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But, to vary a saying of Doctor Johnson, this section of Josephus must be read for the quotations, for if one reads it for the argument of either assailant or apologist, one would shoot oneself. The second book of the apology, which is a continuation of the first, opens with an elaborate refutation of Apion.
You've brought out the truth about that lost coin collection; you've saved Hopewell Drugg from becoming a regular reprobate at least, so says his mother-in-law; you've converted Walky Dexter from his habit of taking a 'snifter' " "Oh, no!" laughed Janice. "Josephus converted Walky."
When captured, Josephus made to Vespasian the prophecy: "Thou shalt be emperor thou and thy son after thee," a prediction soon to be fulfilled, for in A.D. 69 Vespasian was proclaimed emperor, and the next year went to Rome, leaving Titus to carry on the war and subdue Jerusalem.
And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as herself Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking about the horse's ribs. "Ah-ha! I see there's a new day," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh?
There is one, and only one, point of disagreement, and that is, in the number of his followers, which in the Acts are called four thousand, and by Josephus thirty thousand: but, beside that the names of numbers, more than any other words, are liable to the errors of transcribers, we are in the present instance under the less concern to reconcile the evangelist with Josephus, as Josephus is not, in this point, consistent with himself.
The absence of any reference to Jesus and the apostles in Josephus would have seemed damaging to the truth of the Christian testament, and therefore the passages were supplied. Nevertheless we may be grateful to the interpolators, because, on the strength of these passages, Josephus was especially treasured through the Dark and Middle Ages, and he alone survived of the Hellenistic apologists.
For it is not credible that Josephus, who blamed the vices of this king, could have been silent on such a dark and detestable action, if what the Evangelist said had been true.
Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew completely Grecianized. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries; and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradition.
This wonder completed, he led his wife thither; from its top she could look down into the plains below, as from the heights of Rachined, and with this costly gift he presented her. Tell me, could even an Egyptian give more?" Curtius V. 5. Josephus contra Apion. Antiquities X. II. 1. Diod. "And did she recover?" asked Nitetis, without raising her eyes.
For suppose it to be established that Gentile Christianity was a totally different thing from the Nazarenism of Jesus and his immediate disciples; suppose it to be demonstrable that, as early as the sixth decade of our era at least, there were violent divergencies of opinion among the followers of Jesus; suppose it to be hardly doubtful that the Gospels and the Acts took their present shapes under the influence of those divergencies; suppose that their authors, and those through whose hands they passed, had notions of historical veracity not more eccentric than those which Josephus occasionally displays: surely the chances that the Gospels are altogether trustworthy records of the teachings of Jesus become very slender.
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