Devotion for Sunday, January 10
What others said about Christ (from St. Nikolai’s ‘Prologue’)
“No one has ever spread as much shameful slander about Christ the Lord as the Jews. Their Talmud seethes with evil and malice toward the Lord. But all of those worthless calumnies are refuted by the most prominent historian of the Jews, Josephus Flavius, a rabbi and scholar who lived near the end of the first century after Christ. Josephus writes: “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 Himself both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the denunciation of the most eminent men among us, had Him condemned to the cross, those that had loved Him from the first did not forsake Him. He appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold, and they foretold many other things concerning Him. And the sect of Christians, so named after Him, remains to the present day.” Thus wrote a man who did not believe in Christ but was a scholar free of prejudice and malice.”