LIBRARY 
 
 V OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIKT OF" 
 
 ....... ; .. 
 
 Received L^-tZsi^ , ,189*7. 
 
 Accession No.&lf.f/g . C/^s No. 
 
 m 
 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 JESUS OF NAZARETH, 
 
 BY 
 
 M. SCHLESIKGER, PH.D. 
 || 
 
 BABBI OF THE CONGREGATION ANSHE EMETH, ALBANY, N. Y. 
 
 ni 17 BE SIT 7 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 13& EIGHTH STREET. 
 
 1876. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, 
 
 BT CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington,. 
 
THE 
 HISTORICAL JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 " IK a matter so solemn as that of religion, all men 
 whose temporal interests are not involved in existing 
 institutions earnestly desire to find the truth." * If 
 this be so, as it surely ought to be, I need no apology 
 for sending out the following pages to do their share in 
 assisting men to find the truth. 
 
 Ours is prominently a practical age ; the discoveries 
 and inventions of every branch of science, no sooner 
 made, are applied to the practical aims of daily life; 
 every new idea is popularized and made the property of 
 the millions. Only theology seems to make an excep- 
 tion. She, once the presiding mistress in the halls of 
 science, is now scarcely recognized as entitled to admis- 
 sion. Yet, the discoveries of theology during the last de- 
 cades are not less startling and suprising than those made 
 in any other department of science. That they are less 
 known is due partly to the theological bias of society, 
 partly to the lack of popularization or, rather, to both, 
 for the one can only be eradicated by the other. 
 
 It is especially the origin of Christianity over which 
 a flood of light has been poured by the exertions of 
 modern scientific theology, and of which a more inti- 
 mate knowledge must be desirable to every thinking 
 man. 
 
 * Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, p. vi, 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 To give a brief survey of these discoveries, and at the 
 same time to introduce the uninitiated into the very 
 laboratory where they are distilled of course, after re- 
 moving every indication of the sweat and toil they have 
 caused is the aim of these pages. 
 
 1. The origin of Christianity is contained in the Mes- 
 sianic idea of Israel ; the one cannot be understood with- 
 out a full appreciation of the other. "We have, therefore, 
 to trace the development of this idea from its incipient 
 stages down to the time of Jesus. 
 
 2. Of Jesus and his time the New Testament alone 
 gives us any records, which we must necessarily submit 
 to a careful examination before forming any judgment 
 of what they contain. 
 
 3. Having done this, we shall be enabled to sum up 
 what a thorough and conscientious sifting has left as the 
 truth, and finally conclude with the foundation of Chris- 
 tianity by Paul. 
 
 With this brief delineation of the course we intend to 
 pursue, we mean to give timely warning to all those to 
 whom it may be offensive. Not to offend, but humbly 
 to contribute to the general enlightenment in so great and 
 solemn a matter as religion, is our desire. 
 
 We have yet to state that, in citing the Scriptures, we 
 were often compelled, for the sake of truth, to deviate 
 from the authorized version of King James' Bible, and 
 give our own translation from the original Hebrew and 
 Greek. To assist the ordinary reader, however, we fol- 
 low the division of chapters and verses of the common 
 version. 
 
 Albany, October, 1875. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MESSIANIC IDEA 
 OF ISRAEL BEFORE JESUS. 
 
 THE peculiarity of Israel, so often noticed, but never 
 fully explained, consists mostly in its Messianic idea. 
 It is a people that cannot perish, because it is a people 
 that lives for and by an ideal ; an ideal, which, suf- 
 ficiently grand and inspiring in its very beginning, did 
 not shrink or fade with the intellectual advance and 
 development of the people, but always evinced the capa- 
 bility of widening and expanding in grandeur with the 
 widened and more advanced views of the people. The 
 faith in the final realization of this ideal has endowed 
 this people with that vitality and elasticity by which it 
 defies and outlasts the ages. 
 
 What is the Messianic idea of Israel ? Before we 
 answer this question, we have to premise that, originally 
 and fundamentally, it was not coupled with the idea of 
 personality. The Messianic idea of Israel is but the 
 outgrowth of the entirely optimistic bend of mind of the 
 old Hebrews, which forced upon them the conviction 
 that every thing God has made is " very good." Real- 
 ity, the actual state of the world and society, con- 
 tradicted, but could not shake, this conviction. The 
 
8 PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE MESSIANIC IDEA. 
 
 defective state of the world and society was too obvious 
 not to be admitted, but only led to the proud thought 
 that it was their (Israel's) destiny to lead the nations to 
 a more perfect condition. This is distinctly announced 
 at the very beginning of their history (Genesis xii. 3) : 
 " in thee all the generations of the earth shall be blest." 
 All the laws, statutes and institutions of Moses are repre- 
 sented as given for the same purpose (Deut. iv. 6) : 
 " that they be your wisdom and your understanding in 
 the eyes of the nations, who shall hear of all these stat- 
 utes and say, Truly, it is a wise and understanding nation, 
 this great people." 
 
 The Messianic idea, therefore, consists in this: 
 that the people of Israel, by propagating their laws 
 and institutions among the nations, will become the 
 savior of this world. But the course of events did 
 not justify this conception. The nations remained 
 as they were, and, instead of being influenced, often 
 influenced Israel by their idolatrous laws and insti- 
 tutions. To sustain the old hopes, it became neces- 
 sary to call in the supernatural for their realization. It 
 became the popular belief that this imperfect world would 
 be destroyed and a new and perfect one be created. Be- 
 fore this was to take place, a day of judgment was 
 expected, on which all those who did not accept the 
 laws and institutions of Israel were to be judged. 
 
