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 I OCT e 19] fl 
 
 Divisioä 
 
 Section 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 FOE THE PEOPLE. 
 
 BY 
 
 DAYID FRIEDEICH*' STEAUSS. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL IL 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NOEGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, CO VENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1879. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTKD BY C. GKKKN AND SON, 
 
 1 78, STRANU. 
 
CONTENTS OF YOLr^ff//^^J^^^ 
 
 SECOND BOOKk^HSOLOGICiil; 
 
 MYTHICAL HISTORY F ^S^^^^^^V«^^ 
 
 SEC. PAGE 
 
 51. Arrangement ..... 3 
 
 First Chapter. — Prefatory Mythical History of Jesiis. 
 
 52. Subdivision .... 5 
 First Group of Myths. Jesus, the Son of David . 6 — 39 
 
 53. 54. The Two Genealogies ... 6 
 
 55. His Birth in the City of David . . .19 
 
 56. As Messiah dedicated like David . . 28 
 Second Group of Myths . . . 39 — 68 
 
 57. Begotten of the Holy Ghost ... 39 
 
 58. Annunciation and Birth of the Forerunner . . 46 
 
 59. Birth of Jesus .... 52 
 
 60. 61. Jesus, the Creative Word of God, Incarnate . 55 
 
 Third Group of Myths . . . 69 — 115 
 
 62, 63. His Life endangered and preserved by the Star * . 69 
 
 64. His Presentation in the Temple . . 87 
 
 65. Dedicated like Moses and Samuel . . .95 
 
 66. The Messiah -withstands Temptation in the Desert . 100 
 
 Second Ghafter. — Mythical History of the Public Life of Jesus. 
 
 67. . . . . . .116 
 
 First Group of Myths . . . 117 — 126 
 
 68. Jesus and his Preciu'sor . . . .117 
 Second Group of Myths . . . 126 — 149 
 
 69. 70. Jesus and his Discij)les . . . . 126 
 
 Third Group of Myths. Jesus as a Performer 
 
 of Miracles .... 149—280 
 
 71. Cures of the Blind . , . .149 
 
 72. Cures of Cripples .... 160 
 
 73. Cures of Lepers, and of the Deaf and Dumb . . 172 
 
 74. Cures of Persons possessed by Devils . . 179 
 
 75. Cures involuntary and at a distance . . 192 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 SEC. PAGE 
 
 76. Cases ul' the Raising uf the Dead . . . 204 
 
 77. Raising of Lazarus . . . .213 
 
 78. Sea Anecdotes . . . . .237 
 
 79. Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes . . 252 
 
 80. Miracle at Cana . . . .266 
 
 81. Cursing of the Fig-tree . . .276 
 Fourth Group of Myths. Transfiguration and 
 
 Entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem . . 281 — 295 
 
 82. Tlie Transfiguration . . .281 
 
 83. His Entrance into Jerusalem . . . 290 
 
 Tliird Chapter. — Mythical History of the Passion, Death 
 
 and Resurrection of Jesus. 
 First Group of Myths . . • 296 — 324 
 
 84. The Meal at Bethany and the Anointing . . 296 
 
 85. The Passover and the Last Supper . . 304 
 
 86. The Feet-washing, the Treason, and Denial . .316 
 Second Group of Myths. The Agony and Arrest 
 
 OF Jesus .... 324 — 341 
 
 87. The Agony at Gethsemane . . . 324 
 
 88. Arrest of Jesus .... 336 
 Third Group of Myths. Trial and Condemnation 
 
 OF Jesus ..... 342 — 365 
 
 89. Trial before the High-priest . . .342 
 
 90. Death of the Traitor . . . .348 
 
 91. Trial before Pilate and Herod . . .355 
 Fourth Group of Myths. Crucifixion, Death, and 
 
 Burial of Jesus .... 365 — 402 
 
 92. The Crucifixion . . • .365 
 
 93. The Words on the Cross .... 376 
 
 94. The INIiracles at his Death . . .381 
 
 95. The Spear-stab in his Side . . .387 
 
 96. His Burial ..... 395 
 j/ Fifth Group of Myths. His Resurrection and 
 
 Ascension ..... 402 — 430 
 
 97. History of the Resurrection . . . 402 
 
 98. The Ascension ..... 417 
 99, 100. Conclusion . . .430 
 
Setünb ^10 oh. 
 
 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS, 
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND FORMATION. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
MYTHICAL HISTOEY OP JESUS. 
 
 51. Akrangement. 
 
 So far we have drawn the rough outlines of a real Bio- 
 graphy of Jesus, have endeavoured to make him as intel- 
 ligible to us as is possible in the case of a figure which we 
 view not merely at so remote a distance, but, in the main, 
 through a medium so dim, and one which interrupts the light 
 in a manner so peculiar. We now proceed to decompose the 
 medium itself, i. e. to analyse the images visible in it, by point- 
 ing out the conditions under' which they have originated. 
 
 For performing these processes we may adopt more than 
 one method of arrangement. We might take each of our 
 four Gospels by itself, according to the epoch which it marks 
 in the course of the development of Christian ideas and 
 conceptions, and shew how, at this epoch, such and such 
 efforts being made by the Church, such and such dogmatical 
 principles being assumed, the Life of Jesus did and must 
 necessarily have presented itself to men's apprehension; or, 
 looking to the closer relation of the three first Evangelists 
 and the connection of different tendencies in them, we might 
 combine these together, contrast them with the fourth, and 
 develop first the Synoptic, then the Johannine circle of myths, 
 according to their respective origin, so that we should have 
 to go through the course of the Life of Jesus, in the first 
 case four times, in the second at least twice. The first of 
 these processes would certainly be tedious, the second would 
 be somewhat violent. Notwithstanding all the discrepancy 
 
 B 2 
 
4 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 between tlie synoptic Gospels and that of John, still the 
 fundamental principles of the former are in close connection 
 with those of the latter ; even in the case of particular narra- 
 tives they are assumed by the latter, and stand in the same 
 relation of degree to those of the Synoptics as the super- 
 lative does to the positive and comparative. A criticism, 
 therefore, whose highest problem it is to make the Gospels 
 intelligible as literary and historical products, might find it 
 convenient to take each by itself, and to develop connectedly 
 its description of the Life of Jesus ; we, whose object it is to 
 answer the question, whether in the evangelical narratives 
 we have historical accounts of Jesus, or, if not, what, must 
 take another road. 
 
 We shall take, not exactly separate narratives, but sepa- 
 rate groups of them — for instance, the narratives of the 
 genealogy, the procreation, the baptism, the miracles of Jesus, 
 and pursue them in their development through all four Gos- 
 pels; and in doing this we shall, as far as is practicable, 
 take as a clue the chronology of the Life of Jesus. 
 
 The materials for the first section are, naturally, the pre- 
 fatory mythical history of Jesus, containing the accounts, on 
 the one hand, of the coming of the forerunner — on the other, 
 that of his introduction by that forerunner, the history of 
 the baptism and of the temptation, as being inseparable 
 from it. 
 
FIEST CHAPTEE. 
 PEEFATORY MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 52. Subdivision. 
 
 The wliole prefatory history of Jesus, in the form in which 
 it lies before us in the Gospels, assuming the historical 
 notices of his domestication in Nazareth, his subsequent 
 relation to John the Baptist, his own name, and perhaps also 
 the names of his parents, was developed from the simple 
 proposition of the new faith, that Jesus was the Messiah. 
 
 Jesus was the Messiah, i.e. the Son of David, the Son of 
 God, the second Moses, the last, greater Saviour of his people, 
 and of so many of mankind as faithfully turn to him. 
 
 He was the Son of David, i.e. in the first place, he was 
 descended from his family. Efforts were made to prove 
 this on different sides, and from different points of view. 
 Hence the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke. He was 
 the Son of David, i.e. in the next place, he was born in the 
 city of David. But as he was notoriously " the Nazarene," 
 the one Evangelist made use of a particular machinery in 
 order to bring the parents of Jesus from Nazareth, the other 
 to bring them away from Bethlehem to ISTazareth. He was 
 the Son of David, i.e. in the third place, he was, like David, 
 anointed by a man of a prophetical character, filled, by this 
 anointing, with the Holy Spirit, and prepared to undertake 
 his high calling. 
 
 As the Messiah, Jesus was also the Son of God, and in the 
 most literal acceptation of the phrase. This meant, in the 
 view of the authors of the first and third Gospels, that he 
 was begotten in the womb of his mother by the Holy Ghost 
 without the co-operation of a human father, announced and 
 
6 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 welcomed by angels. In the view of the author of the fourth 
 Gospel, it meant that Jesus was the Creative AVord of God 
 become incarnate, a dignity in comparison with wliicli not 
 only the descent from David and the birth in the city of 
 David, but also the pastoral scenes of the occasion of his 
 announcement and birth, vanished, as petty and insignificant. 
 As the Messiah, lastly, Jesus was the second Moses; i.e. 
 had been miraculously preserved from the same dangers as 
 once threatened, in like manner, the infancy of the first 
 Saviour, dangers produced by the fact that the Star out of 
 Jacob promised in the books of Moses had shewn itself on 
 the occasion of his birth, that those who brought gifts from 
 Salja had attended to do homage to the Messianic Infant ; the 
 second Moses, who, like the first and like Samuel, having 
 been even as a child dedicated to his high calling, was the 
 Teacher of the learned; who, lastly, withstood the tempta- 
 tions to which the people, under the guidance of "Moses, had 
 succumbed, and thus proved himself to be the Eestorer and 
 the Kegenerator. 
 
 riEST GROUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 JESUS, THE SON OF DAVID. 
 
 I. Jesus, the Messiah, of the Family of David. 
 The Two Genealogies. 
 
 53. 
 
 The olijcct being to prove tlie descent from David, which, 
 according to the conceptions of his countrymen, was a neces- 
 sary attribute of Jesus if he was the Messiah (Jolm vii. 42; 
 Eom. i. 3), this task was facilitated on both sides by two 
 opposite circumstances. The first was, that the genealogy 
 of David was known both upwards and downwards ; that of 
 Jesus was, uncjuestionably, unknown. 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 7 
 
 The pedigree of David might be read by all men in the 
 list of Jewish kings down to the captivity, as given at 
 length in historical narrative by the Books of the Kings and 
 Chronicles ; it might be read in the form of a pedigree, as 
 given by the introdnction to the first Book of the Chronicles, 
 coming down to Serubaljel, the leader of those who returned 
 from the captivity, and his innnediate posterity. It was a 
 matter of course that he who was descended from David 
 was, at the same time, a descendant of the national patriarch 
 Abraham. But as not only the Son of David was seen in 
 the Messiah, but also that seed promised to Abraham in 
 whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed (1 Mos. 
 xxii. 18; Galat. iii. 15), it might appear appropriate to trace 
 the family of David upwards to Abraham, implied as it was 
 already partly in the first book of ]\Ioses, partly at the end 
 of the little Book of Paith, and in the introduction to the 
 Chronicles. Nay, if it was wished to take a step upwards 
 from Abraham to Adam, the first created man, there was 
 no difficulty in doing so. What was wanted was found in 
 the fifth and eleventh chapter of Genesis, and again in the 
 introduction to the Chronicles. 
 
 Consequently the genealogical thread, as given in the Old 
 Testament, ran down from Adam to Serubabel and his im- 
 mediate successors ; here it came to an end and hung sus- 
 pended in the air, being about 500 years shorter than it/j 
 ought to be, and requiring to be lengthened by so much m 
 it was to be taken as the genealogy of Jesus. This might! 
 be done in two ways ; best naturally, if the descent of Jesus 
 could be known so far up, and supported by original records. 
 But it will be admitted that there is but little probability 
 that this could be done. We do not even require the infor- 
 mation of Julius Africanus, that Herod, ashamed of his own 
 ignoble descent, destroyed the Jewish genealogical registers,* 
 
 * Quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, i. 7, 13. 
 
L 
 
 8 IMYTIIICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to make it extremely doubtful tliat after tlie stormy periods, 
 first of tlie Älacedonian rule, then of that of the Maccabees, 
 and finally of the beginning of that of the Eomans, the 
 obscure family of a Galilean carpenter should have had 
 genealogical trees reaching so far up. It may well, indeed, 
 be believed that at a later period, after a Christian Church 
 had sprung up, the relatives of " The Lord" busied them- 
 selves much with the genealogy of their family, as the same 
 Julius Africanus tells us they did ; and such efforts, in which 
 the members of the family were certainly assisted by other 
 members of the Church, may be supposed to have given rise 
 to our two genealogical tables in IVlatthew (i. 1 — 17) and 
 Luke (iii. 23 — 28) ; but the fact that these writers fill up tlie 
 gap already mentioned with totally different names, confirms 
 our supposition that they had not at their disposal any origi- 
 nal records for doing so, but depended upon their own sur- 
 mise and conjecture. The son of Serubabel, through whom 
 the pedigree of Jesus runs, is called by Llatthew Abiud, by 
 Luke Eesa (both, in this, differing from 1 Chron. iii.), while 
 the father of Joseph, through wliom Jesus is supposed to 
 come from Serubabel and David, is called by ]\Iatthew Jacob, 
 by Luke Eli, and, between the two, the names are different 
 as well as the number of generations, of which, in IMattliew, 
 including Serubabel and excluding Joseph, we find ten, in 
 Luke nearly as many again, namely nineteen. 
 
 This discrepancy was, as we said, very natural when the 
 authors of the two genealogies were thrown back upon their 
 own invention in the filling up of that gap, and neither knew 
 anything of the attemjit of the other. But even if the 
 author of the genealogy in Luke was acquainted with that of 
 Matthew, he might have liis own reasons for differing from 
 it. For he differs from him even as to the members from 
 David down to Serubabel, which he, as well as the composer 
 of the other genealogy, had before him in the Old Testament. 
 From David downwards, the genealogy given in jMatthew 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 9 
 
 makes the pedigree of Jesus run through Solomon and the 
 well-known series of the kings of Judah ; while that in Luke 
 selects Nathan from among the sons of David. Now Na- 
 than, in 1 Chron. iii. .5, is named immediately before Solomon, 
 but his posterity is nowhere spoken of in the Old Testa- 
 ment, so that the compiler of the genealogy in Luke, find- 
 ing no list of them elsewhere, had to invent their names 
 himself. Different reasons may be thought of for his devi- 
 ating from the royal line, as given in the Old Testament. 
 Naturally, it was not, in his opinion, too eminent and too good 
 for his Christ. Consequently it must, in some way or other, 
 have been too mean and unworthy. It is well known tliat, 
 as is often the case in dynasties merely hereditary, that of 
 David also had degenerated in later times. With regard to 
 the last scion of it, that Jechoniah or Jehoiachin, who was 
 carried away to Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah (xxii. 30) 
 had delivered judgment in the name of Jehovah : " No man 
 of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, 
 and ruling any more in Judah." It is impossible that any 
 one remembering these words of Jehovali could represent as 
 descending from an ancestor thus rejected, him to whom the 
 Lord should give the throne of his father David, and who 
 should "reign over the house of Jacob for ever" (Luke i. 
 32 ff.). But in fact that degenerate member of the royal 
 line was not the first that had gone astray, but already 
 Eehoboam, nay even Solomon himself with his licentiousness 
 and his idolatry, might be considered as degenerate also ; so 
 that we cannot be surprised that, according to one ancient 
 account,* there was already a party among the Jews "\\'ho 
 expected the Messiah, not from this, the ruling line of the 
 posterity of David, tainted as it was with crimes, but from a 
 line tliat in its obscurity had continued pure. It was as 
 obvious for the author of the third Gospel, educated as he 
 
 * Comp. Crediier's Introdiictioii to the New Testament, i. 68 ff. 
 
10 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 was in the school of Paul, to adopt into his work a genealogy- 
 sketched from this point of view, as it was for the composer 
 of the first, with his more Jewish-CIiristian spirit, to prefer 
 the other. For the Jewish Christian 'was as regards his 
 Messiah naturally a legitimist. On the other hand, the 
 Pauline, possessed, so to say, with an Orleanistic spirit, might 
 prefer a JNIessiah who, descended from a non-reigning line, 
 appeared* at the same time less as a Jewish King. For the 
 same reason the author of the third Gospel welcomed in the 
 genealogy adopted by him the continuation beyond Abraham 
 up to Adam and God himself, or he himself made that con- 
 tinuation, through which Jesus, in the character of the second 
 Adam (1 Cor, xv. 45, 47), was placed outside of the limits 
 of Judaism in a relation to the whole of mankind. 
 
 But it is not merely in the discrepancy between these 
 two genealogies, but also in the character of each of them 
 separately, that we recognise less the results of historical 
 investigation than the products of dogmatic assumption. 
 That in Matthew divides itself into three portions, containing 
 each an equal number of members, of which the first reaches 
 from Abraham to David, the second from David to the 
 Babylonian captivity, the third from this last to Jesus. It is 
 clear from the title which he gives it, " Book of the generation 
 of Jesus Christ," that the compiler had in view the bipartite 
 register of the primeval generation in Genesis (1 Mos. v. 1 
 f^'., xi. 10 ff.), that in Genesis being called, according to the 
 Alexandrian translation, " Book of the generation of men."-f* 
 Now this latter gives, first, from Adam to Noah ten genera- 
 tions, and then, certainly not without a meaning and a pur-, 
 pose, the same number from Shem to Abraham. In this 
 correspondence of the periods within which the great histo- 
 rical epochs succeeded each other, as in this case the first 
 
 * Comp. Hilgenfeld, The Gospels, p. 165. 
 
 + 1 Mos. V. 1 : ovTii I'l ßiß\o(; ywiffEoic ai'^fHOTviov. M;iU. i. 1 : ßißXog 
 yfvifftwf." 'l>;<Toü Xpiarov, 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 11 
 
 Patriarch of mankind was succeeded by the second, and he 
 by the Father of the faithful, the Ehythm of History was 
 supposed to be discovered, the key-note, as it were, of the 
 divine government of the world — the character of which, 
 however, is not quite so simple as that. Now when our 
 evangelical genealogist combined with the accounts in Gene- 
 sis the genealogy at the conclusion of the Book of Rutli, 
 he found from Abraham to David, both included, fourteen 
 members. Whether there were ten, as in Genesis, or four- 
 teen, was indifferent to him; nay, the number fourteen, 
 as the double of seven, was a particularly sacred number; 
 only as the number ten was repeated in the one case, so 
 must the fourteen be repeated here. And as one more group 
 of fourteen, even taking the numerous Jewish kings into the 
 genealogy, did not reach to Christ, it was necessary to have 
 two more groups of fourteen — three, therefore, altogether, so 
 that again a sacred number resulted in the number three. 
 Moreover, as the first fourteen ended with David, the third 
 with the Messiah, so also it was necessary that the conclusion 
 of the second should coincide with a historical epoch. Now 
 for this there was, this time, no great personage, or favourite 
 of God, but the grand execution of God's judgment in the 
 Babylonish captivity naturally presented itself 
 
 Now with the exception of the name of Serubabel and that 
 of his father, with which the compiler of the genealogy wished 
 to embellish it, there were no other names at hand to enable 
 him to make the third portion uniform with the first. But 
 this was no obstacle to him. Again, thirteen generations 
 were not enough for the six hundred years, or nearly so, from 
 Jechoniah to Jesus (not counting in the latter), seeing that, on 
 the average, each son must have been born when his father 
 was 64 years old. But this gave him little trouble. The 
 case of the middle portion was more difficult. For from 
 Solomon to the end of the kingdom, there were twenty 
 Jewish kings, or, not counting Joash and Zedekiah, who did 
 
12 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 not carry on tlie generation, still eighteen ; if, therefore, the 
 number fourteen was to prevail, four had to he rejected. It 
 cannot be said that, in doing so, the genealogist fixed on the 
 worst, for Joas and Amaziah, whom he passes over, were, in 
 the estimation of the Old Testament historians, praiseworthy 
 princes, and in any case better than Joram and many others, 
 whom nevertheless he thought worthy to occupy a place in 
 his list. But when we see how, before Jechoniah or Jehoia- 
 chin, he passes over his father Jehoiachim, one might suppose 
 a mistake to have been committed from the similarity of 
 sound, especially as he gives Jehoiachin brothers, which not 
 he but his father Jehoiachim had. But when we find further 
 on that, instead of passing from Joram to Ahaziah, or, in 
 Greek, Ochoziah (omitting three names, Ahaziah, Joas, and 
 Amaziah), he goes to Usia, in Greek, Ozias, we are almost 
 inclined to suspect that he had selected for his omissions, 
 intentionally, those passages in which a resemblance in the 
 sound of the names might to a certain extent conceal those 
 omissions. Only he did in reality too much ; for, after those 
 omissions, the second group of fourteen only has its full 
 complement by counting over again, at the beginning of it, 
 the name of David, which had been already counted in the 
 first, and then ending with Josiah. Or if we begin with 
 Solomon, then Jechoniah must be taken in at the end, and, 
 as without him the third division has only thirteen members, 
 he, instead of David, must be counted twice over, being, as 
 he is, named both before and after the Babylonian captivity 
 that defines the section. By these means the object of the 
 compiler is certainly attained : the pedigree of Jesus the 
 Messiah is not merely derived in a general way from Abraham 
 and David, but runs down to him in three uniform cascades 
 of fourteen steps each, a sign, in tlie mind of the writer, that 
 it was not l)lind chance that was here at work, but a higher 
 power, ordering the destiny of man ; in ours, that the result 
 was not that of certain historical investigation, but of arljitrary 
 and dogmatizing compilation. 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 13 
 
 The genealogy in Luke has no such subdivisions of 
 numbers. The sum-total, therefore, assumes greater im- 
 portance. This is not brought into relief as it is in Matthew, 
 but it is, reckoning the name of God at the head of it seventy- 
 seven, consequently eleven times the sacred number seven. 
 Some trouble, however, was required to extend it to this 
 number. At the point where it leaves the Old Testament, 
 we may see this from the numerous repetitions of the same 
 names, that of Joseph occurring four times, of Judah twice, 
 of Levi, Melchi, Matthat, Mattathias, the same, and one 
 Mattatha besides. Names like these do indeed occur in 
 historical genealogies, but, thus accumulated, they point 
 rather to the exhausted imagination of a writer who, when 
 he could think of no new names, kept repeating those he 
 had already used. 
 
 It is clear, besides, that the comjjiler of this list was not 
 the author of the third Gospel, but that the latter found the 
 genealogy ready-made as a separate portion, and incorporated 
 it into his work as well as he could (perhaps with the exten- 
 sion alluded to above). This is clear from the way in which, 
 in the Gospel, it appears, according to Schleiermacher's 
 striking expression, wedged in between the two accounts, so 
 closely connected together, of the Baptism and Temptation 
 of Jesus. In Matthew it stands at the beginning of the 
 Gospel, and very appropriately, as the history of the birth of 
 Jesus is in close connection with it. So far it might be sup- 
 posed that the Evangelist had himself completed tlie list 
 with a view to introducing it in this very place. But this 
 assumption is rendered impossible, both in the case of 
 Matthew and of Luke, by a reason involved in the con- 
 tents of the genealogy. In their accounts of the birth, both 
 Evangelists exclude Joseph from all participation in the 
 procreation of Jesus, but the genealogies deduce the pedigree 
 of Jesus from David through Joseph. Both do indeed in 
 their genealogies describe Joseph only as the supposed 
 
14 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 father of Jesus, or as the husband of Mary, liis mother ; but 
 these are obviously only interpolations and alterations, made 
 by them in order to bring the genealogies into harmony with 
 their accounts of the birth. Whoever, in order to prove 
 Jesus to be the Son of David, i. e. the Messiah, planned a 
 genealogy representing Joseph to be a descendant of David, 
 must necessarily have considered this Joseph to have been 
 the real fatlier of Jesus. The two genealogies in the first 
 and third Gospels are memorials of a time and a circle when 
 Jesus was considered a human being naturally begotten. 
 Whoever conceived of him as having been called into ex- 
 istence without male co-operation by the operation of Deity 
 in Mary, had no resource, supposing him also to wish to 
 prove him to be the Son of David, but to keep to the 
 mother's side, and to derive her from the family of David. 
 Our Evangelists exhibit genealogies of Joseph which they 
 did not wish to be lost, but could not use them in the form 
 in which they were, giving Jesus as the real son of Joseph. 
 So by these additions they cut off the natural connection 
 between Jesus and Joseph, without noticing that they had 
 thus cut the vital nerve, and the power of proof contained in 
 those genealogies. 
 
 54. 
 
 Thus we have considered the genealogies from the natural 
 point of view. From this point they are easily and simply 
 explained, with all their discrepancies from each other, and 
 from the history and the sequel of the evangelical narrative : 
 so easily and simply, that it is almost inconceivable how from 
 any other point of view ditficulties so desperate can be found 
 in them, and, a priori, that point of view may be considered 
 as the wrong one from which such difliculties result. But 
 what they do result from is the supposition that not only 
 in these genealogies, and indeed in both of them, we have 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 15 
 
 genuine historical records, but also in tlie history of the 
 infancy of Jesus an account of historical value. 
 
 Can it, in the first place, be explained on this supposition 
 how Matthew, or whoever is the compiler of the genealogy 
 given by him, came to omit out of it four well-known Jewish 
 kings, and to maintain the absolutely false proposition that 
 from David to the Babylonish captivity only fourteen genera- 
 tions succeeded each other ? In the case of an inspired 
 writer, a mistake is not to be thought of, and even one writ- 
 ing independently of inspiration could at the most only take 
 Jehoiachim and Jehoiachin as one and the same person. 
 But that, besides this, he omits three other kings, that is, 
 exactly the number tliat was necessary in order to bring out 
 his second group of fourteen, cannot have been accidental, 
 but must have been intentional. We say then that the 
 intention was not to get more than fourteen members, but we 
 find in the manner in which the author proceeded an instance 
 of unhistorical caprice. The theologians of the modern 
 Church, on the contrary, as many Fathers of the Churcli had 
 done before them, find in this something deeply significant. 
 That is, in the omission of the three kings between Joram and 
 Usia, they find an inculcation of the divine prohibition against 
 idolatry (2 Mos. xx. 5) ; Joram, they say,* had in marriage 
 Athalia, the idolatrous daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, whose 
 descendants were unworthy of succeeding to the theocratic 
 throne, and were, therefore, omitted from the genealogy of 
 Christ. But, as all the succeeding kings and ancestors of 
 Jesus were descendants of this married couple, the whole 
 genealogical list, on this supposition, should have been 
 broken off at this place. No ! says the theologian, it is only • 
 to the third and fourth generation that Jehovah threatens in , 
 that passage of the law to punish the sin of idolatrous men ; 
 
 * KrafFt, Chronology and Harmony of the Four Gospels, p. 55. Ebrard, Scien- 
 tific Criticism of the Evangelical History, p. 192 of the 2nd edition. 
 
16 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 consequently it was only for the son, grandson, and great- 
 grandson of that couple, exactly as we find it in Mattliew, 
 that the right to figure in the genealogy of Jesus was de- 
 
 ) stroyed. IMadness, we see, has here its method ; hence the 
 
 ' wrong application of reasonable grounds. 
 
 In the second place, if the genealogies are taken as 
 historical records, the discrepancy between them requires, 
 above everything, to be explained. How can Joseph have 
 been at the same time a son of Jacob and of Heli, how have 
 descended from David at the same time through Solomon 
 and the kings, and again througli Nathan and a line not 
 royal ? At first sight, the answer does not appear so difficult. 
 If we had genealogies of Scipio Africanus the younger, one 
 might give the line of the Scipios, the other that of the 
 ^milii, and still both be historical, as the author of the one 
 might have kept to the natural, the other to the adoptive 
 father of the hero. Thus the father of the Church Augustin* 
 considered the Jacob of jMatthew to be the natural, the Heli 
 of Luke to be the adoptive, father of Jesus. In the law of 
 Aloses it was provided, in order to prevent families dying 
 out, that when a married man had died childless, his brother, 
 if he had one, should marry the widow, and that their first- 
 born son should be entered in the register of the family in 
 the name of the deceased brother (5 Mos. xxv. 5 ff.). Accord- 
 ingly, even before the time of Augustin, the learned Chris- 
 tian,-f- Julius Africanus, thought to explain the discre- 
 pancy between the genealogies by supposing that Joseph's 
 mother had been first married to Heli, by whom she had no 
 son, and that then, after his death, his brother Jacob married 
 her, and had by her Joseph in his own name. Consequently 
 Matthew is as correct in saying that Jacob begot Joseph, 
 
 * De Consensu Evangelistai-am, ii. 3. 
 
 t Quoted in Eufiebius, Ecclesiastical History, i. 7, and afterwards corroborated 
 by Augustin in the Eetractations, ii. 7. 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 17 
 
 !«* inasraucli as lie was his natural father, as Luke in calling 
 Josej)li the son of Heli, in whose name he was registered 
 according to the law. 
 
 But if Jacob and Heli were brothers-german, then they 
 both had the same father, and the two genealogies must have 
 coincided above them, which is by no means the case. There- 
 fore Africanus assumed that Jacob and Heli were only bro- 
 thers on the mother's side, and that their mother had two 
 husbands in succession, one of whom belonged to the line of 
 Solomon, the other to that of ISTatlian, in the family of David, 
 and that of these husbands one was the father of Jacob, the 
 other of Heli. This solution would be indeed far-fetched, but 
 still good in so far as it is not impossible, provided the 
 thing was settled by it. But exactly as Joseph in this case, 
 so, higher up, Serubaljel's father Salathiel, in which two 
 names both genealogies, in the midst of clear discrepancies, 
 unfortunately coincide, has in both two different fathers and 
 lines of descent, in Matthew Jechoniah of the royal, in Luke 
 Neri of the other line. So that again the same double hypo- 
 thesis becomes necessary, first that Jechoniah and Neri were 
 brothers, and the one the natural, the other, according to the 
 Levitical law, the lawful father of Salathiel, and then that 
 the two were only half-brothers on the mother's side, conse- 
 quently that these two fathers married successively the same 
 woman, and that moreover, exactly as before, the one genea- 
 logy took the legal, the other, in opposition to the Mosaic 
 ordinance, the natural father. But this is too much even for 
 many theologians, so they prefer either the simple relation of 
 adoption, or explain* Salathiel and Serubabel in Luke to be 
 different persons from those in Matthew — or, and this is the 
 favourite solution, they consider one genealogy as that of 
 Mary. 
 
 "We cannot but be curious to know to which of the two 
 genealogies the last explanation is to apply, as in the one of 
 
 * As Sclimid, Biblical Theology, i. 45. 
 VOL. 11. C 
 
18 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 them Mary is not named at all, in the other only as the 
 wife of Joseph, the descendant of David. And yet it is in 
 this very genealogy, which at all events does name her, 
 that the reference of it to her by the expression, "Jacob 
 begot Joseph, the husband of Mary," is so specifically 
 excluded, that the genealogy in which her name is wanting 
 altogether, i.e. that of Luke, might with more confidence be 
 considered as hers.* In that case, when it is said (ver. 23 
 ff.), Jesus was (as it was believed) a son of Joseph, the (son) 
 of Heli, the (son) of Matthat, &c., the word son, in the first, 
 third and following places, is supposed to mean a real son, 
 and only in the second place, between Joseph and Heli, a son- 
 in-law ;-f" or it is explained, Jesus was believed to be a son of 
 Joseph, (going higher up, a son, i.e. through Mary a grand- 
 son) of Heli, (still higlier up, a son, i.e. a great-grandson) of 
 Matthat, &c. ;J two modes of explanation between which we 
 might hesitate, if it were necessary to award the prize to the 
 most unnatural, which we should choose. Besides this, dif- 
 ferent Fathers of the Church and the apocryphal Gospels assign 
 a descent from David to Mary also.§ Not so the Gospel of 
 Luke ; otherwise, on the occasion of the taxing (ii. 4), it wo^^ld 
 not say that Joseph also went with Mary to be registered 
 because he was of the family of David, but because they both 
 were. 
 
 In the third place, it has to be explained, if not only the 
 genealogies but the account of the Infancy, which we shall 
 discuss furtlier on, are to be taken historically — if therefore 
 Joseph was indeed a descendant of David, but not the father 
 of Jesus, what, as far as Jesus is concerned, the genealogy 
 is intended to prove. The answer is, that they, or at least 
 
 * Thus Krafft, Chronology and Harmony of the Gospels, p. 56 ff. Ebrard, 
 Scientific Criticism, p. 195. 
 
 t Paulus, in the Commentary on the passage. 
 
 X Krafft, as quoted, p. 58. 
 
 § Protevang. Jacobi, c. 1, 2, 10. Evang. de Nativ. Marise, i. 13. .Tustin, Dial, 
 cum Tryph. 23, 43, 100, 
 
HIS BIRTH IN THE CITY OF DAVID. 19 
 
 the genealogy in Matthew, if we appropriate that in Luke to 
 Mary, is intended to shew, not the natural pedigree of Jesus, 
 but the entailing upon him of the theocratic right to the 
 dignity of the Messiah from David through the husband of 
 his mother. Thus it would be not a genealogical but a 
 juridical pedigree.* But according to the notions both of 
 the Jews and the original Christians (Eom. i. 3 ; John vii. 42), 
 the two things were inseparable, as they clearly were also in 
 the original sketch of our genealogies ; the Messianic claim 
 was considered to be a claim inherited with the blood of 
 David, and it was only a change in their view of the person 
 of Jesus, accordinsj to which the jrenealogies could no longer 
 have maintained their ground, at all events as those of Joseph, 
 but only as those of Mary, that caused the Evangelists, not 
 wishing to lose these old and valued documents, to introduce 
 tlie break above mentioned, and to make them harmless 
 indeed as far as the new dogma, but at the same time unmean- 
 ing as far as the genealogies themselves were concerned. 
 
 II. Jesus, as the Messiah, is boen in the City of David. 
 
 55. 
 
 It was out of Bethlehem, according to the text in the Pro- 
 phet (Micah V. 1), that the desired Shepherd of the people 
 of God, i.e. the Messiah, was to come. This was understood 
 of his being born in Bethlehem (Matt. ii. 4 ff.) ; and thus, if 
 Jesus was the Messiah, he must of course be born in the city 
 of David (John vii. 42). 
 
 It was not quite so easy to bring this about as it was to 
 trace the descent of Jesus from David. Of the parents of 
 Jesus it was not known that they were of the line of David, 
 but as no one knew the contrary, any one might boldly 
 maintain upon this point whatever he thought fit. With the 
 
 * Ebrard, as quoted, p. 191. 
 G 2 
 
20 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 home of Jesus, tlie dwelling-place of his parents, the case was 
 otherwise. Of this, on the contrary, every one knew that 
 it had been, as far as could be remembered, Nazareth, not 
 Bethlehem. But, as a home and a birthplace do not necessa- 
 rily coincide, the prophecy might still maintain its right. Jesus 
 might possibly have been born on the road, or his parents 
 might have changed their dwelling in his earliest child- 
 hood. In the first case, they had always lived in Nazareth, and 
 had only once, on an accidental occasion, sojourned temporarily 
 in Bethlehem. In the other case, Bethlehem had originally 
 been their dwelling-place, but they had subsequently had a 
 motive for changing it to Nazareth. So in this the narrators, 
 had their choice of the mode in which they would represent 
 the story, and we may still recognise the motive which might 
 induce one to decide in favour of one statement, the other in 
 favour of another. 
 
 The stronger the spirit of Jewish dogmatism was in one, 
 the greater the importance he attributed to the prophecy 
 with its Bethlehem : the stronger that of Greek pragmatism 
 in the other, the more he was inclined to the relation with 
 Nazareth, which was historically known. To the one, accord- 
 ingly, Bethlehem appeared not only as the birthplace of 
 Jesus, but also as the immemorial home of his parents ; 
 to the other, Nazareth, as the town in which Jesus was not 
 only brought up, but would also have been born, if it had not 
 been necessary for him to be born elsewhere in compliance 
 with the prophecy. We see at once that the first was the 
 case of Matthew, the latter of Luke. 
 
 Matthew begins his narrative with the parents of Jesus, 
 the pregnancy of his mother, the doubts of Joseph and the 
 pacifying of them by the angel in a dream, without saying 
 where all this took place (i. 18 — 25). But immediately 
 afterwards, and without further prefatory remark, he repre- 
 sents Jesus as being born in Betldehem (ii. 1). We must 
 therefore assume that what lias been already recounted took 
 
HIS BIETH IN THE CITY OF DAVID. 21 
 
 place there, consequently that that was the home of the parents 
 of Jesus, but that tlie Evangelist does not name Bethlehem 
 until it was of importance for his dogmatic purpose, that is 
 on the occasion of the birth of Jesus, who could not have been 
 the Messiah if he had not been born in the city of David. 
 Here tlie parents of Jesus receive the visit of the wise men 
 from tlie East, and would not have thought of quitting the 
 place if they had not been warned by an angel in the dream 
 to take flight into Egypt to avoid the threatened murder of 
 the infants (ii. 14) ; nay, even from there they were on the 
 point of returning again at once to Bethlehem, after the 
 death of tlie murderer, had not his successor in Judea, not a 
 much better man than he, caused them alarm : and now the 
 honest angel of the dream makes them settle in the Galilean 
 Nazareth (ii. 22 ff.). Here he who runs may read : the 
 Evangelist assumes as a given fact that the parents of Jesus 
 lived in Bethlehem. He represents them as having been 
 there always, and therefore makes use of no sort of arrange- 
 ment to take them there for the purpose of the birth of Jesus ; 
 on the contrary, his problem is to bring them away from the 
 place after it has happened, and to explain how it came to 
 pass that they are, at a later period, to be found, with Jesus, 
 in Nazareth. 
 
 Luke, on the contrary, as soon as he begins to speak of 
 the parents of Jesus, mentions Nazareth as their dwelling- 
 place. Here he represents the angel Gabriel as announcing 
 to Mary her miraculous pregnancy (i. 20 ff.) ; here Mary's 
 household must be supposed to have been, to which she 
 returns after the visit to Elizabeth (i. 56) ; hither, after their 
 temporary sojourn in Bethlehem, the parents of Jesus come 
 back with the child, and on this occasion Nazareth is described 
 expressly as their own city, i.e. their dAvelling-place (ii. 39). 
 In Luke, therefore, the parents of Jesus are not at homo 
 in Bethlehem, as Matthew says, but exactly the converse is 
 assumed, namely, Nazareth. The wliole oliject, therefore, 
 
22 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 of the narrator must be to bring them to Bethlehem at the 
 proper time. Their return thence to Nazareth, being their 
 home, results naturally. 
 
 Let us, in the presence of this problem, transport our- 
 selves still more definitely into the position of the third 
 Evangelist. He was confronted, on the one hand, by 
 Jesus as the native of Nazareth, as he lived in historical 
 tradition — on the other, by Jesus as the Messiah, and who, 
 consequently, in accordance with a dogmatic hypothesis, must 
 be born in Bethlehem. We know not whether he was 
 ac(|uainted with Matthew's account of the birth and infancy 
 of Jesus;, but even if he was, he might be of opinion that 
 his older colleague had made the matter too easy. How 
 came the parents of Jesus to Bethlehem ? This was the 
 question he proposed to himself; and the answer of Llatthew 
 that they had always been there, must have appeared to him 
 an assumption of a fact for which a cause ought to be assigned. 
 As he is not more economical of his angelic appearances 
 than Matthew, he might possibly have brought about a visit 
 to Bethlehem by such an appearance. It might have plainly 
 directed Joseph to travel to Bethlehem with his betrothed 
 in order to fulfil the prophecy of Micah. But this pro- 
 ceeding would have been a little abrupt, and consequently 
 not to be applied except in case of necessity. ]\Ioreover, an 
 angel had been already used on occasion of the annuncia- 
 tion of Jesus and his forerunner, and angels had to be 
 brought in subsequently on the occasion of his birth. So it 
 seemed a more delicate process to explain that change of 
 locality by natural causes, by the historical circumstances of 
 the period. And in doing so, arrangements of a higher order 
 were not excluded. 
 
 Especially was an opportunity given to the author of 
 shewing that he knew many things of which other Evan- 
 gelists were ignorant, that he was no stranger to history and 
 antiquities, not merely Jewish, but also lloman. lie is fond 
 
HIS BIRTH IN THE CITY OF DAVID. 23 
 
 of bringing forward pieces of information of this kind. We 
 see this not only from the narrative here in question, but 
 from the mode in which he endeavours to define, chronolo- 
 gically, the appearance of the Baptist (iii. 1), and from the 
 historical allusions in the speech of Gamaliel in the Acts of 
 the Apostles (v. 36 ff.). We see, indeed, at the same time, 
 from these very proofs of historical knowledge on the part of 
 our Evangelist, that it was not very accurate. In the first 
 passage he represents a Lysanias as being in ofiice thirty 
 years after the birth of Christ, whereas he had undoubtedly 
 been dead thirty years before that epoch ;* in the next pas- 
 sage he makes a member of the High Council in Jerusalem 
 speak of an "uprising" as an event of the past, which did 
 not take place until ten years after the time of the speech, 
 and represents another " uprising " as having occurred after 
 the former, which falls thirty odd years earlier. " Before 
 these days," says Gamaliel in the reign of Tiberius, "rose 
 up Theudas ;" and then lie goes on to describe his insurrec- 
 tion in the same terms as Josephus,-f- from vfhom we know 
 that it occurred during the governorship of Cuspius Fadus, 
 whom Claudius had sent to Judea. "After this man," con- 
 tinues Gamaliel, "rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the 
 taxing ;" and this was the well-known taxing of Quirinus 
 after the deposition of Archelaus by Augustus. But theolo- 
 gians are as indulgent to their authors as markers to great 
 men in rifle-shooting ; the latter may have gone as wide of 
 the mark as they pleased, still they hit the gold. So in this 
 case, a later Lysanias and an earlier Tlieudas have been made 
 out of nothing, in order to maintain in due honour the 
 historical knowledge of Luke, or rather of the Holy Spirit, 
 But when an author, employed upon historical learning, 
 makes three mistakes (for we shall find immediately that in 
 
 * See the question more accurately examined in my Life of Jesus critically 
 discussed, p. 341 ff. of the second edition, to which I refer the reader generally iu 
 this section. t Jewish Antiquities, xx. 5, 1. 
 
24 ]\[A'TITirAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 this passage, with which we are now engaged, a similar case 
 occurs), I say makes three mistakes of such a kind that his 
 interpreters have their hands full to set the matter tolerably 
 straight, all is not on this head exactly as it should be. 
 
 But however this may be, the author knew, at any rate, 
 many things in history ; he knew in particular of the taxing, 
 or the Eoman census, the execution of which had before 
 caused among the Jews so much ill blood and occasioned 
 the insurrection of Judas the Galilean. Wlien he was 
 working out the problem how to liring to Bethlehem the 
 parents of Jesus who were living in Nazareth, for tlie purposes 
 of his birth, was it extraordinary that in doing so the taxing- 
 occurred to liim ? As this taxing liad been the cause of so 
 much besides, might it not have also caused the parents of 
 Jesus to undertake the journey which the writer so much 
 required ? Taxings or registerings had it certainly in their 
 power to cause journeys ; chronologically, that taxing miglit 
 appear to liim all the better adapted for the purpose of the 
 Evangelist, the less clearly he knew anything about the time 
 of it. AVhen, in the passage in the Acts, lie represents it as 
 succeeding an event that hapjDened some thirty years later, 
 he made a mistake about one occurrence or the other, probably 
 about botli. He knew, indeed, of several other points in 
 connection with this taxing, as he shews, as well as he can, 
 in the passage in the Acts. He knew (ii. 1 ff) what is cor- 
 roborated by history, that it was the first Eoman taxing in 
 Judea, and that this was the very reason that the insurrection 
 of Judas had been connected with it. He knew, moreover, 
 that it had been undertaken by Quirinus, as Governor of 
 Syria, as Josephus also tells us. He knew, lastly, that it had 
 been set on foot in obedience to a command that liad gone 
 out from the Emperor Augustus Cresar, that the whole inha- 
 bited world, i.e. the whole Eoman Empire, sliould be taxed. 
 
 On this point he certainly knows more than history does ; 
 for no more ancient writer, standing nearer to the time of 
 
HIS BIRTH IN THE CITY OF DAVID. 25 
 
 Augustus, mentions a general census of the Empire com- 
 manded by tins Eniperor, and neither Suetonius, or Die 
 Cassius, or the Monument of Ancyra, are acquainted with 
 anything but repeated registerings and taxings of the 2^^oi)Je, 
 i.e. the Eoman citizens, nor are there any records, excepting 
 those of a much later date, from the end of the fifth century 
 of the Christian era downwards, which speak of an enumera- 
 tion or registering of the whole kingdom, doing so in words 
 which betray their dependency upon the passage in Luke. 
 Meanwhile we might overlook the Evangelist having here 
 taken rather too much in hand, whether from a notion that 
 only an universal decree of this sort was suitable for the 
 Eoman ruler of the world, or that what summoned the 
 parents of the world's Saviour to Bethlehem must have been 
 something that set the whole world in motion,* provided only 
 the account of this census in Judea at that time were correct. 
 Now this is indeed the case to this extent, that, as has been 
 mentioned above, after Archelaus had been appointed to the 
 Ethnarchy over Judea and Samaria, and his district had been 
 incorporated with the province of Syria, Quirinus as governor 
 of the province did, in accordance with an imperial decree, 
 direct tlie requisite register to be made of the inliabitants 
 and their property for the purposes of taxation.-f- But at 
 that time, according to our Christian chronology, Jesus was 
 
 * Very lately a Christian Jurist (Huschke, "On the Census taken at the Time 
 of the Birth of Christ," 1840, p. 35), speaks of the "internal historical necessity," 
 not only of the introduction of the census of the Empire under Augustus, 
 but also of that of the coincidence of the birth of Christ with it, in so far 
 as it was necessary that "the Saviour of the world as the second Adam from 
 heaven" should be born exactly at the moment when Augustus, as "the new 
 earthly Adam," was occupied with the census of the Empire. "Is it," adds the 
 author in a spirit of the stauchest faith, " is it to create any anxiety in us that 
 tliis general census is not mentioned in any source of history, either contempora- 
 neous or otherwise, deserving of entire confidence ?" Certainly not, especially if, 
 with the clear-siglited Jurist, we suppose such a source to be found in the gaps of 
 Dio Cassius, and the hiatus of the Monument of Ancyra. 
 
 f See Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xvii. 13, 5; xviii. 1, 1. 
 
26 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 a child of six or seven years old, and according to Matthew 
 (ii. 1), and probaLly also according to Luke (i. 5 — 26), he 
 must, as having been born under Herod the Great, have 
 been even a couple of years older ; so that this taxing of 
 Quirinus came in any case too late to bring his mother to 
 Bethlehem for the purpose of his birth. 
 
 But might not something like a census have been under- 
 taken in Judea ten years earlier, and the like effect have 
 been produced by it ? Possibly. Only we would premise the 
 remark that according to this Luke would, in the first place, 
 have confounded a provincial census with a census of the 
 world, i.e. a census of the kingdom, and, in the second, an 
 earlier census with a later. Of these two mistakes, the latter 
 would be not merely a mistake in chronology, but that earlier 
 census could not, as Luke states, have been undertaken by 
 Quirinus as governor of Syria, as it was not until several 
 years after Herod's death tliat Quirinus undertook the gover- 
 norship of Syria. Moreover, Josephus, who is very explicit 
 in the affairs of this period, says not a word of such census, 
 nor was it the Eoman custom to introduce anything of 
 the kind until a country had been entirely deprived of its 
 native rulers and placed immediately under the Eoman domi- 
 nion ; and, above all, the census of Quirinus, after the deposi- 
 tion of Archelaus, by the commotion which it excited among 
 the people, appears to be marked out as the first that had ever 
 taken place among the Jewish people. But supjjosing even 
 that for some cause or other — such as is supposed to be found 
 in a passage of Josephus,* exceptionally, and it is supposed 
 to be possible to point out a similar exception in a notice 
 in Tacitus -f- — supposing that even before the conversion of 
 Judea into a Roman province, a Eoman census had been 
 undertaken tliere, still it must have been carried out in tlie 
 manner usual in such cases and in accordance with the object 
 in view. Now, according to Luke (ii. 3 ff.), every one, in 
 
 • Jewish Autiquities, xvi. 9, 3. + Auiial. vi. 41. 
 
ms BIRTH m the city of david. 27 
 
 obedience to the imperial decree, every one travelled to his 
 own city, i.e. as is afterwards explained with reference to 
 Joseph, to the place from which his family originally de- 
 scended — Joseph therefore to Bethlehem, because, a thousand 
 years before, David, the ancestor of his race, had been born 
 there. Now this, according to the common supposition, 
 w^as the custom in the Jewish registerings, as the Jewish 
 political system, at least in ancient times, rested upon the 
 basis of family and race; the Eomans, on the contrary, 
 whose object was entirely statistic and financial, in the 
 provincial census had no such object, but, according to the 
 most credible accounts,* the country-people were summoned 
 into the chief town of the circle, and generally every one to 
 the place of which his real or adoptive father had been a 
 citizen. Now there cannot be the least probability in the 
 supposition that the surviving descendants of David (even 
 supposing that Joseph was one of them), if they had settled 
 too in a distant country, should, after all the revolutions 
 of a period of a thousand years, have still been considered 
 as citizens of Bethlehem. And if it is suggested that the 
 Eomans in their foreign taxings adopted the usages of the 
 subject countries, they would only have done so in so far as 
 the operation did not tend to defeat their objects, which 
 would manifestly have been the case had they moved a man 
 for the purpose of entering his own name and that of his 
 family, together with an account of his property, from the 
 distant Galilee to Bethlehem, where tliey could have very 
 little power of checking the entries he might make. But 
 Luke represents Joseph as not only travelling to Betldehem 
 himself, but also as taking with him his betrothed, jMary, in 
 order that she might be registered with him (ver. 5). But this 
 joint journey of Mary was superfluous, not only according to 
 the Eoman, but also the Jewish custom. It is known from 
 the Old Testament that no account was taken of women in 
 
 * Proofs are found in Paulus, Manual of Exegesis, on the passage in Luke, 
 and in Ilusclike, in the treatise quoted, i). llü ff. 
 
28 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the Jewish registerings ; and, moreover, according to the law 
 of Servius Tullius, neither had the Eoman citizens on the 
 occasion of the census to bring with them their wives and 
 children in person, but only to give in their names, nor in 
 the case of the provincials can the necessity of the per- 
 sonal appearance of women, according to the Eoman law, be 
 proved.* If, therefore, ]\Iary travelled to Bethlehem, it must 
 have been by Joseph's free will or her own ; nay, the whole 
 journey appears on the part of both to have been voluntary, 
 everything having disappeared that, according to Luke, could 
 have compelled them to it. It cannot have been the census 
 of Quirinus, for that did not take place until ten years later; 
 it cannot have been one so much earlier, for nothing is known 
 of anything of the sort, and it would be in contradiction 
 to the circumstances ; not a Eoman census, for that would 
 not have summoned a Galilean to Bethlehem ; quite as little 
 a Jewish registering, for on such an occasion, as on that of a 
 Eoman one, Mary might have stayed at home. 
 
 The parents of Jesus had, therefore, no visible cause for 
 undertaking that journey just at a moment the most incon- 
 venient possible for a pregnant woman. On the other hand, 
 the Evangelist had so much the more reason to represent 
 them as undertaking it, and for him that inconvenient time 
 was just the only convenient one, in order to make his Jesus 
 be born in the city of David, and thus an important character- 
 istic of the Messiah adhere to his person. 
 
 III. Jesus, as Messiah, like David, consecrated like 
 David to his Office by a Prophet. 
 
 56. 
 In order to represent the greater David in all points, it 
 was necessary for the Messiah not only to be descended of 
 
 * Not even from Lacant. de Mort. Persecutor. 23, to whicli Iltisclike ai)i)eals. 
 admitting at the same time that the occiurence was not only 300 years hiter, Imt 
 also a ca.se of eAtmonliiiary severity. 
 
AS THE MESSIAH, LIKE DAVID. 29 
 
 David's line, and be born in David's city, but also, as in the 
 case of David, for a man of prophetic order to consecrate iiim 
 to his regal oJBEice by divine commission. In the case of 
 David, Samuel performed this task, and it consisted of an 
 anointing with oil, such as the Seer had already executed 
 upon the first king, Saul. But in reference to David, the 
 divine command issued in the despatch of Samuel to Jesse 
 at Bethlehem, M'here God had promised him to point out to 
 him from among the sons of. that personage the one whom 
 he had chosen (1 Sam. xvi. 1 ff.) ; on the other hand, God 
 had sent Saul to Samuel, and told Samuel on the entrance of 
 Saul that Saul was the man whom lie was to anoint (1 Sam. 
 ix. 15 ff.). 
 
 Now this antitype in David of the consecration of the 
 Messiah, had been crossed in the time after the captivity 
 by another conceiJtion. The degenerate people was threatened 
 with a terrible day of judgment to be held by Jehovah ; but 
 before this came upon them, the prophet Malachi promised 
 (iii. 23 ff.), that Jehovah would make a last attempt to 
 purify and save his people, by sending to them the prophet 
 Elijah, who, by means of his powerful preaching, would 
 prepare their minds as much as possible for the reception of 
 the God of judgment (Luke i. 17). He was the messenger 
 who was to prepare the way of the Lord (Mai. iii. 1), and to 
 him was referred the voice which at the end of the captivity 
 was heard to call by the second Isaiah, to make straight in 
 the desert a highw^ay for the God of Israel. This time of the 
 return of Elijah, of this restorer of all that was degenerated 
 and perverted, was waited for by the pious Israelite with 
 longing, and they were called happy who should live to see 
 it (Sirach xlviii. 11 ff.) ; and as he for whose coming Elijah 
 was to prepare men was subsequently considered, instead of 
 the Jehovah, to be the Messiah, Elijah was expected as the 
 forerunner of the Messiah (Matt. xvii. 11). But he was, in 
 reference to the latter, to undertake at the same time the 
 
30 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 character which Samuel had had with David, to anoint him, 
 and thus, as Samuel had made David, to make him known to 
 others in his exalted destination.* 
 
 Now no human being knew of Elijah having returned to 
 life, and having anointed Jesus, and it would have been 
 dangerous to maintain it: if therefore this mark of the 
 Messiah was not to be lost, it was necessary, among the real 
 persons with whom Jesus had come into contact, to find one 
 who had some resemblance to Elijah, and had done something 
 to Jesus which might be so strained as to be considered an 
 anointing. Such a resemblance was offered by John the 
 Baptist, who had been popular shortly before the coming of 
 Jesus. He had appeared in the wilderness of Judea, was 
 therefore the voice in the desert spoken of by Isaiah ; he 
 called men to repentance because the kingdom of heaven was 
 near, was therefore the preparer of the way for the Lord ; he 
 was a stern ascetic, was therefore in this respect to be com- 
 pared to the Tishbite. He had not anointed Jesus, but 
 baptized him ; this might be considered an anointing, if the 
 object of the ceremony in the case of Jesus was not, as in the 
 case of every one else, considered, not as an obligation to 
 repentance, but the dedication to his Messianic office, and the 
 preparation for it.-|- 
 
 The Baptist, who was bound by his calling to the Jordan, 
 could not, like Samuel on the previous occasion of the anoint- 
 ing of David, be sent to the house of Jesus, but it was neces- 
 sary for the latter, as was undoubtedly done, to go to the 
 Baptist at the Jordan. In order to undertake the baptism 
 of Jesus (Matt. iii. 13—17; Mark i. 9—11; Luke iii. 21 ff. ; 
 John i. 32 — 34), Jolni did not, like Samuel for the anointing, 
 
 * Tlie Jew Tryplio, in the Dialogue with Justin, viii. 49, states this as tl>e 
 expectation spread among the Jewish people. 
 
 t Even the baptism of Christians was sometimes described as an anointing, 
 in virtue of the imparting of tlie Spirit which was included in it. 1 John ii. 
 20—27. 
 
AS THE MESSIAH, LIKE DAVID. 31 
 
 require a special divine commission, as lie conferred it upon 
 all without distinction ; but it was necessary that in the case 
 of Jesus a particular importance should attach to it ; it was 
 necessary that the powers requisite for the exercise of his 
 Messianic office should be imparted to him, if not by means 
 of, but contemporaneously with, the bajDtism which was to 
 represent his anointing. The essence of these divine powers, 
 or more accurately tlie bearer and distributor of them to 
 men, was, according to the conception of the Jews, the Spirit 
 of God. When Samuel had anointed David in the midst of 
 his brethren (1 Sam. xvi. 13), it is said that from that self- 
 same day the Spirit of Jehovah fell upon David. And of the 
 branch from the root of Jesse, the Messiah, Isaiah (xi. 1 ff.) 
 had prophesied that there shall rest upon him the Spirit of 
 Jehovah, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit 
 of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear 
 of the Lord. 
 
 Now in the Old Testament the pre-eminence of men of 
 God in especial favour, as Kings and Prophets (Isaiah Ixi. 
 1), had been, that the Spirit of God came upon them, and 
 was observable in consequence of the effects of a higher 
 inspiration. This, in the new Church of the Messiah, had 
 become common property, inasmuch as (according to the 
 prophecy of Joel, iii. 1 ff.) the communication of the Holy 
 Spirit was supposed to be connected with baptism in the 
 name of Jesus, and the laying on of hands by the Apostles 
 (Acts ii. 38, viii. 17, xix. 5 ff. ; Eom. vüi. 9, 11, 15; Gal. iii. 
 2). It was supposed that the communication to Christ 
 himself must have been antecedent to this derived communi- 
 cation to the Christians ; it must, it was thought, be percep- 
 tible not merely in its extraordinary operations, but it must 
 itself have been a miraculous external occurrence. A natural 
 symbol of the Spirit was always found in fire. John had 
 predicted that he who should come after him would baptize 
 with the Holy Ghost and with fire. And thus, in fact, when 
 
32 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Christ had ascended, the first communication from heaven 
 by him of the Spirit to the Apostles was distinguished from 
 that subsequently effected by their laying on of hands, as 
 reported in the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles (ii. 3), by 
 the visible appearance of tongues of fire, and a Gospel used by 
 Justin represented a fire as being kindled on the occasion of 
 the baptism of Jesus, as he stej)ped down into the water.* 
 But altogether with fire there was, in the expressions which 
 the Old Testament used about the Holy Spirit, another 
 symbol also introduced. It was to "rest" upon the branch 
 of David, to " descend" upon it. Before the beginning of 
 creation it had " moved upon the face" of the primeval water 
 (1 Mos. i. 2) : " like a dove," was added by the ancient 
 Jewish interpreters, a dove which "moves" or hovers over 
 her young without touching them.i" Moreover, in the time 
 of Noah a dove had again appeared (1 Mos. viii. 8 — 12), and 
 as the saving water of baptism was looked upon in Chris- 
 tendom as the counter-type of this destroying water (1 Peter 
 iii. 21), and the former, with its regenerating power, was 
 moreover a parallel to the water of the creation, how obvious 
 it was, when the baptismal water appeared for the first time 
 in its exalted significance, i.e. on occasion of the baptism of 
 the Messiah, again to represent the dove as appearing. The 
 symbolism of the Dove as well as of the Lamb was, besides, 
 familiar to Christianity (Matt. x. 16), and might appear even 
 more suitable than consuming fire to indicate the mildness 
 of its spirit. 
 
 The Gospel of the Hebrews represented this Holy Spirit 
 not merely as descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove, 
 but also as passing into him ;| it was natural that to the 
 
 * Dial. c. Tryph. 88. Similarly thn Prfedicatio Pauli ; according to tlie Tractatus 
 de non iterando bapt. in Cyprian's Works, p. 142, ed. Rigalt. 
 
 f See these and other passages in my Life of Jesus critically discussed, i. 
 116 ff. 
 
 J (Quoted in Epiphanius, llieres. xxx. 13, comp. 29. 
 
AS THE MESSIAH, LIKE DAVID. 33 
 
 Ebionites, who, in opposition to the later doctrine of the 
 Church, maintained the original human nature of Jesus, it 
 should be of importance to bring out in the most palpable 
 manner his subsequent higher preparation. In the three 
 first Gospels also the narrative of the baptism of Jesus, in 
 its original plan, belongs, like the genealogy, to that point of 
 view which saw in Jesus a human being naturally begotten ; 
 but even from this point of view they might keep themselves 
 aloof from the extravagant feature of the entering of the dove 
 — without doubt into the mouth of Jesus — as the remaining, 
 i.e. the continuance of the dove over him, expressly, indeed, 
 stated only by Jolm, but unquestional;)ly assumed by the 
 others, equally well answered the same purpose for them, 
 that, namely, of indicating, if not the immanence, at any rate 
 the permanence, of the effect of the divine principle upon 
 Jesus. 
 
 The heavens opened, and the dove came out of them. 
 This, indeed, even without the great light which according 
 to the Gospel is said to have shone around the place, shewed 
 that it was not a common dove, but a being of a higher 
 order; still, up to this point the whole proceeding was but 
 dumb-show, requiring an explanation. This explanation the 
 Baptist could give ; it must be to the effect that Jesus, by 
 this communication of the Spirit, was prepared to be the 
 Messiah, and was accredited as such by the visible portion 
 of it. Such an explanation was supposed to be found in a 
 famous passage of the Old Testament, but it was put into 
 the mouth of Jehovah himself, in the words of the Psalm 
 (ii. 7), "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." 
 That this speech refers to some Israelitish king, who is 
 thus declared to be the representative of God, may be seen 
 as certainly as it is uncertain and of no consequence to us 
 what king may be alluded to in it.* In the New Testa- 
 
 * Comp, besides, C. Meier, The Three Royal Psalms, &c., in Zeller's Theological 
 Annual, 1846, p. 334 £f., and Hitzig' .s Commentary on the passage. 
 VOL. II. D 
 
34 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 ment, on the other hand, the text is thrice repeated (Heb. i. 
 5, V. 5 ; Acts xiii. 33), referred to Jesus and applied to tlie 
 declaration of him as the Messiah or the Son of God in the 
 higher sense. In the Psalm it was probably given through 
 David (comp. Acts iv. 25) by divine commission ; what then 
 more obvious now that it was to be verified than to represent 
 it as being solemnly repeated by God himself ? Already was 
 heaven opened for the descent of the Holy Spirit as a dove ; 
 thus from the heaven so opened the voice of God also might 
 issue down, in order, by the well known divine address to the 
 ]\Iessiah, to bring out into full expression the significance of 
 the whole scene. 
 
 In all this it is assumed that the voice from heaven origi- 
 nally expressed itself in the form in which Justin quotes it 
 from the Memorabilia of the Apostles,*' that is, exactly in the 
 words of Psalm ii. 7 : " Thou art my Son, this day have I 
 begotten thee." In this form the passage was read by 
 several Fathers of the Church of a later age, and this also is 
 the reading given us by one of the MSS. of our Gospels in 
 the passage of Luke.i* In the Gospel of the Hebrews of 
 Epiphanius, this form is combined with that known to us in 
 our own Gospels. There, the voice from heaven says first, 
 as we now find it in ]\Iark and Luke, " Thou art ]ny beloved 
 Son, in thee I am well pleased ; " then, again, " This day 
 have I begotten thee." 
 
 Then, when the flash of light appears, the Baptist asks 
 Jesus, "Who art thou, Lord?" whereupon the voice from 
 heaven says in answer wliat we read in Matthew, "This is 
 my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We learn 
 clearly from the mode in which Justin attempts to smooth 
 over the difficulty, wliat the reason was for first putting 
 in the ]»ackground, and then entirely removing, the words, 
 " This day have I begotten thee." He says that it does not 
 
 * Dial. c. Tiypli. 88, 103. 
 
 t Comp. Hilgenfeld, The Gospels of Justin, &c., j). Iti9 ff. 
 
AS THE MESSIAH, LIKE DAVID. 35 
 
 follow from these words that Jesus had not, until that 
 moment, been begotten as the Sou of God ; that it was not ob- 
 jectively his Sonship with regard to God that commenced with 
 his baptism by John, but only, subjectively, the knowledge of 
 it on the part of man that did so. The words in question har- 
 monised indeed very well with the view which, as we have 
 pointed out above, lies at the foundation of the genealogies in 
 Matthew and Luke, and which we find at a later period in 
 Cerinthus and among the Ebionites, that Jesus had been a 
 naturally-begotten human being, to whom the higher prin- 
 ciple was not imparted until his baptism; but when Jesus came 
 to be looked upon as having been from the first begotten by 
 the Holy Sjjirit, which we shall soon see more clearly to have 
 been the case with the authors of our three first Gospels, and 
 as Justin also does, then these words created a difficulty, and 
 had either to be explained artificially or to be entirely removed. 
 But as in the latter case the voice from heaven would have 
 been entirely lost, and this was undesirable, other words of 
 God, also interpreted in a Messianic sense, were seized upon 
 from Isaiah xlii. 1. Matthew, applying these words to Jesus 
 in another passage (xii. 18), gives them thus : " Behold, my 
 servant, whom I have chosen ; my beloved, in whom my 
 soul is well pleased." This text must have appeared the 
 more suitable to the baptismal scene, as in the sequel to it 
 Jehovah declares that he has put his Spirit on this beloved 
 one (who, indeed, according to the historical sense of the 
 jjassage in the prophet, is no other than the people of Israel). 
 The harmony with the passage in the prophet is most obvious 
 in the form in Matthew, "This is my beloved Son:" in 
 Mark and Luke in the address, " Thou art my beloved Son," 
 &c. &c., the sound is still heard of the rejected passage in 
 the Psalm. 
 
 Accurately speaking, indeed, it was not this passage in the 
 I'salm only that would not agree with the change of view of 
 the person of Jesus. If Jesus had been originally begotten 
 
 I) 2 
 
36 l^IYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 by the Holy Spirit, then what need was there for that Spirit 
 to descend upon him ? AVas it thej^ possible that over and 
 ybove that physical Sonship, to say nothing of the indwelling 
 laf the divine Logos, there should be a higher, more perfect 
 /communication of the Divinity ? And was it, generally, be- 
 fitting that the Son of God should submit himself to the 
 baptism of repentance by John ? To remove the latter diffi- 
 culty, the author of our first Gospel (Matt. iii. 14 ff.) introduced 
 the scene which represents that when Jesus came to the 
 baptism of John, the Baptist endeavoured to divert him 
 from his purpose by the words, " I have need to be baptized 
 of thee, and comest thou to me?" To which Jesus replies, 
 " Suffer it to be so now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil all 
 righteousness;" i.e. without doubt, to satisfy the expectation, 
 founded upon supposed types and prophecies, that another 
 Elijah would anoint the Messiah. 
 
 But while all impropriety in the act of baptism appeared 
 to be removed, there still remained the contradiction between 
 the supplementary communication of the Holy Spirit and 
 the original procreation by it ; indeed it came out all the more 
 glaringly. If the Baptist made that objection before the 
 baptism of Jesus, consequently before he had seen the mira- 
 culous signs which followed upon it, tlien he must already 
 have known Jesus as one superior to him, and, as he con- 
 fesses himself to have need of the baptism of Jesus by the 
 Holy Spirit and fire, as the Messiah himself; consequently 
 those signs could not have been intended for him, the Bap- 
 tist, but they must have had reference to Jesus himself or to 
 the people. The baptismal miracle referred to Jesus, accord- 
 ing to the original meaning of the narrative, in the very 
 literal sense that it was on this occasion that the Spirit of 
 God was first communicated to him ; but this sense was 
 excluded by the higher view of his person, and therefore 
 Matthew and Mark represent the occurrence to us as a spec- 
 tacle granted to Jesus (we cannot indeed say with what object) 
 
AS THE MESSIAH, LIKE DAVID. 37 
 
 and perhaps (for the language is doubtful) also to the Bap- 
 tist; while Luke, who also expressly embodies the dove, 
 makes all the bystanders witnesses of it. It was impossible 
 that this mode of representation should satisfy the fourth 
 Evangelist, who could be but little inclined to admit that on 
 this occasion his Christ had gained anything which had not, 
 with the Logos, already dwelt within him ; it was necessary 
 that the purpose of the appearance should be decidedly 
 transferred from Jesus to tlie Baptist, to whom it was to serve 
 as a token whereby to recognise the Son of God. But he 
 could only require this if he had not already known Jesus to 
 be the Messiah ; and it is therefore expressly stated by tlie 
 fourth Evangelist, tliat he had not, in contradiction and pro- 
 bably with definite reference to the first. And so from this 
 point of view the voice from heaven was also dropped out, 
 being changed into a statement that God had on a previous 
 occasion pointed out to the Baptist the sign that was to be 
 expected. 
 
 By thus understanding the evangelical narrative of the 
 miraculous appearances at the baptism of Jesus historically, 
 that is, in the spirit of the narrators and their time, and for 
 this very reason accepting them non-historically, we escape 
 a series of difficulties to which the theological explanation of 
 them, in the attempt to maintain the historical character of 
 the occurrence, must be subject. Thus one interpreter, in 
 order to make the miracle more acceptable, considers every- 
 thing as a vision, produced indeed by God, but only in the 
 mind of Jesus and the Baptist ; another makes a real but 
 still a natural dove hover over Jesus ; another prefers imagin- 
 ing a meteoric phenomenon, a flash of lightning and a clap 
 of thunder, which at the same time helps him to explain the 
 voice from heaven. Explanations such as these would be 
 the least of what we should have to encounter. But the 
 question recurs as to what could be the object of a suj)ple-' 
 mentary communication of the Spirit to him who was born 
 
38 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the Son of God ? In order to answer this question, wliieh 
 from our point of view solves itself, theologians hatched a 
 whole nest of artifices and evasions, one more absurd than 
 the other. The Spirit of God says one,* dwelt in Jesus from 
 eternity ; but now the Holy Ghost, the third person of the 
 Godliead, came into a new relation with him, a relation 
 different from the identity of the essence of the Spirit with 
 Son and Father. The Holy Spirit, says another,^- was innate 
 in Jesus as the spirit of life, l.)ut at his baptism it was imparted 
 to him as the spirit of his office ; or he is said to have had from 
 eternity tlie consciousness of Sonship as the Son of God, but 
 lie has received now for the first time the power of proving 
 himself as such to the world — mere miserable sophistries 
 and unmeaning abstractions, in which even the very authors 
 of them can hardly have imagined or intended anything 
 definite. 
 
 Thus the evangelical narrative of the occurrences at the 
 baptism of Jesus, notwithstanding all the additions which it 
 has received from other conceptions, may, in its main features, 
 be derived from the attempt to provide for Jesus as the Son 
 of David an anointing, and, combined with it, a communi- 
 cation of the Spirit, of the same cliaracter as was imparted 
 through Samuel to his ancestor. And we find tliis effort, 
 in tlie case of one of our Evangelists, carried still further up. 
 Tlie Books of Samuel, of wdiich David is properly the licro, 
 begin not with the liistory of David's birth, 1)ut with that of 
 Samuel. Similarly Luke prefaces the history of the annun- 
 ciation and conception of Jesus with that of his forerunner, 
 and in such a maimer that tlie imitation is not to be mis- 
 taken. So far as this goes, this would be the place IVtr 
 tracing tlie origin and rise of the history of the infancy of 
 the Baptist; but that history is so closely connected witli 
 that of the announcement and infancy of Jesus, that it can 
 
 * Ebrard, Scientific Criticism, 261. 
 
 t Lutliardt, The Gusjiel of Join iu its Peculiarity, &c., p. 238. 
 
BEGOTTEN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 39 
 
 only be considered in connection with the latter. And this, 
 being sketched from the point of view which considered desus, 
 not as the Son of David, but the Son of God, must begin a 
 new section. 
 
 SECOND GROUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 JESUS, THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 I. Jesus begotten of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 57. 
 
 According to all that has been said so far, it appears that 
 Christianity, in its moral and religious aspect, issued out of 
 Judaism, but could not have issued out of Judaism until the 
 latter had been penetrated with all kinds of foreign matter, 
 tending to modify its form, and more especially matter of 
 Greek origin. This is also true of a conception which does 
 not indeed belong to the spiritual basis of Christianity, but 
 has contributed to define its form, the conception of Jesus 
 as the Son of God. This appellation, applied to Jesus con- 
 sidered as the jNIessiah, had its origin in the most ancient 
 Judaism, but had in this, as we saw above, a merely figifra- 
 tive sense, not excluding mere human sonship. As applied 
 to Jesus, the expression was taken literally — Jesus was con- 
 sidered as the Son of God, with no human father. In this 
 we cannot fail to see heathen notions acting upon the earliest 
 circle of Christianity. 
 
 The passage in the Psalm about tlie Son of God this day 
 begotten, was, as we have seen, applied to Jesus, in the first 
 instance, by those who nevertheless considered him as Josei)h's 
 son, and understood that divine procreation and Sonship 
 in the traditional theocratic sense, i.e. that Jesus, like the 
 
40 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 best of the kings of David's line before him, was to be 
 considered as a favourite and representative of God, only 
 in an incomparably higher degree than they. It is true, 
 indeed, that in reference to Jesus, the belief in his resurrec- 
 tion, in his glorified and continuous existence with God, 
 contributed not a little to the exaggeration of this idea, 
 without, however, immediately destroying the natural view 
 of liis origin. The Apostle Paul, as we read in the intro- 
 duction, to the Epistle to the Eomans (i. 3), says of Jesus, 
 " which Nvas made of the seed of David according to the 
 flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, accord- 
 ing to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the 
 dead" — and thus we see how little these two points of view 
 excluded each other. 
 
 There is, moreover, even within the limits of Judaism itself, 
 a tendency observable to oppose to one another the natural 
 and religious points of view, in such a manner that in the 
 birth of j)ersonages of importance the share of the natural 
 parents is limited as much as possible in favour of the 
 Divine co-operation. The Hebrew legend is fond of de- 
 scribing individuals, upon whom in the scheme of God with 
 his cliosen people very mucli depended, as tlie children of 
 old parents or mothers who had been long barren. Abra- 
 ham, says the Apostle Paul (Eoni. iv. 17 ff.), trusted in 
 God, who quickeneth the dead and calleth tliose things 
 which be not as though they were ; therefore lie considered 
 not his own body, now dead, when he was about an hundred 
 years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb, but 
 staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but 
 was strong in faith giving glory to God, and being fully per- 
 suaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform 
 — that is, in their old age to give them Isaac as a son. Again, 
 Joseph, Jacob's wise and favourite son and the saviour of 
 his family, is the child of a mother who had been long barren ; 
 so also Samson, the strong hero, and Samuel, the restorer of 
 
BEGOTTEN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 41 
 
 the people and the pure worship of God ; in the case of the two 
 last, their birth, which had become improbable, is announced 
 by heavenly messengers, as that of Isaac by Jehovah himself. 
 The fact that the history of the Baptist's birth in Luke has 
 the same outline has been already alluded to, and in the 
 apocryphal Gospels Mary also, the mother of Jesus, is repre- 
 sented as a late-born child, and on this occasion one of these 
 apocryphal writers thus instructively discloses the idea that 
 lies at the bottom of such representations. " God," he re- 
 marks, " if he closes the womb of a woman, only does so in 
 " order the more miraculously to open it again, and to shew 
 " that what is there born is not the fruit of human passion, 
 "but a gift of God."* If in the case of such late births it 
 was considered necessary that God should have the greater 
 share, it was obvious enough, in a case the issue of which 
 was to be especially distinguished, to represent him as the 
 sole ao-ent, i. e. as the share of the female, when the origination 
 of a human being was in question, could not at all events be 
 dispensed with, as taking entirely and exclusively the place 
 of the male. ^ 
 
 This supposition, however, involved something calculated 
 to repel the strictly orthodox Jew. God, as the Creator and 
 Preserver 'of the world and the operative powers in it, might 
 open a womb that had long been closed, revive the dead 
 powers of generation of old married people, without trenching 
 on the purity of his supersensuous nature ; but to represent 
 his agency as absolutely taking the place of the absent male, 
 as the generative principle, was demurred to, because it 
 appeared to degrade him into sensuality, to assimilate him 
 to the philoprogenitive gods of the heathen. There was, 
 indeed, in the Old Testament a passage which lent itself to 
 such a theory, and which has even by Christians been long 
 interpreted in this sense, the passage of the virgin who is 
 
 * Evangel, de Natlv. Marioe, c. 3, in Thilo. Cod. apocr. N.T. i. 322. Comp, 
 my Life of Jesus, i. 130, Rem. 2. 
 
42 MYTIIIPAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to conceive, Tsaiali vii. 14. When, in the time of kino- Alinz, 
 the kings of Syria and Israel advanced against Jndah, and 
 the trembling king sued for the support of Assyria, the 
 prophet gave him the tranquillizing sign : Circumstances, 
 says he, shall change for the better so rapidly, that a young 
 woman,* now becoming pregnant (the wife, probably, of the 
 prophet himself, comp. viii. 3, 8), will be able to call her sou, 
 born within the proper period, Emmanuel, i.e. God with us. 
 lu this passage, in point of fact, neither the Messiah nor a 
 birth from a virgin, is spoken of; but with the fantastic mode 
 of interpretation prevalent among the Jews, this would have 
 as little prevented them from accepting the passage as an 
 allusion to the Messiah, as the Christians would have been 
 prevented by the same reason from considering it as a pro- 
 phecy applying to their Christ, if the conception of such an 
 origin of the Messiah had been in existence among the Jews. 
 But we have not succeeded in tracing this interpretation to 
 pre-Christian times. 
 
 On the other hand, no proof is wanted to shew that in the 
 province of the Greco-Eoman religion the idea of Sons of 
 God was currently in vogue. It referred not merely to the 
 demigods of the mythical period, but was also applied to 
 historical personages of the later, times. In many cases it 
 may have been the vanity of rulers or the flattery of sub- 
 jects ; in others it was undeniably a real faith of a narrower 
 or wider circle, and this faith sometimes appears very early, 
 almost before personages so worshipped have departed this 
 life. To say nothing of Pythagoras, whom, at a later period, 
 his enthusiastic adherents represented as a son of Apollo,f 
 there was a legend current about Tlato in Athens, even in 
 the lifetime of his nephew Speusippus, that Apollo had had 
 
 * For the Hebrew word means a young marriageable woman, whether marrieJ 
 or single, not an absolute virgin : like the virgines nujitce, and the puelUe jam 
 yirum experts in Horace, Carni. ii. 8, 'I'l; iii. ] •!, 10. 
 
 t lamblicb. Vita I'ylhag. 2. 
 
BEOOTTEN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 43 
 
 intercourse with his mother Pevictione,* in reference to which 
 a learned Father of the Christian Church makes the remark 
 that people could only conceive of the prince of philosophy 
 as the son of a virgin (and of the God of Wisdom, he miglit 
 have added).-|- Alexander the Great may, indeed, have him- 
 self originated the report that he was begotten by Zeus witli 
 his mother Olympias ; Livy,| also, insinuates that the elder 
 Scipio favoured the rise of a similar legend that was current 
 about him among the Koman people ; still less was Augustus 
 too good for this, as Suetonius and Dio Cassius§ give us, from 
 ancient sources, an account of his procreation, obviously an 
 imitation of that of Alexander ; how, that is to say, his mother 
 Atia fell asleep in the temple, on occasion of a midnight 
 festival held in honour of Apollo, and a snake had intercourse 
 with her, and then after ten months she had a son v/ho was 
 considered the offspring of Apollo. But, however they may 
 have arisen, histories of this kind were believed under many 
 forms at a time, with the impulse of which towards contact 
 with the supernatural world they corresponded, and thus we 
 cannot be surprised if the Christians sought to give to tlieir 
 Messiah a birth of equal rank with these teachers of philo- 
 sophy and rulers of the world of divine origin. In doing so, 
 it was natural that everything of a sensuous character, every- 
 thing relating to human intercourse, carefully removed as it 
 was from the Greco-Roman narratives, should also be struck 
 out from those of the Christians ; it was no God in a human 
 or serpent form that had enjoyed the intimacy of his mother, 
 but it was the Holy Spirit, the supersensual creative power 
 of God, which in the womb of the pure virgin had called the 
 divine fruit into life. 
 
 In this form the conception might be acceptable even to 
 the Jewish-Christian ; he found a prophecy of this mode of 
 generation in the son of the virgin mentioned in Isaiah, ap- 
 
 * Diog. Suet. iii. 1,2. t Hieron. adv. Jovin. i. 26. 
 
 J Book xxvi. 19. § Sueton. Octuv. 94. Dio Cass. Hist. 45. 
 
44 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 proxiinating types in the men of God of the Old Testament, 
 born late and contrary to human expectation ; and withdraw- 
 ing himself at the same time from the old Jewish prejudices 
 by the unsensual form in which the idea was clothed, he liad, 
 by the pre-eminence which an origin of this kind assured to 
 Christ above Moses and all Jewish prophets, gained a strong 
 weapon in the conflict with Judaism. 
 
 But this conception, once attained, had now to be properly 
 brought upon the scene, to be put forward in a regular narra- 
 tive. For doing this, the most appropriate means, as in 
 the case of most of those Old Testament births at an advanced 
 period of tlie parents' lives, was a supernatural announce- 
 ment previous to the event. Then the natural father was 
 in existence upon whom the genealogy had built so much, 
 and who now must be set aside. Finally, it was necessary 
 to prepare for the heavenly scion a fitting reception upon 
 earth. 
 
 With regard to the two first points, we have in our Gospels 
 a twofold account, one in the first and one in the third Gospel 
 (Matt. i. 18 — 25 ; Luke i. 26 — 38), of which, if we consider 
 them without prejudice, the first will appear the earliest and 
 most original. It is both sterner and more simple than the 
 other. Sterner in so far as it puts forward the repulsive fact 
 of the pregnancy of a bride without the agency of the bride- 
 groom, and, so far as the reader is concerned, immediately 
 removes the difficulty by the addition that the pregnancy 
 was caused by the Holy Ghost, but represents Joseph, the 
 bridegroom, as really taking offence, and only becoming sub- 
 sequently pacified by an angel in a dream. In this account 
 we do not learn whetlier even Mary had been previously 
 made acquainted with the cause of her pregnancy. That 
 slie should not have been so, appeared to the autlior of 
 the corresponding narrative in Luke, even if he were other- 
 wise acquainted with tliat of Matthew, altogether too abrupt. 
 Still, in the case of Mary, violence could not be supposed to 
 
BEGOTTEN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 45 
 
 have been offered to lier, as by heathen gods in heathen story, 
 but she must, according to Luke, have come to an under- 
 standing about the matter. So an angel is sent to Mary. 
 And this angel is not a common nameless one, but the angel 
 known from the Old Testament (Dan. viii. 16, ix. 21 ; comp. 
 Tob, xii. 25) as one of the highest dignitaries in the court of 
 God. And he is deputed to announce to her that she is 
 favoured by God so far as to become pregnant and to be the 
 mother of the Messiah, and moreover that all this, as the 
 angel adds in answer to her doubting question, is effected by 
 the Holy Ghost, and that therefore the holy offspring of her 
 womb shall be called, in the full sense of the words, the Son 
 of God. Mary acquiescing in the Divine pleasure, the author 
 considers it superfluous to add anything by way of explana- 
 tion as to Josej)h's conduct in the matter; and, conversely, 
 ^Matthew thinks it superfluous to state at all how Mary was 
 informed of what was to happen to her. 
 
 These discrej^ancies are caused by the difference in the 
 plan of the two narratives. But they have two main features 
 in common. They are these : first, that a heavenly messenger 
 announces the miraculous conception of the Messianic infant ; 
 and, secondly, that he fixes beforehand on the name, Jesus. 
 Instances of this were already furnished by the Old Testament 
 types, in the histories of Isaac and Ishmael, of Samson and 
 Samuel. As in Matthew the angel says to Joseph, She, thy 
 wife, shall (or in Luke, to Mary, Thou wilt) bear a Son, and 
 thou shaft call his name Jesus, exactly in the same manner 
 had Jehovah (1 Mos. xvii. 19) spoken to Abraham, Thy wife 
 shall bear to thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac : 
 as the latter name is derived from tlie laughter, at one time 
 of Abraham himself (xvii. 17), at another time of Sarah (xviii. 
 12 — 15), then of the people (xxi. 6), so in Matthew the 
 name of Jesus is derived from the destination of the infant 
 to save the people from their sins. And this, again, is done 
 in words which remind us of the announcement of Samson's 
 
46 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 destination to save Israel from tlie hand of the Philistines 
 (Judges xiii. 5). This imitation of Old Testament narratives 
 j)oiuts to an origin in a Jewish-Christian circle. Agreeable 
 to it also is the Jewish view of the destiny of Jesus, especially 
 in Luke, where the throne of David, endless dominion over 
 the house of Jacob, is spoken of (i. 32 ff.) ; though in Matthew 
 also, not only the sins are alluded to, from which the child, 
 miraculously conceived, shall redeem his people (i. 21), but 
 also, in the Jewish sense, the consequences of them, that 
 is, subjugation to, and maltreatment by, the people of the 
 Heathen. 
 
 58, Annunciation and Birth of the Forerunner. 
 
 The history of the birth of Jesus is more artificially sketched 
 in Luke than in jNIatthew. This, indeed, aj)pears in the 
 characteristics already considered, but is still more decisively 
 shewn by the fact, tliat while Matthew is satisfied witli making 
 us acquainted with the beginning of the life of Jesus, Luke 
 draws that of his precursor, John, within the range of his 
 description (i. 5 — 25, o<J, 39 — 80). So far, as has been already 
 remarked, the beginning of his Gospel resembles that of the 
 first Book of Sannief, which also starts from the history of the 
 birth, not of king Saul or king L)avid, but of the Seer Samuel, 
 who was destined to anoint them, without, however, connect- 
 ing the accounts of the nativity of these kings with that of 
 Samuel, in the manner in which the author of the first chapter 
 of the Gospel of Luke connects that of Jesus the Messiah and 
 his forerunner John. 
 
 Samuel's parents live on Älount Ephraim. So, likewise, 
 those of the Baptist in the hill-country of Judea (i. 39). 
 Samuel, the king-maker, was looked upon, at least in the 
 later Jewish tradition, as a branch of the stem of Levi 
 (I Chron. vii. 26 ft'.), probably because the anointing of 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE FOEERUNNER. 47 
 
 kings was, according to the latest ordinance, jDerformed by a 
 priest (1 Kings i. 39). So also in Luke, the man who was 
 to anoint the Messiah was, on the fa^ther's side, descended 
 from Levites, while his mother is even made a descendant of 
 Aaron and namesake of his wife (2 Mos. vi. 23). And by 
 this, perhaps, as the mother of Jesus is called a cousin of the 
 mother of his precursor (i. 36), a furtlier point was supposed 
 to be attained, that, namely, of deriving the royal Son of 
 David through his mother from a priestly line, and conse- 
 quently of representing him as a Priest and King, after the 
 order of Melchizedek (Ps. ex. 4).* Samuel's mother had 
 been long barren ; so also is that of John. But the former, 
 like Eachel and Leah, is associated as the barren but beloved 
 wife with another who bears children to her husband. The 
 mother of the Baptist, on the other hand, is made a second 
 Sarah ; that is, according to the custom of that time, she is 
 represented as the only wife, having grown old in barrenness, 
 of a husband equally advanced in years. And the similar 
 expression in both cases, " they both were well stricken 
 in years" (Luke i. 7 ; 1 Mos. xviii. 11), leaves no doubt as 
 to the imitation. Then, again, it is in accordance with the 
 type of Samuel that the promise of the Son is connected 
 with a religious journey ; in the case of Samuel, with the 
 annual journey of his parents to Shiloh, to offer a sacrifice 
 to Jehovah; in that of John, with the journey of his father 
 to perform the duties of his priestly oÖice. The wish to 
 have issue in the parents of Samuel, as the father had 
 children by the other wife, was particularly strong on the 
 part of the barren wife. It is, therefore, she who prays 
 Jehovah for a son, and receives from the High -priest the 
 assurance that her prayers are heard (1 Sam. i. 10 ff.). But 
 in the parents of the Baptist the wish is supposed to be 
 equally strong on both sides ; Ijut, as the wife in this instance 
 
 * As he appears in tlie Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs ; comp. Hilgenfeld, 
 The G-Qspel of Justin, &c., p. 265, Remark. 
 
48 MYTHICAIi HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 does not accompany the husband, ^ve must assume it to have 
 been made known to God by him alone during the offering 
 of incense in the sanctuary, and the angel Gabriel to have 
 appeared and signified to him the assent of the Almighty. 
 The angelic appearance, which is not found in the history of 
 Samuel, was borrowed by the evangelical accounts from the 
 history of Samson, who was likewise a son of parents advanced 
 in years (Judges xiii.) ; to the parents of Samson the angel 
 appears in some undefined place in the country, to Zachariah 
 in the Temple. The cause of this difference is the difference 
 in the position of the parents in each case ; but the name of 
 the angel, which is peculiar to the narrative of Luke, and is 
 taken from the mythology of the Jews subsequent to the 
 Captivity, was to a certain extent already given in Samson's 
 history, where indeed the angel refuses to give his name 
 (ver. 18), but is repeatedly designated as a "man of God," 
 which is just the meaning of Gabriel. 
 
 In the liistory of Samson, no doubt whatever is expressed 
 as to the fulfilment of the promise given by the messenger 
 of God. Quite as little in that of Samuel as to the assurance 
 of the High-priest. The parents are not represented as being 
 old in either of these cases, and conse([uently the result is 
 not considered as improbable. But the narrative of Luke 
 makes the parents of the Baptist an old married couple, 
 like Abraham and Sarah, and therefore borrowed also the 
 feature of the word of the angel appearing, at first, incredi- 
 ble to Zachariah. As in that case the parents in succession 
 insist upon the objection arising from their old age (1 Mos. 
 xvii. 17, xviii. 12), so in this Zachariah insists upon it on 
 his own behalf and that of his wife (i. 18) ; and as Abraham, 
 on receiving the first promise that he, through his descend- 
 ants, shall possess the land of Canaan, asks the question, 
 how he is to know this (1 Mos. xv. 8), so, and in the same 
 words also, Zachariah expresses his doubt to the angel (ver. 
 18). Thus the unbelief of Abraham and Sarah passed away; 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE FORERUNNER. 49 
 
 but they had as yet before them no similar example of the 
 effect of miraculous power ; on tlie other hand, Zachariah, 
 who in the history of his people had several instances of this 
 sort before him, was struck dumb, as a sign of punishment, 
 until tlie fulfilment of the promise (ver. 20), as Paul, according 
 to the narrative in the Acts, was struck blind for a time after 
 tlie reproachful apparition of Christ, and as Daniel became 
 dumb after the appearance of the angel (not indeed by way 
 of punishment, but at the majesty of the figure), until he 
 touched the lips of the prophet, and thus restored his speech 
 (Dan. X. 15 ff.). 
 
 The name of the promised child is fixed beforehand, and 
 this is a feature borrowed from the history of Ishmael and 
 Isaac (1 Mos. xvi. 11, xvii. 19). The precepts, again, as to 
 his future mode of life, how he is to avoid wine and strong 
 drink, are word for word the same that were given to the 
 mother of Samsoii for her observance during her pregnancy 
 (Judges xiii. 4, 4iir- 14) ; moreover, the dedication of both 
 infants to higher objects from their mothers' womb, and their 
 waxing in the spirit, is in both cases expressed in similar 
 words (Judges xiii. 5, 24 ff'. ; Luke i. 15, 80). On the other 
 hand, the hymns of praise interwoven with the narrative in 
 Luke, are taken from the history of Samuel. His mother, on 
 bringing to the High-priest the son that had been given to 
 her (1 Sam. ii. 1 K), broke out into a hymn of praise. So 
 likewise does the father of the Baptist, when on the circum- 
 cision of tlie latter his tongue is again loosened (Luke i. 67 AT.) ; 
 although in particular points the hymn of Mary (Luke i. 64 tf.) 
 resembles that of the mother of Samuel more than that of 
 Zachariah does. 
 
 Thus the author of this prefatory history in the third Gospel 
 compounded his narrative like a mosaic out of difterent anti- 
 types in the Old Testament. And the process can only appear 
 improbable to one who has no conception of the form of 
 thought and authorship of the later Jews. The Jew of that 
 
 VOL. II. E 
 
50 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 period of the Epigoni lived so entirely in the earlier history 
 of his people, and in the sacred books in which that history 
 was laid down, that he found in them everything that subse- 
 quently took place prefigured, everywhere prophecies and 
 symbols of following events ; and the poet likewise who 
 wished to glorify the birth of a man of God of a later period 
 could imagine nothing but that all had taken place in con- 
 nection with it as in the corresponding cases of sacred history 
 in primeval times. 
 
 Otherwise the composer of the prefatory history is no 
 spiritless imitator, but, when the object he has in view re- 
 quires it, can, without binding himself to matter already 
 given, exercise independent invention. This is shewn by the 
 original manner in which he brings about a meeting between 
 the mother of the Messiah and that of his precursor. In the 
 arrangement of this meeting, his object was no other but 
 that of glorifying Jesus by putting the Baptist as early as 
 possible into a relation with him, and making that relation 
 one of subordination. This object could not be attained better 
 than by bringing together, not the sons in the first instance, 
 but the mothers, with the embryos of the sons already in 
 the womb, and by representing something to take place 
 significantly prefiguring the subsequent relative position of 
 the two men. In order to give probability to their meeting, 
 it was necessary that the women should be connected : their 
 actual meeting was brought about by a hint of the angel, 
 who in order to make the fulfilment of the promise given to 
 Mary credible to her, referred her to what God had done in 
 the case of her cousin lüizabeth, and which was scarcely less 
 incredible. The author indeed puts a prognostic of the 
 relation between the two sons into the words with which 
 he represents the mother of the precursor as saluting the 
 mother of the Messiah (i. 43) : " And whence is this to me 
 that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" i.e. hoAv 
 am I so honoured that, &c. And this, only referring to the 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE FORERUNNEH. 51 
 
 mothers, implies the same as is implied in the words put 
 by Matthew (iii. 14) into the mouth of the Baptist on the 
 approach of Jesus : " I have need to be baptized of thee, 
 and comest thou to me?" But the prognostic was incom- 
 parably more striking if the embryo Baptist himself also took 
 part in this homage. And the writer had before him an 
 analogous instance in the Old Testament history. Eebecca, 
 the wife of the patriarch Isaac, was also at first barren, and 
 it was not until after the prayer of her husband that Jehovah 
 bestowed upon her those twins who were to be the progeni- 
 tors of two nations, the Edomites and the Israelites (1 Mos. 
 XXV. 21). The subsequent relation between these nations 
 had, according to the Hebrew legend, been already typified 
 in the relation between the two children in the womb of their 
 mother. First, their hostile position to each other by the fact 
 that the two children stru^crled in the womb of their mother 
 (xxv. 22) ; next, the spiritual superiority of the versatile but 
 weaker Israel over the uncultivated strength of Edom, in the 
 circumstance that on the occasion of the birth Jacob took 
 hold of the heel of his first-born brother (xxv. 26 ; comp, 
 xxvii. 36). But as the Baptist was not to be the twin brother 
 of Jesus, there was nothing else possible but that he should 
 make in the womb of his mother a significant movement. 
 Abraham had rejoiced that he should see the day of the 
 appearing of Christ, and had been glad when (in Paradise) 
 he had really lived to see it (John x. 56). In like manner, 
 the forerunner of Christ, while even in his mother's womb, 
 expressed his joy at the coming of him whom he was after- 
 wards to announce, by making a movement indicative of joy 
 on occasion of the salutation given by Mary on her entrance 
 (i. 44). In order to do this it was necessary — for even mira- 
 culous histories prefer, in the secondary features, clinging to 
 the natural course of things — that he should have entered 
 upon the period at which embryos begin to move : hence the 
 assertion that Elizabeth had been already pregnant for six 
 
 E 2 
 
52 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 months when Mary's visit to her was occasioned by the 
 angelic message. 
 
 The hymn of praise which the mother of Samuel sings 
 when she delivers up her infant, after being weaned, to his 
 lofty calling, has been already spoken of as a model not likely 
 to be left unused. It was obvious to put a similar hymn into 
 the mouth of the father of the Baptist ; but before the birth 
 and circumcision of the latter gave a fitting opportunity for 
 such an outburst, Mary comes in with her visit, and now she 
 anticipates Zachariah in plagiarizing the hymn of praise of 
 Samuel's mother (comp. Luke i. 47 with 1 Sam. ii. 1 ; Luke, 
 ver. 49 with 1 Sam. ver. 2 ; Luke, ver. 51 with 1 Sam. ver. 3 ff. ; 
 Luke, ver. 52 with 1 Sam. ver. 8 ; Luke, ver. 53 with 1 Sam. 
 ver. 5; moreover, Luke, ver. 48 with 1 Sam. i. 11), and leaves 
 to Zachariah, for his hymn of praise on the occasion of the 
 circumcision of his son, only an anthology from different pas- 
 sages in the Psalms and Prophets. 
 
 59. Birth of Jesus. 
 
 Annunciation of the birth of the Baptist ; annunciation of 
 the birth of Jesus ; meeting of their mothers ; birth and cir- 
 cumcision of the Baptist ; birtli and circumcision of Jesus ; — 
 thus, in Luke, the narratives are interwoven with one another. 
 In Matthew, on the other hand, not only is nothing here said 
 of the Baptist, but even the birth of Jesus is only alluded to 
 once before it and once after it ; while the birth itself and its 
 attendant circumstances are not made the subject of a narra- 
 tive. 
 
 In Luke, such a narrative is found (ii. 1 — 20). Tlie basis 
 of it, the taxation of Quirinus, as the occasion of the journey 
 of the parents of Jesus, we have already examined, and found 
 it to be an historical error, occasioned by a dogmatical ueces- 
 
HTf? BIRTH. 53 
 
 sity. The further features of the narrative are referred to 
 this basis. As strangers, only brought to Bethlehem by the 
 taxing, the parents of Jesus have there no dwelling-place, 
 and the same occasion having brought many strangers to the 
 same locality, the parents cannot find room even in the inn, 
 but are obliged to find shelter in a stable — or, according to 
 the apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy and several Fathers 
 of the Church, in a cave not far from the place* — and to lay 
 the new-born infant in a manger. Hence ensues the transi- 
 tion into the pastoral world, to which, however, the author of 
 our narrative is led, not merely by the stall and manger, but 
 is also concerned with it on its own account. The patriarchs 
 of the Hebrew nation had been shepherds, and had received 
 the revelations made to them in the midst of their flocks : the 
 angel of the Lord had appeared to Moses, the first Saviour of 
 the people, when he was keeping the flocks of his father-in- 
 law, Jethro (2 Mos. iii. 1 ff.), and the ancestor of the Messiah, 
 David, had been taken by God away from the flocks at Beth- 
 lehem, in order to feed his people (Ps. Ixxviii. 79 ff ; 1 Sam. 
 xvi. 11). In the same way, the Greco-Eoman legends choose 
 to represent their heroes, a Cyrus or Eomulus, as being brought 
 up among shepherds, f So also in this case they are poor 
 simple shepherds in the field, not the Pharisees and Scribes, 
 or the cruel King in the capital, who are thought worthy of 
 the first intelligence of the birth of the Messianic infant. 
 
 It is night when the angel appears to the shepherds, and 
 the glory of the Lord shines around them. This, again, is 
 connected with another idea. According to Isaiah (ix. 2), the 
 people that walks in darkness is to see a great light, and a 
 light is to shine upon those that dwell in the land of the 
 shadow of death. This prophecy is applied not oidy by 
 Matthew (iv. 16) to the Messiah, Jesus, but also in the course 
 
 * Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 78; Orig. c. Cels. i. 51; Protev. Jacobi, c. 18; Evang. 
 de Nativ. ; Mar. c. 13. Justin also refers to Isaiah xxxiii. 16. 
 t Herodot. i. 110 ff.; Li v. i. 4. 
 
54 • MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 of the history of the Infancy in Luke (i. 79) ; it is the day- 
 star from on high, the light that shineth in darkness (comp. 
 John i. 5) ; and as soon as the symbol had got the privilege 
 of being understood literally even once, the night-scene which 
 we have in Luke was the natural result. 
 
 The angel that appears to the shepherds in the heavenly 
 light, proclaims to them the birth of the Messianic Saviour 
 in the city of David, and as a sign of the truth of his an- 
 nouncement refers them to the fact that on their return to 
 the city they will find a new-born infant lying in a manger. 
 So Isaiah (vii. 14) had given to Ahaz as a sign a child still 
 unborn, but to be called on his birth by a name of joyful 
 import. And it was altogether in the spirit of the Hebrew 
 legend to represent sometimes the truth of a prophecy, some- 
 times the divine character of an event, sometimes the dignity 
 of a man of God, as being guaranteed by the coincidence of 
 an occurrence foretold as being about to happen immediately. 
 (Comp. e.fj. 1 Sam. ii. 34, x. 7 ff. ; Matt. xxi. 2 ff. ; Acts x. 5 ff., 
 17 ff). As soon as this one angel has delivered his message, 
 the heavenly hosts join in chorus, the shepherds return to the 
 city, find the child, and tell the announcement that has been 
 made to them in reference to it. At this the common hearers 
 are surprised ; but his mother keeps all these sayings in her 
 heart, and ponders on them, as formerly Jacob had thought- 
 fully preserved in Ms heart what Joseph, his miraculous son, 
 told him of his dreams. 
 
 The birth of Jesus having been thus glorified by angelic 
 scenes, it seemed superfluous to embellish the scene of the 
 circumcision, as had been done on the occasion of that of the 
 Baptist. Only it could not be passed over (Luke ii. 21), in 
 order, in accordance with the tendency of this history of the 
 Infancy in Luke, to bring into relief the exact observance of 
 the law on the part of the family of Jesus. 
 
THE CREATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 55 
 
 II. Jesus, the Creative Word of God, Incarnate. 
 
 60. 
 
