161 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 1, 1886. 



(§0561}]. 



Bt Richaed a. Peoctob. 



For reasons connecttil « itli changes in regard to pub 

 lisliing and printing which will become apparent in the 

 next number, the present is in some degree chaotic. 

 Matter already in type when the changes were called for 

 had to be employed where in the ordinary course other 

 matter would have been more suitable. 



Next mouth my Southern Star-maps will be continued, 

 but iu another form. They have not come out at all 

 well on the black ground. I hope next month to have 

 also pictures of Mars and Jupiter, the two planets which 

 now present so conspicuous an appearance in our skies. 



* * * 



Ne.xt month, too, I hope to give the tirst of a monthly 

 series of papers on the Face of the Sk}% bj- "A Fellow 

 of the Royal Astronomical Society," whose former 

 fortnightly contributions under that heading were much 

 valued. 



Br the substitution of the word " fertility " for 

 "futility" (at p. 133, col. i', line 9), rather lively 

 nonsense has been made of my remarks about the pre- 

 vailing of law and the failure of lawlessness. 



* * * 



My ''Historical Puzzle " seems to have puzzled many 

 in a way I should hardly have supposed possible. I have 

 received appeals from opposite sides to reconsider my 

 conclusion — having expressed none. Several proclaim 

 their opinion that I have been most unjust to Josephus ; 

 manj' more consider that I have been most unjust towards 

 the writers of the gospel narratives. Now in reality, I 

 have only said with regard to Josephus that if Dr. 

 Farrar is right in attributing to him deliberate falsifica- 

 tion of history, by silence about matters of which he must 

 have known if they had occurred as described by others, 

 thfii he was guilty also of offences against literary honesty, 

 in burrowing from the stories of those other writers, and 

 working the borrowed material, without acknowledgment, 

 into his professedly accurate history. As for the gospel 

 narratives assuredly they speak for themselves ; I ha\e 

 expressed no opinion whatever about tliem : those who 

 consider that the passages I quoted from Josephus con- 

 vey unsatisfactory impressions express their own feelings 

 onl}-. I asserted nothing of the sort. I quoted passages 

 which are there in the book, and whose close resemblance 

 to passages in the gospels cannot bo doubted. What in- 

 terpretation is to be given to the peciiliarity I leave 

 undecided — except that I put mere chance coincidence on 

 one side as practically impossible. 



The logical absurdity of that singular sort of faith 

 which is afraid to notice facts lest faith should be shaken, 

 I find myself unable altogether to appreciate. Like the 

 unconditioned it is beyond the mental grasp — being in 

 fact irrational. Don Quixote though certainly not 

 altogether sane, submitted his card-visor to trial ; that 

 the new helmet remained untried, has generallj' been 

 supposed to indicate an uncomfortable doubt lest if test 

 were applied he would have had to make him a third 

 helmet. 



Owing to the incomplete working of a rather complex 

 correction in proof, a passage relating to the interpolated 

 passages in Josephus reads as if Photius were a prede 

 cesser of Origen, instead of following him by several 

 centuries. The passage relating to John the Baptist was 

 not inserted after Photius had dwelt on the absence of 

 any reference to John ; but the manuscript known to 

 Photius in the ninth century, presented probably the 

 original form of the account of the doings of Herod 

 the Tetrarch, Aretas, Tiberius, and ■\'itellius. The 

 internal evidence is so strong against the authenticity of 

 the passage relating to John the Baptist, however, that 

 Photius would almost certainly have regarded the passage 

 as an interpolation, if it existed in the copy which he 

 studied. Only, in that case he would presumably have 

 mentioned its existence ; and he does not. 



* * * 



I KNiiw that Dr. Farrar speaks of this passage without 

 casting doubt on its genuineness. But theologians are 

 very poor judges^ as a rule, of such matters, their wishes 

 usually proving very fertile parents of conclusions which 

 seem acceptable to them. The passage, -without the 

 matter relating to John the Baptist, runs thus : — 



So Herod wrote about these affairs to Tiberius ; who, being very 

 angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius, to make 

 war upon him, and either to take him alive, and bring hira in bonds, 

 or to kill him, and send him his head. This was the charge that 

 Tiberius gave to the president of Syria. So Vitellius prepared to 

 make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men ; 

 he also took with him, &c , &c., &c. 



Into the midst of this passage, the piously fraudulent 

 interpolator, seeing no better place wherein to drag in 

 John the Baptist, has foisted a passage about that 

 worthy, so ingeniously misplaced that it is apropos des 

 hottes in the first place, while in the second it makes the 

 reason for Vitellius going to war with Aretas appear to be 

 the offence of Herod in killing John. Doubtless the 

 interpolator had not much choice. He would have to 

 bring in his pious fraud at the close of a section. Had 

 he been able to pitchfork it into the middle of section I. 

 chap, v., it might have done very well. But coming 

 after the close of that section, (which ends with the 

 words " president of Syria") its absurdity would strike 

 any one except a theologian determined to find what 

 he thinks he ought, and knows he would like, to find. 

 "This was the charge," says Josephus, " which Tiberius 

 gave to the president of Syria. So," — the presi- 

 dent of Syria did what he was bid. But the inter- 

 polator crams in after the charge a long rigmarole 

 beginning " Nou-, some of the Jews thought that the 

 destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that 

 very justly, as a punishment of what he did against 

 John, that" was called the Baptist," itc, A-c. Then, after 

 giving the reader ample time to forget all about the 

 order given to Vitellius, and not in the least recalling 

 that order to the reader's mind, the narrative as improved 

 by the interpolator, goes on " So Vitellius prepared to 

 make war with Aretas," itc. 



* * * 



The interpolator here, as in the passage relating to 

 Christ, was a bad hand at his piously fraudulent business. 

 Some of the ingeniou.sly pious persons who produced 

 epistles from Abraham, nay from Christ himself, and 

 were ready to compose epistles by Peter and Paul, would 

 probably have managed the interpolation a great deal 

 better. But it must be remembered, in considering the 



