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But how does the delinquent before us go to work, in his outrageous attempts upon the sacred text? One of the most impure stories connected with the worship of the most impure deities of Paganism is selected from Josephus; the gross and disgusting_narrative is then illustrated by the comments of two defaming Jews, in which the Virgin Mother is exhited in the character of a prostitute; and this mass of beastliness and blasphemy, by the most shameless arts of distortion and perversion, is given a semblance, which it naturally disclaims, to the facts detailed by the Holy Evangelists, relative to the conception and birth of our Saviour.

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We will not foul our pages with a repetition of the gross and disgusting recital which this blasphemous libeller has drawn out in detail. But as some specimen of the turpitude of heart with which his infamous libel has been constructed; as some justification of the strong language in which, giving way to the imperative demands of duty, we are compelled to hold it up to public abhorrence; we shall select one of the least offensive, but most apposite passages, and present it to our readers, in its author's words.

This shameless blasphemer, having confronted his witnesses, and having heard their testimony out, from which the vilest imagination can extract nothing related, even by the most distant allusion, to the peculiar doctrines of our faith; thus setting truth and decency alike at defiance, forces his own blundering meanings upon their reluctant words.

"In the room of the paragraph in which Josephus speaks of Christ, Josippon has inserted the following remark. "In the days of Tiberius Caesar, many impieties were perpetrated, not in Judea only; even in Rome the city of royalty, many impieties were perpetrated. The impieties here said to have prevailed in Judea and in Rome mean, according to the frequent use of the term, the practices of idolatry and fornication. The author therefore alluded to the doctrines of the divinity and miraculous birth of Jesus, which prevailed if not in Judea, in Rome and in other places. This allusion is certain." P. 106.

We refrain from the attempt to execute judgment in verbal castigation upon the outrageous offender who thus daringly insults the moral sense and religious feeling of society at large; and whose delinquency could alone receive its adequate remuneration from the secular arın. Leaving the correction of these enormities to those whom it may concern, to chastise the gross ignorance and still grosser dullness of the culprit, falls more im mediately within our province: and ours be the blame if it is not laid on with the full force of our arm.

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We pass over the barefaced substitution of allusion for fact, the senseless confusion of time, place, and circumstance, in the passage before us. Nor shall we more than incidentally mention the dulness or dexterity by which the city of Rome is taken for the land of Judea; the reign of Tiberius put for that of Augustus: and the perpetration of impieties taken as synonimous with the prevalence of doctrines. We shall do justice to our author's skill in languages by a dissection of his version of Josippon in due time. Our present concern is with Josephus, on whom the entire weight of sustaining the attack which is made upon the sacred scriptures ultimately devolves. His credibility as a witness against the Evangelists is rested upon the well-known passage of his antiquities, in which our Lord is declared to be the Christ who had been foretold by the prophets, and is admitted to have wrought miracles, and to have risen from the dead; from whence it is inferred that the Jewish historian was a decided and undisguised believer in the Gospel."

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Now let us grant the premises, and note well the consequences which ensue. The life of Josephus was written by himself, and dedicated to that primitive christian, the most noble Epaphroditus,' after the work in which this disputed passage occurs. It particularly specifies the changes which took place in his religious opinions; the author not merely stating that he was of the priestly order †, but that he had passed his probation through the three Jewish sects. Yet this circumstantial account expressly declares that quitting the Essenes he became and continued a Pharisees. In this character, he represents himself as acting under the direction of the Sanhedrim ||, and straining every nerve to sustain the authority of that council, which had procured the crucifixion of Christ, and exerted its small remains of power in persecuting and subverting his religion.

After receiving these impressions of Josephus's attachment to the name and religion of Christ, let us inspect the internal evidence of the work in which the disputed passage is inserted. So far is the author from admitting that our Lord was the Messiah foretold by the prophets, that he expressly denies that the

*Joseph. Antiq. Jud. Lib. XVIII. cap. iii. §. 3. Tom. I. p. 876.

+ Id. Vit. §. 15. Tom. II. p. 8.

Id. ibid. § 2. p. 2.

Id. ibid, conf. § 5. p. 3.

Id. Ibid. § 7. p. 3. § 12. p. 7. § 52. p. 25. § 65. p. 31.

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prophecies were accomplished which had been fulfilled in his person*. So far is he from applying to him the title of Christ, that he represents the term as merely associated by vulgar usage with his name . And in the spirit of hostility to his person ascribing the calamities which befel the Jewish nation to the cruelties inflicted on the deserving members of the commonwealth, he particularises one of the humblest of his followers, yet suppresses all mention of his merits and sufferings, while he expressly alludes to his name ‡.

