Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/191

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([Greek: thoryboi]). This framework seems to have been taken over from an older authority, and so mechanically that disturbances which occurred at different dates are treated as contemporaneous. We have:—

First [Greek: thorybos] (XVIII. 55-59).—Pilate introduces the Emperor's busts into Jerusalem and threatens the Jewish petitioners with death "if they did not desist from turbulence " ([Greek: thorybein] 58).

Second [Greek: thorybos] (60-62).—Pilate appropriates the Corban money for building purposes. His soldiers overpower the insurgents ([Greek: tous thorybountas] 62), "and so the sedition ([Greek: stasis]) was quelled." (See § 25 of the translation for these two [Greek: thoryboi]).

[Here (63-64) comes the passage about Christ.]

Third [Greek: thorybos] (65-84).—Two scandalous events at Rome leading respectively to the crucifixion of the priests of Isis and to the banishment of the Jews (for the second of these see § 27). These paragraphs open with the words "Now about the same time another calamity disturbed ([Greek: ethorybei]) the Jews."

Fourth [Greek: thorybos] (85-87) in Samaria, introduced by the words "The Samaritan race also was not exempt from disturbance " ([Greek: thorybos]), while the next paragraph begins "When the disturbance ([Greek: thorybou]) was put down."

It will be seen that this scheme is interrupted by the Christian [Greek: perikopê]. The opening of 65 connects the third "disturbance" directly with the second (62). The mention of Pilate naturally led the interpolator to insert his statement at this point; but the structure of the original narrative leaves no room for it.

(2) Style.—Notwithstanding its brevity (it comprises only three sentences in Niese's text) the paragraph is long enough to betray in its language the hand of the forger. The style is not quite so "neutral" as Harnack suggests.

Here, again, regard must be had to the immediate