Chapter XXI: Section VI: Jesus Christ (1)

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When we endeavor to write the life of Jesus Christ, the greatest of the prophets, we are beset by peculiar difficulties arising from the nature of the materials. While in the case of the Buddha we receive from authorities a life which, though largely composed of fiction, is at least uniform and consistent, in the case of Jesus we have biographies from several sources, all of them partly historical, partly legendary, and each in some respects at issue with all the rest. Hence the labor of sifting fact from fiction, as also that of reproducing and classifying the fictitious element itself, is far more difficult. In sifting fact from fiction we have to judge, among two, three, or four versions of an occurrence, which is likely to be the most faithful statement of the truth, and within this statement itself how much we may accept, how much we must reject. And in reproducing and classifying the fictitious element we have not merely to relate a simple story, but to combine into our narrative varying, and sometimes conflicting, forms of the same fundamental myth.

Hence further subdivision will be needed in the case of Jesus than was requisite in treating the lives of any of the other prophets. We may in fact discern in the gospels three distinct strata: a stratum of fact; a stratum of miracle and marvel; and a stratum (in John) of mere imagination _within_ the realm of natural events. Correspondently to these divisions in the sources we will treat Jesus first as historical; secondly, as mythical; thirdly, as ideal. The historical Jesus is the actual human figure who remains after abstraction has been made of the miraculous and legendary portions of his biography. The mythical Jesus, who is found in the three first gospels, is the human subject of legendary narratives; the ideal Jesus, who is found in John, is a completely superhuman conception.

Finally, it may be needful to remark that the names affixed to the several gospels are merely traditional, and that in using them as a brief designation for these works, no theory as to their actual authorship is intended to be implied. The gospels (excepting perhaps the fourth) were the work of many authors, though ultimately compiled and edited by a single hand. Who this editor was is of little moment; and who the original authors were we never can discover. So that the gospels are to all intents and purposes anonymous; but it will be convenient, after noting this fact, to continue to describe them by their current titles.

SUBDIVISION 1.—_The Historical Jesus._

In attempting to sketch the outline of the actual life of Jesus—and anything more than an outline must needs be highly conjectural—there are some general principles which it is advisable to follow. Recollecting that we have to deal with biographers who have mingled in promiscuous confusion the supernatural with the natural, impossibilities with probabilities, fables with facts, it becomes our duty to endeavor to separate these heterogeneous elements according to some consistent plan. That this can ever be perfectly accomplished is not to be expected. The figure of Jesus must ever move in twilight, but we may succeed in reducing the degree of unavoidable obscurity.

The first of the maxims to be observed will be furnished by a little consideration of the kind of thing likely to be the earliest committed to writing, as also to be the most accurately handed down by tradition. This, it appears to me, would be sayings, rather than doings. Nothing in the life of Jesus is more characteristic and remarkable than his oral instruction; this would impress itself deeply upon the minds of his hearers, and nothing, we may fairly conjecture, would be so soon committed to writing either by them or by their followers. Moreover, the records of discourses and parables would be, in the main, more accurate than those of events; slight differences in the words attributed to a speaker being (except in special cases) less material than divergences in the manner of portraying his actions. Historical confirmation of this hypothesis is not wanting. There is the well-known statement of Papias that Matthew wrote down the "sayings" of Christ in Hebrew [Syro-Chaldaic]. And if we look for internal evidence, we find it in the far greater agreement among the synoptical gospels as to the doctrines taught by Jesus than as to the incidents of his career. The incidents bear traces of embellishment undergone in passing from mouth to mouth from which the doctrines are free. In some cases, moreover, there is concurrence as to the doctrines taught along with divergence as to the place where, and the circumstances under which, they were delivered. Added to which considerations there is the all-important fact that the events in the life of Christ are often of a supernatural order, while his discourses (excepting those in John) present nothing irreconcilable with his position in regard either to his epoch, his presumable education, or his nationality.

Giving this preference to sayings in general, over doings in general, we may next establish an order of preference among doings themselves. Of these, some are natural and probable; others unnatural and improbable; others again supernatural and impossible. The first kind will, of course, be accepted rather than the second; while the third kind must be rejected altogether. And as a corollary from this general principle, it follows that where one narrative gives a simpler version than another of the same event or series of events, the simpler version is to be preferred.

A third rule of the utmost importance is that when any statement is opposed, either directly or by its implications, to subsequent tradition, that statement may be confidently received. For when the whole course of opinion in the Christian Church has run in a given direction, the preservation in one of our Gospels of an alleged or implied fact conflicting with the established view, is an unmistakable indication that the truth has been rescued from destruction in a case where succeeding generations would gladly have suppressed it.