 The view that Jesus was begotten by the Holy Ghost in 
 the womb of a virgin, might indeed, as above explained, be 
 reconciled with the Jewish idea of God, by the exclusion of 
 every sensuous element from the conception. Still, as the 
 consideration of this element could not be prevented from 
 continually intruding, the theory retained something offensive, 
 not only to the Jewish Christians, but also to those converted 
 from the heathen, who had elevated their minds to a spiritual 
 conception of the nature of the Deity. Christians, accord- 
 ingly, of this description, and these in particular, were under 
 the necessity of making their new form of religion indepen- 
 dent of that of the ancient Jews, of attempting to raise their 
 Christ above the nature of common humanity, and at the same 
 time above the greatest of the prophets of the Old Testament. 
 A method of doing so, and of keeping clear at the same time 
 of that objectionable theory, appeared to present itself to them 
 — a method by which the same object might be attained, and 
 at last a point even higher might be reached.* 
 
 When it became impossible for the adherents of the mur- 
 dered Messiah to consider him as dead, as a disembodied 
 shade, i.e. when their faith in his resurrection and ascension 
 to God arose, they attained to a conception of Jesus which, at 
 least from the moment of his resurrection and ascension to 
 heaven, placed him in the same rank with the rest of the 
 
 * Compare, on what follows, Zeller, on the Christology of the New Testament, 
 Theological Annual, 1842, p. 51 S. ; Philosophy of the Greeks, iii. 2, p. 621 ff. ; 
 Schwegler, The Post- Apostolic Age, ii. 286 fif. ; Hell wag, Theory of the Pre-existence 
 of Christ in the Ancient Christian Church, Theological Annual, 1848, p. 144 if., 
 227 ff.; Lücke, Commentary on the Gospel of John (third edition), i. 283 ff.; Baur, 
 Christianity of the Three First Centuries, p. 308 ff. ; Volkraar, Commentary on the 
 Revelation of John, p. 72 ff., 113 ; Holsten, Paul's Vision of Christ, Journal of 
 Scientific Theology, 1861, p. 231 ff. 
 
56 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 court of God, the angels, nay, even above them, as a being 
 to whom all power in heaven and earth was given by God 
 (Matt, xxviii. 18). But if his existence had not begun until 
 the time of his human birth, he could not be even in the rank 
 of the angels, seeing that they were as old as the creation of 
 the world. If he was to be made equal to them, he must have 
 existed before his human birth ; this must have been, not the 
 origination of his person, but only a descent of it from his 
 earlier superseusual existence. 
 
 The formation of such a view of Jesus as the Messiah was 
 assisted by several Jewish notions. The Son of ]\Ian in 
 Daniel, who comes in the clouds of heaven before the throne 
 of God, and is endowed by him with dominion of the uni- 
 verse, might have been originally intended merely as a symbol 
 to mean the people of Israel. But when, as is obviously 
 the case in our Gospels, the term was considered to apply 
 to the Messiah, the latter was naturally looked upon as a 
 supernatural being. The name of Messiah, as well as the 
 nation and their law, was considered by the Jews as among 
 those things which had existed in the mind of God even 
 before the creation of the world — that is, as God, as they 
 were taught by their own selfishness to believe, made the 
 world for the sake of the Jewish people, and for their sake 
 also would send the jNIessiah into the world, he must, at the 
 same time that he sketched the plan of the universe, have 
 also had in his mind the INIessiah and his mission to it. 
 Now the course of ideas of this kind is well known. What 
 was previously intended, is converted into a fact already 
 executed : the ideal becomes the real pre-existence. From 
 the description of God, as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and 
 of Jacob, Jesus inferred the continued existence of these 
 patriarchs (Matt. xxii. 31 ff.). Just as easily might another 
 person, on the supposition that the appearance of this Mes- 
 siah was included in the eternal scheme of God in the 
 creation, infer that he had been God at the time of the 
 
THE CREATIVE WOKD OF GOD, IXCAKNATE. 57 
 
 creation of the world. The description of Jesus as "the 
 beginning of the creation of God," in the llevelation (iii^^, 
 stands on the dividing-line between the ideal and real appre- 
 hension of the notion. 
 
 Something similar might be suggested by a peculiarity in 
 the Mosaic history of the creation. It is well known that 
 in the first book of Moses the creation of man is told in two 
 ways. First, i. 27, in the words, "And God made man 
 in his own image, in the image of God made he him, man 
 and woman made he them;" again, ii. 7, it is stated that 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of life, and then, subsequently, made 
 the woman of one of his ribs. This double narrative, which 
 has persuaded modern criticism that two distinct portions 
 are combined in the first book of Moses, suggested to 
 Jewish thinkers discoveries of quite a different sort. As 
 it was said of man, in the first instance, that he was made in 
 the image of God, and, in the second, that he was formed 
 of the dust of the earth, it was supposed that the same man 
 could not be meant, but that the first must have been the 
 supersensual heavenly man, the second the sensual and earthly. 
 We find this distinction in the Alexandrian Jew, Philo ; we 
 find it also in the Apostle Paul, and indeed applied to Jesus 
 as the Messiah. According to Paul, Jesus is, in his nature, 
 tlie other man, the second Adam, the image of God ; who, as 
 heavenly, is contrasted with the first earthly man (1 Cor. xv. 
 45 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4). He is called the second or the last, 
 though created before the other, without doubt because he 
 did not appear until after the first. God waited for the 
 posterity of the earthly Adam to develop itself up to a 
 certain point, and then, and not till then, in order to close 
 the present period of the world, sent upon earth in human 
 form the heavenly Adam, who since his creation had been 
 with him, as the Son of God, in a glorified form of light. If 
 the Messiah, as the heavenly Adam, had thus existed since 
 
58 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the creation, lie might still, even though he had not ap- 
 peared among mortal men until the coming of Jesus, have 
 influenced mankind, and especially the chosen people; and 
 when Paul on one occasion (1 Cor. x. 4 — 9) calls Christ that 
 spiritual rock which followed the Israelites through the 
 wilderness, and warns the Corinthian Christians not to tempt 
 Christ as some of them had done, we are at all events not 
 compelled to see in the first case a mere allegory, or in the 
 second by a forced construction to evade the inference that 
 Paul conceived his Adam-Christ, even at the time of the 
 march through the wilderness, to have stood in a peculiar 
 relation to the people of Israel. 
 
 It is, as is well known, a disputed point whether he attri- 
 buted to him a part in the creation of the world. When, 
 indeed, we read in 1 Cor. viii. 6, " But to us there is but one 
 God, the Father, of whom are all things, and Ave in him ; and 
 one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by 
 him ;" we might at first sight suppose that these words can 
 mean only that Christ was the Creator of the world, though 
 in a secondary, more instrumental position. And if Paul is 
 also the author of the Epistle to the Colossians, in which 
 (i. 15 ff.) Christ is called the image of the invisible God, the 
 first-born of every creature, for by him were all things created 
 that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible ; 
 and if, therefore, the first passage is to be explained by the 
 last, it would not be possible to doul)t the creation of the 
 world by Christ to be the doctrine of Paul. It is true, indeed, 
 that according to the original Mosaic record, man, even the 
 being created in the image of God, was not created until the 
 sixth day, after everything else. And thus it is not exactly 
 clear how he can be supposed to have taken part in the cre- 
 ation. But that his having been created would not exclude 
 the possibility of his own creative efficacy, we see from this 
 very passage of the Epistle to the Colossians : after he had 
 been created by God, all else, it is said, was then created by 
 
THE CREATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 59 
 
 him. But if the Epistle to the Colossians, together with 
 those to the Pliilippians and Ephesians, belongs to a some- 
 what later period, and the passage in that to the Corinthians, 
 taken by itself, admits of another explanation, still we see 
 from them, as well as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, what 
 the tendency M'as of the course of the development of these 
 conceptions. The Epistle to the Hebrews, like that of the 
 Colossians, while passing over the Pauline idea of the prime- 
 val man, connects the creation of the world immediately with 
 the attribute of the Messiah, Son of God, taking it not in the 
 Jewish theocratic, but in the metaphysical sense. The Son is 
 the express image of the essence, the brightness of the glory 
 of God, the First-born through whom God created the reons, 
 i. e. the present and future, the visible and invisible world 
 (i. 1 — 6), whom afterwards, out of consideration for men, he 
 made to become like unto men, and to take upon him human 
 flesh and blood (ii. 14 ff.). In fact, we have here already 
 the same nature whicli the fourth Evangelist calls the Logos, 
 only that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not 
 use this term. And this is the more remarkable as he is 
 acquainted with it (iv. 12 ff.), and must have been acquainted 
 with it through his education in the school of Alexandria and 
 Philo. 
 
 Like the whole of the Alexandrine philosophy, the idea of 
 the Logos in Philo has a double root, Jewish and Grecian. 
 But it is not the speech of God for the purposes of creation 
 (1 Mos. i.), for even in the application of it (Ps. xxxiii. 6), 
 " By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all 
 the host of them by the breath of his mouth," we have not 
 yet even a poetical personification ; and the Memra of the 
 Chaldee Paraphrase of the Old Testament is to be considered 
 rather as a retrospective effect of the Alexandrian idea of 
 the Logos. On the other hand, through the whole Hebrew 
 literature of Eeflection and Proverbs, from the Book of Job 
 and of Proverljs up to that of Sirach and the Wisdom of 
 
60 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Solomon, there runs the idea of the divine Wisdom, %vhich 
 in Job (xxviii. 12 fl'.) is plainly only a poetical personifica- 
 tion, but in the Proverbs (especially chaps, viii. and ix.) is 
 described in such a manner that, even if the author did not 
 intend it, might easily suggest a real personality. Wisdom 
 here appears speaking in her own person. She boasts of 
 having been made by God — as the beginning of his way 
 before his other works. W^ien he laid the foundation of the 
 earth, she was by him, and was his delight, as she, on the 
 other hand, has her delight in the sons of men. According 
 to Sirach, also (chap, xxiv.). Wisdom was created by God 
 before all time, proceeded at the beginning from the mouth 
 of the Highest ; she sought for herself a firm habitation 
 among the nations, until she was told of God to tabernacle 
 in Jacob,* and to have her possession in Israel (comp. Baruch 
 iii. 36 ff.). In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (vii. 25 ff., 
 X. 1 ff.), Wisdom is the effluence of the glory of God, and 
 the brightness of the eternal light ; the Spirit of God, that 
 orders the world, and is the friend of men ; that preserves 
 goodness in the world ; takes his dwelling in the souls of 
 pious men ; and in particular led the people of Israel on the 
 march through the wilderness in the shape of the pillar of 
 cloud and the pillar of fire. From this Wisdom of God, which 
 forms and preserves the world, the last quoted apocryphal 
 book distinguishes the Word of God, not only as the Word 
 that creates, but also judges, and likewise represents it as such 
 in a personal character. When the Egyptians continued in 
 their unbelief in the presence of the miracles of Moses, then, 
 in the midst of the silence of the night (Wisd. xviii. 14 ff.), 
 the Almighty Word came down as a miglity champion, carry- 
 ing his solemn command like a sharp sword, and placed him- 
 self (like the angel of the pestilence, 1 Chron. xxii. 16) between 
 heaven and earth, filling all with death. 
 
 * Ver. 8, iv laKwß KaraaKi'ii'waoi'. John i. 14 (of the Xoyoc), »crti iaKl}Vi<>atv 
 Iv »iinv. 
 
THE CEEATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 61 
 
 JSTow the system of Greek philosophy that next to the 
 Platonic obtained the greatest influence over the Jews in 
 Alexandria was the Stoic. In this system, the term used to 
 describe the divine Eeason penetrating and artificially mould- 
 ing the world was not "Wisdom, but that by which the Alexan- 
 drian translation of the Old Testament and the Jews who 
 spoke Greek universally designated the creative Word of God, 
 the term Logos. This term, from a peculiarity of the Greek 
 language, meant at the same time Eeason and Word. The 
 consequence was, that philosophising Jews in Alexandria soon 
 accustomed themselves to ascribe to the divine Logos what 
 had been before attributed to the divine Wisdom. Thus, in 
 Philo especially, the contemporary of Jesus who survived 
 him, the Logos on the one hand corresponds to that which 
 in the proverbial literature of the Jews is the divine Wisdom, 
 and on the other to that which in the Stoics is the Eeason 
 of the World, in Plato and the N"eopythagoreans the Soul of 
 the World and the World of Ideas. The Logos of Philo is 
 the Mediator between God and the world; it stands on the 
 boundary-line between the two, and makes their intercourse 
 possible, inasmuch as, in a downward direction, and being 
 the essence of the Divine Ideas, it informs the world with 
 these, while, acting upwards, it represents the world, and 
 especially men, with God. It is neither uncreate, or created 
 as we are, but came into existence, being, however, the most 
 ancient and most original of all that did come into existence ; 
 it is therefore a God to us, as beings who stand far below it, 
 not God absolutely, but a second or subordinate God. This 
 Logos, as an invisible angel, led the Exodus of the people of 
 Israel out of Egypt, in the pillar of cloud and fire, and is 
 probably to be understood by the superhuman appearance 
 which, according to Philo, in the Messianic period, being 
 cognisable only to the saved, but invisible to all besides, is to 
 lead back the scattered Jews into the land of promise. Still, 
 Philo conceived of the Messianic Prince, who was to place 
 
62 RrrTHICAL history of JESUS. 
 
 4 
 
 himself at the head of the returning people, as something 
 distinct from this superhuman Eeason. For he looked upon 
 the Logos as supersensual, not capable of entering into mat- 
 ter, scarcely indeed as a definite personal Being. 
 
 But the combination of these two ideas, that of the Logos 
 and of the Messiah or Christ, could not be long delayed. 
 The Mediatorial character which the one had to sustain 
 between God and the chosen people, the other between God 
 and the world in general, could not fail to unite them. In 
 the Xew Testament indeed they are not found in combina- 
 tion, except in the Gospel of John, or before it (i. 1 — 18). 
 The Apostle Paul, though assuming an existence of the 
 ^Messiah anterior to man, knows nothing of a Logos in Philo's 
 sense. The term is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
 but in the same way as in the Book of "Wisdom it is placed 
 by the side of Wisdom, so the Logos is placed, as a sharp, 
 all-penetrating and judging spirit (iv. 12 ff.), by the side of 
 the Son who creates and redeems the world, the brightness 
 of the glory, and the express image of God (i. 1 — 3). In 
 the Eevelation of John (xix. 13), "the Word of God" is 
 written as his mysterious name on the head of Christ- ap- 
 proaching as a conqueror. But by this Jesus is only intended 
 to be described as the herahl and executioner of the Divine 
 sentence upon the world. This is shewn by the context, and 
 especially by the sharp sword which (ver. 15) goeth out of 
 his mouth, and which is this powerful Word of God. Besides, 
 it is clear that the later author of the Gospel, who is likewise 
 supposed to have borne the name of John, might take to this 
 description of the Apocalyptic John and understand it in its 
 metaphysical sense. It can however hardly be the case that 
 the author of this Gospel was the first who completed the union 
 of the two ideas. For it is found, if not earlier, at all events 
 independent of him, in other writings of the same period, 
 especially in those of Justin Martyr, who wrote in the interval 
 between 147 and 160 a.J)., and, as has been already remarked, 
 
THE CREATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 63 
 
 it is found in him in a form differing in so many ways from 
 tlie type of John, that we see clearly that he, like the author 
 of the fourth Gospel, adopted the doctrine of the Logos as a 
 current idea of the time, and used it in his own way for his 
 theory of Christianity. 
 
 The entrance of the higher nature that appeared in Christ 
 into the world of man is described by Paul (Eom. viii. 3) in 
 the following words : " God sent his own Son in the likeness 
 of sinful flesh," i.e. in a body which was like the sinful 
 human body (only like, because he was himself without sin). 
 When the Apostle expresses this idea in the following 
 terms (Galat. iv. 4), " God sent forth his Son made of a 
 woman, made under the law ;" this has as little to do with the 
 exclusion of male agency in the histories of the Infancy as 
 given in Matthew and Luke, as when on any other occasion 
 (Eom. i. 3 ff.) it is said of him that he was made of the 
 seed of David according to the flesh, but declared to be the 
 Son of God according to the spirit of holiness, by the resur- 
 rection from the dead. On the contrary, there is no doubt that 
 Paul conceived of his Christ as a naturally -begotten man, 
 with whom the Son of God, the heavenly Adam, perhaps 
 before his birth, united himself 
 
 Nor, in the Gospel of John, which describes the higher 
 Spirit as the divine Logos, the only-begotten Son, who from 
 the beginning was with God, and by whom all things were 
 made, is anything more accurate stated with regard to the 
 mode of his entrance into mortal life. It is only said (i. 14) 
 that the Word became flesh, i.e. took a human body; but at 
 what moment or how, we do not learn. We have, in this 
 Gospel, quite as little reason as in Paul, for supposing the 
 exclusion of male participation from his procreation. Not 
 only by the Jews (vi. 42), but also by the Apostle Philip, 
 after he had already recognised in Jesus the Messiah pro- 
 phesied by the Law and the Prophets, is Jesus, without the 
 hint of correction, described as the son of Joseph (i. 46). As 
 
64 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 faithful Christians, natural human beings in their origin, 
 " are born, not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of man, but 
 of God" (i. 13), so also, according to the view of John, 
 might Christ himself, notwithstanding his perfectly human 
 procreation, be the only -begotten Son of God. But the 
 Evancrelist does not give a hint as to when this union took 
 place. When, indeed, it is said of the Logos, as the true 
 light (apparently in reference to the period of the Baptist's 
 ministry), that it lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world (i. 9), and immediately after, on the occasion of the 
 baptism, the Holy Spirit is represented (i. 32 ff.) as abiding 
 upon Jesus, the inference has been drawn that the fourth 
 Evangelist conceived the baptism of Jesus to have been the 
 moment of the union of the Logos with man.* But the Spirit 
 in the form of a dove, which he represents as descending upon 
 Jesus on this occasion, cannot be immediately compared with 
 the Logos, but is a remnant of the most ancient view of the 
 higher nature in Christ, which the Evangelist follows as tra- 
 ditional, though it did not fit in with his doctrine of the 
 Logos ; as the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus on the occa- 
 sion of the baptism would not have fitted in with the synoptic 
 notion of the procreation of Jesus by him. The most probable 
 supposition is that the fourth Evangelist connected that 
 union with the first beginning of the life of Jesus, after the 
 manner of the Platonic incorporating of pre-existent souls, 
 but passed over the history of the Infancy, partly because 
 it was much more difficult to conceive the subordinate God 
 incarnate in tlie age of infancy than the human being wlio 
 had been begotten of God, partly because a Gospel of the 
 Infancy was too humble for the lofty style and higher flight 
 of his description. 
 
 But if the views of the Prologue of John, and those of the 
 synoptic histories of the birth with regard to the origin of 
 
 * IlilgenfeUl, The (iospels, p. 241. The Question of tlie Gospels, Theological 
 Annual, 1857, p. 522. Comp, iilso Bretschueider, rrobabil. p. 6, 128. 
 
THE CREATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 65 
 
 the person of Jesus, are equally unlike the more ancient 
 view given in the history of the baptism of the Messianic 
 preparation of that person, still they cannot therefore be 
 reconciled with each other. 
 
 The solution of Justin,* that by the Holy Ghost or power 
 of the Highest, which Matthew and Luke describe as the 
 efficient cause of the pregnancy of Mary, only the Logos is to 
 be understood, does not hold good. Whether Spirit or Word, 
 there must always be a difference between, on the one hand, 
 a divine nature that has become flesh in Jesus and abided 
 immanently in him, and, on the other, merely a divine ope- 
 ration occasioning his procreation. In the latter case, the 
 subject of the evangelical history is produced by this opera- 
 tion ; in the other case it already exists, and only enters, in 
 virtue of its incarnation, into another form of existence. In 
 the one case, the personality of Jesus is a mixed product of 
 fructifying divine operation and receptive human, i.e. female, 
 co-operation ; in the other, it is the pure, divine personality 
 of the Logos, to which the human element in him stands in 
 the relation only of a transitory appurtenance. 
 
 6L 
 
 But it was not merely when a loftier, superhuman subject 
 for the personality of Jesus, the Messiah, was sought for that 
 the divine Wisdom of the Proverbs and of Sirach presented 
 itself, but Jesus, the Teacher, pointed in this direction. Wis- 
 dom frequently appeared in those writings as the Instructress 
 of men : as soon as Jesus was looked upon as the ideal of a 
 Teacher, it was obvious to put him in the place of Wisdom, 
 the Instructress of men. When, in Proverbs (ix. 1 ff.), it is 
 said of Wisdom that she hath built her house, she hath slain 
 her beasts, she hath mingled her wine, she hath furnished her 
 
 * Apol. i. 31, 35. 
 VOL. II. F 
 
6ß MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 table, she hath sent forth her maidens, she crieth upon the 
 highest places of the city, " Come, eat of my bread and drink 
 of the wine which I have mingled !" we are reminded of the 
 evangelical parable of the Feasts (Matt. xxii. 1 ff. ; Luke xiv. 
 16 ff.), where, likewise, the Master sends his servants into 
 the streets of the city, with the invitation that his feast is 
 prepared, his oxen and his fatlings are slain, and all is ready, 
 only the guests are wanting. In this parable it is God him- 
 self who takes the place of Wisdom in the Proverbs, but we 
 have already above seen a case in which, in the evangelical 
 tradition, Jesus has been substituted for her. The speech 
 about the prophets and apostles which were sent to the Jews 
 and ill-treated and murdered by them, which Jesus in Luke 
 (xi. 49 ff.) brings forward as words of the " Wisdom of God," 
 are attributed to him in Matthew (xxiii. 34 ff.) as spoken 
 directly by him and uttered in his own name ; as the ancient 
 Jewish-Christian writer Hegesippus describes the companions 
 of Jesus as those who had been thought worthy to hear with 
 their own ears " God -inspired Wisdom."* 
 
 The conclusion of the Book of Sirach (chap, li.) is a thanks- 
 giving, in which the author, as a pupil and distributor of 
 Wisdom, uses in part exactly the same words which in a well- 
 known passage in the first and third Gospels we find put into 
 the mouth of Jesus. " I will praise thee, Lord and King," 
 he says (ver. 1 ff.) both for protection and preservation, and 
 "also for the gift of Wisdom which he has vouchsafed to him. 
 And now he cries (ver. 23), ''Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, 
 seeing your so%ds are very thirsty (ver. 26) ; put your neck 
 under the yoke, and let your soul receive instruction ; I have 
 had but little labour, and have gotten unto me miich rest." 
 Here the words of Jesus in Matthew (xi. 25 ff.) cannot fail 
 to occur to us : "I praise thee. Father, Lord of heaven and 
 earth," after which follows the thanksgiving, peculiar indeed 
 to him, for that God has hid these things from the wise and 
 
 * Quoted iu Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, iii. 32, 8. 
 
THE CREATIVE WORD OF GOD, INCARNATE. 67 
 
 prudent, and has revealed them unto babes. Then follows, 
 exactly as in Sirach, the invitation, " Come to me, all ye that 
 lahour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ; take my 
 
 yoke upon you and ye shall find rest to your souls." 
 
 Such a coincidence can hardly be accidental ; but it may be 
 supposed that possibly Jesus may have had in his mind the 
 passage of the Book of Sirach, which was originally written 
 in Hebrew. 
 
 But in the Proverbs (viii. 1 — 22 if.) we hear "Wisdom call, 
 " The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before 
 
 his works of old Before the mountains were settled was 
 
 I brought forth "VVlien he appointed the foundations of 
 
 the earth, then was I by him as one brought up with him, 
 
 and I was daily his delight Now, therefore, hearken 
 
 unto me, all ye children : for blessed are they that keep my 
 ways, for whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain 
 favour of the Lord ; but he that sinneth against me wrongeth 
 his own soul : all they that hate me love death." Again, we 
 read in Sirach (xxiv. 1 ff.), "Wisdom shall praise herself, and 
 
 shall glory in the midst of her people I came out of 
 
 the mouth of the Most High .... (ver. 19 ff.). Come unto 
 me, all ye that be desirous of me ! . . . . they that eat me 
 shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be 
 thirsty," &c. &c. When we are reading these speeches, we 
 are looking into the very cradle of the speeches of Christ as 
 given in John. The historical Jesus was combined with the 
 Wisdom of the Apocrypha and the Old Testament, the office 
 of Wisdom as the Instructress of mankind assigned to him, 
 and also as helpmate of the Divinity at the creation. The 
 asseveration of Wisdom, that whoso findeth her findeth life, 
 that he that sinneth against her wrongeth his own soul, all 
 they that hate her love death, is re-echoed again in many 
 ways in the speeches of Christ in John {e.g. iii. 20 ff., 36, v. 24) ; 
 the invitation of Wisdom to eat of her bread and to drink of 
 her drink, nay, to eat and drink her herself, is also found in 
 
 F 2 
 
68 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the mouth of the Christ of John (iv. 10 ff., vi. 51 ff., vii. 37), 
 only that what Wisdom adds in Sirach, that whoso has eaten 
 and drank her once will always hunger and thirst for her, is 
 changed, in John, by Jesus into a higher sense, to the effect, 
 that whoever comes to him and believes in him will never 
 thirst, as the water which he gives becomes in man himself 
 a well springing to eternal life (vi. 27, 35, iv. 14). The Vine, 
 also, and its branches, to which Christ, in John, compares 
 himself and his disciples (xv. 1 ff.), is taken from the speeches 
 of Wisdom in Sirach (xxiv. 16 ff.). And, generally, the ex- 
 pression in the Book of Sirach, " Wisdom shall praise herself, 
 and shall glory in the midst of her peo]3le," imparts its charac- 
 ter to all the speeches of Christ in the fourth Gospel. Such 
 a continuous glorifying and praising of itself is not the least 
 offensive on the part of a divine idea or attribute personified, 
 but becomes so immediately it is transferred to a real human 
 person, even though compounded of God and man. 
 
 Thus, in his speeches, Jesus was identified with that Wis- 
 dom which speaks in the Old Testament and its Apocryphal 
 books. And this Wisdom, in consequence of the familiarity 
 of educated Jews with the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, was 
 at a later period transformed in Alexandria into the idea of 
 the divine Logos, and in the course of the second century 
 Christianity forced its way into a circle thus cultivated. The 
 natural result was, what we have in the Gospel of John, that 
 Jesus in his speeches glorifies himself as the principle of Sal- 
 vation and of Life, like the Wisdom of the Proverbs and of 
 Sirach, and finally in tlie prologue is, in exact accordance 
 with the doctrine of Philo, introduced as the Divine Logos, 
 the Creator of the world. 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGEEED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 69 
 
 THIED GROUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 jesus, the second moses. 
 
 62. His Life endangered and preserved by the Star 
 OF THE Messiah. 
 
 It may be said that whoever reads Suetonius intelligently 
 cannot fail to be enlightened as to the mode in which the 
 miracles of the evangelical history are to be viewed. For 
 from the supernatural procreation till the ascension, the two 
 lines of miracles run parallel ; and though the Old Testament 
 narratives of miracles may ofier more decisive points for 
 comparison, still on the side of Suetonius there comes under 
 consideration the useful fact that his prodigies and miracles, 
 when they cannot be explained on natural principles, are 
 recognised by every one as fables, and now, considering the 
 speaking similarity of the almost contemporaneous imperial 
 ndracles to the Christian, it begins to be too difficult at the 
 present day to see in the one set fables, in the other true 
 histories. 
 
 The theme of the group of narratives immediately before 
 us — the life of a child destined for great objects endangered 
 and miraculously preserved — is one of the fundamental themes 
 of all heroic legends ; which, not to go in this place beyond 
 the point at which a real connection between the people and 
 legends is probable or possible, we find recurring in the 
 Hebrew, the Persian, the Greek, and Eoman legend. To say 
 nothing of the dangers which threatened the infant life of 
 Zeus or of Hercules, and the mode in which they were 
 averted, we find the theme in the histories of the infancy of 
 Moses in the Pentateuch, of Abraham in the later Jewish 
 legend, of Cyrus in Herodotus, of Eomulus in Livy, and then 
 in the same century in the history of the childhood of tlic 
 
70 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 first Roman Emperor in Suetonius, and of the Christian Mes- 
 siah in the Gospel of Älatthew (chap. ii.). The theme is car- 
 ried out in all of these with features so similar, that it is 
 impossible to overlook either the influence of one legend 
 upon the other, or the common psychological source of all. 
 This source is that law of the imagination which leads men 
 to endeavour to make the value of a good, and therefore also 
 of a great, man the more sensibly felt by the near approach 
 of the possibility of his loss on the one side, and by the care 
 of Providence for his preservation on the other. And as 
 regards the influence of one legend upon the other, sucli 
 influence on the part of the Mosaic legend uj)on the Christian 
 is unmistakeable, on that of Persian on the Greek probable, 
 on that of the Eomans at least possible. 
 
 In the history of the Infancy of Jesus, the mode in which 
 the danger is brought about is peculiar. The cause of it is 
 a Star, which about the time of his birth appears in heaven, 
 and guides Eastern Magi to Jerusalem, where their inquiries 
 after the new-born King of the Jews attract the attention of 
 Herod the Great to the latter. Thus the Star appears as the 
 means which gives occasion to the danger to his life. Still 
 the legend with regard to it had an object of its own. There 
 is a belief coming from hoar antiquity even to our own times, 
 that new appearances of stars, particularly comets, coming 
 unexpectedly and vanishing again, prognosticate revolutions 
 in human affairs, birth and death of great men, or, in better 
 cases, good wine. Men start from the supposition that so 
 striking a phenomenon in tlie heavens must have, corre- 
 sponding to it, a similar one on earth, in the circumstances 
 of mankind. Then, when among a hundred cases such a 
 coincidence happens, this is looked upon as a proof of the 
 hypothesis. The ninety-nine, meanwhile, are overlooked, in 
 which the natural phenomenon passes witliout any historical 
 parallel; and then, conversely, Mhen an historical event 
 happens which it is wished particularly to distinguish, some 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 71 
 
 extraordinary natural phenomenon which never took place is 
 invented to correspond to it. Whether in the case of a 
 traditionary narrative of this kind we are to assume that the 
 natural phenomenon really occurred, and was only brought 
 by the narrator into close connection with an historical event 
 with which it had in reality nothing to do, or that the alleged 
 phenomenon rests entirely upon fiction, will have to be decided 
 by the presence or absence of other unsuspicious statements 
 with regard to that phenomenon, also by the character of the 
 narrative and its sources. When Suetonius* relates that on 
 the occasion of the first set of games which Octavian gave in 
 honour of his great uncle, after his murder, a comet was seen 
 for seven days, and was considered by the people to be the 
 soul of the deified Ceesar, it is possible, independently of this 
 superstitious application, that the notice of tlie appearance 
 of a comet at that time may be perfectly correct, because the 
 narrative contains nothing contradictory to the nature of such 
 a meteor, and because the historian lived near enough to the 
 time and the place of the occurrence to get credible informa- 
 tion with regard to it. And we do, in fact, learn from Pliny -f* 
 that in Augustus' own memoranda the phenomenon was 
 mentioned. But when we read in a rabbinical author | that 
 at the moment of Abraham's birth a star stood in the East 
 which swallowed up four other stars, each of which stood in 
 one of four quarters of the heavens, what is said to have 
 happened is so extravagant, the date of the origin of the 
 account is so far removed from that of the alleged occurrence, 
 that in both respects it may be looked upon as a mere 
 romance. Lastly, Justin § tells a story about Mithri dates, 
 to the effect that in the year in which he was born, and in 
 that of his accession, a comet appeared, each time for seventy 
 days, every day for four hours, of so large a size and so 
 bright that it occupied a quarter of the sky and outshone 
 
 * Julius, 88. Comp. Plutarch, Cres. 69. + Hist. Nat. ii. 2.3. 
 
 t Jalkut. Rubeni, f. 32, 3. § Hist. Philipp. 87, 2. 
 
72 iOTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the brightness of the sun. In this case, also, the description 
 of the phenomenon is at least highly fabulous ; and whether 
 we are to believe or not the general statement, that in one, 
 at all events, of those two periods (for the duplication is more 
 than suspicious) a comet did appear, will depend upon an 
 examination of the sources which Justin, or rather Trogus, 
 from whom he extracts, made use of in the composition of 
 his history. 
 
 Xow, in the first place, the composition of the narrative 
 in the Gospel of Mattliew of the star that appeared on the 
 occasion of the birth of Jesus, was not so far removed from 
 the occuiTence in question as to be doubted on this ground 
 alone. A report of an extraordinary phenomenon having 
 appeared in Palestine might just as easily have been prevalent 
 in the country eighty, or even a hundred and more, yeare 
 after the event, as that about the comet of Csesar in the time 
 of Suetonius, i.e. of Trajan. But here a distinction appears 
 to the disadvantage of the evangelical narrative. The comet 
 in Suetonius coincided with the games in honour of Csesar, 
 consequently with an event to which general attention was 
 directed, and in connection with which the celestial pheno- 
 menon that coincided with it must have impressed itself upon 
 the memory of the people, and have also been entered in 
 contemporary memoranda. The birth-year of Jesus, on the 
 contrary, apart from the evangelical narratives, the truth of 
 which has stiU to be proved, was marked by no particular 
 event as regards those who were living at the time. So that 
 a hundred years after, it could scarcely have been known with 
 certainty whether a phenomenon, suj^posing such a thing to 
 have been surviving in the memory of men, was seen in that 
 year or in another. 
 
 As regards, in the second place, the description of the 
 star in Matthew, we learn that the Magi saw it in the East, 
 and that when they had recognised it, we know not how, as 
 the star of the new-born King of the Jews, i.e. the Messiah, 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 73 
 
 they commenced their journey to Jerusalem. It is not said 
 that the star continued visible during this journey. On the 
 contrary, when, on the command of Herod, they had set forth 
 on the road to Bethlehem, it comes into sight again all at 
 once, and not only precedes them as a guide, but also con- 
 tinues stationary, in so marked a manner, over the house of 
 Jesus' parents, that the Magi likewise stop, and, with their 
 presents, enter the house. What sort of a star it was, we 
 are not told ; but whatever it may have been, it is impossible, 
 if it was a natural star, that it should have done what I 
 Matthew says it did; and if it was a supernatural one, i.e. a 
 star immediately sent from and guided by God, it should 
 have done more, that is, it should have avoided Jerusalem 
 and taken the Magi straight to Bethlehem, so as not to have 
 aroused the old tyrant in the capital, and hand over the poor 
 infants in Bethlehem unnecessarily to the sword. We must, 
 therefore, in any case set aside everything supernatural in 
 the star, such as its going before the Magi, and its stopping, 
 and the only question is, whether we have reason also to give 
 up the appearance of the star altogether, or to maintain it as 
 historical. 
 
 Now no other historical document of that time, as far as 
 we know at present, does accredit it; but Kepler — a great 
 name — in order to get a datum for determining the true year 
 of the birth of Christ, has calculated that in the year 748 of 
 the city of Eome, two years before the death of Herod, a 
 conjunction of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, took 
 place, and in this conjunction, Kepler, and after him a series 
 of modern astronomers and theologians,* have found, as they 
 suppose, the historical nucleus of the Star of the Wise Men in 
 Matthew. But, independent of the fact that INIatthew speaks 
 not of a group of stars but of one star, a conjunction of two 
 
 * Comp, as a specimen of all the rest, Wieseler, CLronoIogical Synopsis of tlie 
 Four Gospels. 
 
74 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 or even of three planets is not of such rare occurrence 
 (between Jupiter and Saturn every twenty years) as to 
 appear to Orientals, ac(|uainted with the stars, so very extra- 
 ordinary a thing as is represented in the narrative of Matthew. 
 Hence even Kepler himself did not consider the mere con- 
 junction of the planets by itself as sufficient, but surmised 
 that a new and extraordinary star may have been combined 
 with it, as was the case in his own time in the year 1604. 
 Then these three planets were in conjunction, and on a sud- 
 den such a star did appear, and having shone for some time 
 with the briglituess of a star of the first magnitude, it gra- 
 dually waned, and at last disappeared. As, however, there 
 is absolutely no internal connection between the appearance 
 of such a star and the conjunction of those planets, the 
 truth or otherwise of the supposition, that as in the year 
 1604 after Christ, so also at the time of his birth, the appear- 
 ance of an extraordinary star may have coincided with an 
 ordinary conjunction of planets, remained undecided, until 
 Professor Wieseler at Göttingen discovered, in Chinese regis- 
 ters, that in fact in the fourth year before the beginning of 
 our epoch (and this epoch places the birth of Jesiis just this 
 much too late), a bright star did appear, and was visil^le for 
 some time. 
 
 All honour to the accuracy of the registers of the celestial 
 kingdom ; all honour, too, to a theology whose zeal to rake 
 together proofs of the truth of Christianity drives it to the 
 wall of China ! "We, on our part, must confess that the 
 journey is too far, nay, that it appears to us to be a circuit- 
 ous route, as we think we have the object of the search in 
 a better and more satisfactory form close at hand. For let 
 us even suppose that we had for the birth-year of Jesus a 
 comet, or an extraordinary, but still natural, star, still we 
 have not such an one as Matthew describes his to have been. 
 For that not only appears to the travellers, but actually 
 goes before tliem. And it does not, like other stars, stop 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGEEED AND PEESEEVED BY THE STAR. 7o 
 
 when the persons in motion stop, but stops first where they 
 are to stop. Now a star is a heavenly body, existing for 
 itself and for objects entirely distinct from our earthly affairs. 
 On the other hand, we find exactly such a star as we require, 
 a star from which all the services performed for the Mes- 
 sianic pilgrims might be expected which Matthew boasts that 
 his star performed, in the fourth book of Moses (xxiv. 17). 
 Tlie Star out of Jacob, announced by Balaam, is not a real 
 star, but the Star of the Messiah, and therefore could not 
 refuse any service which it might be the pleasure of the 
 Jewish-Christian faith to impose upon it in honour of the 
 Messiah. 
 
 The episode of Balaam and his prophecy is, as is well 
 known, one of the most beautiful poetical pieces in the Old 
 Testament, composed at a happy period, when the spirits of 
 the people had just been raised afresh by victories over hos- 
 tile neighbouring tribes, especially Moab and Edom. The 
 composer of the piece clothes this feeling in a narrative, ac- 
 cording to which Balak, the terrified Moabitish king, makes 
 Balaam the Seer come from the Euphrates against Moses, 
 advancing victoriously out of the Desert, in order to curse 
 Israel, but who, instead of cursing, is inspired by Jehovah 
 with blessing and lofty prophecies in favour of his people. 
 Among these prophecies is found also the following (ver. 17) : 
 " I shall see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not 
 nigh : there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall 
 rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and 
 destroy all the children of Seth." It is manifest here that tlie 
 expression, " a star out of Jacob," answers to that of " a scep- 
 tre out of Israel," to express the same object. The addition, 
 tlierefore, in ver. 18, " Out of Jacob shall come he that shall 
 have dominion," is not necessary in order to convince us that 
 by the former ones a glorious Euler is symbolically meant. 
 It is equally clear, in the next p]ace, that by this Ruler is 
 meant, not the Messiah, but an historical King of Israel, per- 
 
76 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 haps tlie very one under whom the poet was living, and whose 
 achievements, in order to exalt them the more, he represents 
 as being foretold by a Seer as early as the time of Moses, 
 though there may be a question as to what king is intended, 
 whether David or a later one. 
 
 Now the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch, which is 
 considered older than our Gospels, has, instead of the star, a 
 king, and instead of the sceptre, the expression, an anointed 
 one. And thus, if the allusion to the Messiah was not exactly 
 established, still the way to it was prepared, as every king 
 might be called an anointed one, or Messiah. It is certain 
 that many of the later Eabbis understood the passage of the 
 Messiah ; and it is also probable that such an interpretation 
 had already become traditionary in much earlier times, from 
 the fact that the pseudo-Messiah, who kindled the Jewish 
 insurrection under Hadrian, openly called himself, in accord- 
 ance with this passage, Bar Cochba, i. e. Son of the Star. 
 He might, indeed, style himself so, if he only understood the 
 star as a symbolical description of the Messiah, but the spirit 
 of literalism and astrological superstition of the time co- 
 operated so far, that by the Star out of Jacob a real star 
 came to be understood, which was to appear at the time of 
 the Messiah and announce his coming. In the Apocryphal 
 Testament of tlie Twelve Patriarchs, dating from the end of 
 the first Christian century, it is said of the Messiah,* " And 
 his star shall rise in heaven as a king's, beaming forth with 
 the light of knowledge :" nay, as the birth of the Messiah 
 was announced by a star, that of Abraham, on the part of 
 the Jews, was represented as being so likewise. But if the 
 expectation was once established that a star would appear 
 about the time of the birth of the Messiah, it will be admitted 
 that a Christian who cherislied it must have been convinced ; 
 and as the author of an evangelical jirefatoiy history would 
 
 * Test. Levi, 18; in Fabric. Cotl. Pseudepigr. V. T. 584 ff. 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PEESERVED BY THE STAR. 77 
 
 naturally say, that the appearance of it coincided with the 
 birth of Jesus, whether he knew anything of a particular 
 celestial phenomenon or not — also that in the description 
 which he gave of the Star of the Messiah, he would be "guided 
 not by historical inquiry, but solely by his own conception of 
 the Star of the Messiah. 
 
 Consequently, the author of our narrative took the Star 
 from the fourth book of Moses, and he took the Magi from 
 the Star. Eor who could have observed it first and recog- 
 nised in it the Star of the Messiah but men initiated into 
 the secrets of natural, and especially astronomical, philosophy, 
 and those too coming from the East, the ancient home of 
 mysterious knowledge, probably from Babylonia, from* the 
 Euphrates, whence also Balaam came, who had beheld that 
 Star from far off in the distant future, as now his successors 
 saw it in the nearness of the present ? 
 
 But the Magi bring presents for the Messianic child whose 
 Star they had seen. Balaam had brought nothing of this 
 kind ; on the other hand, Balak had been compelled to per- 
 suade him to undertake the journey out by presents which he 
 sent to him at the Euphrates (4 Mos. xxii. 7). Balaam 
 came, persuaded by the gifts, and the result was that he saw 
 immediately the Star out of Jacob ; the Magi came guided 
 by the Star in order to bring presents. Here there is in the 
 copy a perturbation, only to be explained by the influence of 
 another type, which, however, we have not to go far to seek. 
 The Messiah was not merely the Star out of Jacob, he was 
 also the Dayspring from on high (Luke i. 78 ; comp. Matt. 
 iv. 16), the Light that, according to the prophecy of Isaiah 
 (Ix. 1 ff.), was to rise up over Jerusalem, and to which peo- 
 ples and kings were to draw nigh with rich offerings. By 
 this Light, indeed, the Prophet, as he expressly says, under- 
 stood the glory of Jehovah, i.e. Jehovah himself, who being 
 reconciled to Israel at the end of the Captivity, was to return 
 to Jerusalem, which had been deserted by him in consequence 
 
78 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 of their sins (comp. lii. 7 ff.), in order to restore and to reign 
 over them, now that they had been purified and received into 
 grace. When, however, the return out of captivity and the 
 restoration of the worship of Jehovah had taken place, and 
 the further promise of glory had been in no respect fulfilled, 
 the natural consequence was, that the promise was referred 
 to a more distant future, which could be none other than the 
 time of the Messiah. For him also the presents of gold and 
 frankincense must be intended (ver. 6), which the Gentiles 
 were to bring, as, indeed, it was said in the seventy-second 
 Psalm (ver. 10), of a King who was to judge the people of 
 Israel with righteousness, break in pieces his oppressors, 
 help the poor and needy, and who shall be feared so long as 
 the sun and moon endure, — thus of a ruler under whom at a 
 later period it was impossible to avoid understanding tlie 
 Messiah that the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring him 
 presents, and among them in particular gold. And it is, as 
 it were, a sort of obscure reference to the real origin of this 
 feature in the evangelical narrative that in ecclesiastical 
 tradition the Wise Men from the East were, at an early period, 
 supposed to have been Kings. 
 
 The narrative therefore in the first Gospel about the Magi 
 and their Star is the result of a combination of the two pro- 
 phecies of Balaam and the second Isaiah, understood in a 
 Messianic sense. From the first comes the Star and the fea- 
 ture that those who see it are astronomers ; from the other, the 
 feature that they follow the celestial light, i.e. according to 
 the combination of both prophecies, are led by the Star, and 
 that they bring presents to the new-born Messiah, to which 
 the Star leads them ; to which the evangelical narrative, per- 
 haps from Psalm xlv. (ver. 9), which is also inter^^reted in 
 Heb. i. 9, in a Messianic sense, added the myrrh. More- 
 over, they who bring the offerings are represented in Isaiah 
 as belonging to the foreign nations among whom the Jews 
 had sojourned during the Captivity. So, also, in Matthew, 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 79 
 
 the Magi are to be considered, not as foreign Jews, but as 
 heathen, and the ecclesiastical legend, in taking the Wise Men 
 from the East to be the first representatives of the conversion 
 of the Gentile world to Christianity, has in this also shewn a 
 more correct appreciation of the fact than many modern theo- 
 logians, who, in order to make the inquiry of the Magi more 
 intelligible, saw in them foreign Jews. 
 
 63. 
 
 In the evangelical narrative, the Magi, in order to find the 
 new-born King of the Jews, turn immediately to Jerusalem. 
 The reason of this representation might appear to be contained 
 in the passage of Isaiah, according to which the bearers of the 
 presents travel to this place. But the main reason is, that 
 the tyrant Herod lived there. For the history of the Star and 
 the Magi, although, as we have seen, of independent Messianic 
 import, also serves the purpose, in the connected narrative, of 
 exposing the life of the new-born Messiah to danger, and of 
 bringing about a miraculous preservation from it, thus placing 
 in so much clearer light the great value of his life, and the 
 divine protection extended over it. 
 
 It has already been remarked that the history of the 
 Infancy of the first Saviour of the nation served as a type 
 for that of the second. Herod is the second Pharaoh, and 
 he, like the latter, would have effected the murder of the one 
 he wished to kill, together with that of the others, if that one 
 had not been preserved by a higher Providence. Pharaoh, 
 however, as we are told in 2 Moses i., was concerned with 
 many children, not with the one alone, of whose birth and 
 destination he knew nothing. His object in issuing the 
 command to put to death all the infants of the Israelites, 
 was only to prevent the dangerous increase of the people. 
 
80 MYTHICAL HISTOßY OF JESUS. 
 
 Herod, on the contrary, was concerned only with the one 
 Messianic infant, of whose birth he had been told by the 
 Magi ; and it was only because he could not effect his object 
 in any other way, that he gave orders to despatch all the male 
 children of a certain age who might be found in Bethlehem, 
 the supposed city of the birth. Meanwhile, like so many 
 other Old Testament narratives, that of Pharaoh's murderous 
 command has been further embellished in the sequel, and in 
 a manner which made it still better adapted to serve as a 
 type for our evangelical account. That Pharaoh, in issuing 
 his command, should have made no particular reference to an 
 infant of a destiny so exalted, and so dangerous to himself, as 
 Moses, appeared but little in accordance with the importance 
 of this child. So in Josephus,* who in all probability followed 
 in this an old tradition, it is represented that Pharaoh was 
 induced to give the order for a general massacre by a declara- 
 tion of his scribes (as Herod, by the inquiries of the stranger 
 astronomers), as to the approaching birth of an infant wlio 
 should some time bring help to the Israelites and humble the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 So far, the account of Moses follows the track of that of 
 Cyrus, Romulus, and Augustus, and upon this track that of 
 Jesus ran parallel to it. Pharaoh or Herod is, in the case 
 of Cyrus, his grandfather Astyages, in that of Eomulus and 
 Remus, tlieir great-uncle Amidius, in that of Augustus, the 
 Roman Senate. Astyages had a dream, which the Magi 
 interpret for him, that his daughter should bear a son, who 
 would be king instead of hira.-f- Amulius naturally feared 
 the vengeance of the twins for the deposition of their grand- 
 fatlier.J Before the birth of Augustus, it was said to have 
 been prognosticated at Rome by a prodigy that Nature was 
 pregnant of a king for the Roman people.§ How prone the 
 popular imagination of the Hebrews especially was to fictions 
 
 * Antiq. ii. 9, 2. t Herod, i. 108. 
 
 X Liv. i. 3. § Siietou. Octav. 9i. 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 81 
 
 of this kind, is clear from the fact, that in hiter Jewish writ- 
 ings the account of the peril which threatened the life of the 
 Lawgiver was copied also in the history of the Patriarch of 
 the nation. In this case Pharaoh is Nimrod : in one account 
 Nimrod sees a star in a dream ; this star, according to the 
 other account, actually appears in the sky, and his sages 
 explain it to liim to mean that a son is at that moment born 
 to Tharah, from whom shall come a mighty nation, destined 
 to inherit the present and the future world.* And when the 
 same feature had been introduced into the history of the 
 infancy of Jesus, it was at last, like the secondary rainbow, 
 also introduced into the history of the infancy of the Baptist, 
 who, having been endangered by the massacre at Bethlehem, 
 was said to have been preserved by a miracle.f 
 
 Now in the legend of Cyrus, Ptomulus, and Abraham, the 
 tyrants give special orders for murdering only the children 
 who are pointed out as dangerous to them ; the narratives of 
 ]\Ioses, Augustus, and Christ, resemble each other in this, that 
 the potentates seek to catch the destined infant, who is un- 
 known to them personally, in a wide net together with others. 
 In the original narrative of Moses, Pharaoh, as has been 
 already remarked, does not even know generally that the 
 birth of such a child is impending ; in the later form of the 
 legend in Josephus, like Herod in Matthew and the Eoman 
 Senate in Suetonius, he does know thus much, but, like them, 
 he does not know which of the children that are to be born, 
 or which have just been born, is the dangerous one. So 
 Pharaoh gives orders to drown all the male children of the 
 Israelites ; the Senate, not to allow any male born in that 
 year to be brought up ; Herod, to despatch all male infants 
 found in Bethlehem and the surrounding districts of two 
 years old and under. At first, indeed, Herod wished to put 
 
 * Jalkut Rubeni, f. 32, 3, and the passage out of an Arabian writing in Fabric. 
 Cod. Pseudepigr. V. T. i. 345. 
 + Protevang. Jac. c. 22 ff, 
 VOL. iL G 
 
82 MYTPIICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 himself in a position, like the tyrants in the legends of Cyrus, 
 Eomulus, and Abraham, to attack the dangerous infant imme- 
 diately, hoping to get information of it through the Magi on 
 their return from Bethlehem ; and it was not until they, in 
 consequence of a warning from above, had avoided Jerusalem 
 on their return, that he took other measures ; and we now 
 also understand for the first time why, just at the beginning, 
 when, with his original purpose it could be of but little im- 
 portance to him, he still had felt it necessary to make such 
 careful inquiries of the Magi as to the time when the star 
 had first appeared to them, in order thereby to get a datum 
 for the probable age of the child. Now such an order for a 
 general massacre, though not quite in accordance with the 
 sagacity, is quite so, nevertheless, with the cruelty of the old 
 Herod. Still it is rendered more than doubtful by the histo- 
 rical consideration that neither Josephus, who is otherwise so 
 explicit about Herod, nor any older author, makes mention 
 of it, excepting one of the fourth century after Christ, who 
 manifestly confounded the execution of one of Herod's sons, 
 ordered by him, with the notorious massacre of the infants 
 told in Matthew.* 
 
 There is a discrepancy between our narratives in the mode 
 in which they represent their miraculous child as being pre- 
 served from mortal danger. In the Mosaic and ancient 
 Eoman legend, in which, in accordance with the geographi- 
 cal character which the Nile plays in Egypt, the Tiber in 
 Latium, the children were threatened with a watery grave, 
 a basket laid upon the shore and the compassion of those 
 concerned, are the means by which the infants are saved; 
 in that about Cyrus, the sagacity and kindness of those who 
 are charged with the commission of the murder; in the 
 legend about Augustus, the interest of the Senators them- 
 selves who have had sons born to them in that year deprives 
 the resolution of the Senate (of wliich, besides, quite as little 
 
 * 1 Mai.Tob. Siiluiu. ii. i. 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANGERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 83 
 
 is known from other sources as of Herod's massacre) of all 
 effect ; the narrator in the first Gospel here introduces a 
 motive, much used, indeed, generally throughout the legendary 
 history both of Jews and early Christians, but an especial 
 favourite of his — a suggestion in a dream. An angel, appear- 
 ing to Joseph in a dream, had already warned him not to be 
 offended at the pregnancy of his bride (i. 20) ; then, in a dream 
 (whether or not by an angel is not expressly said, but at all 
 events by God), the Magi are cautioned, on leaving Bethle- 
 hem, not to return to Herod (ii. 12). Now while the latter 
 is occupied with threatening the infants at Bethlehem with 
 the massacre, the angel of the dream advises Joseph to fly to 
 Egypt (ii. 13) ; immediately after the death of the tyrant, he 
 tells him to return into the land of Israel (ii. 20) ; and then 
 comes, by way of supplement, the recommendation of the 
 dream not to go to Bethlehem, into the province of the no 
 less cruel Archelaus, but rather to turn towards Galilee (ii. 22). 
 A miraculous star, and five miraculous dreams within a 
 few years, of which four are imparted to the same person, 
 however, is almost too much, especially if it can be shewn 
 that several of these might have been combined, not only 
 without disadvantage, but with manifest advantage. . It is 
 clear at once that the last warning by a dream might have 
 been dispensed with, if by the one before the last Joseph had 
 been recommended to go to Galilee, instead of indefinitely 
 into the land of Israel. Still the separation into different 
 dreams at least did no harm. On the other hand, as has been 
 already pointed out, it was productive of very important harm 
 that either the star, which was so conversant with pointing 
 out the road, did not, instead of leading the Magi to Jerusa- 
 lem, lead them straight to Bethlehem, and from thence home, 
 or that the warning of the dream was not given on the way 
 to Jerusalem before the visit there. For thus the interference \ 
 of Herod and the massacre at Bethlehem might have been / 
 avoided. It is intelligible that God should permit cruelties 
 
 G 2 
 
84 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 of tins kind in the regular course of nature and history ; but 
 it is incredible that he should himself produce them by his 
 own extraordinary interference. In this case, the children at 
 Bethlehem would have remained unhurt, had not the Magi 
 given the alarm at Jerusalem, after having been guided to that 
 city by the star. 
 
 We have, therefore, here, not only no natural or historical 
 occurrence, but not even such an one as we might imagine to 
 have happened on the supposition of a miraculous interference 
 by Providence. We are therefore entitled all the more to 
 consider it as one which a pious Christian from among the 
 Jews would have imagined towards the end of the first cen- 
 tury. Such a Christian would feel it necessary to have a 
 massacre of innocents ordered by a tyrant, from which, by 
 a miracle, the second great Saviour of the nation escaped, 
 because the first Saviour also escaped, by a higher Providence, 
 a massacre ordered by a tyrant, and because, over and above 
 all that, the passage in Jeremiah about Eachel weeping for 
 her children (xxxi. 15 ; j\Iatt. ii. 17 ff ), a passage which did, 
 indeed, in the mind of the prophet, refer to the carrying away 
 of the people into captivity, might be applied to this massa- 
 cre. And then of miraculous dreams, the more the better. 
 Not only had the men of God of the old covenant had such, 
 but it was especially considered as a mark of the last, i. e. of 
 the Messianic times, that in consequence of the imparting of 
 the Holy Spirit, men and women should prophesy, old and 
 young see visions and dreams (Joel iii. 1 ; Acts ii. 17). 
 
 The method of preserving the Messianic child from the 
 murderer Herod, pointed out to his guardian by the angel in 
 the dream, is flight out of the country. In the Revelation of 
 John (xii. 5 ff'.), the child which the woman clothed with the 
 sun and crowned with stars, standing upon the moon, is to 
 bring forth, is cauglit up to heaven from before the Dragon 
 that lies in wait for it to swallow it, while the mother liies 
 into tlie wilderness. Cyrus, Iloniulus, are brouglit up among 
 
HIS LIFE ENDANOERED AND PRESERVED BY THE STAR. 85 
 
 shepherds, Moses by the king's daughter, until a subsequent 
 occurrence, that of killing an Egyptian, after he has grown 
 up to manhood, occasions his flight out of the country (2 Mos. 
 ii. 15). It is clear that it is this later flight of the first 
 Saviour which the evangelical narrator has in his mind in 
 describing the earlier occurrence in the life of the second 
 Saviour, from the fact, that in assigning the motive for the 
 return of the latter after the death of Herod, he uses the same 
 words as the Old Testament writer uses in speaking of the 
 return of Moses after the death of Herod : " Go," says Jeho- 
 vah, in the latter case, " return into Egypt, for all the men 
 are dead which sought thy life ;" after which it says, "And 
 Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, 
 and he returned to the land of Egypt" (2 Mos. iv. 19 ff.). 
 "Arise," says the angel, in the dream to Joseph (who lay 
 asleep, Jehovah having appeared to Moses while awake, and 
 having therefore made use of a different introductory expres- 
 sion), " and take the young child and his mother, and go into 
 the land of Israel, for they are dead which sought the young 
 child's life ;" whereupon, we are also told, he arose, took the 
 child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel (Matt. 
 ii. 20 ff.). We see here how Joseph steps into the place of 
 Moses, Mary into that of his wife, and the child Jesus into 
 that of his children, and the ecclesiastical legend, with a true 
 feeling as to the origin of the legend, has also, out of that of 
 ]\loses, introduced the ass. 
 
 The first Saviour, having grown up in Egypt, fled ovt of 
 Egypt to Midian ; the last, born in Palestine, flies to Egypt, 
 and subsequently returns from it again. In this, the narrator 
 sees the fulfilment of the prophecy of Hosea (xi. 1) : " Out 
 of Egypt have I called my Son." By the term " Son," the 
 prophet was, indeed, far from meaning the IMessiah. Jeho- 
 vah begins, " When Israel w^as a child, then I loved liim ; " 
 then continues, "and out of Egypt I called my Son;" says 
 further on, "he taught Ephraim to go, taking them by their 
 
86 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 arms, but notwithstanding they have offered to idols." Now 
 in all this it is palpable that by the Son, as elsewhere by the 
 Servant of God, no one is meant but the people of Israel. 
 It is true, indeed, that the passage spoke of the Son of God ; 
 but tlie Son of God was, according to the Jewish-Christian 
 interpretation, the ]\Iessiah, Jesus : if, therefore, God had 
 called his Son out of Egypt, Jesus (and as a child, for in 
 Hosea " teaching to go" is spoken of) must once have been 
 in Egypt. That, according to primeval Christian logic, was 
 a perfectly conclusive argument, of which the Jews, at all 
 events, had no right to complain, as it was from them that the 
 Christians had learnt this logic. Moreover, events of great 
 antiquity rendered Egypt an obvious place for the infant Mes- 
 siah to fly to. Even if the Lawgiver had fled not to, but out 
 of, Egypt, it had repeatedly been the place of refuge for the 
 Patriarchs from scarcity and famine. If, as Hosea had done, 
 the people of Israel were considered as a whole, it might be 
 said to have passed its earliest childhood (the Patriarchal 
 age) in Palestine, and the later in Egypt, and had subse- 
 quently been called thence by God into the land of its destiny, 
 and now it was obvious to copy this course of Life of the col- 
 lective Son of God, in the individual life of the personal 
 one. 
 
 Finally, we have our first Evangelist's assurance that by 
 Josepli's journey to Nazareth, the prediction of the prophet 
 that "he should be called a Nazarene" (ii. 23) was fulfilled. 
 Erom this we may see the lengths to which he was carried 
 by his zealous endeavour to seek up supposed prophecies in 
 the Old Testament, and the arbitrary manner in which he 
 pressed such passages into the service, in defiance of all rules 
 of correct interpretation. By this prophecy, nothing, certainly, 
 is meant, but that in the prophets the Messiah is frequently 
 designated as a Shoot of Jesse, for wliich Isaiah, in the pas- 
 sage best known, xi. 1, uses the Hebrew word Nczcr (other 
 prophets, as Jeremiali xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15 ; Zech. iii. 8, vi. 12, 
 
HIS PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 87 
 
 the synonymous Zemach), in which, together with the literal 
 meaning of the word, a mysterious allusion to Nazareth as the 
 future home of the scion of David is supposed to be implied. 
 
 64. Parallel Section : Presentation of Jesus in the 
 Temple. 
 
 Turning now from this narrative in the Gospel of Matthew, • 
 we throw a glance of comparison on the one other Gospel 
 which gives us a history of the Infancy — that of Luke. And 
 we find in the same place an account totally different, differing 
 from the other in substance and fundamental ideas (ii. 22 — 40). 
 In Matthew, the glorification of the birth of the Messianic 
 child by the star and the homage of the Magi, exposes his 
 life to a danger from which he only escapes by flying into a 
 foreign country in consequence of a divine warning, where 
 be is compelled to remain until the death of the persecutor. 
 Meantime, in Luke, he is brought to Jerusalem at the time 
 appointed by law, i.e. forty days after his birth, in order to 
 be presented to Jehovah as a first-born male. And on this 
 occasion his mother, as having been lately delivered, presents 
 her offerings of purification, and the homage which in INIat- 
 tliew the child receives from the Eastern Magi is performed 
 by Israelites of strict piety. Not a word is said of danger, 
 but the parents, after having satisfied the exigencies of their 
 pious duty, return in peace to their home, taking the child 
 with them (ii. 22 — 40). In Luke, therefore, the glorifying 
 of Jesus is kept within a narrower" circle than in Matthew, 
 does not, as in the account of the latter, produce a tragical 
 complication, but all goes off peacefully, and the complications 
 that threaten the future are only alluded to preliminarily in 
 the speech of the aged Simeon about the resistance which 
 
88 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Jesus is to meet with, and tlie sword wliich shall pierce his 
 mother's soul. 
 
 Moreover, in the narrative of Luke no reference is observ- 
 able to the antitype in the life of Moses. We find, indeed, 
 in the introduction, the law of Moses quoted three times, once 
 as to the days of the purification, then as to the redemption 
 Ol the first-born and the offering of the mother, and at the 
 conclusion we read, that after his parents had fulfilled every- 
 thing required by the law of Moses, they returned to their 
 home. And we see from this that the narrator, who, as we 
 remember, also made express mention of the circumcision of 
 Jesus, was much more concerned to shew that from the time 
 of the earliest infancy of the Christian Messiah nothing had 
 been neglected which the Mosaic law required in the case 
 of a child. The Jewish zealot hated in Jesus the person 
 who was to destroy Law and Temple (Matt. xxvi. 61 ; Acts 
 vi. 14). Naturally they indulged in hostile fictions, specimens 
 of which may be found in later Jewish libels,* to the effect 
 that he was unlawfully begotten and unlawfully brought up. 
 In ojDposition to this, it was important to shew that, on the 
 contrary, Jesus had been the offspring of a strictly pious 
 family, that the alleged Destroyer of the Temple had been 
 early presented to God in the Temple, and received as the 
 long-expected Saviour by devout and inspired attendants at 
 the Temple. In this respect, tlie salutation of the infant 
 Jesus by Simeon and Hannah, after being saluted at his birth 
 by angels (also in Luke), and therefore in a still more glo- 
 rious manner, was by no means superfluous from the Jewish 
 point of view. It was not enough for the Jew to know wliat 
 the relation had been between Jesus and the religion gene- 
 rally; he wished also to be accurately informed what the rela- 
 tion had been between him and Judaism, the Law and the 
 Temple. 
 
 * Sucl) as the book TlioledüUi Jcsclm ; comp. Riseninenger, Jiukism Unveiled. 
 
HIS PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 89 
 
 At tlie same time the salutation of the Messianic child by- 
 pious Israelites admitted of being used for another purpose. 
 The chief offence which the Jews took at the Christian Ä'Ies- 
 siah was the ignominious end, in a worldly sense, to which he 
 came : the crucifixion of Christ was to them a stuml)ling-block 
 which tliey could not get over (1 Cor. i. 23). When, then, a 
 just and pious man like Simeon, waiting for the consolation 
 of Israel, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, on first seeing the 
 ]\Iessianic infant, predicted to that infant its future struo-oles, 
 and to the child's mother her future agony, alluding, in a 
 manner not to be mistaken, to tlie violent death of the former 
 —in all this the lesson was involved that, correctly and spiri- 
 tually understood, the Messianic idea did not exclude, but 
 include, the mark of suffering and of death. AVhen Simeon 
 expresses himself to the effect that the child is set for the fall 
 and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall 
 be spoken against, in this an allusion was contained to the 
 fact, that the resistance of the Jews to Jesus was already 
 counted upon in the scheme of Providence, and that it was 
 then for every single Jew to see that the Messiah set by God 
 be not, to himself, a fall, but a rising again. 
 
 There is something in the arrangement of the presentation 
 scene in Luke which may remind us of the Magi in ]\Iatthew. 
 Simeon comes into the Temple impelled by the Spirit, from 
 whom he has received a promise that before his death he 
 shall yet behold the Messiah. In like manner the Magi came 
 to Jerusalem, led by the star, which was to them a sign of the 
 birth of the Messiah. As the IVIagi, when the star had made 
 known to them the house in which the infant Jesus lay, did 
 homage to him and offered him their gifts, so Simeon takes 
 into his arms the child — which, as we must suppose, the Spirit 
 pointed out to him at first sight as the one promised to him — 
 and in inspired words offered him his homage. And as in 
 the first case the arrival and inquiries of the Magi caused an 
 excitement in the capital, so in this Hannah, the proplietess, 
 
90 Ivn^TIIICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 takes care, by the reports which she spreads, that the circum- 
 stance shall not remain concealed from any one in Jerusalem 
 who has faith in the Messiah. The resemblance may be acci- 
 dental, and arise from the circumstance that at corresponding 
 points of the history of the Messianic infancy similar features 
 naturally appeared ; still it is not impossible that the author 
 of the narrative in the third Gospel knew that of the first, 
 and purposely contrasted another with it. We know from 
 Justin Martyr* that one of the accusations of the earliest 
 opponents of Christianity was that the miracles of Jesus were 
 only magical illusions ; that he himself was a magician and 
 impostor of the same description as several others who at 
 tliat time travelled through the country with pretensions to 
 higher powers. How an accusation of this kind might be 
 supported by the narrative in the first Gospel of the fiiglit 
 to Egypt, the ancient home of sorcery, we see from the work 
 of Celsus against the Christians, in which this heathen philo- 
 sopher puts into the mouth of a Jew the assertion that Jesus 
 did, in his youth, enter service in Egypt from poverty, antl 
 there learnt mystical arts which he practised after his return 
 home.-f- This suspicion having been once excited, not merely 
 the flight to Egypt, but also the contact with Eastern Magi, 
 might be demurred to, and thus it might seem advisable to 
 introduce Israelites of unimpeachable character, who, instead 
 of stars and astronomy, were concerned with the Temple and 
 the Holy Spirit. Thus, again, the concluding formula as to 
 the child's increasing in wisdom and stature is of an ancient 
 Hebrew character, being in fact copied, almost word for word, 
 from a similar formula in the history of Samson (Judges xiii. 
 24 fi\). 
 
 Independently, however, of the inconceivable character of 
 the accounts of the infancy in Matthew and Luke, or of the 
 fact that in their individual features they are manifestly 
 framed with a purpose in view, it is clear, lastly, that we 
 
 ♦ Dial. c. Tryiili. 69. t Orig. c. Gels i. 28. 
 
HIS PRESEXTATIOX IN THE TEMPLE. 91 
 
 have in them not true histories but fictions, from the conside- 
 ration that while each harmonises perfectly with itself, it is 
 absolutely impossible to reconcile one with the other. We 
 have already seen above that each of the two Evangelists 
 starts from a different hypothesis with regard to the original 
 dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus, inasmuch as in 
 Matthew Bethlehem ajjpears in that character, in Luke 
 Nazareth. In accordance with this liypotliesis, the parents 
 of Jesus, in Matthew, continue after the birth of the child 
 to live quietly in Bethlehem, receive here the visit of the 
 Magi, and would never have thought of removal had they 
 not, on account of the impending massacre of the infants at 
 Bethlehem, been warned to go into Egypt by the angel in 
 the dream. But having been informed here of the decease 
 of the murderous tyrant, they would immediately have 
 returned home to their Bethlehem if they had not been told 
 in a dream that in Archelaus, now reigning over Judea, 
 the case was one of like sire like son, and that they would 
 therefore do well to avoid his district and to settle in Galilee. 
 While, therefore, in Matthew the existence of the parents of 
 Jesus gravitates throughout towards Bethlehem, from which 
 they are removed only by a power from without, in Luke, 
 on the contrary, Nazareth is this point, and in it, accord- 
 ingly, the pendulum that has been set in motion conies as 
 soon as possible to rest. Brought to Bethlehem, as strangers, 
 by the taxing, they stay there only the forty days during 
 which the condition of the mother on the one hand, the 
 necessity of undertaking the journey to Jerusalem at the end 
 of that period on the other, made their sojourn in the place 
 near to the capital advisable ; as soon as their business in 
 Jerusalem is done, there is nothing to prevent them from 
 returning to their distant Nazareth. 
 
 If both accounts were historical, they must admit of being 
 incorporated into one another. The Magi must have come 
 either before or after the presentation in the Temple, the 
 
92 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 presentation in tlie Temple must have taken place either 
 before their visit, or, if not, after it, but still before the flight 
 to Egypt, or, lastly, not until parents and child had returned 
 again from Egypt. But whichever of these positions we 
 attempt to adojDt, the narratives will fit into none of them. If 
 we make the presentation in the Temple precede, then im- 
 mediately after this the family went back to Nazareth, and 
 the IMagi, coming afterwards, would find them no longer in 
 Bethlehem, which Älatthew expressly says was the case. 
 Besides, if on the occasion of the presentation in the Temple, 
 Hannah the prophetess had communicated to all who were 
 hoping for it in Jerusalem the news of the birth of a ]\Iessiah, 
 tlien on the subsequent arrival of tlie j\Iagi the event could 
 no longer have been, as Matthew represents it, a novelty in 
 the capital. If then, by way of trial, we place the coming of 
 the Magi, together with the flight to Egypt in connection with 
 it, hefore the presentation in the Temple, we fall into a diffi- 
 culty with tlie fort}^ days which Luke introduces as the inter- 
 val between the birth of Jesus and his presentation in the 
 Temple. For when Herod inquired of the Magi liow long it 
 was since the star w\as first visible to them, he seems to 
 have supposed that the Messianic infant had been born 
 simultaneously with the appearance of the star; and when, 
 in consequence of the information which the jNIagi gave him 
 upon this point, he commanded the Bethlehemitish children 
 up to two years 'old to be slain, he must have supposed 
 tlie infant Messiah to be at least approximating to that age. 
 Consequently from the birth of Jesus until the arrival of the 
 Magi we should have, according to Matthew, to suppose 
 more than forty days to have elapsed; and beside this, in 
 the space of time above mentioned the Magi must be sup- 
 posed to have withdrawn again, the parents to have travelled 
 to Egypt in company with the child, to have stayed there till 
 the death of Herod, and after it to have again travelled out 
 of Egypt to Palestine. That is manifestly too nnich for .^^ix 
 
HIS PEESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE, 93 
 
 weeks ; and hence the necessity of an attempt, however 
 difficult it may be to succeed in it, one thing in the narrative 
 of Matthew being so closely connected with another, to 
 separate the Egyptian journey from the visit of the Magi, 
 and to drive in, like a wedge between the two, the presenta- 
 tion in the Temple. So then, after the retirement of the 
 Magi, the parents of Jesus would have travelled with the 
 child to Jerusalem, and this must have taken place before 
 the angel had advised the flight to Egypt on account of the 
 danger threatened by Herod. But how is it conceivable that 
 this angel should not, above everything, have prevented the 
 journey, dangerous as it was, to the residence of the tyrant, 
 or that, when the journey had been taken, and the news had 
 been spread in the street, by the loquacious Hannah, of the 
 infant Messiah having arrived in the capital, Herod did not 
 seize him, and spare himself the expedient, as uncertain as it 
 was odious, of the massacre at Bethlehem ? On the contrary, 
 the account of the presentation in the Temple in Luke does 
 in no way presuppose such an occurrence as the arrival and 
 inquiry of the Magi, but runs as if nothing had ever been 
 heard of the thing before, and there had been no danger to the 
 child heard of far and wide. 
 
 The unhistorical character, accordingly, of the two evan- 
 gelical descriptions, which the character of each separately 
 had indicated, is confirmed by their incompatibility, and we 
 must therefore consider them as fictions, which the authors 
 of the first and third Gospels either worked out themselves 
 or adopted into their works. There is, however, still one 
 thing which may surprise us. For observing as we do the 
 Judaising element to prevail in the first Gospel and the 
 principles of Paul in the third, if we keep together on 
 the one hand the narrative of the star and the Magi, and on 
 the other that of the circumcision and the presentation in 
 the Temple, we might feel some surprise at not finding tlie 
 latter in Matthew and the former in Luke, instead of the 
 
94 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JJ!SITS. 
 
 converse. For in the star and the Magi there is as manifestly- 
 implied a reference to the Heathen world and their admission 
 into the kingdom of Christ, as in the prominence given to 
 the circumcision and presentation in the Temple to the 
 sanctity of the Jewish juridical system. But we have 
 already found in the Gospel of Matthew, together with por- 
 tions of an undeniably Judaising tendency, at the same time 
 others in which the calling in of the Heathen was brought 
 into view ; and in the narrative of the ]\Iagi nothing is said 
 decidedly as to the mode in which or the conditions under 
 which they are to be admitted. On the other hand, it is the 
 Apostle of the Heathen himself who declares that Christ, 
 when he appeared on earth, was put under the law (Gal. 
 vi. 4 ff), so that the description in Luke might be considered 
 only as an illustration of the expression of Paul in reference 
 to the infancy of Jesus. Meanwhile, Paul immediately adds 
 that the object of that ordinance in reference to Christ was, 
 that he might redeem those who were subject to the law 
 (ver. 5), and thus put an end to the law (Eom. x. 4), an idea 
 which is not alluded to in the history of the Infancy in Luke. 
 On the contrary, if we consider this preliminary history in 
 connection with what is said with regard to John the Baptist, 
 we cannot mistake the presence of a Judaising element both 
 in form and substance. But we found in other instances 
 Judaising portions of tliis kind incorporated into his Gospel 
 by Luke, only balanced, at the same time, in some cases by 
 portions of an opposite tendency, in others characterised in 
 themselves by a catholic spirit. Characteristics of this kind, 
 rendering Judaism unprejudicial to the general scheme of the 
 Gospel, are found also in this case, eitlier having existed 
 originally in the narrative, in which case they miglit be 
 adopted by the author of the Gospel with the less demur, or 
 been introduced for the first time by himself When Simeon 
 calls the infant Messiah a Light to lighten the Gentiles 
 (ii. 31 ; comp. Isaiah xlii. 6), the whole meaning contained in 
 
DEDICATED LIKE MOSES AND SA]\IUEL. 95 
 
 the narrative is comprised in this expression ; as, on the other 
 hand, in wliat Simeon says further on of the fall and rising 
 again of many in Israel, and the opening of the thoughts of 
 many hearts (ii. 34 ff.), the Jews are confronted as sharply as 
 possible with the prospect of the sifting that is to come upon 
 them, in which many will not stand. 
 
 II. Jesus, like Moses and Samuel, dedicated eaely to his 
 
 HIGH CALLING. 
 
 65. 
 
 Suetonius tells of Augustus,* that having been, as a little 
 child, laid on the ground in the cradle in a room, he had 
 vanished on the following morning, and, after a long search, 
 was found at last in the highest part of the house lying 
 towards the East. 
 
 Now it will be asked what resemblance this story is sup- 
 posed to have to that of Jesus at twelve years old in the 
 Temple (Luke ii. 41 — 52). Certainly the age, and what 
 depends upon it, is in both cases different ; but in both we 
 have still the common feature that a child, destined to higher 
 objects, is missed where he is ordinarily to be found, and dis- 
 covered in a place dedicated to God. This, indeed, in the 
 narrative about Augustus, is not a temple ; but the East is 
 the sacred quarter of the heavens, and the high tower, as 
 Suetonius expresses himself, alludes to the neighbourhood of 
 the gods, whither, as w^e must suppose, the child Augustus 
 was removed out of his cradle in a supernatural manner. As 
 in the case of Christ, so also in that of Augustus, lofty desti- 
 nation was identical with lofty extraction ; for it is hardly 
 possible that the anecdote above quoted should have arisen 
 without reference to the legend of Apollo having been the 
 
 * Octav. 94. 
 
96 ^lYTIIICAL HISTÜKY OF JESUS. 
 
 father, whose property, as the Sun-god, the East especially 
 was, as in our evangelical narrative the answer of Jesus as 
 to his Father's house manifestly contains an allusion to the 
 history of his supernatural conception. 
 
 As Jesus was a Son of God in human form, so also was 
 Cyrus, who was brought up as a shepherd's son, a king's grand- 
 son in the form of a slave, and also in his case his royal nature 
 and destiny broke through the disguise at an early age, namely, 
 in his tenth year. 
 
 Having been elected king by his playfellows when he was 
 about this age, he exercised the duties of his office in so digni- 
 fied a manner, that the discovery of his real extraction imme- 
 diately followed.* 
 
 In the case of Moses, it was somewhat late before his desti- 
 nation as the Saviour of his people declared itself in a simi- 
 larly pre-eminent manner. For the purposes of the powerful 
 assistance rendered to a fellow-countryman, which is said to 
 have been the means of this declaration, it was necessary that 
 he should be "grown," as the narrative in Moses (ii. 11) says, 
 though not perhaps exactly forty years old, as the Acts of the 
 Apostles (vii. 23), resting upon later Jewish tradition, more 
 accurately defines his age. But we know that a statement 
 differing from this, and of Eabbinic origin, made him twenty 
 years of age on that occasion, and even if great physical power 
 could not have developed itself before that period of manhood 
 or youtli, still the distinguished intelligence of the Lawgiver 
 was represented to have come out in his earlier years. Accord- 
 ing to Josephus,-)* his intelligence was out of all proportion to 
 his age ; according to Philo,j Moses, as a boy, was attracted, 
 not by child's play and trifles, but by serious occupation, and 
 at an early period teachers had to be engaged for him, to whom, 
 in a short time, he shewed himself superior by natural genius. 
 
 Samuel was still an infant when his mother brought him 
 
 * Herod, rhap. i. 114 ff. f Antiq. ii. 9, 6. 
 
 + De Vita Mosis, Opp. ed. Mang. ii. 83 ff. 
 
DEDICATED LIKE MOSES AND SAMUEL. 97 
 
 to Shiloh for the constant service of Jehovah in the Taberna- 
 cle (1 Sam. i. 25), and still a boy when the call and address 
 of Jeliovah came to him for the first time in the night (iii. 
 1 ff.). In the Old Testament his age is not given more accu- 
 rately ; but as the Acts of the Apostles says v^ith reference 
 to Moses, so also Josephus* says of Samuel, on the authority, 
 no doubt, of a later tradition, that he began to prophesy at his 
 twelfth year. For it was from the twelfth year that, according 
 to the Talmud, a boy was considered among the Israelites to 
 be of the age of discretion ; this age, as the fourteenth year 
 with us, was looked upon as the transition from the period 
 of boyhood to that of youth : hence in a record of Christian 
 origin indeed, but probably in accordance with Jewish tradi- 
 tion, the wise judgments of Solomon and Daniel (1 Kings 
 iii. 23 ff. ; Susanna 45 ff.) were placed in their twelfth year.-f- 
 It is clear, however, from other features that the history of 
 Samuel's youth served as a copy to our evangelical historian, 
 not only in this instance, but in those also of an earlier period. 
 In the first place, he introduces his narrative with the remark 
 (ver. 41), that the parents of Jesus travelled every year to 
 the Passover at Jerusalem. Similarly it is remarked of the 
 parents of Samuel, not merely introductorily but repeatedly 
 (i. 21, ii. 19), that they went every year to Shiloh in order to 
 make an offering to Jehovah. Secondly, the remark at the 
 end of the evangelical narrative that the boy Jesus increased 
 in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man 
 (ii. 52), is manifestly copied from the concluding remarks as 
 to the child Samuel, that he grew and was in favour both 
 with the Lord and also with men (ii. 26). 
 
 If we pass from these grounds for the origination of a nar- 
 rative of this description, grounds existing in the very nature 
 of the heroic legend, and from those, more special, existing in 
 
 * Antiq. v. 10, 4. t Ignat. Epist. ad Magnes. 3. 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
98 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 the lore of the Hebrew prophets, to the peculiar form of the 
 Messianic legend, we must remember that the operation of 
 furnishing the man Jesus with the powers required for his 
 Messianic calling was at first connected with his baptism by 
 John, consequently transposed to a mature age, and tliat it 
 was not until a later period that those powers were considered 
 to have been produced by a supernatural principle, and his 
 higher Messianic powers to have been peculiar to him from 
 the beginning of his life. Now, if the transition were m.'ide, 
 as our first Evangelist makes it, immediately from the birth 
 and earliest infancy of Jesus to his baptism, there was be- 
 tween the two events far too large a gap, and the question 
 might be put : Well, but if your Jesus was full of the Holy 
 Spirit from his mother's womb, how happens it that the Spirit 
 was so long idle with him, and that it was not until the years 
 of manhood that he gave proofs of his power and wisdom ? 
 This question, through wliich there was always danger of the 
 Ebionitic doubts as to the supernatural conception of Jesus 
 insinuating themselves again, was barred by apocryphal Gos- 
 pels of the Infancy by means of narratives, according to which 
 Jesus, while still a child, performed miracles, spoke when in 
 the cradle and declared himself to be the Son of God, dis- 
 closed to his tutor in the alphabet its mystical meaning, and, 
 in general, embarrassed all his teachers by his questions before 
 his twelfth year.* 
 
 The narrative of Luke, as a comparatively healthy product 
 of primeval Christian invention, stands in favourable con- 
 trast with these late results of the operation of a wild ima- 
 gination. In the first place, it altogether avoids the perform- 
 ance of the miracles. But as to the wisdom, it does indeed 
 transgress the limits of the human and the probable. For it 
 represents Jesus at twelve years old, instead of sitting at the 
 
 * Comp, the Protevang. Jacobi, the Evang. Thomse ; also the Arabian Gospel of 
 the Infancy in Thilo's Codex Apocr. i. 
 
DEDICATED LIKE MOSES AND SAMUEL. 99 
 
 feet of his teachers, as would have become his age, aud as 
 propriety required (comp. Acts xxii. 3), as sitting in the 
 midst of them and on a par with them ; and, moreover, 
 as calling God his Father in a sense which assumes either 
 the truth of the history of his supernatural procreation, or a 
 maturity of religious development which, naturally, a hoy 
 could not have. Still it does not offend so glaringly against 
 nature as those apocryphal stories do ; but, apart from that 
 designation of God as his Father, does not go further than 
 the vain Josephus does in reference to himself, when he 
 speaks of the notice wliich he excited in his fourteenth year 
 by his premature genius and knowledge.* And even in this 
 our narrative gives a very appropriate representation when 
 it places the stepping-stone between the birth and early 
 infancy of Jesus on the one hand, and his mature age on the 
 other, exactly on the intermediate point between the age of 
 boyhood and that of youth. 
 
 The narrative begins with an illustration of that which is 
 the fundamental theme of the whole of the history of the 
 Infancy in the third Gospel, the account, that is, of the mode in 
 which the strict piety of the parents of Jesus shewed itself in 
 their annual journeys to the feast of the Passover at Jerusalem. 
 Immediately on the occasion of the departure of the parents 
 from Jerusalem, the child remains behind, and they seek for 
 him in vain. Thus it appears at once that his ways are not 
 the ways of ordinary men, that he follows a higher law of 
 his own : in his question on the occasion of their finding him 
 again — why had they sought him, did they not know that 
 he must be about his Father's business — he makes them 
 feel this, not without a degree of harshness, which is palliated 
 however by the concluding remark as to his continuous 
 obedience (ver. 51), and is certainly exceeded by John in a 
 speech uttered on another occasion : " Woman, what have I 
 
 * Vita, 2. 
 H 2 
 
100 MYTHICAL IIISTOIIY OF JESUS. 
 
 to do with thee ?" The inferiority in intelligence on the 
 part of the human parents to the Son of God is further illus- 
 trated by the author in the addition of the words, that they did 
 not understand his questions (ver. 50), as in the former section 
 he had remarked their surprise at the speech of the old 
 Simeon (ii. 33). But if it had been true that even before 
 the birth of Jesus the angel had foretold both to Mary and 
 to Joseph that the child, as a being begotten by the Holy 
 Spirit, would be called the Son of God, they must necessarily 
 have understood what he meant by his Father's house ; and 
 when the evangelical narrator represents them as not under- 
 standing, he betrays himself to be not an historian but a 
 narrator of miracles, whose style is appropriately charac- 
 terised by accounts of the continuous astonishment and per- 
 plexity on the part of the human beings who are placed in 
 contrast with the performer of miracles. The remark, lastly, 
 which had already been made when the shepherds told their 
 stories (ii. 19), that Mary kept all these sayings in her heart, 
 shews that the author had in his mind Joseph, the miraculous 
 child of the Old Testament, in whose history it is likewise 
 said, in reference to the important dreams which he told as a 
 boy, tliat his father kept the saying (or the circumstance) in 
 his mind. 
 
 III. The Messiah, Jesus, withstands the Temptation to 
 WHICH the People in the Wilderness, led by Moses, 
 yielded. 
 
 66. 
 
 At the age when young men become their own masters, 
 and shew whether they are to pursue the paths of virtue or 
 of vice, the Hercules of Prodicus underwent his temptation, 
 or (according to tlie expression of Xenophon*) liad the choice 
 
 * Mernoiab. ii. 1, 21. 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 101 
 
 given him. Abraham must have been advanced in years 
 when, being commanded to sacrifice his only and late-born 
 son, he was subjected to his temptation — the hard trial of 
 his faith and obedience (1 Mos. xxii.). On the other hand, 
 the people of Israel was, as the prophet says, still young 
 when Jehovah called it, as his Son, out of Egypt (Hos. xi. 1), 
 and during the period of forty years tried him in the wilder- 
 ness with all sorts of hardships in order to search his heart, 
 and to discover whether he would keep the commands of 
 God or not (5 Mos. viii. 2). David also, immediately at the 
 outset of his public career, after having been first (according 
 to the combined accounts of the compiler of the Books of the 
 Kings) anointed by Samuel and filled with the Holy Spirit, had 
 to submit to a dangerous trial, the battle with the gigantic 
 Philistine Goliath (1 Sam. xvii.). These trials had been suc- 
 cessfully withstood by Abraham and David, as also by Her- 
 cules ; but the people of Israel yielded to the temptation, and 
 had been so carried away as to murmur at Jehovah, to prac- 
 tise licentiousness and idolatry. In this they had acted in the 
 same way as the first pair of human beings, who had also given 
 ear to the seducing voice of the serpent and sinned against 
 the command of God, thus drawing upon themselves banish- 
 ment from Paradise and from the tree of life. 
 
 As the Mosaic history generally survived in the memory 
 of the Israelites, so, in particular, as warning examples, 
 did these trials in the wilderness, so ill withstood, together 
 with the divine punishments which they brought with them. 
 " Now all these things," writes the Apostle Paul, after 
 giving short accounts of these occurrences, "happened unto 
 them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, 
 upon whom the ends of the world are come" (1 Cor. x. 
 6 — 11) ; and so, on another occasion, fearing lest his Corin- 
 thian Christians might, in their simplicity, allow themselves 
 to be deceived by false preachers, he reminds them of Eve 
 who was beguiled by the suljtle serpent (2 Cor. xi. 3). 
 
102 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 It was the calling of the Messiah to restore that which was 
 corrupt, to do well what others had done ill. It was neces- 
 sary, therefore, that he should withstand temptation better, 
 and that Jcstis, as the Messiah, should have withstood it 
 better than the people in the wilderness, or the first parents 
 in I'aradise. Now the whole life indeed of Jesus, and 
 especially his suffering, had been a series of such trials (Luke 
 xxii. 28 ; Heb. iv. 15) ; but we see at once how strong the 
 inducement must have been to sej)arate off one single solemn 
 act of temptation, and, as in the case of Abraham's trial, the 
 temptation of the first parents, to delineate it with dramatic 
 picturesqueness (Matt. iv. 1 — 11 ; Mark i. 12 ff ; Luke iv. 
 1—13). 
 
 There was another circumstance that co-operated to this 
 end. Abraham, the people in the wilderness, had been 
 exposed to temptation by God himself, and, indeed, with a 
 good intention, for the people had only to withstand it as 
 their ancestor had withstood it. But as time went on, it 
 appeared objectionable to refer temptation immediately to 
 God. Many thus fell, who would otherwise have continued 
 upright; many were thus brought into trouble which they 
 had not deserved ; did not God, if he had exposed them to 
 it, appear in the light of a jealous Being, rejoicing in mischief ? 
 God must himself participate in evil, it appeared, if he could 
 tempt any one to evil (James i. 13). Hence the inclination 
 arose, at an early period, to assign to Temptation another 
 author. In Genesis, the being which excites in Eve the 
 desire to act in opposition to the divine command, is the 
 serpent, as being tlie subtlest of the beasts of the field ; a 
 fabulous representation, whicli could not long hold its ground. 
 Now the Israelites in ca})tivity became acquainted with the 
 Zend religion, whicli assumed the existence of a good and 
 evil principle, and looked upon the development of the whole 
 system of the world as a battle between the two opposing 
 principles. This theory suited the Jewish people in the crisis 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 108 
 
 through which it was passing at that time, and thus espe- 
 cially the conception of the Persian Ahriman adapted itself 
 to tlie limitation that he did indeed counteract the operations 
 of the God of goodness, but remained nevertheless strictly 
 subordinate. He was the Enemy (Satan), the Accuser and 
 Slanderer of men to God, who by his doubts of the constancy 
 of Job's piety caused God to tempt him by heavy sorrows : 
 he it was also who, disguised in the form of a serpent, 
 tempted the first parents in Paradise, and thus brought death 
 and destruction into the world (Wisd. ii, 24 ; 2 Cor. xi. 13 ; 
 Eevel. xii. 9 ff.). 
 
 With regard to the change in the Jewish views of the 
 world, nothing is more instructive than a comparison of the 
 motives assigned in the older Book of Kings and the later 
 Book of the Chronicles for the numbering of the people 
 undertaken by David, and so severely punished by Jehovah. 
 "And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against 
 Israel," we read in the first account (2 Sam. xxiv. 1), " and 
 he moved David against them to say, Go number Israel and 
 Judah." In the second, on the contrary (1 Chron. xxi. 1), 
 " And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to 
 number Israel." Now, if the history of the patriarchs and 
 of the journey through the wilderness had been also written 
 in the later period after the Captivity, we should probably 
 find Satan in like manner represented as being implicated in 
 the temptations to which Abraham and the people of Israel 
 were exposed. In the Talmud, at all events, this is actually 
 the case. In the Babylonian Gemara, God is represented 
 as being stirred up by Satan to try Abraham, as in the 
 prologue of the Book of Job to try Job. Satan, accordingly, 
 meets Abraham as he goes out to sacrifice his son, and per- 
 sonally tempts him. In like manner in the march through 
 the wilderness it is Satan, according to the later Jewish 
 statement, who, while Moses lingers on the mountain, per- 
 
104 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 suades the people of his death, and thus seduces them to tlie 
 worship of the calf.* 
 
 All that was bad and evil in the world, especially in so far 
 as it concerned the people of Israel, being thus referred to 
 Satan as its first cause, it was a natural result that the 
 Messiah, who was to purify the people from their sins and 
 to deliver them from the evils which oppressed them, should 
 be opposed to Satan as his antagonist and conqueror. Christ 
 is come to destroy the works of the devil -^John iii. 8), to 
 destroy bad spirits (Mark i. 24 ; Luke iv. 34) ; he sees Satan 
 fall like lightning from heaven (Luke x. 18), the Prince of 
 this world, who is no other than the devil, cast out (John xii. 
 31). But for this end it was necessary first to conquer him. 
 If he attacks Christ, he must find nothing in Christ on which 
 he can lay hold (John xiv. 30). But attack him he will, as 
 surely as he attacked so many Old Testament saints, and also 
 as certainly as he still in the Christian world goes about 
 seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter v. 8). In ordinary 
 cases, this sifting by Satan consists only in the entrance of 
 evil, in tempting tlioughts (Luke xxii. 31 ; John xiii. 2). But 
 against the Messiah, since a decisive battle was to come off, 
 a personal appearance of Satan was required, for, as it were, 
 a duel with the Son of God. As David confronted the proud 
 giaut of the Philistines, so must the Messiah confront Satan, 
 the Prince of the world ; as David overthrows the former by 
 the stone out of his sling, so does the Messiah put Satan to 
 flight by the weapon of the Word of God ; the Holy Spirit 
 approves itself in both, they having received it immediately 
 before, the one through the anointing by Samuel, the other 
 through the baptism of John. 
 
 The period at which the history of the temptation is 
 placed, being thus fixed by this type of David, or, generally, 
 
 * Gemara Sanhcdr. in Fabric. Cod. pseiulepigr. V. T. p. 335. Scbabbat bab., 
 quoted in Grfrörer, The Century of Salvation, ii. 381. 
 
THE MESSIx\.H WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 105 
 
 by the consideration that the communication of the Spirit 
 just received is to approve itself under the strongest trial, so 
 also the locality of the scene, the duration of Jesus' con- 
 tinuance upon it, the substance moreover and form of the 
 temptation, as well as the resistance offered to it, are all 
 copied from the Mosaic history. The theatre is the wilder- 
 ness, not merely because it was always considered among 
 the Jews as the dwelling-place of evil spirits (3 Mos. xvi. 
 8 — 10; Job viii. 3; Matt. xii. 43), but, above all, because 
 the people of Israel also were tempted in the wilderness. 
 The time of trial for the people in the wilderness had lasted 
 forty years ; in the case of the Messiah, the substance of these 
 forty years was compressed into as many days ; which at the 
 same time was connected with the character of the first temp- 
 tation prepared for him by Satan. 
 
 For the first temptation encountered by the people in the 
 wilderness had been hunger, and they had yielded immedi- 
 ately to this first so far as to murmur against Moses and 
 Aaron, i.e. in the last resort, against Jehovah himself 
 (2 Mos. xvi.) ; nay, soon after, being dissatisfied with the 
 manna given them, they desired meat (4 Mos. xi.). There- 
 fore it was by hunger first that the Messiah was to be 
 tempted : in order to feel hunger he must have fasted : now 
 Moses had fasted during the march through the wilderness, 
 on Sinai (as Elijah had done subsequently and similarly, 
 1 Kings xix. 8), forty days (2 Mos. xxxiv. 38 ; 5 Mos. ix. 9), 
 So also Christ fasted in the wilderness forty days, and after 
 the lapse of these he felt hunger, whereby Satan hoped to be 
 able to get him into his power. It would be to no purpose 
 to tempt the Messiah to murmur, as in his case the fasting 
 was voluntary ; consequently the Tempter fixes upon his 
 character as the Son of God, and endeavours to seduce him 
 to aid himself by his own power. The form in which he does 
 this, the demand made to him to change at a word the stones 
 that lie around' him into bread, is determined partly by the 
 
106 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS, 
 
 stony ground of the desert, partly by proverbial language 
 met with elsewhere also in the New Testament. God, said 
 John the Baptist, likewise in the desert, could, in case of 
 necessity, raise up children to Abraham from these stones 
 (Matt. viii. 9) ; and coinciding still more closely with this 
 feature of the history of the temptation, Jesus had asked 
 whether any one would give his son a stone when he asked 
 for bread (Watt. vii. 9). So much the more suitable it must 
 have seemed to Satan's mischievous nature to refer a hungry 
 person to stones instead of bread, with the additional demand 
 to forestall God by a miraculous word, and change them into 
 bread. But, notwithstanding the fact that a particular fea- 
 ture is taken from elsewhere, the temptation of the people of 
 God in the wilderness is throughout the real antitype of the 
 history of the temptation. This appears immediately from 
 the answer by which Jesus repels this first attack of the 
 Tempter. At the close of the marcli through the desert, 
 Moses, according to the representation in Deuteronomy, calls 
 upon tlie people to remember all the way which Jehovah led 
 them all the time in the wilderness and proved them, and 
 says, among otlier things (5 Mos. viii. 3) : " He humbled tliee 
 and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna (which 
 thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know), that he 
 might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, 
 but by every word tliat proceedeth out of the mouth of the 
 Lord doth man live." These last words are the very words 
 with which Jesus replies to the Tempter (Matt. iv. 4), appeal- 
 ing at the same time to what " is written," and thus the latter, 
 bahled at the first onset, applies himself to a second. 
 
 In order to understand this second temptation, we must 
 start from tlie words at the end of it, the answer of Jesus : 
 " Again it is written. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
 God." In the passage of the fifth book of jNIoses, from 
 wliicli also this text is taken (vi. 16), it is said more accu- 
 rately : " Ye, that is, the people, shall not" (when ye come 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 107 
 
 into the land of Canaan, " tempt the Lord your God, as ye 
 tempted him at Massa." That is at the time when from want 
 of water in the wilderness they murmured against Moses 
 and Aaron (2 Mos. xvii.) ; for this was considered a " tempt- 
 ing" of God, implying as it did a doubt of his miraculous 
 support (ver. 7). This tempting of God, or, as he seems to 
 understand it, of Christ, is also numbered by the Apostle 
 Paul among the things in which the Christians are to make 
 the precedents of the Israelites in the wilderness a warning 
 example to themselves, so as to escape similar punishments 
 (1 Cor. X. 9, where 2 Mos. xvii. 1 ff. is combined with 
 4 Mos. xxi. 4 ff.). Also, in that portion of the prophet 
 Isaiah, so much read among the first Christians on account 
 of its supposed Messianic importance, chap, vii., where king 
 Ahaz, encouraged by the prophet to demand an accrediting 
 sign, answers (ver. 12), " I will not ask, neither will I tempt 
 the Lord," the expression has without doubt the same mean- 
 ing, but might possibly be also explained to mean that the 
 king would not make of God any improper demand, as in 
 Ps. Ixxviii. 18, it is said in reference to this murmuring of 
 the Israelites for meat (4 Mos. xi.), "And they tempted 
 God in their heart by asking meat for their lust." Now 
 what improper demand was there that could be suggested 
 by Satan to the Messiah to make of God? Ps. xci. 11 ff, 
 it is said of him who stands under the protection of the Most 
 High, as in the most distinguished sense was the case with 
 the Messiah, that God shall give his angels charge over him 
 to keep him in all his ways, that they shall bear him in their 
 hands, that he strike not his foot against a stone. This, 
 literally understood, might be taken to mean that tlie Protected 
 of God might throw himself without danger from a height, 
 as God's angels would support him and bring him without 
 hurt to the ground. Satan, therefore, calls upon Jesus to do 
 this ; and as in another Psalm it is said of a man of clean 
 hcUids and a pure heart, again therefore pre-eminently of the 
 
108 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Messiah (Ps. xxiv. 3, comp. xv. 1), that he shall ascend into 
 the hiU of the Lord and stand in his holy place, the Messiah 
 also is now to ascend the pinnacle of the Temple and throw 
 himself down from thence — to which proposal the answer 
 came in quite suitably in the text, " Thou shalt not tempt the 
 Lord thy God." 
 
 One of the most prominent warnings drawn by the Apostle 
 Paul in the often-quoted passage of the first Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, from the history of the march through the 
 wilderness, is that in chap. x. 7, not to be idolaters, as some 
 of them (2 Mos. xxxii. 6) were. In the same section, 
 idolatry (in accordance with the view prevailing among the 
 Jews), is explained to be a worship of devils (x. 20 ff.) ; 
 and the Prince of the devils is, according to this mode of 
 conception, Beelzebub (Matt. xxii. 24), i. e. Satan. For a 
 considerable time the Jews must have seen the sovereignty 
 of the world in the hands of idolatrous people ; consequently, 
 according to their ideas, the supreme idol, Satan, was Prince 
 or God of the present world (2 Cor. iv. 4 ; John xxii. 12, 31, 
 xiv. 30, xvi. 11). So the temptation to idolatry, which as the 
 antitype of the nation the Messiah had to undergo, took the 
 form, according to the ideas of this later period, of a demand 
 to worship the de^dl; and to this demand the devil might 
 add as an inducement the promise to surrender to the 
 Messiah the whole of this world, the disposal of which 
 belonged to him as the Lord of it. In order to invest this 
 inducement with the greatest possible strength, it was neces- 
 sary to shew to Jesus this world in all its glory, and with 
 this view he takes him to the top of a high mountain, as 
 Jehovah had taken Moses before his death to Mount Nebo, 
 and made him survey the whole country which he would give 
 to the people of Israel (5 Mos. xxxiv. 1 ff.). It is clear that 
 the Messiah would yield to this temptation as little as to any 
 of the otliers, and in this case the weapon with which he 
 repels the tempter is an expression from the speech of Moses 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION 109 
 
 at tlie end of the wanderings in the desert, i. e. the command 
 to the people to worship Jehovah, to the exclusion of all other 
 Gods. 
 
 Beaten thus in three onsets, Satan is compelled to give in, 
 and retires, but, as Luke adds, only to renew his attack at 
 a more convenient season. There is no doubt that by this 
 later attack Luke meant the suffering of Jesus. And this, 
 not indeed in Luke, but in Matthew, is opened by three 
 courses, as, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus thrice sepa- 
 rates from his sleeping disciples, in order to pray to his 
 Father for the putting away of the cup of suffering (Matt, 
 xxvi. 36 — 45). In like manner, Peter thrice denies his 
 Master (Matt. xxvi. 69 — 75), and so it followed that his love 
 for him must thrice be called in question (John xxi. 15 — 17) : 
 all instances in which the triple repetition has the same 
 ground, the natural preference, not merely of the Jews, but 
 of others, also, for the number three, which must also have 
 appeared especially appropriate for the arrangement of dra- 
 matic scenes, like that of our history of the Temptation. 
 Hence, also, the narrative of the Gemara above mentioned 
 represented Satan as having three courses with Abraham ; 
 while other rabbinical accounts, perhaps in accordance with 
 the number of Egyptian plagues, speak of ten temptations of 
 Abraham. 
 
