Book Description

Excerpt from The Life of Jesus Christ Even in the period next after this violent stifling, this mysterious stillness of the new Spirit in the world lasts on until it irresistibly penetrates it ever more strongly, and then soon both Jews and heathens say enough of it, when they had already lost the opportunity of being able to know most accurately about Christ. Thus Flavius Josephus is the only non-christian historian of the first century we possess who speaks of Christ. In the first indeed of his two great works - the history of the Jewish War - he did not speak of Him, he had no need in respect of the principal subject of it. But we cannot see how he, in the Antiquities, should have neglected to speak, however briefly, of Christ and His followers; as there he mentions much far less important, and that work professes to give a general history of the people, according to all its aims, various divisions, and manifold crises. Had he also in this work said nothing of Christianity, that could only be explained from a want of clear views on the subjects which had so completely fettered him, that he preferred to be silent on a matter so imperfectly known to him. He had certainly, when he wrote his work for the roman-greek world, a secret horror of every thing Messianic, and Christianity must have appeared to him, as to all the Jews of his views, something incomprehensible; and' besides, as it was felt how much this last division had injured the Jews, it must have been a subject disagree able and repugnant. But these grounds seem insuflicient for his entirely overlooking it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.