A fourth maxim, which is likely to be useful, is that wherever we can perceive traces of faults or blemishes in the character of Christ, we may presume them to have actually existed. For his biographers were deeply interested in making him appear perfect, and they would have been anxious wherever possible to conceal his weaknesses. Where, therefore, they suffer such human frailties to be perceived, their unconscious testimony is entitled to great weight. For although they themselves either do not see or do not acknowledge that what they record is really evidence of faultiness at all, yet it is plain that circumstances conveying such an impression to impartial minds are not likely to have been invented. The conduct ascribed to Jesus might be capable of justification from his peculiar mission or his peculiar conception of his duties, but admiring disciples would not wantonly burden him with a load not rightly his. Yet this principle, though unquestionable in the main, must be tempered with the qualification that there are cases where his followers may have misunderstood and misrepresented him. It must be added that a similar presumption of truth attaches to the record of faults or blunders in the conduct of the disciples, whose characters their disciples were likewise anxious to exalt.

In the fifth place, it is a reasonable supposition that the less complete the outline of the life of Jesus contained in any Gospel, the more authentic is that Gospel. Gaps in the story told by one writer which, in another writer, have been filled up, are strong indications of actual gaps in the life as known to the first Christians. While it is true that the compiler of one Gospel might, from ignorance or from design, omit some historical fact which the compiler of another would insert, yet it is unlikely that whole years would be passed over in silence, or remarkable events left out, where any genuine knowledge of those years or those events was possessed by the biographer. But nothing is more natural than that a space, subsequently felt to be a serious and almost intolerable void, should in process of time be removed by the exercise of the imagination craving to fill the empty canvas with living figures. Nor even where there is no positive blank, is it surprising that many actions conformable to the notion formed of Christ should be fitted into his career, and made to take their places alongside of others of a more unquestionable nature. We shall therefore prefer the scantiest account of the life of Jesus to the fullest.

A careful comparison of the first three Gospels—which alone can pretend to an historical character—will establish the fact that the second, ascribed to Mark, is the most trustworthy, or to speak accurately, the least untrustworthy, according to these canons. For in the first place, it absolutely omits many of the most noteworthy events comprehended by the other Gospels in the life of Jesus. Secondly, it sometimes gives a natural version of a circumstance which appears in the others as supernatural; or a comparatively simple version of a circumstance which the others have converted into something mystical. It surpasses the others in statements, and still more in omissions, implying divergence from well-established subsequent tradition; and in general the far greater scantiness of detail, the failure to fill up blanks as the other Evangelists have done, the almost fragmentary character of this Gospel, are points telling largely in its favor. That, however, we have the earliest, or anything approaching the earliest form of the life of Jesus in Mark it would be a great error to assume. As much as Mark differs from Matthew and Luke, so much at least did the primitive story differ from his, and in the same direction. Nay, it must have differed far more, for by the time the second Gospel was committed to its present form, a cloud of marvels had already surrounded the person of Jesus, and obscured his genuine figure. Through the mist of this cloud we must endeavor to discern such of his lineaments as have not been totally and forever hidden from our scrutinizing gaze.

Very little is known of the parents of Jesus, and even that little has rather to be inferred from casual references than gathered from direct statements. Joseph, his father, was a carpenter or builder, but his status is nowhere clearly defined. He and his family appear, however, to have been well known in their native country, and he was probably, therefore, not a mere workman, but a tradesman in comfortable circumstances.[19] At any rate, he was the father of a considerable family, consisting of five sons and of more than one daughter (Mt. xiii. 55, and xii. 46; Mk. vi. 3, and iii. 31; Lu. viii. 19). The names of the brothers of Jesus,—James, Joses, Simon, and Judas,—have been preserved, while those of his sisters are unknown.

Whether there is not some confusion here, may indeed be doubted, for we hear also of another Mary, the mother of James and Joses (Mk. xv. 40; Mt. xxvii. 56), and it is possible (as M. Renan supposes), that the names of her children have been substituted for those of the genuine brothers of Christ which had been forgotten. Paul certainly mentions James, the Lord's brother (Gal. i. 19), and it would be natural to interpret this literally. But the question does not admit of any positive decision. Of the actual existence, however, of both brothers and sisters there can be no reasonable doubt; for they are spoken of as personages who were familiar to their neighbors, while the very fact that they play no part in the subsequent history is a guarantee that they have not been invented for a purpose. Little is known of his mother Mary, her genuine form having been transfigured at a very early period by the Christian legend. The first and third Gospels have made her the subject of a story which would force us—if we accept it at all—to consider Jesus as her illegitimate child, born of some other father than Joseph. But there is no adequate ground to ascribe to her such laxity of conduct. For aught we can discern to the contrary, she seems to have borne a fair reputation among her countrymen, who undoubtedly, according to the incidental and therefore unbiased testimony of all four Evangelists, believed Jesus to have been the son of Joseph, begotten, like the rest of his family, in wedlock (Mt. xiii. 55; Mk. vi. 3; Lu. iv. 22; Jo. vi. 42.)

