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♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[June 1, 1886. 



of the other two, great as they doubtless are. Think, how- 

 ever, of the satisfaction of first escaping the wearisome 

 monotony of hearing badly-ijlayed dance music ; secondly, 

 having two or three hours wholly occupied by acting 

 thoroughly good throughout — no weaklings marring the 

 eflbrts of the better players, and lastly, not having to wait 

 more than a few seconds between each act. Thus, to take 

 yesterday evening (I write on May 6), we had " Der Geizige " 

 (Moliere's " L'Avare ") and "Der eingebildete Kranke " 

 (Moliere's " Le Malade imaginaire "), admirably rendered, 

 and followed by an interesting scene in which all the actors, 

 in plain evening dress, joined in presenting a tribute of 

 esteem to Herz on his completing the fiftieth year of his 

 stage life, all being concluded before ten — tliree hours of 

 perfect enjoyment from beginning to end. Naturally the 

 ]\Innich theatres are always full, except when, Patti or 

 Nilsson coming here, the price is raised fi-om tive to twenty 

 marks for opera or concert, and no tickets being taken 

 except by a few Americans, those admirable singers decline 

 to fulfil their engagements. 



* * * 



1 RECEIVE a great number of letters still in i-egard to the 

 doubtful (m I'eality not at all doubtful) passages in Josephus. 

 I fear that argument and evidence are quite idle in such a 

 matter. For those who, either through self-interest or dul- 

 ness of apprehension, can maintain a position utterly 

 unrea.sonable, cannot well be convinced bj- reasoning. 

 Their stronghold, the Credo qiiia increxlihUe of St. Augus- 

 tine, is quite impregnable. Were it otherwise, however, 

 it would be very little worth attacking. 



* * * 



A f'ENTT'RY ago Voltaire wrote on this point, " All men 

 of true learning are now agreed that the short passage 

 relative to Christ in the history by Flavius Josephus has 

 been interpolated." " The Christians," he proceeds in a 

 note, " by one of those frauds called pious, grossly falsi- 

 fied a passage in Josephus. They invented for this Jew, so 

 extremely zealous for his own religion, four awkwardly 

 interpolated lines, and at the end of the passage they add, 

 ' And he was the Christ.' What ! Josephus had heard of 

 so many events out of the course of nature, yet in the 

 history of his country gives us but four lines about them ! 

 What 1 this obstinate Jew said that Jesus was the C'hrist ! 

 Then, if he believed him to have been Christ, lie must have 

 been a Christian. What an absurdity, to make Josepluis 

 talk like a Christian I " And then he calls to mind the 

 much grosser impostures which, in the age of pious forgery, 

 were piously invented to delude for their good the heathen 

 who might otherwise have gone fatally astray. 



As to the passage about John the Baptist, theologians 

 having not quite such overwhelming evidence (or evidence 

 quite so obviously overwhelming) against this passage, 

 accept it as a valuable confirmation of their views. (Their 

 evidence is in any case only ex. jmrte, and of very little 

 weight except when they honestly admit, like Warburton, 

 Butler, Stanley, and others, the weakness of much which the 

 dishonest still continue to put forward as valid.) 



* * * 



It may be added to the objections cited (as a correspondent 

 to whom I am already largely indebted points out) that : 

 First, if Josephus had known about John what he is made 

 to assert in this passage, he could not have omitted him in 

 describing professedly all the sects and Jewish leaders. 

 (But it was probably impossible to piously interpolate the 

 necessary forgeries to obviate this objection.) Secondly, 

 Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Chrysostom could not but 



have seized on a passage so important ; but alas I the pious 

 interpolater came too late, and their ej'es never rested on it. 

 Thirdly, it praises John, though Josephus was a Pharisee, 

 and John denounced the Pharisees. Fourthly, the inter- 

 polater being more pious than learned, so puts the stoiy as 

 to leave John's head to be brought a distance of a hundred 

 miles from the citadel of Macherus to Herod ; even on the 

 most fiery " charger " this could hardly have been managed 

 with the celerity indicated in Mark's narrative. ^Moreover, 

 the charger on which the head was brought was of another 

 kind. Fifthly — a mere ti-ifle — the citadel of Macherus was 

 at that time in the possession of Herod's bitter enemy 

 Aretas. 



With regard to Zechariah the son of Barachiah, it is 

 perfectly obvious to any one not theologicalh' inclined, that 

 whoever wrote the gospel of INIatthew means to indicate 

 the entii'e range of the innocent who had been slaughtered, 

 from the time of Abel down to the time of the speaker who 

 said that all such innocent blood should be on the heads of the 

 Scribes and Pharisees. It is simply absurd to imagine that 

 that writer imagined the slaughter of the innocent had 

 ceased with the death of Zechariah the prophet, who pro- 

 bably died comfortably in bed in the time of Darius, ages 

 befoi'e his time. Unfortunately, not being strong as a 

 chronologist, the writer put into the mouth of a contemporary 

 of Pontius Pilate a remark i-elating to an event which 

 occurred after Jerusalem was taken by Titus, some forty 

 years after Pontius Pilate, according to the same account 

 (and also according to Josephus), had put his contemporary 

 to death. It may be more I'espectable — more religious even 

 — to quibble over this matter than to say that the writer 

 of the narrative had made a mistake, but it does not seem 

 so to me. Different pei'sons see the same thing in such 

 different lights. 



* * * 



It occurs to me as a noteworthy proof, foi' those who 

 want such proofs, of the advanced scientific knowledge of 

 the ancient Babylonians (or whomsoever they may have 

 been from whom the old Jews derived their earliest recoi-ds) 

 that Abraham was promised a progeny equal in number to 

 the stars in the sky. For it would have been a very poor 

 outlook for the progenitor of a future nation (one progenitor 

 — ]')lvs one progenitrix — was always held sufficient for a 

 nation in those days) that his descendants should number 

 a few thousands. But the actual number of stars in the 

 galaxy would suffice foi' a quite re.spectable nation. In fact 

 the trouble rather is, on this view, that the number of stars 

 is too great for the prophecy, unless the Jews are hereafter 

 to number some thousands of millions. Possiblj- we m.ay 

 reconcile matters (the difficult}" has occurred to me only 

 since I began this pai-agraph) by assuming inspiration equiva- 

 lent in space-peneti'ating power to a telescope 10| inches 

 in diameter. 



* * * 



A CORRESPONDENT puts this question : — " Is it correct to 

 say that, supposing a man to be able to reach, in one 

 second, the remotest star visible, and were to continue on to 

 all eternity, doubling his speed eveiy second, that he would 

 never get to the end of worlds, but «-ould always have as 

 many in front of him as he had behind him ? It .seems 

 absurd, yet appears to be a necessary consequence of the 

 theory that ' end there is none — lo — nor is there j'et 

 beginning.' If, on the other hand, the last star could be 

 reached in every direction, then the universe not only has 

 bounds, but is as a mere grain of sand in the desert of 

 space. This seems as absurd as the other. Of course I 

 here use the word ' universe' in its largest sense." 