So much for the confirmation which this passage derives from the internal evidence of the work in which it occurs. With respect to the external, it is remarkable that within the course of the first three centuries, Josephus is expressly quoted by Justin Martyr, St. Irenæus, Theophilus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Ter

* Id. Antiq. Jud. Lib. X. cap. x. § 4. p. 535.

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+ He thus incidentally speaks of our Lord in referring to St. James; Antiq. Jud. Lib. XX. cap. ix. §. 1. p. 976. tòv ådınçòr rỡ. Xeyouέva Xgisẽ. This is the confession which St. Matthew puts in the mouth of Pilate, Matt. xxvii. 22: and Justin Martyr ascribes to Trypho or Tarpho, the Jew; Just. Mart. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 249. b. The relative force of λeyóμevos Xpisós in the above extract, and of Xprès ros in the disputed passage, will be of course best ascertained from the observation of a native Greek on both phrases; S. Epiphan. adv. Hær. xxv. p. 80. c. à yàg 'Amósodes. φήσας· εἴπερ εἰσι λεγόμενοι Θεὸ ̓ ἐκ εἶναι τέτες ὑποφαίνει. ἐν τῷ γὰρ εἶπειν 4 λεγόμενοι, έδειξεν αὐτὲς ἐν τῷ λέγεσθαι μόνον εἶναι, μὴ ὄντας τῇ ὑποφάσει, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς τινῶν υπολήψεως. On the contrary, it is observed by a Greek historian; Sozom. Hist. Eccl. Lib. I. cap. i. P. 8. 1. 22. ἀξιόχρεως ἂν εἴη [ Ιώσηπος] μάρτυς τῆς περὶ Χρισὲ ἀληθείας. ἄνδρα μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀποκαλεῖν ὀκνεῖ—Χρισὸν δὲ περιφανῶς ὀνομάζει. Origen, it is apparent, received the directly contrary impression, from reading Josephus's account of Christ, vid. infr. p. 349. n. t. And St. Jerome was so forcibly struck with the impossibility of reconciling the two passages before us; of making the testimony borne to Christ agree with the declaration of Josephus; that he corrects the former by the latter; though he destroys the weight of Josephus's evidence by the alteration. S. Hier. Cat. Script. Eccl. in Joseph, Tom. I. p. 22. Scripsit autem [Josephus] de Domino in hunc modum. Eodem tempore fuit Jesus vir sapiens-et credebatur esse Christus." But Sophronius, who has translated St. Jerome into Greek, has restored the true reading. Vid. Fabric. Bibl. Script. Eccl. p. 69. ed. Hamb. 1718.

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Joseph. Antiq. Jud. Lib. XX. cap. ix. §. 1. p. 976.

tullian,

tullian, Minucius Felix, and Origen *; but not the smallest allusion is made to this extraordinary testimony to our Lord's miracles and resurrection; though the evidence of the author was received and appealed to, as the extraordinary concession of an enemy and a Jew. Nay Origen, in direct contradiction of its plain assertions, proclaims his total ignorance of its existence, by positively denying that Josephus had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ. In fine this stupid interpolation is not merely inserted in some copies of the "Jewish Antiquities," but in some also of the "Jewish Wart." For surely the truths which it tells so happily, however awkwardly or unseasonably introduced, cannot be too frequently told.

Such is the testimony of Josephus, the authenticity of which is now, by a curious involution of ingenuity, opposed to the spuriousness of the introductory chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke. And great as the difficulties may be conceived which oppose the discovery of another such authority, yet so supremely fortunate is our author in his researches, that of the only remaining two, on which he blunders, both carry the certificate of their illegitimacy branded in their front. From one of these passages, which he fathers upon St. Jerome §, he pro

*Tert. Apolog. cap. xix. p. 18. Clem. Alex. Strom. Lib. I. xxi. p. 409. Orig, contr. Cels. Lib. I. cap. xlvii. cap. 362. Conf. Joseph. Testim. ap. Haverc. Tom. I. p. 33.

p.