Beyond the fact that Joseph and Mary occupied a respectable position in Nazareth, we can say little of them. The lineage of both was plainly unknown to the compilers of the Gospels, since Joseph has been endowed with two different fathers, while the parentage of Mary has not even been alluded to. All that we can venture to assert is, that neither of them were reputed to be of the family of David, for Jesus took pains to prove that the Messiah need not, as was commonly believed, be descended from that monarch (Mt. xxii. 41-46; Mk. xii. 35-37; Lu. xx. 41-44). There would have been no occasion for his ingenious suggestion that David, by calling the Messiah Lord, disproved the theory that this Lord must be his son, unless he had felt that his belonging to a family which could not claim such a pedigree might be used as an argument against his Messianic character. We may confidently conclude then that his lineage was obscure.

That his birth took place at Nazareth is abundantly obvious from the very contrivances resorted to in Matthew and Luke to take his parents to Bethlehem for that event. According to either of these narratives one fact is plain: that the habitual dwelling-place of the family was Nazareth; while Matthew has preserved the valuable information that he was called a Nazarene (Mt. ii. 23), a statement which is confirmed by the manner in which he is alluded to in John, as "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jo. i. 45). Jesus therefore passed in his life-time for a native of Nazareth, and as it does not appear that he ever contradicted the current assumption, as moreover the only two authorities which are at issue with this assumption are also at issue with one another on all but the bare fact of the birth at Bethlehem, we need not hesitate to draw the inference that he was born at Nazareth.

In his youth the son of Joseph was apprenticed to his father's trade, and he may have practiced it for many years before he took to his more special vocation of a public teacher. He was at any rate known to his neighbors as "the carpenter," and his abandonment of that calling for one in which he seemed to pretend to a position of authority over others, caused both astonishment and indignation among his old acquaintances.

His public career was closely preceded by that of an illustrious prophet, by whom he must have been profoundly influenced—John the Baptist. Very little of the doctrine of John has been preserved to us, his fame having been eclipsed by that of his successor. But that little is sufficient to evince the great similarity between his teaching and that of Jesus. He was in the habit of baptizing those who resorted to him in the Jordan, and of inculcating repentance, because the kingdom of heaven was at hand (Mt. iii. 2). Now precisely the same tone was adopted by Jesus after the captivity of John. Repentance was inculcated on account of the approaching advent of the kingdom of heaven, and a mode of instruction similar to that of John was practiced. Both these prophets, affected no doubt by the troubled condition of Judea, enjoined the simple amendment of the lives of individuals as the means towards a happier state of things. Both attracted crowds around them by the force and novelty of their preaching. Jesus, according to a probable interpretation of the narrative, was so much impressed by the lessons of his predecessor, and by the baptism received from him, that he for a time retired to a solitary place, living an ascetic life, and pondering the stirring questions that must have burnt within him. During this retirement Jesus could mature his designs for the future, and on emerging from it he was able at once to take up the thread of John the Baptist's discourses. Possibly John himself had perceived the high capacity of the young Nazarene, and had appointed him to the prophetic office. But the story of his baptism by John has been unfortunately so surrounded with mythical circumstances, that the true relations between these teachers can no longer be discerned.

Meditating in the wilderness on the words of John the Baptist, and on the state of his country, the notion may have entered the mind of Jesus that he himself was the destined Messiah. While the power he felt within him may have given birth to the idea, the idea once born would react upon his nature and increase the power within him. But whether the conception of his own Messiahship arose now or at some other period, it is plain that he was animated by it during his public career, and that it gave to all his teaching its peculiar tone of independent authority. How far he was completely convinced of his own claim to the Messianic title will be considered in another place; it is sufficient to say here that he was plainly anxious that this claim should be acknowledged, and the rights it conferred upon him recognized.

On emerging from his retreat, he began the public promulgation of his doctrines; at first, however, with caution and reserve, and keeping within the lines marked out by John the Baptist. Attracted by the young enthusiast, a select band of followers gathered around him, and while he inspired them with implicit trust, they no doubt inspired him in their turn with higher confidence. The reticence which modesty or hesitation had produced gradually melted away, and he began boldly to put forth pretensions which, while they repelled and scandalized many, drew others into a closer companionship and a more implicit submission. Simon and Andrew, James and John, were the first, or among the first, of his disciples. Eight others joined him at about the same period of his life, their names being Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas (Mk. iii. 14-19; Mt. x. 1-4). While these formed the inner circle, we must suppose that he had many other admirers and followers, who were either less intimate with him, or less constant in their attendance. And there may even have been others of equal intimacy with the twelve apostles, whose names have not been handed down to us. For all the apostles did not enjoy an equally close and unreserved friendship with their master. Three of their number—Simon, James, and John—stood towards him in an altogether special and peculiar relationship. They are far more prominent than any of the other nine. They were selected to accompany Jesus when others were left behind. They formed an inmost circle within the circle of his more constant companions. Them alone he is said to have distinguished by names of his own invention. On Simon he conferred the name of Peter. To James and John, the sons of Zebedee, he applied the familiar nickname of Boanerges, or sons of thunder, which seems to indicate that they were distinguished by the fervor of their zeal (Mk. iii. 16, 17).

