publication of Josephus's history, found the Christians in such numbers
in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint that the
contagion had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so seized them
as to produce a general desertion of the public rites; and when, as has
already been observed, there is no reason for imagining that the
Christians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of
the Roman empire; it cannot, I should suppose, after this, be believed,
that the religion, and the transaction upon which it was founded, were
too obscure to engage the attention of Josephus, or to obtain a place in
his history. Perhaps he did not know how to represent the business, and
disposed of his difficulties by passing it over in silence. Eusebius
wrote the life of Constantine, yet omits entirely the most remarkable
circumstance in that life, the death of his son Crispus; undoubtedly for
the reason here given. The reserve of Josephus upon the subject of
Christianity appears also in his passing over the banishment of the Jews
by Claudius, which Suetonius, we have seen, has recorded with an express
reference to Christ. This is at least as remarkable as his silence about
the infants of Bethlehem.* Be, however, the fact, or the cause of the
omission in Josephus,+ what it may, no other or different history on the
subject has been given by him, or is pretended to have been given.

_________

* Michaelis has computed, and, as it should seem, fairly enough; that
probably not more than twenty children perished by this cruel
precaution. Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, translated by
Marsh; vol. i. c. ii. sect. 11.

+ There is no notice taken of Christianity in the Mishna, a collection
of Jewish traditions compiled about the year 180; although it contains a