 In the summary accounts in Mark, the number three of 
 the temptations has disappeared, and it is only said, "And 
 immediately (after the baptism of Jesus) the Spirit driveth 
 him into the wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness 
 forty days, tempted of Satan, and was with the wild beasts, 
 and the angels ministered unto him." Whether the wild 
 beasts are intended to colour more highly the picture of "jthe 
 wilderness" (comp, also 2 Mace. v. 27), or to represent Jesus 
 as the second Adam, still it is an extravagant feature, fand 
 when taken in combination with the rest of the description, 
 which is so abbreviated as to be almost unintelligible, does 
 
110 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 not say much in favour of the originality of this account, and 
 of the second Gospel generally. Even the account in Luke, 
 in comparison with that of Mark, looks like one at second- 
 hand, partly from the fact that, at aU events according to the 
 common reading, he is the first to speak of the Temptation 
 as continuing for the forty days, and tlien represents the 
 three separate acts of the Temptation as following upon the 
 close of them, partly from the artificial touching up of the 
 narrative of the latter as given in Matthew. For an artificial 
 touch it is when Luke puts the temptation to worship the 
 devil second, and that to throw himself down from the pin- 
 nacle of the Temple third. For in point of substance the 
 call to worship him is the strongest that the devil could 
 make upon Jesus, and forms, therefore, a suitable conclusion ; 
 what induced Luke to modify this order was undoubtedly the 
 reflection, that it was more improbable that Satan should have 
 gone with Jesus out of the wilderness to the mountain, and 
 then into the city, than out of the wilderness into the city, 
 and then out again to the mountain — a reflection little suit- 
 able in the case of a narrative like ours, where a probability 
 more or less was of little consequence. A second hand also 
 is betrayed by additions such as the following : that the devil 
 shewed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world "in a moment;" 
 that he makes his own dominion over the world the ground 
 of his offering it to Jesus ; and that, in conclusion, he is said 
 to have departed from him only " for a season," seeing that 
 he never appeared to Jesus again, at least in this manner, 
 i. e. personally and visibly. Meantime, Luke loses the conclu- 
 sion of the narrative in Matthew, which Mark, in spite of all 
 his abl jreviations, preserves, that after the departure of the 
 devil, angels came and worshipped Jesus. They refreshed 
 him subsequently, as an angel did Elijah preliminarily (1 Kings 
 xix. 5 ff.), though not with earthly, but, undoubtedly, with 
 heavenly food ; with the bread of angels, as the manna was 
 called, according to later Jewish notions (Ps. Ixxviii. 25, in 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. Ill 
 
 the Greek translation ; Wisd. xvi. 20) ; and thus proof was 
 given of the confident assertion made by Je^sus at the begin- 
 ning, that for the support of the pious God is not confined to 
 common material bread. 
 
 The fourth Gospel has no history of the Temptation — nay, 
 as if it were intended to be pointedly excluded, the parti- 
 cular events, from the time of the baptism of John to the 
 first performing of miracles by Jesus, are connected by the 
 strictest dates (as, on the next, on the third day) so closely 
 together, that the Temptation, with its forty days, can find no 
 place between them. Here, accordingly, John has certainly 
 one incredible history less than the Synoptics, but he passes 
 it over, not because he found it insufficiently accredited from 
 an historical point of view, but because, dogmatically, it was 
 not to his taste. In his dogmatic theory, indeed, the devil, 
 as the author of sin among men and as the antagonist of 
 Christ, had a prominent place ; but the idea of his aj)pearance 
 in a sensible form was opposed to his Hellenistic education, 
 and that Jesus should have condescended to enter into a 
 formal conflict with him as a being of equal rank, appeared 
 to John to be unsuitable to the dignity of the Son of God in 
 Ibis sense. So on this, as on many other occasions, the 
 author of the fourth Gospel endeavoured, while sacrificing 
 the form, to retain the substance and the result, of the 
 history of the Temptation, and in doing so adhered to the 
 reference made by the third Evangelist to the suffering of 
 Jesus as a renewed attack of Satan upon him. In this sense 
 he refers especially (xiii. 2) the treason of Judas to the in- 
 spiration of Satan, thus following Luke (xxii. 3), but avoid- 
 ing his language, which reminds us of a formal possession 
 by a devil, though he retains that language (vii. 70) when 
 it suits the purposes of his own representation. Further on, 
 too, and before the opening of the regular history of the pas- 
 sion, he comprises all that can be looked upon as the real 
 dogmatic meaning of the history of the Temptation in the 
 
112 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 words which he puts into the mouth of his Christ (xiv. 30) 
 — " The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in 
 me." 
 
 Thus, looking upon the history of the Temptation as a 
 Messianic myth, we escape, in tlie first place, the necessity 
 of liaving recourse to any of those traditional quibbles hy 
 which attempts are made to make that history and its forty 
 days fit into the tissue of tlie Johannine narrative whicli is 
 here so closely woven. With tliis view, apologistic theokigy 
 has scarcely left a place unattempted between the beginning 
 of the historical narrative of the fourth Gospel, chap. i. 19, 
 and iv. 54. In every case, however, with equally bad success, 
 as the object of the narrative of John is not to leave a place 
 where that of the Temptation may possibly be inserted, but 
 conversely, in all probability, absolutely to exclude it. But 
 even independently of this incongruity between the fourth 
 Gospel and the Synoptics, which, with our view of the former, 
 proves nothing against the narrative of the latter, this narra- 
 tive in itself presents difficulties so numerous and so impor- 
 tant, that a mode of looking at it which cuts these absolutely 
 away must be considered a welcome discovery. For few per- 
 sons at the present day will be bold enough, with Ebrard, to 
 assert that the dignity of Jesus as the second Adam required 
 that Satan should appear to him, as to the first, personally 
 and visibly, not as to the latter under the disguise of an 
 animal, but undisguised in his own figure. And it is only 
 necessary to allude to the evasions of a vision, a dream, a 
 parable, &c., in order to shew that in view of the text, which 
 manifestly speaks of a real objective occurrence, they are as 
 inadmissilJe, as the assumption of a myth, provided only the 
 right point of view is taken, is natural and probable. 
 
 By introducing the history of the Baptism and that of the 
 Temptation, we have already overstepped the line which is 
 generally considered to bound tlie preliminary history of the 
 Gospels, and lately, also, as that within Mliich the admission 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 113 
 
 of mythical elements is no longer contested. The whole 
 school of theologians which received its stamp from Schleier- 
 macher, and as the representatives of which we would here 
 name only De Wette and Hase, agree with their master in 
 giving np as untenable, and to even a greater e.xtent and 
 more fully tlian he does, the historical character of the 
 accounts of the birth and infancy, and consider these as a 
 tissue of primeval Christian legends and fictions, out of which 
 no historical nucleus, even supposing such a nucleus to be 
 contained in them, can be now extracted.* In making 
 these admissions, they follow the example of wise and decisive 
 generals, who, in order to be the better able to maintain a 
 fortress, surrender untenable outworks, and do not even 
 hesitate to burn them down themselves. In modern times, 
 indeed, there has been ample opportunity for discovering 
 that the preliminary history of the Gospels may, as against 
 the siege artillery of criticism, be compared to such untenable 
 outworks. And nothing but the stiff-necked stupidity of the 
 old Tubingen school, or the pettifogging obstinacy of the 
 modern Church tendency, can blind themselves, like Smith or 
 Ebrard, to this daylight so far as to think of maintaining this 
 portion of the evangelical history to be perfectly historical. 
 
 Still there is something in the conduct of theologians of the 
 latter description, in which we are bound to do them justice, 
 as compared with the former. The burning of a suburb is 
 only advisable when it is cut off from those parts of the city 
 w^hich are intended to be preserved, or when the latter are 
 made of materials so incombustible that there is no fear of 
 the lire spreading from the one to the other. On the other 
 hand, if this is possible or even proljable, it is generally 
 considered better to let the suburb stand, and to see how 
 long it can be held, than to set it on fire and so precipitate 
 the destruction of the whole place. Indeed, if we were to 
 
 * Hase, Lehen Jesu, § 26, 
 VOL. IL I 
 
114 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 listen to theologians of the first description, we should have 
 to believe that the evangelical account of the public life of 
 Jesus was in every way fortified against such danger. The 
 testimony of the Apostle is supposed to answer the purpose 
 of a trench and wall; this (according to Acts i. 21 ff., x. 
 36 ff., comp, with Mark i. 1) begins first with the baptism 
 of John.* But these theologians do not recognise apostolical 
 testimony in the synoptic Gospels at all ; and as to that of 
 John, whom they cannot give up as an eye-witness, they have 
 lately made it illusory by those well-known alibis which 
 they bring in whenever he tells anything which they cannot 
 believe. But as regards the more durable material of which 
 the narratives of the public life of Jesus are supposed to con- 
 sist, they put just within the wall of defence, first the history 
 of the Baptism with the dove and the voice from heaven, 
 the first of these being also found in the account of the eye- 
 witness John, as well as the history of the temptation with 
 the personal appearance of the devil — material as combustible 
 certainly as any in the history of the Infancy, and, conse- 
 quently, not merely endangered by the fire kindled in the 
 suburb, but with no hope of escape from its ravages. Or if 
 we begin with the conclusion of the evangelical history, then 
 the narrative of the ascension of Jesus is the exact parallel 
 to that of his supernatural conception, the history of the 
 transfiguration to tliat of the baptism, and then there run 
 through the whole of the department of the life of Jesus the 
 narratives of his miracles, which likewise consist of similarly 
 combustible material. If this is the case in tlie interior of 
 the fortress, it is well indeed to think twice before firing the 
 outworks ; and if I had the misfortune to be inside, T should 
 be on tlie side of those who preferred defending the whole, 
 outworks included, though with uncertain success, rather 
 than set the latter on fire, and so sacrifice everything to 
 
 * Hase, Leben lesu, as quoted above. 
 
THE MESSIAH WITHSTANDS TEMPTATION. 115 
 
 certain destruction. The real difference between the history 
 of the Infancy of Jesus and that of his public life, as it lies 
 before us in the Gospels, is only this, that in the former there 
 is, independently of a few quite general notices, nothing 
 whatever historical ; in the latter, in the midst of what is 
 unhistorical, there is still much that is historical on which the 
 torch of criticism cannot lay hold. This historical element, 
 however, is at the same time the natural element : the super- 
 natural in the history of the public life of Jesus is so similar 
 to that in the history of the Infancy, that whoever recognises 
 the necessity of maintaining the historical character of the 
 one will also find it the best course to admit no doubt to 
 arise in his mind as to the historical character of the other. 
 
 I 2 
 
SECOT^D CHAPTEE. 
 
 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 67. 
 
 Thus we see that the history of the birth and infancy of 
 Jesus, a few meagre historical notices excepted, is throughout 
 a tissue spun from dogmatic conceptions, and was, therefore, 
 necessarily drawn within the circle of our present exposition, 
 the object of which is to point out the progressive formation 
 of the mythical history of Christ. In the former Book, in 
 which we were concerned with the real history of Jesus, we 
 had nothing to do with that earlier account. But in the 
 history of his public life, there is, as the analysis contained 
 in the former Book has shewn, much that must be recognised 
 as historical both in the facts, and especially in the speeclies 
 of Jesus, and we shall now therefore be concerned with all 
 that remains, and which did not come under our notice in the 
 historical synthesis of the former Book, 
 
 The miraculous element will obviously come first under 
 this investigation, comprising not only the miracles wliich 
 Jesus performed, but also those which were performed in his 
 company, or in reference to him; much also that does not 
 indeed, like the miracles, contradict the laws of Nature, but 
 those of historical probability — events, that is, with regard 
 to wliich it is easier to understand how they may have 
 arisen as reflexes of sacred or poetical fiction, than that they 
 really happened. It is clear, of course, that such an inves- 
 tigation will contain points open to dispute; '^'e shall there- 
 fore content ourselves with bringing forward at present only 
 those portions of the history of tlie public life of Jesus in 
 which the mythical formation may be pointed out with some 
 
JESUS AND HIS PRECURSOR. 117 
 
 degree of certainty. Portions of this description are the 
 accounts, throughout, of the relation of Jesus to his precursor 
 and his own disciples ; towards the conclusion, those of the 
 transfiguration of Jesus and his entrance into Jerusalem. 
 Meanwhile the accounts of miracles performed during this 
 period are numerous, and continue from the beginning to the 
 end of the period. 
 
 FIEST GEOUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 JESUS AND HIS PRECURSOR. 
 68. 
 
 It was recorded, historically, John baptized Jesus. It was 
 attempted to be established dogmatically, by his baptism, as 
 by an anointing, John dedicated Jesus to his Messianic office. 
 Hence the history of the Baptism already considered. 
 
 It was recorded further, historically, that the Baptist, after 
 having baptized Jesus, did not attach himself to him, but 
 continued the exercise of his baptismal function as before. 
 This, naturally, did not suit the dogmatic interests of Christ- 
 endom : it was supposed that the Baptist himself must have 
 acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah. We have seen how the 
 synoptic tradition endeavoured to shew this by its mode of 
 representing the history of the Baptism. It made John an 
 eye and ear witness of the miracle which was supposed to 
 take place on that occasion, and thus it followed as a matter 
 of course that he rej^resented what was said as being said to 
 himself, and recognised Jesus as the person which the voice 
 from heaven declared him to be. He had already referred to 
 a Mightier than himself who was to come after him, and to 
 baptize with the Holy Spirit ; it is not expressly said tliat 
 in doing so he had in view the person of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 but, according to the history of the Infancy in Luke, it is 
 
118 .MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to be presumed he had ; and when, according to Matthew, he 
 attempted to deter Jesus from coming to his baptism with 
 the declaration that he, the Baptist, had more need to be 
 baptized by Jesus, he must have recognised the latter, even 
 before the miracle of the baptism, as that Mightier of whom 
 he had spoken. The Hebrew Gospel gave to this recognition 
 of Jesus on the part of the Baptist a palpable expression, 
 making the latter fall at the feet of Jesus and pray to be 
 baptized by him.* 
 
 The question, however, still remained, why the Baptist, 
 when that Greater One, for whose coming he was only to 
 prepare, had been pointed out, and, as it were, placed before 
 him by God himself, did not immediately desist from his 
 own function and attach himself to him ? To this question 
 the synoptic tradition replied by pointing to the forty days' 
 sojourn of Jesus in the wilderness, where it was necessary 
 that the Messiah should be alone. Further on, Matthew and 
 Mark represent, as we are almost compelled to suj)pose, the 
 imprisonment of the Baptist as taking place during, or at the 
 conclusion of, this sojourn, when of course there would be 
 an end to the possibility of John's attaching himself to the 
 Messiah. 
 
 Now it was known, or believed to be known, that John had 
 not been immediately put to death, but kept for some time 
 in prison, and as during this time Jesus was supposed to 
 have begun his public ministry, it was considered incon- 
 ceivable that the Baptist should not have had intelligence of 
 this (Matt. xi. 1 ff. ; Luke vii. 18 ff.). The far-spread rumour 
 of the miraculous deeds of Jesus must, it was thought, 
 have come to his ears in spite of the prison walls ; and as 
 he had from the first proclaimed one who should come after 
 him, the question forced itself upon him whether the man 
 who performed sucli deeds was not he tliat should come, 
 and to proclaim whom he had been sent. If he had indeed 
 
 * E|iipli;tn. Hsercs. xxx. 13. 
 
JESUS AND HIS PRECURSOR. 119 
 
 already on the occasion of his baptism seen the Holy Spirit 
 hover over Jesus in the shape of a dove, and heard the 
 heavenly declaration of his being the Son of God, he must 
 have known, witliout further questioning, that Jesus, and no 
 other, was he that should come ; and if he had, moreover, 
 heard meanwhile of his miraculous deeds, this coiüd only 
 strengthen him in his conviction. The synoptic Gospels 
 represent him as not only asking the question, but as adding 
 to it the expression of still further doubt as to whether 
 another is to be looked for. Now he could only do this in 
 case he had either become doubtful as to the meaning of the 
 baptismal miracle, or this miracle had not taken place at all. 
 Our narrator, however, does not give the slightest hint of his 
 having been guilty of the grievous sin of falling away while 
 in prison from his belief in the miraculous sign of which 
 he had been thought worthy to be the witness. We nmst, 
 therefore, suppose that this account does not assume the 
 existence of that of the baptism as we now have it, i.e. that 
 the account of the message of the Baptist out of the prison 
 comes originally from an author who knew nothing of the 
 miraculous occurrence at the baptism. So the question which 
 John is represented as asking, is one which might have been 
 asked by any other person, namely, as miracles might be 
 ascribed to any one else, whether those which Jesus was said 
 to be performing do really indicate the expected Messiah, 
 or whether, as had already been the case so often before, 
 the hope of that Messiah's coming was to be still further 
 delayed. Jesus is said to have replied to this question in 
 words which, if they were ever uttered by him, might, accord- 
 ing to an explanation given above, apply only to the moral 
 miracles of his ministry, but are understood by the Evan- 
 gelists as referring to the real material miracles which Jesus 
 performed.* 
 
 It is not said what the effect of this answer upon the Bap- 
 
 * See above, First Book, Vol. i. p. 364. 
 
120 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 tist was — wliether or not it led him to recognise Jesus as him 
 who sliould come. Instead of this, a speech about John is 
 put into tlie mouth of Jesus, whicli he might, indeed, have 
 spoken without thi» message having been sent at all, but 
 Avliich was brought in here because it appeared adapted to 
 remove much of the difficulty involved in the fact that the 
 Baptist did not attach himself to Jesus. For in this speech 
 (Matt. xi. 7 fF. ; Luke vii. 24 ff.) John is recognised, on the 
 one hand, as the promised Messianic forerunner, as the most 
 exalted j^ersonage of the ancient time. On the other liand, 
 he is made to draw a strong distinction between himself and 
 the children of the more modern period, that of the Messianic 
 kingdom of heaven ; nay, even to subordinate himself to the 
 least of them. And thus it might be less surprising that he 
 failed fully to understand him who had introduced this modern 
 period. 
 
 Luke also states summarily that John had been impri- 
 soned by Herod (iii. 20) ; but the statement in Matthew as to 
 when this was done, and that he sent the message to Jesus 
 straight out of the prison, is not given in Luke. Thus the 
 result of the account of this message — which is not said, 
 indeed, to have liad any result at all — becomes unsatisfactory 
 in another point of view. If John, when the Greater One 
 whom he had announced had begun his pulJic ministry, and 
 who had, moreover, now so expressly answered his doubts, 
 was still at liberty, and not prevented from shewing his sub- 
 jection to him, why did he not do so ? He must, it was sup- 
 posed, have done so, not, indeed, to the extent of giving up 
 his own baptism and attaching himself to him — for that he did 
 not do so, the continuance of his own school, which was kept 
 so decidedly distinct from that of the followers of Jesus, was 
 too significant a proof — but in such a manner, that instead of 
 putting the question as to whether Jesus was he that should 
 come in a doubting spirit, he answered himself and others in 
 a sjiirit of tlie firmest faith, and made declarations of his rela- 
 
JESUS AND HIS rRECURSOR, 121 
 
 tion to him, which must have removed all difficulty. The 
 fourth Evangelist gave this turn to the narrative (i. 19 — 28), 
 and in doing so not only followed Luke, as he does on many 
 other occasions, but also continued and completed what Luke 
 had left unfinished. 
 
 In Luke, the Baptist refers to a Mightier who was to come 
 after him, and the motive for making this reference is stated 
 to be the surmise, on the part of the people who flocked to 
 him, that he might be the Messiah. Luke had also given it 
 the more decisive meaning of a disavowal of the dignity, and 
 a transference of it to the One who should come after him 
 (iii. 15 ; comp. Acts xiii. 25). For the fourth Evangelist this 
 was not quite official enough. It was not enough that the 
 people should only have entertained that surmise quietly in 
 their hearts ; they must have expressed it in the form of a 
 question put to the Baptist ; and the people who so put it 
 could not have been mere common crowds, but must have 
 been emissaries of the Jewish government in Jerusalem, 
 Priests and Levites, in order that Jesus might appeal to the 
 declaration of the Baptist made to them as convincing human 
 testimony. But here arose the difficulty, that a proceeding 
 which was intelligible enough on the part of an unprejudiced 
 and excitable mob, is, in the case of the Jewish hierarchs and 
 their Pharisaic messengers, inconceivable. It is inconceivable 
 that they should have offered to the Baptist, whose preaching 
 of repentance could not possibly have been agreea])le to them, 
 and who had, moreover, expressly attacked the sect of the 
 Pharisees, the titles in succession of tlie Messiah, of Elijah 
 of that Prophet, in order, after all, to meet with a refusal. 
 Not a hint is given by the Evangelist that they did this with 
 a malicious intent — with the intent, that is, of seizing John 
 in case he assumed the title, as they subsequently seized 
 Jesus, of bringing him into suspicion with the Eomans and 
 dragging him to punishment. On the contrary, the object of 
 the Evangelist seems simply to have been to represent John 
 
122 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 as refusing those titles ; but he could only refuse them in case 
 they were offered to him. In Luke he had only disclaimed 
 the title of Messiah in favour of Jesus, while in all the Synop- 
 tics he is declared by Jesus liimself to be in a certain sense 
 Elijah, and a prophet in the highest sense (Matt. xAdi. 12 ff ; 
 comp. xi. 9, 14). In the fourth Gospel it was necessary that 
 he should be represented as refusing the two last titles, partly 
 in order to place himself still further below Jesus, partly 
 because the view of the Baptist as another Elijah was too 
 Jewish for the author. 
 
 But the fourth Evangelist has also managed to preserve the 
 mission of the two disciples of John to Jesus, only in a form 
 modified after his own fashion. In his Gospel, John sends 
 two of his disciples to Jesus as he is passing by. He does 
 this, not at a later period out of the prison, but soon after the 
 baptism, and not with the doubting question as to whether 
 he is the coming One, but with the decisive assertion that he 
 is the Lamb of God who takes away sins. In the Synoptics, 
 Jesus bids the messengers tell their master what they hear 
 and see ; here, in answer to the question of the two disciples 
 as to where he dwells, he says, " Come and see." Upon this 
 the two, instead of turning back to John, as the synoptic 
 emissaries do, remain in the train of Jesus and bring to him 
 other disciples (i. 35 ff). 
 
 The question of the Baptist, as put by the two disciples in 
 Matthew and Luke, standing as it does now in the account of 
 those two Evangelists after the history of the ])aptism, could 
 only be understood as arising from doubt and difficulty. But 
 the fourth Evangelist preferred modifying this feature and 
 making it harmless, to leaving it uncorrected. The offence, 
 therefore, was transferred to the disciples of the Baptist ; 
 they, and not their master, are said to have been olTended at 
 the fact, that he, who had formerly been on the Jordan follow- 
 ing their master, is now attended by more people than John 
 himself; and it is not Jesus wlio sends to John, but John 
 
JESUS AND HIS PRECURSOR. 123 
 
 himself gives to his disciples the explanation that solves the 
 difficulty (iii. 22 K). The connection between the com- 
 plaint of the disciples of John to their master and the 
 dispute with a Jew about the purification, i.e. the purifying 
 virtue of baptism (ii. 25), and John's comparison in his 
 answer of Jesus with the bridegroom, and of himself to the 
 bridegroom's friend (ver. 29), reminds us of another synoptic 
 passage (Matt. ix. 14 ff.), where the disciples of John put to 
 Jesus the question, why they and the Pharisees fast so much, 
 and his disciples do not fast. Jesus answers them, that it is 
 not fitting that the children of the bride-chamber mourn and 
 fast, so long as the bridegroom is with them. This passage 
 also has been touched up by the fourth, and a turn given to 
 the comparison of Jesus to the bridegroom, such that the 
 time of the bridegroom's presence is not, as in the Synoptics, 
 contrasted with that when he will be taken away from his 
 followers, i. e. the lifetime of Jesus with the time after his 
 death, but the Bridegroom, i.e. the Son of God who came 
 from heaven, with his forerunner, who is only of earthly 
 extraction. When on the same occasion the Baptist declares 
 himself to be he who must decrease as compared with Jesus 
 who must increase, he says of himself the same, in refer- 
 ence to Jesus, as the author of the Books of Samuel says 
 of Saul in reference to David (2 Sam. iii. 1) ; and that this 
 declaration may have its full value as a voluntary self-subor- 
 dination, it is expressly said that he had not yet been thrown 
 into prison (ver. 24), so that he may appear to have laid down 
 his arms at the feet of Jesus, while still at liberty and without 
 compulsion. 
 
 The contradiction to Matthew, who does not represent this 
 public ministry of Jesus as beginning until after the im- 
 prisonment of the Baptist, is here obvious ; but beside this, 
 tlie fourth Evangelist gives us a representation of the Baptist 
 which corresponds neither with the description of him in the 
 three first Gospels nor with historical probability, and can 
 
124 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 only be explained from the peculiar character of this Evan- 
 gelist. It is true, indeed, that he gives us no description 
 of the coarse exterior, the clothing and mode of life, of the 
 Baptist. But this may be thought of the less importance, as 
 he does apply to him the passage in the Prophet of the Voice 
 in the wilderness, in the same way as the Synoptics do (i. 23). 
 In the Synoptics his preaching consists of two parts : Eepent, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John entirely omits 
 the first part, in order to bring out the other at so much 
 greater length, and in more free and lofty language. Like 
 the Synoptics, he represents the Baptist as referring to a 
 Mightier and Higher than he who should come after him ; 
 but the higher dignity of this personage is characterised with 
 features wdiich are foreign not only to the synoptic Baptist, 
 but also to the range of thought of the Synoptics themselves. 
 The statement that he is the Lamb who taketh away the sins 
 of the world (John i. 29, 36), involves an application of the 
 prophecy in Isaiah (liii. 4 ff.) to Jesus, which is not indeed 
 unknown to the three first Evangelists, seeing as they do in 
 the dying Jesus a sacrifice for many (Matt. xx. 28 ; Mark x. 
 25 ; comp. Alatt. xxvi. 28) : but it does not occur to them to 
 ascribe to the Baptist a view which did not begin to dawn 
 upon the discij^les of Jesus until after liis death. But the Bap- 
 tist also declares in the fourth Gospel that Jesus wdio comes 
 after him is only preferred before him because he had been 
 before him (i. 15, 30), only stands above all because he comes 
 from heaven and testifies upon earth what he had seen and 
 heard there (iii. 31 ff.). Now this view of a heavenly pre-exist- 
 ence of Jesus before becoming man is foreign not only to the 
 synoptic Baptist, but to the Synoptics themselves, and peculiar 
 to the fourth Evangelist alone, wlio, in liis subjective way, 
 attributes it to his own Baptist, and, to leave no doubt as to 
 its interpolation, puts into his mouth exactly the same expres- 
 sions and turns of language as he had just before represented 
 Jesus as usino; in his conversation with Nicodenius. Jesus had 
 
JESUS AND HIS PRECURSOR. 125 
 
 said to Nicodemus, " That which is horn of the flesh is flesh ; 
 and that which is born of the spirit is spirit : we speak that 
 we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not 
 our witness" (iii. 6, 11). The Baptist says of Jesus, "He 
 that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth; 
 he that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath 
 seen and heard he testifieth, and no man receiveth his tes- 
 timony" (iii. 31 ff.). Now, as in the fourth Gospel the 
 Baptist, Jesus, and the Evangelist, where he introduces his 
 own reflections, all move within the same round of thoughts 
 and phrases, only three cases are here conceivable. Either 
 Jesus as well as the Evangelist learnt this mode of thinking 
 and speaking from the Baptist ; or the Baptist as well as the 
 Evangelist took it from Jesus ; or, finally, the Evangelist lent 
 his mode of thought and expression to Jesus as well as to 
 the Baptist. The first supposition is opposed to that religious 
 respect which is thought due to Jesus, and it is also opposed 
 to historical probability, as the synoptic Gospels know nothing 
 of such thoughts and expressions in the mouth of the Baptist, 
 and speculations of this kind are not at all suited to his stand- 
 point. The second, adopted, e.g. by Hengstenberg,* that the 
 Apostle John not only copied his own mode of expression 
 from that of Jesus, but also told his earlier teacher, John the 
 Baptist, while he stayed with Jesus in his neighbourhood 
 (John iii. 22 ff.), of the dialogue which the latter had just 
 held with Mcodemus, and that the Baptist immediately appro- 
 priated the watchwords out of it — this, certainly, is far less 
 natural and probable than the third, that the Evangelist repre- 
 sents both the Baptist and Jesus as speaking in the style in 
 which he himself was accustomed to speak when he wished 
 to utter his own deepest religious convictions, and that here 
 in particular he puts the same thoughts and turns into the 
 mouth of the Baptist as were still floating in his mind and 
 
 * In his Commentary on John. 
 
126 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 ready to issue from his pen, after writing down immediately 
 before tlie dialogue of Jesus with Nicodemus. 
 
 In the three first Gospels, also, the Baptist, in the spirit of 
 the tendency of these writings, is engaged as the forerunner 
 of the Messiah Jesus, but still in his austere preaching of 
 repentance something of his own is left him. In the fourth 
 Gospel, all independent existence is taken from him ; he exists 
 only as a witness to him who is to come after him, and, as it 
 were, as a wooden sign-post : he is like the heroes of the most 
 modern dramas with a purpose, which are deprived of every 
 rationally human characteristic, stuffed out and crammed with 
 the straw and chips of the subjective pathos of the composer. 
 
 SECOND GEOUP OF MYTPIS. 
 
 JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 
 69. 
 
 Historically, it was known that there had been, among the 
 most eminent disciples of Jesus, several fishermen and at 
 least one publican. In reference to the first, also, the saying 
 of Jesus had been preserved, that, instead of fishermen in the 
 ordinary sense, he would make them fishers of men. 
 
 Now it was known, further, from the legends of the pro- 
 phets in the Old Testament, how, e.g. Elijah was supposed to 
 have called his servant and successor Elisha. The latter was 
 ploughing and driving twelve oxen before him when the 
 prophet threw his mantle over him ; then Elisha left the oxen 
 and followed Elijah (1 Kings xix. 19 ff'.). 
 
 It is impossible, in considering this narrative, not to re- 
 member the well-known story in Eoman history, relating how, 
 when the perils of war became threatening, the emissaries of 
 the Senate summoned L. Quinctius Cincinnatus from his little 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 127 
 
 farm on the other side of the Tiber, where he had laid aside 
 his toga, and was engaged in ploughing or making a ditch.* 
 This may really have occurred, for it is agreeable to the sim- 
 plicity of the ancient Eoman habits that so eminent a man 
 should have been cultivating his own ground, and that the 
 Senate should have summoned him from this occupation to 
 the dictatorship may be naturally explained from the fact, 
 that he had already approved himself to his fellow-citizens in 
 the discharge of several high offices. Still, even in this case 
 a legendary origin of the story is possible, as the imagination 
 is not merely attracted by the contrast between an humble 
 material occupation and a call to an exalted position where 
 such contrast really exists, but has a pleasure in inventing it 
 even where it does not exist. 
 
 So also as regards the two biblical narratives, the supposi- 
 tion that an Elisha may have been previously a husbandman, 
 a Peter and a John fishermen, involves no difficulty ; and, so 
 far, the history of their calls, in the form in which we read it, 
 would not lie out of the range of historical probability. Only 
 in this case there is one difierence. These men were not 
 summoned, like Cincinnatus, in consequence of the proofs of 
 their competency which they had given to those who sum- 
 moned them, but Elisha by an immediate divine command 
 (ver. 16), the apostolic fishermen in virtue of the penetrating 
 eye of the Messiah, by means of which he saw what was in 
 men at the very first interview. The summoning of Cincinna- 
 tus, though at first sight surprising, is still a well-grounded, 
 naturally-connected event ; this natural ground is wanting to 
 the call of the disciple of the prophet as well as to that of the 
 Apostles ; and thus, while in the case of the Eoman narrative 
 we only found it possible that it might be a legendary fiction, 
 we recognise that character as really present in the other. 
 
 Several of the most distinguished disciples of Jesus may 
 have been previously fishermen, and Jesus may have named 
 
 * Liv. iii. 26. 
 
128 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 them, when he called them, fishers of men, in allusion to 
 their earlier occupation; just as he compared the kingxlom of 
 heaven to a net in which fishes of every kind are caught 
 (Matt. xiii. 47 ff.). But he may also have so entitled them 
 after they had long quitted their earlier trade ; nay, he may 
 even have used the expression that he would make theui 
 fishers of men when, after a longer acquaintance with them, lie 
 recognised their competency for the apostolical office, without 
 such a scene having actually occurred as Matthew describes 
 (iv. 18—22), and Mark (i. 16—20). 
 
 That, however, we have in this scene a product of legend, 
 is clear, not merely from its similarity to the calling of the 
 prophet in the Old Testament, but also from a remarkable 
 difference between the two. Elisha had begged permission 
 from Elijah, when he summoned him first, to say farewell to 
 his parents, had received this permission at once, and did not 
 follow Elijah until he had taken leave. In the evangelical 
 narrative we find this feature withdrawn. The elevation of 
 the Messiah above the mere prophets must, it was thought, 
 be proved by the fact that, on the occasion of his summoning 
 a follower to attend him, no such delay could be thought of 
 The fishermen called by Jesus follow him instantly and un- 
 conditionally ; they quit not merely the occupation in which 
 they are engaged at the moment, but the sons of Zebedee 
 abandon their father, and Mark alone, in order not to leave 
 him quite helpless, and so represent his sons as too neglect- 
 ful, associates with him permanent hired servants. And this 
 request for delay was not only omitted from this calling of 
 Apostles, but, with a call that had succeeded, having been 
 accepted at once by the persons called, these cases were con- 
 trasted which failed in consequence of a request for delay, 
 or in which, at all events, this request must have been re- 
 jected. The significant words of Jesus, "Leave the dead to 
 bury their dead," and, " No man, having put his liand to the 
 plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God," 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 129 
 
 must be supposed to have been uttered on occasion of such 
 requests, when in the one case a person called had wished to 
 bury his father, and another had expressed a wish to take 
 leave of his friends (Alatt. viii. 21 ff.; Luke ix. 59 — 62), 
 
 But a simple unmiraculous history, like that of the calling 
 of the Apostles, as given in Matthew and Mark, wdio follow 
 him, was far from satisfying the imagination of the primeval 
 Christian circle. For us, indeed, it is miraculous enough 
 that Jesus should, without hesitation, have called men to 
 follow him whom, if we are to believe the narrative, he saw 
 for the first time, or knew no more of than if he had, and 
 that these men should also, without hesitation, have obeyed 
 the call; but the devout listeners to evangelical preachiug 
 required more than this. The declaration of Jesus that he 
 wished to make those who had been called fishers of men, 
 was a mere verbal expression : at this turning-point of the 
 evangelical history, on so eventful an occurrence as the 
 calling of the first Apostles, a corresponding fact was wanted, 
 a miracle that should at once strengthen and realise that 
 expression. As already remarked, Jesus had compared the 
 men whom he gained over to the kingdom of heaven to 
 fishes that had been caught, the kingdom of heaven itself 
 to a net thrown into the sea ; if, therefore, caught fishes 
 meant converted men, a miraculously rich draught of fishes 
 which Jesus now gave to his disciples, was the symbol of the 
 numerous conversions to faith in him which those disciples 
 were subsequently to succeed in making. The narrative 
 appears in this modified form in Luke (v. 1 — 11), wdio 
 accordingly omits the simple narrative of the calling in the 
 two first Evangelists. He places it a little later, and intro- 
 duces it in a difierent manner. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus, 
 walking about on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, sees first 
 the brothers Simon and Andrew throwing their nets, calls 
 upon them, as he stands upon the shore, to follow him as 
 fishers of men, whereupon they leave their nets and join him ; 
 
 VOL. II. K 
 
130 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 then he sees likewise James and John, with their father 
 Zebedee, in the ship, occupied with mending their nets, 
 and calls them to him with the same result. In the corre- 
 sponding passage in Luke, he sees, while teaching on the sea- 
 shore, and thronged by the number of his listeners, two ships, 
 one of which belonged to Peter, the other to the two sons 
 of Zebedee, who were occupied together on the land with 
 washing their nets ; he embarks on board one of these, orders 
 Simon (Andrew is not mentioned in the narrative of Luke) 
 to put off a little from the shore, and thus, sitting in the 
 ship, instructs the multitude ; after finishing his lecture, he 
 calls upon Peter to go out into a deeper place, and to throw 
 out his net for fish. Peter, though demurring on the ground 
 of their unsuccessful labour during the past night, consents, 
 on the command of Jesus, to make the attempt, and now, in 
 conjunction with his sailors, he catches such a quantity of 
 fish, that not only does the net break, but, while they are 
 emptying a portion of their booty into the ship of the sons of 
 Zebedee, both craft threaten to sink. Upon this, the surprise 
 of the people, and especially of Peter, at such a miracle, 
 almost borders upon terror ; but Jesus pacifies the latter by 
 telling him that from henceforth he shall catch men, and in 
 consequence of this, the men leave all and follow him. On 
 reading this, we see on the one hand that we have, only in a 
 miraculous form, the same narrative as in Matthew and IMark ; 
 and, on the other, there can be no doubt that the miracle 
 is symbolical, and, in accordance with the parable of Jesus 
 already quoted, realises, under the image of a great drauglit 
 of fishes, that ministry of the Apostles which followed, and 
 which was so richly blessed. 
 
 And then it becomes a question whether we ought not to 
 go further, and look for symbolical allusions even in separate 
 features of the narrative. When Peter meets- tlie command of 
 Jesus to move out into deeper water, and then to thro^v out 
 the nets, witli tlie mention of tlie ill success of their work 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCU'LES. 131 
 
 during the past night, and then, following that command, gets 
 so large a draught, we may at first sight find nothing in this 
 but the contrast between the poor material produce of their 
 ordinary trade and the rich spiritual fruit of the higher calling 
 imposed upon them by Jesus ; and so likewise the tearing of 
 the net, and the necessary partition of the booty between two 
 ships, may be taken only as a p'fcturesque indication of the 
 magnitude of the draught. But is it not possible that the 
 author of the third Gospel, who is also the author of the Acts 
 of the Apostles, when he speaks of the toil of the apostolical 
 fishers of men, which was at first fruitless, and then, when 
 they repeat it at the command of Jesus, was so richly blessed, 
 may have had in his mind the slight success of evangelical 
 preaching among the Jews, and the result of it, favourable 
 beyond expectation, among the heathen ;* when he speaks of 
 the tearing of Peter's net in consequence of the enormous 
 draught, he may have referred to the threatening schism in 
 the Church in consequence of the ministry of Paul ; and in 
 the partition of the draught into two boats, may have alluded 
 to the rise of the heathen Christian Churches by the side of 
 the Jewish Christian ? This is a question deserving of all 
 consideration, and which may perhaps, by comparison with a 
 further narrative, obtain still further light. 
 
 The fourth Gospel, in its supplementary chapter (xxi. 1 — 
 14), has also a miraculous draught of fishes, and the fact that 
 it places this, not, as the third does, at the beginning of the 
 public life of Jesus, but at the extreme end of his walk on 
 earth, in the days of his resurrection, will not prevent us, any 
 more than many other such discrepancies, from seeing in it 
 nothing but a modification of the draught of fishes in Luke. 
 With this narrative the author has interwoven traits from 
 two other miraculous accounts, the Walking on the Sea and 
 the Feeding; but in this place these features, the basis of 
 
 * Comp. Volkmar, Religion of Jesus, p. 316. 
 K 2 
 
132 MYTHICAL IIISTOllY OF JESUS. 
 
 the whole, namely, the moving about of the risen Jesus, being 
 miraculous, appear as in themselves divested of their mira- 
 culous character : Jesus does not walk upon the sea, which 
 would not have been anything remarkable in the case of a 
 person who had risen from the grave, but stands upon the 
 shore, and Peter does not attempt to go upon the waters, but 
 swims over in an ordinary manner, and subsequently the 
 bread and the fish are there, how we know not, but without 
 anything being said of miraculous production or increase. 
 But even apart from these admixtures, tlie history of the 
 draught of fishes appears changed in many ways. Besides 
 Peter and the sons of Zebedee, Thomas and Nathanael are 
 also here, and two disciples, not named, also ; the narrative, 
 moreover, does not, like that of Luke, begin on the day fol- 
 lowing the night of the unsuccessful toil, but accompanies 
 Peter and his companions to their fruitless work during the 
 night, and rejjresents Jesus as appearing first, not during 
 the course of the next day, but at the very first dawn of the 
 morning. But where it is said of those who had gone forth 
 to fish, " That night they caught nothing" (ver. 3), exactly as 
 in Luke, Peter answered the Lord, " We have toiled all night 
 and taken nothing" (ver. 5) ; and when, in the morning, Jesus, 
 on the disciples answering in the negative his question as to 
 whether they had anything to eat, calls upon them to throw 
 out the net on the right side of the ship, and they shall find 
 (ver. 6), as in Luke he orders Simon to push out into deeper 
 water and to let down the net into the water for the draught 
 (ver. 4) ; and where, according to both accounts, they get so 
 rich a one that the blessing becomes a burthen to them — it is 
 impossible to mistake, in the two accounts, a variation upon 
 the same theme. 
 
 The discrepancies which appear in the description of the 
 successful result confirm this conclusion instead of weakening 
 it. Luke only speaks of a great multitude of fislies, but the 
 author of John xxi. gives their number defiuitely at 153, and 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 133 
 
 large fishes too ; according to Luke, their multitude and 
 weight tears the net ; in John, it is only said they were not 
 able to draw it up, not that it was torn, notwithstanding the 
 multitude of the fishes ; lastly, in Luke, the fishes are divided 
 between the two boats, which threaten to sink in consequence, 
 while in John they are drawn in the net to the shore. In 
 reference to the number 153, there is a remarkable observa- 
 tion of the learned father of the Church, Hieronymus. " The 
 " writers," he observes,* " upon the nature and characteristics 
 "of animals, and among them the excellent Cilician poet, 
 " Oppian, say that there are 153 species of fishes ; all these 
 " were caught by the Apostles, and none were uncaught, just 
 "as great and small, rich and poor, all sorts of men, were 
 " drawn to happiness out of the sea of this world." Hierony- 
 mus, therefore, considers the number 153 as that of all species 
 of fishes adopted by the writers on natural history of that 
 time, especially by Oppian. And in the fact that exactly this 
 number of fishes were caught by the Apostles at that time, he 
 sees a prophetic symbol of men of all kinds being incorporated 
 by the preaching of the Apostles into the kingdom of God. 
 Now as regards Oppian, in his poem upon fishing — written, 
 however, according to the most probable supposition, in the 
 last year of Marcus Aurelius, and therefore later than the 
 fourth Gospel — we do not find any exact number of the spe- 
 cies of fish given ; and if we count their numbers, we may, 
 according as we take in or not tlie subdivisions into which 
 many of the same species may be distributed, and count simi- 
 lar names twice or not, possibly make out 153, but also quite 
 as easily more or less. Hieronymus, however, only refers to 
 Oppian among others, and therefore there is still a probability 
 that in some writer on natural history, now lost, that number 
 may have been more definitely given. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, it is clear from another feature 
 
 * Comment, upou Ezekiel, -17. 
 
134 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 in which the narrative of John differs from that of Luke, that 
 the fishes thus caught have a symbolical reference to the 
 men to be incorporated in the kingdom of God. In Luke, 
 the net splits ; in John, it is expressly stated that, in spite 
 of the multitude of fishes, it did not split. At first sight, 
 indeed, this only looks like an exaggeration or completion 
 of the miracle, as we must suppose that he who gave the 
 fishes could also give the net the supernatural strength re- 
 quired to hold them. Meanwhile, we observe that this non- 
 tearing of the net is peculiar to the supplement of the same 
 Gospel, which (with the same Greek word, and that too 
 the word from which Schism, i.e. division of the Church, is 
 derived) says also of the coat of Jesus that it was not rent 
 (xix. 24), and which attaches so much importance to the com- 
 bination into one flock of the sheep out of two folds, that is, 
 of the Christians from among the Jews and the Heathen 
 (x. 16) ; and observing this, we can scarcely avoid seeing in 
 the non-tearing of the net on occasion of the great draught, 
 the symbol of the assumption that the entrance of the Hea- 
 then into the kingdom of Christ is to produce no schism ; 
 that, as the author of the Epistle to the Colossiaus expresses 
 himself (iii. 11), there is no longer here either Greek or Jew, 
 circumcision or uncircumcision, no longer barbarian or Scy- 
 thian, slave or free, but Christ is all in all. There is also 
 a suitable connection between this supposition and the fact 
 tliat, in the narrative of John, one ship only, from first to 
 last, is spoken of; consequently no distribution of the first 
 into two, as in Luke, but the whole draught is dragged to the 
 neighbouring shore, in order to be laid at the feet of Jesus. 
 Between the date of the composition of the third Gospel, 
 together with the Acts, and that of the fourth and its sup- 
 jilementary chapter, the development of the relations between 
 different parties had made such progress, that the peaceful 
 juxtaposition of a Jewish and Gentile Christendom was no 
 longer considered sufficient, but it was the wish of the Church 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 135 
 
 to present itself to Christ on liis second advent as one and 
 undivided. 
 
 But it was known, moreover, that besides the fishermen, 
 among the more confidential disciples of Jesus, there had 
 been also among them one or two publicans ; and it was also 
 known that, on the part of Pharisaically disposed Jews, much 
 offence had been taken at the harmless intercourse of Jesus 
 with people of this class. 
 
 Now the transition of a fisherman from his former trade to 
 the discipleship of Jesus may have taken place in many ways, 
 without the necessity of Jesus summoning him away from 
 the act of casting or mending his net. But the legend chose 
 only the latter form, as being the most picturesque. Thus, 
 also, the same thing may have happened in one way or ano- 
 ther, quite gradually and naturally, in the case of a publican. 
 But the course of the legend was exactly the same in the one 
 case and in the other. As Jesus had seen the fishermen in 
 the boat with their nets, so must he have seen the publican 
 sitting at the seat of custom ; as he called the former, so must 
 he have called the latter, to follow him, whereupon, as the 
 fisherman had done in the former case, so in this the publican 
 left all and followed Jesus (Matt. ix. 9 ff. ; Mark ii. 13 ff. ; 
 Luke v. 27 ff.). In this case there is no such expression 
 recorded corresponding to that descriptive of the relation 
 which the fisherman's future occupation is to bear to their 
 past one, namely, that of " fishers of men," but the other cir- 
 cumstance, historically well known, that much offence had 
 been taken at the friendly intercourse of Jesus with publicans, 
 was brought in here, and thus a phrase, though of a different 
 kind, was gained for the embellishment of the scene. Jesus 
 certainly may have dined with the publicans whom he found 
 susceptible of his influence, without having previously sum- 
 moned them directly from the seat of custom. But still, when 
 once such a history of the calling had gained ground, the 
 publican's dinner, with the expression of Jesus, " I am not 
 
136 • ^rYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and 
 " the whole need not a physician, but the sick," -were admi- 
 rably adapted to be connected with it. 
 
 The publican thus called by Jesus is named in the first 
 Gospel Älatthew. Referring to the history of his call, the 
 catalogue of the Apostles describes him as the publican (x. 3). 
 Mark and Luke give him the name of Levi. They have no 
 person of this name in their catalogue of the Apostles, but 
 the name of Matthew is found there as well as in the others, 
 without, however, being described as the publican — a proof 
 that they did not refer this history of the call to. him, as they 
 would haA^e done if their Levi had had the surname of Matthew. 
 As, however, histories of "calls" were narrated without names 
 (Luke ix. 59 ff.), because the words of them were considered 
 as of principal importance, there might also in another case 
 be a variation in the name, and the more readily in one like 
 that before us, where the history of the " call" comes in only 
 as an introduction to the scene and speeches on the occasion 
 of the publican's dinner. 
 
 Another entertainment at the house of a publican is pecu- 
 liar to the third Gospel. It is placed in the last period of the 
 life of Jesus, when he was passing through Jericho on the 
 road to Jerusalem (Luke xix. 1 — 10), where, moreover, all 
 the Synoptics represent the healing of a blind man to have 
 occurred. The publican, of the name of Zaccheus, is not an 
 ordinary personage, but a chief among the publicans and rich: 
 he is not sitting at the receipt of custom till Jesus calls him ; 
 but when he hears of his approach he rises up to see the great 
 performer of miracles, which he cannot do, because of the 
 press and being little of stature, without climbing a mulberry- 
 tree on the road. There Jesus sees him, bids him come down 
 in haste, because he must on that day abide in his house ; 
 and Zaccheus obeys his call, not only overjoyed at it, but also 
 declaring himself ready to give liberally to the poor, and to 
 restore in full measure anything that he has wronged any 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 137 
 
 man of. Upon this Jesus, in answer to the Jews wlio mur- 
 mur, palliates his assertion that salvation had tliat day come 
 to that house, by referring to the fact that the publican also 
 was a son of Abraham, and ends with the words, that the Son 
 of Man was come to seek and to save that which was lost. 
 That reference to Abraham has been considered as an indica- 
 tion of a Jewish-Christian source, from which Luke may have 
 drawn.* It would, however, be quite in accordance with his 
 manner if he understood the words, " Son of Abraham," in a 
 Pauline sense (as in Galat. iii. 7 ff.), according to which faith 
 in Christ stamped even a Heathen (whom the publican resem- 
 bled) with the character of a Son of Abraham. 
 
 70. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist also speaks of a fig-tree, and of Jesus 
 having observed one, who subsequently became a disciple, not 
 indeed upon, but under it ; and as in Luke Zaccheus, after 
 having come down from the tree and disclaimed all unright- 
 eous gain, is declared by Jesus to be a Son of Abraham who 
 is saved, so in John, Jesus calls Kathanael, after having seen 
 him under the fig-tree, a true Israelite in whom there is no 
 guue. The mode, however, in which Jesus sees Nathanael is 
 not, as in the case of Zaccheus, a natural, but a supernatural 
 sight, and is recognised by the person so seen as a complete 
 proof of the Sonship of God in Jesus. 
 
 This, however, apart from the fact that in the case of 
 Zaccheus no "call" to discipleship in the narrower sense is 
 in question, is the only resemblance between the histories of 
 calls in the three first Evangelists and those in the fourth. 
 The fourth Evangelist also describes the beginning of the 
 acquaintanceship between Jesus on the one hand, and Peter 
 
 * Köstlin, Synoptic Gospels, p. 228. 
 
138 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS." 
 
 and Andrew on the other, and probably, though without 
 naming him, of Jesus with Jolm. On the other hand, the 
 name of James is not found either here or throughout the 
 Gospel, except in the supplementary chapter. Instead of 
 him, Philip is mentioned, whom we also find in the catalogues 
 of the Apostles in the Synoptics, and Nathanael, who had been 
 already named, and who is known only to the fourth Gospel. 
 ]\Iention is also made of the manner in which they came into 
 connection with Jesus. All the more immediate circumstances 
 are different in John from the other Gospels. 
 
 In the first place, if we had merely the fourth Gospel, we 
 should have no inkling whatever of any of the disciples of 
 Jesus having been previously fishers or publicans (apart, again, 
 from the supplementary chap. xxi.). On the contrary, it 
 informs us that one of them, and he the one who is of the 
 greatest importance in the author's view, had been an acquaint- 
 ance of the High-priest (xviii. 15) — a fact of which the three 
 first have not the slightest knowledge. Quite as little as of 
 the secret discipleship of Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews 
 (iii. 1 ff.), and of the fact that, generally, as the fourth Gospel 
 states, many of the chief rulers believed Jesus, though secretly 
 only, from fear of the Pharisees (xii. 42). 
 
 The fact that the preaching of Christianity found at first a 
 response mostly among the lower orders of the people, that 
 not many rich in worldly goods, not many of the powerful 
 and great, were to be found among the first believers, might 
 be accounted for by the consideration that Christianity, when 
 opposed to the wisdom of the world, appeared only all the 
 more as a divine revelation (Matt. xi. 25 ff. ; 1 Cor. i. 25 ff,). 
 On the other hand, however, the reproach of the opponents 
 of Christianity, as we find it in Celsus,* about the middle 
 of the second century, that Jesus had as his disciples only 
 abandoned men, publicans, and sailors of the lowest kind, 
 contained a story which became the more painful in proper- 
 
 * Ori". c. Gels. 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 139 
 
 tion as Christianity gradually penetrated into the higher 
 circles of society. It may, therefore, only appear natural 
 that a Gospel, the product of a highly -educated mind, in- 
 tended also to satisfy Christians of superior rank and cul- 
 tivation, should have taken up a different position with 
 reference to that fact. The allegation that none of the 
 Eulers- or Pharisees, but only the lowest of the people, 
 believed in Jesus, is indeed put into the mouth of the Pha- 
 risees as an nnrefuted reproach (vii. 48 ff.), and thus the 
 objective fact is necessarily recognised : but we are also 
 assured that many of the Elders of the people (provided they 
 were not Pharisees) believed in Jesus inwardly and in their 
 hearts, but kept their belief secret for fear of the condemna- 
 tion of the Pharisees, and, like Nicodemus, chose the night 
 time for their interviews with Jesus (xii. 42, xix. 38 ff.). It 
 agrees with this that of the Apostles it is the favourite dis- 
 ciple who is raised to a higher sphere by his acquaintance 
 with the High-priest, and in the case of the others no mention 
 at least is ever made of their earlier career as fishermen or 
 publicans. 
 
 When the obvious motives for representing the call of the 
 disciples as having summoned them from fishing and the 
 seat of custom disappeared, so much the more did the Bap- 
 tist present himself to the fourth Evangelist as the agent 
 who must have brought about the connection between Jesus 
 and his first disciples. The discij)les were exalted if, instead 
 of coming from a low industrious occupation, they came out 
 of the preparatory school of the Baptist. And the more the 
 fourth Evangelist represented him only as the forerunner of 
 Christ, so much the more natural was it that beside the people, 
 some of whom continued in unbelief, some came only to a half 
 imperfect faith, he should have introduced to Christ the first 
 of the true and entire believers, the Apostles. So when he 
 had described to the multitude gathered round him that 
 Jesus, who was approaching him, as the Lamb of God that 
 
140 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 taketh away the sins of the world, he then, the next day, 
 when Jesus is passing by, a second time repeats tlie same 
 description in the presence of two of his own disciples, with 
 the result that both follow Jesus, ask him where he dwells, 
 are invited by him to come and see for themselves, continue 
 the remainder of the day with him, and also, we must sup- 
 pose, remain always after in his company (i. 35 K). From 
 this first stem, so far as the Evangelist informs us of the 
 manner in which the disciples come together, grows, branch 
 by branch, the company of Jesus' disciples. Andrew, one of 
 the two to whom John points out Jesus, brings his brother 
 Simon to Jesus ; Philip, whom, as it would appear, the fact 
 of his being the countryman of the two brothers just named 
 puts in the way of Jesus, is called by him himself ; and Philip, 
 again, brings Nathanael to him. 
 
 As the fishing had disappeared, so also does the expression 
 about fishers of men. Instead of this expression, which in 
 Matthew and Mark is referred to the two sons of Jonas, 
 and which, moreover, Luke had represented as having been 
 applied only to Simon, the Evangelist introduces here one 
 that applies only to Simon, in the addition of the name of 
 Peter. Tliis the two older Evangelists represent as coming 
 considerably later, after long acquaintance of Jesus with 
 the disciple. John, with great improbability, represents the 
 name as having been given on the first meeting of the two, 
 and in such a manner that Jesus Avould appear to have taken 
 a supernatural view not merely of his character as Peter, or 
 the Eock, but also of the name he bore as a citizen and son of 
 his father (ver. 42). . Quite as supernaturally he discovers at 
 a distance the guilelessness of jSTathanael when approaching 
 him, and as a proof of his ability to do this he appeals to the 
 fact that before Nathanael came within his natural range of 
 sight he saw him under tlie fig-tree. The attempt to explain 
 the former from physiognomical knowledge of the human 
 countenance, the latter as casual and transient observation, is 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 141 
 
 absurd in the presence of a Gospel which expressly says of 
 the Jesus who is described in it that he did not consider it 
 necessary that any one should testify to him about men, as 
 he himself knew what was in man (ii. 25) ; it was but a slight 
 thing for a Jesus who had seen God before the world began, to 
 have seen Nathanael under the fig-tree before Philip called him. 
 It is well to pay especial attention to the changes which 
 the fourth Evangelist has made in the order in which the 
 first disciples attached themselves to Jesus. In Matthew and 
 Mark, Jesus first calls the two sons of Jonas, of whom Simon 
 has the precedence, then the two sons of Zebedee, James 
 having the precedence. In Luke, from first to last, Simon 
 only does anything, Andrew is not named at all, James and 
 John only supplementarily as Simon's helpers. In the fourth 
 Gospel, only two nameless disciples are first spoken of, who, 
 on the Baptist pointing out Jesus, follow him (i. 35 — 87) ; 
 we then discover (i. 41) one of these to have been Andrew, 
 the other continues in the obscurity of his incognito, which 
 in the course of the Gospel gradually clears, so far that John 
 comes out more and more plainly. Peter, therefore, who 
 stands foremost in all the other accounts, is not in this 
 Gospel even one of the pair first called, but it is composed 
 of Andrew and the supposed John. And it is only by the 
 agency of his brother Andrew, who everywhere else is second 
 to him, and is altogether passed over by Luke in the history 
 of the call, that Peter is brought into connection with Jesus ; 
 while James, John's brother, who is everywhere else, when 
 they are named together, named before him, is not mentioned 
 either here or all through the Gospel. The prince of the 
 Apostles does indeed receive his traditional honour in the 
 addition of the name of Peter ; but his claim to be the first- 
 born of the Apostles is altogether disallowed, in favour indeed, 
 to some extent, of his brother, but at the same time of the 
 unnamed party who throughout the whole Gospel is at his 
 side and pushes himself before him before he is aware. We 
 
142 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 have here the first intimation of a cleverly-laid plan, of the 
 greatest importance, indeed, for the understanding of the fourth 
 Gospel, but only to be explained without compromising the 
 character of its author, if that author is not John. If not, 
 then what tells in favour of this Apostle is not said by him- 
 self for himself, but for a principle represented by the author, 
 of which principle the chief support is John.* Let us examine 
 this relation a little more accurately. 
 
 In the time of the Apostle Paul, we find the three men, 
 James, Cephas, and John, spoken of as the three pillars of 
 the primeval Church at Jerusalem (Galatians ii. 9). That 
 powerful James cannot have been the son of Zebedee, for he 
 had been already put to death (Acts xii. 2). If, therefore, 
 he was one of the Twelve, he must have been the other 
 James of our lists of the Apostles, the son of Alpheus. But 
 the ambiguous phrase in Galatians (i. 19) leaves it uncertain 
 whether he was an Apostle or not ; but he is here called a 
 brother of the Lord, by which term, if we look upon him 
 as the Apostle James the son of Alpheus, only a cousin of 
 Jesus might be meant. According to what was said above, 
 it is more probable to me that he was a real brother of Jesus, 
 and in that case not one of the Twelve. And thus also the 
 following phenomenon may be explained. In the three first 
 Evangelists, as well as in the Epistle to the Galatians, we 
 find the same names at the head of the disciples, Peter, James, 
 and John. But in the synoptic Gospels, James is not the 
 brother of the Lord, but the brother of John, the son of 
 Zebedee. It is conceivable, certainly, that Jesus considered 
 these three men as the most faitliful or the most competent 
 of the Apostles, thought them deserving of his particular 
 confidence, and treated them as it were a select committee 
 of the college of Twelve. The instances, indeed, which the 
 
 * According to Renan, vexation at not having been hronght forward with 
 sufficient prominence was, in fact, one of John's principal motives for writing an 
 additional Gospel himself. 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 143 
 
 Synoptics give of his having done so are, historically, more 
 than doubtful. He is said to have taken them apart on the 
 occasion of his Transfiguration on the mountain, on that of 
 the Agony in Gethsemane, and on that of the raising of the 
 daughter of Jairus, — mysterious occurrences, at which the 
 narrators intend to imply that only persons of advanced reli- 
 gious culture, and more deeply initiated than others, were 
 present. We are naturally here reminded of the old story in 
 Clement of Alexandria, that it was to James, John, and Peter, 
 that the Lord delivered, after his resurrection, the Gnosis, an 
 esoteric doctrine.* The James of whom Clement here speaks 
 is not indeed the son of Zebedee, but, according to his descrip- 
 tion, James the Just, i.e. the brother of the Lord; but how 
 close these two came together in the tradition of the Church, 
 how, to a certain extent, they changed places with each other, 
 is clear from another expression of the same Clement, in 
 which he praises the three Apostles, Peter, James (son of 
 Zebedee), and John, for having, with a modesty that did them 
 honour, refrained from electing one of themselves Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, and appointed James the Just to that ofhce.-f* 
 The evangelical triumvirate, therefore, Peter, James, and 
 John, appears to be a reflection of the later and historical 
 one of the same names ; and it was only the notorious fact 
 that, in the lifetime of Jesus, James, the brother of the Lord, 
 was not one of his disciples, that necessitated the introduction 
 of another James instead of him, who was known as one of 
 the Twelve. 
 
 It is well known that the distinguished historical triumvi- 
 rate was disposed to strict Judaism ; it was only with difficulty 
 that Paul could get them to recognise him in his ministry as 
 an Apostle of the Heathen (Galat. ii. 1 — 10), and even after- 
 wards he was kept in continual conflict with the adherents of 
 the triumvirate, especially those of James (Galat. ii. 12). It 
 formed the rallying-point of Jewish Christianity ; and again 
 
 * Eusebius, Church History, ii. 1—4. f Eusebius as quoted, iii. 
 
144 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 one of the supports of the triumvii-ate itself was the dis- 
 tinguished position which the synonymous triumvirate was 
 supposed to have hekl in the lifetime of Christ. However 
 ironically Paul may have spoken of those three supposed 
 pillars of the Church, they continued even after his death to 
 be obstacles to progress, as long as two of them, the same 
 personally, the third as a synonymous double, occupied in 
 the evangelical tradition the position nearest to the person 
 of Christ. In order to make a breach for progress, it was 
 necessary that the triumvirate should be broken, and this the 
 fourth Evangelist undertook to do. 
 
 By a bold stroke he seized hold of John above every one 
 else, for the purposes of carrying out the opposing spiritual 
 tendency. For a bold stroke it was, indeed madly so, in 
 presence of the Apocalypse and historical record ; so he pro- 
 ceeded with the greatest caution. Throughout the Gospel 
 he never names John, he only lets him be guessed at. First 
 he introduces in the most unobtrusive manner an unnamed 
 party with Andrew (i. 35 — 41), who, however, can be neither 
 Peter, nor Philip, nor Nathanael, as these are distinguished 
 from him, as having come to Jesus subsequently. Then, 
 when further on Peter, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, have been 
 spoken of by name, some of them repeatedly, we meet at 
 the last supper of Jesus an unnamed disciple, whom Jesus 
 loved, who also at table lay on Jesus' bosom, and to whom 
 Peter makes a sign to ask Jesus something (xiii. 23 £f.). 
 After the arrest of Jesus, it is "another disciple" who, as 
 an acquaintance of the High-priest, procures for Peter the 
 entrance into the palace (xviii. 15). Then, beneath the 
 Cross, we again meet with the disciple whom Jesus loved 
 (xix. 26), who, as an eye-witness, accredits the wound in the 
 side of Jesus (ver. 35), and immediately afterwards wo are 
 given to understand that this favourite disciple and that 
 " other disciple," consequently and without doubt the name- 
 less one who just at the beginning was introduced with 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 145 
 
 Andrew, are one and the same person (xx. 2). Lastly, in 
 the supplement to the Gospel, among seven disciples, some 
 named, some not named, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and 
 who at the last Supper had lain upon his bosom, appears and 
 is indicated as the author of the Gospel (xxi. 7, 20, 24). But 
 no name is given even here, and it cannot be strictly proved 
 out of the fourth Gospel in itself that by the disciple so 
 mysteriously alluded to we are to understand John to have 
 been meant at all. A comparison with the three first Gospels 
 might help us a little if anything which in the fourth Gospel 
 is ascribed to "the other," or to the favourite disciple, was 
 told in them of John ; but this is not the case. Still the 
 tradition of the Church has undoubtedly apprehended aright 
 the meaning of the author in having always looked upon this 
 nameless disciple as John. Yor if the first readers of the 
 Gospel were to imderstand who was meant, he must have 
 been an Apostle very well known and much respected in the 
 country in which it appeared ; and in Asia Minor, and espe- 
 cially in Ephesus, to which both external and internal evidence 
 point as the cradle of the fourth Gospel, this was pre-eminently 
 John. The later supplement, indeed, alone says expressly 
 that the nameless disciple was at the same time the author of 
 the Gospel, but even the Gospel itself intends, most probably, 
 to give its readers to understand the same thing (xix. 35). 
 But this John of the fourtli Gospel is no longer the Judaizing 
 Pillar- Apostle, who gave Paul so much trouble ; but as the 
 bosom disciple of the Johannine Christ, as author, or at all 
 events voucher-man, of the Johannine Gospel, he is made the 
 propagator of a spiritual, universal Christianity, advanced 
 beyond that even of Paul himself. And John, thus spiritual- 
 ized, is taken out of the synoptic triumvirate, and, as the 
 favourite disciple, is placed above all the rest, in a sense of 
 which the three first Gospels are entirely ignorant. 
 
 Of the two other members of the triumvirate, James has 
 absolutely disappeared. As regards the brother of the Lord, 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
14G MYTHICAL IIISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 the James of the historical triumvirate, there is no Gospel in 
 which it is said so expressly as in the fourth that the brothers 
 of Jesus did not believe in him. Of their subsequent belief, 
 either the author took no notice, or intended to intimate that 
 their Judaizing faith was no better than no faith at all. In 
 any case, as his Jesus, speaking from the Cross, presents the 
 disciple whom he loved to his mother as her son, and the 
 latter takes her under his protection at once (xix. 26), John, 
 according to Baur's acute observation, is put in the place of 
 the brothers of Jesus, especially of James, and the bosom 
 disciple is at the same time declared to be the true spiritual 
 brother of the Lord. Having thus set aside the Judaizing 
 brother of the Lord, the fourth Evangelist had no further 
 motive for bringing forward into prominence, as the Synoptics 
 do, James the son of Zebedee, and would even have counter- 
 acted his own purpose if he had done so ; thus we can under- 
 stand his silence about him, a silence which, on the supposition 
 that the author of the Gospel was really John, the brother of 
 this James, is not intelligible by any turn of apologetic theo- 
 logy, however subtle. 
 
 The author of the fourth Gospel found no difficulty in avoid- 
 ing the name of James, as the brother of the Lord had not, in 
 the lifetime of Jesus, belonged to his nearest circle, and the 
 son of Zebedee had been put to death at an early period, and 
 had long since fallen into oblivion, at least in the tradition of 
 the churches out of Palestine. But Peter could not be thus 
 dealt with. He, in the lifetime of Jesus, had been famous as 
 one of his most confidential disciples ; now he was the head 
 of Jewish Christianity, and, especially since his name had 
 been brought into connection with Eome, the capital of the 
 world, continued to labour in the Church, and therefore also 
 lived in her traditions. A Gospel silent about Peter would 
 have been no Gospel at all, and a Gospel attempting to deprive 
 him of the distinguishing characteristics usually associated 
 with liis image could only have found a response in very 
 
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 147 
 
 limited and distant circles. This had been well considered 
 by the fourth Evangelist. So he does not deprive the prince 
 of the Apostles of any of his traditional honours ; informs his 
 readers both of the famous surname which Jesus assigns to 
 him (i. 43), and of the strong confession of faith of which 
 before all the Apostles he delivers himself (vi. 68 ff, comp. 
 Matt. xvi. 16) ; represents hira as coming forward in action 
 quite as often as the otlier Evangelists do — nay, on some 
 occasions even oftener ; but still he is adroit enough almost 
 always to append to these advantageous characteristics, and 
 the more as the history approaches nearer to its conclusion, a 
 slight "but" which disparages them, or he shares them be- 
 tween Peter and his own hero John in a way which gives an 
 advantage to the latter. Thus there is indeed mucli beauty in 
 the zeal with which Peter, on the occasion of the first supper, 
 first of all will not hear of the washing of the disciples' feet 
 by Jesus, and then desires to have both his hands and his 
 head washed by him (xiii. 6 — 10); but there appears at the 
 same time in this jump from one extreme to the other, a vio- 
 lence which passes over the deep meaning of the act of Jesus 
 without any fine perception of its meaning. Likewise all the 
 Evangelists do indeed tell of a disciple who, on the occasion 
 of the arrest of Jesus, cut off the ear of a servant of the High- 
 priest, but the fourth is the only one who names Peter as the 
 disciple who did it (xviii. 10). And in doing so he invests 
 him with another characteristic of that carnal zeal which 
 made it more difficult for him to penetrate into the spirit of 
 his Master. 
 
 But the subtle calculation of the fourth Evangelist shews 
 itself first in those cases in which he places his other or 
 favourite disciple in juxtaposition with Peter. Above we 
 have started from a case in which, like the Synoptics, he 
 makes Peter come into connection with Jesus among the 
 four first, — not, however, as the first of all, but the third, 
 while the supposed John is among the first; Peter being 
 
 L 2 
 
148 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 called not immediately by Jesus, but by the agency of one 
 of the two first. This agent is here his brother Andrew ; in 
 other cases it is the favourite disciple. The Hellenes, who at 
 the last Passover wished to make the acquaintance of Jesus, 
 apply, not to Peter, but to Philip, and he to Andrew, both 
 then to Jesus (xii. 20 ff). In like manner, Peter himself, in 
 order to extract from Jesus which of his disciples he intends 
 to indicate as liis betrayer, is obliged to bespeak the mediation 
 of the favourite disciple who is lying on Jesus' bosom. After 
 the arrest of Jesus, Peter does indeed follow him, even in the 
 fourth Gospel, into the palace of the High-priest ; but not 
 only does the other disciple also go in with him, a fact un- 
 known to the other Gospels, but it is he to whom, by means 
 of his acquaintance with the High-priest, Peter is obliged to 
 apply before he can get leave to enter (xviii. 15). On the 
 occasion of the crucifixion and death of Jesus, Matthew and 
 Mark represent only the women who came with him from 
 Galilee as being spectators. Luke, indeed, adds all his ac- 
 quaintances, but only at a distance (Matt, xxvii. 55 if. ; Mark 
 XV. 40 ff. ; Luke xxiii. 49). The fourth Evangelist places the 
 women with the mother of Jesus near the Cross, and associates 
 with them here the favourite disciple, in order to bring him, 
 by means of the mother of Jesus, into a very peculiar relation 
 to the latter, of which we have spoken above. But the pro- 
 ceeding of our Evangelist is most remarkable in the history of 
 the Kesurrection, in which he places the favourite disciple in 
 juxtaposition with Peter, who, according to Luke, runs to tlie 
 grave, and in an underhand manner deprives the latter of his 
 rank (xx. 2 — 9), — a proceeding Mdiich the author of the sup- 
 plementary chapter has imitated in the account of tlie draught 
 of fishes (xxi. 7). 
 
 Eeviewing from this point the accounts of the " calls," we 
 can no longer think of attempting to reconcile those of tlie 
 Synoptics and John of the mode in which the first disciples 
 became connected with Jesus, as, on the contrary, we recog- 
 
HIS ]\riT?ACLES. CURES OF THE BLIND. 149 
 
 nise in the latter a remodelling of those of the Synoptics in 
 the spirit of the peculiar position and tendency of the Gospel 
 of John. We may, however, congratulate ourselves on being 
 elevated by this knowledge above the apologetic tricks and 
 artifices by which it is intended to be made intelligible how 
 the same men, after having been introduced to Jesus by the 
 Baptist, or like Peter through his brother, and having already 
 attached themselves to him, are said to have been called upon 
 by him to follow him, as if they had been altogether strangers. 
 In Matthew and Mark, Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, 
 "Follow me." By these words a continuous attachment is 
 confessedly implied. Undoubtedly also nothing else can be 
 intended, when in John he says to Philip, " Follow me." In 
 like manner, the two first Evangelists, as well as the fourth, 
 say of Andrew and John that they followed Jesus. And 
 manifestly the one account as well as the other intends it to 
 be understood that they immediately accompanied Jesus as 
 disciples ; and there could have been as little need of a further 
 calling, as stated in Mattliew and Mark, after the act of attach- 
 ment recounted in John, as after the former call and the 
 success that attended it those men can have been unacquainted 
 with Jesus until introduced by the Baptist to him. 
 
 THIRD GROUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 jesus as a performer of miracles. 
 
 71. Miracles of Jesus. Cures of the Blind. 
 
 The miracles which our Gospels speak of Jesus having per- 
 formed might be divided into two, or, if we will, into three 
 classes, according as they are said to have been performed on 
 
ir;0 i^rVTHTCAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Inniian beings or on lifeless nature, and the first on the human 
 organism either dead or diseased. 
 
 With regard to the first class, the cures of the sick, we have 
 already in an earlier investigation* admitted that supposed 
 miracles of this sort may sometimes have been really per- 
 formed by Jesus, though only in a manner perfectly natural. 
 As the Jewish people expected from a Prophet, and still more 
 from the Messiah, miracles, especially miraculous cures, and 
 Jesus was considered a Prophet, and subsequently the Mes- 
 siah, — it would, we said, have been extraordinary if many 
 sick persons when in his presence, on being accosted and 
 touched by him, had not really felt themselves relieved, and 
 either permanently or transiently better. We thought this 
 more intelligible in proportion as the sufferings of these per- 
 sons were open to physiological influence, consequently more 
 so in the case of persons afflicted with mental, nervous, and 
 even muscular diseases, than with diseases of the skin or 
 deprivation of a sense ; while in the case of those who were 
 already dead, or those of extra-human natural objects, every 
 explanation of that kind entirely failed. The explanation of 
 miraculous narratives of this latter description must be looked 
 for, not in psychology and physiology, but in the history of 
 religion ; it lies in the Jewish and original Christian expecta- 
 tions of tlie jMessiah ; and as even those cures of Jesus which 
 we recognise as naturally possible would not have succeeded 
 had not the power to perform them been attributed to him as 
 a Pro})het, the distinction between the two classes is only this, 
 that in consequence of Jewish expectations Jesus considered 
 to be the ]\Iessiah, or at all events a Prophet, was really 
 instrumental in introducing one portion of those effects, wldle 
 an incomparably larger portion was subsequently attributed 
 to him in the legend. 
 
 We have already learnt the prophetic programme which 
 lies at the bottom of the miracles told of Jesus ; it is in the 
 
 * First Book, § 42. 
 
HIS MIRACLES. CURES OF THE BLIND. 151 
 
 words in Isaiah (xxxv. 5 ff.) : " Then the eyes of the blind 
 shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped ; 
 then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and. the tongue of 
 the dumb sing." This passage, though it stands in the first 
 section of the oracles of Isaiah, still, like the second, belongs 
 to the period at the end of the captivity, and describes how, 
 from joy at the permission to return, the poor exiles shall for- 
 get all their sorrows, shall feel tliemselves healed of all their 
 maladies. But as all these prophecies, when with the return 
 from captivity the expected period of bliss did not occur, 
 were extended in their application to the Älessianic age, the 
 ideas of which were continually taking a form more and more 
 supernatural, so the prophecies originally intended to be only 
 symbolical, of the blind regaining their sight, of the leaping 
 of the lame, and so on, were, in the sequel, understood actually 
 and literally of the miracles of the future IMessiah, and our 
 evangelical narratives of the miracles are for the most part 
 only illustrations of the passage of the Prophet so understood. 
 • This passage, moreover, as applied by Jesus to himself, under- 
 went certain modifications upon which we must remark. Jesus 
 (Matt. xi. 5) directs the emissaries of the Baptist to tell the 
 latter what they see and hear as being performed by him. 
 " The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers 
 are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up." 
 In the first place, therefore, the dumb who are mentioned in 
 the passage of the Prophet are not mentioned in the speech 
 of Jesus, though undoubtedly they are comprised among the 
 deaf whom he names,, because both maladies frequently appear 
 in connection, and in the Gospels the deaf, cured by Jesus, 
 are generally at the same time described as dumb (Matt. 
 ix. 32 ; Mark vii. 32 ff.). On the other hand, there is nothing 
 said in the passage of Isaiah of the cleansing of lepers and 
 raising of the dead of which Jesus speaks; but miracles of 
 both kinds are found in the legends of the Prophets in the 
 Old Testament. Elisha cured a leper, and he, like his master 
 
152 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Elijah, raised a dead man. The expulsion of evil spirits, 
 which plays so large a part in the evangelical accounts of 
 miracles, is not mentioned either in the passage in Isaiah or 
 in the legend of the Prophets, because in those early times 
 "possession" was not yet the order of the day; it is wanting, 
 also, in the speech of Jesus, which had only to enumerate 
 as fulfilled by him those prophecies, or types of miracle, the 
 fulfilment of which was to be expected from the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 For the production, therefore, of the evangelical accounts of 
 miracles, there have, from the first, been two factors at work, 
 which may be distinguished as an ideal and a real factor. 
 What is said in the passage in Isaiah of the cures of the blind, 
 the deaf, and the lame, interpret it as we will, is in no way 
 to be understood of a miraculous restoration, but non-literally 
 and ideally ; on the other hand, the acts of Elijah and Elisha 
 are told as real actual miracles, and the later Jewish concep- 
 tions of the JMessiah expected the same from him.* In like 
 manner, in the speech of Jesus, j\Iatt. xi. 5, the cures and 
 raisings were, in their original sense, undoubtedly understood 
 only morally and ideally, as effects of the preaching of the 
 Gospel to the poor ; the evangelical legend understood them 
 literally, as real physical miracles, though here and there, in 
 the final remodelling of this legend in a mystical and artistic 
 spirit, such as we find in the first Go.spel, the original ideal 
 character of these miracles again appears. 
 
 If we first take the miraculous cures by classes, and in the 
 order which the speech of Jesus which we have just quoted 
 suggests, the Evangelists speak both generally of many blind, 
 among other sick persons, whose sight Jesus restored (Matt. 
 XV. 30; Luke vii. 21), and give us several particular accounts 
 of cures more or less in detail. The three first Evangelists 
 have in common a cure of a blind man, which Jesus is said 
 
 * See above, Introduction, § 25. 
 
HIS MIRACLES. CURES OF THE BLIND. I;"i3 
 
 to have performed on the road to Jerusalem at the hist prin- 
 cipal station, Jericho (Matt. xx. 29 — 34 ; Mark x. 46 — 52 ; 
 Luke xviii. 35 — 43). According to Matthew and Mark, this 
 miracle was performed on going out of the city ; according to 
 Luke, on going into it ; and we see at once from this discre- 
 pancy how little the Evangelists cared about details of this 
 sort, which are of importance to the historical writer. For 
 the only reason why in Luke it was necessary to represent 
 Jesus as performing the miracle before entering the city, is 
 this — that Luke had something to tell of his passage through 
 the city, of which Matthew and Mark have nothing particular 
 to say. "What Luke had to tell of is the meeting with Zac- 
 cheus. Now if, as he continues to do from the middle of the 
 eighteenth chapter, he had chosen to follow the arrangement 
 of ]\Iatthew, and consequently (omitting the history of the 
 mother of Zebedee's sons, for the substance of whose speech 
 he reserved a place further on) had made the cure of the 
 blind man follow immediately upon the announcement of his 
 suffering, then Jesus, when he healed the blind man, ought 
 not to be represented as having passed Jericho, because, had 
 he done so, he could not have met with Zaccheus in Jericho, 
 a circumstance wdiicli Luke wished to speak of at some length. 
 Another discrepancy is, that in Matthew there are two blind 
 men, in Mark and Luke only one, and that in Matthew Jesus 
 touches their eyes, while the two other narrators say nothing 
 of his having done so. Exactly in the same way, Matthew 
 represents Jesus as proceeding with two blind men in an ear- 
 lier cure, of which the other two know nothing (ix. 27 — 31) ; 
 and thus he may have transferred the number two and the 
 toucliing from one narrative into the otlier, as naturally such 
 a history might be told, sometimes of one, sometimes of two 
 blind men, sometimes assigned to one district, sometimes to 
 another, and with different details : a miraculous cure of the 
 blind must be had : the particular attendant circumstances 
 were unimportant. 
 
154 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 The trait in tlie narrative of the blind men persisting in 
 appealing to Jesus as the Son of David, has lately suggested 
 an interpretation of tlieir blindness as symbolical of tlie blind- 
 ness of Jewish Christianity, which in Jesus sees only the Son 
 of David, until Jesus himself opens its eyes.* Now we have 
 above attempted to shew that Jesus, in ascribing to himself 
 tlie cure of the blind, only understood this symbolically, as 
 when, in the appearance alleged to have been vouchsafed to 
 Paul, he says that he sends him to the Heathen to open their 
 eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light (Acts xxvi. 18). 
 But that Matthew, or any one of the three first Evangelists, 
 did, in their histories of the cures of the blind, ever think of 
 such a thing — this is an hypothesis which on the very face of 
 their narratives we must altogether deny. The idea of Christ 
 as the opener of the eyes of the spiritually blind, had, when 
 those Evangelists wrote, long disappeared under the sensuous 
 conception of a material miracle ; and the particular features 
 of these narratives must always be explained upon this con- 
 ception of the nature of a miracle, unless, as above, in the 
 history of the draught of fishes, the spiritual reference is trans- 
 parent ; and this is not the case in these synoptic histories of 
 tlie cures of the blind. 
 
 In the first place, the continued formation of these narra- 
 tives proceeded in anything but an ideal direction. In the 
 description of the cure of the blind man at Jericho, even 
 Luke, and still more Mark, distinguishes himself by the addi- 
 tion of traits which only serve to increase the vividness and 
 picturesqueness of the scene : among these are, in the case of 
 jNIark, the name and father's name of the blind man,-f the 
 address of the people, and the casting off of his coat by the 
 subject of the cure. Mark also has, as if dissatisfied with the 
 
 * Volkmar, The Religion of Jesus, pp- 235—250. 
 
 + There hare been all sorts of surmises as to the source from which Mark may 
 have taken the names of Timaeus and Bartimseus. Wliat if this source were no 
 otlier than the Greek tense of Tifj.au) {tTTfrifirjae and iTrtTiji-wi') ? 
 
HIS MIRACLES. CURES OF THE BLIXD. 155 
 
 narratives of his predecessors, a history of the cure of a blind 
 man peculiar to himself. This he has introduced between 
 the narratives of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the con- 
 fession of Peter, and with the history of the cure of a man 
 deaf and dumb, likewise peculiar to himself, has arranged it 
 exactly according to his taste (viii. 22 — 26). The blind man 
 who is brought to Jesus at Bethsaida is taken by him first 
 out of the town ; for the miracle is a mystery which the 
 uninitiated must not witness ; and therefore, when it is com- 
 pleted, the publication of it is forbidden, as is done on 
 several occasions in Matthew and Luke, but most industri- 
 ously in Mark. Then Jesus spits in the eyes of the blind 
 man, just as the subservient Procurator of Egypt made 
 Vespasian,* whom he had just saluted as Emperor, spit in the 
 eyes of a man alleged to be blind, because in the case of 
 magical cures, according to the superstition of the times, 
 saliva was an important ingredient. 
 
 Again, the blind man does not see perfectly all at once, 
 but on Jesus asking him, after having applied the saliva 
 and laid his hands upon him once, whether he sees anything, 
 and receiving the reply that he sees, only indistinctly, men 
 walking as trees, he lays his hands once more upon the blind 
 man's eyes, and then, and not before, his restoration to sight 
 is perfect. At first sight this looks like a diminution of the 
 miracle, inasmuch as the sanatory power of the performer 
 appears not to be absolute, but has as it were to contend 
 with the resistance of the complaint ; and it is on this feature, 
 therefore, that the natural explanation of the miracles mainly 
 rests its assumptions. But this is not what is intended by 
 Mark : on tlie contrary, his object is to bring the miracle, 
 without prejudice to its value as such, more wdthin the range 
 of our conception by dividing it into its successive factors : 
 certainly an unsuccessful effort, and one by which he loses 
 more than he gains. Miracles, as instances of the inter- 
 
 * Vol. i. p, 369. 
 
156 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 ference of absolute causality with the chain of finite causes, 
 are essentially sudden events, and are only brought into 
 contradiction with themselves by being divided into separate 
 factors. 
 
 We find the author of the fourth Gospel following in the 
 steps of Mark, and carrying still further the practice of which 
 he sets the example in the way of giving picturesqueness to 
 the miracles, and exaggerating their miraculous features. 
 Instead of the two accounts of cures of the blind in Matthew 
 and Mark, he has only one (ix. 1—41), but this, far otherwise 
 than the single one in Luke, is of a character such as to make 
 all others superfluous. For the blind man whom Jesus 
 healed according to John, and not in Bethsaida or Jericho, 
 but in the capital itself, was not an ordinary blind man, but 
 blind from his birth, consequently a man blind, as it were, 
 absolutely, whose cure was possible only by an absolute 
 miracle ; an idea which the author puts into the mouth of 
 the man himself who had been cured, when he represents 
 him as saying, in opposition to the unbelieving Jews, that 
 since the world began (ver. 31) it has not been heard that 
 any one has opened the eyes of one born blind. By way, 
 moreover, of an external and visible instrument for the cure, 
 Jesus avails himself not merely of the saliva ; he spits, not 
 immediately into the eyes of the blind man, but upon the 
 ground, and, making clay, anoints his eyes ; a feature which 
 serves at the same time to constitute a work over and above 
 the miraculous cure, i.e. a violation of the Sabbath. Then 
 the clay has to be immediately washed off if the blind man 
 is to enjoy his lately given power of sight : so Jesus sends 
 him to wash, not indeed in the Jordan, as the Propliet 
 Elislia sent the leprous Naaman (2 Kings v. 10), but to the 
 neighbouring pool of Siloah, from which he returns with his 
 sight restored. All these features are attributable partly to 
 exaggeration, partly to an attempt to invest the miracle with 
 picturesqueness and a magical character. There is this addi- 
 
ms MIRACLES. CURES OF TUE BLIND. l.j? 
 
 tion also, that the fact is laboriously ascertained, in a manner 
 unknown to the older Evangelists in their miraculous histo- 
 ries, by a regular examination and hearing of witnesses. The 
 speeches of the neighbours, when the well-known blind beggar 
 comes back to them seeing, are in themselves mere surmises, 
 as they may be deceived by a likeness to the real blind man 
 (ver. 9) ; his own declaration in answer to these questions, 
 especially as he has no accurate knowledge of his benefactor, 
 and is therefore so far unprejudiced, is of more importance ; 
 but before the authorities, before whom he is represented by 
 the Evangelist as being summoned in order to give official 
 corroboration to the occurrence, even this declaration does not 
 suffice : his parents are summoned, as they alone can give 
 credible evidence that tlieir son was blind from his birth. If 
 any doubt remains, it is quashed by the remark that the 
 Jewish authorities had laid the confession of Jesus being the 
 Messiah under the ban of excommunication ; if, nevertheless, 
 the man not only adhered to his statement as to the reality 
 of his cure, but also made no secret of his belief in the pro- 
 phetic dignity of Jesus, he spoke to his own injury; and this, 
 as the Evangelist intends to imply, he would not have done, 
 if he had not been firmly convinced of the miracle that had 
 been performed upon him. 
 
 But while the fourth Evangelist thus carries miracles to 
 the extreme of external reality, and thus gives tlie finishing- 
 stroke to the tendency originated by Mark, he endeavours at 
 the same time, in a manner of which his predecessors afford 
 no example, to bring into view the ideal meaning. Thus, in 
 this instance, the miracle is introduced and carried on from 
 first to last, not by any request for help on the part of the 
 sufferer, but by a dogmatic question which the disciples con- 
 nect with his condition, a question which is answered by 
 Jesus in words to the effect that the man was purposely born 
 blind, that by his being cured God's almighty power might 
 be manifested in him. This manifestation or glorification of 
 
158 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 God by the Son consists, in John, not merely in the perform- 
 ance by Jesus of something which surpasses human power, 
 and which at the same time, by its beneficial, charitable cha- 
 racter, is worthy of God, but it is in reality a phase in the 
 operations of God and his creative word reflected as it were 
 symbolically in the miraculous acts of Jesus. The divine 
 Logos is, according to the Alexandrine doctrine, the principle 
 of life and light for the world, the nourishment of souls ; 
 the Johannine Jesus exhibits himself in each of these capa- 
 cities by one or more miracles. As regards that which we 
 are considering, it is said of the Logos in the preface : " In 
 him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the 
 light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended 
 
 it not But as many as received him, to them gave 
 
 he power to become the sons of God, even to them that 
 believe in his name" (i. 4 ff., 12). Now at the conclusion 
 of our miraculous narrative, the Jewish rulers having shewn 
 themselves incorrigible, the man who had been cured having 
 declared his faith in Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus says : 
 " For judgment am I come into this world, that they which 
 see not might see ; and that they which see might be made 
 blind." Again, when the Pharisees ask him whether they 
 also are blind, Jesus answers, that if they were so, i.e. knew 
 themselves to be so, it would be well ; but that as the know- 
 ledge is wanting, the capacity for improvement is wanting 
 also (31 — 41). Now we see that the purport of all this is, 
 that the man born blind who was made to see, first phv- 
 sically, then spiritually, represents those men who, though 
 originally belonging to the world, i.e. to darkness, have never- 
 theless the power and the will to comprehend the light, and 
 thus to become children of God : the Jews, on the other hand, 
 represent those wlio shut out the light, and continue in dark- 
 ness, i.e. in sin. For the completion of the allegory it would 
 be an appropriate addition to say that, as he who is physically 
 blind, and spiritually conscious of his blindness, comes to see 
 
HIS MIRACLES. CURES OF THE BLIND. 159 
 
 not merely spiritually, but also physically, so those who see 
 physically, and think they see spiritually, will at last be con- 
 vinced, not merely of their spiritual blindness, but also be 
 struck with physical. But this would contradict the declara- 
 tion of the Johannine Christ, that he is not come to condemn 
 the world, but to bless the world, and that the unbeliever is 
 already condemned in himself (iii. 17 ff., xii. 47 ff.). From 
 Jesus, as the divine creative Word, only what is affirmative 
 can proceed — only Light, Life, and Salvation : he neither 
 requires nor needs to perform a penal miracle ; the creature 
 who excludes him he need but leave in the condition of un- 
 happiness in which it is already without the operation of Jesus, 
 and thus it is punished sufliciently. 
 
 Thus the miracle in John is penetrated in all its features 
 by the ideal spirit : it is throughout symbolical, and at the 
 same time throughout real; it would be the greatest mis- 
 understanding to suppose that the fourth Evangelist did not 
 mean to say that what was so important really happened. 
 We see even from one single feature in the narrative how little 
 in his view the one excludes the other, and also how strangely 
 such a view of the world was formed. The name of the pool 
 in which Jesus bids his blind man wash, the Hebrew word 
 Siloa, meaning without doubt a flow of water, is said by the 
 Evangelist to be by interpretation Sent (ver. 7) ; he looked, 
 therefore, upon the spring and the pool as being, by these 
 names, prophetic of the God-sent Jesus, or of the sending of 
 the blind man to it, a prophecy which at the same time 
 existed as real water, that being already the literal meaning 
 of the word. 
 
160 . MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 72. Cures of Ckipples. 
 
 In the answer to the Baptist, so often mentioned, Jesus 
 speaks of cripples as second in the list of those who are 
 cured by him. Cripples are also among the many kinds of 
 sick who are brought to Jesus previously to the second 
 feeding, for the purpose of being healed by him ; and the 
 people are surprised when, among the blind who have been 
 made to see, &c., they observe the lame also walking (JMatt. 
 XV. 30 ff.). In other places they are more generally paralytics, 
 translated by Luther the palsied, who are spoken of (Matt. 
 iv. 24, viii. 6, ix. 2) ; these, according to the meaning of 
 the word, were those sick persons whose muscles on one side 
 were " slackened," i. e. crippled; while the description of the 
 sick man, Matt. ix. 2 ff., applies to entire lameness, at least 
 of the feet; that of the other, Matt. viii. 5 ff., to a painful 
 palsy. The necessity of Jesus having cured sick of this de- 
 scription, was implied in the literal understanding of the 
 prophecy of Isaiah, " then shall the lame man leap as an 
 hart" (xxxv. 6) ; a prophecy preceded (ver. 3) by the com- 
 mand, " strengthen ye the feeble knees !" where the Greek 
 translation has the same word as that by which Luke (v. 18, 
 24) describes the paralytic man. It is not so clear in the 
 evangelical narratives that the passage in Isaiah is the root 
 of these miraculous histories, as it is in one which we find 
 in the Acts. It is well known that in that book the first 
 miracle by which the Apostles prove their exalted mission is 
 the cure of a lame man, who was begging before the Temple 
 at Jerusalem, performed by Peter. Of this man it is said, 
 that when Peter had commanded him in the name of tlie 
 Lord to rise up and walk, immediately his feet and ancle- 
 bones received strength, and he, leaping up, stood and walked, 
 and entered with them into the Temple, walking and leaping 
 
CURFS OF CRirPLES. 161 
 
 (Acts iii. 7 ff.)- In the leaping, so repeatedly mentioned, on 
 the part of the lame man, the leaping like a hart promised in 
 Isaiah is not to be mistaken; while the strengthened legs 
 and ancle bones remind us of the strengthening of the feeble 
 knees in the same prophecy. 
 
 The history of the servant of the captain at Capernaum, 
 whom moreover only Matthew describes as paralytic, will 
 come into consideration further on under a different point of 
 view : the classical history of the cure of a paralytic is that 
 of the man who, likewise at Capernaum, is brought on a bed 
 to Jesus, and to whom he first announces the forgiveness of 
 his sins, and then, when the scribes take offence at his doing 
 so, bids him take up his bed and walk (Matt. ix. 1—8 ; Mark 
 ii. 1--12 ; Luke v. 17—26). We have here nothing more to 
 do with the question as to whether the cure of a side person 
 of this description may have been possible, in virtue of the 
 confidence which he may have had in Jesus as a Prophet ; we 
 have not, speaking generally, disputed the possibility in the 
 former Book ; but in any case these evangelical narratives are 
 so modified according to the conception of Jesus as a performer 
 of miracles, that the real facts, possibly lying at the founda- 
 tion of them, can no longer be extracted. We see the liberty 
 taken in the remodelling of these accounts, by the discrepancies 
 of the several Evangelists from one another. Matthew only 
 says simply that Jesus went across the sea into his city of 
 Capernaum, that there they brought to him a lame man lying 
 on a bed, and when he saw their faith he assured the sick 
 man of the forgiveness of his sins. The faith of the people, 
 of the bearers, and of the sick man himself, was, according to 
 Matthew, known to Jesus merely from their having taken so 
 much trouble to drag the sufferer there ; to Luke, this proof 
 of faith did not appear sufficiently special, and as he thought 
 it necessary to introduce the interference of the scribes, to 
 whom he adds the Pharisees, by representing them as being 
 from the first collected round Jesus, he prefers making the 
 VOL. II. M 
 
162 ]\IYTniCAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 press so great that the men with their pallet-bed cannot 
 penetrate to Jesus, but find themselves compelled, carrying it 
 as they are, to break a separate passage through the roof of 
 the liouse, and to let down the sick man upon his bed from 
 above into the middle of the room in front of Jesus. It is 
 not out of Matthew, at all events, that Luke gets the notion 
 of Jesus having been in a house, but he wanted this feature 
 in order to bring out the peculiar proof of faith which he had 
 imagined. In speaking of the passage through the roof, or 
 through the tiles as he expresses himself, there is no doubt 
 that Luke was thinking of the opening which, according to 
 Eastern architecture, was left in the flat, tiled roofs of the 
 houses, by means of which the roof could be reached from the 
 interior, and the interior from the roof ; it was through tliis 
 that, according to the notion of the Evangelist, there being 
 no regular staircase and a ladder could not be used for the 
 purpose, the bed with the sick man on it was let down, as it 
 appears, by ropes into the room where Jesus was teaching. 
 Whether the author of the second Gospel was not acquainted 
 with this peculiarity of the houses in Palestine, or whether 
 he wished to place the faithful zeal of the people in a still 
 clearer light, he takes no notice of the opening already exist- 
 ing in the roof, but represents the bearers, whose number he 
 fixed at four, from the four corners of the bed, as first break- 
 ing a hole through, without remembering that by doing so lie 
 exposed the assemblage immediately under it to the danger of 
 being crushed by the falling bricks. No one who remembers 
 merely the liistory of the unfruitful fig-tree, will deny that 
 such precipitancy is quite in the style of Mark, and he will 
 also mark this narrative as one of those which negative the 
 possibility of Mark being the original Evangelist. 
 
 There is a miraculous cure connected with this occurrence 
 which the three first Evangelists represent as taking place on 
 the Sabljath, so that in the former case tlie rock of offence 
 for the scviljes being that Jesus arrogated to himself the 
 
CURES OF CRIPPLES. 163 
 
 power of forgiving sins, in this his sanatory work is called 
 in question as a violation of the Sabbath. Even the arrange- 
 ment, according to which all the Synoptics place the healing 
 of the withered hand immediately after the history of the 
 plucking of the ears of corn on the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 
 9 — 14; Mark iii. 1 — 6; Luke xi. 6 — 11), shews us that they 
 are less concerned with the miracle itself than with its having 
 been performed on the Sablmth. The mode of keeping the 
 holiday of the Sabbath and the extent of licence allowed on 
 it was a disputed question between Jesus and Pharisaic Juda- 
 ism, and we therefore find it returning upon us in the Gospels 
 under different forms. The question might be connected 
 wäth any act, however natural ; with the plucking of the ears 
 of corn by the disciples, which, in the Mosaic law, was not 
 considered as injuring another man's proj)erty, and was so 
 far generally permitted (5 Mos. xxiii. 25) ; and as it could not 
 be called regular work, especially in case of want, it was con- 
 sidered by Jesus as allowable even on the Sabbath, and on 
 the other hand, by the pedantry of later interpreters of the 
 law, among the labours forbidden on the Sabbath. If, on an 
 occasion of this kind, Jesus met the objection of the Pharisees 
 by the example of David, who, when compelled by hunger, did 
 not hesitate to appease it both in his own case and that of 
 his followers with the shew-bread in the Temple, which was 
 generally reserved for the priests alone, he might, in those 
 cases in v^^hich, not his own necessity, but that of others whom 
 he wished to help, made him commit an alleged violation of 
 the Sabbath, avail himself of the example of the animal which 
 the owner did not hesitate to try to rescue, even on the Sab- 
 bath, from a pressing danger. It is clear that a proof thus 
 adduced by no means necessarily presupposes a miracle as 
 the occasion of thus adducing it ; on the contrary, it suited 
 any perfectly natural act of charitable assistance. But it is 
 also equally clear that when men were accustomed to expect 
 miracles of Jesus, the performance of those miracles on the 
 
 M 2 
 
164 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Sabbath must have appeared a suitable occasion for ilhistrations 
 such as this. It might seem so even when it was supposed 
 to be effected by the mere w^jrd of Jesus ; as a Eabbinical 
 school of that time interdicted even the consolation of the sick 
 on the Sabbath. 
 
 The illustration of the sheep which is dragged out of the 
 pit on the Sabbath-day is only on this occasion found in 
 Matthew ; in Mark and Luke, Jesus only put to the Pharisees, 
 who are lying in wait for him, the question as to w^hat is 
 lawful on the Sabbath-day, to do good or evil, to save souls 
 or to destroy them ? On the other hand, Luke has intro- 
 duced the illustration of the domestic animal into two other 
 miraculous accounts, — a further proof that in narratives of 
 this kind less emphasis was laid upon the miracle tliiin upon 
 the words of Jesus referring to the proper mode of keeping 
 the Sabbath. On one occasion (Luke xiv. 1 — 6), on the 
 Sabbath-day, at the house of one of the chief Pharisees, 
 Jesus meets with a man sick of the dropsy, and having 
 healed him in spite of the suspicious silence of the Pharisees 
 to his question as to whether it is lawful to heal on the 
 Sabbath-day, he puts to the Pharisees the further question 
 as to which of them, whose ass or ox has fallen into the 
 pit on the Sabbath-day, will hesitate straightway to pull him 
 out ? On the other occasion (xiii. 10 — 17), there is in a 
 synagogue a woman bowed by disease for eighteen years. He 
 makes her straight by calling to her and laying hands upon 
 her, meeting the objection of the ruler of the synagogue by 
 asking him whether each one of them does not on the Sabbath 
 loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to 
 watering ? — where the discrepancy in the image is occasioned 
 by the circumstance that the woman's malady is looked upon 
 as a case of being bound by Satan, from which Jesus releases 
 her. 
 
 Of these cures, tlie latter especially, supposing it to have 
 been preserved for us in a strictly historical account, might 
 
CURES OF CRIPPLES. 105 
 
 be understood as a cure effected psychologically by the im- 
 pression made by the word and touch of Jesus upon the faith 
 of the sick woman. Dr. Paulus has proved, by reference to 
 original authorities, the occurrence of an exactly similar case 
 in modern times.* But the sudden cure of a dropsical man 
 will not adapt itself to such a theory ; and the history of the 
 withered hand has too manifest a precedent in the legend of 
 the Hebrew prophet to leave us doubtful as to the origin of it. 
 It is frequently the case, and is so here, that the miraculous 
 account in the Kew Testament is distinguished from that in 
 the Old by the circumstance that in the latter the malady is 
 first miraculously inflicted as a punishment, and then mira- 
 culously removed, while in the former, in accordance with 
 the spirit of the Gospel, the malady is given and only re- 
 moved by the humane performer of the miracle. Thus in 
 the Old Testament (1 Kings xiii. 4 ff'.), it is a miraculous 
 punishment inflicted by God that the idolatrous Jeroboam 
 has his hand, blasphemously stretched out against a prophet 
 of Jehovah, withered for a moment, i.e. so stiffened that he 
 cannot draw it back to him ; and it is not until at the king's 
 request the prophet intercedes for him with Jehovah, that 
 by a second miracle, and that a miracle of grace, its restora- 
 tion is eflfected. In the evangelical narrative, the hand of 
 the sufferer is already stifle from disease, and this stiffness 
 shews itself, not, as in the case of the king, in which it was a 
 punishment for a blasphemous stretching out of the hand, in 
 his inability to draw it to him, but conversely in his not 
 being able to stretch it out ; and his cure by Jesus consists 
 in his being enabled to stretch it out. But if we compare 
 what is said in the first instance of Jeroboam (ver. 4), " And, 
 behold, his hand which he stretched out withered," with 
 what is said in this (Matt. ver. 10; Mark ver. 1), "And, 
 behold, there was a man with a withered hand;" and then 
 
 * See above, § 42. 
 