+ Orig. Com. in Matt. Tom. III. p. 463. c.—ws oλáßióv "Iwontov εἰρηκέναι κατὰ μῆνιν Θεῦ ταῦτα αὐτοῖς ἀπηνηκέναι, διὰ τὰ εἰς Ἰακώβον * τὸν ἀδελφὸν τῷ Ἰησὲ τὸ λεγομένε Χριςδ' ὑπ' αὐτῶν τετολμημένα. καὶ τὸ θαυμαςόν ἔτιν, ὅτι τὸν Ἰησῶν ἡμῶν ἐ καταδεξάμενος. εἶναι Χρισον, ἐδὲν *τλον Ἰακώβῳ δικαιοσύνην ἐμαρτύρησε τοσαύτην. In this passage, Origen clearly infers, that Josephus rejected Christ, on account of the epithet which he bestows on Him, while he eulogises the righteousness of his brother, and imputes the destruction of Jerusalem to a cause different from His death and sufferings. Yet our wise author, with this strong passage before his eyes, first convicts Origen of a falsehood, and then finds out, that he declares Josephus did not receive Jesus as the Christ,' because he believed him an Ebionite. P. 113. To form a just idea of the learning and ingenuity of this observation, we must compare Origen's definition of an Ebionite which precisely reverses this supposition; Orig. contr. Cels. Lib. II. cap. i. p. 385. c. Εβιωναῖοι-οἱ ἀπὸ Ιεδαίων τὸν Ἰησῶν ὡς Χρισὸν παραδεξάμενοι.

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In Cod. MS. Alex. Petav. ap. Haverc. ed. Joseph. Tom. II. p. 166. n d.

§ Vid. S. Hier. Epist. Tom. IX. p. 272. ed Vict. Tom. V. col. 443. ed. Bened.

ceeds

ceeds to point out, how the facts, out of which the contested chapters have been fabricated, were first moulded, under the form of two spurious Gospels, into Apocryphal Scripture. From the other, which he palms upon Origen *, he proceeds to disclose how the cheat was kept secret, which he ingeni ously imagines the orthodox thus played on themselves; until the origin of the facts which gave rise to the spurious scriptures being forgotten, the Apocryphal Gospels were finally manufactured into Canonical Text.

We shall make brief work with our author's very learned, and we make no doubt very ingenious hypothesis. A few of the testimonies which support the credit of the authority which he gratuitously bestows on St. Jerome, we subjoin in our margint. If they fail to do justice to his exquisite taste in the Latin Fathers; they will, we doubt not, fully evince the stability of the foundation on which his theory rests. To Origen himself we consign the task of proving, that his skill in the Greek Fathers is equal, if not superior, to his taste in the Latin. Of the passage of that author, which he quotes from a barbarous version, we annex the original; which was discovered in the Colbert and Royal library at Paris, by P. Simon, and is published in his Critical History of the Greek Text, and has been consequently restored by the Benedictine editors, to its proper place in his works t. On confronting it with the trans

* Vid. Orig. Hom. in Luc. Tom. III. p. 933. c. col. I.

+ Erasm. Tit. Tom. IV. Op. S. Hier. ed. Par. 1546. “In tertia [parte] lectu prorsus indigna, et impudenter attributa doctis viris." Præf. Gen. in Epist. Hier. [p. vii.] Tom. V. ed. Be ned. "In tertia similiter [parte sunt] quæ suos auctores ipsa præ se ferunt; sed quæ parum docta." Catal. Epist. Tom. IV. p. 143. "Cæterum in hoc catalogo nihil reperies quod non sit ex æquo indoctum, infans & impudens.-Adjecimus censuras," &c. Cens. Epist. Ib. col. 420. fol. 136. ed Erasm. Quid opus est in hoc argumentis uti, cum id totus sermonis insulsissimi character adeo palam præ se ferat.-Nunc auriculæ prominentes produnt asinum, & totus sermo clamitat indignum fuisse qui in Divi Hieronymi culina ministri locum teneret. Conf. col. 444. ed. Bened. fol. 143. ed. Erasm.

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† Orig. Hom. in Luc. Tom. III. p. 932. b. woλadı μèr av imexeiβησαν [εὐα[γέλια ανατάξασθαι] καὶ κατὰ Ματθίαν, καὶ ἄλλα πλείονα. τὰ δὲ τέταρα μόνα προκρίνει ἡ Θεῦ ἐκκλησία. ἐχ ἁπλῶς δὲ πεπιτευμένων ἀλλὰ πεπληροφορημένων τὸ ἀπαράβατον τοῖς λεγομένοις μαρτυρῶν. Comp. Si mon, Hist. Crit. des Comm. du N. T. ch. v. p 81. ed 1693. We add the authority cited by our author from the old Latin version; subjoining the clause which he has so industriously suppressed:

lation,

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