the admissions and
recognitions which Pagan authors had made of the existence of Christ or
Christians before his time.

"It has nowhere been stumbled on by the laborious and all-seeking
Eusebius, who could by no possibility have missed of it....

"There is no vestige nor trace of its existence anywhere in the world
before the fifteenth century.

"It rests then entirely upon the fidelity of a single individual. And
he, having the ability, the opportunity, and the strongest possible
incitement of interest to induce him to introduce the interpolation.

"The passage itself, though unquestionably the work of a master, and
entitled to be pronounced the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the art, betrays the
_penchant_ of that delight in blood, and in descriptions of bloody
horrors, as peculiarly characteristic of the Christian disposition as it
was abhorrent to the mild and gentle mind, and highly cultivated taste
of Tacitus.

* * * * *

"It is falsified by the 'Apology of Tertullian,' and the far more
respectable testimony of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who explicitly states
that the Christians, up to his time, the third century, had never been
victims of persecution; and that it was in provinces lying beyond the
boundaries of the Roman Empire, and not in Judaea, that Christianity
originated.

"Tacitus has, in no other part of his writings, made the least allusion
to Christ or Christians.

"The use of this passage as a part of the 'Evidences of the Christian
Religion,' is absolutely modern" ("Diegesis," pp. 374--376).

Judge Strange--writing on another point--gives us an argument against
the authenticity of this passage: "As Josephus made Rome his place of
abode from the year 70 to the end of the century, there inditing his
history of all that concerned the Jews, it is apparent that, had there
been a sect flourishing in the city who were proclaiming the risen Jesus
as the Messiah in his time, the circumstance was one this careful and
discerning writer could not have failed to notice and to comment on"
("Portraiture and Mission of Jesus," p. 15). It is, indeed, passing
strange that Josephus, who tells us so much about false Messiahs and
their followers, should omit--as he must have done if this passage of
Tacitus be authentic--all reference to this additional false Messiah,
whose followers in the very city where Josephus was living, underwent
such terrible tortures, either during his residence there,