1G6 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 tlie words at the conclusion of the first cure (ver. '6), " And 
 the hand of the king was restored again and was as before," 
 with those at the conchision of the second (ver. 13), "And 
 his hand was restored again and was as the other," — the 
 imitation can scarcely be overlooked. But that these were 
 exactly the maladies, the cure of which was at that time 
 expected of one " who enjoyed the favour of Heaven and the 
 friendship of more exalted beings," is shewn by the often- 
 mentioned narrative of Tacitus, according to which, in order 
 to give Vespasian an opportunity of proving his power of 
 performing miracles, a man wdth a maimed hand (according 
 to Suetonius, with a lame leg) was, with a man perfectly 
 blind, stationed in the way of that emperor.* 
 
 In the case of this class of miracles also, we find all the 
 elements that in the earlier Gospels appear scattered and 
 dispersed, collected in the fourth, exaggerated on the one 
 hand and spiritualised on the other. We find, also, that the 
 form in which they are presented in the fourth Evangelist is 
 in immediate connection with that in which they are pre- 
 sented in the second. The history of the sick man at the 
 pool of Betliesda at Jerusalem (John v.) refers to a lame man, 
 in the same way as the history of the cure of the paralytic at 
 Capernaum ; it is at the same time the history of a cure on 
 the Sabbath, like that of the man with the withered hand, 
 the dropsical man, and the bent woman. In this it surpasses 
 the former account partly in the brilliancy of the stage ujjou 
 which the miracle is performed, partly in the account of the 
 duration of the sickness, which is wanting in the case of the 
 paralytic at Capernaum ; this in the case of the bent woman 
 goes to the extent of only eighteen years, while here, in John, 
 it is represented as amounting to thirty-eight ; and again it 
 endeavours to excel the histories of the cures on the Sabbath- 
 day by a more profound view of the question, in which at the 
 
 * Tacit. Plistor. v. 81. Suetou. Vespas. 7. 
 
CURES OF CRIPPLES. 167 
 
 same time is involved the spiritualisation and symholising of 
 the whole miraculous narrative. 
 
 The pool of Bethesda (about wliich, independent of tlie 
 fourth Evangelist, we find no information either in Josephus 
 or in the Eabbis), with its five halls full of the blind, the lame, ^ 
 and other sufferers, is, as it were, a great hospital tlieatre, u])on / 
 which the gr eat practitioner of miracles appears, and selects ) 
 the patient who has been longest ill of the most obstinate 
 disease, in order in the most brilliant manner to prove him- 
 self, by operating upon him, as the divine Creative Word that 
 gives life to all. The fact that higher powers already had 
 power over the pool itself, an angel descending from time to 
 time in order to move the water, after which the patient wlio 
 first entered was healed,* and that this angelic operation 
 proves insufficient for the cure of the one who requires 
 curing most, places Jesus, who heals him, so much the higher ; 
 wdiile this feature, in connection with the whole description 
 of miraculous cure, suggests the supposition that something 
 symbolical may be concealed under it. The thirty-eight years 
 of sickness have been looked upon as the type of the thirty- 
 eight years which the people of Israel were compelled to 
 pass in the wilderness before they reached the promised land 
 (5 Mos. ii. 14) ;-f- and I am surprised that, in the case of the 
 five halls, the five Books of Moses have not been thought of, 
 for these are, at all events, principally to be understood as 
 among the writings in which, as Jesus remarks on occasion of 
 this miracle (v. 39, comp. 45 ff.), the Jews think they have 
 eternal life, but in which they can as little find it without 
 Christ as the sick man could find a remedy without him in 
 the halls of the pool of Bethesda. According to believing 
 
 * The most convincing critical grounds are in favour of tlie genuineness of ver. 4, ^ ^^n- ' 
 which contains the notice of the angel; comp. Hengstenberg, Commentary on the rpi^c^l? 
 Gospel of John, i. 300. ^!.a_<c>'* (. 
 
 + Krafft, Chronology and Synopsis, p. 98; Hengstenberg, Commentary on the 
 Gospel of John, i. 300. 
 
in8 WYTIIICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 interpreters, the historical validity of the narrative is not 
 supposed to be damaged by this symbolical explanation ; on 
 the contrary, that opinion is that, by an arrangement of Provi- 
 dence, Jesus had here to meet with a man who, in the number 
 of years of his sickness, presented himself as a type of the 
 people of God — as "the sick man Judah," as Hengstenberg 
 expresses himself in the style of the most modern time. From 
 our point of view, the story has already lost all historical 
 value, and the indication of its supposed symbolical meaning 
 has for us only the merit of suggesting more definite grounds 
 of explanation of the particular features of the story, while 
 the uncertainty of such explanations cannot in any way shake 
 our conviction that narratives of this kind are in any case 
 unhistorical. 
 
 That the Johannine narrative in particular is copied from 
 the synoptic account of the man with the palsy at Capernaum, 
 may be seen from the different features which are common 
 to both. Thus even the reference to the forgiveness of sins 
 is not wanting in John, only that he has changed the pre- 
 liminary words, "Thy sins ai'e forgiven!" into an expression 
 added afterwards, " Sin no more, lest a worse thing happen 
 to thee" (v. 14). But it is impossible to mistake the resem- 
 blance in the manner in which the miraculous command of 
 Jesus to the sick man is expressed in the two narratives. The 
 Synoptics give the words twice over, once conditionally, on 
 the question of the Pharisees, whether is easier to say to a 
 man in this state, Thy sins are forgiven thee, or. Arise (Mark, 
 take up thy bed) and walk ! Then follows, as an actual com- 
 mand given to the sick man. Arise, take up thy bed and 
 go home ! The fourth Evangelist, not having premised any 
 announcement of the forgiveness of sins, has not the preli- 
 minary question, but only the actual command, compounded, 
 however, of the two speeches in the Synoptics. He keeps to 
 the first form, though adopting, like Mark, out of the second, 
 the bed M'hich was to be packed up ; but that in doing so 
 
CURES OF CRIPPLES. 169 
 
 lie has particularly followed iMark, appears from the fact that 
 both, in describing the bed; coincide in the use of a remark- 
 able word. Matthew twice speaks of it by the most ordinary 
 word, bed ; Luke also once, and twice by the diminutive 
 meaning, little bed ; at last periphrastically that upon which 
 the sick man lay. On the other hand, Mark uses throughout, 
 i.e. four times, and likewise John five times, a word which is 
 not, indeed, elsewhere unknown in the New Testament, but 
 is quite as strange as if in English we were to describe a bed 
 by the term pallet, and which therefore, as it is not found 
 elsewhere in John, but does appear again in Mark, makes it 
 probable that the former copied from the latter.* 
 
 Here, too, as in the case of the history of the man born 
 blind, it is an arrangement peculiar to the fourth Evangelist 
 that the fact of the miracle is established by a formal hearing. 
 The Jews, i.e. the Jewish authorities, seeing the man carrying 
 his bed, remark to him that it is not permitted on the Sab- 
 bath-day. He replies, that he who had enabled him to walk, 
 ordered him to do so. They desire to know who it was. He 
 declares that he does not know himself, as Jesus, after giving 
 the miraculous command, had gone away to avoid the multi- 
 tude. Jesus then again meets the man whom he had healed 
 in the Temple, where he gives him the caution mentioned 
 above ; and on this occasion the man must have learnt his 
 name, for he now announces to the Jews for the first time 
 that it was Jesus who had made him whole. While, however, 
 in the history of the man born blind (who, moreover, was 
 already acquainted with the name of Jesus, but knew nothing 
 else about him), the inquirers press him and his connections 
 still further, in order to learn the description of the malady 
 and the mode of cure applied by Jesus, in the case under con- 
 sideration, as soon as Jesus is discovered to have been the 
 author of the violation of the Sabbath, they cease from their 
 
 * The word Kpäßßaroc, which appears in Mark vi. 55, Acts v. 15, ix. 33, 
 appears in the same meaning of a portable sick bed. Comp. CatuU. Carm. x. 22. 
 
170 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 examination, in order to direct their attack upon him. Then 
 the description becomes very far from clear. " Therefore," it 
 is said, " did the Jews persecute Jesus, because he had done 
 these things on the Sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them," 
 &c. &c. Now an objection, a reproach, an accusation, may be 
 answered ; persecution, on the contrary, unless the word is 
 to be understood in its absolutely literal meaning, is a long- 
 continued act, which a man may avoid, which he may take 
 precautions against, but which he cannot answer. After the 
 first answer attributed to Jesus, it is then said further, "There- 
 fore the Jews souglit the more to kill him ;" and thereupon 
 Jesus " answers " a second time, and in a long speech too, 
 which must have given the Jews, if they really did wish to 
 kill him, plenty of time and opportunity for doing so. We 
 see that as soon as the man who had been healed had pointed 
 out Jesus to the Jews as the author of the desecration of 
 the Sabbath, the narrator considers the scene as at an end ; 
 he is then only concerned with the speech of Jesus which 
 he wished to connect with it, and which he therefore intro- 
 duced so unsatisfactorily, alleging it to be an answer to a 
 persecution. 
 
 It was this speech that the Evangelist had in view at the 
 very first, when he placed the miraculous cure on the Sab- 
 bath-day. The activity attributed to Jesus on the Sabbath 
 might give him an oj)portunity of exhibiting the never-rest- 
 ing character of the divine Logos. In order, therefore, to 
 combat the objections of the Jews, he avails himself, not of 
 tlie practical argument drawn from the ox and the ass, or 
 from David and the sliew-bread, as in the Synoptics (though 
 arguments of this kind were not unknown to the author of 
 the fourth Gospel, as we see from vii. 27), but of the meta- 
 physical one, that as God, his Father, works and creates 
 throughout the rest of the Sabbath without interruption, 
 so also incessant work is proper for him as the Son who 
 in all his doings rules himself after the example of the 
 
CUKES OF CRIPPLES. 171 
 
 Father. The doctrine of uninterrupted creation on the part 
 of God was a fundamental doctrine of the Jewish Alexan- 
 drine philosophy ; the same never-resting activity belonged 
 to the Logos as the agent of the operation of God in the 
 world ; the dignity of Jesus, as the Logos incarnate, could 
 not be more emphatically illustrated than on an occasion on 
 which the Jewish opponents attempted to limit his divine 
 and infinite energy by their national Sabbatarian law. It 
 has, therefore, been rightly said that of the doctrine of the 
 Johannine preface (i. 4), " In him, the Logos, was life, and 
 the life was the light of men," the last half is illustrated* 
 in the history of the man born blind, the first in the history 
 we have been considering ; only we must always remember 
 this, that in the mind of the Evangelist these histories 
 are to be taken as entirely literal as well as entirely symboli- 
 cal occurrences. 
 
 Independently, however, of the connection between the 
 fundamental idea of the speech and the system of Philo, it 
 is clear that it was arbitrarily invented by the fourth Evan- 
 gelist, from, among other things, the unhistorical feature 
 which constantly recurs in the fourth Gospel. It is this, 
 that when Jesus calls God his Father, the Jews see in his 
 doing so a virtual equalization of himself with God (ver. 18). 
 To do this did not occur to the actual Jews. They were 
 accustomed to the description of the Messiah, nay even of 
 ordinary kings, as Sons, i.e. proteges and vicegerents of 
 God, as a title that assumed nothing at all. In the next 
 place, it is seen from the fact that a series of the propositions 
 of the speech appear, some in the Preface (comp. ver. 37 
 with i. 18), some elsewhere, as the Evangelist's own words 
 (comp. ver. 32 with xix. 35 ; ver. 44 with xii. 43), or as 
 those of the Baptist (comp. 20 with iii. 35) ; still more are 
 repeated in the first Epistle of John (comp. ver. 24 with 
 
 * Baur, Critical Investigations into the Canonical Gospels, p. 176. 
 
172 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 1 John iii. 14 ; ver. 34 and 36 ff. with 1 John v. 9 ; ver. 38 
 with 1 John i. 10 ; ver. 40 with 1 John v. 12 ; ver. 42 with 
 1 John ii. 15) ; the last of which is indeed only a proof 
 resting upon probability for those who consider the first 
 Epistle of John as earlier than the Gospel, while the first 
 is sufficient to corroborate the conclusion which forces itself 
 upon us in reference to all the speeches of Jesus in the fourth 
 Gospel. 
 
 73. Cures of Lepers and of the Deaf and the Dumb. 
 
 In the speech of Jesus (Matt. xi. 5), the mention of the 
 maim is followed by that of the lepers, and in his address to 
 the Twelve when he sends them fortli (Alatt. x. 8), they are 
 empowered to perform especially cures of lepers, among 
 those of other sick persons. Jesus could not have taken the 
 lepers out of the passage in Isaiah, as he did the blind and 
 lame, since the prophet, in that passage, makes no mention 
 of them. For such mention would not have been suitable to 
 the character of that refreshing joy of the people at the 
 termination of their captivity, which the prophet wished to 
 describe as causing them to forget all sorrows. But as a 
 programme of the Messianic miracles, that prophetic utterance 
 was, as has been noticed above, supplemented out of the 
 prophetic type. In the prophetical legend, leprosy plays a 
 considerable part, as it also does among the sicknesses tra- 
 ditional in Judea, and, accordingly, in the Law of Moses 
 (3 Mos. xiii. 14). A complaint so malignant, so obstinate, 
 and especially terrible from the exclusion which its infectious 
 character rendered necessary, was especially adapted to be con- 
 sidered as a divine punishment or trial (look at the account 
 in Job), and the cure of it as a divine blessing. So among 
 the miracles which Jehovah qualifies INIoses to perform in 
 
CUEES OF LEPERS AND OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. 173 
 
 order to accredit him Math the people, the production 
 
 and removal of the leprosy takes nearly the first place 
 
 (2 Mos. iv. 6 ff.). Jehovah commands him to put his 
 
 hand into his bosom, and to pull it out again : it was as 
 
 white as snow ; and when he had put it in a second time, 
 
 and taken it out a^ain, it was awain whole like the rest of his , 
 
 I i I I 
 body. This is only as it were a miraculous trick on the part /. / . 
 
 of the Deity; but on another occasion the infliction and 
 removal of the leprosy is in bitter earnest. Miriam, Moses' 
 sister, having had the audacity to rebel against her brother, 
 the wrath of Jehovah was inflamed against her, and she be- 
 came as white as snow from leprosy ; it was not until Aaron 
 had interceded with Moses for her, and the latter had again 
 interceded with Jehovah, that after seven days exclusion she 
 was again received as clean (4 Mos. xii. 1 — 15). Then there 
 is the case particularly celebrated, and mentioned also by 
 Jesus himself, in a passage of the third Gospel (Luke iv. 27). 
 It is the cure of a leper by the prophet Elisha, from whose 
 history so many other features have entered into that of 
 Christ (2 Kings v. 1 ff.). The Syrian captain, Naaman, suf- 
 fering from leprosy, addresses the prophet on the subject of 
 his cure. The latter commands him to bathe seven times in 
 the Jordan ; but the warrior is offended, and considers himself 
 only recommended to have recourse to an ordinary mode of 
 cure by bathing, whereas he had expected that the prophet, 
 calling upon Jehovah his God, would have come to him, 
 passed his hand over the diseased part, and so have removed 
 the eruption. But he allows himself to be persuaded to follow 
 the prescription of the prophet, and after seven immersions 
 in the Jordan finds himself perfectly cured ; while the prophet 
 immediately after feels it his duty to transfer the leprosy to 
 his own avaricious servant Gehazi. 
 
 In this instance, also, the Messianic life, in the form at 
 least in which it entered into Christianity, omitted the penal 
 side of the Old Testament miracle, but the Messiah could not 
 
174 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 be deprived of that of healing and grace. Thus, among the 
 very first sick persons who apply to Jesus to be healed, it is, 
 according to all the synoptic Gospels (Matt. viii. 1 — 4 ; Mark 
 i. 40 — 45 ; Luke v. 12 — 16), a leper, who falls down before 
 him and declares his conviction that if he will he can make 
 him clean. Jesus, touching him, declares his willingness, and 
 in a moment the man is so clean, that Jesus can command 
 him to shew himself with confidence to the High-priest, and 
 to prepare his offering of purification. The attempt to explain 
 this narrative on the supposition that the man was already as 
 good as cured, that the leprosy was in its last stage, and that 
 Jesus only pointed this out to him, consequently did not make 
 him clean, but only declared that he was so — this rationalistic 
 explanation is as violent when applied to the evangelical nar- 
 rative, as it is, from our point of view, ridiculously superfluous. 
 We have here a prophetico-Messianic myth of the clearest 
 stamp ; it wants no natural explanation, but simply an expla- 
 nation, which we have given, founded upon the principle of 
 gradual formation and development. 
 
 There is a second cure of leprosy in Luke, and in this in- 
 stance there are ten lepers all at once who' are benefited by 
 the healing power of Jesus (xvii. 11 — 19). Engaged in the 
 journey to Jerusalem, and while travelling on the boundary 
 between Galilee and Samaria, he is met outside a village by 
 ten lepers, who stand at the distance from him required by 
 law, calling out to him with a loud voice to have mercy upon 
 them. Without touching them, as he does the diseased per- 
 son in the former case, or even calling them to him, he 
 commanded them to go and shew themselves to the priests ; 
 and while they went they became clean. Now at this point 
 the accoimt, considered as a miraculous one, would have been 
 properly at an end, and we should so far have considered it 
 simply as a variation upon the former one, though the remark- 
 able exaggeration in the number, increased as it is from one to 
 ten, might to a certain extent surprise us. But the narrative 
 
. CURES OF LEPERS AND OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. 175 
 
 of Luke does not end here. On the contrary, when the ten 
 find themselves cured, nine of them go forward on their way, 
 while one returns to fall at the feet of his benefactor with 
 thanks, and this one is a Samaritan. In this man's presence 
 Jesus proceeds to speak unfavourably of the nine Jews who 
 have left the duty of returning thanks to one who was not a 
 Jew. He then dismisses the Samaritan with the declaration 
 that his faith has made him whole. 
 
 Now in this turn given to the conclusion we may recog- 
 nise, on the one hand, an imitation of the conclusion of the 
 history of Elisha and Naaman, which the former account of 
 leprosy had left unnoticed. For ISTaaman, when he found 
 himself cured, had likewise returned to give thanks to the 
 prophet, and to acknowledge the God of Israel as the only 
 true God, and Naaman was likewise a stranger, as the 
 Samaritan in this case. And he is also described by Jesus 
 in Luke as the only one among several, when the former says 
 (iv. 27) that in the time of the prophet Elisha there were 
 many lepers in Israel, and none of them was made clean, 
 but only Naaman the Syrian, just as in this case ten were 
 cleansed, but none of them, like Naaman, shewed themselves 
 by gratitude to be deserving of cure, but only one Samaritan. 
 Elisha dismisses Naaman, after declining his presents, with 
 the parting words, " Go in peace." Instead of this, Jesus 
 takes leave of the grateful Samaritan with the formula that 
 occurs in other places on tlie performance of miracles, " Go 
 thy way ; thy faith hath made thee whole." Now it is easy 
 to see that these last words, which were entirely in their 
 place on the occasion of the healing of the woman with tlie 
 issue of blood (Luke viii. 48), or the blind man at Jericho 
 (Luke xviii. 42), are here unsuitable ; for if the Samaritan had 
 been healed on account of the faith he exhibited in his return 
 to Jesus, why were the others healed who gave no such proof 
 of their faith ? Consequently, this concluding expression lias 
 been transferred by the Evangelist from other miraculous 
 
176 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 accounts into this; without them, the narrative has, in the 
 question of Jesus, whether, of the ten, none have been found 
 to give honour to God but only this stranger, as instructive a 
 conclusion as the parable of the Good Samaritan, in the ques- 
 tion (x. 36), which of the three was neighbour to him that fell 
 among thieves — who is likewise a stranger. 
 
 The miraculous account of which we are speaking, and 
 which likewise is peculiar to Luke, has, generally, the most 
 striking similarity to this parable, which is also peculiar to 
 him ; both belong to his Samaritan stories, which are so 
 closely connected with the tendency of his Gospel. In the 
 miracle, the only one of the ten who is grateful is a Samaritan, 
 and the same is the case in the parable, where a Samaritan 
 is the only one of the three who is good ; while in both the 
 others all genuine and regular Jews shew themselves ungrate- 
 ful and uncharitable. The number ten, like the number three, 
 is a round number and suited to a parable, the first meeting 
 us again in the parable, for instance, of the Ten Virgins 
 (Matt. XXV. 1 ff.). We cannot say that the story, like that 
 of the Good Samaritan, was originally given by Jesus as a 
 parable, and at a later period taken historically. When we 
 are told something about an indefinite subject, as a king, a 
 traveller, a sower, or even a third person with a favourite 
 name, like Lazarus, an instructive moral being subjoined, the 
 parable character is easy to recognise ; but when a man tells 
 of something as having really occurred to himself, he has 
 either improperly disguised the fact or imposed upon his 
 hearers. We have as little right to impute to Jesus the one 
 as the other, and can therefore, in the case of the miracvilous 
 story in question, only suppose that it is the work of a later 
 hand, who gave to the old prophetico-Messianic theme of the 
 healing of leprosy a turn favourable to the Gentiles, whether 
 it were that in doing so he was thinking of the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan, or that he himffelf was also the author of the 
 latter. 
 
CURES OF LEPEKS AND OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. 177 
 
 In this class of miraculous accounts the fourth Gospel 
 deserts us altogether ; lepers are not mentioned. The reason 
 is, indeed, that in the comparatively cleanly Grecian world of 
 Asia Minor, in which the author lived, maladies of this kind 
 were not so common as among the Jews in Palestine, also 
 that they could not be so easily adapted to his symbolical 
 system, which consists in the opposition between light and 
 darkness, life and death. 
 
 This is also the case with the deaf, who occupy the next 
 place in the answer of Jesus to the emissaries of the Baptist. 
 In tlie passage of Isaiah from which they are taken, the dumb 
 also are especially mentioned with them. In the Greek of the 
 Gospels the same word means deaf and dumb ; and hence it is 
 that Matthew and Luke, who represent Jesus as saying nothing 
 in his answer of dumb persons, but only speaking of deaf to 
 whom he restores the power of hearing, say, in their accounts 
 of miracles, nothing of deafness cured by him, but speak only 
 of the dumb to whom he restored their powers of utterance. 
 Mark, on the contrary, on two occasions, once in a history of 
 a cure peculiar to himself, the second time in an account in 
 which the two others only mention possession by devils, con- 
 nects deafness and dumbness together. 
 
 Of these narratives, the two first, at least in Matthew, are 
 repetitions of each other. On one occasion (ix. 32 — 34) 
 there is brought to Jesus a man dumb from possession, who 
 speaks after the devil is driven out, at which the people ex- 
 press their surprise at something the like of which has not 
 been seen in Israel, while the Pharisees say that Jesus drives 
 out devils by the prince of the devils. On the other (xii. 
 22 — 24; comp. Luke xi. 14), a man possessed is brought to 
 Jesus. This man is blind and dumb ; Jesus heals him so that 
 he can speak and see ; the people surmise that the performer 
 of the miracle is the Son of David, but the Pharisees say that 
 he only drives out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. 
 Here it is clear that the author of the first Gospel found in 
 
 YUL. II. N 
 
178 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 one of the sources of his history, the account of the cure of a 
 man dumb from possession by a devil, — in another, of a man 
 blind and dumb also from possession, — stories of this kind 
 being current in different forms and combinations ; and that 
 he, believing them to be two different occurrences, incorpo- 
 rated in his Gospel two narratives, placing one at an earlier, 
 the other at a later period ; while Luke, though not perhaps 
 acquainted with the true state of the case, considered the in- 
 troduction into his Gospel of two accounts so exactly resem- 
 bling each other as superfluous. 
 
 From the standpoint of belief in devils, it was natural to 
 look upon the dumb as .possessed, when we consider the un- 
 easy gestures of persons so affected; it w^as less obvious in 
 the case of the blind. When, however, we see how delusion 
 had drawn within its circle even cases of diseases of the limbs 
 and muscles, as that of the bent woman, the notion of posses- 
 sion by devils as a cause of blindness cannot surprise us very 
 much. It is a different thing when a sick man, whom Mat- 
 thew calls a lunatic, but describes, as Luke also does, as one 
 possessed by a devil, is at the same time described by Mark 
 alone as dumb and deaf (ix. 17, 25). As this is the case in 
 ■which the power of the disciples is insufficient, and Jesus 
 himself is obliged to interfere, we see that Mark, by aggra- 
 vating the malady, perhaps with reference to the dumb man 
 by possession in Matthew, wished to represent the case as a 
 particularly difficult one. 
 
 It is manifest that in delineating both the circumstances of 
 the sick man and the scene between his father and Jesus, 
 Mark was performing a task in which he took particular 
 pleasure. This is a point to which we shall return hereafter. 
 So also the account of the man with an impediment in his 
 speech (vii. 32 — 37), together with that which we have con- 
 sidered above, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, is 
 the true model of a miraculous narrative in the taste of our 
 second Evangelist. In addition to the mysterious taking 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 179 
 
 apart of the sick man, and the alleged command at the con- 
 clusion not to publish the fact, we have here also the Aramaic 
 word with whicli Jesus orders the closed ears of the deaf man 
 to open. This word, which the author has to translate for. his 
 readers, he gives, as a sort of talisman, in its original foreign 
 form. We do not find here the description of the gradual 
 process of the cure, as in the history of the blind man. So, 
 instead of this, the manipulation by Jesus, in connection with 
 the fact that in this case a double defect was to be removed, 
 is described all the more at length ; here he touches the man's 
 tongue with the spittle, which, in the other case, he spits 
 immediately into his eyes, while he put his fingers into his 
 ears. Then, in addition, we have a sigh and look upwards 
 to heaven, giving an effect to the scene, which we only find 
 repeated in the history of the raising of Lazarus in the fourth 
 Gospel. At the conclusion, the people cry out in an excess 
 of admiration, " He hath done all things well ; he maketh 
 both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." Now this 
 means nothing else but that Jesus has performed what, accord- 
 ing to the passage in the Prophet, was expected of the Messiah, 
 and what, therefore, Jesus, as soon as he was recognised as the 
 Messiah on better grounds, must, it was taken for granted, 
 have done, whether he really did it or not. 
 
 74. Cures of Persons possessed by Devils. 
 
 According to the speech of Jesus, which we are following 
 in the consideration of his miracles, we should come next to 
 his raisings of the dead. But there are still several kinds of 
 miraculous cures which, though not mentioned in that speech, 
 must nevertheless be noticed. 
 
 Among these are the cures of driving out devils, of which 
 
 N 2 
 
180 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Jesus makes no meution in that speech, in which he only 
 appeals to those miracles which were expected of the Messiah, 
 in accordance, partly with the prophecy, partly with the pre- 
 cedent of the Prophets of the Old Testament, in whose times, 
 even the latest of them, possession had not been heard of. 
 Now it has been already explained above, that of all the cures 
 performed by Jesus of which the Gospels speak, that of those 
 maladies which were supposed to be caused by demoniacal 
 possession, has most natural possibility and historical proba- 
 bility in its favour. If Jesus cured sick persons at all, sup- 
 posed demoniacs were certainly among them. 
 
 It does not, however, follow from this that the accounts of 
 those cures as we find them in the Gospels are historically 
 accurate. On the contrary, we cannot conceive of any of 
 these as having been naturally performed exactly as we are 
 told they were. And it would also be a remarkable thing if 
 the excitement which the idea of a personal presence of evil 
 spirits, and an encounter between them and the Messiah, 
 imparted to the imagination, had not resulted in a manifold 
 embellishment of such stories. Apart from the summary 
 statements that Jesus or his disciples drove out devils (the 
 former we find in Matt. iv. 24, viii. 16 ; Mark i. 34-, 39, iii. 11; 
 Luke iv. 41, vi. 18; the latter. Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15, 
 vi. 7, 13 ; Luke ix. 1, x. 17, 20), and from those narratives in 
 which the possession appears only in the second degree, as 
 the cause of other maladies, as in the cases of the blind and 
 dumb in the accounts just spoken of, or where the sick person, 
 the case being one of a cure at a distance, remains in tlie 
 background, as in the instance of the demoniac daughter of 
 the Canaanitish woman ; apart from these, we have in the 
 synoptic Gospels three cases of tliis kind, of which the first 
 is described as simple, tlie two others as complicated and 
 difficult. 
 
 Even in those sunmiary accounts in Luke and Mark, espe- 
 cial stress is laid upon the fact, that the devils in the persons 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 181 
 
 possessed recognised Jesus as the Älessiah. The iinch'au 
 sx)irits, says Mark (iii. 11 ; comp. Luke iv. 41), wlieii they 
 saw him, worshipped him and cried out, Thou art the Son of 
 God ; whereupon Jesus, if he allowed them to speak to him 
 at all (comp. Matt. i. 34), forbade them, under a heavy penalty, 
 to publish abroad that he was so. The devils, it was sup- 
 posed, must of course know the Messiah who was some time 
 to deliver over to damnation themselves and their prince 
 (Matt. viii. 29, xxv. 41 ; Mark i. 24 ; Luke iv. 34 ; lievel. 
 XX. 1 K, 10) ; and by force of the penetrating sight of their 
 spiritual nature, they w^ould have considered no one as such 
 who was not so really. Consequently, if they recognised the 
 Messiah in Jesus, this, from the standpoint of Jewish popular 
 ideas, was a strong proof that he was the Messiah. At the 
 same time, there resulted the practical contrast in the fact, 
 that while Jesus was in vain labouring among his contem- 
 poraries to plant the faith in him as the IMessiah, he, on the 
 contrary, with the more sharp-sighted devils, had only to take 
 care that they did not proclaim him to be the Messiah more 
 than his modesty allowed. But inasmuch as in those pos- 
 sessed of devils we see nothing but cases of natural sickness, 
 so neither can we ascribe to them any such penetration into 
 the character of Jesus in its most profound depths, i.e. we 
 cannot assume, what the Evangelists plainly state to have 
 been the case, that as soon as a man in this condition got 
 sight of Jesus, he recognised him as the Messiah without 
 knowing anything further about him ; but when such a 
 recognition took place, we must suppose that something had 
 happened beforehand, tending to impress the sick man in a 
 natural manner with this conviction. 
 
 Such an explanatory circumstance is suggested by the 
 evangelical narrative itself of the demoniac in the synagogue 
 at Capernaum (Mark i. 21 — 28; Luke iv. 31 — 37), repre- 
 senting, as it does, Jesus as giving a lecture previously, and 
 thus making a strong impression on the assemblage. The 
 
182 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 etiect produced by this upon a person present suffering from 
 demoniac symptoms, might easily be such a state of excite- 
 ment that he woukl fall into a paroxyism, in which, in the 
 character of the demon, he would beseech the mighty man of 
 God to leave him alone. The Evangelists, indeed, do not put 
 the two things originally in connection, but represent the 
 demon as drawing his knowledge purely from himself, so that 
 even if Jesus had not spoken he "would have known him to 
 be what he was. They also represent him as declaring Jesus 
 to be not merely a Prophet, but the Holy One of God, i. e. the 
 Messiah, which seems inconceivable at the first be^innins of 
 the ministry of Jesus, since, according to a very credible tra- 
 dition, the view that Jesus was the Messiah did not sjjring 
 up even in his own immediate circle until much later. Our 
 narrative, therefore, either places the standard of the dignity 
 attributed to Jesus by the subject of the possession too high, 
 or the occurrence is placed much too early. But from the 
 impression which Jesus made upon the sick man by his speak- 
 ing, his personality, and all the rumours about him in the 
 district, the sequel, as stated by the Evangelists, may be 
 naturally explained. If the man recognised in Jesus only a 
 prophet, he must still have attributed to him, according to 
 Jewish ideas, a divine power given from above for combating 
 the power of evil — consequently, the kingdom of devils; and 
 as soon as Jesus, sharing or availing himself of this opinion, 
 commanded the demon to depart out of the man, this jiiiojit 
 have the effect, as we are told, of producing a crisis, amid 
 violent spasms, which put an end to the morbid condition — 
 whether for ever or not, we know, in this case, as little as in 
 that of any other of these evangelical narratives. Still, a per- 
 manent cure of such a malady by psychological impressions 
 would not be unheard of 
 
 The case is different with the narrative, which is common 
 to all the Evangelists, of the possessed Gadarene, or Gada- 
 renes (Matt. viii. 28—34 ; Mark v. 1—20 ; Luke viii. 26—39). 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS, 183 
 
 This, among the evangelical stories of possession, is the 
 show-piece ; richly embellished with every accessory, possible 
 and impossible, the latter indeed being that which in certain 
 circles always makes the greatest impression. With refer- 
 ence, moreover, to this embellishment, there is, between the 
 different accounts, a discrepancy by no means unimportant, 
 features which are found in Mark and Luke being wanting 
 in the description of Matthew. Conversely, the latter has an 
 advantage over the two former, in so far as he speaks of two 
 persons possessed, while these speak only of one. These 
 discrepancies have been interpreted to his disadvantage, and 
 only a very faded tradition found in his account, in which, in 
 particular, the plurality of demons in the one sick man had 
 changed into a plurality of demoniacs ; but it would be just 
 as easy to suppose, conversely, that in order to bring out the 
 plurality of demons the more decidedly in each individual 
 affected, only one so affected was spoken of in the later repe- 
 tition. In all other portions, at all events, the narrative of 
 Matthew^, in comparison with those of the two others, appears 
 as the simpler. Even in his description of the state of the 
 two men possessed, he says in his few words respecting their 
 great fierceness, " so that no man could pass by the way on 
 which they dwelt," as much as the others say, especially 
 Mark, with their lengthened descriptions. The address of the 
 possessed to Jesus is, according to all three, in all essential 
 points the same as in the former history ; the question, that 
 is, as to what they have to do with him, and the prayer not 
 to torment them before the time. It is, however, more 
 natural that the man possessed should have made it when 
 Jesus came into his neighbourhood, than that, as Mark espe- 
 cially says in contradiction to Matthew, he should have run 
 from far off to meet the personage so dreaded. The narrator, 
 finding this not quite conceivable, endeavours to suggest a 
 motive for it in a previous command of Jesus that the devil 
 should come out of him ; a command as to which we are at 
 
184 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 a loss to see wlien Jesus was supposed to have given it if the 
 man possessed had not been before in his neighbourliood. 
 Indeed, Matthew's representation is more natural even from 
 the miraculous point of view ; for that a man thus diseased 
 should have recognised Jesus as the Messiah at first sight is 
 less conceivable on the further shore, where the events take 
 place, and where Jesus was less known than on the Galilean 
 side. How many devils there were in each of the possessed, 
 and even that there were several in one, is not said in the 
 first Gospel at all ; the question of Jesus as to the name of the 
 devil, and the answer that he was called Legion, because there 
 were many of them, is an addition of the second and third 
 Gospel. And it is obvious to surmise that the plurality was 
 only an inference drawn from the feature which follows, which 
 ]Matthew has in common with tlie others, the prayer, that is, 
 of the devils to be allowed to pass into the swine. This might 
 seem to assume an equality in number between the devils and 
 the swine, on account of which the herd in the one case is 
 balanced by a legion in the other. 
 
 The feature of the swine is one at which the faith of even 
 the most credulous expositors is accustomed to falter. For 
 even if the possession of human souls by evil spirits is con- 
 ceivable, it is not easy to see how the souls of animals can 
 be possessed in the same way ; and even if this notion is 
 admissiljle, there is a difficulty in the contradiction involved 
 in the alleged behaviour of the evil spirits. First they are 
 said, in order to avoid the necessity of going doM'n the 
 precipice or out of the country, to pray to be allowed to take 
 u]) their quarters in the swine, and immediately after, when 
 tlieir prayer has been granted, to have given the creatures 
 the impulse to rush into the sea, and so to have themselves 
 destroyed the very quarters they had asked for. Eeal devils 
 could not have acted so stupidly, but a legend or fiction 
 might easily fall into such a contradiction, when in sketching 
 its different features it was led by different views and objects. 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 185 
 
 As in this place not merely a simple history of an expulsion of 
 devils was to be given, but one remarkable in every way, it was 
 considered necessary not merely that the devils should "-o 
 out of the man, but, as a proof that they had really left him, 
 passed into another object. Tlie object best suited for this 
 was the unclean animal, the swine, and, if there was a herd of 
 them, a plurality of devils might be inferred from this cir- 
 cumstance, and thus a still further exaggeration for the whole 
 history be gained. The prayer of the devils might be alleged 
 as a cause for their going into the swine, and the idea of 
 this prayer resulted from that current at the period, that 
 beings of this sort preferred a parasitical existence in bodies, 
 even those of brutes, to a disembodied life in the desert or 
 possibly in hell. But how was it to appear that they had 
 really gone into the swine ? It was impossible that they 
 should speak out of swine as out of human beings : they 
 might fall to the earth and exhibit contortions, but, consi- 
 dering the strange movements which these creatures often 
 indulge in of themselves, this would be no certain sign. So 
 nothing remained but, what tlie brutes would certainly not 
 otherwise have done, to rush spontaneously to destruction, 
 i. e. to be driven to it by the devils ; a feature which, inde- 
 pendently of the particular case and the prayers of the evil 
 spirits that had preceded, was suited to their destructive 
 nature. There were other stories current at the time of such 
 proofs of expulsion of spirits. Josephus* tells of a Jewish 
 exorcist who, by means of a magic ring and Solomonian 
 talismans, drew devils out of the nose of persons possessed 
 by them ; that in order to convince the bystanders that the 
 evil spirit had really gone out, he placed close by a bucket 
 full of water, and ordered the devil to upset it, which the 
 latter really did ; and Josephus assures us that he himself 
 had been a joint spectator of this proof of the incompara- 
 ble wisdom of his countryman Solomon. In like manner 
 
 * Antiq. viii. 2, 5. 
 
186 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Philostratus* tells how Apollonius of Tyana ordered a devil 
 who had possessed a youtli to depart with a visible sign, 
 upon which the devil entreated to be allowed to upset a statue 
 that stood near, and this statue did really fall over just at the 
 moment when the devil left the young man. Such an object 
 however being, as these stories say, close at hand, there was, 
 no doubt, room for deception ; but how could this be supposed 
 possible when, like the herd of swine, according to ]\Iatthew's 
 express assurance, it was a considerable distance off? 
 
 In Matthew, the narrative concludes by saying that the 
 inhabitants of the town, on hearing the account given of the 
 transaction by the swineherds who had fled into it, came out 
 and besought the performer of miracles, who thus threatened 
 their material interests, to apply his energies elsewhere. 
 This is also in the accounts of the two other narrators ; but 
 besides this they describe further the condition of the man 
 who had been healed : how he who had been just before a 
 wild and raving maniac, sat at Jesus' feet clothed and in his 
 ri"ht mind, and how, when Jesus was about to return, he 
 expressed a wish to be allowed to accompany him ; that Jesus 
 however did not comply with his wish, but recommended 
 him to go home to his friends, and to tell them of the great 
 things that God had done unto him. This addition in par- 
 ticular, and subsequently the whole narrative, have lately sug- 
 gested to several critics an allegorical interpretation.-f The 
 man who had been just before possessed by a legion of un- 
 clean spirits, now sitting decently and in his right mind at 
 the feet of Jesus, appeared to them to be a type of the con- 
 version of the Gentile world, for which the Gadarene, as 
 an iidiabitant of a district for the most part heathen, was 
 particularly suited ; the legion of demons represented the 
 numerous heathen gods whicJi from the point of view of the 
 
 * Vita Apollon. iv. 20. 
 
 t Baur, Critical Examination of the Canonical Gospels, p. 430 ff. Yolkniar, 
 Keligion of Jesus, p. 229 ff. 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 187 
 
 earliest Christians appeared in the light of demons (1 Cor. x. 
 20 ff.) ; their elective affinity to the swine represented the 
 moral impurity of heathenism ; the refusal of Jesus to retain 
 with himself and the Twelve the man who had been healed, 
 and his command to him to publish among his relations and 
 friends the great things that God had done for him, would be, 
 as it were, the establishment of the heathen Apostolate and its 
 ministry, separated by Jesus himself from the Jewish Apostles. 
 Such an explanation is certainly very obvious in this case; 
 still it can never be anything but conjecture ; and how easily 
 it may be pressed too far is shewn by the circumstance that, 
 from the same point of view, the fetters which had been in 
 vain put upon this man were supposed to mean the legislation 
 of the ancient world, which had proved insufficient to restrain 
 it within the bounds of morality. 
 
 The object of the third of the miraculous cures indicated 
 above (Matt. xvii. 14—21; Mark ix. 14—29; Luke ix. 37— 
 43), which is described in its simplest form in Matthew, is to 
 prove the strength of the miraculous power in Jesus, not so 
 much by shewing the difficulty of the case in itself, as by 
 pointing out that his disciples proving at first to be incompe- 
 tent to render assistance, the Master himself does so with 
 ease. A comparison of this kind between the Master and his 
 disciples was involved in the nature of the Hebrew legend. 
 Elisha, to whom we have so often referred as a prototype in 
 the history of Jesus, had sent his servant Gehazi with his 
 staff, for the purpose of raising the dead son of his Shuna- 
 mitish hostess ; but Gehazi not having succeeded at all, Elisha 
 was compelled to go himself in order to raise the youth, which 
 however he does not do without considerable trouble (2 Kings 
 iv. 8 ff'., 29 — 37). Now, though it is a different descri]3tiou of 
 miracle, for it concerns a young man not dead but possessed, 
 this proceeding is in part copied in the act of Jesus, in part 
 surpassed, inasmuch as the latter has no occasion for the busy 
 activity of the prophet, but needs only to threaten the demon, 
 
188 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 in order to accomplish his object. In Matthew, the cause of 
 the inability of the disciples to heal the sick man is stated to 
 have been their ^vant of faith : Mark refers this want of faith 
 to the father of the youth, and invents upon the strength of it 
 a dialogue between Jesus and him, which we must, undoubt- 
 edly, attribute only to Mark himself. In Matthew, next to 
 the want of faith on the part of the disciples, a second cause 
 is stated for their failure; it is, that this kind of demons 
 Cometh not forth but by prayer and fasting. This does not 
 exactly agree with all the rest ; for if prayer and fasting were 
 necessary to drive out the devil in ij[uestion, then want of 
 faith was not the cause of the disciples' failure. So Luke 
 skilfully omits the speech about want of faith, and limits him- 
 self to that about fasting and prayer. ]\Iatthew appears here 
 to have combined together the different attempts made to 
 explain failure in driving out devils, such as must often have 
 occurred in Christian communities, without disadvantage to 
 the cause of Jesus. Still the inability of the disciples to suc- 
 ceed with this sick person in particular, appeared to reqviire 
 some explanation, retrospectively ; so even Luke delineates 
 the symptoms of his malady more fully than Matthew, while 
 Mark, as was said above, adds further that he was deaf and 
 dumb, and represents the youth as having been subject to this 
 malady from childhood. As they describe the case, it appears 
 to have been one of inveterate ejiilepsy : it is contrary to all 
 probability that such a malady should have given way at once 
 and for ever to a word, though supported by the greatest pos- 
 sible dignity on the part of the speaker, and by the greatest 
 possible faith on the part of the sick person; though in a 
 simpler case the circumstance that the disciples may very 
 possibly have failed, and then Jesus himself have stepped in, 
 may very easily have occurred. 
 
 It has been already remarked above that this class of the 
 miracles of Jesus, the cures of persons possessed, is wanting 
 in the fourth Gospel. We do indeed find in it the terms 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 189 
 
 Dfemonion and being Da3moniac, but they are only used as we 
 find them in classic Greek, and as the Evangelist himself 
 (x. 20) interprets the latter term, that is, as synonymous 
 with being mad or crazy. When Jesus asks the Jews at tlie 
 feast of Tabernacles, " Why seek ye to kill me ?" the people 
 answer him, Who seeks to kill thee ? thou hast a devil (John 
 vii. 19 ff.), i.e. thou art affected with hypochondriac fancies ; 
 as in Matthew (xi. 18) and Luke (vii. 33) it is said of John 
 the Baptist, that because he neither ate nor drank, his con- 
 temporaries declared that he had a devil. When, again, on 
 another occasion Jesus declares to the Jews that they are not 
 from God, and therefore they hear not the words of God, but 
 that he who keeps his word will not die for all eternity, they 
 maintain a second time that he must have a devil (viii. 48, 
 52), i.e. be foolish. Now it is true, indeed, that even in 
 classical Greek that expression was understood not merely 
 metaphorically, but an influence of demoniac beings and the 
 like was really assumed ; as in John the better class of 
 people meet those reproaches applied to Jesus by asking 
 whether a dsemonion, such as the opponents of Jesus sup- 
 posed to be in operation within him, could open the eyes of 
 the blind (John x. 21). Still this is not the idea of devils 
 as the causes on the one hand of complaints of different 
 kinds and that occur in other ways as well, on the other of 
 that particular form of malady which is called possession in 
 the strict sense. In the fourth Gospel this conception is not 
 found, and there is no mention in it either summarily or in 
 detail of possessed persons healed by Jesus. 
 
 There was a time when this was considered an advantage 
 in favour of John. The Biblical notion of demoniac posses- 
 sion was one of those which -were the first to seem intolerable 
 to modern interpretation. How welcome, then, was the 
 absence of so odious a popular belief from the writings of the 
 favourite disciple of Jesus ! But we neither find the theory 
 in John, nor the histories with which the theory was con- 
 
190 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 nected. It were to be desired that those histories, or others 
 like them, which the Synoptics give us as histories of pos- 
 sessed persons, had been given by John from another and 
 more rational point of view. Instead of this, there are no 
 such stories at all, and their absence is suspicious for the 
 reason that, according to all that we know of that period, 
 possession was the most common form of disease precisely 
 in those districts which were the scene of the events of the 
 evangelical history. From Josephus to Justin Martyr and 
 Philostratus downwards, Jewish, Christian, and in part Hea- 
 then Greek writings, are full of notices of persons possessed 
 and their cures. Consequently there is every historical pro- 
 bability in favour of the account of the three first Evangelists 
 that sick persons of this description frequently appeared 
 before Jesus. And when we remember the power exerted by 
 the imagination in diseases of this kind, there is, as has been 
 often remarked before, no form of complaint in which we 
 might more easily suppose a cure to have been performed by 
 the mere word of Jesus than this. Now the fourth Gospel 
 says nothing whatever of such sick persons or such cures, and 
 this omission does certainly not point to an author who was 
 a contemporary of the life and ministry of Jesus, or near to 
 him as a countryman who lived soon after. 
 
 No one has felt more deeply than Ewald how nearly this 
 circumstance affects the credibility of the fourtli Gospel. He 
 is right in recognising in the histories of possession an ele- 
 ment of the three CJospels of a specially historical character, 
 and he sees that if the fourth is to lay claim to historical 
 validity, it ought not to want this component element. And 
 while we are making the best of it, and observing tliat the 
 fourth Gospel does indeed want this element, and with it a 
 main support upon which its claim to historical validity might 
 be founded — Ewald, on the contrary, says that the Gospel is 
 without it now, but was not originally so ; between the fifth 
 and sixth chapters a portion of the Gospel has been lost, 
 
CURES OF PERSONS POSSESSED BY DEVILS. 191 
 
 which with other matter must also have contained an expul- 
 sion of a devil * We, who are unable to soar after the great 
 Eagle of Göttingen in so bold a flight of authoritative deci- 
 sion, assert, on the contrary, that as the fourth Evangelist 
 says nothing of expulsion of devils, he either knew nothing of 
 them or did not wish to know anything. If he knew nothing 
 of them, the reason cannot have been that occurrences of this 
 kind did not take place, for according to the credible testi- 
 mony of the synoptic Gospels, they really did take place; 
 but the occurrences must have been unknown to him. This 
 cannot have been the case if he was the Apostle John ; more- 
 over, it cannot have been the case if he lived at a later period, 
 but was acquainted with the synoptic Gospels or others con- 
 nected with them, in all of which the cures of persons possessed 
 played an important part ; and there is every indication of his 
 having been acquainted with these Gospels. If, therefore, 
 he says nothing of those histories with which he must have 
 been acquainted from these Gospels, it must be because he 
 did not wish to know anything about them. Baur supposes 
 that he may have found himself unable to extract from them 
 any important support for the point of view in which he 
 places the miracles of Jesus as proof of his Logos-nature.-f* 
 But the theory of possession, and the cure of it by Christ, 
 would have been sufficiently well adapted to the conflict and 
 antagonism between Light and Darkness, verging as it does 
 upon dualism, and running through the whole of his Gospel, 
 if it had been suited to the ideas of the Evangelist himself 
 and the readers for whom his Gospel was intended. In tliis 
 point of view, Köstlin has drawn attention to the fact that 
 the belief in demoniac possession, and a power of the JMessiah 
 over devils, was eminently Jewish and Jewish-Christian, and 
 that therefore the power of expelling devils is not enume- 
 rated by Paul among the gifts of the Spirit practised in the 
 
 * The Writing.? of John, i. 25, note. 
 t Critical Investigations, p. 255, note. 
 
192 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xii. 10, 28) ; while in the author 
 of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, the stress 
 which he lays upon this side of the ministry of Jesus belongs 
 to that Jewish-Christian element in him which may be re- 
 marked on other occasions.* To this may be added what 
 Bretchneider has already noticed,-f- that in the second century 
 after Christ the alleged cure of demoniacs by exorcism had 
 become so common, that a reference to these cures was not 
 considered, even by the most uneducated classes, to say nothing 
 of the educated Greeks, any proof of the higher nature of 
 Christ. It is enough to say that demons, and the expulsion 
 of demons, at the period, in the district and the state of culti- 
 vation in which and for which the author of the fourth Gospel 
 wrote, were not in good repute : the whole thing, as one may 
 see from Lucian, had, by means of magicians and impostors, 
 come into such discredit, that it appeared most desirable to 
 keep Jesus aloof from the whole of this department. 
 
 75. Cures, involuntary and at a distance. 
 
 So far we have arranged the miraculous cures of Jesus 
 according to the species of maladies to which they were 
 applied. They might also be arranged according to his 
 mode of operation in applying them. Beginning with those 
 in which he availed himself of material means, as saliva or 
 clay, we might pass on to those in which he effected the cure 
 simply by touching, then to those in which he operated by a 
 word alone, and in these again distinguish between the cases 
 in which the patient was present and himself heard the 
 words spoken, and those in which he was absent and the 
 
 * Origin and Composition of the Synoptic Gospels, p. 241. 
 t Probabilia, 118. 
 
CUilES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE, 103 
 
 words of Jesus operated at a distance. From all those cures, 
 which assume a definite individual act of will on the part of 
 Jesus as the cause of the cure, those cases, lastly, would have 
 to be distinguished in which he is touched by one or more 
 sick persons, and the cure is as it were stolen from him with- 
 out any separate act of will on his part. The miracles of 
 Jesus which we have considered so far, all come under the 
 head of conscious and intentional cures of persons present, 
 sometimes by means of material instruments, sometimes by 
 touching, sometimes by word ; on the other liand, involuntary 
 cures, and cures at a distance, have not yet been discussed. 
 
 According to several summary statements of the synoptic 
 Gospels (Matt. xiv. 36 ; Mark vi. 56), Jesus was sometimes 
 besought by sick persons or their connections to allow the 
 hem of his garment to be touched by the former for the 
 purpose of effecting a cure. If he consented, as we must 
 suppose he did, there was, on his part, a definite act of will 
 to effect the cure. If, on the other hand, as we also read 
 (Mark iii. 10 ; Luke vi. 19), the sick persons came upon him 
 at once, and sought to touch his garment, we do not know 
 whether he could take notice of each individual among those 
 who thus pressed upon him, and specially direct his will 
 towards them. But that the cure did not follow until he 
 knew upon whom it was conferred, we know for certain from 
 what is told of the woman with the issue of blood, whose 
 history is connected by all three Synoptics with that of the 
 raising of the daughter of Jairus (Matt. ix. 20 — 22 ; Mark v. 
 25—34 ; Luke viil 43—48). 
 
 In this account, however, there is a discrepancy between all 
 three narrators, in which we may plainly see the continued 
 growth of the myth, the increasing materialization of the idea 
 of miracle. In these summary statements, Llatthew says 
 (xiv. 36) that the sick persons who touched the hem of the 
 garment of Jesus became whole, Luke (vi. 19) that virtue 
 went out of him which healed all. Now it may indeed be 
 
 VOL. 11. o 
 
194 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 said that these two statements amount to the same thing, as 
 Matthew conceived the cure to be effected, not, as we have 
 supposed in many of these cases, by the power of imagination 
 in the sick persons, but by a miraculous power inherent in 
 Jesus. Still the more cautious or at least indefinite character 
 of the expression of Matthew, compared with the greater 
 concentration and materialism of that of Luke, is not to be 
 mistaken. Corresponding to this difference is the tone of 
 the more lengthened narrative given by each of the case of 
 the woman with the issue, where Mark, as might be expected, 
 is on the side of Luke, and even adds here and there a pic- 
 turesque touch. Matthew tells that when Jesus, attended 
 by his disciples, was going to the house of the Jewish ruler, 
 in order to raise his daughter who had just died, a woman, 
 who had had an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him 
 and touched the hem of his garment, with the firm convic- 
 tion that this touch would suftice to make her whole ; that 
 Jesus turned round, and, when he saw the woman, said to 
 her, " Daughter, be of good comfort ; thy faith hath made 
 thee whole !" And from that very hour the woman was 
 healed. There is nothing here, apart from the accounts of 
 the particular form and duration of the malady, which might 
 not have occurred as is stated. A sick woman may have 
 touched Jesus in a spirit of faith, may have traced an amend- 
 ment in herself in consequence of this touch, and may have 
 been dismissed by Jesus with a comforting word : it is true 
 that the Evangelist conceives the cause of this amendment 
 in her condition to have been a supernatural healing power 
 inherent in Jesus ; but what he says and represents Jesus 
 as saying is (|uite reconcilable with the lielief that it was the 
 faitli of the sick person that "made her whole." The mean- 
 ing of tlie narrative of the first Evangelist depends principally 
 upon the question as to what it was that made Jesus turn 
 round. This is not expressly stated by Matthew : following 
 his statement, we might suppose that Jesus felt in a perfectly 
 
CURES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE. ,195 
 
 natural manner that some one caught at his garment ; for, 
 according to Matthew, he was only attended by his disciples, 
 who did not press on him or touch him, so that as he walked 
 on he might easily feel such a stoppage. 
 
 Now it was just at this point that the narrative of Matthew 
 ceased to satisfy the belief in miracles. The woman, it was 
 supposed, must not merely have felt herself cured, but Jesus 
 also must have felt that healing virtue had gone out of him 
 on being touched by the woman, and have turned round 
 towards her for this and no other reason. The pressure of 
 the people, which Luke and Mark add to the attendance of 
 the disciples spoken of in Matthew, only avails to make this 
 turning round of Jesus inexplicable on natural grounds. It 
 was impossible for Jesus, in the crush and pressure of the 
 multitude, to distinguish, in a natural manner, one particular 
 touch of his garment. If he did distinguish it, there must 
 have been something supernatural, there must have been an 
 issue from him of his miraculous power, by which he so dis- 
 tinguished it. This is intended to be shewn by the question 
 of Jesus, the answer of the disciples, and, lastly, by the 
 woman's coming forward in consequence of Jesus' continued 
 inquiries. And as it appeared at the same time that the 
 healing virtue of Jesus had operated on his being touched by 
 the woman in a spirit of faith, without his being aware of 
 the person who was to benefit by it, he appeared no longer 
 merely as one who could produce a cure by his word and his 
 will, but as one in whom the healing power was always present, 
 in whom, to apply a well-known expression in a somewhat 
 different sense, all the fulness of the divine power of salvation 
 and healing dwelt bodily (Col. ii. 9). 
 
 From this point it is no great step to those narratives in 
 the Acts of the Apostles of sick persons being healed by the 
 application of handkerchiefs or aprons of Paul (xix. 11), nay, 
 even by the mere shadow of Peter falling upon them (v. 15). 
 Limiting the cases to certain maladies, and for the most part 
 
 o 2 
 
196 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to transient relief only of the sick persons, we would as little 
 deny the possibility of this, as that on the grave of the Abbe 
 Paris, or by the application of relics to faithful Catholics, 
 results have been sometimes attained which might be claimed 
 as cures. But these effects might be produced, whether the 
 bones in which faith was put had really belonged to a saint 
 or a sinner ; and likewise in the case of Jesus, whether he 
 were a religious character qualified to give us a standard, or 
 only a prophet in the sense of ordinary Judaism, provided 
 only he knew how to make his contemporaries put faith in 
 him. The case is the same if, as modern tlieologians are fond 
 of doing, the healing power of Jesus is supposed to have been 
 of the nature of animal magnetism ; except that an instanta- 
 neous and proportionally healing effect of magnetic power 
 upon sick persons of the most various descriptions, and with- 
 out continued magnetic relations, is unexampled in the history 
 of animal magnetism. 
 
 In involuntary cures of this kind, the healing power of Jesus 
 appears as completely material as an electric fluid, which, on 
 the body tilled with it being touched, issues forth upon that 
 which touches it. Conversely, in the cures at a distance, 
 instances of which are also given by our Evangelists, there is 
 quite a spiritual character, as the mere will of Jesus is sup- 
 posed to have shewn itself in operation upon a sick person 
 corporeally absent. So, as in those other cases, modern 
 theologians are glad to fall back on the analogy of animal 
 magnetism, in these they appeal to that property of spirit in 
 accordance with which we describe it as not beino" confined to 
 space. " A cure at a distance," says Hase,* " really involves, 
 as a spiritual operation, nothing inconceivable." Certainly, 
 as space is only for corporeal things ; and if there were pure 
 spirits, it is conceivable that they should operate upon one 
 another witliout being bound by tlie conditions of space. 
 But what is the use of such fancies as tliese, when, as in the 
 
 ' Life of Jesus, § 55 ; comp. 81. 
 
CUKES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE. 197 
 
 case before us, we are concerned not with pure but with 
 embodied spirits ? Embodied spirits, such as we have here, 
 not only in Jesus, but in the sick persons, can only operate 
 outside of themselves by means of their bodies, consequently 
 under the conditions of space. Consequently, the appeal to the 
 nature of spirit, in order to explain a cure at a distance, is only 
 a mere form of speech, without any real corresponding meaning. 
 
 Of cures of this kind, Matthew and Mark have one in 
 common, Matthew and Luke the other, and John also in a 
 somewhat different form. The first is the healing of the 
 daughter of the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv. 21 — 28), the 
 latter that of the servant or son of the captain or king's 
 of&cer in Capernaum (Matt. viii. 5 — 13; Luke vii. 1 — 10; 
 John iv, 46 — 54). In the first account, the sick person in 
 both Evangelists is a woman possessed; in the other, we 
 have in Matthew a man with the palsy, grievously tormented, 
 in Luke and John a person stated generally to be sick unto 
 death. In the first case, all the stress is laid upon the 
 original refusal of Jesus to use his miraculous power for the 
 benefit of the heathen woman, and his subsequent consent in 
 consequence of the persevering faith of the woman; in the 
 second, everything, at least in Matthew, turns upon the fact 
 that while Jesus is ready to go into the captain's house, the 
 latter declares his confidence that Jesus can perform the cure 
 at a distance. We have already had occasion to consider the 
 first narrative apart from the miracle ;* as to the miracle, 
 which is all that remains to discuss, it coincides with the rest 
 of the history. 
 
 In this we again see clearly, first and foremost, how, in the 
 repetition and then in the subjective re-touching, it passes 
 through a course of continuous exaggeration. In Matthew, 
 the captain beseeches Jesus to aid his sick boy ; Jesus offers 
 to go and lieal him ; the captain considers this too great a 
 condescension, and also not necessary ; Jesus need only speak 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 299. 
 
198 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 a word and it will take effect, as certainly as when he, the 
 captain, orders one of his subalterns to perform something 
 at a distance ; Jesus holds up this faith on the part of the 
 heathen man to his compatriots as an example which may 
 put them to shame. To the captain he grants the cure in 
 which he has expressed his faith, and the cure takes place at 
 the self-same hour. Luke describes the "boy" in Matthew, 
 who might also be possibly a son, as a servant ; but in order 
 to suggest a more satisfactory motive for the captain's zealous 
 eagerness for his cure, he also describes him as a particularly 
 valuable servant to his master. All these are unimportant 
 features. But we may recognise in the other discrepancy a 
 more definite object, that discrepancy consisting in the fact 
 that the captain, who in Matthew comes to Jesus in person, 
 sends, in Luke, the elders of the Jews to pray Jesus to come 
 into his house. The object of this change appears in what 
 these elders do ; besides conveying the request, they recom- 
 mend the heathen captain as a friend of the Jews who had 
 built a synagogue for them. If we understand this to mean 
 that Jesus was to be justified, as it were, for putting his mira- 
 culous power at the service of a heathen, such a turn might 
 certainly be expected rather in a Gospel of Judaising than of 
 Pauline tendency. If, on the other hand, it is understood to 
 imply a general recommendation of the Heathen to the Jews 
 in words to this effect. See, ye Jews and Jewish Christians, 
 there are among the Heathen persons of so graceful a charac- 
 ter and so right-minded as this, and you are very wrong in 
 utterly condemning them — we see how such a turn suited 
 completely the scheme of a Gospel, the object of which was 
 to reconcile Jewish and Pauline Christianity. Exactly in the 
 same way we see in the second part of the work, the Acts of 
 the Apostles (x. 1 ff., 22), also a Eoman captain, Cornelius, as 
 a candidate for Christian baptism, recommended by the excel- 
 lent testimonials given by all the Jews to his fear of God and 
 his benevolence and charity. 
 
CURES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE. 199 
 
 In Matthew, tlie captain had at first only begged, generally, 
 for help for his sick boy, and on Jesus offering to go with 
 him into his house, modestly, and in a spirit of faith, declines 
 this, and only prayed for a Messianic command. In Luke, he 
 sends first the elders of the Jews praying Jesus to come to 
 save his servant ; then, on Jesus going with them and ap- 
 proaching the house, he sends some friends to meet him, 
 declining his visit and begging for a simple word. The 
 narrative of Matthew is perfectly self-consistent ; but in the 
 account of Luke there is an internal inconsistency. If in the 
 first instance the captain has asked Jesus, through the elders, 
 to vouchsafe him a personal visit, what could afterwards have 
 made him change his mind so as to countermand this visit 
 by a second message ? The author himself seems to have 
 felt that there was a contradiction here, so he endeavours to 
 reconcile the two messages by the remark put into the mouth 
 of the bearers of the second (ver. 7), that the sending of the 
 first was intended to imply that the captain thought himself 
 unworthy to communicate directly with Jesus, and conse- 
 quently to be visited personally by him. Nevertheless, he 
 had, in the first message, begged for this visit in plain words, 
 and therefore it still remains a question how he came sub- 
 sequently to countermand it. In the history of the daughter 
 of Jairus, we find in Luke and Mark, as distinguished from 
 Matthew, a similar deprecating message. In the first Gospel 
 (ix. 18 ff.), the daughter is reported to Jesus by the father 
 as having just died, upon which the process of Jesus visiting 
 the house for the purpose of raising the dead goes on witli- 
 out interruption. In Luke (viii. 41 K) and Mark (v. 22 ff.), 
 the maiden is lying in her last agonies, and the father prays 
 Jesus to come and save her life ; but as Jesus is going, her 
 death takes place, and the father is met by a message from 
 the house, recommending him not to trouble the ]\Iaster, as 
 the maiden is dead, and now nothing can do any good. In 
 this case, we may suppose that the father, though he had 
 
20Ü MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 before begged for the visit of Jesus, did not wish to trouble 
 the latter any more ; for, as tlie state of things in his house 
 had changed in the meantime, he might now have ceased to 
 wish for what he had before gained by his entreaties. On the 
 other hand, in the history of the Capernaum captain, where 
 the circumstances had continued the same, there was no motive 
 for such a change of mind ; and the supposition that it has 
 been improperly transferred out of the other history into this 
 seems the more probable, as the visit of Jesus in person is on 
 each occasion declined in the same words.* 
 
 The two synoptic accounts have tins feature in common, 
 that the petitioner, by his faith, outbids the offer of Jesus, 
 i. e. Jesus is ready to do more, but the petitioner prefers 
 less, in the conviction that from Jesus even the less is more 
 than enough. Such a relation between the Logos Christ and 
 a human being is contrary to the ground-plan of the fourth 
 Gospel. According to this, the hu.man being is never to per- 
 form more than the God in Man had expected; but, conversely, 
 the latter must always be doing far more than the former 
 could have believed, or even conceived : surprise, outljidding, 
 is here as exclusively on the side of Christ, as on the side of 
 man there is nothing but backwardness in faith and under- 
 standing. It was only when remodelled in this spirit that 
 the narrative availed at all ; but, so remodelled, it was of 
 much avail for the purposes of the fourth Gospel. The author 
 seems to have compounded the features of his own story from 
 those of the two forms which he had before him in the older 
 Gospels. He takes the boy spoken of in Matthew to have 
 been, not, as Luke calls him, a servant, but a son of the peti- 
 tioner ; on the other hand, he knows nothing of the palsy 
 which, according to Matthew, tortured the patient, but, with 
 Luke, repi'esents him as being on the point of death, without 
 stating the form of the malady. As in Älatthew, the peti- 
 
 * Luke viii. 49 (daiigliter of Juinis) : /<?) aKvWe tuv öiCuaKaXov. Luke vii. G 
 (captain of Cai)ernauin) : Kvptt, /o) lyKvWov. 
 
CURES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE. 201 
 
 tioner applies personally to Jesus, not with an undefined 
 prayer for aid, but, as in Luke, witli a petition still more 
 definitely stated, that Jesus would accompany him for the 
 purpose of healing the sick person. Now here comes in the 
 jjeculiarly Johannine turn of the narrative. In two of the 
 Synoptics, Jesus readily accompanies him, but is stopped 
 either by the faith of the captain or by his messengers. In 
 the fourth Gospel, on the contrary, Jesus expresses his dis- 
 pleasure at the captain's request, in which, however, the 
 latter perseveres ; and while in the other accounts it is the 
 captain who surprises Jesus and ourselves by his faith in the 
 mere word of Jesus as sufficient for the cure of the distant 
 patient, in this, to our surprise and that of the man, Jesus 
 pronounces spontaneously the talismanic word which operates 
 at a distance, and now for the first time, after receiving the 
 rebuke from Jesus, faith in the mere word of Jesus arises all 
 at once in the man's mind. 
 
 Had the petitioner been from the first placed in the unfa- 
 vourable light of a man possessed only of the coarsest notions 
 of the higher power of Jesus, then, in a Gospel which looks 
 upon the heathen world as the proper soil of Christianity, he 
 could no longer be a Eoman captain, i.e. a heathen; he was 
 tlierefore transformed into an officer of the king, i.e. the Gali- 
 lean tetracli Herod Antipas, who had also the title of king 
 (Matt. xiv. 9 ; Mark vi. 14), and, by the expression of Jesus 
 directed to him, " Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not 
 believe," set up as a representative of carnal miracle-seeking 
 Judaism. As one, however, who is led by Jesus to believe in 
 his mere word, he appears contrasted with the stiff-necked 
 Jews in the character of those Galileans who in our Gospel 
 form the transition to the more susceptible Samaritans or 
 Heathen. Capernaum, as stated in the synoptic accounts, is 
 his appropriate dwelling-place; but the fourth Evangelist 
 does not choose that his Jesus should sojourn in this city, 
 which in the Jewish -Christian tradition appeared as the 
 
202 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 proper seat of liis ministry (comp. ii. 12) ; the place of Lis 
 Galilean performance of miracles is here, on the contrary, 
 Cana (iv. 46) : and by this arrangement in the present case, 
 as the sick person lay at Capernaum, an increase of the 
 distance, and consequently an exaggeration of the miracle, was 
 gained. 
 
 We see from another feature that, among other things, the 
 author of the fourth Gospel had in view in a general way to 
 give more emj)liatic importance to the supernatural element 
 in the occurrence, and to accredit that element to the utn^ost 
 of his power. In Matthew, it is said that after Jesus had 
 pronounced the words that guaranteed the cure, at the self- 
 same hour the boy was healed ; in Luke, that when the mes- 
 sengers came back into the house they found the sick servant 
 recovered. Here certainly, from the nature of the case, no 
 circumstantial investigation iuto the moment at which the 
 cure took place was required, as in Luke the messengers 
 found Jesus already in the neighbourhood of the house, and 
 in Matthew the captain himself came upon him in a street of 
 the same little town in which his house was : it was, therefore, 
 a matter of course that when he or his messengers on return- 
 ing home found the sick person recovered, that the recovery 
 must have followed the words of Jesus. In John, on the 
 contrary, on account of the distance between Cana and Caper- 
 naum, it is not until the following day that the father comes 
 home, and there was therefore room for the investigation as to 
 whether it was not until that day or on the day before, and 
 at what hour on the day before, that the amendment in the 
 health of the sick person took place. This inquiry is now 
 actually made by the father of the boy, and it is found that 
 the hour of the amendment coincided accurately with that in 
 which Jesus spoke the word of life for the benefit of the son. 
 Now the laboriousuess of this investigation and settlement of 
 the time, if we compare it with the simple account of Matthew, 
 gives to the statement of the fourth Gospel a very second- 
 
CURES, INVOLUNTARY AND AT A DISTANCE. 203 
 
 hand character, and proves it in this case also to be the latest 
 subjective re-touching of the matter of the Synoptics. 
 
 In the case of this history it is particularly clear that be- 
 tween the view of the strongest believer in miracles and that 
 of Eeimar, so long as the evangelical accounts are considered 
 historical, there is no intermediate point. For every natural 
 or even half-natural explanation of the result is excluded, 
 because as the patient is at a distance from the performer of 
 the miracle, it is impossible that faith should have been 
 excited in the former by the personal impress of the latter. 
 If, according to Matthew, Jesus said to the captain, " Go thy 
 way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee ;" or, 
 according to John, to the officer of the king, " Go thy way, 
 thy son liveth !" he must either have felt conscious that he 
 could effect such a cure, i.e. he must have been a performer 
 of miracles in the sense of the most decided supranaturalism ; 
 or, if he attributed to himself such miraculous power as this 
 without any ground, he was a wild enthusiast ; while, if he 
 ascribed it to himself with the consciousness that he did not 
 really possess it, he was an audacious cheat and impostor. To 
 understand the words, " Thy son lives," as Ewald does, and 
 explain them aw^ay to mean that Jesus only intended to say 
 to the father that his son would not die, and then to speak 
 of a miraculous {i.e., in plain words, accidental) coincidence 
 between the time at which the words were uttered and the 
 hour of the amendment, is an evasion and of no use. For no 
 one but either a charlatan who was as inconsiderate as he 
 was shameless, or a man who was conscious that he could put 
 an end to an illness, would declare that a sick person at a 
 distance, represented to him as dying, would not die. In this 
 case, if in any, criticism alone points out a mode of escape 
 from a superstitious belief in miracles to which we cannot 
 bring ourselves, and a naturalistic pragmatism altogether 
 unsatisfactory. We have not here a history, but a Messianic 
 myth, which has grown out of the myth of the prophet in the 
 
204 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 Old Testament. The attribute ordinarily ascribed to a pro- 
 phet was tlie power of healing on the sjiot by bodily contact ; 
 it was this that the leprous Naamau (2 Kings v. 11) says 
 he expected of Elisha ; and when, instead of this, the prophet, 
 without quitting his house, tells him he is to wash seven 
 times in the Jordan, he considers himself mocked, because he 
 expects no result in doing so. Still he allows himself to be 
 persuaded to follow the advice, and is healed; i.e. the ]3i»pliet 
 has performed a miracle at a distance, as the bathing in the 
 Jordan, as in the case of the Johannin e cure of the blind man 
 the washing in the pool of Siloa, is only the form with which 
 it was his pleasure to connect the operation of his word. Tlie 
 ]\[essiah could not be supposed to have fallen short of such 
 miraculous power; and, above all, the Being in whom the 
 Creative Word of God had become flesh, what would such a 
 Being require but a mere word to operate in the furthest dis- 
 tance so as to heal and restore to life ? 
 
 76. Cases of Eaising of the Dead. 
 
 Turning now from those cures effected by Jesus which we 
 do not find mentioned in the list of miracles, Matt. xi. 5, to 
 the order of the miracles there enumerated, we find, in the 
 next and last place, raising of the dead to life. Neither the 
 cures of leprosy nor these cases are taken from the prophetic 
 passage (Isaiah xxxv. 5 ff.), as are the other Messianic signs 
 to which Jesus appeals in Matthew, but still the raising of 
 the dead was suggested by the prophetic prototype. Elijah 
 (1 Kings xvii. 17 ff.) and Elisha had raised the dead, and 
 among the divine acts which, in accordance with this proto- 
 type, the Jews expected at the time of the Messiah, raising of 
 the dead is particularly mentioned.* 
 
 Added to this there was an element involved in Christian- 
 * See above, Vol. i. p. 201 ff., the passages quoted from Tancluiina. 
 
CASES OF EAISING OF THE DEAD. 205 
 
 ity itself. It was Jesus who had brought life and immortality 
 to light (2 Tim. i. 10) ; the Christians were not like other 
 men who have no hope beyond the grave (1 Thess. iv. 13) ; 
 Christianity was the religion of the resurrection and of im- 
 mortality. A future resurrection of the dead to a new and 
 immortal life was, indeed, according to Daniel, xii. 2, also 
 the doctrine of later and especially of Pharisaic Judaism 
 (2 Mace, vii.) ; but as it was not found in the books of Moses 
 and of the older prophets, but required to be foisted upon 
 them by means of artificial interpretation, it was not recog- 
 nised by the Sadducees, and continued as an ajjple of discord 
 between the schools, and little else but a scholastic opinion. 
 The raising of the dead was expected to be brought about, 
 sometimes by God himself, sometimes it was represented as 
 to be undertaken by the Messiah, according as the conception 
 of the latter took a form more or less supernatural ; and 
 indeed this conception was itself uncertain and indefinite 
 until the appearance of Jesus, from whom it received its due 
 precision and living spirit. From the time of his ministry it 
 was known, i.e. his adherents knew, what conception was to 
 be formed of the Messiah ; from the time of his departure 
 they knew — they knew it because they wished it, and knew 
 it for certain because they wished it ardently — that he would 
 return immediately, in order to fulfil all those Messianic func- 
 tions which on his first presence upon earth had been left in 
 arrear, among them the raising of the dead. In view of this 
 immediate raising of the dead by Christ, death appeared to 
 Christians nothing but a sleep, and the expression of Jesus 
 over the daughter of Jairus (Matt. ix. 24), " She is not dead, 
 but sleepeth," apart from the miracle with which it is here 
 brought into connection, contains the early Christian view of 
 death generally. The faith in the resurrection of Christ, i.e. 
 in the fact that he had been raised to life by God (1 Cor. xv. 
 12 ff.), involved, indeed, the principal guarantee for the future 
 resurrection ; but together with this passive resurrection, men 
 
206 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 desired to see also active proofs of the exercise of this power 
 on the part of him who was to raise the dead ; he must not 
 merely have been raised from the dead himself, but have also 
 himself raised the dead. 
 
 If the answer to the message of the Baptist, which in the 
 present section we are making the basis of our discussion, 
 was really spoken by Jesus, he attributes to himself, together 
 with the restoration of the blind to sight, &c., also the raising 
 of the dead ; not indeed in any other sense than that in which 
 (IMatt. viii. 22) he replied to the man who wished first to bury 
 his father, commanding him to leave to the (spiritually) dead 
 the task of burying the (corporeally) dead, the symbolical 
 sense, that is, that he is able to quicken anew the dead mind 
 of man with a feeling for something more exalted, and fill it 
 with a new moral aim. In this sense the fourth Evangelist, 
 in particular, framed the Christian expression, making his 
 Jesus say (xi. 25), "I am the resurrection and the life ; he 
 that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ;" 
 or (v. 21), "As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth 
 them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." In these 
 expressions we must, indeed, understand to be implied the 
 future resuscitation of those who are corporeally dead, and at 
 the same time that spiritual quickening which proceeds from 
 Jesus. 
 
 But whatever was the theory of the early Christian circle, 
 this present spiritual awakening could not suffice as a guaran- 
 tee for the future corporeal resurrection of the dead. Jesus, 
 during his life on earth, must also have raised the corporeally 
 dead, at least in some cases. Then, and not before, could it 
 be known for certain that there dwelt in him a power to recal 
 all the dead to life on his more glorious second coming. And 
 now the legend of the prophets came in opportunely. As 
 Elijah and Elisha had each raised a dead body to life, so 
 Jesus the Messiah must at least have done as much. Matthew 
 and Mark are satisfied with one history of this description, 
 
CASES OF RAISING OF THE DEAD. 207 
 
 the raising of the daughter of Jairus (^Matt. ix. 18 ff.; Mark 
 V. 22 ff.) ; Luke gives two of thein, namely, together with 
 the one just mentioned (in him, viii. 41 ff.), that of the youth 
 at ISTain (vii. 11 ff.) ; John only one indeed, the raising of 
 Lazarus (chap, xi.), but one of such a character tliat it stands 
 for all, and that, in comparison with it, every other is simply 
 superfluous. 
 
 The theme of the first account of a raising of the dead, 
 common to the three synoptic Evangelists, is, as has been 
 already remarked, the text, "She is not dead, but sleepeth;" 
 i.e. the fundamental Christian view of death as merely a 
 sleep. We find this theme here embodied in the form of 
 a miraculous history, and indeed in its simplest form in 
 Matthew. The father of the maiden, described indefinitely 
 as a ruler, announces to Jesus the death of his daughter as 
 having just occurred, petitioning him to come and lay his 
 hand upon her, so will she become alive again. Jesus, at- 
 tended by his disciples, goes wäth him. The interlude of the 
 woman with an issue of blood having taken place, they come 
 into the house of mourning, and here they find, in accordance 
 with the bad habit of the Jews at that time, the burial of the 
 dead body of the girl about to take place in a few hours, the 
 musicians already on the spot, and a noisy crowd of mourners 
 of other kinds whom Jesus orders out, alleging as a reason 
 what we have just described as the theme of the narrative ; 
 whereupon, however, he is ridiculed by the people. The new 
 Christian view of death is here immediately contrasted with 
 that of the old Jews as a heathen view. Even the Jew of 
 the old style, with his faith in a resurrection, not grounded 
 on the principles of Moses, but wavering in the midst of the 
 conflicts of the schools — a resurrection, moreover, which lay 
 in the distant background of a long life amid disembodied 
 shades, belonged no less than the heatlien to those who 
 have no hope ; the noisy death- wail might therefore suit 
 their notion, but, on the Christian point of view, it had to be 
 
208 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 put aside as something altogether inappropriate ; while, con- 
 versely, Christian confidence iu death appeared to Jews, as 
 well as to Heathens, a ridiculous delusion. 
 
 It is Christ who has put an end to the inconsolable sorrow 
 for the dead felt by the ancient world, in reality by the fact 
 that the hope of a resurrection, not long to be delayed, and 
 of a happy life with him, was connected with faith in him for 
 all who believed ; here, on the other hand, where this relation 
 is put in the form of a miraculous history, the object of the 
 history is attained by his recalling, on the spot, to earthly life 
 the maiden for whom the death- wail was intended. After 
 having j)ut out the profane multitude, he accomplishes this 
 simply by taking the hand of the maiden, who immediately 
 rises ; in complete contrast with the instances of raising the 
 dead by the prophets, which were not effected without long 
 exerted efforts by the performers of the miracles. 
 
 Now it is certainly a proof of great simplicity and naivete, 
 that, according to Matthew, the father at once assumes that 
 Jesus need only come and lay his hand upon the body of the 
 child, and she will immediately come to life again. By his 
 looking upon it thus as a matter of course, so extraordinary 
 a miracle as a raising of the dead is, appeared to be de- 
 graded to the level of an ordinary thing, or at all events 
 to something short of a miracle. It appeared greater if it was 
 not expected, but nevertheless took place. If indeed the 
 father accosted Jesus, as he is said in Matthew to have done, 
 with a petition to come to his daughter who was dead, he 
 must have considered her recal to life as possible. On this 
 account Luke and Mark represent him as going to Jesus 
 before the girl is dead. The laying on of hands, for which he 
 petitions, is supposed to heal only those who are dangerously 
 sick ; it is not assumed that it is also sufficient to resuscitate 
 a person already dead. But it was necessary that Jesus 
 should have raised a person in that state. So in Mark and 
 Luke the girl dies in the interval between the father's con- 
 
CASES OF liAISING OF THE DEAD. . 209 
 
 versation with Jesus, and his arrival at the house of mourn- 
 ing, and now tlie supposition that the assistance of the 
 performer of miracles conies too late, is enunciated by- 
 people who come out of the house, and recommend the 
 father, now that it is all over with the child, not to trouble 
 the Master any longer. Whether, on receiving this in- 
 telligence, the father himself also abandoned all hope we 
 are not told, as Jesus anticipates anything he might say 
 by the encouraging exhortation not to fear, but only to believe, 
 and his child shall be saved. By this the way is prepared 
 for the subsequent declaration that the maiden is not dead 
 but only sleeping, but this declaration does not produce so 
 striking an effect as in Matthew, where it comes in without 
 any such introduction. Moreover, we see clearly, on com- 
 paring the form in which the history is given in Luke and 
 Mark with that in Matthew, that the raising of the dead is 
 here brought in supplementarily, and placed as it were upon 
 a pedestal. The mode in which the two middle Evangelists 
 introduce it, is only the objective statement of the reflection 
 that cures of the sick by word and laying on of hands are 
 indeed marvellous enough, but still something conceivable by 
 the human mind, while the raising of the dead transcends all 
 human thought and intelligence. Luke and Mark limit more 
 accurately the father's office of " Euler," by stating that he 
 was ruler of a synagogue, and they also give his name. 
 But this fact is no advantage to their account over that of 
 Matthew, as the first feature might be an addition from the 
 narrator's own invention, while the name of Jair might be 
 chosen simply on account of its meaning in the language.* 
 Another feature peculiar to Luke, that, namely, of the girl 
 
 * The Hebrew word Jair (which is moreover the name, among others, of a son of 
 Manasseh, the son of Joseph, 4 Mos. xxxii. 41 ; Josh. xiii. 30) means, he will 
 enlighten. In Ps. xiii. 4, it is said, the same word being used, Lord, lighten thou 
 mine eyes, that I sleep not in death. The father might have got this name because 
 this quickening enlightenment shewed itself in bis daughter. 
 
 VOL. IL P 
 
210 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 having been her father's only child, only serves the purpose 
 of making the scene more pathetic, and appears to be taken 
 from the history of the son of the widow of Nain, where Luke 
 likewise has it, as the account in him and Mark, that the 
 girl was twelve years old, is probably introduced in con- 
 sequence of the interweaving with the history we are con- 
 sidering, the narrative of the woman with the issue of blood, 
 the period of whose illness is fixed by all the narrators at 
 twelve years. Matthew is the only one who states that Jesus 
 ordered out the people, who could do no good, before setting 
 about the performance of the miracle ; he says nothing of 
 his having also excluded some of the disciples. On the other 
 hand, according to Luke and JMark, Jesus takes with him, 
 besides the parents of the girl, only a very small and select 
 number of his disciples, Peter, James, and John ; and in their 
 account, in addition to the stretching out of the hand, by 
 means of which Matthew represents the raising of the girl 
 as having been effected, there comes the word of command, 
 " Damsel, arise," which Mark reiDcats in the original Aramaic, 
 which Jesus used. In this case also, as in that of the cure 
 of the deaf and dumb man, which is peculiar to Mark, the 
 object of this last-mentioned feature can only be to invest 
 the miraculous act with greater mystery ; and this is also 
 the object of the exclusion of the disciples, with the exception 
 of that triumvirate, and of the command, at the conclusion, 
 not to publish the occurrence, while Matthew represents it 
 as having been, without hesitation, proclaimed abroad over 
 the whole country ; the command of Jesus in Mark and Luke 
 to give the damsel something to eat, is a feature which adds 
 vividness to the scene, and one which the natural explanation 
 in vain endeavours to turn to its advantage. 
 
 As a parallel to the history of the raising of a damsel, 
 there arose another, the object of which is a boy or youth. 
 The formation of such a parallel was suggested by the Old 
 Testament prototypes, as Elijah and Elisha were said, each 
 
CASES OF KAISING OF THE DEAD. 211 
 
 of them, to have raised the young and only son of a mother, 
 who, moreover, in the history of Elijah, is a widow. We find 
 all these elements, calculated as they are to excite sympathy, 
 repeated in the history of the youth of Nam as given in 
 Luke, and which, moreover, in this respect stands in the 
 relation of an exaggerated account, as compared with that 
 of the daughter of Jairus. The mother, the widow, accom- 
 panying to the grave her only son, has a stronger claim on 
 our sympathy than the father whose daughter (as to whom, 
 moreover, we only learn from the narrator of our history that 
 she also was an only child) has died ; in that account the 
 mourners are especially mentioned as hired attendants, whose 
 conduct is only disgusting ; in this it is the bereaved mother 
 who, by her tears for her only son, moves the compassion of 
 the performer of miracles. Thus we find also in the address 
 of Jesus to the widow, when we compare it with that to 
 Jairus, the same substantive meaning, only changed from the 
 objective into the subjective. If, as Jesus had said to Jairus, 
 it is really the case that death is only a sleep, the inference 
 is, what Jesus says to the widow of Nain, and Luke had 
 already introduced in the history of the daughter of Jairus, 
 that the dead are not to be wept for. On the point of view 
 of the early Christians, this follows even if they continue 
 dead, as their resurrection is at hand with the second coming 
 of Christ ; in the miraculous history, indeed, the consolation 
 appears to be founded upon the fact that the dead person is 
 to be immediately recalled to life on earth. But that such a 
 bringing out of the sympathetic side is quite in the character 
 of the third Gospel, any one may see who remembers the prin- 
 cipal parables peculiar to him, as distinguished from those of 
 Matthew. 
 
 But even as regards what actually took place, this case of 
 raising the dead is an exaggeration, as compared with that 
 considered above. The daughter of Jairus had just died, and 
 was lying, as we must suppose not yet cold, upon her bed. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 If her recal to life was used as a proof of the miraculous power 
 of Jesus, how obvious it M'as for the unbelievers to suspect 
 that the damsel was not really dead, but had only fainted, and 
 would have come to herself again, even without the interven- 
 tion of Jesus. The case was different with a dead person who 
 was already being carried to the grave ; he was beyond com- 
 parison more certainly, was, so to say, notoriously dead. It 
 was, indeed, the custom among the Jews at that time, as has 
 been already mentioned, to bury the dead very soon after 
 death, usually within four hours ; but still some test of death 
 was instituted which had power of proof, at least for contem- 
 poraries. Consequently Philostratus also, in his biography 
 of ApoUonius, the Neo-Pythagorean performer of miracles, has 
 copied, in particular, this history.* He represents his hero 
 as meeting the bier of a bride, whom he recals to life by a 
 touch and a few words. In the case of Jesus, it requires only 
 the command to the youth to rise up; the touch had been 
 only for the cofiin, to make the bearers stop. Then, when the 
 dead upon the bier had raised himself into a sitting posture, 
 it is said that Jesus gave him to his mother. And this is 
 described in exactly the same words as the act of Elijah with 
 reference to the son of the widow of Sarepta raised by him 
 (1 Kings xvii. 23). 
 
 It may, however, be conceded to the natural explanation 
 that in this case, in which the person to be raised is already 
 being borne to the grave, there is not, considering the Jewish 
 custom of early burial, any absolute security that the person 
 believed to be dead was not only apparently so. So much 
 the more certain is it that Jesus, when he forbids the mother 
 to weep, orders the bearers to stop and the young man to rise, 
 does not at any moment conduct himself as if he recognised 
 in the condition of the body an apparent death, but as if he 
 had the power and the will to restore to life one really dead. 
 
 * Coini). Baur, Apolloniu.s of Tyana and Christ, p. 145. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 213 
 
 Quite as little can the astonishment of the people, amounting 
 almost to terror, their praise to God that he had visited his 
 people by sending a great Prophet among them, be looked upon 
 as the mere discovery of an apparent death. Consequently 
 the history, as narrated by the Evangelist, is intended as a 
 real raising of the dead. If we cannot conceive the occur- 
 rence of such an event, then we have remaining, not a natural 
 history, but no history at all, and we shall have to look for 
 the elements out of which the narrative has arisen, in the 
 same department in which the impossibility lies of looking 
 upon it as a history, — in the conceptions of God and his reve- 
 lation in nature and the world of mankind, which among the 
 Jews and the most ancient Christians were different, and pro- 
 duced different effects from what they produce among our- 
 selves. 
 
 77. The Eaising of Lazarus. 
 
 It was felt, however, that the forms in which the miracu- 
 lous act of raising the dead appears in the history which 
 we have just been considering, did not put an end to all 
 doubt, and that the proof which it was intended to establish 
 was still imperfect. And this was the case, not in the first 
 instance with the rationalists of modern times, or the ancient 
 opponents of Christianity, but from the very beginning, within 
 the Christian circle itself. What men wished to be most 
 certain of by these histories of the raising of the dead, was 
 the future resurrection of the dead by the power of Christ on 
 his coming again. Now this second coming was, in the first 
 years of Christianity, considered so near, that the Apostle Paul, 
 for example, still hoped to live to see it (1 Cor. xv. 51 ff.; 
 1 Thess. iv. 15 ff.). But still, taking only Christians into 
 consideration, a considerable number of these, and the longer 
 
214 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 time went on the more the numbers increased, had long 
 since died, been buried and had seen corruption, and though 
 he in his lifetime had recalled to life certain persons, who 
 were scarcely dead and not yet buried, it was by no means 
 sufliciently established from this fact that the re-awakening 
 power of Christ on his return would extend to the former. 
 It was necessary that the miracle of the past, which should 
 guarantee the future, should stand to that future in a more 
 direct relation, as a proof that some time or other all who 
 should be lying in the grave should hear the voice of the 
 Son of God and come out of it (John v. 28 ff.) ; it was neces- 
 sary that during his earthly pilgrimage he should have called 
 forth out of the grave, with a mighty voice, one who had 
 already been lying in it for some time, and been given up to 
 corruption (John xi. 17, 39, 43). This is the origin of the 
 Johannine history of the raising of the dead, in which, more- 
 over, all the threads coincide that constitute the peculiarity 
 of the Gospel. Among all the three raisings of the dead 
 mentioned in the Gospels, that of the daughter of Jairus, 
 which is common to them all, has been described as the posi- 
 tive, that of the youth of Nain as the comparative, to which 
 the narrative of the raising of Lazarus, peculiar to John, 
 forms the superlative ; but this is exactly the relation in 
 which the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, also stand, 
 in general, to each other. In Matthew, the miraculous ele- 
 ment appears throughout in simple solidity, as if it could not 
 be otherwise ; in Luke, the principle from which it proceeds, 
 and the effect upon the mind, are each in a degree brought 
 more fully to light ; in John, lastly, everything, principle and 
 miraculous act, mental impression and spiritual meaning of 
 the miracle, are all raised to their highest expression, and 
 these different sides at the same time brought into a unity 
 which does not fail to produce its effect even after the con- 
 tradictions involved in it have been long discoverable l)y the 
 unprejudiced eye. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 215 
 
 In order that our sympathies might be engaged from first 
 to last, it was necessary that the subject of the miracle should 
 be, not an unknown person, but a friend of Jesus, and the 
 female heart that sorrowed for his death, not that of an ordi- 
 nary mother, but the tender sister hearts of Martha and 
 Mary, that Mary who hung upon Jesus with such enthusiastic 
 worship peculiar to herself. Nor has the narrator in the 
 fourth Gospel left out of sight that more subtle characteristic 
 by which, in the history of the raising of the daughter of 
 Jairus, Luke was distinguished from Matthew. In order to 
 get a step from the lower to the higher, he also represents 
 the person subsequently raised as having been announced at 
 first to be not dead but only sick. In the first case the 
 father goes himself; in this the sister sends to Jesus a 
 message with the intelligence of their brother's illness : it is 
 not said, but appears nevertheless from what follows (ver. 21, 
 32), that their intention was that he should come and heal 
 him. Jesus was at that time, not, as in the case of the former 
 miracle, in the same city with the sick man, but in the pro- 
 vince of Persea, on the other side of Jordan, while Lazarus 
 lay at Bethany, near Jerusalem. ISTevertheless, instead of 
 going without delay to the house of the sick man, he re- 
 mains here two days, without making preparations for his 
 journey. 
 
 How was this, when, on the one hand, the distance, not 
 inconsiderable — on the other, the close relations between the 
 parties — must have urged him to redoubled haste ? In the 
 other case, there is a plain statement, implying that Jesus 
 hastened to a sick person, but that she died, contrary to his 
 expectation, before he reached the house. But this defect of 
 knowledge in no way derogated from the dignity of the 
 Messiah, having as he had the power to awaken from death 
 at once the damsel who had died unexpectedly as far as he 
 was concerned. But with the divine Logos incarnate it was 
 a different thing. In him there could be no defect of know- 
 
216 MYTHICAL HISTOltY OF JESUS. 
 
 ledge of any kind. The Joliannine Christ knew what he was 
 doing when he stayed two days longer in Pereea, after receiv- 
 ing the message about the illness ; he knew that Lazarus 
 would die in the interval, and it was his will that he should 
 do so. WJien, on the arrival of the message, he said that 
 the sickness was not unto death, but for the glorifying of 
 God and of his Son, it is the greatest misapprehension to 
 understand this to mean that at that time Jesus himself did 
 not expect a fatal issue of the illness of Lazarus ; the mean- 
 ing is only that the intervening death will not be the last 
 result, but that by means of the resurrection of the dead all 
 will end in the glorification of God and his Logos-Christ. For 
 when the two days are over, and he is starting on his journey 
 to Judea, he says, without having received meanwhile any 
 further intelligence, consequently from his higher knowledge 
 which penetrates into the distance, that Lazarus has gone to 
 sleep, but that he goes to awaken him. This speech gives 
 occasion to the Evangelist to bring in one of his regular 
 misunderstandings. The disciples understand the sleep lite- 
 rally, Jesus having meant it figuratively of death, which was 
 soon, like a light sleep, to yield to his word of command. 
 Here, also, is the contrast between the Christian view of 
 death and the ordinary one which all persons except himself 
 entertained. And now, also, Jesus discloses the object of 
 his delay ; he rejoices, he declares to the disciples, that for 
 their sake he had not been present to prevent the death of 
 their friend, because what he is now intending to accomplish, 
 namely, his restoration to life, will serve to strengthen their 
 faith far more than a mere healing of the sick. It requires 
 scarcely a word to point out that such a mode of proceeding 
 on the part of any one — that is, of preferring to allow a friend 
 to die, when he might have saved him, in order afterwards 
 to have the power of reviving him — is as appropriate to a 
 being of the imagination like the Johannine Christ, as in 
 tlie case of a real man, even the most divinely endowed and 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 217 
 
 most closely united with God, it would be inhuman and 
 revolting. 
 
 But Jesus had lingered not merely on this account, and not 
 merely so long as was necessary for the death of Lazarus to 
 have occurred before he arrived at Bethany, but it was requi- 
 site that time enough sliould have passed for Lazarus to have 
 lain four days in the grave (ver, 17), so that Martha might 
 say that by this time he stinketh (ver. 39), and that corrup- 
 tion had already begun. It is not indeed said that when the 
 cave was opened the latter was the case, or the contrary : it 
 was believed among the later Jews that for a space of three 
 days* the soul hovered round the dead body, and departed 
 on the fourth, leaving it to corrujotion. This feature was 
 obviously intended to make the condition of the person who 
 was to be raised as near as possible to that of those whose 
 future resuscitation by Jesus was expected on the last day. 
 
 In the history of the daughter of Jairus, when Jesus had 
 arrived in the neighbourhood of the house, one or more per- 
 sons go out and inform the father of the death of the damsel, 
 which had occurred in the interval, and do not wish to have 
 the Master troubled further. In like manner, in this case, 
 on hearing that Jesus is coming, Martha goes out of the 
 village to meet him. She speaks of the death of her brother 
 as if she knew that Jesus was already acquainted with it, and 
 that it would not have happened if Jesus had been present. 
 The fact, however, of its having occurred had not, as was 
 the case with the people of Jairus, deprived her of all hope ; 
 even before the disciples in our narrative, who had been 
 averse to the journey of Jesus to Judea, she has a sort of 
 foreboding that all is not over with her brother's death, that 
 even now Jesus need only pray to the Father in order to 
 obtain what he wishes. But however impressible the sister 
 of Mary, the member of that devoted circle of Bethany, may 
 
 * Gfrörer, The Sanctuary and the Truth, p. 319 flf. 
 
218 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 be represented as being, still it was considered right to 
 represent Jesus as surpassing her understanding and expec- 
 tation. So she immediately exposes the indefiniteness of her 
 presentiment and the weakness of her intelligence by taking 
 the assurance of Jesus that her brother shall rise again, to 
 apply only to the resurrection on the last day, and, so far, 
 not very consolatory. But on Jesus referring that assurance 
 to its general principle, by explaining that he is the resur- 
 rection and the life, and that he who believes in him shall 
 live even though he die, she confidently declares her faith 
 that he is the Christ, the Son of God, that cometh into the 
 world, a faith devoid as yet of any intelligent meaning, but 
 from which, liowever, the germ of such a faith might be de- 
 veloped. Moreover, the proposition, " I am the resurrection 
 and the life," &c., forms the theme of the Johannine account 
 of a resurrection, exactly as the text, "The damsel is not 
 dead, but sleepeth," forms that of the account common to 
 the Synoptics, and the addition of "weep not" had formed 
 that of the history in Luke particularly. The Johannine 
 theme is distinguished from both by the characteristic by 
 which the Johannine Gospel generally is distinguished from 
 those of the Synoptics. That characteristic consists in the 
 assumption of the principle that, in the first place, Christ 
 appeared not merely actually as One who makes death 
 nothing but a sleep, and dries men's tears for the dead, but 
 that, as the Son of God in the higher sense of this Gospel, 
 he exists expressly as an object of faith, and establishes this 
 faith, moreover, as a condition of our participating in eternal 
 life ; and that, in the next j^lace, by the life spent by him is 
 understood neither the future life in general, nor the bodily 
 resurrection to be now granted exceptionally to any single 
 individual, but, at the same time, the new spiritual life tliat 
 proceeds from him. 
 
 Martha, having confessed this faith, goes to fetch her sister, 
 who not only comes herself, but a host of sympathising and 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 219 
 
 sorrowing Jews with her. These weeping Jews play in the 
 history of Lazarus the same part as the musicians and the 
 noisy assemblage of mourners in that of the daughter of 
 Jairus : they bring out into relief the contrast between the 
 old Jewish and Heathen view of death on the one hand, and 
 the new Christian view on the other. But how much higher 
 above the former point of view the Johannine Christ stands 
 than the Christ of the Synoptics, is seen in his conduct. To 
 the synoptic Christ, the noisy wail of the people appears 
 unsuitable, and therefore he orders them out : here, in 
 John, no wailing is spoken of; the people only weep, and 
 Mary weeps with them ; but Jesus, instead of forbidding them 
 to weep in a kindly tone as he forbid the widow of Nain, 
 "is troubled" (angry) in spirit at their proceedings. That 
 he had no reason for this from a human point of view is 
 clear; but all attempts to give to the word by which the 
 Evangelist repeatedly describes* the emotion in the mind of 
 Jesus any other meaning than that of anger, or any applica- 
 tion except to the tears of the Jews and of Mary, are useless. 
 The Logos-Christ is angry that the people and even Mary 
 can weep at the death of Lazarus, while he, the principle of 
 life, is at hand. This blindness of men to what they have in 
 him excites displeasure in him, followed immediately by pain ; 
 for even the tears into which he now bursts as he goes to the 
 grave, cannot, if the description is to be consistent with 
 itself, be tears of sorrow at the death of Lazarus, whom he is 
 on the point of awakening to life, and they are not to be 
 considered so because they are so understood by the Jews, 
 who, in the fourth Gospel, always misunderstand Jesus. If 
 we look for a parallel in the evangelical history, the only 
 otlier occasion on which the tears of Jesus are spoken of is 
 that (Luke xix. 41) when he weeps on beholding the city of 
 Jerusalem, when he thinks of the awful days which shall 
 
 * Ver. 33, hißpijxi'jaaTO r(p irvivjxan ; ver. 38, iraXiv sfißpiUM/xivog h tavr(p. 
 