The admirers of Jesus were scarcely, if at all, less numerous among the female than among the male sex. Indeed, he seems to have exercised a very marked fascination over women. When he went to Jerusalem, he was followed by many women from Galilee, who had been accustomed to contribute to his wants, and to give him that personal attention which kindly women know so well how to confer. Mary Magdalene whom he had healed of some mental ailment, Mary the mother of James, Salome the mother of the sons of thunder, were among the most devoted of these, while two sisters, Mary and Martha, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, are also mentioned (Mk. xv. 40, 41; Lu. viii. 2, 3, x. 38, 39). If we may believe one of the Evangelists, who stands alone in this respect, the homage of women was particularly agreeable to Jesus, who received it with words of the highest praise (Lu. vii. 36-50, x. 38-42). That some among these many female followers were drawn to him by the sentiment of love is, at least, highly probable. Whether Jesus entertained any such feeling towards one of them it is impossible to guess, for the human side of his nature has been carefully suppressed in the extant legend.

Supported then by adherents of both sexes, Jesus entered upon his career of a public teacher. His own house was at Capernaum (Mt. iv. 13), but he wandered from place to place in the exercise of his vocation, staying, no doubt, with friends and disciples. It is not necessary to follow him in these peregrinations, of which only the vaguest accounts have been preserved by the Evangelists. But two remarkable circumstances deserve to be noted; namely, that his own family rejected his pretensions, and that he met with no success in his own district. Of the former, in addition to the negative evidence furnished by the fact that neither Mary nor the brothers of Jesus are mentioned among the believers, we have the positive evidence of John that his brothers did not believe (Jo. vii. 5), confirmed by the statement in the other Gospels that his family attempted to see him during the earlier part of his career, and that Jesus positively refused to have anything to do with them (Mk. iii. 31-35; Mt. xii. 46-50; Lu. viii. 19-21). This desire on the part of the family to confer with him, and the manner in which Jesus, disavowing all special ties, adopts all who "do the will of God" as mother, brother and sister, admits of but one construction. Mary and her other children were anxious to draw him away from the rash and foolish mode of life—as they deemed it—on which he had entered, and Jesus, understanding their design, avoided an unpleasant interview by simply declining to be troubled with them. And if, as is highly probable, it was they who thought him mad (Mk. iii. 21), we have further proof that neither his mother nor any of the other members of his family can be counted among his converts, at any rate during his life-time. The second circumstance, his complete failure in his own neighborhood, is attested by a saying of his own, recorded by all four Evangelists. A prophet, he is reported to have said, is without honor in his own country, among his own kin, and in his own house (Mk. vi. 4). To which it was added that he was unable to perform any work of power there, beyond curing a few sick people. And these cures evidently did not impress the skeptical Nazarenes, for we are told that "he marveled because of their unbelief" (Mk. vi. 5, 6).

Leaving, therefore, these hard-hearted neighbors, he proceeded to address the people of Galilee and Judea in discourses which excited great attention; sometimes inculcating moral truths in plain but eloquent language, sometimes preferring to illustrate them by little stories, the application of which he either made himself or left to his hearers to discover. Had these stood alone, they would have sufficed to give him a high reputation. But he did not depend on words alone for his success among the people. The peculiar condition of Palestine at this epoch gave him a favorable opportunity of supplementing words by deeds. The trials and sufferings they had undergone, both from the Herodian family and the Romans; the constant outrage to their deepest feelings afforded by the presence of an alien soldiery; the insults, humiliations, and cruelties they endured at the hands of their conquerors, had wrought the people up to a state of almost unbearable tension and extreme excitement. That under the pressure of such a state of things nervous disorders should be widely prevalent, is not to be wondered at. And these affections, as is well known, are peculiarly infectious, easily spreading through a whole village and raging in a whole country (See, for example, Hæcker's Epidemics, _passim_). Hysteria, moreover, takes many forms. Now it may show itself as species of madness; now as the imagination of some positive disease. Here it may be violent and outrageous; there morbid and gloomy. Another peculiarity is its tendency to increase the more, the greater the attention paid to it by friends and onlookers. To be an object of interest to those around is enough to inflame the symptoms of the hysterical patient. And when this interest took shape in a belief that he was inhabited by some bad spirit—which was equally the theory of the Jews in the time of Christ, and of Christians up to the middle ages—it was natural that the evil should be magnified to the highest degree. There are, however, some individuals who exercise a peculiar power over sufferers of this description. Their looks, their touch, their words, are all soothing. By addressing the victims of hysteria in tones of authority, by taking their hands, or otherwise endeavoring to calm their excited nerves, these physicians of nature may put a stop to the pain, or expel the illusion. In modern days they would be called mesmerists, and though the peculiarities of temperament to which they owe their mesmeric faculty are not yet understood, their influence is well known to those who have examined into the subject.

