<h2 id="id00200">THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS</h2>
<p id="id00201" style="margin-top: 3em">In all historical matters, we cannot ask for more than a
<i>reasonable</i> assurance concerning any question. In fact, absolute
certainty in any branch of human knowledge, with the exception of
mathematics, perhaps, is impossible. We are finite beings, limited in
all our powers, and, hence, our conclusions are not only relative, but
they should ever be held subject to correction. When our law courts
send a man to the gallows, they can have no more than a reasonable
assurance that he is guilty; when they acquit him, they can have no
more than a reasonable assurance that he is innocent. Positive
assurance is unattainable. The dogmatist is the only one who claims to
possess absolute certainty. But his claim is no more than a groundless
assumption. When, therefore, we learn that Josephus, for instance, who
lived in the same country and about the same time as Jesus, and wrote
an extensive history of the men and events of his day and country,
does not mention Jesus, except by interpolation, which even a
Christian clergyman, Bishop Warburton, calls "a rank forgery, and a
very stupid one, too," we can be reasonably sure that no such Jesus as
is described in the New Testament, lived about the same time and in
the same country with Josephus.</p>
<p id="id00202">The failure of such a historian as Josephus to mention Jesus tends to
make the existence of Jesus at least reasonably doubtful.</p>
<p id="id00203">Few Christians now place any reliance upon the evidence from Josephus.
The early Fathers made this Jew admit that Jesus was the Son of God.
Of course, the admission was a forgery. De Quincey says the passage is
known to be "a forgery by all men not lunatics." Of one other supposed
reference in Josephus, Canon Farrar says: "This passage was early
tampered with by the Christians." The same writer says this of a third
passage: "Respecting the third passage in Josephus, the only question
is whether it be partly or entirely spurious." Lardner, the great
English theologian, was the first man to prove that Josephus was a
poor witness for Christ.</p>
<p id="id00204">In examining the evidence from profane writers we must remember that
the silence of one contemporary author is more important than the
supposed testimony of another. There was living in the same time with
Jesus a great Jewish scholar by the name of Philo. He was an
Alexandrian Jew, and he visited Jerusalem while Jesus was teaching and
working miracles in the holy city. Yet Philo in all his works never
once mentions Jesus. He does not seem to have heard of him. He could
not have helped mentioning him if he had really seen him or heard of
him. In one place in his works Philo is describing the difference
between two Jewish names, Hosea and Jesus. Jesus, he says, means
saviour of the people. What a fine opportunity for him to have added
that, at that very time, there was living in Jerusalem a saviour by
the name of Jesus, or one supposed to be, or claiming to be, a
saviour. He could not have helped mentioning Jesus if he had ever seen
or heard of him.</p>
<p id="id00205">We have elsewhere referred to the significant silence of the Pagan
historians and miscellaneous writers on the wonderful events narrated
in the New Testament. But a few remarks may be added here in
explanation of the supposed testimony of Tacitus.</p>
<p id="id00206">The quotation from Tacitus is an important one. That part of the
passage which concerns us is something like this:—"They have their
denomination from <i>Chrestus,</i> put to death as a criminal by Pontius
Pilate during the reign of Tiberius." I wish to say in the first place
that this passage is not in the <i>History</i> of Tacitus, known to the
ancients, but in his <i>Annals,</i> which is not quoted by any ancient
writer. The <i>Annals</i> of Tacitus were not known to be in existence
until the year 1468. An English writer, Mr. Ross, has undertaken, in
an interesting volume, to show that the <i>Annals</i> were forged by an
Italian, Bracciolini. I am not competent to say whether or not Mr.
Ross proves his point. But is it conceivable that the early Christians
would have ignored so valuable a testimony had they known of its
existence, and would they not have known of it had it really existed?
The Christian Fathers, who not only collected assiduously all that
they could use to establish the reality of Jesus—but who did not
hesitate even to forge passages, to invent documents, and also to
destroy the testimony of witnesses unfavorable to their cause—would
have certainly used the Tacitus passage had it been in existence in
their day. <i>Not one of the Christian Fathers</i> in his controversy with
the unbelievers has quoted the passage from Tacitus, which passage is
the church's strongest proof of the historicity of Jesus, outside the
gospels.</p>
<p id="id00207">But, to begin with, this passage has the appearance, at least, of
being penned by a Christian. It speaks of such persecutions of the
Christians in Rome which contradict all that we know of Roman
civilization. The abuse of Christians in the same passage may have
been introduced purposely to cover up the identity of the writer. The
terrible outrages against the Christians mentioned in the text from
Tacitus are supposed to have taken place in the year 64 A. D.
According to the New Testament, Paul was in Rome from the year 63 to
the year 65, and must, therefore, have been an eye-witness of the
persecution under Nero. Let me quote from the Bible to show that there
could have been no such persecution as the Tacitus passage describes.
The last verse in the book of Acts reads: "And he (Paul) abode two
whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in
unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, <i>none forbidding him</i>." How
is this picture of peace and tranquility to be reconciled with the
charge that the Romans rolled up the Christians in straw mats and
burned them to illuminate the streets at night, and also that the
lions were let loose upon the disciples of Jesus?</p>
<p id="id00208">Moreover, it is generally known that the Romans were indifferent to
religious propaganda, and never persecuted any sect or party in the
name of religion. In Rome, the Jews were free to be Jews; why should
the Jewish Christians—and the early Christians were Jews—have been
thrown to the lions? In all probability the persecutions were much
milder than the Tacitus passage describes, and politics was the real
cause.</p>
<p id="id00209">Until not very long ago, it was universally believed that William Tell
was a historical character. But it is now proven beyond any reasonable
doubt, that Tell and his apple are altogether mythical.
Notwithstanding that a great poet has made him the theme of a powerful
drama, and a great composer devoted one of his operas to his heroic
achievements; notwithstanding also that the Swiss show the crossbow
with which he is supposed to have shot at the apple on his son's head—he
is now admitted to be only a legendary hero. The principal arguments
which have led the educated world to revise its views concerning William
Tell are that, the Swiss historians, Faber and Hamurbin, who lived shortly
after the "hero," and who wrote the history of their country, as Josephus
did that of his, do not mention Tell. Had such a man existed before their
time, they could not have failed to refer to him. Their complete silence
is damaging beyond help to the historicity of Tell. Neither does the
historian, who was an eye witness of the battle of Morgarten in 1315,
mention the name of Tell. The Zurich Chronicle of 1497, also omits to
refer to his story. In the accounts of the struggle of the Swiss against
Austria, which drove the former into rebellion and ultimate independence,
Tell's name cannot be found. Yet all these arguments are not half so
damaging to the William Tell story, as the silence of Josephus is to the
Jesus story. Jesus was supposed to have worked greater wonders and to have
created a wider sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult to
explain the silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and Quintilian;
or of philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus, concerning Jesus,
than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers concerning Tell.</p>
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