220 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 come upon her because she knew not the time of her visita- 
 tion. This time of visitation for the Jewish people was in the 
 days of the ministry of Jesus, which was at tliis very time to 
 reach its culminating point in tlie miracle of the raising of 
 Lazarus, without, however, bringing the Jews to faith and 
 knowledge. Therefore it is that Jesus weeps, and therefore 
 also his tears give way to displeasure when the Jews give 
 utterance to the question as to whether the man who a short 
 time before made the blind to see, could not also have hin- 
 dered the death of Lazarus. For in this question was involved, 
 in part a reproach against him, and in part an absence of all 
 presentiment that here they have before them, in person, the 
 resurrection and the life.* 
 
 The sepulchre, to the front of which we are immediately 
 taken, is described in almost the same terms as, afterwards, 
 the sepulchre of Jesus. It is called a cave, as the sepulchre 
 of Jesus was, according to the Synoptics, hewn in rock, and 
 consequently a sort of artificial cave, and it is closed, like the 
 sepulchre of Jesus, by a stone rolled to the mouth of it. The 
 grave-clothes also in which the body was wrapt are spoken 
 of exactly in the same manner as in the case of Jesus (xx. 
 6 ff.). The raising of Lazarus by Christ was to be not merely 
 a guarantee for the raising of all the dead by his means, but 
 a type of his own resurrection that was close at hand. And 
 now, notwithstanding Martha's remonstrance on the ground 
 of the probable stench from decomposition, tlie stone is re- 
 moved from the sepulchre. This being done, the Johannine 
 Christ, instead of proceeding as the synoptic Christ does in 
 the two previous accounts of raising the dead, that is, simply 
 uttering his word of command, considers it right to j)reface 
 
 * Hilf^enfeld's explanation is (Gospels, p. 296, note 1), that tlie displeasure of 
 Jesus applies to the sorrow which here threatens to tear the human personality out 
 of its unity with the divine Logos. I am unable to agree with this, because every- 
 where else in this Gospel, and especially in the following chapter immediately after 
 (xii. 27), the unity of these two personalities appears undisturbed. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 221 
 
 his act with a prayer to his Father. Not, indeed, a prayer 
 containing a petition, such as Elijah offers on raising the 
 dead, and which could not be necessary for the Son who was 
 One with the Father, but a prayer of thanksgiving for the 
 hearing which had been already vouchsafed. Consequently 
 he had at first prayed in silence, but with the certainty of 
 being heard ; as prayer and hearing, or, looked at from the 
 other side, command and execution, between the Father and 
 him are to be considered, not as a series of individual acts, 
 but as a state of constant correlation subject to no change. 
 In a strict sense, therefore, the notion of an individual act of 
 thanksgiving to the Father can be as little entertained as a 
 prayer; and if Jesus condescends to anything of the kind, 
 this must be solely from accommodation to the bystanders, in 
 order to draw their attention to God, who has given such 
 power to the Son (ver. 42). But if an accommodation is to 
 have the desired effect, the person so accommodating himself 
 must not say that it is only accommodation ; and, on the 
 other hand, a prayer which is only uttered in a spirit of 
 accommodation is an absurd mockery. It has been thought 
 an acute remark, in opposition to the view of criticism that 
 the Johannine Christ is only a personified dogmatic idea, that 
 an idea does not go to a marriage, does not feel sympathy, 
 &c.* Conversely we may say, no real human being acts as 
 the Johannine Christ is said to have acted at the tomb of 
 Lazarus, even though he were a human being with a divine 
 nature, but only an embodied idea, and moreover an idea 
 compounded of two contradictory elements. The Johan- 
 nine Christ, being on the one hand the everlasting creative 
 Word, one with God, has no need to pray the Father for any- 
 thing particular, or to thank him for anything particular, as 
 his whole conduct is only a constant effusion of that which is 
 being infused into him from the Father. On the other hand, 
 
 * Luthardt, The Peculiar Character of the Gospel of .John, i. 96. 
 
222 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 however, he walks among human beings as a liuman being 
 who is to lead them to the Father, to refer them to the Father 
 on ever)'' opportunity, and who could least of all omit to do 
 this on occasion of an act in which, as the raising of a 
 dead man, the glory of the Father so especially reveals itself. 
 Consequently he offers aloud a prayer to the Father, pre- 
 ferring indeed a prayer of thanksgiving to one of petition, 
 which might be more liable to be misunderstood as bearing 
 an appearance of uncertainty of being heard. But since, in 
 his human character, he is at the same time the Logos incar- 
 nate, prayer with him is a mere accommodation, and since 
 he wishes to be recognised also as the Logos, he declares 
 himself that he has uttered the prayer, not out of and for him- 
 self, but solely for those who are standing around. Considered 
 as a real Being, as a Man, the Christ of the fourth Gospel 
 appears in this prayer of accommodation as an actor, and in 
 his confession that his praying is only an act of accommoda- 
 tion, an awkward one as well; but considered as an idea 
 personified, he exposes in a particularly marked manner the 
 contradictory elements which in him are compounded into an 
 inconceivable union. 
 
 The loud voice with which Jesus immediately calls into the 
 sepulchre and orders the dead to come forth, plainly typifies 
 the voice of the Son of God, .which hereafter all men who are 
 lying in their graves shall hear, and thereupon come forth out 
 of them (John v. 28 ff.) ; it is the word of command for the 
 resurrection, which in other passages the archangel, as the 
 herald of the Messiah, is commissioned to pronounce, and 
 which is accompanied by a loud sound of a trumpet (1 Cor. 
 XV. 52 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16). 
 
 We have considered the history of the raising of Lazarus, 
 as well as the two other evangelical histories of the raising 
 of dead persons, as an unhistorical emanation of the ima- 
 gination of the first Christians, as an illustration of the same 
 dogmatic theme, only more conscious and more artificial. 
 
THE KAISING OF LAZARUS. 223 
 
 We have felt ourselves bound to take this view by the consi- 
 deration that the narrative is as inconceivable historically as 
 its origin is capable of easy and complete explanation from 
 the dogmatic tlieories and peculiar character of the Johannine 
 Gospel. There is still another circumstance to be considered. 
 The fourth Gospel makes no mention of the two other cases 
 of raising of the dead. It is intelligible that it should not 
 do so, and no one would think of impugning its historical 
 character on the ground of its silence about them. For even 
 supposing that they had actually taken place, everything that 
 gave them importance was involved in the history of Lazarus 
 to such a high degree, that in a history which besides was 
 under the necessity of proceeding electively, the addition of 
 the former to the latter might be fairly dispensed with. The 
 case is very different if it is asked, conversely, how it is 
 that the Synoptics say nothing of the raising of Lazarus — a 
 history so much more important ; why, instead of those cases 
 which they do report, so much less important and convincing, 
 they did not choose in preference that of Lazarus ? It has 
 been said that this is all the worse for the authors of the 
 three first Gospels ; that it proves that none of them, not 
 even Matthew, was an Apostle, or, otherwise, an eye-witness 
 of the life of Jesus ; for that to any one who had been so, it 
 was impossible that the raising of Lazarus could have been 
 unknown, and if it had been known he must have given an 
 account of it ; but that if none of them was an eye-witness, 
 and all only collectors of traditions, the raising of Lazarus 
 might have taken place, and yet no account of it been given 
 to them. It might, at the time at which they wrote, have 
 either dropped altogether out of the tradition, or at all events 
 lost some of its importance. This importance, it is said, con- 
 sisted principally in the effect which it had upon the deve- 
 lopment of the destiny of Jesus,* inasmuch as it raised the 
 
 * Schleiermacher, in particular, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 282 fF. 
 Comp. Lücke, Commentary on the Gospel of John (third ed.), ii. 476. 
 
224 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 animosity of his enemies against him to such a point, that 
 they laid that regular plot against his life which ended in his 
 destruction. It has been already pointed out what the real 
 importance of the raising of Lazarus was in this respect.* 
 The ofience occasioned by a miracle was as little required to 
 produce the crucifixion of Jesus as in the case of Socrates, 
 where, in the opposition to the popular standpoint and the 
 popular interests, there were natural causes enough, and over 
 enough, to account for the result. Quite as little did the 
 raising of Lazarus require this sort of importance in order to 
 appear in the character of an event which, if it really happened, 
 could not be passed over in a Gospel containing any sort of 
 details or having any intelligent purpose. It was the miracle 
 of miracles, and as such it is evidently represented by the 
 fourth Gospel. We cannot trust our eyes when we read in 
 Schleiermacher the assertion that, as regards the doctrine, the 
 history of Lazarus has no great value. What ! a history no 
 great didactic value, in which, more than in any other, Jesus 
 . proves himself to be the resurrection and the life ; and not 
 only proves himself practically, but also extracts the doctrine 
 out of the history ? But Schleiermacher has traced out another 
 cause which may have occasioned, at an early period, the his- 
 tory of Lazarus to drop out of the evangelical tradition. He 
 draws attention to the fact that there is no mention at all in 
 Matthew and Mark of the relation of Jesus to the family which 
 is the subject of the history ; that in Luke, who is acquainted 
 with the sisters, the brother and the place where they lived 
 are lost. This, he says, may have arisen from the circum- 
 stance that when the traditions upon which the accounts of 
 the Synoptics rest were collected, the family of Lazarus, per- 
 haps by reason of persecutions which they had gone through, 
 was no longer to be met with in Bethany. As if the fame of 
 an event so extraordinary, if it really took place, would not 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 344. 
 
THE KAISING OF LAZARUS. 22") 
 
 necessarily have survived in the district, whether the family 
 whom it immediately concerned had emigrated, or died out, 
 or not. The silence of the older Evangelists is intelligible 
 only on the supposition that the fourth Evangelist composed 
 the history in the second century. 
 
 But we need not lose sight of Schleiermacher's hint, with 
 regard to different relations of the Evangelists to the family 
 at Bethany, even though we are led by it to a different result 
 from that at which the acute friend of John arrives. The 
 three first Evangelists certainly knew nothing of a family at 
 Bethany, towards which Jesus stood in a relation of intimate 
 friendship. The two first (Matt. xxvi. 6 ff. ; Mark xiv. 3 ff.) 
 represent him as having been anointed a few days before his 
 last Passover in Bethany, but in the house of one Simon, called 
 the leper, and by a woman whose name is not stated. Luke 
 represents an anointing of Jesus as having been performed 
 still earlier in Galilee, not mentioning the name of the place, 
 but in the house of a Pharisee called Simon, and he describes 
 the woman who anoints him, whose name he also omits, as a 
 sinner (vii. 36 ff.). On the other hand, he represents Jesus 
 at a later period, on the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, 
 but while still far from his destination, and in a village which 
 he does not name, as turning in to lodge with a woman of the 
 name of Martha who has a sister Mary. Here an event takes 
 place which is the subject of a well-known history, the cream 
 of which consists in the words, " One thing is needful" (x. 
 38 ff). The fact that we find not only the liistory but the 
 names of the two sisters for the first time in Luke certainly 
 excites suspicion, but does not decide against the historical 
 value of the account. Martha, who is troubled about many 
 things, and who is dissatisfied with her apparently idle sister 
 Mary, who sits listening at the feet of Jesus, but who, in his 
 judgment, has chosen the better part, are personifications of 
 Jewish Christianity with its zeal about works, and Pauline 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
226 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Christianity with its inward faith.* But it is intelligible that 
 this should be so, even though two such sisters really lived 
 and stood in some such relation to Jesus. 
 
 Consequently in Matthew and Mark we have in Bethany a 
 woman who anoints, but without a name ; in Luke, on the one 
 hand, a female sinner who anoints, likewise Avithout a name, 
 and not in Bethany ; on the other hand, the sisters Martha 
 and Mary, likewise not in Bethany, and different from the 
 woman who anoints. In John these threads are combined 
 (xii. 1 ff). The woman who anoints is Mary, and since the 
 anointing took place, according to the tradition, in Bethany, 
 Mary with her sister are dwelling in Bethany. Even in Luke 
 the reception which Martha accords to Jesus betokens, cer- 
 tainly, friendly feelings, and the conduct of Mary points to a 
 still deeper susceptibility ; but a relation of intimate friend- 
 ship between Jesus and the family is first spoken of in John 
 (xi. 3, 5, 11, 36). For the rest, the characters of the sisters 
 appear in the fourth Gospel exactly as they are described in 
 the third. At the meal, which is followed by the anointing, 
 Martha waits, exactly as in the narrative of Luke she gave 
 herself much trouble with the waiting ; even her hastening 
 to meet Jesus on hearing of his arrival, after her brother's 
 decease, is quite in character. So also on the side of Mary, 
 her falling at the feet of Jesus, and, subsequently, her pouring 
 out the costly ointment on his feet, is in accordance with 
 the behaviour of the person who, sitting at Jesus' feet and 
 listening to his words, forgets all besides. And now arises 
 the question — whether is it more probable that all should in 
 reality have taken place as John represents, that, therefore, it 
 was Mary who anointed Jesus, that she and her sister lived 
 in Bethany near Jerusalem, and that this house afforded a 
 friendly asylum to Jesus on his last journey to a feast, but 
 that the tradition was lost, that the name of Mary as the 
 
 * Zellcr first drew attention to this, Theological Annual, 18'13, p. 8.5. 
 
THE KAISING OF LAZARUS. 227 
 
 woman who anointed had disappeared, that of her and her 
 sister's honsehold in Bethany, which, even though the place 
 was destroyed, must have continued to survive as a sanctuary 
 in the memory of Christendom, no one in the district knew 
 anything after only a few decades of years — or that, conversely, 
 the true state of the case was what appears in the Synoptics, 
 that in the house of a man at Bethany, who stood in no very 
 close relation to Jesus, a woman, otherwise unknown, anointed 
 Jesus, and that in another locality, perhaps in Galilee, there 
 lived a pair of sisters, with whom Jesus found a hospitable 
 reception and readiness to listen to his doctrines ; but that 
 the fourth Evangelist adroitly combined these acconnts, trans- 
 ferred to the listener at Jesus' feet the anointing of his feet, 
 to the bnsy Martha the task of waiting on that occasion, 
 took the two sisters to Bethany and settled them there, 
 placing them in that relation of intimate friendship to Jesus 
 which meets us in the history of Lazarus ? If we put this 
 question to ourselves, we may reply that, according to the 
 discussion, as far as it has gone already, the first alternative 
 of the two is sufficiently improbable ; but still we would not 
 decide imtil we have taken a more comprehensive view of 
 both. 
 
 We have, so far, left out of consideration the brother of the 
 two sisters, Lazarus, with whom, however, we commenced. 
 In the first case, therefore, the synoptic tradition must like- 
 wise have forgotten him, which, considering the j)ei"fectly 
 unique miracle connected with his name, is scarcely conceiv- 
 able. But, it might be said, the tradition did not forget him. 
 There is a Lazarus, too, in Luke. Not, indeed, a real Lazarus, 
 only an allegorical one, the beggar Lazarus, who lies, in this 
 life, covered with sores and suffering hunger, before the rich 
 man's gate, and then, lying after death in Abraham's bosom, 
 excites the envy of the rich man, who is tormented in hell 
 (xvi. 19 ff.). There is, in fact, a connection between the two 
 men called Lazarus. The Johannine Lazarus is not, indeed, 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 like the allegorical Lazarus of Luke, a poor man, but he also 
 is sick, and even the introductory words of the two narratives 
 have a remarkable resemblance. " Now there was a certain 
 sick man, Lazarus of Bethany," John begins : " There was a 
 certain poor man of the name of Lazarus," Jesus begins his 
 parable in Luke. Moreover, these two men die and are buried. 
 The difference is, that the one does indeed return from the 
 tomb to life, while tlie other might at least have returned ; 
 it is desired, but not allowed. And why, in the parable, is 
 the prayer of the rich man not granted by Abraham, to send 
 Lazarus unto his father's house in order to convert his five 
 brethren ? For the reason that Abraham foresees that, not 
 believing Moses and the prophets, they would not believe 
 even if one rose from the dead. And how true was the 
 foresight of Father Abraham in this case ! One really did 
 rise from the dead, namely, Jesus, but did the Jews there- 
 fore believe ? Nay, a Lazarus, exactly as the rich man would 
 have wished, did rise from the grave, but still the Jews did 
 not believe, but then first formed a regular design to put Jesus 
 to death. 
 
 Well, then, are we to assume that the historic Lazarus 
 became in the tradition the allegorical one, that the miracu- 
 lous history became the parable, the event that really took 
 place (the return of one dead) a merely hypothetical case ? 
 Whoever lias any conception of the mode in which such narra- 
 tives are remodelled and extended, will feel that the converse 
 is the more probable. The fourth Evangelist adopted into 
 his scheme, out of the third, the two sisters who lived in 
 one village, and who entertained Jesus in their house. Lie 
 adopted them into his scheme, as the one of them seemed to 
 him a person adapted to have attributed to her the well- 
 known anointing, the other the attendance at the meal 
 during which the anointing took place. If he was obliged, 
 for this purpose, to transplant them to Bethany, Avhere, 
 according to the tradition, the anointing had taken place, 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 229 
 
 he saw that there was no place better suited for the history 
 of the raising of the dead, which he wished to tell, than just 
 this very Bethany. This, as the miracle of miracles, was to 
 close the career of Jesus as the performer of miracles ; it was, 
 further, to bring to a head the animosity of the dominant 
 party of Pharisees and High -priests in Jerusalem ; it was 
 necessary, therefore, that it should take place at a later period, 
 and either in, or at all events near to, the capital To place 
 it, however, in the capital itself, would have been contradic- 
 tory to the view of the fourth Gospel, according to which 
 Jesus, during the last period, chose to avoid Jerusalem on 
 account of the plots of his enemies, and, if he was there, 
 had every reason for being cautious : consequently, a village 
 near was a better place, and, from the history of the anoint- 
 ing, Bethany was already given. And if the two sisters were 
 transplanted to that place, they might be considered as attend- 
 ing upon their brother, who is consequently assigned to them 
 as Lazarus. That the fourth Evangelist came to represent 
 the occurrence as he does by first taking the sisters out of the 
 third Gospel, and then associating the brother with them, is 
 plainly shewn by the manner in which he introduces the three 
 relatives for the first time (xi. 1 ff.). " Now a certain man 
 was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and 
 her sister Martha. It was that Mary which anointed the 
 Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose 
 brother Lazarus was sick." A brother is only described tlius 
 when his sisters are better known than he. ]\Iary and Martha 
 were so, in consequence of the story in the third Gospel of 
 Jesus' reception by them, to which also the expression in tlie 
 fourth, " the town of Mary and her sister Martha," refers ; for 
 Luke begins his narrative with the statement that Jesus, on 
 his journey, came to a village, and that there Martha received 
 him. And tlie fourth Evangelist further adds, that it was 
 that Mary which anointed Jesus, a circumstance whicli he 
 does not speak of until afterwards : his noticing it here before- 
 
230 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 hand looks exactly as if he wished to put this notice in cir- 
 culation for the first time. He shews still more plainly that 
 in his Lazarus he is introducing a new figure into evangelical 
 history ; for surely he was not " a certain man," a brother 
 of more famous sisters, if Jesus had performed on him the 
 greatest of his miracles, he being beloved by Jesus as well as 
 his sisters. 
 
 Consequently, the fourth Evangelist had transplanted the 
 two sisters to Bethany, and for a crowning miracle, such as 
 a raising of tlie dead was to be, Bethany was, in his opinion, 
 the most appropriate theatre. It was, at all events, an 
 obvious proceeding to associate, in the capacity of brother, 
 one who was to be raised in the liesh, with the sisters who 
 were awakened in the spirit. The two Synoptics were of no 
 avail to him for tlie further setting forth of his history of a 
 raising of the dead. He wished to have one who was most 
 certainly and surely dead, one who was at least buried, 
 neither of which was the case with the daughter of Jairus, or 
 the son of the widow of Nain, On the other hand, there 
 was, in Luke, a man dead, only indeed in a parable, but 
 who was buried and certainly dead, for his soul was now 
 carried in Abraham's bosom. He also might have returned 
 to earth, but was not permitted to do so, because it would 
 have been in vain, as he would not have converted tlie 
 brothers of the rich man. But for this very reason it was, 
 in the opinion of the fourth Evangelist, worth the trouble to 
 represent the dead man as having really returned, in order 
 fully to confirm the fact of the incorrigible unbelief of the 
 Jewish people. Accordingly, no figure in the synoptic tra- 
 dition was more adapted in every respect for a hero of a 
 history of a raising of the dead, which the fourth Evangel- 
 ist wished to give, than the Lazarus of the parable in Luke. 
 And as we see from this whence the fourth Evangelist gets 
 his Lazarus and the attendant circumstances, quite as clearly 
 as we are unable to conceive what the other Evangelists can 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 231 
 
 be supposed to have done with him, if he really existed and 
 was raised by Jesus, we may, it would seem, look upon the 
 investigation upon this point as concluded * 
 
 We shall not, however, consider it as too much trouble to 
 examine the explanations of the history of Lazarus by which 
 others have endeavoured to satisfy themselves. In this case, 
 also, Schleiermacher's theory has given the riüe to modern 
 theology.-f- The two dead persons, of whose raising by Jesus 
 we read in the Synoptics, were looked upon by Schleiermacher, 
 without hesitation, as cases of sham death only. In the in- 
 stance of one narrative, adopting the most miserable form of 
 exegesis, he takes Jesus at his word, that the damsel is not 
 dead but sleepeth : he remarks also that the youth of Nain, 
 considering the Jewish custom of speedy burial, may very 
 easily have been only in appearance dead. But it was the 
 fourth day of Lazarus' lying in the tomb. So decomposition 
 might, indeed, have already begun. But, says Schleiermacher, 
 it need not have done so; what Martha says is only surmise on 
 her part. In any case, Jesus does not ascribe this act to him- 
 self as his own. Indeed, it cannot be conceived as having been 
 so, without the destruction of the unity and continuity of his 
 human life by such a creative act. But he obtains the result 
 by prayer to God, and thanks God for it, as the immediate 
 act of the latter. Now what, in plain German, does that 
 mean ? Lazarus also, though, from the longer time that he 
 
 * This investigation owes most to Zeller, who was the first to trace, as is here 
 done, the Johannine Lazarus to the Lazarus of the parable (Studies in New 
 Testament Theology, in the Theological Annual, 1843, p. 89. Comp, also Baur, 
 Critical Investigations, p. 248 ff.). I had already, in the year 1833, thrown out 
 the supposition that the two are identical in a notice of the treatises of Paulus 
 and Hase on the Life of Jesus, a paper which I sent, at their request, to the 
 Society for Scientific Criticism in Berlin ; from which body, however, I received 
 it back, because they observed in it the frons turgida cornibus. But as I had not 
 found the key of the connection, the change of the hypothetical return of one 
 who was dead into a real one, the supposition, as being too bold, was left out of my 
 Life of Jesus. 
 
 t What follows is from his lectures on the Life of Jesus. 
 
232 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 had lain in the grave, the case ^vas a more uncommon one, 
 had been only apparently dead, and that Jesus Avas the 
 instrument of his resurrection was a mere accident, in ^vhich 
 the action of a higher Providence is not to be mistaken. We 
 now understand how Schleiermacher could say that the 
 history of Lazarus has no great doctrinal value. So far from 
 having any great value, it has, from his point of view, none 
 at all. 
 
 Schleiermacher has wisely omitted to grapple with the 
 more immediate question of the conduct of Jesus as described 
 in the Gospel of Jolm. And yet it is impossible to avoid 
 asking the question : if it was only accident, only the impro- 
 bable possibility that Lazarus, who had been buried four 
 days, might be only apparently dead, upon which Jesus 
 counted — how could he, while still at a distance — how, by the 
 very side of the tomb, utter speeches which must be cha- 
 racterised as mere trifling if not backed by the certainty 
 that he could restore his friend alive to his relations ? It is 
 necessary, says Schweizer,* to take into consideration the 
 whole practical and psychological condition of Jesus. At 
 that moment, having avoided the persecutions of the authori- 
 ties at Jerusalem by going to Peroea, he was in a state more 
 depressed than he had ever been before. But still his 
 Messianic consciousness was unbroken. What must the 
 result have been ? -f- The most confident hope, answers 
 Schweizer, that God will not desert him in such a condition. 
 " For him," explains Hase (for in these cases one good turn 
 always meets with another), " before whom Jairus' daughter 
 " had been awakened " (from her apparent death), " the wish 
 
 * The Gospel of St. Jolm, according to its Internal Value, &c., p. 156 ff. 
 
 + "There are powers," adds Schweizer, with obvious reference to the present 
 writer, "which a Life of Jesus must discover, and use as a key for the under- 
 standing of particular acts, before it can deserve the name of a Life of Jesus." 
 Very good, replies the writer, if the alleged facts are critically established. 
 Until they are so, i^sychological pragmatism is ill applied in ojiposition to mere 
 lebend. 
 
THE KAISTXG OF LAZARUS. 233 
 
 " might become a presentiment, or in his distress a bold con- 
 " fideuce, that in this case, in which his individual inclination 
 " coincided with the glorifying of the kingdom of God, God 
 "would hear his prayer for the life of the man beloved by 
 "him."* If, then, continues Schweizer, an external event 
 corresponds to such confidence, an event which is in itself no 
 real miracle, there arises a miracle notwithstanding, namely, 
 that of confidence in God justified. So in this case, the mira- 
 cle is not really the return of the life wliich had only retreated, If £^ 
 but tlie coincidence of that return with the confidence of /, 
 Jesus and the opening at his command of the tomb. Why ^^^^*^ 
 then, concludes the assthetically educated theologian, should Clo-'U'^^ 
 not, sometimes at least in the life of Jesus, a striking result ^^^ ^ 
 have corresponded with his bold confidence — if there is any r 
 truth in the words of the poet, " There exist moments in tlie 
 " life of man" ? «feci* That is real sublimity, for Theology to 
 deck herself out with the pens of modern poets, applying 
 them, too, in an improper manner. Thus in this case she 
 does not remember how ill the false application of the truth 
 contained in these words suits the hero who utters them. He 
 had settled it arbitrarily in his own mind that the first person 
 who came to meet him the next morning with a token of 
 friendship must be his truest friend, and that very person 
 was his betrayer. The friend whom he found dead, must be, 
 as surely as God would not desert him, not really dead, but 
 at his call return to life — Jesus had got this into his head, 
 and the result corresponded to so wild a notion. Ebrard 
 remarks, with perfect truth, that such an explanation, accord- 
 ing to which the Lord would have tempted God in the most 
 extravagant manner, contains ten times as many inconceiv- 
 abilities as twenty writers can find in the account of the 
 Evangelist.^ This is not enough ; wdiat he should have said 
 
 * Life of Jesus, § 94. 
 
 t Scliiller's Wallenstein, Coleiidgo's translation ; Piccolomini, Act v. Sc. 3. 
 
 + Scientific Criticism, p. 4C3. 
 
234 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 is, that it abases Jesus as oiily naturalists and mockers have 
 abased him. ^^'^ -^ ^-^"^^ ^ i^^^ ^-^l<.i:\ 
 
 The theory is not made much better' by following Eenan, 
 and taking the raising of Lazarus to have been an intrigue 
 of the family at Bethany, instead of a wild enterprise on the 
 part of Jesus. Mortified at the ill reception which their adored 
 friend had met with in Jerusalem, his worshippers at Bethany 
 attempted to do something which might give a new impulse 
 to his cause in the unbelieving city. That, they thought, must 
 be a miracle, if possible the raising of a dead man, and above 
 all a man well known in Jerusalem. Now during Jesus' 
 absence in Peraea, Lazarus is taken ill. The sisters, becoming 
 alarmed, send for their absent friend. But before he arrives, 
 the brother has become better ; and now an excellent idea 
 occurs to them. Lazarus, still pale from the effects of his 
 illness, permits himself to be put into a winding-sheet like 
 a dead body and shut up in the family tomb. When Jesus 
 arrives, Martha goes to meet him, and leads him to the tomb. 
 Jesus wishes to see his departed friend once more, but on the 
 stone being removed, Lazarus comes forth alive to meet him 
 with his winding-sheet and napkins. In this all the bystanders 
 behold a miracle. But Jesus ? Did lu permit himself to be 
 blinded by so coarse a trick ? Or, still worse, was he a party 
 to the deception ? He might, says Kenan, have been as little 
 able to control the thirst for miracles on the part of his adhe- 
 rents as St. Bernard, as Francis of Assisi. He allowed the 
 miracles which were wanted of him to be forced upon him, 
 rather than that he performed them himself In despair, and 
 reduced to extremities, he was no longer his own master. 
 After a few days, moreover, death delivered him from the 
 distressing weight of a character which daily made greater 
 claims upon him, w^as daily more difficult to maintain.* 
 
 In fact, as soon as we cease to consider the history of 
 Lazarus as a miracle, in the true sense of the word, nothing 
 
 * Renan, Vie de Jesus, 359 IT. 
 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 235 
 
 remains but either to follow the explanations last described, 
 and to sacrifice the honour of Jesus to the truth of the 
 account, or the truth of the account to the honour of Jesus 
 and common sense. Ewald is entitled to commendation for 
 having preferred the latter, though he has done so certainly 
 with all sorts of evasions peculiar to himself. So far is he 
 from maintaining the whole of the Johannine narrative, with 
 all its attendant circumstances, to be historical, that he con- 
 siders only the most general result of it to be so. " That 
 " Lazarus was really raised by Christ from the grave " (observe, 
 Ewald does not say, from the dead), " we cannot doubt, but 
 " it would be equally unreasonable and perverse to overlook 
 " the spirit of more elevated life which swells the bosom of the 
 " Apostle, and inspires the narrative with the most miraculous 
 " character. The recollection of a raising of the dead, which 
 " he had once really lived to see, became to him the sign and 
 "token of that great general resurrection at the end of the 
 "world, that introduction into a new life which the whole 
 " apostolic age expected with joy and exultation ; all the 
 " several circumstances accompanying it, which he could still 
 " remember, had become in his view parts of this most sublime 
 " truth, and it was only when seized with the glow of infinite 
 " hope that he now looked back upon that which he had once 
 " experienced and seen with his own eyes, in order to write 
 " down with the same most fiery vividness all that he could 
 "remember of this material image of heavenly assurance."* 
 So the Apostle John wrote down what he could remember in 
 his old age of the raising of Lazarus ; but he wrote it down 
 with all the glow of feeling and imagination excited by the 
 hope of the future general resurrection through Christ — his 
 description of the past was, as Ewald expresses himself, 
 "glorified" by the light of the future. Now this may and 
 indeed should at first sight be understood to mean, that by 
 this prospect of the future only the form o the Johannine 
 
 * The Johannine Writings, i. 314 fi'. 
 
23G MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 narrative is affected, that the description has become more 
 vivid and pathetic, but that the substance consists only of 
 what the writer actually remembered. But then much more 
 of the narrative must be maintained to be historical than is 
 allowed by Ewald ; that Lazarus was really raised from the 
 tomb by Christ, or, as he expresses it on another occasion, 
 that Christ saved " him that was lost."* For this last expres- 
 sion, however ambiguously and cautiously selected, clearly 
 shews us that Ewald's view of this miraculous history simply 
 extends to this, that Lazarus would have been "lost" if Jesus 
 had not, by the command which he gave, we know not why, 
 to open his tomb, "saved" him, i.e. made it possible for him 
 to wake from his death-like trance, and to return to life. 
 Everything in the conduct and speeches of Jesus that goes 
 beyond this natural and probably merely accidental fact, which 
 implies the exhibition of a miracle performed by Jesus, more 
 convincing than any other as regards his dignity as the Son 
 of God, would be an addition on the part of the Evangelist 
 arising from his inspired expectation. What an Evangelist, 
 in whose mind, supposing his life to have been as long as we 
 will, a history could change into something so completely 
 different ! What real value could his testimony have ? If the 
 real Christ stood to his Christ in the same relation in Avhicli, 
 according to Ewald, the historical liasis of the account of the 
 raising of Lazarus is supposed to have stood to what John has 
 made of it, how much of the real Christ have we left in that 
 of John ? No ! we have here the miserable remnant of a pro- 
 bably natural event, not worth further discussion, but which, 
 if only it and nothing further is supposed to have been the 
 historical basis of the evangelical narrative, either makes Jesus 
 a madman, or the Evangelist a dotard. So let us quit this 
 characterless and isolated thing, and openly admit that we are 
 liere concerned only M'ith an ideal image, an arbitrary inven- 
 tion of the Evangelist, from which we learn nothing whatever 
 
 * History of Christ, 358. 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 237 
 
 of tlie real Clirist, but only the extent to which the conception 
 of the higher element in Christ, first much changed in the 
 Jewish-Christian circles, and afterwards in those of the Pauline 
 Christians, was now completely reflected in the mind of a 
 Christian who had had an Alexandrine education. 
 
 78. Sea Anecdotes. 
 
 As the dwelling of Jesus was situated on the Sea of Galilee, 
 and his ministry, for the greatest part of the time, was con- 
 fined to its sliore, it was natural that there should be a con- 
 nection between the sea and a portion of the miraculous 
 histories circulated about 'him. Of these anecdotes, we may 
 describe one-half more inmiediately as ilshing legends, the 
 other as Sailing legends, in so far as the one class refers to 
 fishing as the trade of a portion of the disciples, the other to 
 the element of water as a means of transport. Of the anec- 
 dotes of the first class we have that of the miraculous draught 
 of fish by Peter in Luke. Of this we have already spoken, 
 because it is connected with his call to be a fisher of men, and 
 we combined with it, in consequence of the internal connec- 
 tion, notwithstanding its occurrence at a period so much later, 
 the draught of fishes in the supplement to the Johannine 
 Gospel. There remains yet the history of the piece of money, 
 which, as advised by Jesus, Peter is supposed to have found 
 in the mouth of a fish (Matt. xvii. 24 — 27). 
 
 By this miraculous history, which is peculiar to INIatthew,^ 
 all explanations appear to be put to shame. The believers in 
 miracles cannot answer the question when asked, where was 
 the necessity or even the good of so strange a miracle as that 
 of bringing to Peter's hook a fish with a piece of money in 
 
238 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 "its mouth, and how, without a second miracle, the fish, when 
 opening its mouth to snap at the hook, could still have held 
 the coin in it. The natural explanation which represents the 
 piece of money, not as having been found immediately in the 
 mouth of the fish, but earned by the sale of it, offends too 
 much against the text, which connects the finding of the coin 
 immediately with the opening of the mouth of the fish. As 
 the Evangelist only mentions the recommendation given by 
 Jesus, but does not say that Peter followed it and really found 
 a piece of gold in the mouth of the fish, there has been lately 
 an inclination to understand the expression of Jesus merely 
 figuratively and proverbially, as when we say of the dawn 
 that it has gold in its mouth ; but the execution of an order 
 of Jesus, and the correspondence between a prediction of his 
 and the re"sult predicted, are taken in the Gospel as a matter 
 of course. And even the mythical explanation does not appear 
 altogether suitable to an account of a miracle which has 
 neither the character of a fulfilment of a Messianic expecta- 
 tion, nor an embodiment of an original Christian conception, 
 but of a capricious result of an uncontrolled imagination. 
 
 Meanwhile, if Ave examine the case more accurately, the 
 narrative in question has the character of a miraculous history 
 only at the conclusion. At the beginning and in the middle 
 it looks exactly like one of those discussions, several of which 
 are contained in the three first Gospels, and among these it 
 has an unmiste,J>;eable connection with that about the tribute- 
 money (Matt XX. 15—22; Mark xii. 13—17; Luke xx. 20— 
 26). In each case the discussion refers to a tax ; in the former 
 case, the tribute to the Romans, and the question is asked 
 whether it is right for the Jews to pay it ; in this case the 
 tribute is for the Temple at Jerusalem, and the question is 
 whether Jesus and his disciples are bound to pay it. In the 
 former case, Jesus decides the question in the affirmative, 
 after ordering the tribute-money, a denarius, to be shewn to 
 him ; in this case, after deciding the question negatively, he 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 239 
 
 himself miraculously provides the tribute-money, a stater, in 
 order to settle the matter amicably. 
 
 As the dispute as to whether the peoj)le of God were free 
 from sin in recognising in the Eomans any supreme authority 
 besides them, had continued among the Jews since the days 
 of Judas the Gaulonite, it is possible that a question bearing 
 upon this dispute may have been at some time or other put 
 to Jesus. It is, on the other hand, less probable that the 
 question as to his obligation, and that of his followers, to pay 
 tribute to the Temple at Jerusalem, was mooted in his life- 
 time. It was not until a considerable time after his death, 
 when the Christian community had separated itself more and 
 more from the Jewish, that the question could arise as to 
 whether the Christians were bound to contribute to the ex- 
 penses of the TemjDle at Jerusalem. And from the Christian 
 point of view, the most correct answer was, that in the 
 abstract neither the Messiah, as being greater than the Tem- 
 ple (Matt. xii. 6), nor his adherents as the Eoyal Priesthood 
 (1 Peter ii. 9), could be amenable to the tax, but that still, 
 for the sake of precious peace, they would not refuse to 
 pay it ; a decision which, like so many other results of later 
 development, was attributed to Jesus himself, and very pro- 
 bably in direct imitation of the history of the civil tribute- 
 money. 
 
 But now the miracle ? Jesus, it was thought, was not to 
 prejudice himself at all by that admission — by that acqui- 
 escence in the payment of a tax which the Messiah was not 
 called upon properly to pay. While he submitted to it, he 
 must (it was considered) at the same time shew himself raised 
 above it ; he must himself provide the token of his submission 
 in a manner which placed him above all these relations. Thus 
 a miracle was required in this case more than in any other. 
 
 But why especially this miracle ? And as on so many 
 other occasions, so also on this, the disciple Peter is brought 
 forward as the spokesman. It is to him that the collectors of 
 
240 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the tax apply with the question as to whether his Master 
 pays the tribute to the Temple ; it is he whom Jesus catechises, 
 on entering the house, with a series of questions, which lead 
 to the conclusion that, strictly speaking, they, as children of 
 God, are not subject to any tax for the support of the house 
 of God ; it was with him, therefore, that the miracle was 
 most appropriately connected, which was to put into its 
 proper light the discharge of this claim on the part of Jesus 
 and his followers. Peter, in the original Christian tradition, 
 was the fisherman. He had been, before all, called away 
 from his net to undertake the office of a fisher of men ; it was 
 to him that tlie rich draught of fishes was vouchsafed as a 
 type of his apostolical ministry. Jesus might now again 
 have granted him another such, which, turned into money, 
 would have made up the amount of the Temple-tribute. But 
 this was an unnecessary resource. On the occasion of the 
 former miraculous draught, the case had been different : then 
 the question had been, not about an amount of money, but 
 about a symbol of the apostolic ministry. So in that case 
 only ordinary fish, only in great numbers, had been caught. 
 In this case, on the other hand, the question was about the 
 tribute to the Temple, payable by two persons, amounting to 
 four draclnns, or a stater. As this was to be provided mira- 
 culously, why not at once in ready money ? and as it was to 
 be provided by the fisher- Apostle, why not by a fish bring- 
 ing him a stater ? Consequently, as on this occasion only 
 one fish is wanted, it was not necessary for Peter to throw 
 out his net, but only his line ; and because when the fish 
 was caught it was necessary to open its mouth in order to 
 extract tlie hook, it was necessary that the fish should have 
 the stater in its mouth. But here the narrator, while he en- 
 deavours to make matters easy for Peter, makes the task of 
 the fish far too difficult. Since the times of Poly crates, it has 
 ol'ten happened tliat fishes have swallowed treasures and 
 kept them in tlieir stomachs ; but for a fisli, and one too 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 241 
 
 caught by a hook, to have kept a piece of money in its mouth 
 together with the hook, is without example in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 Our Evangelist made light of difficulties of this kind. We 
 need only remember the two asses upon which he makes 
 Jesus ride on the entrance into Jerusalem. Still it would 
 be a great mistake to consider the miracle — one certainly of 
 a fabulous character, and told by Matthew alone of all the 
 Synoptics — as a proof that he was at all events the latest of 
 them. On the contrary, the omission of it by Luke and 
 Mark marks them as later than Matthew. The question as 
 to the obligation of the Christians to pay the tax for the 
 Temple, could only be of interest as long as the Temple 
 stood.* Consequently this history does not belong even to 
 the latest portions of the Gospel of Älatthew. Wlien this was 
 worked up into the whole which we now have before us, the 
 Temple was, indeed, already destroyed ; but the antecedent 
 circumstances, especially in Palestine itself, were still fresh 
 in men's recollection. When at a later period Luke and 
 Mark wrote in another country, the subject of the narrative 
 of Matthew appeared to them as no longer of importance, 
 and perhaps even the solution of it too favourable to the Jews 
 to admit of their admitting it among their evangelical narra- 
 tives.-f- 
 
 In the same manner as the fishing anecdotes go so far as 
 to say that Jesus granted to his disciples a rich and valuable 
 draught of fish, so the sailing anecdotes assert that he rescues 
 
 * Comp. Köstlin, Synoptic Gospels, p. 31, note. Hilgenfeld, Gospels, p. 91. 
 
 + Volkraar, The Religion of Jesus and its First Development, p. 265, refers the 
 history to the poll-tax, which, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews, and 
 consequently the Jewish Christians also, had to pay to the Romans, upon which he 
 thinks the question arose as to whether tlie Heathen Christians also had to pay it. 
 But in that case, as in that of the tribute-money, the narrative must have spoken 
 of a tribute to the emperor. It would have been too absurd to take the Jewish 
 tribute to the Temple as an example of the later poll-tax payable to the Roman 
 treasury. 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
242 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 them out of the distress and trouble into which wind and 
 waves have brought them. On one occasion, he is himself 
 present in the ship ; on another, he walks from the shore over 
 the lake and comes to them. 
 
 The first history (Matt. viii. 23—27 ; Mark iv. 36—40 ; 
 Luke viii. 22 — 25) describes throughout what might easily 
 have happened. After a laborious day, Jesus may have 
 started from Capernaum with his disciples, gone to sleep in 
 the ship, a storm, alarming the disciples, may have broken 
 out while he slept, they may have awakened him and begged 
 his assistance, and he may have rebuked their timidity — but 
 he cannot, as the Evangelists report, have also rebuked the 
 winds and the sea, unless he was either conscious of uncon- 
 ditional power over nature, or a miserable braggart and impos- 
 tor — the first of which is altogether inconceivable, the second 
 excluded by all that we credibly know of Jesus, A Psalm 
 (cvi. 9, with the same expression in the Greek translation) 
 says, he "rebuked" the Ked Sea also, and it retired, and let 
 the people pass dryshod through its waves. And we may 
 certainly suppose that to the Messiah also, as God's represen- 
 tative, the power might be attributed of setting limits to the 
 raging of the sea. 
 
 But we can only understand this narrative completely 
 when we take the ship and the disciples into consideration 
 as well as Jesus, In this, as well as in the other his- 
 tory, the Fathers have seen in the battling with the waves a 
 figure of the Christian Church, in the tempest and the surges 
 an image of the assaults to which the Church is exposed . in 
 the world. A scholar, distinguished for his knowledge of 
 Judaism, has shewn, with praiseworthy industry, that this 
 symbolism did not come first out of the history we are con- 
 sidering into the circle of Christian ideas, but was already 
 in existence among tlie Jews, Hengstenberg* has drawn 
 
 * In the preface to the series of the Evangelical Journals for the year 1861, 
 p. i ff. Comp. hi.s Coinmontary on the Gospel of Jdin, i. 352 S. 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 243 
 
 attention to the mode in which in Psalm cvii. the restoration 
 of the people out of captivity is described under the image 
 of seafaring men, who are happily brought to land by 
 Jehovah, and saved from the billows and the tempest. " He 
 commandeth," it is said (xxv. 28 — 30), "and raiseth the 
 stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. Then they 
 cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them 
 out of their distresses. Then are they glad because they 
 be quiet ; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven." 
 Now Hengstenberg thinks that it was with reference to this 
 Psalm and its symbolizing imagery that Jesus really under- 
 took the miraculous calming of the tempest, in order thereby 
 to give a practical prophecy of the protection which he 
 purposes to give for the comfort of his Church in all its 
 distresses and perils, till the end of time ; and Hengstenberg 
 even says generally that the symbolical acts of the Lord in 
 the New Testament usually rest upon figures in the Old. 
 In so far as these symbolical acts are understood, as in the 
 present instance, to comprise miracles, we are in perfect 
 agreement with the proposition of Hengstenberg, even though 
 we take it in a somewhat different sense from him. Hengsten- 
 berg's o]3inion is, that an Old Testament writer was inspired 
 with an image, and that then this image was realised by 
 Jesus : ours, on the contrary, is, that images of this kind i 
 were in the later legend fictitiously converted into acts 
 which never were really performed as they are represented to I 
 have been. 
 
 We know from the Epistles of Paul that the first Chris- 
 tians, when they met together, were accustomed, among other 
 things, to edify each other with psalms and spiritual hymns 
 (1 Cor. xiv. 26 ; Eph. v. 19 ; Col. iii. 16). In the Acts 
 (iv. 24 — 30) such an effusion is preserved, which is, indeed, 
 in other respects an arbitrary composition, but still only an 
 application of a passage in a Psalm quoted in it (Ps. ii. 1 ff.). 
 There is no doubt that whole Psalms were thus sung and 
 
 R 2 
 
244 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 applied to Christian circumstances, and for this purpose there 
 were scarcely any more appropriate than that pointed out by 
 Hengstenberg, the 107th. According to ver. 2, it is to be 
 understood, they say, of the redeemed whom the Lord has 
 redeemed out of the hand of the enemy, and whom he has 
 assembled together out of all lands, from the East and from 
 the "West, from the North and from the sea. In these words 
 the Christians could not fail to recognise themselves, called 
 as they were from the East and from the West, from the 
 North and from tlie South (Matt. viii. 11 ; Luke xiii. 29), and 
 redeemed by Christ out of the hand of the enemy — by whom 
 the devil and his angels were now understood (Luke i. 74). 
 But further on in the Psalm tempests at sea were spoken of, 
 out of which those assembled together had been saved. And 
 these tempests were now no longer referred to the misfor- 
 tunes of the ancient people of God, but to the persecutions 
 which the new Church of the Messiah had to undergo at an 
 early period, and the Lord, to whom they called, and who 
 commanded the storms and waves to rest, was no longer 
 Jehovah, but Clirist. And thus a point was attained at 
 which the image became, almost necessarily, history, and in- 
 deed miraculous history. Jesus had once lived on earth as 
 a real man ; hence the calming of the storm was looked upon 
 as his real act, and those whom he saved out of it must have 
 been his Apostles, the original society who surrounded him 
 during his pilgrimage on earth. It is still possible, as was 
 remarked above, that, in company with his disciples, he did 
 really experience a storm on the Sea of Galilee, during which 
 he was at first asleep, and then, having been awakened, dis- 
 played great presence of mind ; but the miraculous story 
 would have been told of him, founded upon the passage in 
 the Psalm and the early Christian symbolism, whether any 
 event in his real life supplied a point of connection or not ; 
 and thus, while we are compelled to declare the miracle in the 
 evangelical narrative to be decidedly fiction, we arc, as re- 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 245 
 
 gards the natural remainder of it, at all events without any 
 guarantee for its historical character. 
 
 However valuable this history must have been to the Chris- 
 tendom of the earliest time, by reason of its consolatory figu- 
 rative meaning, still it had one defect. The distress falls 
 upon the disciples while Jesus is with them in tlie ship. Can 
 the Church be attacked by any distress in the presence of its 
 Lord ? He was indeed sleeping, but the guardian of Israel 
 slumbers not nor sleeps (Ps. cxxi. 4). No distress attacks the 
 Church except while and during the time that Christ is absent ; 
 indeed he is with her until the end of the world (Matt, xxviii. 
 20), but only spiritually; he has withdrawn from her his 
 bodily presence, and in order to sift and prove her has left 
 her to the battle with the world. But that even then his arm 
 is not shortened, that when the distress of his followers is 
 greatest he is able to help them — this it is of which they 
 would wish to assure themselves, which they would wish to 
 behold in the history of a miracle. On this occasion (Matt. 
 xiv. 22—33 ; Mark vi. 45—52 ; John vi. 16—21) they em- 
 barked alone, and without Jesus ; a somewhat far-fetched 
 reason for his remaining behind is given in the statement 
 that he did so in order to send the multitude away after the 
 miraculous feasting. When he had completed this task, he 
 ascends the mountain for the purpose of solitary prayer; 
 according to Mark, he saw from there what in Matthew is 
 only mentioned as having taken place in the meantime — the 
 ship, now in the middle of the sea, battling with the waves 
 after nightfall, in consequence of the wind being against it. 
 He allows it thus to battle for some time, and it is not until 
 the fourth watch of the night, i.e. towards daybreak, that he 
 bestirs himself to help them. More than once (Matt. xxiv. 
 42, XXV. G), according to the evangelical narrative, and on 
 one occasion even with direct reference to the division of the 
 night into four night watches, he gives it as a motive for 
 watchfulness that they cannot know when the Lord cometh, 
 
246 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cock-crow, or 
 in the morning (Mark xiii. 35) ; equally unknown is the hour 
 he has determined for appearing to render assistance ; it may, 
 as in this instance, he the latest, the fourth watch of the 
 night. 
 
 But again, how will Jesus leave the shore without a boat, 
 and render assistance to the disciples while sailing in the 
 very middle of the sea ? It is impossible that this can cause 
 any difficulty to the Messiah : the only question is, what kind 
 of miraculous passage is the most appropriate for him. Fly- 
 ing, by means of which Abaris the Hyperborean traversed 
 sea and rivers, was not traditionary in the Hebrew legend, 
 and in that of the first Christians it was only attributed to the 
 wicked magician Simon. The miraculous heroes of the Old 
 Testament, when they wanted to cross a piece of water, had 
 a wand in their hand, which they had only to stretch out 
 (2 Mos. xiv. 16), or a cloak, with which they had only to strike 
 the Avater (2 Kings ii. 14) ; in other cases, the bearers of 
 the ark had only to step into the water (Josh. iii. 13 — 17); 
 this done, it parted and gave them a road, so that they could 
 pass over on dry ground. This celebrated resource from the 
 history of Moses, Joshua, and Elisha, was, unfortunately, not 
 applicable in this case. Jesus did not wish to reach the 
 opposite shore, but to get on board a ship sailing on the 
 surface of the lake, so that it was of no use to lay the bottom 
 dry and walk upon it. So the only way that was left was to 
 walk upon the water itself, and in fact no more appropriate 
 mode of transit could be imagined for the Messiah, for whom 
 the idea of difficulty was altogether impossible. It was the 
 method of Jehovah himself The march of Israel through the 
 Eed Sea, on which occasion Jehovah himself formed the 
 rear-guard in the pillar of fire, was sometimes poetically so 
 described that he himself was represented more as one walk- 
 ing upon the sea than through the sea. When it is said in 
 Isaiah (xliii. 16), "Thus saith the Lord, M'hich maketh a way 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 247 
 
 in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters," we are quite on 
 the ground of the Mosaic narrative ; but when the Psalmist 
 says (Ixxvii. 19), "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in 
 tlie great waters, and thy footsteps are not known," it is but 
 a step from the last description to that in the Book of Job 
 (ix. 8), where God is described as he who treadeth on the 
 waves of the sea, or, according to the Greek translation, who 
 walks upon the sea as upon firm ground. That the Messiah 
 should pass over the water in the same way as Jehovah, 
 was certainly the most appropriate thing that could be said 
 of him. 
 
 We must here glance at the mode in which the peculiarity 
 of the several Evangelists shews itself in the narrative. The 
 statement of Mark, already mentioned, that Jesus saw from 
 the mountain the ship driven in the midst of the sea, although 
 the coming on of darkness creates some difficulty, is still not 
 altogether untenable. The more suspicious, after the words 
 (ver. 48), " About the fourth watch of the night he cometli 
 unto them, walking upon the sea," is the addition of the 
 same Evangelist, " and he would have passed them." AVhen 
 Ewald maintains* that these words can mean nothing else 
 but that Jesus would have come to them over the sea, he 
 only says what he wishes his friend Mark had said ; but in 
 fact he does not say so, but he says that Jesus wished to 
 have passed by them, and also that he would have done so if 
 they had not cried out and so caused him to take notice of 
 them. From first to last, when Jesus sees their distress, and 
 at last bestirs himself to go to them, the narrative of Llark 
 might be understood to mean that the bark of the disciples 
 had been the object of Jesus walking upon the sea ; but by 
 that addition we are taught something else, which is, that 
 Jesus would have continued to leave the disciples to them- 
 selves, and only have passed over the sea on his own account, 
 
 * The Three First Evangelists. 
 
248 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 for which purpose the way across the surface was as passable 
 for him as the road round the shore would have been for 
 another person. As in this point of view the walking on the 
 sea appears to be a thing which Jesus performs not merely 
 for tlie sake of the miracle, but as quite an ordinary act, he 
 becomes a Being perfectly supernatural and foreign to us, and 
 the Evangelist indulging in such a conception of Jesus can- 
 not, to us at all events, appear in the character of the original 
 Evangelist. 
 
 Moreover, we find a not less remarkable feature in the 
 corresponding passage in John. After describing the start of 
 the disciples, he continues (ver. 17), "And it was now dark, 
 and Jesus was not come to them." But could the disciples 
 have expected that he would come to them in the midst of the 
 sea ? They could only have done so if he had either promised 
 them to come, of which nothing is said, and then when he 
 came they would not have been afraid, or if passages of this 
 kind were customary with him, as the addition of Mark sup- 
 poses. So that we may in this case again see a trace of the 
 fact that the fourth Evangelist, in his miraculous histories, is 
 glad to follow the second. 
 
 When Jesus had come near to the ship, and the first alarm 
 of the disciples had been pacified by his " It is I," Matthew 
 has something peculiar to himself in an interlude with Peter. 
 As if to prove that the apparition approaching him on the 
 waves is not a spirit, but the Being whom it professes to 
 be, Peter calls out to him to be allowed (and at the same 
 time to have power given to him to enable him to do so) to 
 go over the water to him. Jesus directs him to come ; Peter 
 makes the attempt, succeeds for a moment, but is soon ter- 
 rified by the strength of the wind; he begins to sink, and 
 appeals to the Lord for support, who, with the words, "0 
 thou of little faith," seizes him by the hand, and takes 
 him with him into the ship. In any case, we have here in 
 this addition of Matthew an extremely ingenious feature. 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 249 
 
 not one merely extravagant, like that in Mark which we have 
 just remarked upon, Eckerman tells ns that Goethe* con- 
 sidered this narrative as one of the most beautiful, and, to 
 him, most valuable of legends, inasmuch as in it is illustrated 
 the lofty truth that man, by faith and courage, is victorious 
 in the most difficult undertaking, and, on the other hand, is 
 inevitably lost when the slightest doubt arises in his mind. 
 In order, however, to understand its origin, we must go back 
 to the Old Testament, and moreover to the history of the 
 passage of the Israelites through the Eed Sea. There the 
 Israelites who passed through in safety are contrasted with the 
 Egyptians who would have pursued them, but were drowned 
 in the returning waters. And why ? " By faith," says the 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 29), " they (the 
 Israelites) passed through the Eed Sea as by dry land, which 
 the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned." They were 
 drowned because they had not faith, as on this occasion Peter 
 was on the point of being drowned because his faith deserted 
 him. If it was wished, in order to make the Mosaic parallel 
 complete, to have a counterpart to the unfaitliful who were 
 drowned out of the circle that surrounded Jesus, there was 
 Peter, whose faith in the hour of danger was nearly extin- 
 guished, and who was only preserved by the intercession of 
 Jesus (Luke xxii. 31 ff.) ; and thus in this he does not actually 
 sink as the Egyptians did, but only begins to do so, and is 
 saved by Jesus. The two middle Evangelists omit this epi- 
 sode, as they do much beside which concerns only Peter in 
 particular ; only the author of the supplement to the fourth 
 Gospel, which, for a reason above explained, has more to do 
 with Peter, incorporates it with a narrative which we have 
 discussed above, but in a form essentially different.-j- 
 
 According to jNIatthew and Mark, Jesus now joins his dis- 
 ciples in the ship, whereupon the wind drops, and they accom- 
 
 * Dialogues with Goethe, ii. 2G3. t See above, § CD. 
 
250 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 plish the remainder of the passage to the other shore with- 
 out further delay. The distance must have been considerable, 
 as when Jesus set out upon his miraculous walk they had 
 only just arrived at the middle of the lake. According to 
 the fourth Evangelist, on the contrary, they wished, indeed, 
 to take Jesus on board, but found themselves at the same 
 moment already close to the shore to which they were bound 
 (ver. 21). Consequently, Jesus did not go on board. What, 
 therefore, Mark represents him as only intending to do, that 
 is, to pass the disciples and cross the lake, he actually accom- 
 plishes in John, Without availing himself of the ship, he 
 comes to the opposite shore, and possibly, moreover, accelerates 
 in a miraculous manner the speed of the vessel.* Accordingly, 
 in this instance also the fourth Evangelist treads in the steps 
 of the second in the exaggeration of the miracle, but only, as 
 in so many others, to attain, in our time at least, the opposite 
 of what he wishes. For as he represents Jesus as not meeting 
 with the disciples until they were close in shore, even theolo- 
 logians-j- who believe in John conclude from this, awakening 
 asain the shade of old Paulus, that Jesus did not walk over 
 the sea, but passed by land round its northern point, and that 
 the disciples, in the mist of the morning, only imagined that 
 they saw him walking over the water ; so that even John does 
 not say, as the others do, that Jesus walked upon the sea, but 
 only that the disciples saw him walking on it. But this does 
 not mean in the least that they merely imagined what they 
 saw, but comes to exactly the same thing as the two Synoptics 
 say. In this case it is not easy to see what meaning the 
 whole narrative is to be supposed to have if Jesus came to the 
 disciples in a natural manner. 
 
 That it is not the intention of the fourth Evangelist to 
 
 * Comp. Meyer' .s Commentary on the passage. 
 
 t Bleek, Contributions, i. 103 ff., in remarkable agreement with Qfrörer, The 
 Sacred Legend, i. 218 ff. In this case also, as in all subterfuges of the same kind, 
 Schleiermacher has set the example, in his Lectures on the Life of Jesus, though 
 only in passing allusions. 
 
SEA ANECDOTES. 251 
 
 represent the passage of Jesus as a natural proceeding, is clear 
 from the pains which he takes to describe the investigation 
 carried on on the part of the people into the mode in which 
 Jesus crossed the lake. When the people who had been col- 
 lected around Jesus on the eastern shore for the loaves and 
 fishes, find him on the next morning no longer in the spot or 
 in the locality, they calculate that he cannot have sailed across, 
 because (a) he had not embarked with the disciples on board 
 their ship, and (h) there had been no other ferry-boat there. 
 But neither could he have gone by land, as the people, return- 
 ing by water, find him already there (ver. 25), and he could not 
 have arrived in so short a time if he had taken the circuit of 
 the shore. Thus all natural modes of transit having been cut 
 off, there remains only a supernatural one by which Jesus 
 could have crossed, and this is the inference drawn by the 
 people themselves in their question of surprise (ver. 25) as to 
 when he came hither, i. e. back to the western shore. In order 
 to make this process of investigation into his quick passage 
 possible, the Evangelist provides "other boats" (ver. 23), i.e. 
 fishing boats, which he gets out of the history of the calming 
 of the storm in Mark (iv. 36), of which, however, a whole fleet 
 would not have sufficed to transport the five thousand men, 
 with their wives and children. John, therefore, here narrates 
 a miracle if any one ever did, and whoever does not choose to 
 believe him, but nevertheless considers him to have been an 
 eye-witness, has no resource left but, with Hase,* to admit 
 that here is another occasion on which he was absent — that is, 
 to make a second hole in the theory of the school of the fourth 
 Gospel, in which there are already holes enough. 
 
 * Life of Jesua, § 75, comp, with 74. 
 
252 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 79. The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. 
 
 In the rsalm wliicli describes tlie distress of the Israelites 
 during their captivity by the image of a storm at sea, and 
 their preservation out of it as a calming of the tempest by 
 Jehovali, we find, just at the beginning, the same thought 
 expressed by the image of a famine, out of which Jehovah 
 saved them. " They wandered," it is said (Psalm cvii. 4 — 9), 
 " in the wilderness in a solitary way ; they found no city to 
 dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. 
 Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he deli- 
 vered them out of their distresses. And he led them forth 
 by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. 
 Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and 
 for his wonderful works to the children of men ! For he 
 satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with 
 goodness." 
 
 But famine in the wilderness, as we may remember from 
 the history of the temptation, not merely figuratively, but as 
 real hunger, had been among the trials which the people of 
 Israel had had to undergo during their exodus from Egypt, 
 and the mode in which Jehovah had relieved them was among 
 the most famous miracles described in the original history of 
 the Hebrews. He had relieved them by maima, as a substi- 
 tute for bread ; and besides this, as they wished for flesh as 
 well, by quails. And, according to the Rabbinic text, taken 
 from 5 Mos. xviii. 15, as was the first Saviour, so is the last 
 Saviour, a new edition of the gift of manna was especially 
 expected from the Messiah.* 
 
 In famines, too, the prophets had proved their divine mis- 
 sion by sending miraculous relief When, daring the great 
 drought under Ahal), Elijah lodged with the widow of Zare- 
 
 * Sec the passage from Midrascli Koliclelli, above, p. 20 J. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 253 
 
 phath, Jehovah's miraculous operation in favour of his pro- 
 phet prevented the barrel of meal wasting or the oil failing 
 in the widow's cruse, so long as the scarcity lasted (1 Kings 
 xvii. 7 ff.)- Likewise, when in the days of Elisha a famine 
 occurred, and the hundred disciples of the prophets whom he 
 had with him were in want, twenty barley loaves and some 
 ears of corn in the husk were so completely sufficient at 
 Jehovah's word to satisfy them, that something thereof was 
 left (2 Kings iv. 38, 42—44). 
 
 Thus, in the history of the prophets, in accordance with 
 the change of circumstances, the form of the miracle had so 
 far changed, that a new aliment from heaven was no longer 
 given, but common and earthly nourishment was made suffi- 
 cient for a far longer time, or for far more persons, than it 
 would naturally have maintained. And therefore it was natural 
 that the Messianic hope, while keeping that strict Mosaic 
 form in view, should also appear in another, in which, con- 
 necting itself with the history of the prophets, it expected* 
 of the Messiah only a miraculous increase of means of nourish- 
 ment already existing ; only that, in order to excel the pro- 
 phet, the Messiah must feed a larger number with a less 
 amount of provision. 
 
 But the fact that a miraculous supply of food, such being 
 considered an appropriate act for the Messiah to perform, 
 was attributed to him, not in the form of a shower of manna, 
 but of a distribution of bread, depends also upon a further 
 consideration. The most important rite of the new Church 
 of Christ consisted in a distribution of bread. After the 
 Pentecostal speech of the Apostle Peter, the first believers 
 assembled for the breaking of bread and j)rayer (Acts ii. 42, 
 
 * Thus in tlie passage above quoted from Midrascli Koheleth, Ps. Ixxii. 16 is 
 brought forward as referring to the manna to be given by the latter Saviour. In 
 that Psalm only a superabundance of bread-corn is spoken of, which is to be in the 
 land in the days of the king eulogised in the Psalm, who is, according to the later 
 explanation, the Messiah. 
 
254 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 46) ; it was at the breaking of bread that the disciples going 
 to Emmaus recognised Jesus after the resurrection (Luke 
 xxiv. 30, 35) ; for, it is said, he took the bread exactly as at 
 the last supper, gave thanks over it, broke it in pieces, and 
 distributed it to his disciples. And when Paul (1 Cor. x. 3) 
 says of the Israelites under Moses, that they had been all 
 baptized in the cloud and in the sea, had all eaten the same 
 spiritual meat, and drunk the same spiritual drink, he con- 
 siders the manna and the water out of the rock likewise as 
 signs prefigurative of the bread and wine in the Supper of the 
 Lord, in the same way as he considered the wetting by the 
 cloud and the sea as a type of Christian baptism. Of the last 
 supper, indeed, the Christians told each other of the mode in 
 whicli Jesus instituted it on the last evening he spent on 
 earth ; but it admitted also of being represented as a counter- 
 part to the feeding with manna under Moses, and moreover 
 in the character of a miraculous feast : hence our evangelical 
 history of the Loaves and Fishes. It does not contain a 
 feature which may not be derived from the Mosaico-prophetic 
 type on the one hand, and the antitype of the Christian supper 
 on the other. 
 
 In the account given in the books of Moses there is this 
 peculiarity, that the feeding of the people with quails is told 
 twice over. So also the manna is twice spoken of (2 Mos. 
 xvi. ; 4 Mos. xi.). And it would seem to have been thought 
 necessary to imitate this peculiarity in the Gospels. At all 
 events, the two first of these have each two accounts of 
 feeding respectively. These accounts are, in each instance, 
 similar in the main, but differ in detail (Matt. xiv. 13 — 21, and 
 XV. 29, 32—39 ; Mark vi. 30—44, viii. 1—10). On the first 
 occasion Jesus withdraws into a wild region on the eastern 
 shore of the Sea of Galilee ; on the second, to a mountain in 
 the neighbourhood of the same Sea, which is also described as 
 Wilderness; — on the first, the multitude that followed him 
 stayed with him a whole day until evening ; on the second. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 255 
 
 three days ; — on the first, the multitude, without women and 
 children, amounted to five thousand ; on the second, to four 
 thousand men ; — on the first, it is the disciples who at first 
 recommend Jesus to dismiss the multitude, that they may buy 
 food ; on the second, it is Jesus who declares to the disciples 
 that he will not send the people away fasting ; — on the first, 
 there are five loaves and two fishes ; on the second, seven 
 loaves and a few fishes ; — on the first, there are twelve baskets 
 remaining ; on the second, seven baskets of fragments. But 
 everything else, — the hunger, which threatens the numbers 
 that have flocked together, by reason of their prolonged stay, 
 the doubt of the disciples as to the possibility of providing 
 sufficient nourishment for them, the question of Jesus as to 
 the provision in hand, the command to the people to sit down, 
 then the prayer, the distribution, the satisfying of the hunger, 
 and gathering of what remains, — all these are told exactly to 
 the same purport in both, in part in the same terms. Still, 
 in both Gospels, reference is expressly made to the two narra- 
 tives as relating two different events (Matt. xvi. 9 ff. ; Mark 
 viii. 19 ff.). Now this indeed can scarcely be an intentional 
 imitation of the double narrative in the Old Testament, but 
 may easily be explained from the same cause, namely, that 
 the author of our first Gospel, as well as the compiler of the 
 Pentateuch, found the same history in two different sources 
 given with somewhat varying details and in a different con- 
 nection, and took, in consequence, the double narrative of the 
 same history for two histories, and placed them unhesitatingly 
 close to one another. In this, Mark followed Matthew ; Luke, 
 as elsewhere in similar cases, only gives the first history (ix. 
 10 — 17), and omits the second; while John, likewise quite in 
 his own manner, compounds his narrative out of features of 
 both histories (vi. 1 — 15). He takes the five loaves and two 
 fishes, the five thousand men and the twelve baskets of frag- 
 ments, from the first history of the feeding ; on the other hand, 
 he transplants the occurrence, as Matthew and Mark do the 
 
256 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 second feeding, to a mountain, represents moreover, as is 
 done in tlie latter, the scene as being opened by an address of 
 Jesus to the disciples; and to his account, moreover, as to 
 the second of the two first Synoptics, there is subjoined the 
 demand for a sign from heaven and a confession of Peter 
 (vi. 30 ff., 68, comp, with Matt. xvi. 1, 16). 
 
 If, after these preliminary remarks, we go through the 
 several details of the narrative, we shall find that the locality 
 in which the miracle takes place, the wild district remote 
 from human habitations, supplies, on the one hand, a motive 
 for the performance of it, while, on the other hand, as in the 
 case of the history of the temptation, it already existed in the 
 Mosaic type. So also the time of day, the late evening, 
 does indeed supply a motive for what was to follow, but 
 it points not backwards into the Mosaic, but forwards into 
 the Christian history. The mode in which the disciples draw 
 the attention of Jesus to the day being far advanced, and as 
 a reason for either dismissing the people, or, which is the 
 alternative he adopts, feeding them, reminds us of the request 
 of the disciples going to Emmaus to stay with them, because 
 it was towards evening and the day was far spent, where- 
 upon follows the breaking of bread already mentioned (Luke 
 xxiv. 29) ; it reminds us moreover of the evening when Jesus 
 sat at table with the Twelve to eat the Passover and to 
 institute his holy Supper. Jesus' meal of love and miracle 
 is a supper. 
 
 The beginning of the miracle creates no difficulty on any 
 supposition, whether, that is, it is introduced, as in the first 
 account given by the Synoptics, by a suggestion of the dis- 
 ciples, or, as in the second, by Jesus himself expressing his 
 compassion for the multitude, who have already been with 
 him three days without sufficient food. On the other hand, 
 it is imintelligible how Jesus, according to the narrative of 
 the fourth Gospel, the very moment he sees the multitude 
 coming to him, can ask Philip, "Whence can we buy bread 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 257 
 
 that these may eat ?" The people •came, not to eat, but, 
 according to the Evangelist's own statement, on account of 
 the healing of the sick, and it was certainly not the business 
 of Jesus, before anything else and without any necessity, 
 which, according to the Johannine narrative, did not exist, 
 to look after the bodily support of the people. In fact, on 
 reading the additional words of the Evangelist, that Jesus 
 put that question to Pliilip in order to tempt him, we might 
 understand the purport of the speech to be exactly the same 
 as that of his speech at Jacob's well in Samaria, when the 
 disciples had fetched means of support for him out of the city, 
 and called upon him to eat. Then he said that he had food 
 of whicli they knew nothing. This the disciples understand 
 of real food, which some one might have brought for him 
 during their absence, while he is alluding to his performance 
 of the will of God and the execution of his work (John iv, 
 31 — 34). Thus, it might be supposed, on this occasion also 
 Jesus has in his mind a spiritual feeding of the people, and 
 so the answer of Philip, that five hundred pennyworth of 
 bread would not suffice for such a multitude, would be only 
 one of the regular misunderstandings in John, and the solution 
 v/ould be involved in the subsequent discussions contained 
 in the sixth chapter about the Logos as the bread of life 
 given by God to men. But, as usual in the Gospel of John, 
 this flight into the region of the spiritual meets with an 
 obstacle which brings it to the ground ; in spite of the ideal 
 elements introduced, the material miracle goes on, and this, 
 after being performed in all its material breadth, is again 
 remodelled and invested with a spiritual character. But tlie 
 Evangelist has this ideal perspective in view from the very 
 first ; it is because he knows what he intends at last to make 
 of the history of the feeding, namely, without prejudice to its 
 natural reality, a symbol of the spiritual nourishment of man- 
 kind by the Logos, it is because the material element in the 
 history is, as it were, transparent to him, that he represents 
 VOL. II, S 
 
258 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 Jesus as putting this question at the very outset, a question 
 which, unless we place ourselves exactly upon his point of 
 view, must appear absurd. 
 
 The objections which, in the first account of the feeding, 
 the disciples make to the request of Jesus to them to give 
 food to the people — in the second, to his declaration that he 
 cannot send the people away fasting, expressed in the one 
 case by their pointing to the small quantity of their pro- 
 vision, in the other by the question as to where sufficient 
 nou.rishment is to come from in the wilderness, are indeed 
 of the same description as the narrators of every detailed 
 miraculous history are fond of introducing, in order to give 
 relief to the accounts, but at the same time are prefigured 
 both in the Mosaic and also in the prophetic history. Jeho- 
 vah declares to Moses his intention of feeding the murmuring 
 people with flesh for a whole month even to satiety. He is 
 met by Moses first with an objection founded upon the num- 
 ber of the people, and then attention is drawn to what would 
 be required to satisfy so large a host with meat for so long a 
 time. In like manner when Elisha's servant is commanded 
 by his master to set before the sons of the prophets the 
 twenty barley -loaves, the latter is met by the question, 
 " What ! should I set this before a hundred men ?" (2 Kings 
 iv. 43). Here also we see the fourth Gospel going further in 
 the steps of the second. It is only in these two that the dis- 
 ciples name a sum which would be required to provide food 
 for the assembled multitude, and moreover the same sum, 
 two hundred pence, doubtless as an amount which would ex- 
 ceed that in the treasury of the society ; only that Mark says 
 that this amount would certainly be wanted, Jolm, on the 
 contrary, that so much would not suffice for eacli to have 
 but a small quantity. On the other hand, the assignment of 
 the conversation, which in the other Evangelists the disciples 
 carry on in common, to Philip and Andrew, togetlier with the 
 introduction of a lad as the bearer of the loaves and fishes. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LO.WES AND FISHES. 259 
 
 is to be laid to the account of that dramatically picturesque 
 manner of the fourth Gospel with which we are already ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 The provision in hand consists principally of bread. This 
 is the result partly of the ecclesiastical tradition, j^artly of the 
 Mosaic, and also of the proplietical type. For manna takes 
 the place of bread, and is frequently so called. The fact 
 that the bread is in the form of barley-loaves, that is, the 
 cheapest kind of bread, and that John speaks of this alone, 
 may be taken from the history of Elisha. The circumstance 
 that an accessory consisting of meat is added to the bread, 
 corresponds to the Mosaic precedent, according to which, 
 besides the manna, quails are also given to the people ; and 
 that in the evangelical narrative the accessory consists of 
 fish, — this might be derived, though not very satisfactorily, 
 from the remembrance of the murmuring of the people for 
 the fish which they had for nothing in Egypt, and from the 
 expression of Moses, that to feed so many people with fiesh 
 all the fish of the sea must be gathered together. If v,-e look 
 to the other of the types to which we have drawn attention, 
 the Christian supper, the fish, and the accessory of flesh at all, 
 might even excite surprise. It would not, indeed, have suited 
 the disciples' mode of life, in their travels into tlie desert, to 
 have carried wine as well as bread with them ; it is there- 
 fore quite intelligible that in the history of the loaves and 
 fishes the other element should be unrepresented, but where 
 the fishes came from is a question that from this point of view 
 is still enigmatical. We might, apart from the Supper, and 
 supposing the miraculous legend to have had its origin in 
 Galilee, look upon the fishes as a local feature, as in these 
 lake countries fish was a main element in the food of the 
 people, and indeed among the proofs of his resurrection 
 which Jesus gives to his doubting disciples, the consumption 
 of a piece of broiled fish occurs ; we might, moreover, remem- 
 ber that the Apostles, some literally and all figuratively, were 
 
2G0 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 fishermen, consequently the fishes were the most obvious 
 things to connect with the bread. 
 
 But we are at once, and necessarily, taken back to the 
 Supper, when we look at the description which the Evangel- 
 ists give of the distribution of the bread and the fishes by 
 Jesus. It might, indeed, be said that the fact of Jesus, on 
 this occasion as well on that of the institution of the Supper, 
 first blessing the bread with a prayer, was a part of the 
 Jewish custom, and still more, here, of the intention to perform 
 a miracle ; that his breaking the bread twice arose from the 
 nature of it ; his distributing it twice, from the circumstances 
 of the case ; so that, consequently, no conclusion should be 
 drawn from the similarity of his proceedings in both cases 
 as to an internal relation of the one narrative to tlie other. 
 But why then is the resemblance of the conduct of Jesus on 
 one occasion to his conduct on another so frequently and so 
 industriously brought forward ? Why is tlie mode in which 
 lie acted on these occasions represented as a test by which 
 he might be recognised? As in this instance it is said of 
 him that he took the five loaves and the two fishes, looked 
 up to heaven, gave thanks, broke the bread and gave it to 
 his disciples, so it is said, not merely at the institution of the 
 Supper, exactly in the same terms, that he took the bread, 
 gave thanks, broke and gave it to his disciples (Matt. xxvi. 
 26) ;* but also in the scene at the sea of Galilee after the 
 resurrection, Jesus takes the bread and gives it to them, 
 likewise also of the fish (John xxi. 13) ;f and likewise after 
 the resurrection, with the disciples at Emmaus, "He took 
 the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them ;" and it 
 was by this, "by the breaking of the bread," that he, who 
 
 * It is said in Mark of the fishes, vi. 4], Kai rove Svo Ix^rvac tfdpiae naai, 
 as in Luke xxii. 17, it is said of the cup that Jesus gave it to his disciples with 
 the words, AaßsTe rovro, Kai Sra^fpiffarE iavrolc- 
 
 t Here also the words, Kai to öxlxiptov ö^ioiwg, remind us of the waavrioc icai 
 T<> TTO-t'ipiov (in Justin, Apol. i. OH, Kui to Tro-i)piov ofioloj^), in tlie history of the 
 institution of the Sujiper, Luke xxii. 2(i ; 1 Cor. xi. 25. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AN"D FISHES. 261 
 
 up to that time had been unknown to them, was recognised 
 by them as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 30 K, 35). This, therefore, 
 was the act in the performance of which the members of 
 the Church took most pleasure in conceiving Jesus as being 
 enraged ; it was that in which he continued to survive in the 
 holy custom of the Supper ; and it was upon this conception, 
 independent of the act of instituting the Supper, that similar 
 acts were referred partly to the days of his resurrection, partly 
 to those of his natural life. And there is one point in which 
 our history of the loaves and fishes prefigures the ancient 
 Christian rite of the Supper even more accurately than the 
 history of the consecration itself. In this, Jesus was only in 
 the company of his disciples ; he therefore distributed the 
 bread and wine to them alone : on the other hand, at the 
 Supper, in the most ancient Churches, there existed a double 
 gradation, the bread and wine being delivered by the chief to 
 the deacons, and then by them handed to the several members 
 of the congregation,* exactly as in the history of the feeding, 
 bread and fish is first given by Jesus to the Apostles, and then 
 by them to the people. 
 
 The absence of wine at these preliminary semblances of the 
 Supper admits of the same explanation as the circumstance 
 that the celebration of the original Christian Supper is some- 
 times only described as " breaking of bread" (Acts ii. 42, 46, 
 XX. 7). The bread was always the substantial part of the 
 repast. And the circumstance that here, as in John xxi., the 
 bread is accompanied by fish instead of wine, may perhaps 
 be explained from this, that with the Supper, in Christian 
 antiquity, common meals, the so-called agapa',, were con- 
 nected. An allusion to these meals, properly so-called, 
 exceeding as they did the simple elements of the Supper, 
 may be found in the fishes ; so that the history of the feed- 
 ing would have a reference not merely to the Supper, in the 
 
 * Justin Martyi-, Apol. i. 65. 
 
262 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 more restricted sense, but to the custom of the Christian 
 love-feasts generally, the Supper included. The comprehen- 
 sive nature of Christian love, which at these feasts fed also 
 the poor members of the Church, was represented in the 
 history of the feeding as a product of the miraculous power 
 of Christ, which richly provides food for all. Perhaps also 
 from the custom which prevailed at these ancient Christian 
 meals may be explained the feature that, in the first account 
 of the feeding, Luke represents the people as sitting down, 
 some in fifties, some in hundreds : this may be an allusion to 
 the masses into which a large company might divide itself at 
 the love-feasts. 
 
 That a miracle is involved in the history of the feeding is 
 shewn unmistakeably by the fact that Jesus distributes the 
 broken pieces of five or seven loaves, and of two, or at all 
 events only a few fishes, and that by these pieces four or five 
 thousand men, together with the women and children belong- 
 ing to them, are not merely satisfied, but besides this, on one 
 occasion twelve, on another seven, baskets of fragments, i.e. 
 a larger quantity than was originally there for distribution, 
 remain. But it is not stated at what moment the miracle 
 really took place. Schleiermacher thinks that an eye-witness 
 would have told us this for certain : we add, yes, if there 
 could be an eye-witness of an impossible event. If we en- 
 deavour to put the thing plainly before us, especially the 
 moment of the miraculous increase, we see the pieces, before 
 coming into the mouth and stomach of the people, pass 
 through three sets of hands — the hands of Jesus, then those 
 of the Ap)ostles, lastly those of the multitude to be fed — and 
 tlie miraculous increase may be supposed to have taken place 
 under any one of these three processes. Supposing the 
 Iragments of five loaves to have come into the hands of more 
 than five thousand men without preceding increase, so as to 
 grow in their hands, not having done so before, then only 
 \ery small crumbs must have been carefully distributed by 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 263 
 
 the disciples to tlie people; a conception that involves an 
 amount of trifling which certainly was not in the mind of the 
 Evangelists. There remain, therefore, only the hands of 
 Jesus or the Apostles, and it appears to be most in accord- 
 ance with the spirit of the narrative to suppose that it was 
 in the hands of him who looked up to heaven and blessed 
 the little store tliat the increase of it also took place. We 
 may conceive this increase to have taken place in one of two 
 ways : that either when Jesus had finished with one cake of 
 bread or one fish, a fresh one and then again a fresh one 
 came out of his hands ; or that each of the five loaves and 
 two fishes grew under his hands, that is, threw off new 
 pieces, until in the case of the loaves a fifth part, in that of 
 the fishes a half, of the multitude was provided for, and that 
 then another loaf and the second fish came into the series. 
 And as John, certainly in the sense of the other narrators, 
 says that the baskets of fragments were collected from the 
 five loaves, tlie occurrence must have taken place, according 
 to their notion, in the manner last described, for in the first 
 case the fragments would not have come from the five loaves, 
 but each loaf would itself have been multiplied. 
 
 But whatever conception we may form of the miracle, it 
 involves, in any case, something so extravagant, that we can- 
 not be surprised if modern theology is anxious to get rid of 
 it at any price. But in doing so, the theologians should set 
 about the task fairly and openly, admitting that the Evan- 
 gelists here intend to describe a miracle, but that they do 
 not believe it, and inasmuch as similar cases are constantly 
 recurring in the Gospels, they are unable to look upon these, 
 generally, as historical compositions. Instead of this, we see 
 in the passage in question a set of miserable .shifts and de- 
 lusive evasions contending with each other for the mastery. 
 Schleiermacher-, who in this case also takes altogether the 
 ground of Paulus, finds in the words of Jesus in John (vi. 
 26), that the people had followed liim, not because they had 
 
264 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 seen miracles, but because tliey had eaten of the loaves, an 
 indication that the increase of the bread had been a natural 
 process. But as to what the miracles had been wliicli the 
 people saw, and what had happened to the loaves — upon this 
 point, with more cunning but less candour than Paulus, he 
 avoids every explanation. JSTaturally — because on a nearer 
 examination of the question he cannot avoid seeing that even 
 his eye-witness John describes the occurrence as a miracle, 
 and understands the speech of Jesus to mean that the people 
 looked upon the miracle which they had seen as important, 
 not because it was a miracle, that is, a proof and reflex of his 
 higher power, but only on its material side, as a distribution 
 of bread. The hypothesis that a hospitable meal, provided 
 by Jesus not through his own miraculous power but in a per- 
 fectly natural manner, for the purpose of setting an example 
 of a man's sharing his own provision with others, operated 
 iilDon by jDopular recollections and expectations, quickly took 
 the form of a legend about a miraculous feeding — this hypo- 
 thesis, according to Hase,* is only oj^posed by tlie fact of 
 John's having been an eye-witness. But what is to be done, 
 as, according to the admission of tlie same theologian, " the 
 possibility of an increase in a quantity of nourishing sub- 
 stance, without cause assigned, is undeserving of serious 
 thought" ? We know already what the scientific investiga- 
 tor of the life of Jesus will do : he dismisses the unwelcome 
 eye-witness, whose presence, moreover, on the occasion of 
 Jesus' walking on the water (the narrative of which imme- 
 diately follows, and which we have already discussed), would 
 place him in a difficulty. It is true, indeed, that according 
 to the express account of the two middle Evangelists (Mark 
 vi. 30; Luke ix. 10), the Apostles, i.e. the twelve who had 
 been sent out (Luke ix. 1 ; Mark vi. 7), had just before re- 
 turned ; but the dreamer John must have been behindhand, 
 and on meeting afterwards with Jesus, and hearing llie 
 
 " Life of Jesus, § 74. 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 265 
 
 history spoken of, cannot have taken the trouble to examine 
 into the actual circumstances. According to Ewald* it is 
 impossible now to state with accuracy what was the original 
 occasion of the narrative, in which he sees simply an embodi- 
 ment of the doctrine that where true faith is combined witli 
 genuine love, infinite effects may be produced by the smallest 
 external means. When the meaning of a miraculous history 
 is understood to be so abstractedly moral as this explanation 
 implies, we certainly require, if the origin of the evangelical 
 narrative is to be made intelligible, a special external occa- 
 sion. In Ewald's explanation, this occasion is simply an 
 immaterial nonentity. We, who have definitely accounted 
 for the origin of all the individual features of the narrative, 
 are formally exempt from the necessity of suggesting this ex- 
 ternal occasion. 
 
 Of these features there still remain only the gathering 
 together of the fragments and the number of the baskets. 
 The gathering of fragments generally may appear on the 
 one hand to be simply an imitation of the history of the 
 manna, which is also gathered from first to last, and not 
 merely the remnants. There is, however, a more definite 
 antitype in the history of Elisha, who causes the twenty 
 loaves to be set before the hundred prophets, with the ex- 
 planation, " for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat and shall 
 leave thereof." Then the writer continues, " So he (the 
 servitor) set it before them, and they did eat and left thereof, 
 according to the word of the Lord" (2 Kings iv. 43 ff.). On 
 the other hand, this gathering up of the remains of the 
 miraculous feast, especially when the reason for it given by 
 the Evangelist is taken into account, "that nothing may 
 remain," reminds us of the horror which the ancient Churcli 
 had of any of the elements of the Supper dropping to the 
 ground or being otherwise lost.-f- The fragments are gathered 
 
 * Three First Evangelists, p. 260. History of Christ, p. 320 ff. 
 t Tertull. de Cor. Mil. 3. Orig. in Exod. Homil. xiii. 3. 
 
266 MYTHICAL HISTOllY OF JESUS. 
 
 into baskets. This was partly a matter of course; but the 
 manna was also gathered into measures of a homer each. 
 In one account the number of baskets is exactly twelve. 
 This number may be copied from that of the Apostles who 
 gather. In the other, the number of baskets, seven, might 
 seem to be taken from that of the seven loaves mentioned in 
 the account, possibly also from that of the seven deacons 
 employed* at the celebration of the Supper. (Comp. Acts 
 vi. 1 ff., xxi. 8.) In the first number, as well as in that of 
 the twelve Apostles, an allusion to the twelve tribes of Israel 
 may at the same time be found ; but whether, because only 
 the remnants of the meal are collected into the twelve baskets, 
 those who had already feasted are to be understood as Heathen 
 and the feast as the great Supper of the Heathen, by which 
 the number of the twelve tribes of the Jews was to be by no 
 means diminished — is a question but few readers would 
 answer in the affirmative.-f* 
 
 80. The Miracle at Cana. 
 
 In the history of Moses (2 Mos. xvii.; 4 Mos. xx.), the gift 
 of manna or bread is accompanied by a miraculous gift of 
 water, and this also, in the expectations of the Jews, was 
 transferred from the first Saviour to the second, the Messiah. 
 jMetaphorically also, in speaking of spiritual nourishment, 
 the bread of understanding was placed by the side of the 
 water of Wisdom (Ecclus. xv. 3) ; in the Apocalypse, the water 
 of life to which the Lamb leads his followers, whose stream 
 
 * Comp, the passage from Justin quoted above. 
 
 t Thus Lutliardt, The Gospel of John, ii. 44, to tlie effect that Jesus meant to 
 imply this by the command given, at the conclusion of his miracle, to gather into 
 twelve baskets ; Yolkmar, Religion of Jesus, p. 232 ff., supposes a fiction, alluding 
 to the ministry of the Apostle of the Heathen. 
 
THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 267 
 
 springs forth from the throne of God and the Lamb, plays a 
 great part (vii. 17, xxi. 6, xxii. 1, 17) ; and even in the Gos- 
 pel of John, Jesus speaks of a living water which he gives to 
 men and which appeases thirst for ever (iv. 10, 13 ff.). 
 
 On other occasions Jesus prefers to compare what lie offers 
 to mankind to wine, and moreover to new wine which should 
 be put into new bottles (Matt, ix, 17). And in consequence 
 of his mode of life he found himself contrasted in many ways, 
 and not much to his advantage, as a drinker of wine, with 
 the Baptist who drank water (Matt. xi. 18 ff.). Moreover, 
 the frequent comparison of the joys of the kingdom of the 
 Messiah to a feast (Matt. viii. 11, xxvi. 29 ; Eev. iii. 20), to a 
 marriage-feast, at which the Messiah appears as a bridegroom 
 (Matt. xxii. 1 — 14, comp. ix. 15 ; John iii. 29 ; Eev. xix. 7, 
 xxi. 2, 9, xxii. 17), suggested the idea of wine that rejoices the 
 heart ratlier than that of sober water. 
 
 John's calling was to baptize with water; he was to be 
 followed by the Messiah with the baptism of the Spirit and 
 fire (Matt. iii. 11; Luke iii. 16 ; John i. 26, 33). According 
 to the accounts given in the Acts, the pouring out of the 
 Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus did actually manifest 
 itself by tongues of fire, resulting in phenomena which 
 were ascribed by mockers to those men being filled with 
 sweet wine (Acts ii. 13), the phenomena being on the con- 
 trary the effects of the Holy Spirit. But if, on this occasion, 
 being filled by the Spirit gave the impression that the effects 
 of the Spirit were those of the heat of new wine, conversely a 
 gift of wine might easily be taken as an image of the com- 
 munication of the Spirit. 
 
 The Baptist belonged to the old covenant ; his baptism by 
 water was but the last of those purifications, those works of 
 the law by which, since Moses, the Jewish people had in vain 
 attempted to gain the favour of God. The contrast between 
 the new element that had come in Christ and the old element, 
 between grace and the law, between the Son of God and Moses, 
 
268 MYTHICAL HISTüEY OF JESUS. 
 
 implying that it was only under the first conditions of this 
 series tliat satisfaction and happiness are to be attained, 
 under the last nothing but imperfection and dissatisfaction, is 
 especially involved in the principle of the fourth Gospel, " For 
 the law," it is said at the conclusion of the preface, "was 
 given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 
 "And of his fulness," it had been said just before, "have all 
 we received, and grace for grace" (i. 16 ff.). It has been cor- 
 rectly remarked,* that in the narrative of the gift of wine at 
 Cana, exactly the same principle returns in the form of a fact 
 that had been enunciated in that passage of the preface as to 
 the relation of Moses to Christ, of the law to grace. 
 
 If, as a parallel to the miraculous gift of food, a similar 
 gift of drink was to be ascribed to Jesus as the second Moses, 
 or the divine "Wisdom personified, all these considerations 
 must have concurred in causing that drink to be represented 
 as consisting rather in wine than, as in the case of its anti- 
 type, in water. And then there came in the additional con- 
 sideration which had principally contri1)uted, in the case of 
 Jesus, to change the gift of manna into a gift of bread. It 
 was impossible that a miraculous gift of food should be attri- 
 buted to Jesus without an allusion to the bread at the 
 Supper. Quite as impossible to describe him as having, like 
 Moses, miraculously supplied drink as well, without thinking 
 of the wine at the Supper. Thus Paul (1 Cor. x. 3 ff), in 
 speaking of the water out of the rock in the wilderness, con- 
 siders both it and the manna as types of the two elements of 
 the Supper. But if the matter employed at the miraculous 
 feeding was the same as one of the elements of the Supper, 
 it was obvious to represent the matter of the miraculous 
 supply of drink as corresponding to the other element of the 
 Supper, consequently as consisting of wine. Moreover, it is 
 intelHgible from tliis why the narrative of the miraculous 
 
 * Lutliardt, i. 354. 
 
THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 269 
 
 gift of wine is found only in the Gospel of John. The three 
 first Evangelists were satisfied with the history of the feeding 
 as prefiguring the Supper, as they all give a special account 
 besides of the institution of the Supper, in which, together 
 with the bread, its other element also, wine, has its proper 
 place. On the contrary, as the fourth Evangelist had, as is 
 to be explained below, his reasons for avoiding all mention 
 of the scene of the institution of the Supper, he was called 
 upon, in order that both the elements might be spoken of, at 
 all events indirectly, in liis Gospel, to place a miraculous 
 supply of drink by the side of a miraculous supply of food, a 
 gift of wine by the side of a gift of bread. 
 
 He makes it the beginning of the miracles which Jesus did 
 (ii. 11); it would seem as though he had felt himself com- 
 pelled, after having illustrated the propositions of his preface 
 with regard to the purpose and testimony of the Baptist, to 
 bring upon the stage, as a sort of a prologue to his whole 
 Gospel, the passage quoted as to the relation of Jesus to Moses/^E^:*^, ^ 
 of grace to the law. On this principle, perhaps, the form 
 which he gives to the miracle may be explained. It would 
 have corresponded to the evangelical miracle of the feeding, 
 as well as to the Old Testament miracle of the oil performed 
 by Elijah, if Jesus had increased a small quantity of wine, 
 had made it sufficient for a considerable time, or for many 
 men. Instead of that, he changes water into wine. Moses 
 also liad opened his miraculous career by a change of water ; 
 only it had been the vindictive change of all the water in Egypt 
 into blood. The first-fruits of the miracles of Jesus could 
 not, indeed, be a miracle of vengeance ; the blood into which he 
 changed the water must not be real blood, but only the noble 
 blood of the grape (1 Mos. xlix. 11 ; 5 Mos. xxxii. 14), which 
 indeed, as taken at the last Supper, is the sacrificial blood of 
 the Messiah (Matt. xxvi. 28), the life-giving blood of the Son 
 of Man who came down from heaven (John vi. 53 — 58). 
 
 If, after these preliminary remarks, we examine more closely 
 
270 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the Johannine account of the miracle at Cana (ii. 1 — 11), we 
 find that the scene where it takes place, a marriage feast, is 
 fixed by the conception already mentioned, of the kingdom 
 of the Messiah under the figure of a feast, and, more espe- 
 cially, a marriage feast. Had the scene of such a feast been 
 transplanted into the future, or the description been intended 
 to be a mere comparison, as in Matt. ix. 15, xxii. 1 ff, John 
 iii. 29, then, by a figure probably taken from the Song of 
 Solomon, Jesus himself might represent the bridegroom 
 wdiose bride is sometimes represented to be the Church 
 (Ephes. V. 25 — 27, 29, 32, and the passages from the Eeve- 
 lations above .quoted). On the otlier hand, in the case of a 
 scene placed as an historical occurrence in the life of Jesus, 
 the representation of it could not be given ; the bridegroom 
 must be a different person ; Jesus himself can only be a guest 
 at the marriage ; but still he is the person from whom, in the 
 end, the enjoyment of the feast proceeds. For the natural 
 bridegroom (this is necessary as a motive for the miracle) 
 has not provided, or has not been able to provide, a sufficient 
 quantity of wine. 
 
 The mother of Jesus points out to her Son the deficiency 
 that has occurred, as in the first account of the loaves and 
 fishes given by the Synoptics the disciples call his attention 
 to the fact that it is time to send the people away that they 
 may buy food. But, as is clear from his answer, the mother 
 of Jesus gives him this information intending to make a 
 demand upon his miraculous powers. The ensuing miracle 
 being the first, according to the Evangelist's own account, 
 that Jesus did, and no account having been given of the 
 miraculous events of his infancy, it appeared to the narrator 
 suitable that the mother of Jesus should have been from the 
 first aware of, or at all events have suspected, the existence 
 of her Son's exalted nature. But while he exalts her by im- 
 plying this, he degrades her on the other hand far below lier 
 Son's unapproachable dignity, by llie abrupt retort wliieli 
 
THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 271 
 
 Jesus makes. By the cutting words, " Woman, what have I 
 to do with thee ?" the fourth Evangelist appears to have in- 
 tended to outdo the question of Jesus to his parents, " Wliy 
 sought ye me ? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
 business ?" which the third Evangelist puts into the mouth 
 of Jesus at twelve years of age (Luke ii. 49) ; but that this 
 is too abrupt for him, will be the opinion of every one who 
 does not consider that what we are dealing with here is not 
 a condition of natural humanity, but the relation between the 
 creative Word incarnate and every human authority, and that 
 even that authority which is otherwise most sacred must be 
 repudiated by that incarnate Word. Jesus adds, as a special 
 ground for this repudiation, that his hour is not yet come. That 
 of the day and hour of the second coming of the Messiah, 
 and the end of the present period of the world, no man knows, 
 but only God the Father alone— this is the concurrent view 
 of the three first Evangelists (j\Iatt. xxiv. 36, xxv. 13 ; Mark 
 xiii. 32 ; Acts i. 7), of whom the second extends that igno- 
 rance to the Son, the Messiah. There, God alone is the Being 
 who knows, men (the Messiah being more or less expressly 
 included) do not know ; in the fourth Gospel, a most import- 
 ant point in favour of its fundamental view, the Son of God, 
 the incarnate Logos, is contrasted as the only Being that 
 knows with men who do not know, and the day and the hour 
 in question are not those of his future return but of his pre- 
 sent glorification, first by miracles and lastly by his death. 
 It is the latter that is implied when, as is frequently the case, 
 it is said that the persecution of his enemies had no result 
 because his hour was not yet come (vii. 30, viii. 20), and 
 subsequently that he knew and declared that his hour was 
 now come (xii. 21, xiii. 1). On the other hand, with regard 
 to the time for his public entrance into Jerusalem, he main- 
 tains, in opposition to his brethren, that it is not yet come 
 (vii. 6, 8), as he here objects to his mother that it is not yet 
 the hour for him to perform miracles : although in this case. 
 
272 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 as well as in the former, lie does really and after a short in- 
 terval acquiesce in the demand made upon him before the 
 time. Mary knows beforehand that he will do this, and upon 
 this knowledge directs the servants to do as her Son shall 
 direct them. Thus she is again exalted. For though she 
 bears in mind the distance between herself and him who is 
 above all (iii. 31), still, knowing what she does, she is not 
 embarrassed or perplexed. 
 
 The symbolical meaning of the six water-pots of stone, 
 which, according to the custom of the Jewish ablution (of the 
 hands before eating, Matt. xv. 2 ; Mark vii. 2 K), stood at 
 hand, cannot be mistaken. Jesus orders them to be filled with 
 water, thus getting the basis for his miracle. The statement 
 of the capacity of the pots, which was considerable, and their 
 being filled to the brim, is intended to imply that Jesus was 
 he who gives of his fulness (i. 15), who, like God himself, gives 
 not his gifts with scanty measure (iii. 34). 
 
 The pots, therefore, are filled with water ; then the servants, 
 at the order of Jesus, draw out and bear to the Master of the 
 feast, who, having tasted the liquor, recogr^ises it as wine, and 
 better too than had before come to table. When, on this, the 
 Evangelist uses the expression, " the water that became wine," 
 and, further on, describes Cana as the place where Jesus 
 changed the water into wine (iv. 46) ; Avhen, moreover, he calls 
 this change of water a miracle, in consequence of which the 
 disciples believed in Jesus (ver. 11), and ranks it as the first 
 Galilean miracle, with a cure at a distance as the second 
 (iv. 54) ; — when he does all this, he describes the act of Jesus 
 unmistakeal)ly as a miracle, and the interpretation of believers 
 is justified in the remark that any explanation that does away 
 with the miraculous element is not merely opposed to the 
 words and tlie view of John, but also depreciates his credi- 
 bility and capacity for observation, placing even the character 
 of Jesus in an equivocal light.* 
 
 * Meyer, Commentary on the Gospel of Jolin, p. lOS of tiie tliud edition. 
 
THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 273 
 
 If we believe in John, we must believe in tl;e miracle ; if 
 we cannot do the latter, we must refuse to believe in the 
 Evangelist, and that not only here, but as he narrates a series 
 of miracles not less incredible ; nay, as almost every word 
 uttered by his Christ is as incredible as this miracle, we 
 must do so throughout, and particularly as regards liis giving 
 us to understand that he is the Apostle John. The appli- 
 cation in this case of Hase's solution, which supposes him to 
 have been absent,* is the more ridiculous, as, according to 
 ver, 2, the disciples of Jesus were invited with him to the 
 marriage, and in the unnamed disciple who appears among 
 those before engaged by Jesus (i. 35, 41), Hase himself 
 recognises John ; the appeal of Schleiermacher and his fol- 
 lowers -f- to the fact that nothing is said of the impression 
 made upon the guests by the alleged miracle, and that the 
 narrative generally is not vivid enough, is a weak juggle 
 about an account which no honest reader can misunderstand ; 
 while Neander'sl attempt to substitute a mere potentialization 
 of the water for vinous properties, for the change of water into 
 real wine, can only be called a result of imbecility of thought, 
 as well as of faith, which deserves our compassion. 
 
 There now follows a speech of the master of the feast 
 which has caused the expositors much trouble in the attempt 
 to shew that the custom which is described in it as common 
 existed somewhere or other in the world. The master of the 
 feast says that every man puts before his guests^ the good 
 wine first, and then, when they have well drunk, that which 
 is worse. But, on the contrary, no man does this, because 
 it contradicts the nature of the operations of the human mind, 
 which requires a gradation of pleasure in the ascending scale. 
 The Evangelist simply invented this alleged custom alto- 
 gether, or rather appropriated it from a synoptic expression 
 
 * Life of .Jesus, § 50. 
 
 + Among whom, in this case, Ewald must be numbered, The Joluuinine Writings, 
 i. Ii9 fi. t Life of Jesus Christ, p. 27L 
 
 VOL. 11. T 
 
274 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 of Jesus. Ill composing liis narrative, he had floating in his 
 mind that speech of Jesus in which tlie latter compared what 
 he offered to mankind with new wine. And in Luke he 
 found appended to it (v. 39) the words : " No man also having 
 drunk old wine, straightway desiieth new : for he saith, The 
 old is better." This passage in the tliird Gospel is intended 
 to apply to the attachment of men to what is old (in this 
 instance, Judaism and the Jewish customs), and to their 
 prejudice against what is new ; and practical experience is 
 appealed to in proof of the assertion : our Evangelist intends, 
 conversely, to shew that the new element offered by Jesus is 
 preferable to the old, and that consequently in the miraculous 
 narrative the wine that was given last tasted better than 
 that before placed upon the table by the bridegroom. He 
 endeavours, in his own peculiar manner, to illustrate this by 
 a contrast ; but inasmuch as the question does not, in his 
 narrative, as in the passage of Luke, concern the difference 
 between wine that is old, i.e. grown in an earlier year, and 
 new, i.e. of a later growth, but only that between wine put 
 on the table sooner or later, that natural and frequently 
 heard phrase in Luke, The old is better, is converted into the 
 pretended custom, but one which cannot be proved to have 
 anywhere existed, of first setting on the better wine, and the 
 fact that immediately after the old tlie new has no taste, into 
 the imaginary usage of putting the M-orse wine before the 
 guests after the better. 
 
