Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 92:365 (Jan 1935)
Article: Eisler on the Josephus Passage
Author: Herbert William Magoun

BSac 92:365 (Jan 35) p. 77

Eisler on the Josephus Passage

H. W. Magoun

Of all the attempts that have been made to discredit the testimony of Josephus concerning Jesus, that of Robert Eisler, Ph.D., is, perhaps, the boldest, the most erudite, the most elaborate, and the most plausible. Heretofore the assaults have been confined to endeavors to destroy the passage, either in its entirety or else in some particular by bracketing portions which did not meet with some one’s approval because he did not believe that such a testimony was likely to have been written by a Jewish author. The point of view of the assailant, however, has always been that of his own day, not that of the times in which Josephus wrote, and that fact has never been appreciated.

The assaults of the past have been composed by Christian as well as by Jewish scholars, and Dean Farrar, in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (XIII, 658), goes so far as to say: “That Josephus wrote the whole passage as it now stands no sane critic can believe.” He writes, however, from a standpoint that is purely modern and ignores all the characteristics of people of the first century of our era. It is a fatal blunder,but a common one. In his opinion the entire paragraph is spurious, one of his avowed reasons for so believing being the supposition that it was unknown to Origen.

Dr. Eisler has effectively demolished that supposition. Furthermore, he has made it clear not only that the passage was known to Origen but also that it was not accepted by him as an endorsement of Jesus as the Christ. Indeed, Eisler actually makes use of the attitude of Origen as an argument for the belief that Origen’s text of Josephus was quite different from the present accepted one; but, he is

BSac 92:365 (Jan 35) p. 78

positive that the original has not been subjected to expansion at the hands of Christian scribes. That assumption has been the usual line of attack. Eisler’s method, significantly, is of exactly the opposite sort. He maintains confidently that the passage has been altered by deletions which have changed it from an original disapproval to a Christian endorsement.

With that theory as a basis, he proceeds to enlarge the testimonium by verbal alterations and interpolations, and he continues the process until he has an account which is distinctly uncomplimentary to Jesus but is satisfactory to his own ideas of what Josephus should have written. It must not be supposed, however, that he has any love for Josephus; for he berates him as a man “most anxious to whitewash himself,” as a “conceited historian,” as a “wretched renegade,” etc. Indeed, he seems to despise Josephus about as much as he would have despised him if Josephus had really endorsed Jesu...