Among the Jews, the subjects of these current maladies were said to be possessed by devils. And it was a common profession to cast out these so-called devils,[20] for we are told that it was practiced by the adherents of the Pharisees. What means they employed we do not know. Probably they were not of the mesmeric order, but consisted in charms and exorcisms which, being believed by the patients to have the power of curing them, actually had it. At any rate, the fact remains that Jesus and the Pharisees are reputed to have possessed a similar influence over the demons, and if we accept the statement as true in the one case we cannot consistently reject it in the other. It remains to be considered, however, whether the evidence is such as to induce us to believe it in either. Now it is quite true that a great many absurd and impossible miracles are ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels. But considering the important place occupied in his life—as it has come down to us—by his cures of sick people; considering the possibility above suggested that many of these might have taken place by known methods; considering too the extremely easy field which Palestine presented for their application, it would appear more likely that there might be a basis of truth in the numerous accounts of sudden recoveries effected by him, than that they were all mere inventions. We may then assume, without here entering into details, that a number of unfortunate people, thought to be possessed by devils, either met him on his way, or were brought to him by relations, and were restored to health by the authoritative command addressed to the evil spirit to depart; mingled with the sympathetic tone and manner towards the tormented subject of possession. Individual examples of these apparently miraculous cures may be open to doubt from the very inaccurate character of the records, and for this reason it will be better for the present to admit the general fact without binding ourselves to this or that special instance of its occurrence.

Possessing this power himself, and ignorant of its source, Jesus attempted to communicate it to his disciples. It is expressly stated that he gave them power to heal sicknesses and cast out devils (Mk. iii. 15), though it is doubtful whether they met with much success in this vocation. On one occasion, at least, a signal failure is reported, and as the fact stated redounds neither to the glory of Christ, who had appointed his disciples to the work, nor of the disciples who had received the appointment, we may believe it to be true (Mk. ix. 14-29). A parent had brought his little son to the apostles to be delivered from some kind of fits from which he suffered. The apostles could do nothing with him. When Jesus arrived he ordered the spirit to depart, and the boy, after a violent attack, was left tranquil. We are not told indeed how long his calmness lasted, nor whether the fits were permanently arrested. For the moment, however, a remedy was effected, and the disciples naturally inquired why they had not been equally successful. The extreme vagueness of the reply of Jesus renders it probable that his remedial influence was due to some personal characteristic which he could not impart to others. This conclusion is confirmed by the noteworthy fact that an unknown person exercised the art of casting out devils in the name of Jesus, though not one of his company (Mk. ix. 38-40). Here the name would be valuable only because of its celebrity, the expulsion of the devils being due, as in the case of Jesus himself, to the personal endowments of the exorcist. At any rate, we have the broad facts that the Pharisees, Jesus himself, and the unknown employer of his name, were all proficient in the art of delivering patients from the supposed possession of evil spirits. Possibly too the apostles did the same, and it was certainly the intention of Jesus that they should.

Such exhibitions of power, though they might tend to strengthen the influence of Jesus among the multitude, were not the principal means on which he depended for acceptance. His sermons and his parables were both more remarkable and more original. In addition to the fact that he taught, in the main, pure and beautiful moral doctrines, he well knew how to exemplify his meaning by telling illustrations. The parables by which he enforced his views have become familiar to us all, and deserve to remain among our most precious literary possessions. What more especially distinguished his mode of teaching from that of other masters was the air of spiritual supremacy he assumed, and his total independence of all predecessors but the writers of Scripture. Not indeed that he ventured upon any departure from the accepted tradition with regard to the history of his nation, or the authority of the Old Testament. On the contrary, he was entirely free from any approach to a critical or inquiring attitude. But in so far he did not teach like the scribes, that he boldly put forth his own interpretations of Scripture and his own views of ethics, without the smallest regard for the established opinions of the schools, and without seeking support from any authority but his own. In this course he was evidently strengthened by an inward conviction that he was the destined Messiah of the Jewish people. Deputed, as he conceived, directly from God, he could afford to slight the restrictions which others might place upon their conduct. He was not bound by the rules which applied to ordinary men.

