Note 1 — Chapter IV · THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

Evidence of Josephus It remains to examine how this school of writers handle the evidence with regard to the earliest church supplied by Jewish or Pagan writers. I have said enough incidentally of the evidence of the Talmud and Toldoth Jeschu, but there remains that of Josephus. In the work on the Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. xviii, 5, 2 (116 foll.), there is an account of John the Baptist, and it is narrated that Herod, fearing an insurrection of John’s followers, threw him in bonds into the castle of Machaerus, and there murdered him. Afterwards, when Herod’s army was destroyed, the Jewish population attributed the disaster to the wrath of God, and saw in it a retribution for slaying so just a man.1 On the whole, Josephus’s account accords with the picture we have of John in the Synoptic Gospels, except that in the Gospels the place and circumstances of his murder are differently given. This difference is good evidence that Josephus’s account is independent of the Christian sources. Nevertheless, Dr. Drews airily pretends that there is a strong suspicion of its being a forgery by some Christian hand. As for John the Baptist as we meet him in the Gospels, he is, says Drews, no historical personage. One expects some reason to be given for this negative conclusion, but gets none whatever except a magnificent hint that “a complete understanding of the baptism in the Jordan can only be attained, if here, too, we take into consideration the translation of the baptism into astrological terms” (Christ Myth, p. 121).