 Such is the symbolical view of the miracle at Cana, in the 
 form in which it was some time since brought forward by 
 Herder, without impugning its liistorical validity, most lately 
 by lUiur in })articular, who expressly rejects the latter. On 
 critical grounds, the only objection to be made to it is that 
 the Evangelist does not say a word pointing to such a pur- 
 port of the narrative, and especially that he does not, as he 
 does, e.g. in the case of the miracle of the feeding, connect 
 with it "speeches of Jesus illustrative of this meaning. I>ut this 
 
THE miraclp: at caxa. 2yo 
 
 very reference to the miracle uf tlie feeding, assists us in the 
 solution of this difficulty. The two miracles of the gift of 
 bread and the gift of wine are so essentially connected in 
 form and substance, as well as by their common reference to 
 the Supper, that the meaning of the one cannot be explained 
 without that of the other ; but the question was only this, 
 whether the higher meaning of the miraculous gift of food 
 should come under discussion on the occasion of the mira- 
 culous gift of drink, or the meaning of the latter on occasion 
 of the former. The miracle of food appears in the Synoptics 
 nearly in the middle of the narratives about Jesus, and its 
 position was assigned to it by reason of the connection in 
 which it appears. And if the fourth Evangelist had reasons 
 for placing the gift of wine at the beginning of his Gospel, 
 it is easily intelligible that he might not be inclined to subjoin 
 to the very first miracle described by him that lengthy sort 
 of illustration. In order to introduce a gradual ascent into 
 his Gospel, he gives of the two first miracles (ii, I ff,, iv. 
 46 ff ) a short and simple description ; the third is the first to 
 which he annexes long dissertations, and these, in the case 
 of the fourth, the account of the loaves and fishes (the walk- 
 ing on the water is treated more as an appendix to this), in- 
 crease in importance, until they culminate in the case of the 
 last, the raising of Lazarus, though here, in consequence 
 of the dramatic character of the scene, they are carried on 
 only in the form of a dialogue. In the discussions annexed 
 to the account of the loaves and fishes, it was natural that 
 Jesus should represent himself as the spiritual food of man- 
 kind in every sense, his flesh as their meat, his blood as their 
 drink, and should also allude to the wine given at Cana, at 
 least in its reference to the Supper. ]3ut the relation be- 
 tween the old and new, Judaism and Christianity, as it was 
 involved in the change of water into wine, had been already 
 expounded beforehand in the passage of the preface discussed 
 above. 
 
 t2 
 
MYTHICAL IIISTOliY OF JESUS. 
 
 81. The Cursing of the Fig-tree. 
 
 The miracle of the cursing of the fig-tree (Älatt. xxi. 18 — 
 22 ; Mark xi. 12— U, 20—23), which we have left to the last, 
 being, as a vindictive miracle, the only one of its kind in the 
 evangelical history (the Book of Acts has several such), is 
 indeed as such a particularly difticult one, hut still on other 
 accounts remarkably instructive. For in the case of this 
 miracle, not only, as in that of others, may the elements be 
 pointed out of which it is compounded, but also the different 
 shapes which it had to pass through before becoming a miracu- 
 lous account ; its changes, as it were, from the chrysalis to the 
 butterfly, or from the tadpole to the frog, are still co-existing 
 in the Old and JSTew Testament. 
 
 In a retrospect of the past ages of Israel, the prophet 
 Hosea, the prophet who has, soon after, the passage about 
 the Son or favourite of God, represents Jehovah as saying 
 (ix. 10), " I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness ; I 
 saw your fathers as the first-ripe in the fig-tree at her first 
 time ; but they went to Baal-peor," &c. That is, they re- 
 cruited the care which he bestowed upon the isolated and 
 unprotected horde by falling away into idolatry. The same 
 image is found with a different turn given to it in INlicah 
 (vii. 1 ff.), when he exclaims, " Woe is me ! for I am as 
 when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape 
 gleanings of the vintage : there , is no cluster to eat : my 
 soul desired the first-ripe fruit {i.e. fig). The good man is 
 perished out of the earth; and there is none upright among 
 men . . . the best of them is as a briar," &c. &c. Here 
 the people is not, as above, the grape or early fig, but the 
 fig-tree or the vine-branch, which, like the stripped stem 
 after the vintage, gives no more fruit ; degenerate Israel, 
 tlirowing out no more good shoots, is a fig-tree barren of 
 fruit. 
 
THE CURSING OF THE FIG-TREE. 277 
 
 Whether such a tree means a whole people or a single 
 man, we are told in the New Testament what its just fate is 
 to be, first by the Baptist (Matt. iii. 10), then hj Jesus him- 
 self (Matt. vii. 19). "And now also the axe is laid unto the 
 root of the trees ; every tree which bringeth not forth good 
 fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." And in connec- 
 tion, as it were, with tlie passage of Micah (and also with 
 the parable of the Vineyard in Isaiah, chap, v.), Jesus on 
 another occasion brings forward a parable of a man who had 
 planted a fig-tree in his vineyard, upon which for two years 
 he sought fruit in vain. In the third year he again finds 
 none, and then he commands the gardener to cut down the 
 useless tree that only burdens the soil; but the gardener 
 prays for a respite for this year, during which he will try 
 every means to make the tree fruitful ; if then it does not 
 answer to their expectation, it may be cut down without 
 further grace. Now it is remarkable that Luke, who alone 
 has this parable of the barren Fig-tree, passes over the history 
 of the cursing of the fig-tree. Does he not appear to have 
 been conscious that he had already communicated the essen- 
 tial substance of this history in that parable, and in a less 
 offensive form than that of a vindictive miracle performed by 
 Jesus might appear to the Evangelist, who likewise is the 
 only one who represents the demand made by certain disci- 
 ples for a vindictive miracle as having been rejected by Jesus 
 (Luke ix. 54 ff.) ? 
 
 But the motive was there. No sooner was a word or an 
 image of this kind found in the original Christian tradition, 
 than it became, if possible, a miraculous history. The severe 
 possessor of the vineyard in tlie parable was God ; the 
 patient gardener, Jesus tlie IVlessiah ; the year's respite which 
 he obtains for tlie tree, the acceptable year of the Lord 
 (Luke iv. 18), the period of the ministry of Christ in Israel. 
 But, as is well known, the time of this respite expired without 
 result ; if it did so, the gardener was ready to leave the tree 
 
278 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to its fate ; nay, the IMessiah whom he represents was himself, 
 according to the Christian view, returning in the clouds of 
 heaven to execute this punishment in the place of God. If 
 Jesus was supposed to have done this prefiguratively during 
 his earthly life to a tree which symbolised unfruitful Israel, 
 still the axe, according to the words of the text, could not 
 appropriately be put into his hands, so tliat he might be 
 represented as cutting down the tree like a day-labourer, but 
 the proceeding was brought into connection with his mira- 
 culous power, and tlie barren fig-tree was withered by a word 
 from him. This is the form in which the history is given by 
 Matthew and Mark, and put into a connection which on the 
 one side bears traces of its original import, while on the 
 other these traces have entirely disappeared. For it is in 
 the last week of the life of Jesus, on one of his last walks 
 from Betliany to Jerusalem, that he is said to have noticed 
 the barren tree, and to have passed judgment upon it. This 
 is connected with the meaning of the history, in so far as 
 that at that time the incapacity of Israel for the salvation 
 offered by Jesus was fully proved. On the other hand, the 
 dialogue between Jesus and the disciples, which both the 
 Evangelists append to the miracle, shews that in view of the 
 miracle itself they had altogether lost sight of tlie original 
 meaning of the narrative. For, on the disciples observing 
 with surprise how soon the fig-tree was withered away, Jesus 
 replies, that if they have faith and doubt not, they shall not 
 only do what had been done to the fig-tree, but also if they 
 say to a mountain (Luke, in a similar speech, on another 
 occasion introduces a sort of fig-tree, xvii. 6), " Be thuu 
 removed and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be doue." 
 These speeches, which only obscure the real meaning of the 
 narrative, might liave been added to it when it begun to be 
 looked upon only as a miraculous history ; Luke has pre- 
 served for us, in connection with his parable of the Fig-tree, 
 tlie sort of speeches wliidi (b'd originally behmg to it. There 
 
THE CURSING OF THE FIG-TUEF. 270 
 
 (xiii. 1) Jesus is speaking of the Galileans, whose blood 
 Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and of the eighteen 
 upon whom the tower of Siloaui fell, and asks the Jews 
 whether they thought that this had happened to those people 
 because of any particular guilt. No, he answers, but unless 
 ye repent ye shall all likewise perish ; and then he connects 
 with this the parable of the Fig-tree. Only this would also 
 be the moral of the history of the accursed fig-tree, and then 
 it would have been addressed, not to the disciples, but, as in 
 the first case, to the Jews, to the effect that except they repent 
 they would all perish like the fig-tree. 
 
 If then, in this case, as we have found in several others 
 also, and as is natural when we consider the numerous differ- 
 ent sources open to him and Matthew alike, Luke has pre- 
 served in his parable the pure and original form of this 
 narrative, it appears on further consideration, if we look at 
 the account as that of a miracle, and compare the description 
 of it in JNIatthew and Mark, that Matthew's is from two points 
 of view the more original. In the first place, he represents 
 the fig-tree as withering in a moment at the command of 
 Jesus ; and this, in the case of miraculous narratives, is the 
 only test of real simplicity. If the performer of a miracle 
 can produce the withering of a tree by a word, he can as 
 easily make the effect apparent immediately after the word 
 has been spoken. Separating the two in the way in which 
 Mark represents the tree as being cursed by Jesus on one 
 morning, and then its decay as being observed by the disci- 
 ples on the next, and not before, is pedantry and pragmati- 
 cism. It did not indeed occur to the Evangelist, that the 
 event might thus be made capable of explanation on natural 
 grounds, a purpose for which his representation has been 
 employed ; all that he had in view was to make the thing 
 more vivid and dramatic ; but, as by other similar modifica- 
 tions, he has only by this attempt weakened tlie strong and 
 original form of tlie miraculous account. 
 
280 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 But he has made a still gxeater mistake by his addition of 
 the words, that the time of figs \vas not yet. Not that he was 
 MTong in saying so, if we take the history by the Calendar. 
 That time, the week before Easter, is not yet the time for 
 figs ; for the early fig was not ripe till June, the regular fig 
 not till August; and when Josephus says of the shore dis- 
 trict of the Sea of Galilee that it bears figs* ten mouths in 
 the year, this proves nothing for the rocky region of Judea. 
 Mark adds these words in order to explain (what in the case 
 of a particular tree may easily be explained, even in fig-time, 
 by disease or from local causes) why Jesus found no figs 
 uj^on it ; but in his eagerness to explain, he overlooks the fact 
 that he thus makes the act of vengeance performed by Jesus 
 unintelligible. If it was not yet the time at which a healthy 
 tree should have liad fruit, the cursing of it Ijy Jesus had no 
 meaning. So in this respect also Matthew takes the better 
 course in not explaining the barrenness of the tree, i.e. not 
 mentioning that at that time no fruit whatever could properly 
 have been on a fig-tree, and thus leaving open the possibility 
 of explaining, at least from a certain point of view, the con- 
 duct of Jesus with regard to it. In the moral precept and 
 parable upon which our history is based, no time of year is 
 named, but the period at which fruit was sought in vain upon 
 the tree is naturally supposed to have been that of the fruit- 
 harvest. In the form of a miraculous history it was trans- 
 planted into the last day of the life of Jesus, and the cause 
 of this, as we have seen, was probably a faint remembrance 
 of its original meaning. But the narrators who repeated the 
 story, and who were thinking only of its miraculous charac- 
 ter, did not consider that by thus placing the occurrence 
 they l)rought it into the spring, a season unsuited to it if 
 looked upon as a subject of real history, 
 
 * Lell. Jud. iii. 10, 8. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 281 
 
 rOUETH GEO UP OF MYTHS. 
 
 the transfiguration and entrance of jesus into 
 jerusalem. 
 
 82. The Transfiguration. 
 
 In a Jewish work* we read in tlie narrative, 2 Mos. xxxiv. 
 29 ff., " Behold, Moses our Teacher, of blessed memory, who 
 was a mere man, God having spoken to him face to face, 
 obtained so shining a countenance, tliat the Jews feared to 
 approacli him ; how much more must this be assumed of the 
 Godhead itself, and the face of Jesus must have shone from 
 the one extremity of the world to the other ! But he was not 
 endowed with brightness of any kind, and was altogether 
 like other men. Hence it is clear that we are not to believe 
 in him." Tliis is indeed from a late post-Christian writing ; 
 but the inference it draws is that which a Jew must have 
 drawn in the earliest Christian times so long as he saw, on 
 the part of him who was held up as the last Saviour, nothing 
 corresponding to the shining countenance of the first Saviour. 
 Now it could not indeed be said of Jesus, as it w^as of Moses, 
 that when he spoke with the people he was obliged to put a 
 veil over his face on account of its brightness — because this 
 was notoriously not the case. But so celebrated a feature in 
 the history of Moses could not be left without a parallel in 
 that of Christ ; all that was required was to give it tlie proper 
 character. 
 
 Now we find, first of all, in the Apostle Paul, in a passage 
 (2 Cor. iii. 7 ff.) where he is giving utterance to his exalted 
 feelings, as a servant of the New Covenant, of the Spirit 
 that giveth life, the words: "But if the ministration of death, 
 
 * Nizzachon Yetus, p. 40. 
 
282 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS, 
 
 written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the 
 children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of 
 Moses for the glory of his countenance ; which glory was to 
 be done away ; how shall not the ministration of the Spirit 
 be rather glorious ? In this passage, indeed, it is not Christ 
 but the Apostles who are contrasted with Moses, and the 
 glory of the latter only understood in a spiritual sense. But 
 when it is said further on (ver. 13, 18), that they, the minis- 
 ters of the New Covenant, do not as Moses did, who placed 
 a veil upon his face, " But we all with open face beholding 
 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
 image from glory to glory ;" Christ himself also is brought 
 into the comparison as the Being from whom the glory of his 
 ministers is reflected, and moreover allusion is made to tlie 
 outward transfiguration which the risen Christ has undergone, 
 and which on his return his followers also shall undergo 
 (1 Cor. XV. 43—49). 
 
 Now it was always a subject of possible objection on the 
 part of Jewish opponents that so much that was expected 
 of the Messiah had not been performed by Jesus during his 
 earthly life, and must consequently be deferred to his second 
 coming. And in order to guarantee this future performance, 
 some preliminary proofs of it, as, e.g. of the raising of the 
 dead by the Messiah, were mythically referred to the bygone 
 life of Jesus upon earth. Thus a necessity may have been 
 felt of representing also the glory of that Christ who had 
 risen again, and was to return in the clouds of heaven, as 
 having appeared through the veil of his humanity, though 
 transiently only, during his first presence upon earth. This, 
 on one side at least, is the mode in which the history of the 
 Transfiguration, as given in tlie New Testament, arose (Matt. 
 xvii. 1—13; Mark ix. 2—13; Luke ix. 28— 3G). Tliis 
 history could not be unknown to the Jewish writer quoted 
 above, but no notice is taken of it, no douljt because it does 
 not speak of a permanent glory of the countenance of Jesus, 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION, 283 
 
 like that of Moses in the Old Testament narrative. Instead 
 of this, as we shall see, pains are taken in other respects to 
 outdo the Mosaic history. 
 
 The imitation of this in the evangelical narrative is plain, 
 and indeed the events mentioned in 2 Mos. xxiv. 1 ff. and 
 xxxiv. 29 are combined. The theatre of the representation. 
 Loth in the New Testament and the Old, is a mountain. In 
 tlie latter, it is Sinai ; in the former, as elsewhere in the his- 
 tory of the New Testament, a mountain without a name, but 
 described, as in the history of the Temptation, as a liigh 
 mountain. The number of persons whom Jesus takes M'ith 
 him for a nearer view of what was to happen to him is three, 
 and they are those who form that small committee, with 
 which we are well acquainted, of the apostolical college : as 
 Moses had taken with him to the mountain, besides the 
 seventy elders, three men in particular, Aaron, Nadab and 
 Abihu (2 Mos. xxiv. 1 , 9). The evangelical narrative is con- 
 nected with the preceding events by the date " after six" (in 
 Luke, eight) " days ;" as it is said of Moses, that after the 
 cloud had for six days covered the mountain, he was called 
 up to it by Jehovah on the seventh (2 Mos. xxiv. 16). More- 
 over, there is in each case some resemblance in what follows 
 the scene upon the mountain. When Moses, after his call, 
 comes from the mountain with the three men, from whom the 
 triumvirate that accompanies Jesus is copied (the illumina- 
 tion of his countenance is indeed spoken of subsequently), 
 the first thing that meets liis eyes is the sight of the people 
 danciim' round the ^olden calf, and his first emotion is one 
 of anger at the incapacity of tlie representatives he had 
 left behind him (2 Mos. xxiv. 14), of whom Aaron liad been 
 even an accomplice in tlie preparation of the idol (2 Mos. 
 xxxii. 15 ff'.). When Jesus comes from the mountain, his firyt 
 sight is the boy possessed with a devil, and his first feeling 
 one of displeasure at the inability of his disciples to drive it 
 out. 
 
284 MYTHICAL HISTOUY OF JESUS. 
 
 Tu both cases, the glory of the countenaiice is developed 
 upon the mountain itself; for that of IMoses also had become 
 shining upon the mountain during his conversation with 
 Jehovah, thougli this was not noticeable until he had de- 
 scended again to the people. The cloud, moreover, and indeed 
 a bright cloud, because tlie glory of God must be supposed 
 to have been in it, is likewise a feature taken from the Mosaic 
 history (2 Mos. xix. 16, xxiv. IG, 18). But in the case of 
 Jesus tliere is this addition, that besides his countenance, his 
 clothes also became shining ; and especially that he, as a 
 glorified Being, takes the place of Moses ; while tlie latter, 
 with Elijah, stands at his side in a subordinate position, nearly 
 in the same manner as the two accompanying angels at the 
 side of Jehovah in the history of Abraham. 
 
 The object of Moses' ascent of the mountain was to hear 
 the laws from Jehovah, and to receive the tables which he 
 was to hand over to the people. No such instruction could 
 be required by tlie Messiah : he, in whose time the law was 
 to be written in the hearts of men by the pouring out of the 
 Holy Spirit (Jer. xxxi. 31 ff.; Ezek. xi. 19 ff., xxxvi. 26 ff.), 
 must, above all men, carry it in his heart ; in his case the 
 ascent of the mountain was only intended to exhibit him to 
 his followers penetrated by supernatural light, and in com- 
 munication with exalted personages of Jewish antiquity, and 
 moreover, as had already been done at his baptism, to be 
 declared by God to be his Sou. The presence of Moses was 
 naturally called for by the similarity of what was now occur- 
 ring to Jesus to that which had once occurred to the Lawgiver, 
 and, generally, by the connection between the office of the 
 Messiah and his own. The Messiah was, indeed, according 
 to the interpretation of that time (Acts iii. 22, vii. oG), he 
 whom Moses had once proclaimed in the words (5 ]\Ios. xviii. 
 15), "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee ä I'rophet 
 from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto 
 him ye shall hearken." Moreover, if Moses was now seen in 
 
THE TRANSiaCURATION. 285 
 
 friendly conversation with Jesus, it was j)roved tliat the former 
 saw in him, not, as M'as the view of Jewish wranglers, the 
 destroyer, but the fulfiller of tlie law. 
 
 But, besides the Lawgiver, there appeared upon the moun- 
 tain of the transfiguration a prophet as well — Elijah. Accord- 
 ing to the prophecy of Malachi (iii. 23 ff., comp. Ecclus. xlviii. 
 10 ff), Jehovah was to send him before the coming of his 
 terrible day of judgment, to move, if possible, the people to 
 repentance. Hence it was a dictum of those learned in the 
 Scriptures that Elijah must first come and restore all things, 
 and that until the forerunner had appeared, the Messiah 
 was not to be expected (Matt. xvii. 10). It is well known 
 how Jesus himself (more probably the defensive tactics of 
 the first Christians) was said to have endeavoured to weaken 
 the proof drawn from the non-appearance of Elijah against 
 his own Messiahship, by representing John the Baptist to 
 be this Elijah (Matt. xi. 14; Mark i. 2 ; Luke i. 17): they 
 were satisfied with an imaginary Elijah, as the real Elijah 
 was not to be had. But it is in the higliest degree remark- 
 able that, according to the evangelical narrative, Jesus 
 should, just after the appearance of the real Elijah, have 
 referred his disciples to the unreal one, and moreover Imxe 
 referred to the latter because they looked for an appear- 
 ance of the former. For after they descended from the 
 mountain of the transfiguration, his disciples are said to have 
 asked him. How then do the scribes say that Elijah must 
 first come ? To which he answers. Certainly Elijah must 
 first come ; but in fact he has already come (that is, in John), 
 and not only not been recognised, but in fact maltreated and 
 put to death, which shall be also tlie fate of the JNIessiah him- 
 self (Matt. xvii. 10—13 ; Mark ix. 11—13). The question of 
 the disciples can only mean — If, as we are convinced (comp. 
 Matt. xvi. 16), thou art the Messiah, what then becomes of 
 the maxim of the scribes, that Elijah must precede the Mes- 
 siah, seeing that he has not preceded thee ? It is impossible 
 
286 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 that the disciples should have asked this question if Elijah 
 had appeared just before, and quite as little, supposing them 
 to have asked it, would Jesus have referred them to the 
 Baptist, and not simply to the real Tishbite whom they had 
 just seen. On the other hand, that question of the disciples 
 would have come in extremely well after the foregoing history 
 of the confession of Peter ; and it has therefore been surmised 
 that Matthew found it in this connection, and inserted, on 
 his own responsibility, the history of the Transfiguration.* It 
 is, however, quite in the manner of our synoptic Gospels, 
 simply on account of a common subject, in this case the word 
 Elijah, to put together two narratives, as frequently on other 
 occasions two texts, which in point of meaning have no con- 
 nection. In this instance, indeed, not merely is this done, 
 but the two histories formally exclude each other. Had Elijah 
 just appeared, as is said, the disciples could not ask the 
 question they are said to have done ; if they did ask the ques- 
 tion, Elijah could not have appeared just before. It is indeed 
 a very naive proceeding to connect two such histories ; but 
 it is exactly like Matthew to do so.i* We can here distin- 
 guish plainly between two layers of the tradition. The doubt 
 of the truth of the Messiahship of Jesus, arising from the 
 prophecy of Malachi, was first met by investing the Baptist 
 with the character of Elijah; then, when a pressure was put 
 upon the literal meaning of the prophecy, an attempt was 
 made to exhibit the real Elijah. He could not be represented 
 as appearing publicly to all men, but only apart to one or two 
 
 * Köstlin, Synoptic Gospels, p. 25. 
 
 + Baur starts with John, and thus his sense of the simplicity of the Synoptics 
 becomes obscured. So he tries to introduce a meaning into tliis conversation by 
 artificially interpreting the question of the Apostles to imply that after the appear- 
 ance of Elijah it was only their expectation that he would remain that was dis- 
 appointed (Review of the latest Investigations into the Gospel of Mark, Theological 
 Annual, 1853, p. 78). But their words imply that it was not his stay they were 
 disappointed of, but his coming at all, of which, according to the preceding history, 
 they could not have been disappointed. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 287 
 
 For this purpose the history of the Transfiguration and the 
 grouping with Moses naturally suggested itself. 
 
 The two first Evangelists do not say what formed the sub- 
 ject of the conversation between Jesus and the two departed 
 personages. Moreover, nothing depended upon it, as the 
 object of the meeting was only to exhibit Jesus in agreement 
 with the Lawgiver, and not without the Prophets associated 
 with him. Luke says that these personages announced to 
 him beforehand the death which awaited him in Jerusalem. 
 But this was superfluous, as he had already himself prophesied 
 this death (Luke ix, 22). But there is no doubt that the 
 purpose of the Evangelist is to represent the death of Jesus, 
 that great stumbling-block to the notions of the Jews, as 
 founded on the divine counsels of which his two associates 
 were considered as the depositaries. The proposal of Peter 
 to build tabernacles for Jesus and the two forms from the 
 kingdom of Sj^irits, to detain the grand supernatural appari- 
 tion as something natural and material, is described by Luke 
 and Mark as a misunderstanding, and the former represents 
 all three disciples as overcome with sleep, as they appear 
 subsequently in Gethsemane. By this, on both occasions, the 
 distance between them and Jesus is intended to be indicated. 
 While their Master is in the most elevated and mysterious 
 of states, they were lying on the ground with their senses 
 paralysed. 
 
 On the mountain of the transfiguration, as formerly in 
 Sinai, there, was a cloud containing the glory of God, who 
 could not be supposed to have been silent on this occasion, 
 any more than on that. His words were then directed to 
 Moses, which the latter was commissioned to convey to the 
 people ; now, in accordance with the different objects of the 
 scene, they are addressed to the disciples as a divine testi- 
 mony to Jesus. They are the words from Isaiah, xlii. 1, comp, 
 with Psalm ii. 7, which had already sounded from heaven on 
 the occasion of the baptism of Jesus, only that on this occa- 
 
288 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 siou, as having a manifest reference to the history of Moses, 
 the call to hear him is added to them, from the passage in 
 which the Lawgiver promises to the people a Prophet like 
 unto himself (5 Mos. xviii. 15). 
 
 After this account of the origin of the liistory of the Trans- 
 figuration, there is only one view of it which need be con- 
 sidered with respect. It is that which sees in it an objective 
 and miraculous occurrence, which believes in a supernatural 
 brightness of the face and garments of Jesus, a real appear- 
 ance of the two personages who had been long dead, and 
 an audible voice of God from out the cloud. Whoever can 
 admit these things seriously — -whoever, being himself con- 
 vinced, stands on the same point of view as the Evangelist — 
 to him indeed this narrative presents no difdculty, and we 
 have nothing to say against him, except that we doubt as to 
 whether he really is what he believes himself to be, and does 
 not merely imagine it. On the other hand, all those explana- 
 tions which attempt to represent the occurrence as half natural, 
 or entirely so, are too miserable and absurd to make it worth 
 while to dwell upon them. Who could suppose that in the 
 change of the figure of Jesus and the brightness which shone 
 around him, even Schleiermacher* sees an optical illusion, of 
 which, however, no more account can be given, i.e. he will 
 not allow the point to be more accurately investigated, 
 because he is well aware that all closer investigation can 
 only expose more fully the absurdity of the whole view : the 
 two personages, whom the Evangelists suppose to have been 
 and consequently describe as Moses and Elijah, were, he 
 imagines, secret adherents, connected, perhaps, with the San- 
 hedrim, an idea corroborated by the statement that they 
 foretold his death to Jesus, as the deadly hatred of that body 
 against him might be known to men of this description ; an 
 actual voice, indeed, is not supposed to have been heard at 
 
 * In hi.s Lectures on the Life of 'esus. Likewise Hase, Life of Jesus. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 289 
 
 all, but the disciples, after the manner of the Jews, looked 
 upon the optical illusion as a divine revelation about Jesus, 
 and later Hellenistic narrators misunderstood this revelation 
 to have been expressed by an actual voice. Thus, after the 
 example of Paulus and Venturini, all the main points of the 
 evangelical narrative are happily set aside ; Jesus was not 
 really transfigured, Moses and Elijah did not appear, no voice 
 from heaven spoke over his head. But then we are at a loss 
 to know what, or whether anything of the sort, did occur to 
 Jesus. Ewald appears to be of this opinion when he says,* 
 that we are now unable to state of what lower materials this 
 description is formed, but that its inward truth is plain, and 
 that the higher materials, of which this inward truth avails 
 itself for its representation, are in no way doubtful. By 
 lower materials are meant, in the mysterious language of 
 Ewald, the natural and historical foundations of a narrative ; 
 by higher materials, the Old Testament conceptions and events, 
 from which the narrative is copied, the inward truth is the 
 idea. So that Ewald means to say, that we cannot now know 
 what historical element is at the bottom of the history of the 
 Transfiguration, but that its ideal truth is evident, and the Old 
 Testament antitypes upon which it was formed unmistake- 
 able. This is nearly the same thing as we say ; only that we 
 are not concerned to find a professedly natural occasion for 
 what never took place ; and as to ideal truth, all that we see 
 in the narrative is the Jewish opinion that Moses and Christ 
 were antitypes of each other, and that a connection existed 
 betw^een Elijah and the latter. 
 
 It is because of the Jewish-Christian character of the his- 
 tory that the fourth Evangelist omits it, or only adopted it in 
 a form so changed that we cannot recognise it. Of this we 
 cannot speak until we come to it further on. 
 
 * Three First Evangelists, p. 274. Comp. History of Christ, p. 338 ff. 
 
 VOL. n. u 
 
290 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 83. The Entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. 
 
 The history of the Transfiguration is followed in all the 
 Synoptics by only a few speeches of Jesus. They represent 
 him then as entering upon the eventful journey to the Pass- 
 over at Jerusalem. We have already spoken, in an earlier part 
 of the work, of the mode in which, on the subject of this 
 journey, the three first Evangelists differ, partly from one 
 another, partly from the fourth. Here we are only concerned 
 with the conclusion of it (Matt, xxi, 1 — 11 ; Mark xi. 1 — 10 ; 
 Luke xix. 29—34; John xii. 12—16). 
 
 Among the contrasts which resulted from a comparison of 
 passages of the Old Testament, so different in their character, 
 but all referred to the Messiah, there was one referring to 
 the mode of his advent. According to Daniel, vii. 13, he 
 was to come witli the clouds of heaven ; according to Zecha- 
 riah, ix. 9, to enter upon an ass. This passage, in which 
 in point of fact an ideal Prince of Peace was alluded to, was, 
 more correctly than many others, referred to the Messiah. 
 " What says the Scripture of the first Saviour ?" it is said 
 in that Eabbinical passage which we have already quoted 
 so often.* Answer : " 2 Mos. iv. 20, we read : And Moses 
 took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass. So 
 also the last Saviour, Zech. ix. 9 : Poor, and sitting upon 
 an ass."i" This contradiction between the description taken 
 from Zechariah and that from Daniel, was reconciled by the 
 Rabbis, by explaining that in case the Israelites should 
 prove worthy, their Messiah was to appear majestically in 
 the clouds of heaven, but if they were unworthy of liim, 
 he should ride in upon an ass in a poor and needy condi- 
 
 • Midrasch Kohelctli, 73, 3. See above, Vol. i. p. 204. 
 
 t This asH of Moses and the Messiah is supposed to have been the same as 
 Abraham had saddled when he was pieparing for the sacrifice of Isaac. Jalkut 
 Kubeni, 70, 3. 
 
HIS ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM. 291 
 
 tion.* The Christians reconciled the contradiction other- 
 wise. They assigned the riding upon the ass to the period 
 of the first presence of their Messiah upon the earth, that 
 is, to the earthly life of Jesus, expecting his coining with 
 the clouds of heaven on the occasion of his future second 
 advent. Since in the passage of Zechariah, in so far as it 
 represents the King as entering meekly seated on the animal 
 of peace (nothing is said of poverty), there seemed to be 
 involved an opposition to the expectation of the Messiah 
 current among the Jews, in which he was represented as a 
 mighty warrior, it might indeed be supposed that Jesus on 
 entering the capital had chosen to ride upon an ass, with 
 the intention of recalling the passage of Zechariah to men's 
 minds, and by this palpable demonstration to divest himself 
 of the character of Messiah who was to be a warrior and a 
 politician. For we have above explained that the royal dig- 
 nity attributed even in Zechariah to the coming Personage, 
 did not necessarily carry a political meaning. If, therefore, 
 we are unable to do what has lately been often done, that is, 
 reject as unhistorical the whole of the entrance of Jesus into 
 Jerusalem upon an ass, we shall certainly soon discover thus 
 much, that the evangelical narratives about it are formed, 
 not so much upon a given fact, as upon Old Testament pas- 
 sages and dogmatic ideas. 
 
 The clearest proof of this lies in the description of the first 
 Evangelist, whose account of the entrance of Jesus contains 
 an impossibility which he cannot have taken from any source 
 of information about a real fact, however much distorted, but 
 only from a passage in a Prophet which he himself misunder- 
 stood. He tells us that the two disciples sent by Jesus to 
 Bethphage, brought from that place, in accordance with his 
 directions, an ass and its colt, s^Jread their clothes upon both 
 animals and set Jesus thereon. Now, if we are to imagine 
 how Jesus could have ridden upon both beasts at the same 
 
 * Gemara Sandhedr. f. 9S, 1. 
 U 2 
 
292 MYTHICAL IIISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 time (and considering the shortness of the distance the notion 
 of a change from one to the other is quite inadmissible), our 
 understanding is paralysed, nor does it recover itself until 
 we look more accurately at the passage of Zechariah quoted 
 by the Evangelist. " Eejoice greatly, daughter of Zion 
 (the words, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, in Matthew, are 
 from Isaiah Ixii. 11) ; behold, thy King cometh unto thee ; 
 he is just and having salvation, lowly, and riding upon an 
 ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." Now, every 
 one who has the least acquaintance with the poetical lan- 
 guage of the Hebrews, knows that by these words not two 
 animals are meant ; but the same animal, which in the first 
 part of the verse is called an ass, is in the second more 
 accurately defined as the foal of an ass. There is no doubt 
 that, in general, the author of the first Gospel knew this 
 as well as we do ; but as he saw in this passage a prophecy 
 of Christ, he thought that on this occasion he must under- 
 stand it literally, and understand the words as applying to 
 two animals. Having thus, as he thought, done full justice 
 to the prophecy, he considered that his task was accomplished, 
 and did not set himself the further problem of realising to 
 his own mind the possibility of one Messiah riding upon tv,'0 
 asses. 
 
 In this Luke and ]\Iark do not follow him, but are satis- 
 fied with one animal. Their description does not on this 
 account approve itself as the more original, for tlie feature 
 in question comes from the passage of Zechariah, and to 
 this Matthew keeps closer than they do, following it as he 
 does literally and blindly, while the two others, doing the 
 same, dp it with a certain amount of reflection. Of the 
 two animals spoken of by Matthew, they choose for the use 
 of Jesus not the dam but the foal. But this, again, is the 
 result of an unhistorical reflection which they betray by the 
 addition that Jesus ordered them to bring a foal upon which 
 no man had sate. This condition was not brought out in 
 
ms ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM. 293 
 
 the passage of Zechariah, but the foal of which the passage 
 speaks might be understood to be of that description, and 
 moreover met the view that, as subsequently only a tomb in 
 which no man had been laid (Luke xxiii. 53) was worthy to 
 receive the sacred body of the Messiah, so now only an animal 
 on wliich no man had sate was worthy to carry him. More- 
 over, it is self-evident that this is a reflection far more suitable 
 for a subsequent narrative than for Jesus himself, who, if he 
 rode an animal never ridden before, could only expect the 
 procession to be disturbed, and the impression which he 
 wished to make destroyed. 
 
 But the original Christian legend was not satisfied with 
 a general fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah by Jesus 
 riding into Jerusalem upon an ass ; the ass of the Messiah, 
 it was supposed, must have been destined for his use by a 
 higher Providence, and, as the Messiah, he must have known 
 where the ass intended for him was standing bound, and 
 had only to be fetched away. He must have known this all 
 the more, as in an Old Testament prophecy the Messiah was 
 expressly described as he who binds up his ass. In the 
 blessing of Jacob, the dying Patriarch says of Judah, but in 
 terms that might apply to Shiloh, so often understood of the 
 Messiah (1 Mos. xlix. 11): "Binding his foal unto the vine, 
 and his ass's colt unto the choice vine;" thus Matthew had 
 here again his two asses, the older one and the young one, 
 while all had the tethered ass which Justin Martyr does, in 
 fact, in accordance with the prophecy, represent as being 
 tethered to a vine at the entrance of the village.* The 
 Evangelists have nothing about the vine, but represent Jesus 
 as only saying to the two disciples whom he despatches, 
 that when they come into the village before them, they will 
 find an ass bound. The passage from Jacob's blessing was 
 not so present to their minds as that from Zechariah, but it 
 
 * Apol. i. 32. 
 
294 MYTHICAL HISTOUY OF JESUS. 
 
 very naturally occurred to that of the IMartyr, as it is certain 
 that the beginning of the evangelical narrative was originally 
 as much taken from the former as the rest of it was from 
 the latter. Properly speaking, it might certainly have been 
 expected that, in accordance with the passage from Genesis, 
 the Messiah would have bound his ass to the vine on dis- 
 mounting ; but the assumption that it was already standing 
 bound gave at the same time an opportunity of a proof being 
 afforded of the supernatural knowledge of the Messiah, and 
 in addition of the power of his Messianic calling, if the dis- 
 ciples had only to say to the owner of the ass, that the 
 Messiah had need of it, to obtain the loan of it without 
 opposition. The fourth Evangelist avoids all these details, 
 and simply says that Jesus found a young ass and mounted 
 it. But this is only because, when he notices the prophecy 
 of Zechariah, he is only concerned with the retrospect of the 
 raising of Lazarus, to which he passes on immediately after 
 (ver. 17 ff.). 
 
 But the prophecy of Zechariah did not merely assert that 
 the Messianic Euler should enter Jerusalem upon an ass, but 
 also called on the capital on this occasion to shout and 
 rejoice; as also the passage of Isaiah which the first Evan- 
 gelist, in consequence of its resemblance, combines with that 
 of Zechariah, commands that the daughter of Zion should 
 be told that her Saviour cometh. According to the descrip- 
 tion of the three first Evangelists, this is the character which 
 the multitudes that accompany him give to Jesus, by the cry, 
 " Hosanna to the Son of David, that cometh in the name of 
 Jehovah !" and by spreading out their garments and strew- 
 ing the road with palm -branches ; the capital, in which, 
 according to the history as given by the Synoptics, Jesus is 
 as yet unknown, is thus thrown into confusion, and the 
 people ask who tliis is ; upon which he is represented to 
 them to be Jesus, the l*rophet from Nazareth in Galilee. 
 According to John, on tlie contrary, the crowds are from tlie 
 
ms KNTUANCE INTO JERUSALEM. 295 
 
 city itself, and on hearing of the approach of Jesus, who was 
 not unknown in Jerusalem, go to meet him with that shout 
 and those offerings of homage, and the reason that is alleged 
 for this solemn introduction is the raising of Lazarus. With 
 the exception of this last feature, including even the offence 
 taken by the Pharisees and the reply of Jesus, of which the 
 account given by the Evangelists is not uniform, all that is 
 here told might have so happened : but even if nothing of it 
 had happened, the narrative was a natural result of the pro- 
 phetic passage taken in a Messianic sense. 
 
THIED CHAPTER 
 
 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF THE PASSION, DEATH, AND 
 EESUEEECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 FIEST GEO UP OF MYTHS. 
 
 the meal at bethany, and the paschal meal. 
 
 84. The Meal at Bethany and the Anointing. 
 
 It is one of the most ancient of the evangelictil traditions 
 that Jesus, shortly "before his Passion, was anointed with 
 precious ointment by a woman on the occasion of a supper 
 at Bethany (Matt. xxvi. 6 — 13; Mark xiv. 3 — 9; John xii. 
 1—8). This history was especially valuable to the Christen- 
 dom of the earliest ages, as is shown by the words whicli 
 INIatthew and Mark put into the mouth of Jesus at tlie time : 
 " Wherever in the world this Gospel" (but it is scarcely pos- 
 sible that Jesus should thus have spoken of a "Gospel," 
 meaning thereby his own history) " shall be preached, there 
 shall also this be told for a memorial of this woman." Ac- 
 cording to this we might have expected that the two first 
 Evangelists would have preserved for us the name of the 
 woman, or something more definite about her ; as this is not 
 the case, it is clear that the earliest Christendom was not so 
 much concerned to know who had anointed Jesus, as that 
 he had been anointed. And, therefore, not only is Bethany 
 named as tlie locality, but the house in which the occurrence 
 took place and the owner of it. The reason of so much 
 stress being laid upon the fact that Jesus was anointed before 
 his passion, is given us by the narrative in the expression 
 
THE MEAL AT ßETHA^y AND THE ANOINTING. 297 
 
 which it likewise puts into the mouth of Jesus, that in tliat 
 she poured that ointment on his body, she did it for liis 
 burial; or, as Mark rightly explains the expression of Mat- 
 thew, that she came beforehand to anoint his l;)ody to the 
 burying, while the turn given to the words in John, that she 
 had preserved the ointment for the day of his biirial, oblite- 
 rates the original meaning of the words till they are almost 
 unintelligible. But the importance thus attributed to this 
 anticipation of the anointing can only be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained upon the supposition that the anointing of the body 
 of Jesus at the proper time, that is, on the occasion of his 
 burial, did not in fact take place. This, according to Mat- 
 thew and Mark, was really the case ; according to Luke, it 
 was intended but not done ; and John is the only one who 
 asserts that it was actually performed at the expense of an 
 entire hundred- weight of spices. These statements involve 
 questions to which we shall return at the proper place. 
 
 But these utterances of Jesus only form the conclusion of 
 the scene which has been introduced by the appearance of 
 the woman with the box of ointment, which she pours out 
 upon the head of Jesus. This act is first censured by the 
 disciples, who point out how much good might have been 
 done to the poor for the value of the precious ointment ; it 
 is then defended by Jesus as a virtuous deed, as the poor are 
 always there, and opportunities of doing them good, while 
 he, and with him the possibility of shewing him love and 
 honour, will soon be withdrawn from them. It is not im- 
 possible that all this may have been really said as it is 
 recounted. But the next speech of Jesus, explaining the 
 anointing by the woman as an anticipation of the anoint- 
 ing of his dead body, looks very much as if it were evolved 
 out of the consciousness of the Christendom of the earliest 
 period, whicli was pained at the fact that there had been 
 no anointing of the body of tlie Master on the occasion of 
 his burial. A similar supposition, therefore, as regards the 
 
298 ^tVTHICAL HISTORY OF JKSUS. 
 
 preceding speech naturally suggests itself. "We may suppose 
 the existence in the earliest times of Cliristianity of an exag- 
 gerated feeling for tlie poor, which looked upon benevolence 
 towards them in the shape of almsgiving as the only really 
 good work, and on the other hand rejected as waste all 
 ornament or decoration in worship. This unimaginative 
 Ebionitish tendency was here met by a feeling of the neces- 
 sity of a personal worship of Christ — and it is significant that 
 it is the fourth Evangelist who goes so far as to see mere 
 hypocrisy in the objection taken to such expenditure on the 
 ground of the poor, that it is he who considers avarice to 
 have been the real motive for it, and accordingly, instead -of 
 the disciples generally, into whose mouth Matthew puts it, 
 INIark having mentioned indefinitely some of them, he attri- 
 butes it to Judas, the thief of the treasury and subsequent 
 traitor. Naturally ; if the censure passed upon the expense 
 incurred for the person of the Jewish-Christian Messiah was 
 inadmissible, it can; as against the divine creative Word 
 incarnate, have only been passed by the representative of 
 abandoned profligacy. 
 
 But, impossil)le as it was, on the standpoint of the fourth 
 Gospel, that any one of the weak but honest eleven should 
 begrudge the ointment — only the abandoned twelfth could 
 do this — quite as impossible was it that an act so graceful, 
 so appropriate to the dignity of the Son of God, should be 
 performed by an unknown person : it must have been per- 
 formed by the most hearty and cordial worshipper of Jesus. 
 Such a person was, as we have seen above, suggested by the 
 author of the third Gospel to that of the fourth, in that 
 Mary, the sister of Martha, who in Luke indeed is neitlier 
 represented as living in Bethany nor as taking part in the 
 anointing, but while her sister is preparing a hospitable 
 reception for Jesus on his journey, sits at his feet listening 
 to his words, is complained of to Jesus by her busy sister 
 for doing so, and is defended by him (Luke x. 38 — 42). Slie, 
 
THE MEAL AT BETHANY AND THE ANOINTING. 299 
 
 and no one else, must have been the woman M'ho anoints him ; 
 as on that occasion she sate at Jesus' feet, so also on this, 
 she must have anointed not his head, as Mattliew and Mark 
 say. she did, but his feet : she must have used for that pur- 
 pose not merely an indefinite quantity, but a whole pound of 
 costly spikenard to the value of three hundred pence. In 
 giving a more definite description of the ointment, as well as 
 in the statement of its value in figures, the fourth Evangelist 
 here takes as his copy the representation given by the second, 
 as he frequently does in the introduction of features that tend 
 to realise and strengthen his account. 
 
 John, following Luke, chap, x., had, as we have seen above, 
 associated with the two sisters Lazarus as their brother, and 
 thus Simon the Leper is excluded from the narrative of t]ie 
 Supper, and Lazarus, who had been dead and raised again by 
 Jesus, is substituted for him. But he is not put altogether 
 in the place of Simon ; he does not appear as Simon does in 
 the character of the master of the house and host, but only 
 as one of those who are sitting at table ; Martha waits, in 
 the same way as she had, in the narrative in Luke, busied 
 herself much wdtli waiting. We see here that the fourth 
 Evangelist does not intend exactly to contradict the tradi- 
 tional account which connected the anointing with the house 
 of Simon, so he leaves him out and names Lazarus, but with- 
 out quite putting him in the place of the former, so that we 
 do not know, on reading his account, who it was that really 
 gave the feast to Jesus, and can only guess from Martha's 
 waiting that, according to Luke, it was her household or that 
 of her brother in which Jesus was entertained. 
 
 But the fourth Evangelist has one feature pointing in a 
 direction quite different from that of the anecdote about 
 Mary and Martha told by the third. The fact that he differs 
 from the two first in representing Mary to anoint not the 
 head but the feet of Jesus, might, in default of any other, 
 admit of the explanation that it is founded w[>on the state- 
 
300 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 ment of Mary's having sate, according to Luke, at Jesus' 
 feet ; but she also dries his feet with her hair, and this is a 
 feature of so peculiar a character that we are compelled to 
 ask what it means and whence it comes. As regards the 
 first, we might look upon it as a sign of heartfelt and meek 
 submission, and thus, possibly, as the result of the Evan- 
 gelist's own imagination : but if it is found in another 
 evangelical narrative, we shall be compelled to assume a 
 connection between the two ; and if it appears to be more 
 essentially a part of the other account than it is of this, we 
 shall be further compelled to assume that tlie former was the 
 source from which ours is taken. In fact, it is found, and 
 found with every mark of originality, in the account of the 
 anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman, which is peculiar to 
 Luke alone (vii. 36 — 50). There are many indications from 
 which we may gather that this history is not foreign to that 
 which we are considering, i.e. is not, as is commonly sup- 
 posed, the narrative of an entirely different occurrence. It 
 must strike us at once that Luke knows nothing of any other 
 anointing ; that therefore, in him, this anointing by the 
 sinful woman, which he does not indeed place at Bethany 
 and in the last days of Jesus, but in the period of his ministry 
 in Galilee, takes the place of the anointing at Bethany. In 
 Luke, moreover, it not only takes place on the occasion of a 
 supper, but the master of the house and giver of the feast 
 has the same name as he of Bethany in Matthew and Mark, 
 namely, Simon, only that he is described not as a Leper but 
 as a Pharisee, as befitted the part he had to play in contrast 
 with the sinful woman. Moreover, as in Matthew and Mark, 
 the woman carries her ointment in an alabaster box ; ' as in 
 their account slie is attacked, not indeed aloud by the disci- 
 ples, but by the master of the house in a murmur to himself, 
 and defended by Jesus, though the attack as well as tlie de- 
 fence, in accordance with the change in the personality of the 
 woman, are each quite different. 
 
THE MEAL AT BETHANY AND THE ANOINTING. 301 
 
 But how can this change be exphained ; and is it conceivable 
 that of the woman who is the subject of much praise, who, 
 from a feeling of profound reverence, emptied her box of 
 ointment on the head of Jesus, either tradition or modifica- 
 tion by a writer should make an accursed sinner, who in a 
 spirit of penitence wetted the feet of Jesus with her tears, 
 dried them with her hair, covered them with kisses, and 
 moistened them with ointment ? Here we must remember 
 that the liistory of a woman who was accused before Jesus of 
 many sins, as well as that of the woman who anointed him, 
 formed part of the most ancient evangelical traditions. The 
 Gospel of the Hebrews is said to have contained it, and 
 Papias also to have given it.* Of the sinful woman in Luke 
 it is expressly said (ver. 47), that her many sins were for- 
 given ; on the other hand, she is not really accused to Jesus, 
 but the Pharisee only thinks within himself that if Jesus had 
 been a Prophet he must have known what sort of a wor- 
 shipper he had got. But we find in the fourth Gospel an 
 account, which is indeed attacked by criticism,i- but which 
 is, if not originally a component part of this Gospel, very 
 ancient. 
 
 It is the sketch of the adulteress (viii. 1 — 11), a woman 
 who is expressly accused before Jesus of only one sin in 
 which she had been caught, and was taken by him under his 
 protection. 
 
 It is clear at once that a narrative of this kind, if Luke had 
 it before liim in the Gospel of the Hebrews, must have been 
 especially welcome to that disciple of Paul ; and quite as much 
 so that he could not be satisfied with it in the form in which 
 we now read it in the Gospel of John. In this account the 
 woman appears throughout as passive ; she does not seek 
 Jesus, but is dragged to him by others ; moreover, while slie 
 
 * See Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 39, 17. 
 
 t See, e.g., Ewald, The Johannine Writings, i. 270. Gn the other hand, its 
 genuineness is defended by Hilgenfeld, The Gospels, p. 285 flf. 
 
302 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 stands before liim she performs no act of any kind, but her ac- 
 cusers, Pharisees and Scribes, avail themselves of the oppor- 
 tunity to put a captious question to Jesus, who disarms them 
 by apj)ealing to their own consciousness in a manner which, if 
 looked at from an historical point of view, is extremely im- 
 probable. It was absolutely necessary for Luke, in accordance 
 with his point of view, to represent the impulse of the sinful 
 woman for salvation as an independent one, her approach to 
 Jesus as spontaneous. The profligate son, though forced by 
 necessity, had still formed his own resolution to return to his 
 father, had done so, and confessed his sin ; Zaccheus, the 
 chief publican, had climbed a tree from eagerness to behold 
 Jesus ; the Publican in the Temple, praying for forgiveness, 
 had beaten his breast. So also the sinful woman must have 
 exerted herself in some way or other to obtain tlie indul- 
 gence which Jesus shewed her. Such exertion might be 
 considered as having been involved in the anointing ; and as 
 the woman who is said to have performed tliis was not named 
 by the older Evangelists, nor anything else more definite 
 stated about her, a combination of the two narratives was 
 the less difficult, as the description of a man or woman as a 
 sinner had, in the spirit of the Gospel, nothing degrading in 
 it, repentance being assumed. But as an humble sinner, the 
 woman was not to approach the head, but only the feet of 
 Jesus ; the first thing with wliich she wetted the latter must 
 have been her tears of repentance ; she could not have consi- 
 dered her hair as too good to dry the feet of the Lord, which 
 she had bathed with her tears, nor her lips to touch them with 
 kisses, nor the most precious oil wherewith to anoint them ; 
 all features wliich serve the purpose of illustrating, in the 
 most striking manner, the proud omission on the part of the 
 Pharisaic host of the corresponding duties which courtesy 
 required. In connection with this, the speeches which are 
 here interchanged, not between Jesus and his disciples, but 
 between him and the I'liarisaic host, have for their suliject, 
 
THE MHAL AT llETHANY AND THE AXOINTING. 303 
 
 not the expenditure of the ointment, but the character of the 
 woman who anoints. While the Pharisee regards her as a 
 person of abandoned character, and one who degrades even 
 Jesus by her approach, Jesus represents the Pharisaic self- 
 righteousness as the source of want of love, the forgiveness 
 of sins claimed by the sinner and granted by him as the 
 source of humble love, in a parable which in many respects 
 may be looked upon as the counterpart to the parable of the 
 King who reckons with his servants (Matt, xviii. 23 — 35). In 
 both there are two debtors, the one with a larger, the other 
 with a smaller debt : only that in Luke both are indebted 
 to the same creditor ; in Matthew, one of the servants to the 
 king, the other to his fellow-servants. In Matthew, the 
 servant to whom, at his request, the king* has forgiven the 
 larger debt, refuses to forgive the smaller to his fellow- 
 servant, and is consequently set up as an example to be 
 avoided : in Luke, conversely, he to whom much is forgiven 
 is also he who loves most (that is, the creditor who has 
 forgiven him the debt, as nothing is said of any one who was 
 indebted in turn to him), and it is only said of him to whom 
 little is forgiven, or who, like the self-righteous Pharisee, 
 thinks he has little occasion for forgiveness, that he will love 
 little. 
 
 We have, therefore, here a group of five narratives, the 
 middle one of which is, 1, that of Matthew and Mark of the 
 unknown woman who at a supper at Bethany had anointed 
 the head of Jesus, had been censured by the disciples for 
 her extravagance in doing so, and defended by Jesus. On 
 the extreme left of this narrative stands, 2, that in the 
 Gospel of the Hebrews about a sinful woman, who was 
 accused before Jesus, and by him (probably, as we no longer 
 have the original narrative) dismissed uncondemned, with 
 the recommendation to sin no more ; on the extreme right, 
 
 * Here both parables coincide also in expression. Matt, xviii. 25 : fit) t^oiTOf 
 I't nvTOv anodovvai — . Luke vii. 42 : /(^ txöi'rioi' ce avrojv anooovvnt — . 
 
304 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 3, that of Luke about the two sisters Martha and ilary, 
 one of whom receives Jesus in her house and serves him 
 industriously, while the other sits listening at his feet, and is 
 defended by him against the censures of her sister. The 
 first and second of these histories is combined by Luke, 4, 
 in his narrative about the sinful woman who anoints the feet 
 of Jesus ; the first and third, by John, 5, in his narrative 
 about Mary's anointing him, only that he has, at the same 
 time, out of the fourth composite narrative of Luke, about the 
 anointing by the sinful woman, introduced the features of the 
 anointing of the feet and the drying with the hair, as suitable 
 to the sensitive character of his Mary of Bethany. 
 
 85. The Passover, ajs'd Institution of the Last Supper. 
 
 The meal at Bethany was of importance to the Christendom 
 of the earliest period, on account of the anointing of Jesus 
 which had taken place at it, as an anticipative compensation 
 for the non-payment of that honour to him after his death. 
 So also was the Passover which he had eaten at Jerusalem 
 with his followers shortly before his death. This was because 
 there M^as a connection between it and the memorial meal, the 
 repeated celebration of which formed the real centre of the life 
 of the Church in the first ages of Christianity. 
 
 So important an event required, above all, a corresponding 
 introduction. The Founder of the Supper of the New Covenant 
 must, it was supposed, even in the mode in which he arranged 
 the Supper (Matt. xxvi. 17 — 19; Mark xiv. 12—15; Luke 
 xxii. 7 — 13), have shewn his high omnipotence. In the 
 same way as, when his entering the capital in a manner 
 corresponding to his dignity was under consideration, he had 
 only to send his messengers, Avho had only to mention the 
 
THE PASSÜVER AND THE LAST SUITEn. 305 
 
 need of the Lord, in order to persuade the chief inhabitant 
 of the neighbouring village to give up his beast of burden for 
 his use, so on this occasion he has, according to Matthew, only 
 to send his disciples to a friendly citizen of the capital, with 
 the announcement that the Lord intends to keep the Pass- 
 over at his house with his disciples, in order to obtain, with- 
 out delay, the use of the required room all ready for his pur- 
 pose. Now even in this, as there is ho reason for supposing 
 any previous arrangement with the owner, in the sense of 
 the Evangelist there is something miraculous implied, whether 
 that miraculous element is to be understood to have consisted 
 in the magical power of the word of Jesus, or in an arrange- 
 ment of Providence in his favour. We have the miraculous 
 element, even M'ithout taking into account the difficulty, if not 
 the impossibility, there would naturally be, considering the 
 press of strangers at the time of the Passover, in finding on 
 the morning of the first day of the feast a place in the city 
 disengaged for the evening. 
 
 There was, however, an obvious inducement to bring for- 
 ward the miraculous element in a more palpable form, as this 
 history of the engagement of a room resembled very closely 
 the model of that of the ass for the entrance into Jerusalem. 
 That this was the case we see in Mark and Luke, in the cir- 
 cumstance that in their description Jesus is represented as 
 sending, not, as in Matthew, his disciples generally, but, as 
 he does for the ass, two of them only (according to Luke, 
 Peter and John) ; then, as in the first case, the two mes- 
 sengers are to find an ass bound; and as formerly Samuel 
 had foretold to Saul that, as a proof of his gift of prophecy, 
 he should meet certain persons, some of them bearing food 
 and drink (1 Sam. x. 2 ff.), so in the two middle Evangelists, 
 Jesus here foretells to the two disciples that when they came 
 into the city, they will be met by a man with a water-pitcher, 
 whom they are to follow into the house into which he enters, 
 and to ask the master of the house, in the name of the 
 
 VOL. II. X 
 
306 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Teacher, for the room in which he can eat the Passover with 
 his disciples; upon which the man will shew him a large 
 upper room, already provided with seats ; and there they are 
 to arrange the feast : all of which turns out accordingly. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist has omitted the whole of this history, 
 as he has that of the entrance. In the case of the latter, he 
 represents the ass as being found by Jesus, without any more 
 definite statement of the mode or the manner. In this case 
 he represents a feast as being prepared, without saying where 
 and how (xiii. 1 ff.). But is the meal of which he speaks 
 really the same with that described by the Synoptics ? It 
 seems not ; for wliile the Synoptics describe their meal ex- 
 pressly as that of the Passover, John gives the clearest in- 
 dications that the meal he describes was a meal hefore the 
 Passover, and instead of the institution of the last Supper, 
 which the Synoptics represent as taking place during the time 
 of eating the meal, John speaks of a w^ashing of feet which 
 Jesus performed upon his disciples during that time. 
 
 According to Matthew, on the first day of unleavened 
 bread, the disciples go to Jesus, with the question, "Where 
 wilt thou that we prepare the Passover for thee ?" and then, 
 when the room has been engaged, it is said further that 
 Jesus sat down with the twelve (Matt. xxvi. 20), according 
 to Luke (xxii. 15) declaring that he had greatly desired 
 once more to eat that Passover with them before his Passion. 
 Here then we have the Passover, which, according to the ordi- 
 nance of Moses (2 Mos. xii.), was to be eaten on the evenino- 
 of the 14th of Nisan.* The evasion which assumes that 
 perhaps Jesus, wdiether foreseeing that his death was to 
 occur the following day, or in compliance with a custom re- 
 quired (only unfortunately not capable of being proved) by 
 
 * According to the Jewish method of beginning the day at six o'clock in the 
 evening, the time appointed for eating the Paschal lamb belonged properly to the 
 fifteenth of Nisan, as the beginning of this high festival ; but, as in the above 
 passage, it is, in the ordinary phraseology, reckoned to the fourteenth. 
 
THE PASSOVER AND THE LAST SUPPER. 307 
 
 the excessive number of visitors to the feast, enjoyed the 
 feast a day too soon, is contradicted not merely by Luke, 
 who describes the day as that on which the Paschal lamb 
 must be killed (xxii. 7), but in fact by Matthew as well, 
 when he speaks of the " first day of unleavened bread," which, 
 according to the Mosaic ordinance (2 Mos. xii. 15, 18), was 
 the 14th, and certainly not the 13th of Msan. 
 
 On the other hand, not only is there no hint whatever in 
 John that the meal in question was the Passover, but when 
 it is said (xiii. 1 ff.) that Jesus, conscious on the one hand 
 that his end was near, and on the other of his exalted dignity, 
 did at a Supper this or that lefore the Passover, the meal 
 spoken of cannot have been the Passover, but must have been 
 an earlier one. And when the order given by Jesus to Judas 
 to do what he does quickly, is interpreted by the disciples 
 to mean that Jesus commissioned him to buy what the society 
 might want for the feast (xiii. 29), the feast, and especially 
 that of the Passover, was still to come ; for all sorts of things 
 had to be bought for it ; and that this was not yet over is 
 most unquestionably clear from the fact that on the next 
 morning the Jews refuse to enter into the praetorium of the 
 heathen, so as not to pollute themselves, but to be in a con- 
 dition to eat the Passover (xviii. 28). 
 
 If, however, in consequence of the manner, so obviously 
 different, in which the Synoptics on the one hand, and John 
 on the other, describe this meal, an attempt is made to dis- 
 tinguish two meals, one of which, with the washing of the 
 feet, took place on the 13th, the other, with the Supper,* as 
 the Passover, on the 14th Nisan, we are immediately con- 
 vinced from other circumstances that, on the contrary, both 
 parts refer to only one meal. For according to John as well 
 as according to the Synoptics, it is during this meal that the 
 
 * Thus, e. g. Hess ; more lately, among others. Rope, Historico-critical treatise, 
 to prove that the Supper of the Feet- washing, John xiii., is not identical with that 
 of the Passover (1856). 
 
 X 2 
 
308 
 
 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 treason of Judas is foretold by Jesus, and during it, or at all 
 events immediately after its close, the denial of Peter like- 
 wise ; and moreover the latter is spoken of by John, who is 
 supposed to describe the earlier meal, as a thing that is to 
 take place before the next cock-crow (xiii. 38). This datum 
 shews at the same time, what indeed is clear enough without 
 it, not only from the introduction of the Johannine narrative, 
 which represents the washing of the disciples' feet as the 
 last proof of Jesus' love for them, but also from the farewell 
 addresses and the departure to the place of arrest, which are 
 connected with it, that John as well as the Synoptics intends 
 to describe the last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. But 
 as this one and the last meal of Jesus in the Synoptics is as 
 plainly the Passover-meal itself as it is in John, a meal on 
 the evening before, we have here a contradiction as entire as 
 a contradiction ever was, and in which one side must be 
 Avrong.* 
 
 The fact that there are still theologians who in the face of 
 this plain statement still deny the contradiction, clearly shews 
 that in theology a standard prevails totally different from 
 that of simple truth ; and the further fact that in the endea- 
 vour to get rid of it they set to work in opposite ways, one 
 
 * The following table will shew the relation between the two descriptions, and 
 also the course of events in the Passion-week : 
 Day of the Month and Bay of the Week accord- 
 Feast according to the ing to all the Evanfjelists. 
 Synoptics. 
 
 Day of the Month and 
 Feast according to John. 
 
 14. Nisan. 
 
 Thursday. 
 
 13. Nisau. 
 
 Evening, 
 
 the 
 
 Supper. 
 
 15. Nisan. 
 
 Friday. 
 
 14. Nisan. 
 
 First Feast-day. 
 
 
 
 Passion 
 
 and 
 
 Death of Jesus. 
 
 16. Nisau. 
 
 Saturday (Sabbath). 
 
 15. Nisan. 
 
 Second Feast-day. 
 
 
 First Feast-day. 
 
 Jesus 
 
 in the 
 
 Grave. 
 
 17. Nisau. 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 16. Nisan. 
 
 Third Feast-day. 
 
 
 Second Feast-day. 
 
 In the 
 
 Aloriiin;.' 
 
 Resurrection of Jesus. 
 
THE PxVSSOVER AND THE LAST SUPPER. 309 
 
 party seeking to draw over tlie Synoijtics to the opinion of 
 John, the other John to that of the Synoptics, others to find 
 the one account as well as the other possible,* only shews 
 that they are induced to attempt the solution, not by any 
 of the texts on either side, but by that extraneous interest 
 which is indifferent as to which side has to give way, pro- 
 vided both are brought under one roof, i. e. the historical credit 
 of both is saved. That neither may be wrong, one of the two 
 must submit, to the greatest wrong, i. e. the violent distortion 
 of their plain words and unmistakeable opinion. Here runs 
 the boundary-line between those theologians with whom we 
 can still treat intelligently, and those whom we must leave 
 to themselves, and to the principle in the service in which 
 they have enlisted. 
 
 By this, however, we do not mean that all those theolo- 
 gians who recognise in this point the contradiction between 
 the synoptic account and that of John, have thereby rid them- 
 selves of every prejudice. For if it is asked which of the two 
 sides is supposed to be right and which wrong, the faithful 
 adherents of John range themselves around their master, who 
 cannot be wrong, because then they themselves, with their 
 modern faith pinned upon him, would be wrong. That is a 
 consideration as untrue and erroneous as any ; historical 
 testing is a court of justice which has to find its verdict un- 
 concerned about possible consequences. If the fourth Gospel 
 cannot prove its own credibility from its own evidence in 
 behalf of itself, the verdict must and will be given against it, 
 whatever may be the amount of displeasure and embarrass- 
 ment thus caused to modern theology. 
 
 Following this principle, if we test the two contradictory 
 accounts, that of the Synoptics, according to which the last 
 Supper of Jesus was that of the Paschal Supper, on the 
 
 * The first by (amoug others) Wieseler, Chronological Synopsis, p. 334 ff. ; the 
 second by Weizel, The Christian Passover of the Three First Centuries, p. 31,5 fif.; 
 the third by Schleiermacher in his Lectures on the Life of Jesus. 
 
310 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 evening of the 14th, and the day of his death the day of 
 the Paschal feast, the 15th of Nisan, is at all events the 
 oldest. It is admitted, indeed, that all our three first 
 Evangelists wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem, but 
 used sources in which, to a certain extent, much more 
 ancient Palestinic traditions about Jesus were found. More- 
 over, in the dispute as to the celebration of the Passover, 
 which in the second half of the second century repeatedly 
 broke out between the Church of Asia Minor and that of 
 Piorae, the custom of keeping the 14th Nisan as the day on 
 which Jesus ate the Paschal lamb with his disciples, by the 
 celebration of the Supper on that day, appears as the ancient 
 tradition in support of which the people of Asia Minor ap- 
 pealed, in particular, to the example of the Apostle John. 
 Meanwhile their opponents also, in order to justify the observ- 
 ance of the Easter Supper, without reference to the day of 
 the month, on the day of the Picsurrection, i.e. on the Sunday, 
 and not before, appealed to the tradition of the Church , the 
 dispute was, lilve all regular ecclesiastical disputes, not of an 
 historical but of a dogmatic character.* ClindnsT; to the 14th 
 Nisan as the day of the Jewish Passover was looked upon in 
 later times as Judaism, disregard of the day was considered 
 as identical with releasing Christianity from Judaism ; hence 
 we see shortly after in the Eastern Church the men of pro- 
 gress, as for instance an Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and later 
 still a Clemens of Alexandria, on the side of the Eomish 
 observance. To establish this, it was now said that Jesus 
 celebrated the Supper on the day before the Passover ; he did 
 not eat the Paschal lamb ; but while the Jews were eating it 
 
 * With regard to this dispute, compare Euseb. Eccl. Hist. v. 24 ; Chron. 
 Paschal. Alex. ed. Bonn. i. 13 fif . ; Baur, Critical Examination of the Canonical 
 Gospels, p. 334 ff. ; Christianity of the Three First Centuries, p. 156 flf. ; Hilgen- 
 feld, Paschal Dispute of the Ancient Church (1860); Canon and Criticism of 
 the New Testament, p. 219 ff. Besides these, critical treatises by both authors in 
 Zeller's Theological Annuals and Hilgenfeld's Journal of Scientific Theology. 
 
THE PASSOVER AND THE LAST SUPPER. 311 
 
 he was subjected to the Passion ; he was, indeed, himself the 
 real and true Paschal Lamb, the Son of God, of whom the 
 Lamb had been but the unessential type. This was the 
 chronological realisation of the notion already suggested by 
 the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. v. 7), that Christ, our Passover, was 
 sacrificed for us ; but the same thouglit also lies at the bottom 
 of the account of the fourth Evangelist. Jesus ate no Paschal 
 Supper before his Passion, but represented in his own person 
 the Paschal lamb : for on the same day and during the hours 
 during which the typical Paschal lambs were being slain on 
 the altars of burnt-offering in the court of the Temple, he was 
 shedding his life-blood on Golgotha as the true Lamb of God.* 
 Apollinaris, about A.D. 170, refers to this account of the fourth 
 Gospel, at the same time drawing attention to the fact that 
 the opposite view, which appeals to Matthew (if not modified, 
 as Apollinaris seems to have done, according to John), brings , 
 
 the Gospels into discrepancy with each other. ]^ 
 
 We may thus penetrate John's motive for giving the repre- 
 sentation which he does ; we understand why he. placed the 
 last Supper of Jesus on the day before the Paschal Supper, 
 and the death of Jesus on the day of this Supper, and con- 
 sequently antedated by one day the account of the older 
 Evangelists : it was the endeavour, most intimately connected 
 with his point of view from first to last, to represent Jesus at 
 the culminating point of his ministry as no longer taking part 
 in the bygone Jewish festival, but as laying the foundation of 
 a new religion by substituting his own death for it. 
 
 Easy, however, as it is to see how, according to this, the 
 fourth Evangelist may have given an unhistorical account of 
 these matters, it is in the same degree difiicult to assume 
 
 * I avail myself here of the striking words of a very orthodox theologian, 
 Krafft, Chronology and History of the Four Gospels, p. 130. It is perhaps this 
 typical relation that induced John (xii. 1) to place the Supper at Bethany, at 
 which Jesus was anointed for his death, on the sixth day before the Passover, 
 T. e. the 10th Nisan, on which, according to 2 Mos. xii. 3—6, the Paschal lambs 
 were selected. Comp. Hilgenfeld, Gospels, p. 298 ; Ancient Christianity, p. 40. 
 
312 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 that the Synoptics can be right in their chronology. The 
 Passover, indeed, presents no difficulty, bnt, all the more, 
 what is said to have taken place during the night and on the 
 next day. That the Sanhedrim, on a night so sacred as 
 that after the eating of the Paschal lamb, and on a day so 
 sacred as was the following first day of the feast, should have 
 not only sent out armed servants for the arrest of Jesus, but 
 have undertaken personally to form a court, to go througli 
 the trial, to pass judgment, and lay an accusation before the 
 Procurator, and then have induced the Eomans to execute 
 the sentence of death on such a day — all this is extremely 
 improbable. Servants indeed, though it is not expressly 
 stated that they were armed, are represented by John as 
 having been despatched by the High-priests and Pharisees to 
 seize Jesus on the principal day of the feast of Tabernacles 
 (vii. 45, comp. 32), and, according to Acts xii. 3 ff., Herod 
 imprisoned Peter during the days of unleavened bread, 
 though he certainly intended to defer his condemnation and 
 execution until after the feast. We are very imperfectly 
 informed as to the arrangement of the judicial system of the 
 Jews in reference to their Sabbatical Calendar and that of 
 their festivals, as Josephus on this point says very little, and 
 the statements in the Talmud are in many ways obscure and 
 also contradict each other. Thus we learn from it, indeed, 
 on the one hand, that the Sanhedrim met on the Sabbath 
 and feast-days, but not in its usual place : but it is not said 
 that these meetings were for the administration of justice; 
 nay, the administration of justice is spoken of elsewhere, as 
 one of the things forbidden on the Sabbath. But as regards 
 the execution of a sentence, we have a statement of the 
 Eabbi Akiba preserved from the time of Hadrian : Who- 
 ever says anything against the scribes is taken up to Jeru- 
 salem at the time of one of the three great festivals, in order 
 to be then put to death, that the people may take warning. 
 It is not, indeed, said that the execution was carried out on 
 
THE PASSOVER AND THE LAST SUPPER. 313 
 
 the very day of the feast; but there is less difficulty in con- 
 nectiou with this, as the sentence, at all events, was executed 
 by the Eomans.* 
 
 It is, however, further maintained that, independent of 
 everything else, the account of the Synoptics is inconsistent 
 with itself, as they describe the day of the execution of Jesus 
 by an expression which contradicts tlieir own assumption 
 that it was the first and greatest day of the Passover, and tliat 
 consequently the preceding Supper was the Paschal Supper. 
 They describe it (Matt, xxvii. 62 ; Mark xv. 42 ; Luke xxiii. 
 14) as the preparation day, or the day before the Sabbath ; 
 but it is objected that the first day of the Passover, having, 
 like all other first days of the festivals lasting several days, 
 itself tlie rank of Sabbath, could not have been called so, and 
 that this description must have been transferred from an older 
 representation, according to which the day of the execution of 
 Jesus, as is said in John, was not the first day of the feast, 
 but the day before. It is to this circumstance, they maintain, 
 that the statement of Luke refers, that the women prepared 
 spices and ointments on the evening of the burial, and 
 rested, according to the Law, over the following Sabbath 
 (xxiii. 56). Had the day of the death and burial been the 
 first day of the Passover, they could not have occupied them- 
 selves with the preparation of spices on it any more than on 
 the Sabbath following it ; and it is only in John, it is said, 
 that the haste to take the body down from the Cross in the 
 evening with reference to the sanctity of the following day, 
 has any real meaning, as in his account the day of execution 
 is the day before the Passover, and so the following day the 
 first day of the Passover. But, even in John, the day of 
 execution is described as the preparation day, not for the 
 Passover, but for the Sabbath (xix. 14), and the reason tliat 
 
 * Comr. on this subject, Bleek, Contributions, i. UO ff. ; Gfrorer, The Sanc- 
 tuary and the Truth, p. 197 ff. 
 
314 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 is given why the next day should not be desecrated, is, not 
 that it was the first day of the feast of the Passover, but 
 that it was a Sabbath (xix. 31), and it is only by the addition 
 of the words that that day was a high day, i.e. especially 
 sacred, that its character as being at the same time the first 
 day of the feast is alluded to. If, therefore, we see in the 
 fourth Gospel, in which the Sabbath is also the feast-day, its 
 character as the Sabbath predominating, that Gospel stands 
 in this respect on the same ground as the three former, who, 
 of the two days placed in juxtaposition, consider the second, 
 the Sabbath, as the more sacred, and it is obvious to suppose 
 that at that time in similar cases it was so considered, and 
 indeed it quite corresponds to the spirit of late Judaism to 
 attach such importance to the Sabbath above everything else. 
 At all events, as Bauer rightly remarks, what was or was not 
 consistent with the custom of the Jews at that time, must have 
 been better known to the author of the first Gospel, who stood 
 in so close a relation to Judaism, and still closer to the Pales- 
 tinic sources of history, from which he took his own, than to 
 us at the present day. If, therefore, he did not hesitate to 
 assert that Jesus was condemned and crucified on the first 
 day of Easter, we may fairly be satisfied with this statement. 
 It is in the same circumstance which induced the fourth 
 Evangelist to antedate the last Supper of Jesus by a single 
 day, and out of the Passover Supper to make a Supper 
 the day before, that we have to look for his reason for 
 maldug no mention, on the occasion of the Supper which he 
 does describe, of the institution of the last Supper (Matt, 
 xxvi. 20—29 ; Mark xiv. 17—25 ; Luke xxii. 14—20). That 
 the Supper was known to him as a Christian rite, would be a 
 necessary assumption, even if it were not clear from his sixth 
 chapter that it was so ; but the persuasion also that it was 
 instituted by Jesus himself on the occasion of his own last 
 Supper, was already in the days of the Apostle Paul so 
 general throughout Christendom, that it must have been 
 
THE PASSOVEK AND THE LAST SUPPER. 315 
 
 known to the author of the fourth Gospel even without the 
 Synoptics. But upon the point of view of the fourth Gospel, 
 the last Supper of Jesus could in no way have been repre- 
 sented as a Passover Supper. Quite as little, upon the same 
 point of view, could he be supposed to have instituted the 
 Supper on the occasion of it, if the last was not to appear as 
 an offshoot of a Jewish custom. It might indeed be said 
 that it could not appear so if the last SujDper of Jesus was 
 placed on the evening hefore the Passover : the fourth Evan- 
 gelist, having so placed it, might confidently represent Jesus 
 as instituting the Supper during that meal. But, as is clear 
 from the description of the synoptic Gospels, the institution 
 of the Supper by Jesus was, in the conception of the most 
 ancient Church, so closely connected with the Passover, that 
 a last Supper of Jesus, or even any Supper at all to which 
 that institution was appended, would always have been looked 
 upon as a Passover, and whoever did not wish to acknow- 
 ledge the Supper as having been instituted on the occasion 
 of the Passover, would have had to represent it as not having 
 been instituted at a Supper at all. And in that case it might 
 have been not instituted in any ritual form at all, but only 
 invested with a symbolical meaning, as is actually done in 
 words in the sixth chapter, but with typical miracles in the 
 account of the gifts of wine and bread found in the Gospel. 
 Thus the Supper was indeed unmistakeably intended and 
 founded by Jesus, but founded not in a real and material 
 manner, but in that mystico-ideal way which is peculiar to 
 the Gospel of John, and not in connection with the Jewish 
 custom of a feast, but as something new, in which the exclu- 
 sion of the old was taken for granted. 
 
 This last point is brought out by the fourth Evangelist in 
 a manner which might seem at first sight as tending again to 
 a connection with the usages of the Jewish Passover. Christ 
 having died about the time when the Paschal lambs were 
 slain, and his bones not having been broken as being those of 
 
316 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the true Paschal lamb (of which further on), one of the sol- 
 diers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately there 
 flowed thereout blood and water, that the Scripture might be 
 fulfilled Mdiich says, "They shall look on him whom they 
 have pierced" (John xix. 33 — 37 ; comp. Zech. xii. 10). They 
 had pierced, that is, the Son of God, whose blood is drink 
 indeed (John vi. 55), not merely in the spiritual but also in 
 the material sense at the Supper; on which occasion the 
 water which flowed with the blood from the wound in the 
 side, beside its reference to the water of baptism, might at the 
 same time refer to the water which according to the custom 
 of the earliest Christians used to be mixed with the wine of 
 the Supper.* While, therefore, in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus 
 partakes of the Jewish Passover, and founds the last Supper 
 in connection with its usages, in John he dies as the true 
 Paschal Lamb, that is, as the Son of God, who yields himself 
 for the sins of the world, and pours forth from his wounded 
 side the drink of life, typified indeed by the bloody sacrifices 
 of the Jews, but which now for the first time, at the Christian 
 Supper, is really and truly present. 
 
 86. The Feet-washing, with the Axnouncement of the 
 Tkeason and the Denial. 
 
 If, however, according to the representation of John, 
 neither the Paschal lanib was eaten at the last Supper of 
 Jesus, nor the Supper of the Lord instituted, then was the 
 form deprived of all its proper meaning ; for the announce- 
 ment of the treason and the denial, which was all that re- 
 mained, was not suftlcient to maintain it in its original im- 
 portance. But the author of the fourth Gospel did not v/ish 
 entirely to dispense with it, partly because it had obtained 
 
 * Justin Mart. Apol. i. 65 S. 
 
THE FEET-W ASHING. 317 
 
 that importance in the Christian tradition, partly because it 
 might serve as a desirable foundation for the farewell speeches 
 which he wished to introduce into this portion of his narra- 
 tive. He was obliged, therefore, to consider of a substitute ; 
 if possible, one of such a description that, on the one hand, 
 like the distribution of bread and wine, it bore the character 
 of a symbolical act, and on the other stood in close connec- 
 tion with the loving and farewell speeches which he proposed 
 to add in this place. According to his general practice, he 
 took a survey on this occasion also of the synoptical accounts 
 before him, to see whether they did not present some mate- 
 rial of which he could make what he wanted, and, as he had 
 frequently done before, he found material of this description 
 in Luke. This Evangelist, certainly most strangely, in de- 
 scribing the dispute of the disciples as to which of them it 
 was to whom the allusion of Jesus as to his future betrayal 
 referred, had thought of that other dispute of the disciples 
 about the cj^uestion which of them was the greatest, and he 
 had thus represented that dispute about precedence, which 
 Matthew more suitably places earlier, as breaking out over 
 the last Supper (Luke xxii. 24 ff.; comp. Matt. xx. 20 ff.). 
 On this occasion he represents Jesus as saying, among other 
 things, that, in opposition to the custom of the world, he that 
 is greatest among them shall be as the younger ; and he that 
 is chief as he that doth serve. "For whether is greater, he 
 that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ? Is not he that 
 sitteth at meat ? but I am among you as he that serveth." 
 In another passage of the same Gospel this comparison is 
 expanded into a regular parable, the reward of those whom 
 Christ on his return shall find in a proper moral state being 
 represented by the image of servants whom their lord when 
 he returns home at night finds w^atching. "Verily, I say 
 unto you," it is said here, "that he shall gird himself, and 
 make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and 
 serve tliem " (Luke xii, 37). Now these images are actually 
 
318 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 brought upon the scene in this passage by the fourth Evan- 
 gelist, as he represents Jesus as girding himself and assuming 
 the character of a servant in the presence of his disciples, 
 and then at the conclusion adding the moral, that if he, their 
 Lord and Teacher, has done this to them, they should also 
 do the same to one another, as the servant is not greater 
 than his lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that 
 sent him (xiii. 4 — 16). But he does not, like the master in 
 the parable, assume the character of the servant by offering 
 them meat, but by a still more menial service, that of wash- 
 ing their feet, which at the same time, by the purification 
 effected by it, carried with it a further symbolical meaning. 
 And as a clear indication that by this narrative the Evan- 
 gelist intends to fill up the gap caused by the omission of the 
 institution of the Supper, he represents Jesus as performing 
 the washing of the feet likewise as an act which is to be 
 repeated in the society, for he describes him as declaring to 
 the disciples that as he has washed their feet, so are they to 
 wash the feet of each other hereafter ; that he has given them 
 an example which they are to imitate. And these expres- 
 sions, indeed, in the mind of the Evangelist are only meant 
 symbolically (comp, moreover 1 Timoth. v. 10), but still have 
 an intentional resemblance to those of Paul and Luke : " This 
 do, as oft as ye shall drink it," &c. &c. 
 
 It would be, on natural grounds, quite possible that Jesus 
 should have entertained suspicions of the unfaithful disciple, 
 and even expressed them, but the Evangelists represent him 
 as foreknowing and foretelling the treason of Judas in a 
 supernatural manner (Matt. xxvi. 21 — 25 ; Mark xiv. 18 — 21 ; 
 John xiii. 18 — 20), and indeed they do so for a reason which 
 must have induced them to represent the case so, even if it 
 were not historically true. This dogmatic reason why Jesus 
 must have been supposed to foretell the treason, and must 
 have foretold it at table and nowhere else, we learn from 
 the fourth Evangelist. With reference to the former, he puts 
 
THE FEET-WASHING. 319 
 
 into the mouth of Jesus the words (xiii. 19): "Now I tell 
 you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may 
 believe that I am he." In these words the motive is dis- 
 closed which is the source of all those pretended prophecies 
 of their own fate, especially if it is an unhappy one, which 
 appear in the mythical history of great personages. The 
 unhappiness, the ill-success in the life of a man of God, is 
 always an offence, inasmuch as the natural assumption is that 
 he who is beloved by God, is sent by God, will also be 
 advanced by God, and this offence has to be set aside, the 
 negation of the high commission, which appears to be involved 
 in the unhappiness has again to be negatived. Such a nega- 
 tion is implied by the man of God foreknowing and fore- 
 telling the unhappiness which is to befal him. He can only 
 know it through God, who by communicating this unhappi- 
 ness to him marks him as one who stands near him, and 
 indicates at the same time that the unhappiness which he 
 causes him to know beforehand, is his own providential 
 arrangement, and does not stand in contradiction to the 
 lofty position of his ambassador. Moreover, inasmuch as our 
 ambassador from God knows his evil fate beforehand, and 
 does not attempt to escape from it, but on the contrary, ac- 
 quiescing in the ordinance of God, calmly meets it, he appears 
 in presence of that fate as not merely suffering but indepen- 
 dent ; it does not appear to be an external power which 
 oppresses him, but a suffering which he has imdertaken with 
 the consciousness of the higher object which he has in view. 
 
 Now, in the misfortune which overtook Jesus, there 
 appeared to be involved a special ground of offence, inas- 
 much as that misfortune was produced by the treason of one 
 of his own disciples. If a familiar friend could betray him to 
 his enemies, it must have been because that familiar friend 
 saw nothing particular in him ; and if he retained so false a 
 friend near him, he cannot have penetrated the mind of that 
 friend, and, consequently, cannot have been possessed of any 
 
320 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 superior knowledge. On the other hand, his adherents were 
 possessed with the conviction, first, that their Master did 
 penetrate the mind of the traitor, and, moreover, as the 
 fourth Evangelist exaggeratingly assures us, even from the 
 beginning (vi. 64). In the second place, rank ingratitude on 
 the part of a messmate was already prefigured in reference 
 to the Messiah in the life of his ancestor David (2 Sam. xv. 
 16), and foretold in the passage of the Psalm (xli. 9) : "Yea, 
 mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat 
 of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." In this 
 passage, which only the fourth Evangelist expressly brings 
 forward, but upon which the whole account must have been 
 formed from first to last, is involved the motive for repre- 
 senting Jesus as having foretold the treason of Judas actually 
 at table. The exact words of the passage in the Psalms gave 
 less occasion for this ; the expression, " which does eat of my 
 bread," indicates a relation of dependency, a bond of grati- 
 tude, violated by the unfaithful friend; but John quotes, 
 " he that eateth bread tvith me ;" the Christian tradition saw 
 in the passage of the Psalm the violation by the traitor of 
 the sacred law of hospitality foretold. In the case of such 
 applications and imitations, everything is taken as literally 
 as possible, and realised to the senses as much as possible. 
 If the Messiah says, " he that eateth bread with me," he 
 must have said it just while tliey were both eating bread 
 together. But if he said it during the time of eating, it was 
 said most suitably on the occasion of that eating wliich 
 immediately preceded the performance of what was foretold. 
 Rut this last occasion of eating was the Supper of the Pass- 
 over, at which the bread was sopped in a dish with broth ; 
 so Jesus says, not simply, " he that eateth bread with me," 
 but "he that dippeth his hand into the dish with me" (in 
 Luke, less definitely, " the hand of him that betrayeth me is 
 with me on the table"). At first sight this would be only a 
 periphrasis for social fellowship; the expression "with me" 
 
THE FEET-WASHING. 321 
 
 would merely mean, during the same eating out of the same 
 dish, so that among the twelve companions of Jesus no one 
 in particular was indicated ; Jesus might indeed have himself 
 known the traitor, but not have thought good to name liim, 
 leaving it to the disciples to consider and ask who it could be. 
 In ]\Iark and Luke the thing is thus left in suspense. Matthew 
 goes further, and represents Judas as being definitely pointed 
 out as the traitor. We cannot but be surprised at his not 
 employing the act of the dipping for this purpose, and repre- 
 senting him as being declared by Jesus to be the traitor who 
 dips his hand into the dish simultaneously with himself ; the 
 mode in which the thing is done, by Judas asking at last 
 whether it is he, and Jesus answering at once Yes, has some- 
 thing awkward and improbable about it, which the two middle 
 Evangelists do not seem to have liked. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist has displayed greater dexterity in 
 this passage. It is of course to be taken for granted that 
 his Logos Christ must now have proved by the most accurate 
 description of the person of his betrayer, that knowledge of 
 him which he had from everlasting. In this he goes with 
 Matthew, but he goes on a way of his own. He does not 
 neglect the opportunity for a more definite description which 
 the dipping of the hand in the dish afforded him. But a 
 simultaneous dipping was not definite enough for him. He was 
 to be the traitor for whom Jesus dipt, and to whom he gives a 
 sop. Besides, in the fourth Gospel all this is quite differently 
 connected. This last Supper appeared to the author of the 
 account the most favourable opportunity for exalting the 
 Apostle in whose name he wrote, and, with him, the whole 
 spiritual tendency which he had in view. Here, if anywhere, 
 a situation was given for representing his friend John as 
 the bosom -disciple, the confidential friend, from whom the 
 Master kept nothing secret. As the Son of God lies in the 
 bosom of his Father, the poor Lazarus, after his departure, 
 in Abraham's bosom, so John, as the disciple whom Jesus 
 
 VOL. II. Y 
 
■322 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 loved, lies in 'the bosom of Jesus (according to the Oriental 
 custom of lying at table) ; and the natnral result was, that 
 in the painful uncertainty as to which of them it could be of 
 whom Jesus spoke as him that should betray him, the rest 
 turned to the bosom-disciple, and begged through him for 
 the solution from Jesus. Peter is represented as the disciple 
 who conveys the inquiries of the disciples, not immediately 
 to Jesus, but to the bosom-disciple — this chief of the Apostles 
 is compelled expressly to subordinate himself to John — and 
 in this fact one of the inmost tendencies of the fourth Gospel 
 is exposed : it is precisely with the relation of these two 
 Apostles and the two forms of Christianity, one of which was 
 connected with the name of Peter, the other with that of 
 John, that the Gospel is concerned. And because only the 
 latter disciple is intended to appear as the one who was 
 acquainted with the inmost thoughts of Jesus, he is here 
 represented as the one who could alone question him about 
 his secret. 
 
 Judas makes an offer to the rulers of the Jews to deliver 
 his Master into their hands. Matthew and Mark allege as 
 the motive for this, the reward of money. In Luke the act 
 is introduced with the remark that Satan had entered into 
 Judas, also called Iscariot, one of the twelve (xxii. 3). This 
 is so represented by John, that in the prophecy above men- 
 tioned, Jesus exj)ressly declares that one of the twelve is a 
 devil (vi. 70) ; at the beginning of the narrative of the last 
 Supper this expression is moderated to the effect that the 
 Devil put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus (xiii. 2) ; 
 now on occasion of the sop being offered to him by Jesus, it 
 is said (ver. 27), that, after the sop, Satan entered into him. 
 The sop, therefore, given to the traitor by Jesus becomes to 
 him a curse, and notwithstanding that in the Gospel of Jolm 
 the sop is not tlie bread of the Supper, we cannot help re- 
 membering the warning of Paul (1 Cor. xi. 27 — 29), that who- 
 ever eats of tlie bread or drinks of the cup of the Lord un- 
 
THE FEET-WASHING. 323 
 
 worthily, eats aud drinks his own condemnation : the idea of 
 the Supper which the Evangelist would have Mashed here to 
 keep at a distance, in accordance with his plan, appears never- 
 theless to have penetrated his mind involuntarily. 
 
 Thus in the fourth Gospel the malignant purpose of the 
 traitor appears to be assisted by an act undertaken by Jesus 
 with a different object. And he is expressly urged on to the 
 execution of his design by the expression of Jesus (ver. 27), 
 " What thou doest, do quickly." In these words Bretschneider* 
 has discovered an exaggeration of the synoptic account. 
 The other Evangelists say that Jesus was conscious of the 
 intention of the traitor, and did not prevent its being carried 
 out, but John, he observes, represents him as having even 
 hastened its execution. The object is clear: the courage of 
 Jesus, his elevation above all sorrow that man could bring 
 upon him, appeared in so much a clearer light if he not only 
 did not attempt to avoid the sword drawn against him, but 
 met it with a brave push home. We shall shortly find the 
 scene in Gethsemane also remodelled by the fourth Evangelist 
 in the same spirit. 
 
 Of the occurrences at the last Supper of Jesus we still have 
 remaining only the announcement of the denial of Peter. 
 This, however, is placed by Mark after the conclusion of the 
 meal, on the way to the Mount of Olives, and only Luke and 
 John represent it as taking place while the Supper is still 
 going on (Matt. xxvi. 30 — 35 ; Mark xiv. 26—31 ; Luke xxii. 
 31 — 34; John xiii. 36 — 38). The course of it is in all four 
 accounts essentially the same. On a somewhat arrogant 
 assertion of Peter to the effect, in the two first Evangelists, 
 that even though all men are offended in Jesus, or separated 
 from him, he will not be offended ; in the two others, that he 
 is ready, for his Master, to go to prison or to death, or to 
 give up his life for him, — Jesus foretells to him that on this 
 very night, before the cock crow, Peter will have denied him 
 
 * Probabil. 
 Y 2 
 
324 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 thrice. That at that critical time Peter was guilty of a weak- 
 ness which looked like a denial of Christ, we may, in accor- 
 dance with the unanimous tradition of the Evangelists, be 
 willing to believe, and the more so in proportion as the state- 
 ment was opposed to the deep feeling of reverence with which 
 the chief of the Apostles was regarded in Christendom at the 
 earliest period ; it is also extremely probable Jesus might 
 sometimes meet with a word of caution the exaggerated self- 
 confidence of the disciples which might shew itself on differ- 
 ent occasions ; but that this was done so immediately before 
 the consequences stated to have followed, and in this exact 
 form, is the more doubtful in proportion as there is no 
 mistaking the legendary elements in the cock-crow and 
 the number three applied to the acts of denial. In Mark 
 we see the poetical impulse advancing a step further : this 
 advance is shewn by the circumstance that he alone thinks 
 it necessary to count the number of cock-crows as well as the 
 number of denials : before tlie cock crows twice Peter will 
 have denied him thrice — a cold idea indeed, and one which 
 received no further notice. 
 
 SECOND GEOUP OE MYTHS. 
 
 the agony and arrest of jesus. 
 
 87. The Agony at Gethsemane. Eelation of the Eourth 
 Gospel to this History. 
 
 There is a resemblance between the foreknowledge and 
 foretelling of the treason and denial and that foreboding of his 
 suffering which the three first Evangelists attribute to Jesus 
 and rejjresent as gaining expression in words and action in the 
 scene at Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 86 — 46 ; Mark xiv. 32 — 42 ; 
 Luke xxii. 39 — 46). Notwithstanding the elevation of his 
 moral character, notwithstanding his resignation to what the 
 
THE AGONY AT GETHSEMANE. 325 
 
 task undertaken by him imposed upon him, Jesus might still 
 have had to undergo a severe inward struggle when his 
 terrible fate presented itself to his mind as unavoidable, and 
 its bursting upon him as every moment possible. But the 
 statement that this struggle, as represented by the Evangel- 
 ist, occurred at the last moment before the fatal close, has an 
 appearance more of poetry than of history, and the events of 
 the scene itself as described by the Synoptics leave us in no 
 doubt as to the unhistorical character at least of the details. 
 
 An agony of Jesus before his Passion is also spoken of in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is said of Jesus (iv. 15), first 
 that we have in him not a high-priest which cannot be touched 
 with the feeling of our infirmities, but who was in all points 
 tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Then, further on 
 (v. 7), " Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up 
 prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto 
 him that was able to save him from death, and w^as heard in 
 that he feared ; though he were a Son, yet learned he obe- 
 dience by the things which he suffered." The allusion to 
 such a scene as that in Gethsemane is here more certain than 
 that the synoptic account of the Temptation is referred to in 
 the other passage of the same Epistle (iv. 15, comp. ii. 18) ; 
 but still the germ of such a reference may be seen in the 
 latter passage, and in the later evangelical descriptions the 
 two scenes of the Temptation and of the Agony in the Garden 
 were treated as parallel pieces. This is seen in the fact that 
 in the statement of Matthew, which is the most original of all, 
 who is followed by Luke in the history of the Temptation, 
 and in that of the Agony by Mark, the struggle of Jesus con- 
 sists, on each occasion, of three courses. 
 
 On this occasion it is uot in the remote wilderness, but in 
 a garden on the Mount of Olives, in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of Jerusalem, where Jesus appears often to have 
 passed his nights during the festival, that he is attacked, not 
 from without by the personal Tempter, but in his inmost 
 
326 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 mind by the terrifying foreboding of his Passion and violent 
 death. He is not, this time, quite alone, as he was before 
 with the Devil in the wilderness, but, though in a solitary 
 place outside the city, he has his disciples, with the exception 
 of the traitor, with him. But of these, according to IVIatthew 
 and Mark, he orders the majority to stay behind, so as to 
 prevent the mystery of the panic and agony of the Son of 
 God from being witnessed by any but the small and exclusive 
 triumvirate he selected from the college of Twelve. They are 
 to watch with him in his distress, but are unable to do so : 
 the moment he departs from them a little in order to pray, he 
 finds them, when he sees them again, fallen asleep, and has 
 to rouse them again to watchfulness ; they had penetrated 
 the profound meaning of what was taking place before them 
 quite as little as on the Mount of the Transfiguration, where 
 Luke likewise describes them as falling asleep. 
 
 In the history of the Temptation, the Devil is represented 
 as having thrice approached Jesus, on each occasion with a 
 different temptation, and as having been every time repelled 
 by him with a difi'erent text of Scripture. So, here, Jesus is 
 tlirice compelled by his internal agony to pray his heavenly 
 Father to turn away his suffering, always, however, reserving 
 the Divine pleasure, to which at last he resigns himself with 
 filial submission, and meets courageously and decisively the 
 inevitable suffering. Matthew does indeed on the second 
 occasion vary the prayer of Jesus a little, and in a manner 
 suited to more entire and complete resignation ; then, on the 
 third, represents the same speech as being repeated which 
 Mark does on the second. This shews that from first to last 
 the sacred number three was as much a matter of importance 
 as the general contents of the prayer, i. c. that the narrative 
 arose dogmatically, not historically. 
 
 Luke omits tlie number three of the disciples, and also the 
 number three of the prayers of Jesus, as in the history of the 
 Temptation Mark omits the number three of the separate 
 
THE AGONY AT GETHSEMAXE. 327 
 
 temptations. But this only arises from his liaving something- 
 else to communicate which intensifies and exaggerates the 
 narrative. After, that is, having repeated the prayer of 
 Jesus in the same terms as Matthew and Mark, he represents 
 an angel as appearing from heaven to strengthen him, then 
 Jesus as becoming terrified, and praying so earnestly that his 
 sweat fell like drops of blood upon the earth. The two cases 
 might have been expected to have been reversed ; but it 
 would seem that the account preferred by Luke should be 
 understood to mean that the appearance of the angel was 
 intended to provide Jesus with sufficient strength to resist 
 the subsequent mental attack, which was to be more violent 
 than any which had preceded. Having thus described, not 
 indeed three acts of Jesus, but still three separate factors, 
 simple prayer, strengthening by the angel, struggling prayer 
 with bloody sweat, the third Evangelist agrees with the two 
 first in taking Jesus back to the disciples, when he repeats 
 to them the command to pray which he had given them at the 
 very first, at the same time censuring them for their sleepiness. 
 The whole of this history is wanting in the fourth Gospel, 
 in the same way as the histories, resembling it in so many 
 points of view, of the Temptation and Transfiguration of Jesus. 
 The reason is still the same : it is that the Logos Christ of 
 the Johannine Gospel was once for all elevated above the 
 sphere of trials of this kind. The Jewish Messiah, as the 
 Lord of the world to come, might put himself in competition 
 with the Devil as Lord of this world, as with an equal, but 
 not so he who came from heaven, who was above all ; exter- 
 nal brightness of the countenance, and a meeting with the 
 Lawgiver and Prophets of the Jews, might be a glorifying of 
 the synoptic Christ — anything of this character would only 
 have reduced the Christ of John within narrower limits ; fear 
 of death, lastly, prayer that it might be averted, as the 
 author of the fourth Gospel saw in death rather the glorifying 
 of Jesus, and even the need of strengthening by an angel — 
 
328 ÄIYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 all tins would have been, in the view of this Gospel, an abso- 
 lute degradation of Christ. 
 
 Moreover, even if there was anything in these histories 
 that might have been useful for the purpose of the Evangelist, 
 he would feel the less inclined to allow it to escape from his 
 pen in proportion as he found such matter firmly rooted in 
 the evangelical tradition. It has already been pointed out 
 how skilfully he preserved the essential meaning of the 
 history of the Temptation, by adopting from Luke the notion 
 of looking upon the Passion of Jesus as an attack of Satan. 
 But he was able to relieve the two scenes of the Transfigura- 
 tion and the Agony of their offensive elements in the most 
 simple manner, and harmonise them witli the peculiar spirit 
 of his own Gospel by combining them together. His Jesus 
 glorifies himself (as he was glorified at the transfiguration) 
 in and through his life, and in his Passion he knows himself 
 and shews himself to be glorified : thus is the Jewish material- 
 ism of the synoptic history of the Transfiguration, as well as 
 the excess of the emotional and passionate element in the 
 synoptic Agony, corrected. 
 
 Even in the Synoptics, the history of the Transfiguration 
 stands immediately after an announcement of Passion and 
 Death, with which Jesus, induced by a speech of Peter, 
 connects the warning (Matt. xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke 
 ix. 24) : " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; but 
 whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save 
 it." The same thought meets us in the mouth of the Johan- 
 nine Christ, after he had spoken first of his transfiguration, 
 then of his death (xii. 23 ff.), in words almost identical 
 (ver. 25) : " He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that 
 hateth liis life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." 
 And further on he says (ver. 26) : "If any man serve me let 
 
 him follow me If any man serve me, him will my 
 
 Father honour:" as he had said in connection with the synoptic 
 announcement of the Passion before the transfiguration, "If 
 
THE AGONY AT OETHSEMANE. 329 
 
 any man will come after me .... let him follow me .... 
 for whosoever shall be ashamed of me before this generation, 
 of liim shall the Son of ^Nlau be ashamed, when he shall come 
 in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels " 
 (Matt. vi. 24 ; Mark viii. 34, 38 ; Luke ix. 23, 2G) ; the cor- 
 responding passage to which is found in another place (]\Iatt, 
 X. 32) : " Whosoever, therefore, sliall confess me before men, 
 liim will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven." 
 These speeches in the fourth Gospel were occasioned by 
 the fact that during the last visit of Jesus to the feast, after 
 liis solemn entrance into Jerusalem, Greeks who had come 
 to worship at the feast, i. e. lieathen who were inclined to 
 Judaism, and perhaps were proselytes of the gate, were 
 anxious to see Jesus, and for that purpose applied to the 
 Apostle Philip, and he, in company with Andrew, acquainted 
 Jesus with this (xii. 20 ff.). Upon this Jesus, without fur- 
 ther noticing the wish of the Hellenes, says, " The hour is 
 come that the Son of Man should be glorified ;" and in what 
 follows, his death is described as the necessary transition to 
 this result. "VVe have here one of those cases which enable 
 us to see to the bottom of the peculiar character of the 
 Johannine Gospel. On the point of view of the synoptic 
 Gospels, the glorifying of the ]\Iessiah is connected at the 
 Transfiguration with a meeting with two ancient prophets of 
 the Jews ; in the fourth, it is occasioned by the arrival of the 
 Hellenes, i.e. of the heathen. The believers of the heatlien 
 world are tlie ripe fruit which the grain of wheat falling into 
 the earth produces (ver. 24) ; but the perishing of the grain, 
 the death of Jesus, is the necessary condition of this ; and 
 the speaker, therefore, now plunges into the thoughts sug- 
 gested by this image, and connects with it the texts above 
 quoted about gaining and losing life, about his servants 
 following him and honouring him. This idea, that the death 
 of Jesus is the necessary transition between his earthly 
 pilgrimage and his glorification in the heathen world, sug- 
 
330 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 gests to the Evangelist tlie possibility of combiniug, in the 
 scene to -which the approach of the Hellenes gives rise, fea- 
 tures out of the history of the Transfiguration with features 
 out of that of the Agony in the Garden. Jesus confesses 
 that he is shaken in his inmost soul by the thoughts of death 
 that have arisen in him ; but the Evangelist, as if wishing to 
 correct the synoptic narrative, in which Jesus is represented 
 as praying the Father to let the cup, or according to Mark 
 (ver, 35, whom in this instance also the fourth Evancjelist 
 follows), the hour, pass away from him, represents his Jesus 
 as putting to himself the question, " And what shall I say ?" 
 (in nearly the same words as in Mark), " Father, save me 
 from this hour ?" (No, I will not say so, for) " for this cause 
 came I unto this hour."* In another passage also a correc- 
 tive allusion to the synoptic prayer in Gethsemane is hardly 
 to be mistaken. In John, Jesus subjoins to the order given 
 to Peter the question (xviii. 11), "The cup which my Father 
 hath given me, shall I not drink it ?" How appropriate, in a 
 Gospel intended for readers of Greek cultivation and accus- 
 tomed to the ideal of Stoic apathy, a correction of the 
 synoptic account in this very place was, is j)roved by the 
 ridicule and censure which from Celsus downwards so many 
 heathen opponents of Christianity have poured forth upon the 
 notion of Jesus trembling in Gethsemane."f" 
 
 It corresponds perfectly to the point of view of the Johan- 
 nine Gospel, that the philosophical Emperor Julian, in con- 
 sidering the account of the agony, looked upon the feature 
 of Jesus, as a God, having needed strengthening by an angel 
 as particularly absurd. Our Evangelist might have omitted 
 
 * Even if the \voi\ls, "Father, save nie from tliis hour!" are regarded not as 
 part of the question, but as a real prayer, still the attack passes over incomparably 
 more quickly and easily than in the Synoptics. 
 
 f See the expression of Celsus and Julian, as well as those taken from the Gos- 
 pel of Nicodemus, in Vol. ii. p. 429 of my Critical Treatise on the Life of Jesus, 
 fourth edition. 
 
