at that time to become masters of the world. The prophecy, as after events proved, had reference to the Roman Emperor, but the Jews appropriated it to themselves and plunged into revolt.”
For interesting discussions on Josephus and Tacitus and the (Messianic) prophecy the reader is referred to the articles by Norden and Corrsen mentioned at the head of Note II.
Footnote 433:
After Virg. _Æn._ VIII. 528 f.
VII. Note on § (63). THE TWENTY-TWO BOOKS OF SCRIPTURE
This passage is important in connexion with the history of the O.T. canon. The language of Josephus implies that the canon had long since been closed, the test of canonicity being antiquity. Nothing written later than Artaxerxes (_i. e._ Ahasuerus) has full credentials. The mention of Artaxerxes must refer to the book of Esther, which Josephus thus regards as the latest addition to the collection. The statement differs in some respects from what is believed to be the oldest Palestinian tradition, but there is no reason to doubt that the unnamed 22 books are other than those comprised in the modern Hebrew Bible.
(1) The _number 22_ as the total of the books of Scripture is here met with for the first time, but reappears as the dominant reckoning in early Eastern Church writers (Melito, Origen, etc.), who connect it with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As these writers were in touch with Palestinian tradition and Melito expressly states that he derived his information from the East (ap. Eus. _H.E._ IV. 26), it seems that this reckoning had the support of at least one section of the synagogue. The normal tradition, however, made the total 24, a number which first appears in a work almost contemporary with the _Contra Apionem_, 2 Esdras (or the Apocalypse of Ezra) xiv. 45 (Oriental text). The smaller number was reached by treating Ruth and Lamentations as supplements respectively to Judges and Jeremiah. The arrangement in 24 books possibly arose in Babylonia.[434]
It is uncertain which of these two reckonings is the older, but in favour of the priority of the number 24 it may be said that (i) the equation with the number of Hebrew letters is artificial and therefore likely to be late, although as Josephus does not allude to this it may be an after refinement; (ii) it is easier to understand the subsequent attachment of Ruth and Lamentations to prophetical books with which their contents or supposed authorship connected them than how, having once gained admission among the Prophets, they could afterwards be relegated to the lower category of “Writings,” in which they now stand.
A third and later arrangement names 27 books, a number arrived at by dividing the double books, while the parallelism with the Hebrew alphabet is retained by reckoning separately the “final” forms of those letters which possessed them. Jerome in his preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings shows acquaintance with all three systems.
(2) Josephus presents a _tripartite arrangement_ (5 + 13 + 4 books), but not the normal one (5 + 8 + 11: Law, Prophets, Writings). His third group is reduced to 4 by the transference to the “Prophets” of a number of books commonly included in the “Writings.” The normal arrangement, which reflects the stages in the formation of the canon and places, _e. g._, Daniel in the third group because of the late date at which it gained admission, is clearly the more ancient. Josephus as a Greek historian writing for Greek readers neglects this and follows the example of the translators of the Greek Bible in grouping all the historical and prophetical books together. A close parallel to his third class (“hymns to God and practical precepts for men”) may be found in the description of the sacred books of the Therapeutæ in Egypt in the _De Vita Contemplativa_ ascribed to Philo, “Laws and oracles delivered by prophets and _hymns and the other (works) by which knowledge and piety are promoted and perfected_” (ed. Conybeare p. 61).
(3) The _constituent books_ doubtless here, as with the Christian writers who name 22 as the total and enumerate the books (cp. Origen in Eus. _H.E._ VI. 25), coincide with the normal Hebrew canon. Dr. Ryle (_Canon of O.T._ p. 165 f.) concludes that the 13 books of the Prophets are probably (1) Joshua, (2) Judges + Ruth, (3) Sam., (4) Kings, (5) Chron., (6) Ezra + Nehemiah, (7) Esther, (8) Job, (9) Isaiah, (10) Jeremiah + Lamentations (11) Ezekiel, (12) Minor Prophets, (13) Daniel; while the group of four will comprise (1) Psalms with (2) Song of Songs, constituting the “hymns,” and (3) Proverbs with (4) Ecclesiastes, the “practical precepts.” The view of Grätz that Josephus omitted Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, as not having yet been admitted to the canon, has not met with acceptance.