This assumption, with its corresponding behavior, could not fail to give great offense to those by whom his title was not conceded. And we accordingly find that he comes into constant collision with the recognized legal and religious guides of the Jews. Among the first of the shocks he inflicted on their sense of propriety was his claim to be authorized to forgive sins (Mk. ii. 7). To the Jewish mind this pretension was highly blasphemous; no one, they thought, could forgive sins but God, and they did not understand the credentials in virtue of which this young man acted as his ambassador. Further scandal was caused by his contempt for the common customs observed on the Sabbath day (Mk. ii. 24, and iii. 6), which appeared to him inconsistent with the original purpose of that institution. The language he was accustomed to use to his disciples, and to his hearers generally, was not of a nature to soothe their growing animosity. Designating himself by the Messianic term of "the Son of man," he announced the approach, even during the generation then extant, of a kingdom of heaven wherein he himself was to return clothed with glory, and his followers were to be gathered round him to enjoy his triumph. Along with these promises to his friends, there flowed forth indignant denunciation of the Pharisees and Scribes, who were held up to the scorn of the populace.

Having thus provoked them to the utmost, he imprudently accepted the honor of a sort of triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the pomp of which, however, has probably been somewhat exaggerated (Mk. xi. 1-11). Nor was this all. He proceeded to an act of violence which it was impossible for the authorities to overlook. The current Roman money not being accepted at the temple, the outer court of this building was used by money-changers, who performed the useful and necessary service of receiving from those who came to make their offerings the ordinary coinage, and giving Jewish money instead of it. Doves being also required by the law to be offered on certain occasions, there were persons outside the temple who sold these birds. Indignant at what seemed to him a violation of the sanctity of the spot, Jesus upset the tables of these traffickers, and described them all as thieves. It is added in one account that he interfered to prevent vessels being carried through the temple (Mk. xi. 15-17). That, after this, the spiritual rulers should ask him to produce his authority for such conduct, was not unnatural. Nor is it surprising that, after his unsatisfactory reply to their inquiry, they should take steps to prevent the repetition of similar scenes.

The efforts of the chief priests to bring about his destruction are described in two of our Gospels as the direct result of his proceedings about the temple, the impression he had made on the multitude being a further inducement (Mk. xi. 18; Lu. xix. 48). Aware of the indignation he had excited, Jesus soon after these events retired into some private place, known only to his more intimate friends. So at least I understand the story of his betrayal. Either Judas never betrayed him at all, or he was lurking in concealment somewhere in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. That the conduct attributed to Judas should be a pure invention appears to me so improbable, more especially when the history of the election of a new apostle is taken into account, that I am forced to choose the latter alternative. The representation of the Gospels, that Jesus went on teaching in public to the very end of his career, and yet that Judas received a bribe for his betrayal, is self-contradictory. The facts appear to be that Jesus ate the passover at Jerusalem with his disciples, and that immediately after it, conscious of his growing danger, he retired to some hidden spot where he had lived before, and where friends alone were admitted to his company. Judas informed the authorities of the temple where this spot was. They thereupon apprehended Jesus, and brought him before the Sanhedrim for trial.

So confused and imperfect is the account of this trial given by the Evangelists, that we are unable to make out what was the nature of the charge preferred against him, or of the evidence by which it was supported. It is clear, however, that the gravamen of the accusation was that he had put forth blasphemous pretensions to be the Messiah, "the Son of the Blessed One." And this was supported by a curious bit of evidence. Two witnesses deposed, either that they had heard him say he _would_ destroy this temple made with hands and build another made without hands within three days, or that he _was able_ to destroy the temple, and to rebuild it in three days (Mt. xxvi. 61; Mk. xiv. 58). The witnesses are called false witnesses, both in Mark and in Matthew. But if we turn to John (Jo. ii. 19), we find the probable source of the charge brought against him by these two witnesses, and we find reason also to think that they were not perjurers. There we are told that after he had driven the money-changers and traders from the temple, the Jews asked him for a sign that might evince his right to do such things. In reply to their demand, Jesus is reported to have said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Connecting this statement in the one Gospel with the evidence given on the trial according to others, we may form a tolerably clear notion of the actual fact. Pressed by his opponents for some justification of his extraordinary conduct, Jesus had taken refuge in an assertion of his supernatural power. If they destroyed the temple he would be able, with the favor bestowed on him by God, to rebuild it in three days. These words might possibly be misconstrued by some of his hearers into a threat that he himself would destroy the temple, an outrage which would in their view have been less difficult to imagine after his violence to those engaged in business in its outer court. But whether so understood or not, there could be no question about the pretension to something like divinity in the promise to rebuild it in three days. There is not a shadow of probability in favor of the interpretation put upon the words in the fourth Gospel, that he spoke of the temple of his body. And even had that been his secret meaning, the witnesses who appeared against him could have no conception that he was thinking of anything but the material temple, to which the whole dialogue had immediate reference. They were therefore simply repeating, to the best of their ability, words which had actually fallen from the prisoner. The evidence for the prosecution being concluded, the high priest appealed to Jesus to know whether he had nothing to reply. Jesus being silent, the high priest proceeded to ask him directly whether he was "Christ, the Son of the Blessed One." Jesus answered that he was, and that they would hereafter see him "sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Such an answer was an explicit confession of the very worst that had been alleged against him. After it, there was no option but to convict him, and we read accordingly that they all condemned him as worthy of death. But capital punishment could not be inflicted except by Roman authority. He was accordingly taken before the procurator, Pontius Pilate, charged with the civil crime of claiming to be king of the Jews. Pontius appears to have regarded him as a harmless fanatic, and to have been anxious to discharge him, in accordance with a custom by which one prisoner was released at the festival which fell at this time. But the Jews clamored for the release of a man named Barabbas, who was in prison on account of his participation in an insurrectionary movement in which blood had been shed. Barabbas accordingly was set at liberty, and Jesus, though with some reluctance on the part of the procurator, was sentenced to crucifixion. The sentence was carried into effect immediately. Unable, probably from exhaustion through his recent sufferings, to carry his own cross, Jesus was relieved of the burden by one Simon, on whom the soldiery imposed the duty of bearing it. He was crucified along with two thieves, and an inscription in which he was entitled "King of the Jews" was placed upon his cross, apparently in mockery of the Jewish nation much more than of him. His ordinary disciples had fled in terror from his melancholy end, but he was followed to the cross by some affectionate women, who had previously attended him in Galilee. And after he was dead, his body was honorably interred by a well-to-do adherent, named Joseph of Arimathæa.