THE AGONY AT GETIISEMANE. 331 
 
 this feature, and with the less hesitation, as Luke was the 
 only one of his synoptic predecessors who had introduced it ; 
 but it was safer to make it unavailable for an opponent by 
 representing the difficulty that arose upon it as a consequence 
 of a misunderstanding. In those moments, he says, of most 
 profound emotion, a higher Being did certainly speak to 
 Jesus ; but it was not an angel but God himself that so spoke ; 
 and he did so, not because he was obliged to strengthen Jesus, 
 but as Jesus had prayed, not for strength .for himself, but 
 that "the Father might in him glorify his own name, the 
 heavenly voice only communicates this affirmative assurance 
 of the accomplishment of this glorification ; while of the sur- 
 rounding multitude, those who were completely uninitiated 
 and dull of comprehension took the voice of God for thunder, 
 the half-awakened for an angel speaking with him. 
 
 But as, by the derivation of the heavenly voice from an 
 angel, in John, there arises a connection between this scene 
 and that in Gethsemane, as described in Luke, it is, on the 
 other hand, in and for itself, taken from the synoptic history 
 of the Transfiguration. In that history it was out of the 
 cloud of light, or, according to the expression in the second 
 Epistle of Peter (i. 17), out of " the excellent glory," that the 
 voice sounded. In John there is no mention made of a visible 
 appearance, but the glory is adopted into the words of the 
 voice, which does not, as the history of the Transfiguration, 
 describe Jesus as the beloved Son of God, whom the disciples 
 are to hear, but only speaks of the glorifying which has 
 already been vouchsafed to him, and shall still be vouchsafed. 
 But even thus this sign appears too material for the inward 
 and spiritual relation of the Logos Christ to the Father ; as 
 between these two Beings there was no occasion for such a 
 request on the one side, such an appearance on the other, 
 and therefore in this passage it was considered necessary 
 that Jesus should declare expressly (ver. 30), as he had de- 
 clared at the raising of Lazarus, that it is only on account of 
 
332 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the surrounding multitude tliat lie thanks the Father for the 
 granting of his prayer. 
 
 The scenes of the Transfiguration, and of the Agony of 
 Jesus, being thus combined in the fourth Gospel, they dis- 
 aj^pear as sej^arate histories, and consequently the places in 
 which they stand respectively in the three first Gospels stand 
 vacant. A solemn conclusion of the Galilean ministry of 
 Jesus, such as is formed in the synoptic Gospels by the his- 
 tory of the Transfiguration, was not wanted in that of John, 
 because in it there is no such lengthened continuity of the 
 sojourn of Jesus in Galilee, but from first to last there is an 
 interchange between his stay there and his sojournings in 
 Judea and Jerusalem. The Synoptics place the scene of the 
 Agony between the last Supper and the arrest. But John 
 required nothing of the kind. Jesus, as represented by him, 
 had no need to struggle for courage and presence of mind on 
 the field of battle ; he must have brought there both these 
 qualities with him. Moreover, before being torn away from 
 his followers by the hostile power, it was necessary to represent 
 him as initiating these persons, who had hitherto been children 
 in understanding, by a lengthened address, into the depths 
 of his mind, especially to familiarise them with the idea of 
 his death, and the salutary effects of it, to make them 
 generally of ripe age, and instead of disciples and servants, 
 friends and fellow-labourers. This could not be done on the 
 JNIount of Olives, where the attack of the enemy was every 
 moment to be expected, but only on the peaceful occasion 
 of the last Supper : moreover, it supposed on the part of 
 Jesus a calmness of mind which could not be disturbed, 
 with which he was capable of meeting the violence of his 
 enemies, witliout any fresh mental struggle. The battle, 
 therefore, must have been already fought, and the correspond- 
 ing scene, though, in accordance with the point of view 
 of the whole Gospel, of a less violent character and less 
 liiglily coloured, be transferred to an earlier place, preceding 
 
THE AGONY AT GETHSEMANE. 333 
 
 the last Supper. Every attempt to insert, in John, the 
 synoptic Agony between the farewell speeches of Jesus 
 from the 14th to the 17th chapter, and the approach of the 
 traitor with his followers at the beginning of the 18th, 
 is an 'attack not merely upon the moral elevation, but 
 also generally upon the manly firmness of the character 
 of Jesus. If, according to this, the mere thought of the 
 suffering that awaited him was able once more to throw him 
 back into so violent an inward struggle, it would have been 
 a mere empty boast, or at all events a deficiency in self- 
 knowledge, to have asserted beforehand as he does (xvi. 
 33) that he had overcome the world and its sorrows. It is 
 manifest that the composer of the Johannine farewell speeches, 
 especially of the High -priestly prayer in chap, xvii., had 
 quite as little notion of an Agony having afterwards occurred, 
 as the synoptic narrators of this Agony have of their Jesus 
 having stood before upon the elevation of that prayer. One 
 account does not presuppose the other ; they are drawn from 
 quite different points of view; they are quite incompatible 
 representations ; but in their present form neither of them 
 can be looked upon as historical, and all we can say is that 
 they are both fictitious, one being only the more simple in its 
 conception, the other shewing more reflection and conscious 
 purpose. 
 
 But that, even in these farewell speeches, the fourth 
 Evangelist has only worked up and expanded the materials 
 handed down to him by his predecessors, is clear from the 
 constant coincidence of what he represents his Jesus as say- 
 ing with the synoptic utterances of Jesus. And here we may 
 notice, that it is a law wdiich marks the spiritual peculiarity 
 of the Evangelist, that when he modifies the thoughts and 
 expressions of Jesus by additions of his own, and makes 
 them approximate to his own form of thought and expression, 
 he is very successful in bringing them into connection with the 
 speeches which are the result of pure invention : when, on the 
 
334 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 Other hand, he leaves them in their original form, then the 
 discrepancy between them and his own form of thought, or 
 his inability to transport himself out of the latter into the 
 mode of thought and expression of the synoptic Jesus, not 
 seldom causes him to introduce original utterances of this 
 kind in the wrong place. This incapacity, of which we 
 become aware as soon as he attempts to bring what is 
 foreign to the character of his mind into connection with his 
 singular and peculiar mode of description, is so little at 
 variance with the dexterity of the same writer when he carves 
 for himself, that, on the contrary, we see that both the one and 
 tlie other are results of a nature thoroughly subjective and 
 plunged deep into this subjectivity. 
 
 The synoptic section out of which especially the fourth 
 Evangelist helps himself in these farewell speeches, is the 
 speech in ]Matt. x., containing the instructions to the Apostles. 
 The Johannine farewell speeches are indeed speeches con- 
 taining instructions, only that they are delivered here, not on 
 the occasion of his sending them forth during his lifetime, 
 but of their taking upon them the Apostolical office after 
 his impending departure. Even on the occasion of the scene 
 with the Hellenes which immediately precedes the farewell 
 Supper, we found texts out of this speech of instructions 
 applied, as the speech about loving and hating life, or gaining 
 and losing it, which at first sight we could not but suppose 
 to be taken from the announcement of the Passion in jNIatt. 
 xvi. 25, is also found with an unimportant variation in the 
 speech of instructions (x. 39). Moreover, it was from this 
 speech, as was mentioned above, that all is borrowed that 
 Jesus says in the fourth Gospel at the last Supper on occa- 
 sion of the feet-washing, to the effect that the servant is 
 not greater than his master, he that is sent than he who 
 sent him (John xiii. 16 ; Matt. x. 24). If these synoptic 
 sayings are not badly introduced in connection with the 
 Johannine description, the same cannot be said of those 
 
THE AGONY AT GETIISKMANE. 335 
 
 words of Jesus, likewise taken out of the speech of instruc- 
 tions (x. 40 ; John xiii. 20), that he that receiveth whom- 
 soever he sends receiveth him, and he that receiveth him 
 receiveth him that sent him. These words are pieced on 
 after the announcement of the treason, without any other 
 apparent connection than that he had the famous speech 
 out of Matt. X. floating before his mind, and presenting some 
 resemblance to that above quoted, and wished likewise to 
 introduce it as aptly as he could. Pie succeeded incom- 
 parably better with the consolatory speech of Jesus (Matt. 
 X. 19 ff.), which says that if his disciples are put upon their 
 trial they are not to trouble themselves as to what they 
 sliall say, for it will not be they who speak, but the Spirit of 
 their Father will speak in them. This text is made by the 
 fourth Evangelist to a certain extent the theme of his fare- 
 well speeches, but he introduces his idea of the Paraclete, and 
 thus gives to the original thought totally different applica- 
 tions. Hence we have here only isolated resemblances, but 
 always suitably introduced (as John xiv. 26, xvi. 13, &c.) ; 
 but the text is never fitted in in the original form which it 
 bears in the synoptic. 
 
 There is another saying of Jesus, not out of the speech of 
 the instructions, but out of the synoptic narrative of the 
 Agony, which the fourth Evangelist endeavoured to preserve 
 in its original form, but has only been able to do so with the 
 ill success which usually attends him in such cases. It is the 
 courageous challenge of Jesus witli which Matthew (xxvi. 46) 
 and Mark (xiv. 12) conclude this scene : " PJse up, let us go ; 
 lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand." He did not wish to 
 lose this, as it harmonises with his endeavour to represent 
 the suffering of Jesus as voluntarily undertaken. But he was 
 unable to make use of the scene from the Agony, as we have 
 already seen ; and so much of it as he could make use of he 
 was obliged to introduce in an earlier place ; so he introduces 
 this speech also in an earlier place. The most natural course 
 
336 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 would have been to put it at the end of the farewell speeches, 
 as a challenge to leave the Supper-room and the city, and 
 to go out to the Mount of Olives ; and that the Evangelist 
 intends to give it this meaning is clear from the alteration 
 which he makes in it. Instead of making Jesus say, " Eise 
 up, let us go," &c., he represents Jesus as saying, without 
 mention of the traitor, " Arise, let us go hence " (xiv. 31). 
 But for the conclusion of Ins farewell speeches, the Evangelist 
 had intended to introduce a prayer of Jesus, in which he 
 represented him as ascending from the speeches which he had 
 made so far to the address to his heavenly Father ; after this, 
 no address to the disciples could follow without weakening 
 the impression ; if the speech was still to find a place, it must 
 have been uttered sooner. Then it was in reality a matter 
 of indifference when it was uttered ; as the challenge would 
 in no case have an immediate result, it might be introduced 
 where a point of connection seemed to ofier itself. But that 
 was where Jesus represents the suffering that aw^aited him 
 as an attack by the Prince of this world, who could, however, 
 have no power over him ; the courageous call upon the dis- 
 ciples appeared to be suitably introduced here, and thus the 
 synoptic description intensified. In the latter it was applied 
 only to the traitor ; in the fourth Gosjjel it is the Devil him- 
 self whom Jesus goes to meet with courage so exalted. It 
 is indeed strange, but not more so than much in the fourth 
 Gospel, that after this encouragement the farewell speeches go 
 on just the same as if it had never been spoken. 
 
 Arrest of Jesus. 
 
 In the three first Gospels, the approach of the traitor does 
 not take place until after the conclusion of the Agony and 
 the courageous call to the disciples. In the fourth Gospel, 
 
HIS AliREST. 337 
 
 in which the history of the Agony in this place is dropped 
 out, the first thing that occurs, after Jesus with his disciples 
 has arrived in the Clarden on the other side of the brook 
 Cedron, is the approach of the traitor. According to Matthew 
 and Mark, he comes with an armed multitude, despatched by ^ 
 the High-priests and elders of the people. With this multi- b^-/^, ^ 
 tude Luke associates the High-priests and elders themselves, i^.i'4 n- 
 together with the chiefs of the guard of the Temple ; John, a 
 company of Eoman soldiers, and, as it was night, though the 
 night of the full moon, he puts into their hands, besides the 
 weapons, torches and lanterns (Matt. xxvi. 47 ff. ; Mark xiv. 
 43 ff.; Luke xxii. 47 ff.; John xviii. 1 ff.). 
 
 It was a tradition in Christendom that Judas served as 
 guide to the people who arrested Jesus (Acts i. 16), and this 
 office of guide was generally understood to imply that he not 
 only pointed out to the officers of tlie Jewish hierarchs the 
 way to the place where Jesus was, but also, by means of a 
 kiss, indicated to them his person, with which they were before 
 unacc[uainted. The fourth Evangelist has nothing about 
 the kiss ; on the contrary, he represents the whole of what 
 the traitor had to do as consisting in pointing out the spot 
 where Jesus was at that time to be found, stating also how 
 Judas was enabled to know it ; for the Jesus described by 
 John is known without being pointed out. According to the 
 Synoptics, the traitor goes up to Jesus and gives him the 
 kiss agreed upon, upon which, after a reproachful question to 
 the unfaithful disciple, Jesus is seized by the constables. In 
 John, as soon as the people make their appearance in front 
 of the garden or garden-house, Jesus, with a supernatural 
 foreknowledge of all that should come upon him, meets them 
 with the question. Whom they seek ? and on their answering, 
 Jesus of Nazareth, he declares that he is that person ; to 
 which the Evangelist, as if wishing expressly to spare the 
 traitor his kiss, adds tlie remark that Judas also stood with 
 the people to whom Jesus thus made himself kno\\'n, and 
 
 VOL. ir. z 
 
338 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 they consequently required no further indication of his per- 
 son. In this distinction, that according to the one account 
 Jesus is pointed out by another and delivered to his enemies, 
 according to the other he makes himself known and sur- 
 renders himself into the hands of his enemies, is involved 
 again the whole of the distinction between the fourth Gospel 
 and the older ones. The Logos Christ, he who had said of 
 himself that no man takes his life from him, but that he him- 
 self lays it down of himself, that he has power to lay it down 
 and has power to take it up again (John x. 17), he must prove 
 this on this occasion also when he is passing into the power 
 of his enemies ; he is not to be supposed to have waited till a 
 third person said, This is he, but must himself have said at 
 once, I am he. Jesus at the same time wished to save his 
 disciples, and in this wish the Evangelist discovers the fulfil- 
 ment, not, as on other occasions, of an Old Testament prophecy, 
 but of some words of Jesus himself, that is of the speech wdiicli 
 he had put into his mouth in the High-priestly prayer (xvii. 
 12), in a spiritually moral sense, that of those whom his 
 Father had given him (Judas excepted), he had lost none ; a 
 double interpretation of the same speech, agreeing perfectly 
 with the double interpretation of which the whole of this 
 Gospel is capable. 
 
 Moreover, by the turn which he gave to the affair, the 
 fourth Evangelist gained yet another object. What was im- 
 plied by the kiss of Judas, This is he, could produce no 
 other effect upon the people except that of causing them to 
 arrest him. On the other hand, if Jesus came forward to 
 meet them with his, / am he, the scene was prepared for one 
 of those effects which rhetorical writers were fond of intro- 
 ducing in the history of a Marius,* of the orator Antonyf and 
 others, when the hired assassins were said to have sheathed 
 their swords, or run away, at the word or the look of the 
 
 * Velleius, Hist. Roin. ii. 19, 3. f Valer. Max. viii. [), 2. 
 
ms ARREST. 339 
 
 great man. Our Evangelist goes still further ; he represents 
 the people not merely as going back at the word of Jesus, 
 but as falling to the ground. He repeats the words, I am 
 he, three times (ver. 5, Jesus said unto them, I am he — 
 ver. 6, As soon as he had said unto them, I am he — ver. 8, I 
 have told you that I am he) ; and this shews that he lays par- 
 ticular stress upon tliem. They were the same words with 
 which Jesus, when walking on the sea of Galilee, had tran- 
 quillised the terror of the disciples (John vi. 20 ; comp. 
 Matt. xiv. 27) 5 the faith or the confession that " I am he," 
 is repeatedly set up by the Johannine Christ as the end to 
 which he wishes to lead his followers (viii. 24, xxviii. 13, 19). 
 In the words, " I am he," therefore, the whole fulness of 
 what Christ is, the wliole divinity of his personality, is con- 
 tained ; thus, when spoken by liim, they operate as a super- 
 natural talisman. The expression gets this meaning from 
 the Old Testament : " See now that I, even I, am he, and 
 there is no god with me : I kill and I make alive ; I wound 
 and I heal ; neither is there any that can deliver out of my 
 hand." " Ye are my witnesses," says Jehovah on another 
 occasion (Isaiah xliii. 10 ff.), " that ye may know and believe 
 
 that I am he I, even I, am the Lord ; and beside 
 
 me there is no Saviour." The expression is, therefore, 
 originally an expression of God himself; and as the fourth 
 Evangelist puts it into the mouth of Jesus, and represents it 
 as producing the effect which on other occasions the counte- 
 nance of God or some other celestial being produces, he also 
 thereby raises it far above the position which it occupies in 
 the Synoptics. 
 
 In Matthew and Mark the sword-cut inflicted by one of the 
 disciples comes after the officers have laid their hands on 
 Jesus; in Luke and John it comes before. This is a point 
 in which the growth of legend and fiction comes most clearly 
 into view. All the Evangelists are agreed that the ill-timed 
 courage of one of the attendants of Jesus cost the servant 
 
 z 2 
 
340 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 of the High -priest an ear; but neither Matthew, nor Mark 
 who here follows him, says which of the two ears it was ; 
 Luke and John are the first to tell us that it was the right 
 one : in a picturesque scene of this kind legend cannot bear 
 any uncertainty. Then we learn from the two first and the 
 fourth Evangelist simply that the servant had lost his ear, 
 not that he had got it again ; only Luke assures us that 
 Jesus healed it with a touch. How could the charitable 
 physician with miraculous powers, who had removed so much 
 evil, leave this unremoved, when it had been inflicted, if not 
 by him, at all events on his account ? Possibly the servant 
 of the priest appeared (to the fourth Evangelist) unworthy of 
 the miracle, or the miracle too trifling for this closing portion 
 of the life of Jesus. Lastly, the three Synoptics are unable 
 to give the name either of the disciple or the servant ; only 
 John knows that the name of the latter was Malchus, and that 
 the former was Peter. Thus in the history of the Anointing 
 only he knew that the woman "vvho anointed was Mary of 
 Bethany, her heartless censor Judas : he thought this act of 
 anointing as appropriate to the character of Mary, the be- 
 stowal of the censure to that of the traitor, as the sword-cut 
 to that of Peter. And indeed, in a double sense, the act 
 might be called a courageous act; but the courage was 
 wrongly exhibited, and rested upon a grievous error of the 
 disciple as to the true destiny of Jesus. Hence even in 
 Matthew the sword-cut of the unnamed disciple was followed 
 by a reproving caution of the Master : but it exactly fitted 
 in with the plan of the fourth Evangelist to expose Peter, 
 especially in the place of a disciple without a name, to a cen- 
 sure pronounced by Jesus, assuming that the censure applied 
 to something which did not contradict the traditionary clia- 
 racter of Peter. In order to connect this feature firmly with 
 the name of Peter, he subsequently, on the occasion of the 
 denial, describes the servant who maintains that he saw Peter 
 iu the ö,arden with Jesus as a relation of the one whose ear 
 
HIS ARREST. 341 
 
 Peter had cut off (xviii. 26) ; but then the servant would 
 scarcely have said merely. Did I not see thee in the garden 
 with him ? but, Thou art the man who cut off my cousin's 
 ear; and Peter, if conscious of the act, would scarcely haA^e 
 trusted himself in the palace of the High-priest. Of the 
 words of reproach in Matthew, the fourth Evangelist only 
 adopts the command to the disciple to put up the sword into 
 the sheath; the threat that they who take the sword shall 
 also perish by the sword, he seems to have found incompatible 
 with the crucifixion of Peter (xxi. 18 ff ) ; finally, what Jesus 
 says in Matthew of the more than twelve legions of angels 
 which he had only to pray his Father for in order to render 
 him assistance, were he not obliged to fulfil the Scripture and 
 his destiny — John had to represent him as proving this in 
 act. For if, according to him, Jesus caused the armed men 
 to fall to the ground by a word, it was obvious that it would 
 have been an easy thing for him to save himself if he had 
 chosen, without legions of angels, by the divine power which 
 dwelt in him. 
 
 While Matthew and Mark console themselves for the arrest 
 of Jesus like a thief with the predictions "of the Prophets" 
 (perhaps the passage in Isaiah liii. 12, which had been quoted 
 by Luke earlier, xxii. 37), they see in the flight of all the dis- 
 ciples the fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah (xiii. \I), 
 which Matthew represents Jesus as reminding them of on the 
 way to the Mount of Olives (xxvi. 31). "Whether the feature 
 of the young man who in terror leaves the linen cloth behind 
 with which he was covered and flees away naked (Mark xiv, 
 51 ff.), is due to tradition or to the imagination of the second 
 Evangelist, or whether a particular meaning is concealed 
 behind it, is a question which it might be difficult to decide. 
 
342 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 THIED GEO UP OF MYTHS. 
 
 trial and condemnation of jesus. 
 
 89. The Trial before the High-priest and the 
 Denial of Peter. 
 
 Jesus, by the authorities of liis own nation, whose Mes- 
 sianic Saviour he proposed to have been, was condemned as 
 a criminal, was delivered up to the Eoman Procurator, and 
 immediately executed by the punishment of crucifixion. This 
 fact was the terrible negation by which hope and faith on 
 the part of his adherents who belonged to this very nation 
 appeared to be for ever annihilated. If they were to be 
 revived, this could only be done by that annihilating negative 
 being in turn itself negatived. This was done in the first 
 instance by the production of faith in the resurrection of 
 Jesus. If death had put an end to liis life, his resurrection 
 put an end to his death — death was swallowed up in victory. 
 But the death and the tortures under which it took place, the 
 accusation and the condemnation, the disgrace and the shame 
 through which the supposed Messiah had passed, remained ; 
 they could not be obliterated out of the memory of men, even 
 of believers in Jesus, could not therefore be denied, but must 
 have a turn given to tliem in the construction put upon them, 
 such that they should lose their negative meaning, that if 
 possible they should become supports of the faith, their nega- 
 tive value positive, their marks of shame signs of honour. 
 This might be done in different ways, and from this point 
 of view we have to consider the discrepancies between the 
 evangelical accounts of this portion of the life of Jesus. 
 
 All the Evangelists agree in admitting that Jesus was 
 pronounced guilty of death by the Jewish authorities (Matt. 
 xxvi. 57, xxvii. 1; Mark xiv. 53, xv. 1; Luke x.xii. 54—71; 
 John xviii. 12 — 30). The two first represent the trial of 
 
THE TRIAL BEFOEE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 343 
 
 Jesus aa taking place iu the niglit, Luke not until the next 
 morning, when also the two first state that the formal reso- 
 lution of the Sanhedrim was taken. In connection with this, 
 Luke describes the denials of Peter hefore, the two others 
 after, the trial of Jesus, and both parties, Luke on the one 
 hand and Matthew and Mark on the other, place differently 
 and describe differently the ill-treatment which Jesus ex- 
 perienced during these hours. But these are accidental, or 
 at least unimportant discrepancies. Then comes the ques- 
 tion as to how the fact of the condemnation of Jesus by the 
 supreme power of his country was made harmless for the 
 faith ? 
 
 In the first place, it is said that the condemnation was 
 the result of false testimony. Matthew and Mark tell us 
 tlmt the Sanhedrim made exertions to suborn false witnesses, 
 many of whom came forward, but, according to Mark, their 
 evidence proved to be useless by reason of mutual contra- 
 diction. At last, according to Matthew, two came forward 
 stating that Jesus said he could destroy the Temple of God, 
 within three days build it up again, or, according to Mark, 
 build within three days another not made with hands. The 
 observation of Mark, after having stated that the substance 
 of what each' said was so identical, is superfluously apologetic. 
 It has been already explained how far this testimony, which 
 may indeed have been brought forward at this time, was false, 
 and how much of it was true. The third and fourth Evan- 
 gelists make no mention of such testimony in this place, but 
 the substance of it was not unknown to either of them. 
 According to Luke, something of the same kind was subse- 
 quently alleged against Stephen, but there also as false testi- 
 mony (Acts vi. 14); John seizes the enemy's weapon boldly by 
 the point: yes, Jesus did really say, not indeed that he would 
 himself destroy this Temple, but that if they were to destroy 
 it, he would restore it again in three days ; but in this he did 
 not, as the stupid Jews thought, speak of their Temple of 
 
344 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 wood and stone, but — of tlie Temple of his body ! (ii. 
 19—22). 
 
 A second expedient by which the original Christian tradi- 
 tion nullified the effect of the accusation and condemnation of 
 Jesus, was the industriously repeated statement that to the 
 question of the High -priest as to what the false witnesses 
 said of him, as subsequently before Pilate, he gave no answer 
 (Matt. xxvi. 63, xxvii. 12, 14 ; Mark xiv. 61, xv. 5 ; Luke 
 xxiii. 9 ; John xix. 9). If Jesus gave no answer, it shewed 
 that he did not recognise the jurisdiction of the court before 
 which he had been brought ; but, what is the principal theory, 
 he thereby shewed himself to be the Lamb who was led to 
 the slaughter and opened not his mouth, as the sheep who 
 is dumb before his shearers, i.e. as the Servant of God, or, 
 according to Clnistian interpretation, as the IMessiah, of whom 
 the prophet Isaiah had prophesied (liii. 7). So to the question 
 as to whether he is the Son (or Servant) of God, he makes no 
 reply, but solemnly declares himself in all form, referring to 
 Ps. ex. 1 and Dan. vii. 13 ff., to be the Messiah ; and in the 
 fact that now this is looked upon by tlie High-priest and the 
 Sanhedrim as a capital crime, there was involved, according 
 to the Christian view, a third, and, so to say, a self-contra- 
 diction of their sentence. If they condemned him because he 
 maintained himself to be what he really was, they did in fact 
 pass judgment not upon him but upon themselves, upon their 
 strong blindness, upon their obstinate unbelief. 
 
 The insults and abuse which Jesus was hereupon compelled 
 to endure from the servants, or even from the Jewish digni- 
 taries themselves, are differently described by the Evangelists, 
 but mockery, blows, stripes, and spitting in the face, are alleged 
 by all : these things also had been prophesied by Isaiah in 
 a passage capable of Messianic explanation (1. 6) : "I gave 
 my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked 
 off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame and spitting ;" 
 by this also and by the calm resignation with wliich he bore 
 
THE TRIAL BEFOEE THE HIGH-rRIEST. 345 
 
 it, he proved himself to be that whicli liis blinded enemies 
 would not recognise in him 
 
 The weakness of the chief of his disciples in denying him, 
 is only a discredit to him and to the frailty of human nature, 
 and is immediately repented of by the Apostle with the bit- 
 terest remorse ; but even this denial becomes rather an 
 evidence of the supernatural character of Jesus by means of 
 the prophecy which he gave of it, and the accuracy with 
 which the result corresponded to his prediction. Tliat the 
 narrators are only concerned with the triple denial, in accor- 
 dance with the prophecy of Jesus, we see by the discrepancies 
 which they admit in reference to persons, place, and circum- 
 stances. In connection with it, the double crowing of the 
 cock in Mark is evidently a feeble refinement ; but in Luke 
 tlie look of Jesus at the disciple when the cock crowed is an 
 effective feature, which is indeed in point of place and cir- 
 cumstances as improbable, historically, as its legendary origin 
 is intelligible. For what Matthew, and Mark after him, 
 represent subjectively as the vivid awakening of Peter's 
 recollection of the prophecy of Jesus by the crowing of the 
 cock, becomes in Luke objectively a look from Jesus pene- 
 trating his inmost soul. A peculiarity which John exhibits in 
 this place is connected with a tendency of his Gospel already 
 sufficiently well known to us, and is, in particular, a parallel 
 case to the turn which he gave, on the occasion of the last 
 Supper, to the inquiry of the discij^les after the traitor. In 
 the same way as, according to his account, instead of apply- 
 ing immediately to Jesus, the disciples there apply through 
 Peter to the favourite disciple as spokesman, so here Peter, 
 whom the others represent as simply entering the court of 
 the palace of the High-priest, is introduced by that " other 
 disciple," who is thus represented as an acquaintance of the 
 High-priest ; accordingly an ojjportunity is taken here also 
 of exalting the supposed author of the Gospel at the expense 
 of the chief of the Apostles. 
 
346 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 In the famous chronological passage of the third Gospel 
 (Luke iii. 1 ff.), the author of the fourth had found two 
 High-priests, Annas and Caiaphas, for the year in which the 
 Baptist appeared, and taken such good notice of this state- 
 ment, which was of itself erroneous and inaccurate, that by a 
 still greater mistake he always calls Caiaphas, when he speaks 
 of him in the history of the last year of the life of Jesus, the 
 High -priest for that year (xi. 49',. xviii. 13), as if he had 
 changed with Annas, whereas, after Annas had been deposed 
 by the Eoman Procurator Valerius Gratus, and some other 
 persons had been invested with the High-priestly office for 
 a short time only, his son-in-law Joseph Caiaphas held it for 
 a series of years, especially during the whole Procuratorship 
 of Pontius Pilate. Now it was the more obvious for the 
 later Evangelist, on an occasion on which the High -priest 
 was supposed to have something to do, as on the trial and 
 condemnation of Jesus, to give that other (supposed) High- 
 priest sometliing really to do, as he thus had an opportunity 
 at the same time of representing Jesus as having been repu- 
 diated and maltreated by two Jewish High-priests ; as Luke, 
 conversely, but with a similar purpose, represents him as 
 having been found innocent by two judges, neither of them 
 belonging to the Jewish hierarchy, that is, by Herod as well 
 as Pilate. That he had no particular sources of information at 
 his command with regard to the trial of Jesus before Caiaphas, 
 betrays itself also in the fact that he makes the main substance 
 of it, introduced only by a question of the High- priest as to his 
 disciples and his doctrine, to consist in the appeal of Jesus to 
 the publicity of his ministry, which the Synoptics had put 
 into his mouth on the occasion of his arrest (Matt. xxiv. 55 ; 
 Mark xiv. 48 ; Luke xxii. 52 ff.). He then says nothing 
 whatever of the trial before the real High-priest, to whom he 
 represents Jesus as being sent by Annas. This is remarkable, 
 and must remain unintelligible until we observe that, with his 
 usual object in view of making Jesus play as important a part 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 347 
 
 as possible from first to last, lie had already anticipated the 
 two points which, according to the two older Evangelists, 
 were brought out at this hearing of the case. In the first 
 place, he had brought in the speech about the destruction and 
 rebuilding of tlie Temple on the occasion of the first visit of 
 Jesus to a feast (ii. 19) ; in the second place, the assurance 
 that henceforth they shall see the Son of Man sitting at the 
 right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven, had 
 already, according to the fourth Gospel, been given by Jesus 
 to Nathanael, on meeting with his first disciples, in similar 
 words (i. 51), from henceforth they should see the heaven 
 open, and the angels of God ascending and descending to the 
 Son of Man.* Even of the condemnatory sentence of Caia- 
 phas it may be said that the Evangelist had anticipated it, 
 not only in si:)eaking of the Council of Blood (xi. 49 ft'.), but 
 also again (xviii. 14), where with reference to this narrative 
 he had described Caiaphas as him who gave counsel to the 
 Jews that it was expedient that one man should perish 
 instead of the whole people. All that was left was the " Yes" 
 pronounced by Jesus in answer to the question as to whether 
 he was the Christ, the Son of God ; but the foiu'th Evangelist 
 did not choose to represent the Jesus of his Gospel as thus 
 confessing himself at once to be the Messiah of the Jews. 
 Thus he passes over the hearing before Caiaphas with a sum- 
 mary statement, representing the denial of Peter as taking 
 place in the court of Annas, and the result of the trial being 
 the condenmation of Jesus, he passes on to the following pro- 
 cess before Pilate.i* 
 
 * On each occasion, äiräpTi uxpecjOe. 
 
 f The English translation of the aorist ci7rt(TTH\sv by the pluperfect " had sent," 
 which is undoubtedly erroneous, gives a totally different impression of the order of 
 events from that which is here assumed by Strauss on the authority of the üreek 
 text, rightly interpreted. — Tr. 
 
348 mythical histoey of jesus, 
 
 90. The Death of the Tkaitor. 
 
 There was a difficulty, capable of being turned to the dis- 
 advantage of Jesus, in the fact that he had been delivered 
 by one of his disciples into the hands of his enemies. This 
 difficulty the ancient Cliristian legend had, as we have seen, 
 attempted from the first to set aside by representing this 
 treason as having been foreknown and foretold by Jesus, and 
 even prophesied in the Old Testament. It had even deprived 
 beforehand the denial of Peter of its sting by such a predic- 
 tion on the pa,rt of Jesus ; but it had also done the same 
 subsequently by the heartfelt rej)entance which it repre- 
 sented Peter as exhibiting. A subsequent repentance of a 
 similar kind was all the more requisite in tlie case of Judas' 
 treason, in proportion as the guilt of it exceeded that of Peter : 
 in this case simple repentance was not enough, the repent- 
 ance must become despair ; nay, whether he repented or not, 
 the traitor must be absolutely overtaken by the divine 
 vengeance. 
 
 That a traitor should feel remorse, that he should even 
 perish either by his own hand or by an accident, is possible 
 and has happened in other cases; but our New Testament 
 accounts with regard to the death of Judas point, in their 
 discrepancy, not to a fact, but to different Old Testament 
 passages and types which have been connected with one 
 fact at the most, a fact moreover which probably has no con- 
 nection whatever with the traitor. According to Matthew 
 (xxvii. 3 — 10), Judas, when he heard that Jesus was con- 
 demned (and we cannot indeed understand how he could be 
 surprised at it), cast down his reward for treason in the 
 Temple into the hands of the High-priest and elders with 
 the confession that he had betrayed to them innocent blood ; 
 and they, Judas liaving hanged himself from despair, bought 
 from a potter for the money, M'hich as being the price of 
 })lood they could not put into the treasury of tlie Temple, a 
 
THE DEATH OF THE TRAITOR. 349 
 
 field to Luiy strangers in. This field, says the Evangelist, 
 on account of the blood of Jesus which clung to it, was 
 called up to his own days the Field of Blood. According to 
 the Acts, on the contrary, when, on the occasion of filling up 
 the place of the traitor in the College of the Apostles, Peter 
 is speaking of his end (i. 16 — 20), he had not restored the 
 recompence for his sin, but bought with it, we are not told 
 from whom, a piece of ground, upon which he shortly after 
 ended his days, not by suicide, but by a fall which burst his 
 body ;* an accident which, becoming known all through Jeru- 
 salem, gave to the piece of ground the name of Aceldama, or 
 the Field of Blood, according to this, therefore, from the 
 blood of the traitor. These two narratives have nothing in 
 common but the sudden death of Judas and the name of a 
 piece of ground at Jerusalem ; the first of which, that the 
 traitor could have come to no good end, was a postulate of 
 the Christian consciousness ; the other, that there was at 
 Jerusalem a piece of ground of that name, is possible, but it 
 need not have anything to do with the traitor; even if it 
 had not, the Christian legend might still bring the ground of 
 blood into connection with the man of blood. 
 
 Now, as regards the narrative in Matthew, we may observe 
 that death by hanging, which is represented to have been the 
 end of Judas, is especially the traitor's death in the Old 
 Testament. Of Achitophel, the unfaithful adviser of David, 
 who had betrayed this ancestor of the Messiah to Absalom, it 
 is said (2 Sam. xvii. 23), " He arose, and gat him home .... 
 and hanged himself," exactly as of Judas, " He departed, 
 and went, and hanged himself." Achitophel, indeed, did 
 not do this from remorse, but because he saw that his 
 treacherous but clever design had not succeeded : he had 
 intended to destroy David, and now foresaw his own destruc- 
 tion, which he anticipated by suicide. Judas saw that the 
 
 * Luther indeed translates 7rpi]V))(; ytj^ö/itj'oc, Acts i. 18, like cnri^y^aro. Matt, 
 xxvii. 5, " hanged himself," which is clearly a mistake. 
 
350 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Son of David had been destroyed by him, and this threw him 
 into despair. 
 
 This, according to the narrative of Matthew, is not the 
 first thing, but is preceded by an act of repentance, the 
 restoration of the reward for his treason and the confession 
 of his guilt. Even the remorse of Judas was a thing which 
 from a Christian point of view would have been inferred even 
 though nothing was historically known about it, and an 
 authority for the expression of it by throwing the money into 
 the treasury of the Temple was supposed to be discovered 
 in a passage of a prophet. Matthew quotes Jeremiah, but 
 wliat he quotes is from Zechariah (xi. 13) ; and the mistake 
 of the Evangelist comes from this, that this potter who is 
 spoken of in this passage as he translated it, reminded him 
 of the famous oracle about the potter in Jeremiah (xviii. 1 £f.). 
 In the oracle of Zechariah, Jehovah appoints the prophet as 
 a shepherd of the people ; but he, soon disgusted with his 
 thankless ofiice, demands his pass or his dismissal. Thirty 
 shekels of silver are given to him, and Jehovah commands 
 him to throw the goodly price, at which he (Jehovah in his 
 representative) was prized at of them, into the treasury ; 
 upon which the prophet takes the thirty pieces and casts 
 them into the treasury in the house of Jehovah. Now if 
 Judas had really got thirty pieces of silver for liis treason, 
 the application of this passage would naturally have forced 
 cJ /I j,.tJitself upon men's minds ; but I believe that it did so force 
 LjL^ itself apart from any corresponding reality, and that the 
 ■^ -> thirty pieces of silver given to the traitor are taken from this 
 passage. A contemptibly low price at which a sheplierd 
 sent by God, and in the last resort Jehovah himself, was 
 prized Ijy the ungrateful people, could not fail to suggest the 
 price, at all events proportionably low, for which the best 
 and truest shepherd of tlie sheep had been sold by his 
 betrayer (Heb. xiii. 20 ; 1 Peter ii. 25) ; and if that price 
 was found in tlie passage of the prophet fixed at thirty 
 
 k/w'W»-4--v. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE TRAITOR. 351 
 
 shekels of silver, it was that passage, and no historical infor- 
 mation, that was the source on the authority of which Mat- 
 thew — observe, Matthew only, who brings forward the pas- 
 sage, and in doing so coincides* in a remarkable manner 
 with the Greek translation of it even in the words of his 
 narrative — fixed the reward of the treason of Judas at that 
 sum. The distinction indeed is not to be overlooked, that 
 what in the passage of the prophet is a reward for service, is 
 in the evangelical narrative pay for a purchase ; consequently, 
 while in the passage of the prophet there are only two par- 
 ties, the hirer and the hired, there are here three, the buyer, 
 the seller, and the subject of the sale ; there the party hired 
 gets the pay, while here, not the party sold, but the seller, 
 receives the price. It is therefore said in the first passage 
 that the party hired and so ill paid, i.e. the prophet, did at 
 the command of Jehovah throw his rew^ard, the thirty pieces 
 of silver, into the Temple. In the passage of the Gospel, this 
 could not be done by the person sold, but only by the seller, 
 that is, the traitor, for he had received the pieces of silver. 
 But as applied to him, the feature gave an excellent proof of 
 his rej)entance, inasmuch as casting the money received into 
 the Temple was the same thing as casting it at the feet of 
 the guardians of the Temple, the High -priests and elders, 
 from v.'hom he had received it as the price of his treason. 
 
 But Matthew goes on to say that the High-priests were 
 unable to put the money restored to them by Judas, as being 
 the price of blood, into the treasury of the Temple, and that 
 they bought for it a potter's field, and in reference to this he 
 appeals directly to the prediction of the prophet. Whence 
 the Evangelist gets the field we shall probably discover here- 
 after ; but the potter himself he likewise took from the pas- 
 sage in the prophet, only not from its real meaning, but from 
 an ancient misunderstanding of it. The place into which, 
 
 * Zech. xi. 12, according to the translation of the LXX. : Kai larijanv tov 
 ^iiaööif fivv, rpiuKora apyvpovc. Matt. xxvi. 15 ; Kai icniaav avT<p rpiÜKovra 
 äpyvpia. 
 
352 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 according to Jeliovah's command, the prophet was to cast his 
 scanty pay and did so cast it, is indicated in the Hebrew 
 text by a word which, with the vowel points usually marking 
 it, would mean a potter, but would be thus absolutely devoid 
 of sense : with other vowel points it may mean the treasury, 
 and thus it must undoubtedly be understood. But the 
 evangelical narrator adhered to the ordinary reading with 
 its potter. But it is said further in the passage of the 
 prophet that he cast the thirty pieces of silver into the house 
 of God, after which there follows, as a more accurate descrip- 
 tion of it, the word wdiicli v.ie translate by treasury, i.e. the 
 treasury which was in the Temple, but the Evangelist by 
 potter, nothing of the kind being there. The casting into 
 the Temple, therefore, cannot have been tlie same thing 
 with casting to the potter, and so the Evangelist made two 
 acts of the proceeding,- distributing likewise these two acts 
 between different persons. He who cast the pieces of silver 
 into the Temple was, according to him, tlie traitor; the 
 money was brought to the potter by the Higli-priests, who 
 did not choose to have in their treasury the price of blood. 
 But for what did they bring the money to the potter ? As 
 the price of a piece of ground which they bought from him 
 as a burying-place for strangers, and to which the name of the 
 Field of Blood continued to cling from the money for which it 
 was bought. 
 
 The Evangelist cannot have taken this piece of ground 
 from the passage of Zecliariali, as there is there no trace of 
 such a thing ; on the other hand, it reminds us of what is said 
 in the Acts of the end of the traitor. This narrative, thou<d'i 
 differing so much in other respects, coincides with that of 
 Matthew in this particular, that it also speaks of a piece of 
 ground, which, however, the traitor bought himself, and not 
 for a burying-place for strangers, but for his own purjDoses, 
 and not from a potter. Now it is easy to see whence the 
 author of the narrative got the piece of ground, for he tells 
 
THE DEATH OF THE TRAITOR. 353 
 
 US himself. He finds in the circumstance of the traitor 
 having come hy his death immediately after the purchase of 
 it, tlie fulfilment of the prophecy, Ps. Ixix. 26, "Let their 
 habitation be desolate ; and let none dwell in their tents." 
 This is one of the pretended suffering Psalms of David, 
 which -were applied in Christendom at an early period to the 
 suffering of the Messiah. Out of it (ver. 22) is taken the 
 vinegar mixed with gall which is said to have been given to 
 Jesus to drink upon the cross, and another passage of the 
 same Psalm (ver. 10) is quoted in the fourth Gospel, as 
 fulfilled in the purification of the Temple undertaken by 
 Jesus (ii. 17). The punishments there threatened to the 
 enemies of the speaker, admitted, if the Psalms were under- 
 stood in a Messianic sense, of an application to the opponents 
 of Jesus generally, the party among the Jewish people that 
 were hostile to him, but in a most especial manner to him 
 who had sinned most grievously against him, the traitor. 
 Now if his habitation (piece of ground on which he dwelt) 
 was to be desolate, he must first have liad one, and where 
 could he have got it but from the reward of his treason, 
 which was now visited upon him by the desolation of the 
 piece of ground which he had bought with the price of it ? 
 But if his habitation were made desolate and uninhabited, 
 he, the inhabitant of it, must have died. The wish that his 
 enemies should be blotted out of the Book of Life, was also 
 expressed against them in the same Psalm (ver. 29) ; and in 
 another Psalm likewise quoted on this occasion (cix. 8), by 
 the author of the Acts, it is said, " Let his days be few." 
 But that the premature death of the traitor could not have 
 been a natural one, was in part assumed as a matter of course, 
 in part announced in that Psalm which threatened his habi- 
 tation with desolation. Let, it is said (ver. 23), "their table 
 become a snare before them ;" just as in the Acts of the 
 Apostles it is said of Judas, that he fell headlong and burst 
 asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out — because, 
 VOL. II. 2 A 
 
354 . MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 L>^j.<L^ ' we may suppose, he had at his own table fed himself iij) into 
 A-tX f /(f . fatness on the pay which he got for his treason. 
 
 That the traitor's body swelled to an enormous size, was 
 in Christendom a very ancient tradition, noticed even by 
 Paj)ias.* It is said that he became so fat that he could 
 not pass through a space large enough for a waggon, and of 
 this assertion another writer made out a story (thus legends 
 of this kind grow), that he was crushed by a waggon meet- 
 ing him, so that his bowels gushed out. Dropsy was said to 
 be the cause of this enormous size, and especially the head 
 and the eyelids of the traitor were said to have swollen to such 
 a degree that he ceased to be able to see out of his eyes. Here 
 the blindness might be merely a colouring given to the picture, 
 dropsy only an assumed cause of the swelling, and the latter 
 an assumed cause of the bursting ; as we read, however, in 
 one of the Psalms to which the author of the Acts of the 
 Apostles appeals in speaking of the fate of Judas, the follow- 
 ing words recorded against the enemy (cix. 18), "Let his 
 cursing come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his 
 bones," we have the dropsy, and in the words of the other 
 Psalm (Ixix. 24), " Let their eyes be darkened that they see 
 not," we have the blindness prefigured in the Old Testament. 
 If the double tradition with regard to the end of the trai- 
 tor could thus arise in the Christendom of the most ancient 
 period without anything historical being known about it, the 
 only question that remains is, whetlier the piece of ground, as 
 to the purchase and name of which the two accounts, other- 
 wise so different, agree, is not to be considered as historical. 
 But it is only in the statement that there was near Jeru- 
 salem a piece of ground called the ground or the field of 
 blood, that the two accounts do really agree ; each taking its 
 own way in bringing the facts into connection with Judas and 
 his treason. One represents it as having been bought by 
 
 * The passages are quote 1 in my Critical Discussion on the Life of Jesus, ii. 
 \K 490 ff., note 19 and 20. 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE AND IIEROD. 355 
 
 Judas himself, the other by the High-priests ; the one says it 
 was named from the blood of Jesus clinging to it, the other 
 from the blood of the traitor gushing out upon it. The bond, 
 therefore, between the traitor and the ground has no tenacity, 
 but the ground takes an independent position, i.e. there may , 
 have been a piece of ground near Jerusalem which, Heavej i *^ 
 knows why , had the name, nay, perhaps liave been used for ' "^ 
 burying strangers in ; this piece of ground with its awful 
 name the Christians claimed for the traitor, but the mode of 
 bringing it into connection with him was not settled; the 
 author of the narrative in the Acts looked upon it as the 
 desolate habitation of the traitor, the writer of the first Gospel 
 saw in it the object for which the blood-money restored by 
 the traitor had been paid to the potter. And it is not here 
 necessary to assume that the field came by its reference to 
 the potter in consequence of the clayey nature of its soil ; it 
 was enough that in consequence of the name of Field of Blood 
 it came by its reference to the traitor, with whom the potter 
 was connected by reason of the false interpretations of the 
 oracle of Zechariah. 
 
 91. The Trial before Pilate and Herod, 
 
 Until the days of the destruction of Jerusalem and later, 
 and consequently during the period during which the sub- 
 stance of the narratives of the synoptic Gospels was forming, 
 tlie real enemies of the youthful Christianity were found in 
 the Jews of the old belief. On the other hand, Eomans and 
 Greeks shewed themselves to be partly indiftereut, partly 
 even capable of belief, or at any rate, apart from local or 
 transitory obstacles, such as the persecution of the Christians 
 under Nero, tolerant. Up to the date of the composition of 
 the fom-th Gospel, the conflicts with the power of the Roman 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Government liad indeed increased, but were infinitely out- 
 weighed by tlie extent to which the conversion of the heathen 
 had proceeded ; in consequence of which the Greco-Romish 
 world was looked upon as the real and proper field for the 
 spread of Christianity, and the Jews continually more and 
 more as an obstinate and abandoned multitude. Now as 
 Jesus at the conclusion of his life had come in contact with 
 both powers, Judaism and Heathendom, the hierarchy of his 
 own nation and the civil power of the Eomans, it is natural 
 that the conditions prevailing in both directions in Christen- 
 dom generally, and in separate circles of it at the time of the 
 composition of the several Gospels, should also shew them- 
 selves in the description of this portion of the history of the 
 life of Jesus. 
 
 That Jesus was put to death by order of the Roman Pro- 
 curator is certain ;* there is no trace of his having given 
 immediate or personal offence to that officer by his ministry ; 
 there is, therefore, every probability in favour of the repre- 
 sentation given by our Gospels, that the Jewish authorities, 
 being themselves deprived of the power of life and death by 
 the Romans, endeavoured to gain over the Roman Procurator 
 for their purposes, by bringing the man whom they wished 
 to destroy for hierarchical reasons, into suspicion with the 
 Romans on political grounds. The political character of the 
 Jewish idea of the Messiah made it possible to do this. Jesus 
 had recognised this idea as applicable to himself only hesitat- 
 ingly, and with a disavowal of its political side ; but the 
 people, and even his own disciples, had up to that time taken 
 the less notice of this disavowal in proportion as it was unin- 
 telligible to them. So much the more easy was it for the 
 Jewish authorities to represent to Pilate in a politically 
 dangerous light the success which Jesus met with in gaining 
 followers among the people, the concourse which attended 
 
 * Tacit. Aniial. xv. 44. 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE AND IIEROD. 357 
 
 his lectures, the homage which had been given to him on his 
 entrance into the capital. So far, therefore, the evangelical 
 account has all historical probability in its favour. 
 
 But if Pilate lent them his support, the inference from this 
 will be, that they had either really convinced him of the dan- 
 gerous character of Jesus, or that he himself was convinced 
 that his own interest called upon him, in this instance, to 
 comply with the wishes of the Jewish leaders. In the first 
 case, he may indeed at first have doubted of the guilt of 
 Jesus, but not until the last have had a conviction of his 
 innocence ; in the second, he would at all events not have 
 proclaimed this conviction publicly, as he would thereby have 
 placed himself unnecessarily in a bad light, and counteracted 
 his object of deserving the gratitude of the Jewish authori- 
 ties, by exciting their disgust. However probable, therefore, 
 may be the evangelical account as to the mode in which the 
 Jewish hierarchs contrived to gain the Eoman Procurator to 
 their side, it is highly improbable in respect of all which 
 they represent Pilate as saying or doing in order to declare 
 loudly and solemnly his conviction of the innocence of Jesus. 
 And as we may observe how, during the period of the for- 
 mation of our Gospels, Christendom was continually turning 
 away from Judaism with disgust, and to Heathendom with 
 hope, we see the source from which the unhistorical element 
 became here amalgamated with the evangelical narratives. 
 
 When, in the two first Evangelists, Pilate, on Jesus being 
 brought before him, immediately puts to him the question 
 as to whether he is the King of the Jews, this is perfectly 
 natural, provided only we assume that the accusation of the 
 Jewish authorities, not mentioned until after, consisted in 
 the allegation that he Imd said he was. Luke, more appro- 
 priately, and more correctly illustrating and bringing forward 
 the political side of the Messianic idea, puts these accusations 
 first, stating that the Jews accused Jesus before Pilate of 
 misleading the people, and dissuading them from paying tri- 
 
358 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 bute to Caesar. On this accusation of the Jewish authorities 
 Jesus was silent, and to this question of the Procurator only 
 gave the monosyllabic reply, " Thou sayest it," without further 
 explanation. Now this might indeed, as being a fulfilment 
 of the prophecy about the lamb that suffered without open- 
 ing its mouth, edify the Christians, but would scarcely gain 
 favour for Jesus with the Eomans, which, however, is said to 
 have been the result. And even succeeding Christians might 
 on this occasion have expected some expression of Jesus 
 having reference to his position to the political side of this 
 Messianic idea, such as the fourth Evangelist does not hesitate 
 to introduce. 
 
 On the whole, this Evangelist has worked up the whole 
 scene before Pilate with especial care. Even at first, in order 
 to keep in sight the Passover, as being immediately at hand, 
 he represents the Jews as not entering into the judgment 
 hall, but Jesus as being led into it. Then Pilate, when he 
 wishes to question Jesus, goes in, and when he wishes to speak 
 with the Jews, comes out, and at last brings Jesus out with 
 him. Thus the scene gets a dramatic, not to say a theatrical 
 character, though indeed to the question as to who is sup- 
 posed to have given to the Evangelist, who stood with his 
 countrymen outside, a description of the conversations be- 
 tween Jesus and Pilate in the interior of the judgment hall, 
 the answer is almost impossible. The representation given 
 by the fourth Evangelist, even at the very first, will give 
 as it were the key to the judicial drama that follows. The 
 Jews having sent the prisoner in to Pilate, Pilate comes out 
 and inquires the accusation, which they give him. Their 
 reply, rude almost to absurdity, that if the man had not been 
 a malefactor, they would not have delivered him to the Pro- 
 curator, is only intelligible by supposing that it was given in 
 order to bring out both Pilate's demand that they should judge 
 him according to their law, and also their rejoinder, which was 
 necessary to explain that they did not possess the privilege of 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 359 
 
 putting criminals to death. It was of importance to the 
 Evangelist to introduce this notice, because it was ouly in con- 
 sequence of this circumstance that the prediction of Jesus 
 with regard to his death, that it would consist in a lifting 
 up from the earth (xii. 32, viii. 28) could be fulfilled, inas- 
 much as in the Jewish code the punishment of crucifixion 
 did not appear ; but for a crime such as Jesus was accused 
 of, the Jewish punishment would rather have consisted in 
 stoning (3 Mos. xxiv. 16, 23). But when he hereupon re- 
 presents Pilate as going to Jesus and putting to him the 
 question in the same terms as those of the Synoptics, and also 
 as abruptly, whether he is the King of the Jews, we still 
 do not know, notwithstanding all preliminary explanation, 
 whence Pilate is supposed to have got this question, as the 
 Jews had not told him what their accusation against Jesus 
 was ; the explanation, therefore, which has been continued 
 up to this point, the object of which was to shew the incom- 
 petence of the Jews to inflict capital punishment, and con- 
 sequently to suggest a reason for the crucifixion, here breaks 
 off, and a new one begins, the purport of which is to expound 
 the supermundane nature of the kingdom and kingly dignity 
 of Jesus, and which ends in the question of Pilate, What is 
 Truth ? Jesus had said that he was a King, in so far as he 
 had been born and come into the world to bear witness of the 
 Truth. Upon this Pilate asks, What is Truth ? In the 
 same way at an earlier period, when Jesus spoke of the ex- 
 altation of the Son of Man, the Jews had asked, Who is this 
 Son of Man ? (xii. 32 ; comp. viii. 28) — consequently this is 
 one of those questions arising from misunderstanding or no 
 understanding at all, by which the fourth Gospel loves to 
 illustrate the sublimity of the thoughts and utterances of its 
 Christ, the notion of " Truth" being as much connected with 
 fundamental ideas of a specially Johannine character, as that 
 of the Son of Man is with those of Christianity in general. 
 Wlien, after this conversation, the fourth Evangelist re- 
 
360 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 presents Pilate as coming out and declaring to the Jews 
 that he finds no guilt in the accused, there is here at 
 any rate better reason for his doing so, than in Luke, 
 where it is simply unintelligible how Pilate, when Jesus 
 had refused all further explanation, with the exception of 
 the dry expression, " Thou sayest it," could declare his 
 conviction of his innocence. The express declaration of 
 innocence in this passage is taken by John almost wprd 
 for word from Luke ; for the two first Evangelists have in 
 this place nothing of the kind, nor anything anywhere in 
 this form. But in their description there now comes in the 
 episode of Barabbas, which John represents as following that 
 declaration of innocence, and which, finding it so firmly 
 rooted in the ancient Christian tradition, we must consider 
 on the whole to be historical. But whether Pilate, as the 
 Evangelists represent, proposed to adopt the custom at the 
 Passover of releasing a prisoner, as an appeal from the fanati- 
 cal priesthood to the unprejudiced populace, and by contrast 
 with a robber and murderer to facilitate the redemption of 
 Jesus, and whether he did this so earnestly with repeated 
 proposals, is indeed another question. And that he, when 
 this attempt had failed, improvised the scene of washing his 
 hands, and thus solemnly testified to the innocence of Jesus, 
 acquitted himself of the blood " of that just man," and laid 
 the responsibility of it upon the Jews — all this is only ex- 
 ceeded in improbability by the statement that the assembled 
 Jewish populace took, as solemnly, this responsibility ujDon 
 themselves, and expressly laid upon themselves and their 
 children the guilt of the blood of Jesus. This representation, 
 which is peculiar to the first Gospel, is manifestly made up 
 altogether out of the Christian consciousness of a later date, 
 which saw in the fearful end of the Jewish state and nation 
 the execution of vengeance on those children whose fathers 
 had shed the blood of Jesus. What their own interest 
 required was, to have as it were official testimony to the inno- 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 3G1 
 
 ceuce of their Christ, and this they foisted upon Pilate. But 
 it is impossible that he could care so much for a Jewish 
 enthusiast, which at the best he considered Jesus to be, that 
 if he did not find it advisable to save him, he would have 
 made an exposure of his own weakness and cowardice by so 
 solemn a declaration of his innocence. 
 
 The first Evangelist does to a certain extent suggest a 
 motive for this interest of Pilate in Jesus by a feature like- 
 wise peculiar to him, in the warning, that is, which he repre- 
 sents as being addressed to him by his wife, while actually 
 sitting on the judgment-seat, to have nothing to do with that 
 just man, for she had suffered many things in a dream that 
 day because of him. On reading of this warning dream of 
 Claudia Procula, as the legend soon after called Pilate's 
 wife, who does not remember the pretended dream of Cal- 
 purnia, Caesar's wife, on the night before the murder, and 
 her prayer to her husband not to go out that day ; and who 
 would not be in a condition, remembering on the one hand 
 this universal belief of the period, and on the other the per- 
 sonal inclination of the Evangelist for suggestive dreams 
 which we recognise even in the history of the infancy, to form 
 a judgment upon this narrative of this writer ? 
 
 These two narratives, of Pilate's washing his hands and 
 of his wife's dream, are simply passed over by the abridging 
 Mark, while Luke and John seek to substitute for them 
 other features producing a similar effect. Even before the 
 digression about Barabbas, and immediately after Pilate's 
 declaration that he can find no guilt in the silent prisoner, 
 Luke has a statement (xxiii. 6 — 15), in making which he 
 stands as much alone as Matthew does in that of the washing 
 the hands — the statement as to the leading away of Jesus to 
 Herod. He connects it with what precedes by saying that 
 the Jews maintain their accusation against Jesus by asserting 
 more particularly that he stirs up the people from Galilee up 
 to the capital of Judea ; whereupon Pilate seizes upon the 
 
362 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 word Galilee, and sends the Galilean to the Governor of his 
 district, that is, the Tetrarch Herod Antipas, who was like- 
 wise present in Jerusalem during the feast. Luke has already 
 made preparations beforehand for the statement. In the 
 passage (ix. 9) in which during the ministry of Jesus in 
 Galilee he mentions the attention which the fame of the 
 miracles of Jesus excited in the mind of Herod, he concludes 
 with the remark, peculiar to himself, that Herod wished to 
 see him. It is to this wish that allusion is now made in the 
 joy which the Prince feels at having him at length in his 
 presence ; and as on the former occasion the miracles were 
 the cause for which he wished to see him, so now also he 
 hopes to witness some miracle done by him. But as his 
 wish is not fulfilled, inasmuch as Jesus meets all Herod's 
 questions as well as all accusations of the chief priests and 
 scribes who remained with him with persistent silence, the 
 disappointed Prince with his men of war resort to ridicule, 
 and finally he sends back the accused to Pilate arrayed in 
 a gorgeous robe. In and for itself, this account contains 
 nothing that might not have really happened as it is told. 
 Neither is anything proved against its historical character by 
 the fact of its being peculiar to Luke. But we must add, 
 that it contains no matter whatever of its own. Nothing is 
 stated about the questions of Herod or a sentence passed by 
 him, and the mockery, together with the gorgeous robe, is 
 only taken from the subsequent passage which follows the 
 judicial sentence of Pilate, where the two other Synoptics 
 have these features, and they are omitted by Luke. Lastly, 
 we see most plainly the object which the narrative has in 
 view, and so we become distrustful of its historical character. 
 Jesus having been brought back from Herod to Pilate, Pilate 
 appeals in support of his earlier judgment to the fact that 
 now neither Herod nor himself find in him any guilt worthy 
 of death. That is, the innocence of Jesus is to be attested 
 by two judges, neitlier of whom could be said to be prejudiced 
 
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 363 
 
 iu his favour, and of whom one was a heathen, and the other, 
 though a Jew, still not a priest; as, on the other side, the 
 fourtli Evangelist represents Jesus as being rejected not merely 
 by one, but by two, Jewish chief priests. 
 
 But there is another way also in which the third Evangelist 
 attempts to increase the weight v/hich, on the part of the 
 Eoman Procurator, is thrown into the scale of the innocence 
 of Jesus. According to the narrative of the two first Evan- 
 gelists, Pilate, after the failure of the attempt to substitute 
 Barabbas, caused Jesus to be scourged and led away to cruci- 
 fixion. Here, therefore, the scourging appears, according to 
 the custom of the Eomans, to be only an accident preliminary 
 to crucifixion. But according to Luke, the Procurator repeat- 
 edly offers to substitute scourging, as the lighter punishment, 
 for crucifixion, hoping thus to spare Jesus the heavier ; but 
 the Jews reject his offer, and insist upon putting Jesus to 
 death (xxiii. 16, 22 ff). If the motive for Luke's preference 
 of this distinguishing feature is not clear in itself, it can hardly 
 fail to become so in comparing the fourth Gospel, where Pilate 
 l^erforms what in Luke he merely offers, ordering Jesus to be 
 really scourged (xix. 1), not, as in IMatthew and Mark, as an 
 introduction to the crucifixion, but in order to prevent it, that 
 is, to persuade the hard-hearted Jews to desist from their 
 demand for the punishment of death, on beholding the piteous 
 countenance of the sufferer under the lash. It is on this 
 account that the Evangelist here brings in also the mockery 
 of the soldiers, the clothing with the robe of purple and the 
 crown of thorns, — events which the two first Evangelists 
 represent indeed as coming after the scourging, but when 
 Jesus had been already sacrificed by the Procurator, while in 
 John they are intended to serve the purpose of strengthening 
 the claims to compassion expressed in the countenance of 
 Jesus, and thus, if possible, of averting from him the extreme 
 punishment. When, then, Pilate has brought forward to the 
 Jews their victim, thus accoutred, with the words, Behold the 
 
364 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 man ! and they, untouched even by this, persist in their 
 demand for his crucifixion, Pilate on the one hand has done 
 all that was possible to save Jesus, and on the other his 
 Jewish opponents have shewn a hardness of heart such as is 
 not seen in the description of any other Gospel. 
 
 In all the Synoptics, after the failure of the attempt to sub- 
 stitute Barabbas, Pilate yields, and commands Jesus to be led 
 away to crucifixion. The fourth Evangelist represents him 
 as still persevering in the effort to save Jesus. Hence it 
 becomes an object for him to shew how the Jewish hierarchs 
 set about attempting to persuade him to reverse his decision 
 (xix. 6 — 16); and thus at the same time the process of his 
 resistance is prolonged, and the cunning obstinacy of the Jews 
 is more palpably realised. At first, the endeavour of Pilate 
 to save Jesus receives a fresh impulse from the statement of 
 his opponents that Jesus had professed to be the Son of God. 
 In this the Jews see a crime worthy of death ; but the heathen, 
 on hearing it, is stated to have been penetrated with a feeling, 
 however dark and mysterious, of the real state of the case. 
 Then comes in the allusion of Jesus to the higher power, 
 without which the Procurator could have had no power over 
 him (comp. Kom. xiii. 1), a hint of higher responsibility which 
 can but increase the hesitation of the Eoman. But now the 
 Jews play their best card, for, connecting what they say with 
 the conversation at the beginning about the kingly office of 
 Jesus, they represent the disinclination of Pilate to condemn 
 the pretended king as disloyalty to the Emperor. The Procu- 
 rator, then, having long resisted on good grounds the urgency 
 of the Jews, at last yields to the lowest motive of personal 
 interest, and against his better knowledge too, as he must from 
 his former interview with Jesus have been well aware that his 
 prisoner only professed to be a king in a sense which could 
 not possibly bring him into collision with the Ca3sar. Certain 
 it is, that the process of the condemnation of Jesus is here 
 represented exactly in cori'espondence with the feelings of 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 365 
 
 later Christendom, but scarcely with reality. For Pilate could 
 only have acted as he is represented here to have acted from 
 motives of profound sympathy with Jesus. And it certainly 
 is not easy to see from what cause these feelings should have 
 arisen in the Roman, though it is very obvious how the Evan- 
 gelist might be induced, from his own Christian consciousness, 
 to attribute them to him. 
 
 FOURTH GROUP OF MYTHS. 
 
 crucifixion, death and burial of jesus. 
 
 92. The Crucifixion. 
 
 Jesus ended his life upon the Cross ; he endured the most 
 ignominious of criminal deaths. Thus, according to traditional 
 Jewish ideas, he lost all claim to recognition as the Messiah. 
 The disciples, and those of the Jews who were led by them to 
 believe in Jesus, modified tlieir ancient Jewish conceptions 
 in accordance with that fact, adopting into their idea of the 
 Messiah the characteristic of his Passion as an intercessory 
 sacrifice, of his death as an expiatorial one. This, within the 
 circle of Jewish ideas, was only possible by passages being- 
 pointed out in the writings of the Old Testament, in which 
 the sufferings and violent death of the Messiah appeared to 
 be spoken of. There were in reality none of this description ; 
 but the servants of Jehovah in Isaiah, spoken of collectively 
 in the singular, and individual pious persons, were represented 
 as the victims of manifold sufferings, tortured even to death, 
 and apparently abandoned by God, and to find the Messiah 
 in such passages was the easiest thing in the world in the 
 
366 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 then state of scriptural interpretation among the Jews at the 
 time. Now if at the time when men begun, in the interval 
 between his death and his return in the clouds of heaven, to 
 look back upon the past life on earth of Jesus the Messiah, 
 the evangelical narrator encountered the problem of rendering 
 an account of the most untoward event in his history, his 
 crucifixion, it was natural that he should, in the attempt to 
 solve it, bear firmly in mind those passages out of the Old 
 Testament, and, taking feature by feature, point out that with 
 all the contempt and suffering which Jesus bore, still nothing 
 whatever had happened to him but what had long since been 
 prophesied in the Old Testament as destined to occur to the 
 Messiah — nothing consequently but what fell in with the 
 scheme of Providence to save the people of Israel and all 
 believers by the suffering and death of the Messiah. In the 
 description, therefore, which the Evangelists give us of the 
 course of events on the occasion of the crucifi^sion of Jesus 
 (Matt, xxvii. 32—56 ; Mark xv. 21—41 ; Luke xxiü. 26—49 ; 
 John xix. 17 — 30), we shall expect to find, a priori, a mixture 
 of historical recollection and modification of the statements 
 according to alleged prophecies in the Old Testament. 
 
 The first feature of the evangelical narrative to be noticed 
 is, that when Jesus went forth to the place of execution his 
 cross was borne by a man of Gyrene, Simon by name, who, 
 according to Mark and Luke, was just coming from the 
 country (Matt, xxvii. 32; Mark xv. 21; Luke xxiii. 26). In 
 this statement the three first Evangelists agree, and the 
 silence, or rather the contradiction, of the fourth, involved in 
 the assertion that Jesus carried his cross liimself (xix. 17), 
 will not, in and for itself, make us doubt its truth, for we may 
 well suppose that to the mind of the latter the statement of 
 the Synoptics might seem to be an anomaly which he must 
 have considered it his duty to get rid of. What, from his 
 point of view, could be conceived more perverse than to intro- 
 duce a substitute for the purpose of bearing the cross in the 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 367 
 
 place of the Lamb of God who bore the sins of the world, 
 of him who, himself as a Mediator for mankind, had taken 
 upon himself suffering and death upon the Cross ? If this 
 substitution were made in the case of bearing the cross, why 
 should it not have been carried out also in the death ? and 
 indeed Basilides the Gnostic is said to have taught that Simon 
 was crucified in the place of Jesus.* Away then, the Evan- 
 gelist might have thought, with the false substitute ; and thus 
 he represented Jesus as one who as he bore our sorrows, so 
 also bore his own cross. If, according to this view, the 
 synoptic account is not to be shaken by that of John, still a 
 glance into the motive of the Johannine representation places 
 us in a point of view where the question arises whether, after 
 all, the synoptic statement also might not owe its origin to a! 
 similar dogmatic motive. The Cross of Christ, when the first 
 offence arising from it had once been conquered, soon became 
 the fundamental symbol of Christianity. For a man to take 
 upon himself the cross of Christ was identical with following 
 his example, and the call to do so was put into the mouth of 
 Christ in the words (Matt. xvi. 24), " If any man will come 
 after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and 
 follow me." Figurative speeches of this kind always brought 
 with them the temptation to those who read, or those who 
 heard them, to understand them literally, as refemng to a 
 real external occurrence ; but the cross of Jesus could in 
 reality have been borne after him when he was going to the 
 place of execution ; and it was certainly not unnatural for the 
 imagination of the first Christians to set up at this moment a 
 first bearer of the cross who, though forced by others to be- 
 come so, did not, in accordance with the precept of Jesus in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, refuse the office, but took the 
 cross upon him, and, as Luke says, carried it after Jesus. 
 Quite as natural was it, if, as may weU have been the case, 
 
 * Iren. Adv. Hajr. i. 24, 4. 
 
368 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 the cross of Christ was really borne by another to the place 
 of execution, just for the sake of that symbolical meaning, to 
 retain this feature, together with the name of the man who 
 bore it; and the agreement of the three Synoptics, not only 
 in the name, but also in the statement as to the home of the 
 bearer of the cross, will always approve itself as favouring the 
 latter assumption. 
 
 There is another occurrence that takes place on the way to 
 the place of execution, described only by Luke ; this is that 
 much people, and especially women, lamenting his fate, 
 followed Jesus ; he however bid the daughters of Jerusalem 
 to weep rather for themselves and their children, on account 
 of the terrible days which in a short time would come upon 
 their city (Luke xxiii. 27 — 31). It is common to all the 
 Synoptics to represent the destruction of Jerusalem as a 
 punishment for the guilt of the inhabitants towards Jesus, 
 but Luke displays an especial tendency to do so. Thus he, 
 and he alone, represents Jesus as weeping over the city on 
 his approach, because by her blindness she is bringing upon 
 herself and her children the misfortune of the siege and her 
 destruction (xix. 41 — 44). The features whereby Luke repre- 
 sents Jesus as describing the future fate of Jerusalem, are 
 taken from the great farewell speech, where, in Luke as well 
 as in the other Synoptics, Jesus says (xxi. 23), "Woe unto 
 them that are with child, and to them tliat give suck in those 
 days !" — as here, " The days are coming in which they shall 
 say, Blessed are the barren, and the womb that never bare, 
 and the paps which never gave suck :" and the wish which 
 they shall then utter, that the mountains may fall upon them 
 and the hills cover them, is borrowed almost literally from 
 Hosea x. 8. 
 
 After the arrival of Jesus at the place of execution, nothing 
 is more important for the two first Evangelists than to shew 
 how two Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled in him. 
 First, says Matthew, with all sim]Tilicity (ver. 34), they gave 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 369 
 
 him vinegar to drink mixed with gall, and when he adds that 
 after Jesus had tasted it he would not drink it, this seems 
 less extraordinary than that anything of the sort should have 
 been offered to him. Moreover, Mark cannot help consider- 
 ing it incredible, and therefore he converts the vinegar and 
 gall into wine and myrrh (ver. 23), and thus gains a con- 
 nection with the Jewish custom of intoxicating beforehand, 
 with spiced wine, malefactors who were to be put to death.* 
 It is possible that he thus hit upon the true state of the case, 
 and that such wine was really offered to Jesus, but refused by 
 him, because he did not wish to be intoxicated ; but then the 
 second Evangelist could only have guessed at this fact, for 
 what was before him in Matthew was not anything tliat 
 really occurred, but only a prophetic feature out of one of the 
 two Psalms, which, together with the extract from Isaiah liii., 
 forms, as it were, the programme according to which the 
 whole history of the Crucifixion in our Gospel sis drawn up. 
 In the Christendom of the most ancient times, the two 
 Psalms xxii. and Ixix. were considered, as w^e have repeatedly 
 had occasion to remark, erroneously indeed throughout, as 
 prophecies of the sufferings of the Messiah, and thus all 
 the features in them, in so far as they had not been already 
 applied, provided only that they suit the situation, are 
 brought in and adapted to it. One of these features is 
 the thirst and the allaying of it by a disagreeable potion. 
 " My tongue cleaves to the roof of my moutli," complains the 
 composer of the one Psalm (xxii. 16) : that of the other (Ixix. 
 21) says: "They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my 
 tliirst they gave me vinegar to drink." Matthew, instead of 
 putting gall into the meat, which could have no place at the 
 crucifixion, mixes it with the drink, and thus brings out the 
 vinegar with gall, representing it as being offered to Jesus 
 
 * See the reference in my Life of Jesus critically "dis^cussed, ii. p. 514, 
 note 15. 
 
 VOL. II. 2 B 
 
370 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 before the crucifixion, perhaps because he knew that on these 
 occasions an intoxicating mixture was sometimes offered, 
 wliile Mark is the first to bring the description into perfect 
 harmony with the established custom. 
 
 But as the gall always created a difficulty, another theory 
 kept only to the vinegar, which, according to the Psalm, 
 must have been offered to Jesus the Messiah. Äloreover, 
 this vinegar presented itself in connection with an historical 
 custom ; it was mixed with water, and the Eoman soldiers on 
 marches and other expeditions drank it so mixed, and there- 
 fore at that time the soldiers who were under orders to be 
 present at the crucifixion would have had it at hand. But 
 as, according to the passage in the Psalm, the Messiah had 
 vinegar given him to drink " for his thirst," or as, according 
 to the other Psalm, his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, 
 the theory which omitted tlie gall, and held exclusively by the 
 vinegar, put off the supplying of the latter to a later period, 
 when the prolonged hanging on the cross might be supposed 
 to have excited a more severe thirst. Then Luke, still think- 
 ing of the soldiers' drink, represents the vinegar as being 
 offered by the soldiers in a spirit of mockery (ver. 36) ; while 
 John, just at the last moment, and immediately before the 
 decease of Jesus, represents some of the bystanders, with, as 
 it appears, a good intention, as dipping a sponge in vinegar 
 and applying it to his mouth upon a stalk of liyssop (ver. 29). 
 All this, a clear proof of the source of the statement, is pre- 
 faced by the words to the effect that Jesus said, " in order that 
 the Scripture might be fulfilled : I thirst," by which only tlie 
 fulfilment of the passage in the Psalm already mentioned can 
 be meant. Besides this offer at a later period of vinegar 
 alone, the third and fourth Evangelists say nothing whatever 
 of vinegar and gall or myrrh-wine being offered to Jesus 
 quite at first ; while, on the other hand, Matthew and ]\Iark, 
 as usual, and as in the case of the loaves and fishes, tliat 
 nothing may be lost, liave incor2)orated with their Gospels the 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 371 
 
 history of tlie giving of vinegar in both the forms which it 
 had taken. The second time they represent, as John does, 
 that the vinegar was given in a sponge : an agreement in a 
 feature not taken out of the Psalm, in which we may see the 
 trace of an historical source, but quite as much also only of a 
 custom at crucifixions. On the other hand, the stalk of hyssop, 
 which appears only in John, i.e. tlie same Evangelist who 
 sees in the crucified Jesus the true Paschal Lamb, reminds us 
 of the Mosaic ordinance with regard to the blood of the lamb, 
 in which, likewise, the hyssop plays a part (2 Mos. xii. 22). 
 
 After a brief mention of the crucifixion, which had in tlie 
 mean time been completed, the two first Evangelists now 
 hurry on to the second feature out of these passion-Psalms 
 fulfilled in Jesus — a feature which the two other Evangelists 
 do not allow to escape them (]\Iatt. xxvii. 35 ; Mark xv. 24 ; 
 Luke xxiii. 34 ; John xix. 23 ff.). The sufferer of the 22nd 
 Psalm had, among other things, complained (ver. 18), "They 
 parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my 
 vesture." This feature also may possibly have been realised 
 in the case of Jesus, as, according to tlie Roman law, por- 
 tions of the clothing of persons executed became the spoils 
 of the executioners. But that in this place the Evangelists 
 drew not from a historical source but solely from the passage 
 in the Psalm, though this is expressly quoted only by the 
 fourth, is clear from this, that each of tliem describes the occur- 7 
 rence exactly as he understood the passage in the Psalm. Any 
 one understanding it correctly was aware that in the second 
 half of the verse neither a different act nor a different subject 
 was spoken of from those in the first, luit that what was said 
 in the first was only more accurately defined in the second. 
 The passage was thus understood by the three Synoptics, 
 most clearly by Mark, and so he tells us that the soldiers 
 divided the clothes of Jesus among them, casting lots for 
 them, which Mark explains to mean that tliey cast lots wliich 
 piece each was to have. On tlie other liand, the fourth Evan- 
 
 2 r. 2 
 
372 ^lYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 gelist understood the passage wrongly, as if it spoke first of 
 a division of the clothes and then of a casting of lots for the 
 coat, as two different acts about two different objects, and he 
 tells us accordingly that the soldiers (whose number he limits 
 to four) divided among themselves the other clothes, i. e. the 
 upper garments, without the use of tlie " lot," and then cast 
 lots for the under garment (this being what he understands 
 by the xtTwi/ in the passage in the Psalm), not wishing either 
 to apportion it directly to one of themselves, or to spoil the 
 unseamed garment by rending it. Exactly as above in 
 the passage of the Prophet about the ass and the foal of the 
 ass ; only that here Matthew and John change places — the 
 misunderstanding, this time, is as much on the side of the 
 latter as before on that of the former. Whetlier the fourth 
 Evangelist jrave this turn to his narrative with the intention 
 at the same time of alluding, under the figure of tlie unseamed 
 vesture of Christ, as under that of the untorn net (xxi. 11), 
 to the unity of the Church, of the one flock under one shep- 
 herd (x. 16), is an hypothesis that can only be put in the form 
 of a c[uestion. 
 
 It must have been an especial consolation to the faithful 
 historian of the crucifixion, that exactly those points which 
 made this history so painful to the Christian conscience, the 
 disgrace and the contempt of the crucified Messiah connected 
 with that crucifixion, were so definitely foretold in the Old 
 Testament as he now learnt to understand it. In the passion- 
 Psalm (xxii. 7) it was said, " All they that see me laugh me 
 to scorn ; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head ;" what 
 wonder if now, as the Synoptics tell us (Matt. ver. 39 iff. ; 
 IVIark, ver. 29 ff ; Luke, ver. 35 ff.), the passers-by, or the 
 spectators, together with tlie elders, mocked the crucified 
 Jesus and shook their heads at him ? Even tlieir mocking 
 speeches are given by Matthew almost in literal agreement 
 with tlie passage in the Psalm : " He trusted in the Lord that 
 he would deliver him ; let him deliver him, seeing he delii^hted 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 373 
 
 in him" (ver. 8): "he trusted in God; let him deliver him 
 now, if he will have him." Now in the Psalm the speakers 
 are described as bulls, dogs, lions, and unicorns, i.e. as outrage- 
 ous sinners : however fitting, therefore, it is on the part of 
 the Evangelists to put these speeches into the mouths of the 
 Jewish opponents of Jesus, it is quite as unlikely that men, 
 learned as they were in the Scriptures, should really have 
 used the words of that Psalm, which, as they must have re- 
 membered, were the speeches of godless sinners. It is more 
 probable that they should really have uttered those words 
 which are not taken from the Psalm, but have reference to 
 the particular circumstances of Jesus ; as, for instance, the 
 ridicule at the man who saved others but cannot now save 
 himself, and the demand that the pretended Son of God and 
 King of Israel, the mighty destroyer and rebuilder of the 
 Temple, should now prove his exalted nature by descending 
 from the cross. 
 
 In connection with this mention of the King of the Jews 
 in the mocking speeches first of the High-priests and Scribes, 
 then of the soldiers, on the occasion of the giving of the 
 vinegar to drink, Luke speaks of the Superscription on the 
 Cross (xxiii. 38 ; the other Evangelists had made mention of 
 it earlier. Matt, xxvii. 37; Mark xv. 26; John xix. 19—22), 
 the main point of which was this very description of Jesus as 
 King of the Jews. Luke first, and subsequently John, state _ 
 prominently that the superscription was written in three lan- 
 guages, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew ; both of them, the follower '^ -^ 
 of Paul as well as the author of the Gospel of the Spirit, see ^-^^ «=- 
 in this circumstance a foreshadowing of the fact tliat the 
 words of this supposed King of the Jews shall be spread 
 abroad in the Grecian and Pioman world far beyond the range 
 of Judaism. Besides this, the latter gives to the title of Jesus 
 as King of the Jews, a turn such that all the ridicule that 
 might be connected with it became harmless as far as the 
 Christians were concerned, and fell upon the Jews themselves. 
 
 
374 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 Tliey felt, says Julm, mortified by this title being given tu a 
 crucified malefactor, and begged the Procurator to change it ; 
 but he adhered to what he had written ; and so the fact 
 remains that the Jews crucified their King, and that there- 
 fore he that was crucified is no longer King of the Jews, but 
 the Son of God and Saviour of the world, in which character 
 he is recognised by the Christians who have been initiated 
 into tlie profound doctrines of John. 
 
 Luke and John mention as quite at the beginning what 
 Matthew and Mark do not introduce until much later, that 
 two transgressors, thieves, according to the two first Evan- 
 gelists, were crucified with Jesus, and, moreover, in such a 
 position that he occupied the intermediate place between 
 them (Matt. ver. 38 ; Mark, ver. 27 ff. ; Luke, ver. 32 ff". ; 
 John, ver. 18). Moreover, we read in Mark that by this 
 circumstance was fulfilled the prophecy which he quotes 
 (Isaiah liii. 12) : " He was counted among the transgressors." 
 In Luke (xxii. 37), the same passage had been quoted by 
 Jesus himself at the close of the last Supper, as one which 
 had yet to be fulfilled in him by the fact of his being arrested 
 as a transgressor. Mark, or whoever interpolated this verse 
 into his Gospel (for the genuineness of it is doubtful), saw in 
 the words of the prophet a definite prediction of the cruci- 
 fixion of Jesus between two malefactors; a circumstance so 
 little alluded to in the passage, even for the most arbitrary 
 explanation, that we can hardly look upon the feature of these 
 two men being crucified with Jesus as one that could be 
 elicited only out of the passage of the prophet. It may have 
 been historical, but still welcome to the Evangelists on 
 account of this supposed prophetical reference. A further 
 use of it also is made by them, each after his own fashion. 
 Matthew and Mark represent the two wretches as joining in 
 the general chorus of contempt which sounds around tlie 
 crucified Messiah ; Luke's ear is finer, and can distinguisli 
 between the two voices. Only one really joined and mockingly 
 
THE CRUCIFIXION. 375 
 
 called upon Jesus, if he is the Messiah, to save himself and 
 both of them ; but the other, better disposed, rebukes his 
 fellow, and not merely recognised Jesus, but also begged 
 him, when he returned in his kingdom, consequently in the 
 character of the Messiah, to rememljer him (ver. 39 ff.). 
 Here then we have a criminal, who undoubtedly came now 
 for the first time into contact with Jesus, understanding 
 without preliminary instruction the doctrine of a suffering 
 and dying Messiah. This doctrine Jesus had up to that 
 time vainly tried to make his disciples comprehend. Now 
 that this should have been so is as unintelligible as the motive 
 is self-evident which influenced the author of the third 
 Gospel or his representative to give this additional colouring 
 to the feature of his joint crucifixion with the two criminals. 
 In the blasphemy uttered by a condemned criminal, the 
 ignominy of the crucified Messiah had reached its lowest point. 
 In this fact naturally lay the inducement to represent him as 
 gaining additional glory from this very humiliation. Especially 
 was this the case with a writer who had given an especial 
 colouring to the general evangelical feature of the friendship 
 of Jesus witli sinners. The statement that the malefactor on 
 the cross was converted and believed, was completely in the 
 spirit of the parable of the Prodigal Son, of the narrative of the 
 anointing by the sinful woman. Hence the third Evangelist 
 adheres so far to the traditional account as to leave one of 
 the two criminals maintaining his character for mockery and 
 contempt, and contrasts with him the other as a repentant 
 and faithful sinner favoured by Jesus. Thus he obtained a 
 contrast that was, in and for itself, very effective. It has been 
 surmised by Schwegler* that Luke, in his account, intended to 
 typify by the two abjects the opposition between the relation 
 of the Jews and the Heathen to Christianity, the obstinate 
 unbelief of the one, the faith, combined with repentance 
 
 * The Post-Apostolic Age, i. 50. Comp. Baur, Critical Investigation of the 
 Canonical Gospels, p. 512. Volkmar, Religion of Jesus, p. 332. 
 
376 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 and a desire for salvation, of the otlier. This is indeed an 
 acute conjecture, hut again one of those which cannot indeed 
 be forgotten, nor, on the other hand, maintained and affmned 
 as a proved result. 
 
 93. The Words on the Cross. 
 
 In the answer of Jesus to the repentant criminal, we have 
 already touched upon one of the words on the Cross, of 
 which there are, traditionally, seven enumerated. That is 
 the number, if the accounts of all the Evangelists are com- 
 bined. But, taken singly, no one has so many. Matthew and 
 Mark have each only one, and both of them the same ; Luke 
 three, but different from these two ; John the same number, 
 but again those of which none of the three former know any- 
 thing. And if we could now ask each of the Evangelists 
 separately, we do not know what the two first might say to 
 the words on the Cross of the two others ; of the third it is 
 probable, and of the fourth beyond doubt, that they would 
 have rejected, with a protest, the expression which the two 
 first put into the mouth of Christ, the crucified. 
 
 This expression is the well-known one, "My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me?" which both the Evan- 
 gelists give in the original Aramaic, in order to make intel- 
 ligible the confusion which they represent as having been 
 connected with it (Matt. ver. 46 ff. ; Mark, ver. 34 ff.). It 
 is well known that these words are the beginning of the 
 22nd Psalm, and thus on the point of view of the two first 
 Evangelists it is quite what might be expected, that after a 
 series of objective features mentioned in this passion-Psalm 
 have been pointed out as having been fulfilled by the cruci- 
 fied Jesus, the introductory verse of it which describes the 
 subjective feeling of the person who speaks in it should now 
 
THE WORDS ON THE CEOSS. 377 
 
 be adopted by Jesus himself, and thus his entire suffering be 
 declared to be the fulfilment of the prophecy contained in 
 the Psalm. Such appeared to the two first Evangelists to 
 be the case ; in them the passage put into the mouth of 
 Jesus is not much more than a quotation ; but if we look to 
 Jesus, and the tone of feeling of which these words, if he 
 spoke them, must have been the expression, it will require, 
 not merely in the case of the Man-God of ecclesiastical doc- 
 trine, most arbitrary assumption to make a feeling of aban- 
 donment by God conceivable in him,* but even we upon our 
 purely human point of view should be afraid of derogating 
 from the spiritual and moral elevation of Jesus, if even at 
 this crisis of most profound suffering we were to attribute such 
 a feeling to him. For by it would be implied the supposition 
 that he had made and now discovered a mistake in himself 
 and his work and his own conception of both, as he must 
 otherwise have recognised in the very death which had now 
 overtaken him personally, the true and real way to the triumph 
 of his cause which he had long foreseen. Even the third 
 Evangelist, with his loftier conception of Christ, was dissatis- 
 fied with that expression, and it was perhaps for this very 
 reason that he heightened the description of the agony in 
 Gethsemane, that every symptom of weakness might be at an 
 end with that scene, and for all that followed only calmness 
 and elevation remain. To the fourth Evangelist, conversely, 
 the scene in Gethsemane was insupportable : a mental per- 
 turbation, under which, however, his confidence in God was 
 never for a moment lost, was the most that he felt to he con- 
 ceivable for his Logos Christ, but a feeling of abandonment 
 by God was absolutely excluded by the fundamental idea of 
 his personality. 
 
 That exalted state of mind which under the most extreme 
 personal suffering, so far from losing the command over 
 
 * Comp, my Life of Jesus ciitirally discussed, ii. 429 ff. 
 
378 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 itself, has still room for sympathy with others, and even for 
 the authors of the suffering, is represented by the third 
 Evangelist as being realised by his Jesus even in the very 
 first words which he represents him as uttering while, as it 
 appears, he hung upon the cross, " Father, forgive them ; they 
 know not what they do" (xxiii. 3, 4) ; an expression harmo- 
 nising not merely with the command to love enemies, but 
 with that feeling of charity which embraces all, makes the 
 best of everything, and which has been described to us above 
 as the fundamental feeling of Jesus ; though it must not be 
 overlooked that the Evangelist did undoubtedly intend to 
 exhibit in this place, as realised in Jesus, what Isaiah had 
 said of the Servant of Jehovah, that he, while numbered 
 among the transgressors, bore the sins of many, and made 
 intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah liii. 12). A similar 
 feeling is exhibited by the second of the expressions on the 
 cross in Luke, the assurance to the beheving malefactor that 
 he, even before the second coming of the Messiah, should be 
 with him in Paradise on that day (ver. 43). In the third 
 and last, the Crucified does indeed remember himself, but in 
 a form entirely opposed to the complaint of abandonment by 
 God, in an expression of the most trustful resignation, imme- 
 diately before his decease : " Father, into thy hands I com- 
 mend my spirit" (ver. 46). A similar prayer, and a similar 
 intercession for his murderers, is put by Luke in the moutli 
 of Stephen, whom he represents generally in a different point 
 of view, as an image of Jesus (Acts vii. 59 ff.) ; but the words 
 are taken out of I*salm xxxi. 6, and literally according to the 
 Greek translation. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist takes the words which he finds in 
 the third, as the last words of Jesus, and applies them as a 
 formula to indicate his death, representing him as bowing 
 his head, and giving up his spirit (to his Father), having first 
 said, " It is finished " (xix. 30). Just for the reason that 
 these were supposed to be the last words of Jesus, a dilierent 
 
THE WORDS ON THE CROSS. 379 
 
 turn had to be given to the giving up of the ghost, from 
 tluit in Luke; but why should these be the last words of 
 Jesus ? Even the expression on the cross that precedes 
 tlie last, the expression " I thirst," is introduced by the 
 fourth Evangelist with the words that Jesus uttered it 
 because he knew that now all was finished, that also this 
 passage in the Scripture about the thirst, and giving vinegar 
 to drink, might be fulfdled in him (ver. 28 ff.). Conse- 
 quently it was the completion of his work, which had been 
 announced indeed beforehand by Jesus in his High-priestly 
 prayer (xvii. 4), but which was now in reality at hand, on the 
 one hand, and the complete fulfilment of the prophecies re- 
 ferring to him, on the other, which John intended to repre- 
 sent as being spoken of by the dying Jesus : perhaps also 
 in connection with the description in Luke, according to 
 which Jesus, as has been already said, had declared before 
 going out to the Mount of Olives, that like everything that 
 had been written of him, so also must the prophecy in Isaiah 
 liii. 12 be now fulfilled in him (xxii. 37). But this refer- 
 ence to fulfilled Scriptures is a different thing in John to 
 what it is in Matthew ; the fulfilment of the prophecies in 
 Jesus is, as we see in this very passage, at the same time the 
 fulfilment of his work, the solution of the problem of the 
 incarnate Logos, with which his pilgrimage on earth has an 
 end and his glory begins ; in the place of his limited human 
 ministry, the mission of the Paraclete comes in. 
 
 The two expressions on the cross in John, hitherto con- 
 sidered, are connected vritli circumstances of which the other 
 Evangelists also make mention ; the third, or, in point of 
 time, the first, refers to a situation of which, with exception 
 of himself, no other reporter knows anything. According to 
 Matthew (xxvii. 55 ff.) and Mark (xv. 40), the crucifixion was 
 viewed only by a number of women, the Galuean companions 
 of Jesus, among whom Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother 
 of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, 
 
380 MYTHICAL IIISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 or, in Mark, Salome, are mentioned l)y name ; the Twelve 
 they suppose not yet to have re-assembled again after the 
 flight which followed upon the arrest of Jesus, though they 
 represent Peter as venturing with doubtful courage into the 
 court of the palace of the High-priest. In Luke there is no 
 doubt that among " all the acquaintances " of Jesus whom he 
 represents as viewing the crucifixion, in company with the 
 women, the Twelve also are comprised (xxiii. 49) : but they, 
 like women, only place themselves timidly at a distance. 
 On the other hand, in the fourth Gospel (xix. 25 ff), there 
 appears, together with the two Marys, the Magdalene and 
 the other, here called the wife of Cleophas, instead of the 
 mother of the sons of Zebedee, the mother of Jesus himself, 
 and with her the beloved disciple, whom the Evangelist 
 foisted in with Peter, in the court of the High-priest, in 
 order to represent him here as being the only one of the 
 disciples present at the cross of Jesus. And moreover he 
 places him, and with him the women, so close to the cross, 
 that the Crucified can speak a confidential word to them. 
 "We do not require to know the substance of what was said, 
 to enable us to guess at once that this arrangement would 
 agree with that cleverly -laid plan which the fourth Evangelist 
 follows with regard to the beloved discij)le whom he chooses 
 as the patron of his work. However, the substance of the 
 speech of Jesus is this, that he recommends the favourite 
 disciple to his mother as her son, her, to the favourite dis- 
 ciple as his mother, and he, as the Evangelist observes, 
 from that hour takes her to himself. According to the Acts 
 (i. 14), the mother of Jesus, after his decease, together with 
 the other women, kept with the Eleven and the brethren of 
 the Lord. It is well known that among the first Peter, 
 among the last James, was pre-eminent, and if John came in 
 as a tliird man (Galat. ii. 9), he was still, as he appears 
 mostly in tlie synoptic combinations of the same three nanu^s, 
 only the third and not the first. Here, on the other hand, 
 
THE MIRACLES AT HIS DEATH. 381 
 
 he appears not merely as the first, but as the only one, and, 
 by tlie declaration of Jesus, is brought into a perfectly ex- 
 clusive relation not only to his mother, but also to himself.' 
 As the personage who steps into the place of Jesus with his 
 mother, he is raised far above all other Apostles, Peter not 
 excepted ; as the younger son, as it were, of ]Mary and the 
 survivor of Jesus, he is, as Baur acutely observes, the 
 Brother of the Lord, and indeed, according to the whole 
 chai'acter of the Gospel, the spiritual Brother, with whom 
 the natural Brother, so alien to the spirit of Jesus, cannot be 
 compared. Moreover, this narrative, like so many others 
 apparently peculiar to the fourth Gospel, is only a modifica- 
 tion of a well-known synoptic one. AVhen, on one occasion, 
 during the delivery of a lecture, the mother and the brothers 
 of Jesus were announced to him, he asked, "Who is my 
 mother, and who are my brothers ?" Then he pointed or 
 looked at his disciples with the words, " Behold my mother 
 and my brethren!" (Matt. xii. 49; ]\Iark iii. 34). This 
 fiigure cannot be mistaken in the Johanuine expression on the 
 cross : " Woman, behold thy son 1 and (disciple) behold thy 
 mother !" only that here, not all the discij)les, but the favourite 
 disciple exclusively is brought into the fraternal relation with 
 Jesus. 
 
 94. The Miracles at the Death of Jesus. 
 
 About the sixth hour, i.e. as the Jews counted the hours 
 from the dawn of day, aljout midday, all the Synoptics repre- 
 sent a darkness as coming on, and continuing until the ninth 
 hour, i. e. till three o'clock in the after^ioon (Matt, xxvii. 45 ; 
 Mark xv. 33 ; Luke xxiii. 44 ff'.). According to Mark, who 
 fixes the beginning of the crucifixion at tlie third hour, i.e. 
 at nine o'clock in the morning, Jesus had then been hanging 
 on the cross for three hours ; according to IMatthew and 
 
^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 382 MYTHICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 >Luke also, lie had then been hanging for some time, but how 
 'Jlong they do not say. 
 
 ^ The darkness, which is only described more definitely by 
 
 Luke as a darkening of the sun, cannot, at the time of the 
 
 Easter full moon, have been a natural eclipse of the sun ; 
 
 ^and indeed the addition of all the reporters to the effect that 
 
 ^ it extended over the whole earth, points to a miraculous 
 
 ^^ ^ event. In proportion as the appearance of Jesus had been 
 
 ^ ^ of importance, must nature have put on mourning for him. 
 
 ^ \^ucli was the taste of the age ; the sun, according to the 
 
 ^".A then existing Roman legend, had done the same on the 
 
 ^ occasion of the murder of Csesar* and before the death of 
 
 1^-^ ^ Augustus, i* The darkening of the sun about the time of 
 
 ^ Cfesar's murder is indeed described to us as part of the dull 
 
 and gloomy character of the whole year,| so that we see how 
 
 a perfectly natural phenomenon, continuing for some time, 
 
 and thus accidentally coinciding with that event, might be 
 
 pressed into the service of superstition and flattery : but the 
 
 phenomenon was soon looked upon as a real solar eclipse,§ 
 
 and moreover to have coincided to the day and horn- with 
 
 Csesar's murder, as, according to the three first Evangelists, 
 
 the darkness is said to have coincided ■with the hour of 
 
 the death of Jesus. Modern theologians eulogise the fourth 
 
 Evangelist for sparing them such a system of prodigies ; 
 
 it is, certainly, too objective for his mode of thinking and 
 
 feeling, only we are, unfortunately, compelled to say, too 
 
 natural ; moreover, for the glorifying of the death of Jesus he 
 
 has in his mind quite other things ; whether they are, for us, 
 
 more edifying, is a point that will be discussed in its proper 
 
 place. 
 
 * Viigil, Georg, i. 463 ff. Ovid, Metam. xv. 785 ff., represents the darken- 
 ing of the sun, and other things which Virgil describes as coming after the murder, 
 as preceding them in the character of prodigies. 
 
 + Die, cap. Ivi. 29. ^ Tlutarch, Ores. 61'. 
 
 § Servius on the pasiage of Virgil. 
 
THE MIRACLES AT HIS DEATH. 383 
 
 The darkness, then, lasts three hours ; then, about the 
 ninth hour, Jesus, in Matthew and Mark, utters the lament 
 about being forsaken by God, and after the drink mixed 
 with vinegar has been offered to him, his death follows, 
 accompanied by a loud cry, to which tuke ascribes the 
 words discussed above (Matt, xxvii. 46 — 50; Mark xv. 
 34 — 37 ; Luke xxiii. 46). After this, Matthew, and the same 
 event was also said to have been connected on the occasion 
 of Cfesar's death with the darkening of the sun,* represents 
 an earthquake as taking place ; but he also, in agreement 
 with the two other Synoptics, reports the occurrence pre- 
 viously to this of an event still more far-fetched, which is, 
 that the curtain of the Temple, without doubt that which 
 separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy, was rent in 
 twain from top to bottom (]\Iatt. xxvii. 53 ; Mark xv. 
 38 ; Luke xxiii. 45). A sudden bursting open of closed 
 doors often appears in the legends of those times as a prog- 
 nostication of approaching misfortune; Caesar's murder, the 
 deaths of the Emperors Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, even the 
 destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, are said to have been 
 announced in this way.-f- Calpurnia, the night before the 
 murder of her husband, saw in a dream the gable of the 
 house fall down : so the Hebrew Gospel had a similar feature 
 on the occurrence of the death of Jesus, representing, not 
 that the curtain of the Temple was rent, but that the roof of 
 it fell in.| The Recognitions of Clement§ give to the rend- 
 ing of the curtain the meaning of a lament at the approach- 
 ing destruction of the Temple; but the fact that it is only 
 the curtain on which the prodigy is disj^layed, appears to 
 point in a different direction. The Apostle Paul, alluding 
 
 * Virgil, as quoted, v. 475 ; Ovid, as quoted, v. 798. 
 
 t Sueton. Jul. 81. Nero, 46. Vespas. 23. Dio Cass. Ix. 35. Tacit. 
 Histor. V. 13. 
 
 t Hieroii. Ep. 120,.ad.'Hedib. § i. 41. 
 
