History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

The pious barbarism of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered

the destruction of the works of Porphyrius and all other opponents of Christianity, to avert the wrath

of God, but considerable fragments have been preserved in the refutations of the Christian Fathers,

especially Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria (against Julian), and scattered notices of Jerome

and Augustin.

§ 30. Jewish Opposition. Josephus and the Talmud.

The hostility of the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees to the gospel is familiar from the New

Testament. Josephus mentions Jesus once in his archaeology, but in terms so favorable as to agree

ill with his Jewish position, and to subject the passage to the suspicion of interpolation or

corruption.

72

1

 His writings, however, contain much valuable testimony to the truth of the gospel

history. His "Archaeology" throughout is a sort of fifth Gospel in illustration of the social and

political environments of the life of Christ.

73

2 His "History of the Jewish War," in particular, is

undesignedly a striking commentary on the Saviour’s predictions concerning the destruction of the

city and temple of Jerusalem, the great distress and affliction of the Jewish people at that time, the

famine, pestilence, and earthquake, the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his

disciples at the approach of these calamities.

74

3

The attacks of the later Jews upon Christianity are essentially mere repetitions of those

recorded in the Gospels—denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and horrible vituperation of his

confessors. We learn their character best from the dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho. The

fictitious disputation on Christ by Jason and Papiscus, first mentioned by Celsus, was lost since

the seventh century.

75

4

 It seems to have been a rather poor apology of Christianity against Jewish

objections by a Jewish Christian, perhaps by Aristo of Pella.

The Talmud is the Bible of Judaism separated from, and hostile to, Christianity, but it barely

notices it except indirectly. It completed the isolation of the Jews from all other people.

§ 31. Pagan Opposition. Tacitus and Pliny.

The Greek and Roman writers of the first century, and some of the second, as Seneca, the elder

Pliny, and even the mild and noble Plutarch, either from ignorance or contempt, never allude to

Christianity at all.

Tacitus and the younger Pliny, contemporaries and friends of the emperor Trajan, are the

first to notice it; and they speak of it only incidentally and with stoical disdain and antipathy, as an

"exitiabilis superstition" "prava et immodica superstitio," "inflexibilis obstinatio." These celebrated

and in their way altogether estimable Roman authors thus, from manifest ignorance, saw in the

72

Joseph. Antiqu. l. XVIII.c. 3, sect. 3. Comp. on this much disputed passage, vol. I., p. 92.

73

It is the special merit of Keim to have thoroughly utilized Josephus for the biography of Jesus.

74

These coincidences have been traced out in full by Lardner, Works, ed. Kippis, vol. VI. p. 406 ff.

75

Ἱάσονος καὶ Παπίσκου ἄντιλογία περὶ Χριστοῦ. D. Origenes Contra Cels. IV. 51. Celsus says, that he read the book which

defends the allegorical interpretation, with pity and hatred. Comp. Harnack, Altchristl. Literatur, vol. 1. (1882). p. 115 sqq.

58

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---

Christians nothing but superstitious fanatics, and put them on a level with the hated Jews; Tacitus,

in fact, reproaching them also with the "odium generis humani." This will afford some idea of the

immense obstacles which the new religion encountered in public opinion, especially in the cultivated

circles of the Roman empire. The Christian apologies of the second century also show, that the

most malicious and gratuitous slanders against the Christians were circulated among the common

people, even charges of incest and cannibalism,

76

5

 which may have arisen in part from a

misapprehension of the intimate brotherly love of the Christians, and their nightly celebration of

the holy supper and love-feasts.

Their Indirect Testimony to Christianity.

On the other hand, however, the scanty and contemptuous allusions of Tacitus and Pliny to

Christianity bear testimony to a number of facts in the Gospel History. Tacitus, in giving an account

of the Neronian persecution, incidentally attests, that Christ was put to death as a malefactor by

Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; that he was the founder of the Christian sect, that the latter

took its rise in Judaea and spread in spite of the ignominious death of Christ and the hatred and

contempt it encountered throughout the empire, so that a "vast multitude" (multitudo ingens) of

them were most cruelly put to death in the city of Rome alone as early as the year 64. He also bears

valuable testimony, in the fifth book of his History, together with Josephus, from whom he mainly,

though not exclusively takes his account, to the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy concerning the

destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy.

As to Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan, written about 107, it proves the rapid spread of

Christianity in Asia Minor at that time among all ranks of society, the general moral purity and

steadfastness of its professors amid cruel persecution, their mode and time of worship, their adoration

of Christ as God, their observance of a "stated day," which is undoubtedly Sunday, and other facts

of importance in the early history of the Church. Trajan’s rescript in reply to Pliny’s inquiry,

furnishes evidence of the innocence of the Christians; he notices no charge against them except

their disregard of the worship of the gods, and forbids them to be sought for. Marcus Aurelius

testifies, in one brief and unfriendly allusion, to their eagerness for the crown of martyrdom.

§ 32. Direct Assaults. Celsus.

The direct assault upon Christianity, by works devoted to the purpose, began about the middle

of the second century, and was very ably conducted by a Grecian philosopher, Celsus, otherwise

unknown; according to Origen, an Epicurean with many Platonic ideas, and a friend of Lucian. He

wrote during the persecuting reign of Marcus Aurelius.

77

6

Celsus, with all his affected or real contempt for the new religion, considered it important

enough to be opposed by an extended work entitled "A True Discourse," of which Origen, in his

76

Οἰδιπόδειοι μίξεις, incesti concubitus; and θυεστεῖα δεῖπνα, Thyesteae epulae

77

Origen (I. 8) indefinitely assigns him to the reign of Hadrian and the Antonines; most historians (Mosheim, Gieseler, Baur,

Friedländer) to a.d. 150 or later; others (Tillemont, Neander, Zeller) to about 160 or 170; Keim (1. c. p. 267) to a.d. 178. As the

place of composition Keim (p. 274) suggests Rome, others Alexandria. He ably defends his identity with the friend of Lucian

(p. 291), but makes him out a Platonist rather than an Epicurean (p. 203 sqq.).

59

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---