dinary nature and unusual
duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of
light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part
of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour.
This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the
preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by
most of the poets and historians of that memorable age" (Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall," vol. ii., pp. 191, 192. Ed. 1821).

If Pagan historians are thus curiously silent, what deduction shall we
draw from the similar silence of the great Jewish annalist? Is it
credible that Josephus should thus have ignored Jesus Christ, if one
tithe of the marvels related in the Gospels really took place? So
damning to the story of Christianity has this difficulty been felt, that
a passage has been inserted in Josephus (born A.D. 37, died about A.D.
100) relating to Jesus Christ, which runs as follows: "Now, there was
about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man,
for he was a doer of wonderful works--a teacher of such men as receive
the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and
many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the
suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the
cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he
appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had
foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him;
and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this
day" ("Antiquities of the Jews," book xviii., ch. iii., sect. 3). The
passage itself proves its own forgery: Christ drew over scarcely any
Gentiles, if the Gospel story be true, as he himself said: "I am not
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew xv. 24). A
Jew would not believe that a doer of wonderful works must necessarily be
more than man, since their own prophets were said to have performed
miracles. If Josephus believed Jesus to be Christ, he would assuredly
have become a Christian; while, if he believed him to be God, he would
have drawn full attention to so unique a fact as the incarnation of the
Deity. Finally, the concluding remark that the Christians were "not
extinct" scarcely coincides with the idea that Josephus, at Rome, must
have been cognisant of their increasing numbers, and of their
persecut