SUBDIVISION 2.—_The Mythical Jesus._

The life of the mythical Jesus is found in the synoptical Gospels, but more especially in the first and third. It is by no means pure fiction, but an indistinguishable compound of fact and fiction, in which the fictitious elements bear so large a proportion that it is impossible to disentangle from them the elements of genuine history. Part of this life moreover is wholly mythical, and of this wholly mythical portion there are certain sections that are constructed on a common plan, the biographers in these sections having only fitted the typical incidents in the lives of great men to the special case of Jesus, the son of Joseph. Not that this need have been done consciously; the probability is that the circumstances and mode of thought which led to the invention of such typical incidents in the lives of others, led to it equally in that of Jesus. However this may be, we shall find in the mythical life of Jesus the following three classes of myths: 1. Myths of the typical order, common to a certain kind of great men in certain ages, and therefore purely unhistorical; 2. Myths peculiar to Jesus, in which the miraculous element so predominates, that it is impossible to recognize any, or more than the very slightest, admixture of history; 3. Myths, peculiar to Jesus, in which there is a more or less considerable admixture of history; And 4. Statements not of necessity mythical, which may or may not be historical, but of which the evidence is inadequate.

At the outset of our task we are met by the assumed genealogy of Jesus, which has caused some trouble to theologians, and which is mainly important as an indication of the degree of credit due to writers who could insert such a document. For these awkward pedigrees afford an absolute proof of the facility with which the Christians of the earliest age supplemented the actual life of Jesus by free invention. We are happily in possession of two conflicting lists of ancestors, and happily also they are both of them lists of the ancestors of Joseph, who, according to the very writers by whom they are supplied, stood in no relation whatever to Christ, the final term of the genealogies. Double discredit thus falls upon the witnesses. In the first place, both lists cannot be true, though both may be false; one of them therefore must be, and each may be, a deliberate fiction. In the second place, both the Gospels bear unconscious testimony to the fact that Joseph was originally supposed to be, by the natural course of things, the father of Jesus, for otherwise why should the early Christians have been at the trouble to furnish the worthy carpenter with a distinguished ancestry? They thus discredit their own story that Jesus was the son of Mary alone. Either then Jesus was the son of Joseph, or neither of the two genealogies is his genealogy at all. The solution of these inconsistencies is to be found in the fact that two independent traditions have been blended together by the Evangelists. The one, no doubt the more ancient of the two, considered Jesus as the child of Joseph and Mary, and the ingenuity of his biographers has not succeeded in obliterating the traces of this tradition (Mt. xiii. 55). Another and much later one, treated him as the offspring of Mary without the aid of a human father. Those who believed in the first and more authentic story had busied themselves with the discovery of a royal descent for their hero, in order that he might fulfill what they considered the conditions of the Messiahship. They had naturally traced his ancestry upwards from his father, not from his mother, according to the usual procedure. But the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written entirely on the hypothesis that he had no father but God; all necessity for showing that Joseph was of the house of David was therefore gone. Nevertheless the writers or the editors of these Gospels did not like to neglect entirely what seemed to them to strengthen their case, and, forgetful of the ridiculous jumble they were making, inserted an elaborate pedigree of Joseph along with the statement that Jesus was not his son.