384 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 to the cover M'liich Moses put over liis face, declares that 
 through Christ a veil is taken away which so long as the Old 
 Testament system lasted was spread over heavenly things 
 (2 Cor. iii. 13 — 18); and the Epistle to the Hebrews con- 
 nects a similar thought with the curtain of the Temple. 
 Under the Mosaic system of religion, the pi'iests had access 
 "only into the Holy Place, and the High-priest alone, once a 
 year, into the Holy of Holies, with the expiatory sacrifice of 
 the blood of beasts ; Christ, it was said, had once for all by 
 means of his own blood entered into the space within the 
 curtain, into the Holy of Holies in the heavens, and in 
 doing so had become the forerunner of Christians, and had 
 opened for them also the entrance to it (vi. 19 ff., ix. 1 — 12, 
 X. 19 ff.). In this representation of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, the existence of our evangelical narrative is mani- 
 festly not assumed ; for if the author of the former had known 
 anything of a rending of the curtain of the Temple, he would 
 not have omitted to make use of this circumstance, so closely 
 connected with his line of thought. We could not, indeed, 
 maintain, conversely, that the evangelical narrative was 
 derived from the description in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
 but if we take this last in conjunction with the expression of 
 the Apostle Paul, we see a group of thoughts and images 
 current in that most ancient Christianity which arose out of 
 Judaism, and which, after this had been used long enough as 
 mere comparison, must at last have settled down naturally 
 into a narrative like that which we have before us. 
 
 "With all these miraculous events — darkness, earthquake, 
 rending of the curtain — our first Evangelist's appetite for 
 miracles was not yet satisfied. Witli the earthquake, peculiar 
 to himself alone, he coiniects the splitting of the rocks (ver. 
 51), as the tempest in which Jehovah had once jaassed before 
 Elijah on Mount Horeb had rent mountains and shattered 
 rocks (1 Kings xix. 11). But on this occasion the splitting 
 of the rocks is only a means adapted to produce the next 
 
THE MIRACLES AT HIS DEATH. 385 
 
 feature Avith which the Evangelist is properly concerned, 
 which is, that on the decease of Jesvis the graves also opened, 
 that out of them there came forthwith many bodies of saints 
 that had fallen asleep, resuscitated, who after the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus came into the Holy City and appeared to many 
 (ver. 52 ft'.). It has already been mentioned above that the 
 accounts of raising the dead in our Gospels are nothing but 
 pledges given to itself by the faith of the Christendom of 
 the earliest period, that Jesus, not having performed in his 
 lifetime the Messianic raising of the dead, will so much the 
 more certainly perform it on his second coming. Attention 
 was also drawn to the disproportion between the guarantee 
 and that for which it was to be the guarantee — a dispropor- 
 tion consisting in the fact that the dead raised by Jesus during 
 his life on earth had returned only to earthly life, to die a 
 second time, while under the Messianic resurrection the dead 
 were to be raised in glorified bodies to immortal life ; added 
 to which was the small number of those isolated evangelical 
 cases of resurrection which was quite incommensurate with 
 the number of those for Avhom they were to answer. To 
 compensate for this double deficiency, a case was desirable in 
 which a larger number of dead, and these not men liable 
 to die a second time, but as risen saints, should liave come 
 forth out of their graves. Moreover, the idea of such a resur- 
 rection was involved in the expectations of the Jews and 
 early Christians ; it was supposed that at the coming of the 
 Messiah, a selection only, in the first instance, of the most 
 pious Israelites was to rise in order to participate with him 
 in the joys of the kingdom of the millennium ; and then, and 
 not until this period had elapsed, the remaining masses, good 
 and bad, to undergo a searching trial.* The Christian theory, 
 indeed, as we find it in the Eevelation of John (xx. 4 fF.), 
 transplanted the resurrection of the pious also to the time of 
 Christ's second coming, but it was always useful for the 
 
 * Gfrörer, the Ceutui-y of Salvation, ii. 276 ff. 
 VOL. II. 2 c 
 
386 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 strengthening of the faith if a sample of this resvirrection had 
 been given during his first presence upon earth. If it Avas 
 asked at what moment of it, the choice might waver between 
 the moment of his death and that of his resurrection; for 
 though his victory over death and the gTave had not yet 
 come to light in the latter, still it was only by his yielding 
 to death that it had been made possil)le, and thus jSIatthew 
 divides, as it were, the occurrence between the two. The 
 opening of the graves, and the resurrection of the saints that 
 slept, takes place at the moment of the death of Jesus, when 
 the earthquake and the splitting of the rocks in consequence 
 furnished a point of connection ; but their coming forth, and 
 their appearance in Jerusalem, does not take place until Jesus 
 also had arisen, who was always to be considered the first- 
 born of the dead (Col. i. 18 ; Kevel. i. 5), the first-fruits of 
 them that slept (1 Cor. xv. 20). 
 
 In conclusion, the imagination of the early Christians 
 represents the effects produced upon the bystanders by all 
 these prodigies with which it surrounded the death of Jesus, 
 to have been exactly that which it endeavoured itself to 
 express. Of those bystanders, the least prejudiced must 
 have been the executioners themselves, the Eoman soldiers 
 with their Captain, who, as heathens, were certainly not 
 prejudiced beforehand in favour of Jesus, nor, as Jews, 
 against him, and according to Matthew (ver. 54) they declared 
 the impression made upon them by the earthquake and the 
 other extraordinary circumstances in words to the effect that 
 he whom those events concerned was truly the Son of God. 
 In Luke (xxiii. 47), where there is no earthquake mentioned, 
 and only at the last the departure with a loud-spoken prayer, 
 the emotion of the Captain (the soldiers are not mentioned 
 here or in Mark) appears to be produced only by this edify- 
 ing end, and liis words only declare that this, certainly, was 
 a righteous man. ]\Iark (xv. 39), instead of the prayer 
 aloud, has only a loud cry; and as, on the other hand, in 
 
THE SPEAR-STAB IN HIS SIDE. 387 
 
 giving the words of the Captain, he follows, not Luke, but 
 ]\Iatthew, his statement seems a strange one, that when the 
 Captain saw that Jesus departed with such a cry, he declared 
 himself convinced that this man was the Son of God. 
 Whether from this we are to understand the meaning of the 
 second Evangelist to have been, as has been surmised, that 
 as evil spirits ordinarily went out with cries, so here the cry 
 indicated the departure of the divine spirit of the Messiah 
 from his body, or whether he considered this cry which so 
 struck the Captain, when taken in connection with the early 
 approach of death, at which he represents Pilate also as being 
 surprised, as a sign that Jesus quitted life spontaneously, 
 before death came in the course of nature — this is a point 
 which can scarcely be decided. Of the prodigies which 
 Matthew represents as ensuing on the death of Jesus, Luke 
 (with Mark) omits all, with the exception of the darkness and 
 the rending of the curtain. But he contrives to give a more 
 perfect idea of the impression which was made upon the by- 
 standers, by representing not only indeed the Eoman officer, 
 the heathen, as "giving honour to God" by an unextorted 
 testimony in favour of Jesus, but the Jewish multitudes as 
 conscience -stricken, and beating their breasts, and conse- 
 quently as returning home not without repentance and self- 
 condemnation. 
 
 95. The Spear-stab in the Side of Jesus. 
 
 Of all these events, either objective or subjective, the fourth 
 Evangelist, as has been already remarked, has nothing what- 
 ever. They appeared to him, not so much unimportant, as of 
 an external, exoteric character, in comparison with what he 
 had to tell (xix. 31 — 37J. Perhaps also he was here following 
 immediately in the tracks of Mark. Mark says (xv. 42 — 45), 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 that when, ou the evening of the day of execution, Joseph of 
 Arimathea begged Pilate to give him the body of Jesus (of 
 which hereafter), the Procurator expressed surprise at his 
 being ah^eady dead, and did not grant the prayer until the 
 officer had assured him that death had, in fact, taken place 
 some time since. Now it is indeed possible, as has been said, 
 that Mark only thus intended to draw attention to the fact 
 that the death of Jesus had occurred not in a natural but in 
 a supernatural manner ; but the circumstance in question 
 might also be understood as an attempt to prove the reality 
 of the death of Jesus, and for this the assertion of the officer 
 might be considered as insufficient. If Pilate had reason to 
 doubt wliether the death of Jesus had really taken place in a 
 natural manner, at the time when they thought of taking 
 him down from the cross, he would, as might be supposed, 
 take care to reduce the death to a certainty, or at, all events to 
 authenticate it. 
 
 That with this object something more was done with Jesus 
 than what was implied by the mere crucifixion, would also 
 appear probable to our Evangelist from another point of 
 view. John, as the author of the Eevelation, had said (i. 7), 
 that when Christ comes hereafter with the clouds, every eye 
 shall see him, even those who have j)ierced him, and all 
 kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Here the 
 passage in Zechariah (xii. 10) is applied to Jesus and his cruci- 
 fixion. In this passage in the Propliet, indeed, he that was 
 pierced was Jehovah, consequently the stabbing or piercing 
 was understood merely figurativel}^, of mental mortification ; 
 but the Apocalyptic writer elsewhere also transfers names and 
 attributes of Jehovah to Christ, and what was here said of 
 Jehovah appeared to be much more ajiplicabie to the suffer- 
 ing ^lessiah. The piercing, accordingly, referred by the 
 author of the Pevelation to Jesus, there beins no hint of a 
 stab in tlie side in his work any more than in the Synoptics, 
 was understood by that writer of the piercing of his hands. 
 
THE SPEAR-STAB IN HIS SIDE. 389 
 
 and perhaps also of his feet, with nails at the crucifixion. 
 But not only the Hebrew word in Zechariah, but also the 
 Greek word used in the Eevelation, might seem to imply 
 more than this. In fact, it generally meant piercing with a 
 SM^ord or a spear. If such a word w^as used in the prophecy, 
 another reader, who took prophecies literally (and that the 
 author of the fourth Gospel did so, w^e know from the account 
 of the division of the clothes), might suppose that according 
 to this Jesus might have been pierced not merely witli nails 
 in the extremities, but that his body also must have been 
 pierced with a spear or a sword. Supposing him, then, to have 
 been thus further pierced, this must have been done wdien he 
 was already dead, and then, it was supposed, the only object 
 could have been to make his death at all events certain. 
 
 But were such special arrangements necessary for this pur- 
 pose ? Why was Jesus not left witli his two fellow-criminals 
 simply to hang upon the cross till all were dead ? According 
 to the Synoptics, this vxis the case with Jesus ; and he could, 
 accordingly, be at once taken down : whether the two crimi- 
 nals also were dead when they were examined and taken 
 down likewise, is not said, inasmuch as it had nothing to do 
 wdth the point in question. According to Mark, death took 
 place remarkably early in the case of Jesus ; it was not very 
 probable that it was so with the two others. Consequently 
 the fourth Evangelist represents them expressly as still living. 
 But why were not they at all events simply left hanging 
 longer on the cross, till the next day, or even the day after ? 
 This was against the law of Moses, which ordained that bodies 
 of persons crucified should be taken down before sunset 
 (5 Mos. xxi. 23 ; comp. Josh. x. 27), and we may assume that 
 this ordinance was respected in time of peace even by the 
 Eomans. Add to this, on the present occasion, that the fol- 
 lowing day was the Sabbath, and moreover, according to the 
 Johannine reckoning, a particularly solemn Sabbath, that is 
 the first, not (as in the Synoptics) the second, day of the 
 
390 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Passover. Now if the two criminals were still alive towards 
 evening, an opportunity was given for hastening their death 
 by the application of some special process. If a fatal stab 
 with a spear was selected for this purpose, and the measure 
 extended for the sake of certainty to Jesus, who was already 
 in appearance dead, then there resulted on the one hand the 
 wound prophesied by Zechariah, and on the other all the 
 certainty that could be desired that, if Jesus was not already 
 dead, this wound had killed him outright. 
 
 But with the body of Jesus not merely, as it was supposed, 
 must something have been done, but also something have 
 been omitted, namely, the breaking of the legs. He was not 
 only he whom they pierced, but also the Lamb of God, 
 especially the Paschal Lamb sacrificed in his death, and of 
 this Lamb it was said in the law, " Not a bone of him shall 
 be broken" (2 Mos. xii. 46). This, indeed, according to the 
 Synoptics also, was not done to Jesus ; but why was it then 
 so expressly said that it was not to be done to the Paschal 
 Lamb, and consequently also not to Jesus, if it might not 
 have been very easily done to him, and was only not really 
 done in consequence of a particular arrangement ? Such a 
 danger threatened him when the bones of his fellow-sufferers 
 were broken ; and as they were still alive, and it was neces- 
 sary to do something with them in order to render possible 
 the taking down of the bodies before evening, this might 
 properly have been the breaking of their legs with clubs, 
 not indeed in immediate connection with the crucifixion, but 
 because it was customary among the Eomans as a punish- 
 ment for slaves, and was followed by death from mortification, 
 if not immediately, at all events Avith certainty. The Evan- 
 gelist rests the fact of Jesus being spared this process upon 
 the ground that the soldiers commissioned to perform it 
 found the victim, who was on the cross and who had died in 
 consequence of the crucifixion, already dead. If indeed 
 tlieir eyesight did not satisfy them, and if they considered 
 
THE SPEAR-STAB IN HIS SIDE. 391 
 
 Jesus to be like the two others, at all events probably still 
 alive, it is not clear why they did not, as they were now on 
 the spot, extend the breaking of the legs to him as well. 
 Meanwhile, as they certainly found him in a different condi- 
 tion from the others, and the breaking of the legs was not 
 completed with a single blow, like the stabbing with the 
 spear, a tolerable reason was thus found for a change of pro- 
 ceeding, and at the same time what was dogmatically desir- 
 able, namely, the spear-stab instead of the leg-breakjng, was 
 also historically introduced. 
 
 Now, therefore, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus in the 
 side as he hung there apparently dead, and what was the 
 result ? There came out blood and water. That, indeed, as 
 every expert will tell us, can in no case have come out ; for 
 if the blood was still flowing in the body of Jesus, either 
 from death not having yet taken place, or only a short time 
 before, nothing but blood would have come ; if it had ceased 
 flowing, nothing whatever would have come ; and even the 
 water from the pericardium, supposing this to have been 
 touched by the spear, and its fluid had not, as might have 
 been expected, exuded into the cavity of the chest, it must 
 in the first case have mixed undistinguishably with the blood, 
 and, in the otlier, have appeared without any blood at all. 
 But the Evangelist assures us that he himself saw the blood 
 and water gush out (ver. 35). He does not, indeed, say so 
 directly, but only that he who saw it bare record, and that his 
 record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true. By this he, 
 the Evangelist understands the beloved disciple, the only one 
 of all of them whom he places at the foot of the cross ; this 
 disciple, as the author of the Eevelation, had testified (i. 7) 
 that Jesus was pierced ; and as he, according to his own 
 declaration (Eev. i. 2), had only testified what he had seen 
 (by which the author indeed meant his own prophetic visions), 
 the Evangelist concluded that he must also himself have seen 
 the wound with the spear and its consequences. Now the 
 
392 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS, 
 
 Evangelist, as lias been explained above,* considered himseK 
 as spiritually identical with the beloved disciple and author 
 of the Eevelation ; what the latter had seen with the eyes of 
 the body, he had seen with the eyes of the spirit ; or rather, 
 what he himself thought he knew in the spirit, he assumed 
 the Apostle must have seen in the body.-)- " They shall look 
 upon him whom they pierced," said the prophecy, and the 
 prophecy must have been fulfilled. Him whom they have 
 pierced they shall behold, i.e. they shall see that he was not 
 a mere man, but the incarnate Word ; and they shall see it 
 plainly by the result of the spear-wound, by that which will 
 gush out from that wound. Had only blood flowed out, 
 then he that was pierced would have appeared to be only a 
 mere man; something must have flowed out at the same 
 time ; and what else can this have been but that which the 
 death of Jesus was to bring to his followers, namely, the 
 Spirit under a visible sign ? But the visible sign of the 
 Spirit is water. Man must be born of water and the Spirit, 
 if he is to come into the kingdom of God (John iii. 5) ; 
 Jesus had given an assurance that if a man believed in him, 
 streams of living water should flow out of his body, and, 
 according to the explanation of the Evangelist, he had said 
 this of the Holy Spirit, which those who believed in him 
 should receive, but not until he had himself been glorified 
 (vii. 38 ff.). It was, therefore, the pouring out of the Spirit, 
 the communication of the new religious life, of which the 
 death of Jesus was the condition, that the Evangelist spiri- 
 tually beheld in the blood and water that gushed out of the 
 wound in the side of Jesus. Whether he looked upon the 
 gushing out of water and blood as at the same time a proof 
 of death, or tlie spear-wound of itself appeared to him suffi- 
 ciently so, in either case this side of the ij^uestion was sub- 
 ordinate to its symbolical significaucy. And accustomed as 
 
 * Vol. I. pp. 144, 149 ff. 
 
 t Compare, for what follows, Baur, Critical Investigations, p. 215 ff. 
 
THE SPEAR-STAB IN HIS SIDE. 393 
 
 he is to see one thing in another, the idea in different reflexes, 
 it is very possible that in speaking of the water and the blood 
 he, like the author of the first Epistle of John (v. 6) and the 
 ancient ApoUinaris, was thinking also of the two Christian 
 mysteries. Baptism and the last Supper ; and again, in the 
 case of the latter, of what was common in his time, the mixing 
 of the sacramental wine with water. 
 
 If there is any passage in which the peculiarity of tlie 
 fourth Evangelist shews itself to the utmost, it is this. It is 
 impossible not to see his eagerness for the inward and the 
 sjDiritual, but this goes hand in hand with a propensity for 
 what is most objective, most material in form : his profundity 
 excites our admiration, but his language is sometimes that 
 of fond conceit. When the three first Evangelists, at the 
 death of the Messiah, represent the sun as being darkened, 
 the graves as opening, the curtain in the Temple as being 
 rent, we see in all this fables indeed, but still such as claim 
 our attention, and place us in the state of mind in which 
 they originated ; but when, on the other hand, the fourth 
 Evangelist considers all this as not worth telling in com- 
 parison with what he imagines, that blood and water flowed 
 out of the wound in the side of Christ — when this is his first 
 and principal thought at the death of Jesus, when he sees in 
 it tlie most profound mystery of Christianity, in corroboration 
 of which he appeals to Moses and the Prophets, to eye-tes- 
 timony and the truth of this eye-witness — we have so little 
 sympathy with such a mode of viewing things, it seems to us 
 so extravagant, that we have a difficulty in even comprehend- 
 ing it. 
 
 The Johannine narrative of the spear-wound which was 
 inflicted on Jesus on the cross, betrays itself also to be an 
 unhistorical interpolation by the fact that in the synoptic 
 Gospels it is, in the first place, not implied, and in the second, 
 to a certain extent, absolutely excluded. In none of them 
 does Jesus, after his resurrection, as he does in the fourth 
 
394 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Gospel, sliew the ^vound in his side to the disciples. But we 
 cannot rest much upon this, because it is only in Luke that 
 the shewing of the hands and the feet — and that without any- 
 definite reference to the marks of the wounds — is spoken of. 
 But it is clear that in Mark the description of the course of 
 events after the decease of Jesus implies that the body of 
 Jesus continued hanging quietly on the cross until in the 
 evening it was given up to Joseph in compliance with his 
 prayer. Here it might occur to any one that omission is 
 not exclusion. But the case is represented differently in Luke 
 and Mark. According to John, Pilate, at the request of the 
 Jews, had given orders to break the bones of the crucified 
 men, and to take them down. If, therefore, Joseph came 
 afterwards, he must have found the body of Jesus taken down 
 already. According, to Luke (ver. 53) and Mark (ver. 46), on 
 the other hand, Joseph himself took the body down from the 
 cross. It is clear, therefore, that these Evangelists do not 
 assume any order to have been given by Pilate, or any taking 
 down from the cross by the soldiers. But that Pilate, as Mark 
 tells us, when Joseph made his request to him, sliould have 
 expressed surprise at the death of Jesus having occurred so 
 soon, and have seen in this circumstance a ground for hesi- 
 tating to grant his request immediately, would be perfectly 
 impossible if he had already given orders for the breaking of 
 the bones with a view to the taking down from the cross. 
 
 But what is most extraordinary is, that the fourth Evangel- 
 ist's own narrative does, one might say, exclude the account 
 of the breaking of the bones.* He himself, after having 
 mentioned it, continues as if he had not mentioned it. That 
 is, he continues, as the Synoptics continue, immediately after 
 the account of the death of Jesus : that then Joseph of Ari- 
 
 * De Wette draws attention to this in his Manual of Exegesis, in speaking of 
 the passage (fourth edition), p. 282 ff. It is only from partiality for John that 
 De Wette satisfies himself with the explanation that the äpy and »ypf, ver. 38, 
 mean simply the carrying away of the body, having meant, in ver. 31, the taking 
 down from the cross. 
 
ms BURIAL. 395 
 
 mathea begged Pilate to be allowed to take down the body 
 of Jesus, that Pilate granted his request, and that Joseph 
 took the body. Consequently he speaks as if Pilate had not 
 already ordered the taking down of the bodies of the crucified 
 men ; he falls into this difficulty because, after making his 
 interpolation, he again adheres to the synoptic narrative, but 
 by falling into it he shews that this portion of his history is 
 nothing but his own interpolation. 
 
 96. BuEiAL OF Jesus. 
 
 It was naturally of great importance to the earliest Chris- 
 tian consciousness that the honour of burial should have been 
 paid to the body of Jesus. Even Paul mentions it as a tradi- 
 tion that Jesus was buried (1 Cor. xv. 4) ; but in saying this 
 he only wishes, as a preparation for what is said immediately 
 afterwards of his resurrection, to establish that the body of 
 Jesus went under the earth. In itself this might have been 
 done only in the manner which was usual among the Jews in 
 the case of persons executed, by his being taken down from 
 the cross, and covered over with soil in the burial-place of 
 other criminals. The Eomans, however, as was remarked 
 above, if the relatives announced themselves as coming to 
 apply for the body of a person who had been executed, were 
 accustomed to give it up to them for burial. And according 
 to the Evangelists, such a person did really announce himself 
 to Pilate in a rich man of Arimathea, by name Joseph, who 
 belonged to Jesus as a disciple (Matt, xxvii. 57 If. ; Mark 
 XV. 42 ff. ; Luke xxiii. 50 ff. ; John xix. 38 ff. 
 
 A rich man — these are the first words of the most ancient 
 reporter, Matthew ; he only adds incidentally that the rich 
 man was also a disciple of Jesus. Luke and Mark forget 
 the rich man in the honourable councillor, and whatever else 
 
396 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 they make of Joseph ; while John seizes on the discipleship, 
 and, in his favourite style, makes it a secret one, from fear of 
 the Jews. But in other cases, wealth, in a good sense, is not 
 of so much importance to the Evangelists : why does the first 
 reporter so industriously put it forward here ? The rich man 
 had a tomb which he had had hewn for himself in the rock, 
 and in which he now laid the dead Messiah. But it was in 
 his death that the Messiah was brought into connection with 
 the rich in Isaiah. With the rich, indeed, in a bad sense, as 
 it would appear when it is said (liii. 9), " He made his grave 
 indeed with the wicked, and with the rich in his death ;" 
 in which words, the rich being taken as synonymous with 
 the wicked, a prophecy of a dishonourable burial might be 
 proved. But the association with the wicked, the being 
 numbered wdth the transgressors, was considered to have been 
 already fulfilled in Jesus by his apprehension and crucifixion 
 (Luke xxiii. 37 ; Mark xv. 28) : thus the rich remained for 
 his burial, he must have been laid in the tomb of a rich man, 
 and this rich man not a godless, but a God-fearing man, who, 
 believing in the Messiah, gave up his tomb to the murdered 
 Christ. 
 
 The tomb of the rich man must have corresponded to his 
 wealth on the one hand, to its lofty purpose on the other. A 
 man in high position is addressed thus in Isaiah (xxii. 16) :* 
 " AVhat hast thou here, and whom hast thou here, that 
 thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that 
 heweth him out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth an 
 habitation for himself in a rock ? " This, indeed, was said 
 rebukingly to a proud -minded man; but of the righteous 
 man also it was said in the same Isaiah (xxxiii. 16), that he 
 shall dwell on high in munitions of rocks, or, according to 
 the Greek translation, in caves of rocks ; then, consequently, 
 even a God-fearing rich man might have hewn for himself a 
 tomb in a rock, and the question as to whom he has here that 
 
 * Reference is made to this passage by Volkmar, Religion of Jesus, p. 257. 
 
HIS BURIAL. 397 
 
 he does this, might be answered by a reference to the body 
 of the Messiah, for whom he was there preparing a resting- 
 place. But in order to correspond to its lofty purpose, the 
 tomb must be a new one, not as yet polluted by any corpse, 
 as it was not considered right that any man should have 
 previously ridden on the ass which the Messiah used on his 
 entrance into the capital. In the two other Synoptics, both 
 the "wealth" of the man, mentioned in the passage in the 
 prophet, as well a^ his relation with regard to the tomb, 
 namely, that he himself had had it hewn for him in the rock, 
 is omitted ; still their meaning undoubtedly is that it was his 
 property ; and in John the connection is completely broken, 
 and the new tomb in which Jesus is to be laid is selected, not 
 because it belonged to Joseph, but because it was near to the 
 place of execution, and a burying -place close at hand was 
 desirable on account of the near approach of the festal Sal> 
 bath. Thus this feature serves the purpose of the fourth 
 Evangelist, enabling him, as it does, to make still more 
 palpable the pressure of time on that evening of the burial, 
 which furnishes him with a reason for what is so important 
 to him, the breaking of the bones in reference to the wound 
 with the spear. 
 
 According to the three first Evangelists, after Joseph had 
 taken the body of Jesus down from the cross, and before he 
 laid it in the tomb in the rock, he rolled it in a linen cloth. 
 Matthew adds that the linen cloth was clean, meaning pro- 
 bably that it had not been used before. In Matthew's account 
 this is all ; he knows nothing of anything further being done 
 or intended to be done. No embalming was, to his mind, re- 
 quired, because a few days before, at the supper at Bethany, 
 Jesus had been embalmed by the woman with the costly 
 spikenard, with a view, according to Jesus' own explanation, 
 to his burial This account is likewise in Mark and Jolm ; 
 Luke, as we have seen, gives it in a very different form, and 
 so entirely without reference, either of time or otherwise, to 
 
398 MYTHICAL HISTOKY OF JESUS. 
 
 the passion and death of Jesus, that he might at first feel 
 sensibly the want of embalming on the occasion of the burial 
 of Jesus. But as the more ancient tradition, as it is found 
 in Matthew, contained nothing of tlie kind, Luke also repre- 
 sents it, not as having been really done, but only prepared, on 
 the Friday evening by the women. They, he says, buy the 
 necessary sjjices, but defer the embalming itself until after the 
 Sabbath, that is, until the Sunday morning (Luke xxiii. 56, 
 xxiv. 1). Though Mark, like Matthew, has the preliminary 
 anointing shortly before the Passion, still that which was 
 subsequently intended, as he found it in Luke, is welcome to 
 him, only he thinks it more simple to defer the purchase of 
 the spices until after the Sabbath has elapsed ; as this ended 
 before six o'clock on the Saturday evening, the women did 
 not consider it necessary to trouble themselves with the 
 purchase so soon as the Friday evening before six o'clock, 
 especially as time pressed, but it was time enough to do this 
 on Saturday, and so to proceed with the embalming early on 
 the following morning (xvi. 1). But as, when the women 
 came to the grave on Sunday morning, Jesus had already 
 risen, the materials for embalming the body were no loager 
 of any use ; but as in Matthew, so also in Mark and Luke, it 
 ended in his not participating in this honour. This was con; 
 sidered by the fourth Evangelist as intolerable ; he therefore 
 changes the mere intention to embalm, spoken of by his two 
 predecessors, into one actually performed, and represents the 
 body of Jesus as being wrapped, not merely in a linen cloth, 
 like Matthew, but in linen clothes with the spices (xix. 40). 
 But to his mind the women were physically unable to convey 
 these spices. How could they carry the hundred-weight of 
 myrrh and aloes which the Evangelist considered necessary 
 for the embalming of the Son of God ? For this purpose a 
 man was required, who was also at hand in Joseph, or at all 
 events in his servants. But Joseph had already performed 
 his part in begging for, and taking down from the cross, the 
 
HIS BURIAL. 399 
 
 -body of Jesus, and the fourth Evangelist had still another 
 personage in reserve, of whom Joseph reminded him, likewise 
 an eminent, though secret, disciple of the Lord, Nicodemus. 
 It appeared to the w^riter to be quite appropriate to represent, 
 as coming forward here for the third and last time, this man 
 who had already twice appeared in Ins narrative in important 
 situations. 
 
 All the Evangelists agree in stating that the sepulchre in 
 the rock, in which the body of Jesus was laid, was closed 
 with a stone rolled to the entrance. According to Matthew, 
 it was a large stone ; in Mark, the women going out take 
 counsel as to who will roll away the stone for them from the 
 mouth of the sepulchre ; consequently they assume it as a 
 difficult thing to do. While, however, the other Evangelists 
 are satisfied with this closure, Matthew represents the stone 
 as being in addition sealed by the Higli- priests, and the 
 sepulchre as being guarded by a watch stationed there by 
 Pilate at their repuest (xxvii. 62 — 66). 
 
 For when, in the earliest times of Christendom, the preach- 
 ing about the resurrection of Jesus had taken the form that 
 his sepulchre was found empty on the second morning after 
 his burial, it was met by the unbelieving Jews with the 
 allegation that it was found in this condition, not because its 
 inmate had come out of it restored to life, but because his 
 corpse had been stolen out of it by his disciples. This Jewish 
 legend in opposition to the Christian, gave rise to a second 
 Christian legend in opposition to the Jewish. If the Chris- 
 tian solution was to satisfy the problem, it must, on the one 
 hand, make the stealing of the body imjDOSsible, and on the 
 other, account for the denial of the resurrection on the part 
 of the Jews. The stealing away of the body was impossible 
 if the sepulchre was watched. Consequently the High- 
 priests and Pharisees must go to the Eonian Procurator and 
 beg him to secure the sepulchre. But what in the world could 
 move them to make such a request ? What could the sepul- 
 
400 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 clire signify to them, so long as they knew that he who had 
 been laid in it was dead ? They remember, they say, that 
 that crucified deceiver did in his lifetime predict liis resur- 
 rection after three days ; they do not believe in a fulfilment 
 of this prediction, but they are afraid lest his disciples should 
 steal the body, and in connection with the prophecy give out 
 that he has arisen. So the High-priests must have remem- 
 bered speeches of Jesus of which his disciples, at the time of 
 his death, can have known nothing whatever (else how could 
 they have been so despairing ?) ; they must have foreseen the 
 rising up of the faith in the resurrection of Jesus, which is 
 absolutely inconceivable : the Christian legend attributed to 
 them the Christian belief of later times, only in the form of 
 unbelief 
 
 Pilate immediately grants them the watch, and orders them 
 in addition to guard the grave as well as they can. He is 
 right in doing so ; a watch may be bribed, hocussed, and 
 what they ought to protect be carried off. So they seal the 
 stone that closes the mouth of the sepulchre, as formerly 
 Darius had sealed the stone at the mouth of the lions' den, 
 into which he caused Daniel to be thrown to prove whether 
 his God would save him from the lions (Dan. vi. 18). Were 
 tliey not, then, antitypes of Christ in the sepulchre — on the 
 one hand, Jonas in the belly of the whale ; on tlie other, 
 Daniel in the lions' den ? 
 
 Thus did the Christian legend establish the impossibility 
 of the stealing of the body, alleged against the Christians 
 by that of the Jews ; but, under the circumstances, how could 
 this Jewish legend originate ? It was a matter of course 
 for the Christian legend to assert that when the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus occurred, an angel descended from heaven, 
 and, shining like lightning, rolled away the stone from the 
 sepulchre with a violent earthquake, that seals and watches 
 availed nothing, and that the latter in particular fell down 
 like dead men (Matt, xxviii. 4). And according to that 
 
HIS BURIAL. 401 
 
 legend, the watch reported tlie fact truly to the High-priests 
 (ver. 11). The real High -priests and Elders would have' 
 considered such a report to be false, and have insisted upon 
 an investigation, which must have elucidated the truth that 
 the watchmen had slept, or had allowed themselves to be 
 bribed, and the body to be stolen. The High-priests and 
 Elders of the Christian legend, on the contrary, look upon 
 the report of the miraculous resurrection of Jesus as true, 
 and give them money to declare that to be false which the 
 real dignitaries must have considered the truth, which the 
 watchmen had motives for concealing, and they for elucidating 
 by an investigation. The fact is, therefore, as stated above ; 
 the Christian legend attributes to the Jewish authorities the 
 Christian belief, leaving them at the same time, as enemies 
 of Christ, their unbelief ; i.e. they believe in silence that Jesus 
 returned miraculously to life, but still they would not re- 
 cognise him as the Messiah, but persevere in their opposi- 
 tion to his cause. Thus the origin of the Jewish legend was 
 indeed explained, but awkwardly enough, and only for the 
 Christians, who, starting from the same assumptions, did not 
 notice the contradictions involved in the attempt at expla- 
 nation. 
 
 But the legend is, undoubtedly, very old, and the fact that 
 Matthew alone has it, does not prove that he is more fabulous 
 or later than the others, but, on the contrary, that he lived 
 nearer to the country and to the period of the origin of this 
 legend, which for his successors, writing later, and not in 
 Palestine, had no longer the same interest. Still, as it had 
 already existed, they might perhaps have adopted it, had it 
 not stood in the way of another circumstance which was 
 more important to them. This circumstance was the in- 
 tention of the women to embalm the body of Jesus after the 
 Sabbath had elapsed. If the sepulchre was sealed by 
 authority and watched by Eoman soldiers, and the women 
 knew of it, as all Jerusalem, especially all the nearest con- 
 
 VOL. II. 2 D 
 
402 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 luections of Jesus must have known of a measure so remark- 
 able and so publicly taken, they could not hope to get there 
 with their spices ; but as they must have hoped to do this, in 
 order to be able seriously to undertake the anointing, that 
 obstacle must not stand in their way. If for these reasons the 
 two middle Evangelists omitted the episode of the watching 
 and sealing of the tomb of Jesus, still with the fourth Evan- 
 gelist it did not stand in the way of the embalming, wdiicli 
 they had undertaken on the Friday evening, but, together with 
 the motives for it, tlie legend was too far removed from the 
 whole point of view of that Evangelist for him to adopt it 
 again. 
 
 FIFTH CtEOUP of MYTHS. 
 
 resurrection and ascension of jesus. 
 
 97. History of the Eesurrection. 
 
 We have already in the first Book been obliged to treat at 
 length of the Eesurrection of Jesus, in consideration of its 
 historical importance, as without faith in it a Christian 
 Church could scarcely have been formed. We endeavoured 
 to answer the question as to the reality that lies at the bottom 
 of the tradition, i.e. how the belief in the fact can have 
 arisen among the disciples of Jesus. We did this partly by 
 following the indications of the New Testament writings, 
 partly by examining the analogy presented by similar phe- 
 nomena in the mental life of men. In doing this we have 
 already discussed many individual points in the Evangeli- 
 cal accounts, as well as the summary statements of the 
 Apostle Paul ; it only remains to realise the gradual growth 
 of the myth under this head, i.e. to shew how the accounts 
 of the appearances of the risen Jesus form a series whicli is 
 continually progressing from the visionary to the palpable. 
 
* HISTORY OF THE RESUKRECTION. 4U3 
 
 from the subjective to the objective. For this purpose we 
 must take one by one the narrative portions into which the 
 Evangelists divide the history of the Eesurrection. In doing 
 this, we will begin with the journey to the grave on Sunday 
 morning, though this narrative (Matt, xxviii. 1 — 10 ; Mark 
 xvi. 1 — 11 ; Luke xxiv. 1 — 12 ; John xx, 1 — 18) cannot have 
 been formed until after single appearances of the resuscitated 
 Jesus had been described, and it is for these also that we would 
 now find a starting-point. 
 
 According to JSIatthew, then, that journey to the sepulchre 
 is performed by the two Marys, her of Magdala and the 
 other who is described by INIark as the mother of James and 
 Joses. Matthew describes, not merely, as the other Evangelists 
 do, what happened to the women at the sepulchre, but he 
 also informs us of what had taken place before they came 
 there ; how, that is to say, an angel, shining like lightning, 
 had descended from heaven, rolled the stone from the 
 sepulchre, and how the terror of the guards laid them for 
 dead upon the ground. It is this very point, that of the 
 watch, of whom Matthew alone makes mention, which sup- 
 plies the motive for his thus depicturing the action of the 
 angel : he wished to shew how the watchmen were set aside ; 
 the other Evangelists had no occasion to do this, as they 
 omit the watch altogether. When the women came to the 
 grave, they see the angel sitting upon the stone that had 
 been rolled away ; this angel gives them the account of the 
 resurrection of Jesus, shews them the now empty place 
 where he had lain, directs them to communicate this message 
 to the disciples, with the intimation that they are to go to 
 Galilee, where they will see him. Then, Jesus himself hav- 
 ing met them on the way back to the city, and repeated this 
 commission, they (as must be supplied from what precedes 
 and follows) execute their commission, and the Eleven, though 
 all doubt in their minds is not satisfied, enter upon their 
 journey to Galilee. 
 
 2 D 2 
 
40-i MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Ill Luke, apart from some unimportant variations, as for 
 instance two angels within the sepulchre instead of one out- 
 side, the chief discrepancy between his description and that 
 of Matthew lies in this, that the disciples have not to be 
 sent to Galilee, because Luke places the appearance of Jesus, 
 when risen, altogether in Jerusalem and the neighbourhood. 
 But in order not entirely to omit the mention of Galilee from 
 the well-known words of the angel, the women are reminded 
 how Jesus, " while still in Galilee," prophesied to them his 
 death and his resurrection. But Luke abstains from adopt- 
 ing out of Matthew the premature appearance of Jesus 
 himself to the women on their return home ; he had to avoid 
 the instructions to them to go to Galilee, and at the same 
 time he wished to give the factors in a more simple form, how 
 that the risen Jesus is first announced by the angels to the 
 women, by them to the disciples, and then, and not before, 
 comes upon the scene in his own person. Hence it is that, 
 on the women communicating to the disciples the message 
 of the angels, he lays so much stress upon the unbelief of the 
 former, an unbelief which is not to be removed until the 
 appearance of Jesus himself and the infallible proofs given 
 by him of his actual resurrection. In Luke, the message of 
 the women cannot have put the discijjles in motion to go to 
 Galilee, as it contains no instruction to that effect; instead 
 of this, it moves Peter to go in a different direction, that is, 
 to the sepulchre, the emptiness of which, and of the linen 
 clothes lying in it, it was desirable to represent as being 
 attested by a man : meanwhile it was not necessary that 
 anything beyond surprise should result from Peter's seeing 
 these things, as the disciples are not to attain to belief in the 
 resurrection of Jesus until they have had satisfactory proof 
 of it. 
 
 Mark, in his account, follows Matthew throughout in all 
 essential points. He represents the news of the resurrection 
 of Jesus, together with the instructions to the disciples to go 
 
HISTORY OF TUE RKSFRRECTIOX. 405 
 
 to Galilee, as being communicated by an angel to the 
 women. On the other hand, we not only miss in his account 
 the meeting with Jesus himself, but the women fail to follow 
 the direction of the angel, as, from fear (it is not exactly 
 evident of whom or of what), they do not venture to say 
 anything to any one of the appearance which they have 
 seen. And when Mark at this point (ver. 9), as if neither 
 the resurrection of Jesus nor any information about it had 
 been given to the Magdalene with the other women, all at 
 once goes on to say, that when Jesus was risen early the 
 first day of the week, he appeared first to ]\Tary Magdalene — 
 this mode of beginning over again in the middle of the 
 narrative is certainly strange enough to lead us to give all 
 attention to the circumstance that the concluding section 
 of Mark (xvi. 9—20) is wanting in two of the best MSS. 
 of the Gospels, and was, according to statements of great 
 antiquity, wanting in several others which are no longer 
 extant. Only it cannot but strike us as extraordinary that 
 these MSS. contain the eighth verse, in which the incon- 
 sistency of the account with itself begins.* In ver. 7, the 
 angel, as in Matthew, gives to the women a message to be 
 taken to the disciples. And the meaning must originally 
 have been, that, as in Matthew, the women imparted this 
 message with joy. But, if they had given it, the disciples 
 would certainly, as in Matthew, have gone to Galilee, and 
 this, in Mark, they are not supposed to have done, as he, 
 with Luke, represents the appearance of the risen Jesus as 
 taking place, not in Galilee, but in Jerusalem and the neigh- 
 bourhood. It is, therefore, the sudden veering of the Evan- 
 gelist from Matthew to Luke which so strangely closes the 
 lips of the women in ver. 8 ; and now, as we shall see more 
 in detail, all that follows from ver. 10, being taken from 
 Luke, is in part abridged, in part expanded ; only the ninth 
 verse, together with the appearing of Jesus to Mary Magda- 
 
 * Volkmar, Religion of Jesus, pp. 100 ff., 104, 
 
406 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 lene, seems rather to be taken from John (xx. 11 — 18). 
 This, if our results so far with regard to the dates of the two 
 Evangelists are correct, would be in favour of the assumption 
 that in the concluding section of Mark we have a later and 
 unauthentic addition. But at all events the notice of the 
 devils that had been driven out of Mary comes, not from 
 John, but from Luke (viii. 2) ; as also the statement that the 
 disciples did not believe the account of the Magdalene, for 
 John says nothing of it, but Luke does say (xxiv. 11), that 
 when the women told the disciples of the appearance of the 
 
 "angels, they looked upon the account as idle tales, and did 
 not believe it. Thus, after all, the appearance itself might 
 be taken out of Matthew, who also represents Magdalene 
 with the other j\Iary as having the first appearance of Jesus 
 on their return from the grave after the appearance of the 
 angel; only that Mark, perhaps from another source, from 
 the use of which possibly the abrupt re-commencement may 
 be explained, limited the appearance to Magdalene alone. 
 
 From these accounts before him, the fourth Evangelist 
 cautiously selected and sagaciously carried on what was 
 available for his own point of view. Luke had distinguislied 
 with great accuracy tlie separate factors of the publication of 
 tlie circumstances of the resurrection ; John goes still fur- 
 ther in doing so. In Matthew, the women see, on first 
 approaching tlie sepulchre, the angel sitting outside on the 
 stone that has been rolled away (in Mark they find him after 
 
 ' entering the open sepulchre) ; Luke represents them, after 
 entering the sepulchre, as first missing the body of Jesus, 
 and then says that immediately after the two angels stood by 
 them and explained all to them. John distinguishes still 
 more accurately between these two factors. Llary Magda- 
 lene, whom he represents as coming forward alone at this 
 juncture, as Mark does in the second section of his narra- 
 tive, must be kept for a time to the negative proposition 
 that the body of Jesus is no longer there ; she has to go into 
 
HISTORY OF THE RESURRECTION. 407 
 
 the city with this intelligence to Peter, whose journey to the 
 sepulchre, with its result, which is likewise little more than 
 negative (mere wonder), seemed to have a more suitable 
 connection with this, than, as in Luke, with the account of 
 the angel's message already received. But John represents 
 Peter, not, as Luke does, as going alone to the sepulchre, as 
 little as he had represented him on an earlier occasion as 
 going alone into the palace of the High -priest. On both 
 occasions he associates with him the "other disciple," and 
 this other disciple is no other than, professedly, himself. 
 Moreover, two disciples, going in conjunction, had been 
 already suggested to the fourth Evangelist by the third. 
 Immediately after the journey of Peter to the sepulchre, 
 occasioned by the message of the women, Lnke tells of the 
 journey undertaken the same day by two disciples, one being 
 named Cleophas, whom Jesus joined, not being at first 
 recognised (xxiv. 13 — 35) ; a non-recognition which Mark, 
 who likewise mentions the circumstance, though only sum- 
 marily, explains by a change in the figure of Jesus (xvi. 12). 
 This feature, as well as the further one that Jesus censures 
 their want of understanding in not having gained out of 
 Moses and the Prophets the notion of the suffering Messiah, 
 we shall subsequently find applied in his own way by the 
 fourth Evangelist. 
 
 So Peter and the other disciple go together to the sepul- 
 chre, and the mode in which each of them has his part 
 weighed out to him, apparently equally, in which every pound 
 put into the scale of the one is immediately balanced by 
 another put into the scale of the other, and at last an over- 
 weight brought out in favour of one, that is, the favourite 
 disciple— the description of all this is, as has been already 
 pointed out, one of the most manifest proofs of the artful 
 calculation with which the Evangelist set to work in the 
 composition of his Gospel. Both disciples ran together, and 
 are, therefore, equalised at first. But the other disciple runs 
 
408 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 fastest and comes to the grave before Peter — consequently 
 gets an advantage over him. But, like Peter in Luke, here 
 the other disciple stoojjs to look into the sepulchre only from 
 the outside, and sees the linen clothes lying; without i^oing 
 in ; so the latter is immediately done by Peter, who comes 
 after, and who in Luke does not do it. He looks more 
 accurately, and observes the linen clothes indeed lying in one 
 place, but the napkin with which the head of Jesus had been 
 covered not lying with them, but wrapped together in a place 
 by itself: now, therefore, Peter has an advantage over the 
 other. Upon this the other disciple also goes into the sepul- 
 chre — but what good now does Peter's earlier entrance do 
 him, what good all the external observation which he had 
 made at the moment, if they did not help him to that which 
 he who arrived at the sepulchre first, but only entered it 
 last, now attained, namely, to see and to believe ? Faith 
 brought about by sight is not, indeed, faith in the highest 
 sense; but the disciples could not have this yet, for, as the 
 Evangelists remark, they, like the travellers to Emmaus in 
 Luke, were still without the understanding of the Scripture, 
 i.e. the knowledge that in it the death and the resurrection 
 of Christ were predicted as something necessary. This true 
 faith could only be given to the disciples by the imparting of 
 the Spirit, which had not yet taken place ; but the other dis- 
 ciple attained to such faith as was then alone possible, and 
 thus was established afresh his precedence over the chief of 
 the Apostles, i. e. of the spiritual and Johannine over the 
 carnal, Petrine, Christianity. 
 
 It was the observation of the Magdalene which the fourth 
 Evangelist divides into its two com^ponent parts, keeping 
 first to the negative, the not finding of the body of Jesus, 
 and sending her with this result to the two disciples, that 
 had occasioned their journey to the sepulchre. Now he 
 represents the Magdalene also as appearing again at the 
 sepulchre, and bringing up the other and positive part of her 
 
HISTOHY OF THE RESURRECTION, 409 
 
 observation. As in Luke, Peter, and in John at first the 
 other disciple, slie only stoops into the sepulchre, without, 
 like the women in Luke, going in ; but, like them, she also 
 sees now, not one, but two angels, and, moreover, at the head 
 and foot of the place where the body of Jesus had lain. The 
 address of the angels to the women in Luke, introduced by 
 a question, is expanded by the fourth Evangelist into a 
 question by the angel and an answer by Mary, and now he 
 seizes upon Matthew and Mark in order to represent an 
 appearance of Christ as being granted to her after that of 
 the angels. But like the two travellers in Luke and Mark, 
 so neither does she at first recognise the Lord, but, the sepul- 
 chre being situated in the garden, thinks at first that he is 
 the gardener, though soon, being more spiritually-minded 
 than they, she recognises him, not by the outward act of 
 breaking bread, but by his addressing her as "Mary," con- 
 sequently by his word of mouth. Hereupon we are most 
 expressly reminded of Matthew by the caution given by 
 Jesus to Magdalene, " Touch me not ;" this command being 
 unintelligible unless we remember in the first instance what 
 Matthew tells of the women ; that on being met by Jesus on 
 the way back, they fell down before him and seized his feet. 
 Here, in Matthew, Jesus forbade them to fear, and sent them 
 to his brethren with the instruction to go to Galilee, where they 
 were to see him. In John, like the angel in the Apocalypse 
 (xxii. 8 ff.), he commands Mary not to offer him, as yet, the 
 divine worship implied by falling at his feet, as he has not 
 yet ascended to his Father, to whom, however, he will ascend 
 immediately.* 
 
 * The fact of his exaltation not being yet complete, appears to me a sufficient 
 ground for .Jesus not yet accepting divine honours ; that he had risen merely as a 
 man, and that, as Hilgenfeld assumes, the Logos did not unite with him again 
 until after his ascension to the Father, I am as unable to reconcile with the 
 Johannine conception of Christ, as, above (§ 77), Hilgenfeld's explanation of 
 ii'ffp: ^ir^aaTO t<i) TtviVftaTi. 
 
410 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Upon receiving from the two Marys the report of the 
 appearance of the angel and of Christ, the Eleven in Matthew 
 start upon their journey to Galilee, and repair to the hill 
 which Jesus had appointed, and where he immediately ap- 
 pears to them (xxviii. 16 — 20). This, in Matthew, with the 
 exception of the preliminary meeting with the women, is 
 the only appearance of the risen Jesus. It cannot, indeed, 
 be assumed that he may not also have heard or read of many 
 others ; hut as in the case of the speeches of Christ he com- 
 bined into a great mass what had been said on various 
 occasions, so also now he combines the essential substance of 
 several visions in one grand appearance before the assembled 
 Eleven. As in these appearances the main point is to con- 
 vince them of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, they 
 generally begin with doubts. Thus, in this instance, some of 
 them doubt ; l3ut Jesus approaches nearer to them, announces 
 himself to them as him to whom all power is given in heaven 
 and on earth, and communicates to them his last injunctions 
 and promises. How and by wliat means he satisfies their 
 doubts is not said. 
 
 Here there was a place left vacant for later hands to fill 
 up the evangelical history. Luke had represented Peter, on 
 tlie receipt of the report of the women, as going to the sepul- 
 chre and returning home surprised : with this statement he 
 interweaves the narrative of the travellers to Emmaus : when 
 these last, having returned to Jerusalem, go in to the dis- 
 ciples, they receive intelligence of an appearance of the risen 
 Jesus seen by Simon, of which there is no definite information 
 given, but which reminds us of the statement of the Apostle 
 Paul, 1 Cor. XV. ;* and as the travellers were giving an account 
 of what they had seen and heard to the assembled disciples, 
 Jesus stood in the midst and saluted them. The first impres- 
 sion was terror, as they thought they saw a spirit ; whereupon, 
 
 * Of the appearance to James, also mentioned liy Paul (ver. 7), there is an apo- 
 cryphal trace in a passage of the Gospel of the Ueln-ewm : sec above, p. 402. 
 
HISTORY OF THE RESUERECTIOX. 411 
 
 to prove that it was he himself and not merely a spirit witli- 
 out flesh and blood, Jesus offered to allow them to touch his 
 hands and his feet ; and as even then there was a remnant of 
 unbelief, though only in the form of joyful surprise, he asked 
 for something to eat, and consumed before their eyes a piece 
 of broiled fish and honey-comb (xxiv. 38 — 43), having, as it 
 seems, on the occasion of tlie appearance at Emmaus, vanished 
 in the very act of breaking the bread before he had himself 
 partaken of it. 
 
 Mark appears to combine this narrative with that of the 
 last appearance of Jesus, inasmuch as he represents him as 
 shewing himself for the last time while the disciples are at 
 table, without taking part in the meal himself (xvi. 14). But 
 the fourth Evangelist touches up the account in his own way 
 (xx. 19 — 29). First and foremost, as in the case of Mary Mag- 
 dalene's journey to the sepulchre, he separates the factors. 
 On the occasion of the appearance, as Luke describes it, belief 
 and disbelief, terror and joy, are mixed up together. John, 
 in the same way as he there makes two journeys of one, 
 the first of which gives a negative result, and only the 
 second a positive one, so here he makes of one appearance 
 two, at the first of which he represents only joy and faith as 
 coming to the surface, while he reserves the sediment of 
 doubt for a particular second appearance in order to change 
 it by a process all the more thorough into faith. And as in 
 the former case, out of several women, he selected one Mary 
 Magdalene, and made her, like another Mary of Bethany, 
 the representative of the most heartfelt, most personal rela- 
 tion of faith and love to the Lord, so now he provides himself 
 with a vessel for that doubt which Luke ascribed to the dis- 
 ciples without distinction, in the person of Thomas, who had 
 already been brought into prominence by him in a similar 
 manner. 
 
 It is not, however, merely in these main points that the 
 Johannine narrative appears copied from that of Luke, but 
 
412 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 feature by feature the resemblance may be traced. Thus, 
 in the latter, a supernatural entrance is indicated by the 
 expression (ver. 36), " while they so spake, Jesus stood in the 
 midst of them," as well as by the terror which the sudden 
 sight of him occasioned. But in John this indication is 
 strengthened by the feature of the doors having been shut, 
 and a regular determination not to understand the Gospels 
 correctly is required in order to agree with Schleiermacher in 
 assuming a natural opening of the doors. The addition that 
 it was from fear of the Jews that the disciples closed the 
 doors of the room in which they met, is said indeed to be the 
 immediate motive for this measure, and is consequently in- 
 tended to make the statement as to the closed doors all the 
 more credible; but at the same time it looks as if in this 
 also the Evangelist had had in view the separation of two 
 features that are united in Luke. In his account it is the 
 appearance of Jesus which causes the disciples fear as well as 
 joy; John refers their fear to the hostile Jews, in order to 
 reserve only the joy for the appearance of Jesus. The ex- 
 pression, " Peace be with you !" which, in Luke, Jesus utters 
 on entering, is in him nothing but the well-known Hebrew 
 formula of salutation; but in the mode in which, in John, 
 Jesus repeats the words, having before in his farewell speeches 
 spoken to the disciples of the peace which he leaves to them, 
 which they were to have in him (xiv. 27, xvi. 83), and in the 
 mode in which he accompanies the words with breathing 
 upon them and communicating the Holy Ghost, we see even 
 this formula charged with the more profound and pregnant 
 meaning of the fourth Gospel. 
 
 The risen Jesus comes through closed doors, but still he 
 is not a spirit ; he may be touched, but still has not a material 
 body. We cannot, indeed, conceive such a com bination, but 
 the Evangelists could, and John as well as Luke has framed 
 his description upon it. In Luke, however, Jesus offers to 
 the disciples his hands and his feet : instead of this, in John 
 
HISTORY OF THE RESURRECTIOX. 413 
 
 it is his hands and his side. In Luke, nothing could be said 
 of the latter, because he knows nothing of a wound in the 
 side ; and this time they are only shewn to them, not offered, 
 as in Luke, to be touched, as John in this case also sepa- 
 rates the factors that are combined in Luke, and reserves the 
 stronger proof for the later appearance, which is intended to 
 overcome doubt. 
 
 In order to supply a motive for this second appearance, it 
 was necessary that at the time of the first, one of the Eleven 
 should have been absent. This one was Thomas, who on 
 former occasions (xi. 16, xiv. 5) is described as a person slow 
 of apprehension. It was necessary that he should not have 
 been satisfied with the report of his colleagues, and have made 
 it a condition of his belief in the resurrection of Jesus that 
 he should himself see him and feel the marks of his wounds. 
 Luke speaks only indefinitely of the hands and feet as having 
 been shewn to the disciples by Jesus in order to convince 
 them of his corporeality ; it may, indeed, be supposed, but it 
 is not said, that the marks of the wounds were also to be 
 taken into consideration : in John, the marks of the wounds 
 were prominently brought forward, flesh and bones not beiog 
 mentioned ; perhaps to the mind of this Evangelist the men- 
 tion of them might seem too material, and he imagined a 
 body which still preserved the visible traces of wounds re- 
 ceived as honourable scars, and could even be touched, but 
 without having regular flesh and bones — a conception which 
 we, indeed, cannot now realise, but may attribute all the more 
 confidently to the author of the fourth Gospel. So, eight 
 days after the first appearance, Thomas finds his condition 
 fulfilled; the disciples are assembled a second time, and now 
 Thomas is with them ; again the doors are shut, Jesus passes 
 without hindrance through them, stands with the salutation 
 of peace in the midst of them, and now calls upon Thomas to 
 apply the required test. He does so, and immediately, being 
 fully convinced, he worships Jesus as his Lord and his God ; 
 
414 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 but is compelled to hear from him who had immediately 
 before called upon him to be not unbelieving but faithful, 
 the censorious words : " Because thou hast seen me, thou hast 
 believed ; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have 
 believed." 
 
 On these words, wdiich close the historical narrative of the 
 fourth Gospel, for what follows is only a concluding formula, 
 the whole of the two-sided character, the whole of the sen- 
 suous supersensuousness of that Gospel, is distinctly stamped. 
 That is declared to be true faith which requires no sensuous 
 proof — as before no signs and miracles, so here no sight or 
 touch ; but why then is it that precisely in this Gospel far 
 more stress is laid than in any other on such sensuous proof ? 
 why is it that here the proofs of the resurrection, as before 
 the miraculous narratives, are exaggerated ? If proofs of this 
 kind have no value, why is a description of them given ? And 
 if they are only valuable for unbelief, in order to change it to 
 belief, wdiy are they told by the Evangelist, whose belief is 
 so profound, with a sympathy which pr^^ves that even to him 
 they were valuable ? He, indeed, who lived some time after, 
 and who was no more present than Thomas, when on the 
 evening of the day of the resurrection Jesus came in to the 
 assembled disciples, might also, like Thomas, have once 
 doubted, and in order to be able to believe, have wished to 
 have, as he had, sensible proof. If so, then he had renounced 
 the wdsh for what was impossible, had got faitli without sight ; 
 and he must have supposed that others instead of him, that 
 the disciples who lived with Jesus had been able to obtain 
 these suf&cient proofs, that a John had seen blood and water 
 flowing out of the side of Jesus, that a Thomas had put 
 his fingers into the marks of the nails, his hands into the 
 wound in the side of Jesus. When, therefore, Baur limits 
 the meaning of this scene with Thomas to this, that all this 
 seeing and touching, this materiality and palpable corporeal- 
 ity, proves nothing in favour of the faith in the resurrection 
 
HISTORY OF THE EESURRECTION. 415 
 
 of Jesus, unless this faith is established in itself as something 
 certain and necessary, that therefore material and empirical 
 faith must* always have absolute faith as its foundation — 
 this, apart from its far too philosophical formalization, is only 
 as true as the opposite, that in the sense of the fourth Gospel 
 pure spiritual faith has, as its assumed foundation, faith rest- 
 ing upon sensible j)roof, or that it was in the mind of the 
 Evangelist one and the same act to believe without having 
 seen signs himself, and to conceive these signs as having been 
 seen by others.-j- The mode in wliich, from this point of view 
 only, the origin of a work like the fourth Gospel is conceiv- 
 able, scarcely requires especial notice. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist, having described at greater length 
 the application of the test of sight and feeling, conceived that 
 the necessity for the proof from eating of the reality of the 
 resurrection of Jesus was superseded. Perhaps, too, it was 
 not to his mind, as being, like the flesh and the bones, of too 
 material a character. The author of the supplement repeats 
 this proof, working it into that strange chain of narrative in 
 which we have already found echoes of the narrative of the 
 miracles of the draught of fishes and the feeding, the attempted 
 walking on the sea and triple denial of Peter, of the rite of 
 the last Supper, and the breaking of bread at Emmaus, as well 
 as of the rivalry in believing between the two Apostles, Peter 
 and John, at the sepulchre of Jesus. Early in the morning, 
 Jesus asks the disciples who are engaged in fishing on the 
 Sea of Galilee, whether they have any meat, and on their 
 giving a negative answer, bestows upon them the rich draught 
 of fishes ; tells them, however, to breakfast off the broiled fish 
 and bread which was already lying on the shore, and himself 
 distributes both to them (xxi. 1 — 14). Thus in this place, as 
 well as in the whole chapter, all the particulars are very 
 
 * Critical Investigations, p. 229. 
 
 t Such is also Hilgenfeld's opinion, Gospels, p. 321 ff., note. 
 
416 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 ambiguous and obscure ; but as the risen Jesus does not, as 
 at Emmaus, vanish after the breaking of bread, but the meal 
 proceeds in his presence, we may assume that he also partook 
 of it himself. 
 
 If up to this point, together with the repetition and modi- 
 fication of one or two miraculous accounts and a proof of the 
 resurrection, the object of the narrative was at the same time 
 the further regulation of the relation between the Apostle 
 Peter and the Apostle John, from this point (ver. 15 — 25) 
 forward its purpose is that exclusively. In the first place, 
 by the triple interrogatory of Jesus to Peter, whether he loves 
 him (more than the other disciples do), and then, when the 
 latter has thrice affirmed this, on the last occasion with some 
 pain, by the thrice repeated command of Jesus to feed his 
 sheep, the triple denial of Peter is partly censured, partly 
 forgiven, and the Apostle is confirmed afresh in his office of 
 chief shepherd ; then, from the well-known event, the death 
 on the cross already alluded to* in the Gospel (xiii. 36) is 
 predicted ; and finally, the circumstance which appeared to 
 place John below him, that it was not granted to the beloved 
 disciple to glorify God by a martyr's death, is turned to the 
 advantage of the latter over Peter. Peter is to follow the 
 Lord in the martyr's death, but of John the Lord had said, 
 if he would that John should remain until his coming again, 
 what did that concern any one else ? It is possible that this 
 legend arose in Asia Minor in consequence of the great age 
 which the Apostle John reached, in the sense that he would 
 live to see the second coming of Christ : on John's death, 
 
 * On the whole this scene with Peter (xxi. 15 — 19), is only a further descrip- 
 tion of tlie conversation between Jesus and Peter, xiii. 36 — 38. There, Jesus 
 had spoken of his departure to a place whither his disciples could not follow him ; 
 then Peter asked whither he is going, and Jesus answered tliat whither he is going 
 Peter could not follow him then, but he would follow him afterwards. There is 
 no doubt that it is implied in these words that the Apostle is to suffer the same 
 death as his Lord. Thou follows the prediction of the denial, to which reference 
 is made in c. xxi. 
 
THE ASCENSION. 417 
 
 tlie prediction thus understood had become untrue — hence our 
 author attempts to bring it back into its original form, in 
 what sense is uncertain ; whether, that is, he laid the stress 
 on the word " If" (as merely conditional), or understood by 
 the word " Coming," something different from the visible 
 return in the clouds, or, finally, by the word " Tarry," some- 
 thing different from surviving in the body ;* it is, after all, 
 his object to involve the matter in a mysterious and sacred 
 obscurity. But as there follows immediately upon this state- 
 ment the explanation that this was the disciple who testified 
 to these things, and wTote this (ver. 24), it is possible that 
 by "his tarrying" until the coming of Christ, the duration 
 of this his writing, the continued validity of the Gospel of the 
 Spirit contained in it, may be understood. 
 
 98. The Ascension. 
 
 When we consider the visions which the different adhe- 
 rents of Jesus, male and female, thought they had had of him 
 after liis resurrection, and the legends which soon attached 
 themselves to these visions as matter already existing, it was, 
 as we have seen above, unavoidable that persons should look 
 back and ask themselves when and how this new and higher 
 life of him who had been crucified begun; i.e. that the con- 
 ception of the resurrection of Jesus, his coming forth from 
 the sepulchre on the third or some other day, should arise 
 and be invested with the traditional decoration of an angelic 
 appearance. And now it might be said that the equally 
 necessary result of viewing the matter from the opposite 
 side of the question, as to the close of this new condition, was 
 the conception of the ascent to heaven of him who had arisen 
 
 * Perhaps a removal to Paradise, there to be exalted until the return of Christ. 
 Comp. Hilgenfeld, The Prophets Esra and Daniel, p. 63 fl'. 
 VOL. II. 2 E 
 
418 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 after one or after forty days. But the circumstance of our 
 finding the account of the ascension only in two Evangel- 
 ists, while that of the resurrection is common to all, shews 
 us at once that the necessity in both directions was not the 
 same. For the neAv life of Jesus must indeed have had a 
 beginning, as he had certainly been dead ; but an end it 
 need not necessarily, nay could not have had, as his life was 
 immortal. Or a conclusion was required for the life on which 
 Jesus had entered through the resurrection only when it was 
 considered a mere intermediate condition ; but originally it 
 was not so considered, or considered so in quite a different 
 relation from that in which the ascension afterwards made 
 its conclusion. 
 
 For it was held that the next epoch in the life of the risen 
 INIessiah would be his return at the end of the present period 
 of the world. He was to come again from heaven, but, 
 according to the most ancient Christian conception, he did 
 not wait forty days after his resurrection to enter into it, but 
 entered into it at the time of his resurrection. At all events, 
 he had appeared to the Apostle Paul, and even if the ascen- 
 sion is not supposed to have taken place until forty days after 
 the resurrection, this would be much later, consequently from 
 heaven, and yet the Apostle places the appearance as being 
 of a similar character, in the same category with those which 
 the older disciples had had, presumably during those forty 
 days ; he conceived therefore the latter appearances also as 
 coming from heaven. Matthew also stands upon this point 
 of view. Indeed, the first appearance of Christ, which he 
 represents as being granted on the morning of the resur- 
 rection to the women returning from the sepulchre, is so far 
 obscure as that we do not know whether we are to suppose 
 Jesus as having already descended from heaven, or, as on 
 the occasion of the first Johannine appearance, on the point 
 of ascending there. Then, when lie shews himself on the 
 mountain in Galilee to the Eleven, stating that all power is 
 
THE ASCENSION. 419 
 
 given to liim in heaven and on earth, he manifestly comes 
 from his Messianic investiture, and this (comp. Dan. vii. 14) 
 can only have taken place in heaven. That the exaltation 
 of the Messiah np to heaven did not exclude his constant and 
 future operation upon earth, we see from the closing declara- 
 tion of Jesus in Matthew (ver. 20), that he is with his dis- 
 ciples for ever, even to the end of the present period of the 
 world; i.e. during the very term during wliich he will be 
 really dwelling in heaven, and before he returns from thence 
 to the earth again he will be, with his invisible ministration, 
 in company with his followers ; and it followed, as a matter 
 of course, that he could not be prevented occasionally and in 
 an exceptional manner from sometimes shewing himself to 
 them in a visible form. It was in the character of prelimi- 
 nary exhibitions of this kind, preliminary, that is, not to the 
 ascension, but to the second advent, that Paul looked upon 
 the appearances of Christ granted to himself as well as to the 
 older Apostles, for whicli therefore no limit of time was laid 
 down, and which might have taken place just as easily years 
 as days after the resurrection. 
 
 But now it came to pass that the immediately expected 
 return of Christ was longer and longer delayed, while, on the 
 other hand, the billows of excited mental life became calmer 
 and calmer. The appearance granted to Paul remained the 
 last of its kind ; the gates of heaven which had received the 
 ascended Christ had closed, and were not to be opened again 
 until the end of the world for his glorious return. If from 
 that troubled time, in which men vainly longed to see one of 
 the days of the Son of Man (Luke" xvii. 22), they looked back 
 to those blessed days when the resuscitated Christ had re- 
 vealed himself to his followers on the open highway and in 
 the closed room, on the sea and on the mountain, had eaten 
 with them and drunken with them (Acts x. 41), that seemed 
 quite another time, between which and that which followed a 
 great gulf was fixed. He could not then, as he had now done, 
 
 2 E 2 
 
420 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 have retired into heaven ; he must, after coming forth from 
 the grave, have stayed a time on earth, have vouchsafed his 
 presence to his followers for a time before withdrawing from 
 tlieni for the long period which was to intervene before his 
 future coming again. Thus naturally arose the conception 
 of an interval between the coming fortli of Jesus from his 
 tomb and his ascent to heaven, of a period during which he 
 that had risen, tliough concealed from the multitude, walked 
 upon the earth, in order to announce himself to his followers 
 as the risen ]\Iessiah by separate appearances before finally 
 separating from them. 
 
 This sojourn of the Eisen One on earth could only have 
 lasted as long as the object of it required. This object was 
 to make his resurrection known and certain to his followers, 
 and to give them their last instructions and promises. This 
 might be done in a short period. It might possibly be done 
 in one day. The other conception did not require such haste. 
 As it brought Jesus upon the place of his Messianic glory at 
 the very moment of his resurrection, it might represent him 
 as appearing upon earth at such intervals as he pleased. 
 Thus in Älatthew the appearance of Jesus upon the mountain 
 in Galilee must be supposed to have taken place long enough 
 after the resurrection, to give time to the disciples to return 
 back from Jerusalem to Galilee, which in any case required 
 several days. But if the celestial glory of the Messiah was 
 withheld from him after his resurrection until he had finished 
 all that remained for him to do with those whom he left 
 behind, then haste was required for these things. It was 
 also very possible, inasmuch as to the glorified body of the 
 risen Jesus space no longer opposed any limits. Thus in 
 Luke he shews himself first to the two disciples on the road 
 to Emmaus, and accompanies them into the village, which is 
 distant three hours from Jerusalem, and when they come liack 
 into the city he has not only appeared already to Simon, l)ut 
 introduces himself immediately after into the assemblage of 
 
THE ASCENSIOX. 421 
 
 the Eleven and the other disciples, whom he immediately 
 led out towards Bethany in order to make them witnesses 
 of his visible ascent to heaven (xxiv. 50 — 53). All this mani- 
 festly takes place on the day of the resurrection, and the 
 circumstances are similarly represented in tlie abbreviated de- 
 scription of Mark (xvi. 14 — 20), the whole of whose conclud- 
 ing section indeed is too confused to admit of a definite idea 
 being gained out of his account alone. Eor as he represents 
 Jesus as appearing to the disciples while they are sitting at 
 table, giving them his instructions and promises, and then 
 after these speeches being carried up to heaven, the conse- 
 quence is, that if we were to take him strictly at his word, 
 we should have to entertain the very strange idea of an 
 ascension out of the room. 
 
 If then, after the Messiah had thus passed from death to 
 life, there was a strong inducement not to detain him too 
 lono- from the final goal of his career, to shorten as much 
 as possible the intervening state between his resurrection 
 and his exaltation to heaven, still there was another motive 
 which must have operated with ever-increasing influence in 
 an opposite direction. Eeports had gradually spread of so 
 many appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, that it 
 constantly became more difficult to conceive them as having 
 all taken place in one day. Taking into account those only 
 of which the Apostle Paul makes mention, to Peter, then to 
 the Twelve, then to five hundred brethren, then to James, 
 then to all the Apostles, there would, even with these, have 
 been too many for one day, the requisite opportunities and 
 situations considered. Even the object of these appearances, 
 the conviction and instruction of the disciples, could not, on 
 a nearer view, appear to have been attainable so quickly ; 
 neither disbelief nor stupidity could have yielded at a blow, 
 and the imagination itself felt the necessity of introducing 
 longer intervals. The closeness to each other of these two 
 opposite views is shewn to us in the remarkable fact that 
 
422 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 one and the same writer, in the half of his work that was 
 written first, has, in his description, followed the one view, 
 and in the latter half the other. Luke, who in the con- 
 cluding chapter of his Gospel implies that Jesus rose to 
 heaven on the very day of his resurrection, speaks in the 
 introduction to his Acts of the Apostles of forty days, during 
 which he appeared to the Apostles after his resurrection, 
 shewing himself alive by many kinds of proofs, and speaking 
 to them of the kingdom of God, and it is not until the ex- 
 piration of forty days that he represents the ascension as 
 taking place. Whether this notion obtained currency in the 
 interval between the composition of the first and second of 
 his works, or he himself felt an inducement to imagine it, 
 the motive can only have lain in the necessity of providing 
 the requisite interval for the numerous appearances of Christ 
 current in the legend, and for the great revulsion in the ideas 
 of the disciples supposed to have taken place during this 
 interval. The limitation of this space of time to forty days 
 exactly was involved in the Jewish symbolism of numbers, 
 a symbolism which had already become Christian as well. 
 For forty years the people of Israel was in the wilderness, 
 the same number of days Moses had been in Sinai, for forty 
 days he and Elijah had fasted, for the same length of time 
 Jesus had sojourned in tliQ wilderness without meat and drink 
 before the temptation ; for forty days long Ezra was said 
 to have retired into solitude with his five scribes, in order 
 to devote himself to the restoration of the holy Scriptures 
 that had been consumed by fire, before he was withdrawn 
 from earth.* Thus it was that for the period during which 
 the risen Christ was teaching his disciples about the kingdom 
 of heaven (Acts i. 3), the number forty (naturally of days, 
 not years), which was traditional for intervals of this kind. 
 
 * 4 Esr. xiv. 23 ff. Comp. Volkmar, Introduction to the Apocrypha, ii. 288 ; 
 Hilgeufeld, Prophets Esra and Daniel, p. 71. 
 
THE ASCENSION. 423 
 
 presented itself as a matter of course. The appearance of 
 Christ presented to the Apostle Paul could not indeed come 
 within even this extended period ; but it was clearly described 
 by himself as a supplementary one, as something out of due 
 time (1 Cor. xv. 8 if.) ; and the object of a special distinction 
 to Paul could only be served by Christ condescending to 
 appear once more from heaven in order to gain the Apostle 
 to his side. 
 
 Moreover, there is one point in which these accounts, 
 differing as they do with regard to the close of the earthly 
 walk of Jesus, harmonize with each other, even that of the 
 fourth Gospel not excepted, which we must speak of in par- 
 ticular further on. It is, that they put into the mouth of 
 the departing Jesus certain ordinances and promises, which, 
 however different they may be in the different Gospels, 
 coincide nevertheless in certain main points. The commis- 
 sion to preach the doctrine of Christ to all nations is common 
 to all the synoptic accounts (Matt, xxviii. 16 — 20; Mark 
 xvi. 15 — 18; Luke xxiv. 44—49; Acts i. 4—8). That 
 Luke does not, as the two others do, mention baptism, is 
 accidental ; but when what Mark in later phraseology de- 
 scribes as preaching the Gospel, Matthew expresses in the 
 Jewish-Christian legal form that the discijDles are to teach 
 all mankind to observe everything that Christ has com- 
 manded, Luke, more in the spirit of Paul, that they are to 
 preach in his name repentance and forgiveness of sins — in 
 these discrepancies the peculiarities of the different writers, 
 so noticeable also elsewhere, are not to be overlooked. It 
 has been already remarked that the destination of the Gospel 
 for all people, i.e. the admission of the Heathen also into 
 the new kingdom of the Messiah without any other con- 
 dition than that of baptism, was a view which had by no 
 means presented itself to the disciples of Jesus so soon after 
 his departure, and modern criticism has come pretty gene- 
 rally to the conclusion that the common baptismal formula, 
 
424 JIYTIIICAL HISTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 as unheard of else\vliere in the New Testament as it is cus- 
 tomary in the later language of the Church, " in the name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," is due 
 to the hand that put the last touches to our Gospel. As 
 on the occasion of Jesus meeting with the two travellers to 
 Emmaus, so also in this, the concluding scene immediately 
 before going forth to the ascension, it is, in the view of 
 Luke, a matter of especial importance that Jesus lays before 
 the disciples the right understanding of the Scriptures, and 
 points out to them in the Old Testament the doctrine of the 
 passion and death of the Messiah ; the only possible condi- 
 tion under which the disciples could firmly continue to be- 
 lieve that their crucified Master was the ]\Iessiah, being their 
 conviction that such a fate had been already prophesied 
 for him in the Old Testament. Tlie other event which the 
 departing Jesus announces in Luke to the disciples is that 
 pouring out of the Spirit in tlie capital which they had to 
 look for, and wdiich it was already part of his jjlan to describe 
 in the second division of his work. The account of Mark 
 of the last words of Jesus to his disciples stands in unfavour- 
 able contrast with these two. After mentioning the command 
 to baptize, and pointing it with a promise and a threat, he 
 names, as the signs which are to characterize believers, the 
 power to cast out devils, to speak with new tongues, to lift 
 up snakes, to drink deadly poison without harm, to heal the 
 sick by laying on of hands ; features which, with the excep- 
 tion of the last but one, are taken out of the Gospels and 
 Acts of the Apostles (ii. 4 £f., xvi. 16 — 18, xxviii. 2 — 10); 
 but are here in part generalized, in part multiplied, by the 
 introduction of the extravagant feature of drinking poison, 
 in a way which shews us at how early a period in the Church 
 a superstitious feeling directed only to signs and wonders 
 begun to smother the genuine spirit of Jesus. If we imagine 
 a Christian travelling about with pretended credentials of 
 this kind in the heathen world of that period, we should have 
 
THE ASCENSION. 425 
 
 exactly one of those jugglers upon whom Liician pours out! 
 his satire, not without a side-glance at Christianity. ' 
 
 Matthew now concludes his Gospel with the distinct 
 spiritual perspective opened by the promise of Jesus to be 
 with his followers until the end of the world. The two 
 middle Evangelists subjoin the visible concluding act of the 
 ascension. The statement of Mark, indeed, as has been 
 already observed, is so indefinite in point of locality and 
 details, that we miglit even doubt whether he really means a 
 visible ascension or not ; but he indicates all the more defi- 
 nitely whence he gets the whole conception. When he says 
 (ver. 19), " So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, 
 he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of 
 God," he could not himself have meant that any one saw 
 this last proceeding, but he took it out of the passage in the 
 Psalm (ex. 1) : " The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on 
 my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." 
 This passage, obviously admitting of a Messianic application, 
 and which moreover Jesus was said to have applied to him- 
 self (Matt xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62), required for its literal 
 fulfilment the exaltation of the Messiah to heaven, and thus, 
 at the conclusion of his earthly pilgrimage, Jesus must have 
 ascended into heaven. 
 
 The narrative of Luke is more full and more vivid, espe- 
 cially in the second edition, corrected and enlarged, of his 
 account of the ascension, the Acts of the Apostles. At the 
 conclusion of his Gospel (xxiv. 50 — 53), he says that Jesus 
 led his disciples out to Bethany, and while he was here 
 giving them his blessing with uplifted hands, he departed 
 from them and ascended into heaven, wdiereupon the disci- 
 ples fell down and worshipped, and returned full of joy to 
 Jerusalem. According to the introduction to the Acts of 
 the Apostles (i. 4 — 12), Jesus collected the Apostles once 
 more upon the Mount of Olives (at the foot of which Bethany 
 lay), and while he was giving them his last commissions and 
 
426 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 promises, he was taken up ; and a cloud received him out of 
 their sight. They looked after him as he moved from them 
 on the cloud into heaven, and while they were so engaged, 
 there stood by them two men in white apparel {i.e. angels, 
 like those described at the tomb), who interrupted their 
 gazing by the assurance that the same Jesus which was 
 taken up from them into heaven, should so come again in 
 like manner as they had seen liim ascend into heaven. We 
 need only reverse this in order to discover how, as before in 
 the case of Mark, this conception of the visible ascension of 
 Jesus arose. As the Messiah was to come again hereafter, 
 so must he now have gone away; but according to Daniel, 
 he was to come in the clouds of heaven, so also must he now 
 have ascended on a cloud into heaven. 
 
 In the Old Testament two especially holy men, Enoch and 
 Elijah, had already been miraculously removed from the 
 earth ; but tlie departure of the first is not described as 
 visible (1 Mos. v. 24; Sir. xliv. 16, xlix. 16; Heb. xi. 5), 
 and the ascent of the latter with its fiery chariot and its fiery 
 horses (2 Kings ii. 11 ; Sir. xlviii. 9), was not in accordance 
 with the milder spirit of Jesus, and was, generally, too 
 materially described. Tliere was but one feature that could 
 be taken from this antitype, the feature which Luke (Acts 
 i. 9) brings into prominence, that Jesus was taken up before 
 the eyes of the disciples, inasmuch as Elijah had connected 
 the transference of his spirit to his disciple with the condi- 
 tion that Elisha should see him ascend. The first Saviour, 
 Moses, Avho is elsewhere so often typical of the second 
 Saviour, had died, according to the Old Testament, a natural 
 death, and only been buried by Jehovah in an undiscovcrable 
 place (5 Mos. xxxiv. 5 If.) ; on the other hand, we find 
 in Josephus a narrative about his end which bears a striking 
 resemblance to our history of the ascent to heaven.* On 
 the mountain to which Deuteronomy already took him before 
 
 * Antiq. iv. 8, 48. 
 
THE ASCENSION. 427 
 
 liis death, Moses makes first the people, and then the elders, 
 stay behind ; and while he is taking leave of Joshua and the 
 High-priest Eleazar, a cloud suddenly stands over him, and 
 he vanishes in a deep hollow. This narrative, which he un- 
 doubtedly took from the later rabbinical tradition, a narrative 
 the object of which was to place the Lawgiver by such an 
 end upon an equality with Enoch and Elijah, Josephus 
 endeavours to reconcile with the simple statement in the 
 fifth book of Moses, that he died, by the remark that Moses 
 wrote the latter intentionally, that no one might venture to 
 say that on account of his extraordinary virtue he had joined 
 the Godhead ; a turn in which a side-glance of the Jewish 
 historian at the deification of Christ, which was already be- 
 ginning in his time, might be found. 
 
 Now, if from this point we take a parting look at the 
 fourth Evangelist, we appear to find him at the conclusion of 
 the evangelical history, not, as on otlier occasions, the foremost 
 in introducing unhistorical modifications, but standing on 
 the same ground as Matthew does, inasmuch as the brilliant 
 concluding scene of the ascension is wanting both in him 
 and Matthew. This may surprise us in the case of an Evan- 
 gelist to whose exaggerated conception of the divinity of 
 Christ such a scene might seem particularly suitable — of a 
 Gospel in which it might appear to be particularly required 
 as a literal fulfilment of many speeches of the Christ described 
 in it about his ascension into heaven, his return into his 
 glory with the Father (vi. 62 ; comp. iii. 13, xvii. 5). If 
 the composer of this Gospel had really before him the 
 account of the ascension, it might have been supposed that 
 he could not have avoided adopting it, though modified in his 
 own way; and as he has not done so, we might have con- 
 cluded either that he wrote earlier than either of them, or 
 that he rejected their account, if he knew of it, on purely 
 historical grounds, because he was aware, as an eye-witness, 
 that nothing of the kind had taken place. But in point of 
 
428 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 fact, lie has adopted it, modified in his own way; and the fact 
 that he has not adopted it in the form in which it was pre- 
 sented to him in ]Mark and Luke may be so perfectly explained 
 from the spirit and scheme of his Gospel, that there is no 
 necessity for attributing to him any historical motive, such 
 being altogether foreign to him. 
 
 The fourth Evangelist, we might say, goes to work with 
 the departure of Jesus to heaven in the same way as he did 
 with his coming from heaven. The latter had been thrown 
 by his predecessors into the form of the begetting of Jesus 
 by the Holy Ghost, and though the Logos -idea of John 
 required a different turn, still a corresponding representation 
 might have been given of the entrance of the Logos into the 
 womb of Mary. But the fourth Evangelist entirely passes 
 over the begetting and birth of Christ, and is satisfied with 
 referring to his exalted origin, partly in his prologue, partly 
 in various passages of the speeches uttered by Jesus. Exactly 
 in the same way with the ascension of Jesus into heaven, 
 he represents him as sometimes alluding to it in his speeches, 
 but does not himself describe it as a visible occurrence. But 
 that the Evangelist does assume this occurrence as having 
 actually taken place, is perfectly clear from the scene with the 
 Magdalene above described, where Jesus speaks of his as- 
 cending to the Father, not as having actually taken place, 
 but immediately to take place. Attention has also been 
 already drawn to the fact that John here follows Matthew, 
 only that it comes out more definitely in him than in Mat- 
 thew, that it was not before, but after, this first appearance 
 that the risen Jesus ascended into heaven. But as in Mat- 
 thew the appearance of Jesus on the mountain in Galilee 
 assumes the ascension to heaven as an event that had 
 already occurred, so also in John does the appearance to the 
 disciples with closed doors. For the communication of the 
 Spirit by breathing upon them, could not, according to the 
 view of the Evangelist, be accomplished until Jesus was 
 
THE ASCENSION. 429 
 
 glorified (vii. 39) ; but liis glorification was not complete until 
 after his departure to the Father. Tlie fourth Evangelist, in 
 representing this communication of the Spirit as having been 
 made personally by Jesus on the day of his resurrection, 
 places himself in opposition to the third, who, in his Acts of 
 the Apostles (chap, ii.), represents this communication as not 
 having taken place until fifty days later, after Jesus had 
 already taken his departure from earth. In this case also, 
 as well as in that of the ascension, he avoids the external 
 sensible occurrence which Luke makes of the pouring out of 
 the Holy Ghost; the soft aspiration appeared to him more 
 spiritual, and in particular more in accordance with the spirit 
 of Christ than the storm and the fiery tongues in the narrative 
 of the Acts ; moreover, the Paraclete, supposing Jesus to 
 have communicated it himself by breathing upon his disci- 
 ples, appeared to come in more definitely as his continuing 
 representative. 
 
 But, besides this omission of the ascension, there is another 
 point in which, at this concluding moment, the fourth Evan- 
 gelist is connected with \,he first. The speech of Jesus after 
 breathing upon the disciples (ver. 23), " Whosesoever sins ye 
 remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye 
 retain, they are retained," reminds us of his words in the first 
 Gospel (xvi. 19, xviii. 18), which are represented, indeed, in 
 the fourth as having been uttered on an earlier occasion. The 
 words are, " Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound 
 in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be 
 loosed in heaven." Here the change which the fourth Evan- 
 gelist makes in the speech might be explained by reference to 
 the dispute as to the veniality of certain sins, which, as we 
 see from the Shepherd of Hermas, begun to disturb the Church 
 early in the second century. 
 
 In consequence of this avoidance of the visible ascension, 
 the fourth Gospel has this feature in common with the first, 
 that, like the latter, or even more than the latter, it dispenses 
 
430 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 with its proper conclusion, so that an opening was left for the 
 addition of an appendix (in chap, xxi.), and this too after its 
 own properly concluding scene, the appearance of Jesus to the 
 disciples who were assembled with closed doors, has received 
 a supplement in the appearance, eight days later, in favour of 
 Thomas. But this very supplementary scene concludes with 
 a speech which opens a perspective extremely suitable for 
 the conclusion of the Gospel, and resembling that which is 
 opened by the concluding expression in Älatthew. The words, 
 " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed !" 
 are spoken not merely to Thomas, but in his person to all 
 men who should come to faith in Christ without the possibi- 
 lity of seeing ; they are the legacy of the Johannine Christ to 
 his Church, a legacy which has still its meaning for us, only 
 indeed in the sense of that expression of Lessing, a sense 
 wrapped for our Evangelists in thick and mystic clouds. The 
 expression is to the effect that accidental historic truths can 
 never form the proofs of necessary truths of the Eeason. 
 
 99. Conclusion. 
 
 This principle is important to us, now that we have arrived 
 at the conclusion of our critical process, in proportion as we 
 are penetrated with the conviction that our historical know- 
 ledge of Jesus is defective and uncertain. After removing 
 the inass of niythica] pprnditps nf rb'ffprp.nt-, kinds that have 
 clustered round th e tree, we see th at what we before consi- 
 dered branches, foliage, colour, and form of the tree itself, 
 belonged for the most part to those parasitical creepers ; and 
 instead of the removal of them having restored the tree to us 
 in its true condition and appearance, we find, on the contrary, 
 that they have swept away its proper foliage, sucked out the 
 sap, crippled the shoots and branches, and conse(|uently that 
 
CONCLUSION. 431 
 
 its orifyjn al figure has entirely disa ppeared. Every mythical 
 feature added to the form of Jesus has not only obscured an 
 historical one, so that with the removal of the first the latter 
 would come to light, but very many have been destroyed by 
 the mythical forms that have overlaid them, and been thus 
 completely lost. 
 
 It is not agreeable to hear and therefore is disbelieved, 
 but whoever has seriously examined the subject and chooses 
 to be candid, knows as well as we do that few great men 
 have existed of whose history we have so unsatisfactory a 
 knowledge as we have of that of Jesu s. How much more 
 clear and distinct, beyond all comparison, is the figure of 
 Socrates, which is four hundred years older ! It is true, 
 indeed, that of the history of his youth and education we 
 likewise know but little. But we know accurately what he 
 was in his mature years, what he attempted and what he 
 effected ; the figures of his disciples and friends stand out 
 before us with historic clearness ; with regard to the causes 
 and the course of his condemnation and the facts of his 
 death we are perfectly informed. And though a few anec- 
 dotical additions are not wanting, his biography has conti- 
 nued free, in the main, from that mythical matter under which 
 the historical figures of many ancient Greek philosophers, 
 Pythagoras for instance, have been, like the figure of Jesus, 
 almost smothered. This preservation of his image, in the 
 case of Socrates, is due to the circumstance of his having 
 lived in the most cultivated city of Greece, at the most bril- 
 liant period of intellectual enlightenment, and when literature 
 was most flourishing. And several of his pupils were also 
 distinguished writers, and in part made their teacher the 
 immediate subject of their works. 
 
 Xenophon and Plato. — On mention of these names, who 
 does not think of Matthew and John, but how unfavourable^ 
 for the two last is the comparison ! In the first place, the 
 authors of the Memorabilia of Socrates, of the two Convivia, of 
 
432 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 \ 
 
 the Phffido, &c., were actual disciples of Socrates ; the authors 
 of the first and the fourth Gospels, on the contrary, were 
 no immediate disciples of Jesus. With regard to the above- 
 mentioned writings of the two Athenians, we should have 
 required no external evidence to be preserved ; we should still 
 have recognised them as the works of contemporaries and 
 personal acquaintances of Socrates. In the case of the two 
 Gospels, however ancient, however consistent the testimony 
 for their apostolic origin might be, still one should put no 
 faith in it, as it would be contradicted by the plainest prima 
 facie appearance of the books themselves. In the next place, 
 the exertions of the two writers about Socrates are directed 
 throughout to setting plainly before us his peculiar character 
 and value as a man, as a citizen, as a thinker and educator of 
 youth. This, too, our two Evangelists do after their own 
 fashion. But this is not enough for them. Their Jesus is 
 assumed to have been more than man ; lie is assumed to have 
 been a miraculous man, begotten of God, and even, according 
 to one of them, the Divine Creative Word incarnate. Hence, 
 in their description, there not only runs parallel with the 
 activity of Jesus as a teacher a series of miracles and develop- 
 ments of miraculous destiny, but this miraculous element is 
 an ingredient in the doctrine itself which tliey put into his 
 mouth, so that they represent Jesus as saying things about 
 himself which it is impossible that any man of sound under- 
 standing should have said. In the third place, Plato and 
 Xenophon agree in all essential points in what they say about 
 Socrates. There is much which they report in similar terms ; 
 several features, peculiar to one, do still, M-hen taken in con- 
 junction with those which the other supplies, unite admirably 
 in one image ; and if Xenophon, as regards the philosophical 
 spirit of Socrates, as often falls as much below his subject as 
 Plato with his arbitrary inventions soars above it, and puts 
 Platonic speculations in the mouth of Socrates, the two de- 
 scriptions easily correct each other by a comparison of the two 
 
CONCLUSION. 433 
 
 writers, and liave no tendency to mislead, because that of 
 Xenophon is evidently the result of naturally inadequate 
 power to grasp his subject, while Plato in his Socratic Dia- 
 logues makes no claim to the character of an historical writer. 
 How irreconcilable, on the other hand, is the Christ of Mat- 
 thew with that of John, and how solemnly the author of the 
 fourth Gospel, in particular, protests the truth of his reports, 
 we have seen. But everything that distinguishes the accounts 
 that have reached us about Jesus from those about Socrates, 
 in respect of historical admissibility, to the advantage of the 
 latter, has its roots in the difference of times and nationalities. 
 With the clear atmosphere and brilliant light of Athenian 
 cultivation and illumination, in which the image of Socrates 
 is seen by us so plainly, is contrasted the thick and murky 
 cloud of Jewish error and superstition, and Alexandrine fana- 
 ticism, out of which the form of Jesus looks at us and is 
 scarcely to be recognised as human. 
 
 It may be said, and has often been said, that all that is 
 unsatisfactory in the evangelical biographies of Jesus is 
 richly compensated for by the fact that we still have before 
 us his work in the Christian Church, and may now draw our 
 inferences from this work to its originator. Thus, of Shake- 
 speare, for instance, Ave know but little that is historical, and 
 much that is fabulous is asserted of him ; we do not, however, 
 allow this to disturb us much, as his compositions enable us 
 to restore in perfect distinctness the figure of his personality. 
 The comparison would be appropriate if we had the work of 
 the Prophet of Galilee at first hand, as we have those of 
 the British jDoet. But the former has passed through very 
 numerous hands — of persons who have had no scruple to 
 interpolate, to omit, and to change in every way. The 
 Christian Church, even in its earliest form as it appears in 
 the New Testament, was moulded by so many other factors as 
 well as the personality of Jesus, that any inference from it to 
 him must be most uncertain. Even Christ the risen, upon 
 
 VOL. IL 2 F 
 
y^ 434 ^[YTHTCAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 I . whom the Church was founded, is quite a different being from 
 I what the man Jesus had been, and it was upon that concep- 
 \ tion of Christ the risen that not only the conception of him 
 nd his earthly life, but also the Church itself, was so moulded 
 at it becomes a very doubtful question whether, if Jesus 
 had returned about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 he would have recognised himself again in the Christ who 
 was at that time being preached in the Churches. 
 
 I do not think that the case is so bad as has lately been 
 maintained, as that we cannot know for certain of any one of 
 the texts which are put into the mouth of Jesus in the 
 Gospels whether he really uttered it or not. I believe that 
 there are some which we may ascribe to Jesus with all that 
 amount of probability beyond which we cannot generally go 
 in historical matters, and I have endeavoured above to explain 
 the signs by which we may recognise such. But this proba- 
 bility approaching to certainty does not extend far, and with 
 the exception of the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and his 
 death, the facts and circumstances of his life are unfavourably 
 situated. There is little of which we can say for certain that 
 it took place, and of all to which the faith of the Church 
 especially attaches itself, the miraculous and supernatural 
 matter in the facts and destinies of Jesus, it is far more 
 certain that it did not take place. But that the happiness of 
 mankind is to depend upon belief in things of which it is in 
 part certain that they did not take place, in part uncertain 
 whether they did take place, and only to the smallest extent 
 beyond doubt that they took place — that the happiness of 
 mankind is to depend upon belief in such things as these, is 
 sojibajLU'd ^ that the assertion of the principle does not, amTe 
 present day, require any further contradiction. 
 
CONCLUSION. 435 
 
 100. 
 
 No ! the happiness of man, oi\ speaking more intelligibly, 
 the possibility of fulfilling Jiis destiny, deve loping the powers 
 implanted in him, and thus participating in the corresponding 
 amount of well-being — it is impossible — and on this point 
 the saying of Eeimar is anTeverlasting truth — it is impossible 
 that this can depend on his recognition „of- facts into which 
 scarcely one man in a thousand is in a position to institute a 
 thorough investigation, and, supposing him to have done so, 
 then to arrive at a satisfactory result. But, as certainly as 
 men have a common destiny, attainable by all, so the condi- 
 tions also of reaching it, i.e. independent of and before the 
 exertion of the will in the direction of the object, the know- 
 ledge of that object must be given to every man, and that 
 knowledge cannot be an accidental acquaintance with history 
 coming from without, but must be a necessary knowledge 
 attainable by reason, such as every man can find in himself. 
 This is the meaning of the profound saying of Spinoza, that 
 for the purposes of happiness it is not in any way necessary 
 to know Christ after the flesh ; but tliat the case is different 
 with that eternal Son of God, namely the Divine Wisdom, 
 which appears in all things, esj)ecially in the human mind, 
 and in Jesus Christ appeared in a pre-eminent degree. With- 
 out this, he says, no one can attain to happiness, because it 
 alone teaches what is true and false, good and bad.* Kant, 
 like Spinoza, distinguished between the historical person of 
 Jesus and the Ideal of humanity pleasing to God, involved in 
 human reason, or in the moral sense in its perfect purity, so 
 far as is possible in a system of the world dependent upon 
 Avants and inclinations. To rise to this ideal was, he said, the 
 general duty of men ; and though we cannot conceive of it as 
 existing otherwise than under the form of a perfect man, and. 
 
 * Id Letter 21. 
 
436 MYTHICAL HISTORY OF JESUS. 
 
 tliough it is not impossible that such a man may have lived, 
 as we are all intended to resemble this ideal, still that it is 
 not necessary that we should know of the existence of such a 
 man or believe in it, but solely that we should keep that ideal 
 before us, recognise it as obligatory upon us, and strive to 
 make ourselves like it.* 
 
 This distinguishing between the historical and the ideal 
 Christ, that is, the exemplar of man as he is destined to be, and 
 the transferring of beatifying faith from the first to the second, 
 is the unavoidable result of the modern spiritual develop- 
 ment ; it is that carrying forward of the Eeligion of C hrist to 
 the E eligion o f^ Humanit y to which all the noblest efforts of 
 the present time are directed. In this the world sees an 
 apostacy from Christianity, a denial of Christ. This view 
 rests upon a misunderstanding, for which the modern expres- 
 sion, perhaps also the mode of thought of the philosophers 
 who made this distinction, is partly responsible. For they 
 speak as if the exemplar of human perfection at which the 
 individual has to aim had existed in the Eeason from the 
 first. So tliat they would seem to imply that this exemplar, i. e. 
 the ideal Christ, might have been present within us as much 
 as it is now if a historic Christ had never lived or worked. 
 But this is by no means really the case. The idea of human 
 perfection, like other ideas, was imparted to the human mind 
 only, at first, in an elementary shape, which gradually reaches 
 its perfection by ex]3erience. It exhibits a different confor- 
 mation in diflerent nations, varying according to the natural 
 character, the conditions of their climate and history, and 
 admits of our observing a progress in the course of history. 
 The Eoman conceived of man as he ought to be, differently 
 from the Greek, the Jew differently from both, the Greek, 
 after Socrates, differently from and unquestionably more 
 perfectly than before. Every man of moral pre-eminence, 
 
 * Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason, second chapter, first section, p. 73 ff. 
 of the second editioa. 
 
CONCLUSION. 437 
 
 every great thinker who has made the active nature of man 
 tlie object of his investigation, has contributed in narrower 
 or wider circles towards correcting that idea, perfecting or 
 improving it. And among these improvers of the ideal of 
 humanity, Jesus stands at all events in the first class. He 
 introduced features into it which were wanting to it before, 
 or had continued undeveloped ; reduced the dimensions of 
 others which prevented its universal application ; imported 
 into it^ by the religious aspect which he gave it, a more lofty 
 consecration, and bestowed upon it, by embodying it in his 
 own persoÄ, the most vital warmth ; while the Eeligious 
 Society which took its rise from liim provided for this ideal 
 the widest acceptance among mankind. It is true, indeed, 
 that this Religious Society originated in quite other things 
 than the moral significance of its Founder, and did anything 
 but exhibit this in its purest form : in the only writing of our 
 New Testament which perhaps comes from an immediate 
 disciple of Jesus, the Eevelation of John, there lives a Christ 
 from whom little is to be gained for the ideal of humanity ; 
 but the features of patience, gentleness, and charity which 
 Jesus made predominant in that image, have not been lost to 
 mankind, and are exactly those from which all that we now 
 call Humanity might germinate and grow. 
 
 Meanwhile, however high may be the place of Jesus 
 among those who have shewn to mankind most purely and 
 most plainly what it ought to be, still he was not the first to 
 do so, nor will he be the last. But as he had predecessors 
 in Israel and Hellas, on the Ganges and the Oxus, so also he 
 has not been without followers. On the contrary, that exem- 
 plar has been, after him, still further developed, more per- 
 fectly finished, its different features brought into better 
 proportion with each other. It cannot be overlooked, that 
 in the pattern exhibited by Jesus in his doctrine and in his 
 life, some sides being finished to perfection, others were only 
 faintly sketched, or not indicated at all. Every point is fully 
 
438 MYTHICAL mSTOEY OF JESUS. 
 
 developed that lias reference to love towards God and our 
 neighbour, to purity in the heart and life of the individual : 
 but even the life of man in the family is left by the Teacher, 
 himself childless, in the background; his relation towards 
 the body politic appears simply passive ; with trade he is not 
 only by reason of his calling unconcerned, but even visibly 
 averse to it, and everything relating to art and enjoyment of 
 the elegancies of life is absolutely removed from his range of 
 view. That these are important defects, that we have here 
 an one-sidedness before us which is grounded partly on Jewish 
 nationality, partly in the circumstances of the time, partly in 
 the special relation of the life of Jesus, no one would attempt 
 to deny, inasmuch as no one can deny it. And the defects 
 are not merely such that only the finishing details are want- 
 ing, while the ruling principle is given; but as regards the 
 State in particular, trade and art, the true idea is wanting 
 from first to last, and it is a fruitless undertaking to attempt 
 to decide upon the precepts or after the example of Jesus 
 what the action of man ought to be as a citizen, what his 
 conduct in connection with the enrichment and embellisli- 
 ment of existence by trade and art. On these points some- 
 thing was wanting that required to be supplied from the 
 circumstances of other times, otlier states and other systems 
 of cultivation. And what was wanted was found in part by 
 looking back upon what Greeks and Romans had accom- 
 plislied in these respects, in part in what was reserved for the 
 further development of mankind and its history. 
 
 But all these defects in what was given by Jesus will be 
 best suj)plied if we start with considering what was given as 
 a human acquisition — human, and therefore capable of im- 
 provement and requiring it. If, on the contrary, Jesus is 
 considered as the God-man, as the pattern form introduced 
 among mankind of universal and exclusive applicability, any 
 attempt towards giving this pattern greater perfection must 
 naturally be repudiated — its one-sidedness and imperfection 
 
C0XCLUSION-. 439 
 
 must be made the rule — and all those aspects of human 
 action which are not represented in it must be either declined 
 or simply regulated externally. Nay, inasmuch as by the 
 side of or above the moral example set by Jesus he himself 
 stands as the God-man, belief in whom, apart from and before 
 the recognition of that pattern image, is the duty of man and 
 the condition of his happiness, then that upon which every- 
 thing depends is thus degraded into the second class, the 
 moral greatness of Jesus is crippled and its first operation 
 prevented, even the moral obligations which derive their 
 authority from being involved in the conditions of human 
 nature are represented in the false light of being positive 
 commands of God. Therefore the critic is convinced that 
 he is committing no offence against what is sacred, nay rather 
 that he is doing a good and necessary work, when he sweeps 
 away all that makes Jesus a supernatural Being,' as well meant 
 and perhaps even at first sight beneficial, but in the long run 
 mischievous and now absolutely destructive, 'restores, as well 
 as may be, the image of the historical Jesus in its simply 
 human features, but refers mankind for salvation to the ideal 
 Christ, to that moral pattern in which the historical Jesus 
 did indeed first bring to light many principal features, but 
 which as an elementary principle as much belongs to the 
 general endowment of our kind, as its improvement and per- 
 fection can only be the problem and the work of mankind in 
 general. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by C. Green & Son, 178, Strand. 
 
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