Note 51 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

But that is all that can be claimed. The fact remains that in the Life, telling of his youthful search for a satisfactory sect, Josephus says not a word of the existence of that of the crucified Jesus; that he nowhere breathes a word concerning the twelve apostles, or any of them, or of Paul; and that there is no hint in any of the Fathers of even a hostile account of Jesus by him in any of his works, though Origen makes much of the allusion to James the Just,51—also dismissible as an interpolation, like another to the same effect cited by Origen, but not now extant.52 There is therefore a strong negative presumption to be set against even the forlorn hypothesis that the passage forged in Josephus by a Christian scribe ousted one which gave a hostile testimony.