Let us now examine the genealogies in detail, placing them in columns parallel to one another. Luke begins a stage earlier than Matthew, making God his starting-point instead of Abraham. From Abraham to David the two authorities proceed together. Matthew, who has cut his genealogical tree into three sections of fourteen generations each, makes this his first division. After this the divergence begins:—

Various observations offer themselves on these discrepant genealogies. In the first place it will be observed that Matthew, in his anxiety to show that the whole period comprised is divisible into three equal parts of fourteen generations each, has actually omitted no less than four generations contained in the authorities he followed. For since he traced the descent of Joseph through the royal line of Judah, we are enabled to check his statements by reference to the Book of Chronicles (1 Chron. iii.), and thus to convict him of positive bad faith. In the first instance he omits three kings, representing Uzziah as the son of Joram, who was his great great grandfather; in the second he passes over Jehoiachim, making Jehoiachin the son instead of the grandson of Josiah. In the third period we have no authority by which to verify his statements beyond Zerubbabel, but his determination to carry out his numerical system at all hazards is shown by the double reckoning of Jehoiachin, at the close of the second and the beginning of the third division. The latter has in fact but thirteen generations, and it was only by this trick—a little concealed by the break effected through his allusion to the captivity—that the appearance of uniformity was maintained. Luke has adopted a different method. Leaving the line of kings, he connects Joseph with David through Nathan instead of Solomon. Now beyond the fact that Nathan was the offspring of David and Bathsheba, nothing whatever is known about him. Indeed it may have been his very obscurity, and the consequent facility of creating descendants for him, that led to his selection in preference to Solomon, though unless it were that his name stood next above Solomon's (2 Sam. v. 14)—there is no obvious reason for his being preferred to several other children of David. However, he answered the purpose as well as any, and after him it was not a difficult operation to invent a plausible list of names to fill up the gap between him and Joseph. The compiler of the list in Matthew had the advantage in so far that he did not require to draw on his imagination except for nine names between Zerubbabel and Joseph, while the compiler of the list in Luke had to supply the whole period from Nathan downwards with forefathers. But the second compiler had the advantage over the first inasmuch as his fraud did not admit of the same easy exposure by reference to its sources, and it was, on the whole, a safer course to desert history altogether than to falsify it in favor of an arithmetical fancy.

Another discrepancy between the two writers remains to be noted; it is the enormous disproportion in the number of generations between David and Joseph. Matthew has twenty-five generations, and Luke forty, excluding Joseph himself. A difference of this magnitude—involving something like 400-450 years—is not to be surmounted by any process of harmonizing. To which it may be added that the two Evangelists, by assigning to Joseph different fathers, clearly inform us that his true father was unknown.

We have here, in short, an excellent instance of the first order of myth, or myth typical. It has been a common practice in all ages, more especially among ignorant and uncultivated nations, to endow those who had risen from obscurity to greatness with illustrious ancestors. Royal connections have always been regarded with especial favor for such purposes. Thus, the Buddha is represented as the descendant of the great Sakya monarchs. Thus, the ancestors of Zarathustra, in the genealogy provided for him in Parsee authorities, were the ancient kings of Persia. Thus, Moslem biographers declare that Mahomet sprang from the noblest family of the noblest nation, and many historians give him even a princely lineage (L. L. M., vol. i. p. 140). Thus, according to Sir John Davis, "the pedigree or Confucius is traced back in a summary manner to the mythological monarch _Hoang-ty_, who is said to have lived more than two thousand years before Christ" (Chinese, vol. ii. p. 45). Thus, the founder of Rome was placed by popular legend in a family relationship to Æneas.

Leaving these genealogies—which are important only from the light they shed on the literary character of their authors and transmitters—we pass to the first legend directly concerning Jesus himself, that of his birth. Here again the second and fourth Evangelists are silent, leaving us to suppose that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, and certainly never hinting that they entertained any other belief themselves. But the first and third each relate a little fable on this subject, though unhappily for them the fables do not agree. Both had to observe two conditions. The first was that Jesus should be born of a virgin mother; the second that he should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew accomplishes this end by informing us that Mary, when espoused to Joseph, was found to be with child. Joseph, who thereupon contemplated the rupture of his engagement, was informed by an angel in a dream that his bride was with child by no one but the Holy Ghost; that she was to bear a son, and that he was to call him Jesus. Being satisfied by this assurance, he married Mary, but respected her virginity until she had brought forth her first-born son, whom in obedience to his dream he named Jesus. The child was born in Bethlehem where it would appear from this account that Mary lived, and it is only after a journey to Egypt that this Gospel brings the parents of Christ to Nazareth where a tradition too firm to be shaken placed their residence (Mt. i. 18-25; ii. 23).

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An analysis of religious beliefChapter XXI: Section VI: Jesus Christ (1)

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