 The first account of this conception we find in the 
 prophet Joel, who prophesied at the beginning of the 
 reign of King Usia of Judah (about 800 B.C.) Pales- 
 tine had been visited by unheard-of calamities : there 
 was an earthquake which made the inhabitants reel on 
 their feet, and the hills and mountains waver ; thunder 
 and lightning, together with the roaring and howling of 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF JOEL. 9 
 
 * 
 
 the sea, caused a deafening and maddening uproar ; the 
 rising vapors darkened the sun and moon and stars ; it 
 seemed as if their light had been withdrawn. This 
 violent outburst passed ; but those who survived were to 
 learn that the quietly destructive elements were still 
 more to be dreaded. In consequence of the earthquake, 
 the rain on which Palestine's fruitfulness depended 
 failed, all the wells, and brooks, and rivulets were 
 dried up, the people and their flocks languished, and 
 even the wild beasts perished on the fields. The 
 scorching sun sent down its fiery rays, and turned the 
 fields, and meadows, and gardens into a wilderness. 
 As if this were not enough, the hosts of locusts which 
 generally haunt the Hauran, the northeast of Palestine, 
 swarmed over like so many invincible armies, and 
 greedily devoured every green leaf that was left. All 
 hope was gone. But suddenly one of those tropical 
 thunder-storms came, the terrible army of locusts was de- 
 stroyed washed away, or driven into the sea and at 
 the same time the land was refreshed, the wells were filled, 
 the fields and gardens and meadows clad in fresh ver- 
 dure, and men and beasts rejoiced over this sudden and 
 unexpected deliverance. 
 
 If this world were to be destroyed if " the last 
 days " were to c ^me after this experience the popu- 
 lar expectation could take shape and form. And, 
 indeed, the prophet Joel, who during these calami- 
 ties had upheld the courage of the inhabitants in Judea, 
 saw in all this but the faint promise of what would come 
 to pass at " the end of days," which end of days was 
 always considered near at hand. He describes it (Joel 
 iv. 1 if.), " For behold, in those days and at that time, I 
 shall bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem. 
 
10 MESSIANIC IDEA OF JOEL. 
 
 And I will gather all nations and bring them down to 
 the valley of Josaphat, and will plead with them there." 
 (Iv. 9), "Proclaim ye this among the nations, prepare 
 the war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of 
 war draw near and go up." (Iv. 14), " Multitudes, mul- 
 titudes in the valley of decision, for near is the day of 
 the Lord in the valley of decision. Sun and moon shall 
 be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shin- 
 ing. For the Lord roars out of Zion, and from Jerusa- 
 lem he sends forth his voice, and the heavens and the 
 earth shall shake, but the Lord is refuge to his people 
 and shelter to the children of Israel." And then (iii. 
 1 ff.), "I will pour out my spirit over all flesh, and 
 your sons and daughters shall prophesy ; your old men 
 shall dream dreams, and your young men shall have 
 visions. And also upon the servants and the hand- 
 maids in those days will I pour out my spirit." This 
 oldest description of the approach of " the end of days " 
 became typical, and was only modified with the modi- 
 fication of the Messianic idea. In general it was ex- 
 pected that days of great and unprecedented trouble and 
 misery would come, followed by the day of judgment, 
 when all nations would be summoned to the valley of Josa- 
 phat (i.e., " the Lord judges") ; fierce battles would then 
 take place, but the Lord's people would be victorious, and, 
 thenceforth, the Lord would reign on Mount Zion, and 
 his spirit rest upon every child of man. 
 
 The Messianic idea was first modified by Israel's polit- 
 ical difficulties. The northern ten tribes had seceded 
 from the southern tribes, and, consequently, from the 
 national sanctuary in Jerusalem. This secession, together 
 with the ambition to form political alliances, opened the 
 gates to the abominations of the surrounding nations. The 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF AMOS. 11 
 
 consequence was that the inhabitants of the northern 
 kingdom, the kingdom of Israel, soon became estranged 
 from the faith of their fathers. This state of things had 
 reached the climax under the magnificent reign of Jero- 
 boam II. (830-769 B.C.), when religious decay and moral 
 rottenness progressed so rapidly that all hopes were pre- 
 cluded. Joel's contemporaries, the prophets Amos and 
 Hosea, who lived and prophesied in the kingdom of 
 Israel, turned their eyes to the " fallen tabernacle of 
 David," as their only hope. The breach which had rent 
 the nation into two separate and often hostile parts, and 
 which had become so fatal, not only to their political, 
 but also to their religious, development, seemed irrepar- 
 able ; but it would be healed. When ? Of course, in 
 those days that were to come. Then the nation would 
 again be reunited under the house of David. The Lord 
 would raise up a second David, who, like the first, would 
 unite all Israel under the banner of the Lord of Hosts ; 
 and, as this was to happen at "the end of days," he was 
 expected to rule over all nations. The Messianic idea 
 thus underwent the first great and important modification. 
 Thenceforth it was assumed that, though the Lord was 
 and would be the sole sovereign, he would transfer the 
 ruling power of the mundane world to his anointed 
 King (i.e., Messiah). Here the personal Messiah came in, 
 who was to be a descendant of David, the king who 
 united all the tribes of Israel and ruled so gloriously 
 that he lived in the memory of the people as " the man 
 after the Lord's own heart." Now, only by the restor- 
 ation of this house to the government of the whole 
 nation, by " the sprouting of a branch out of Jesse's 
 house," salvation was to be expected.- 
 
 Amos prophesies (ix. 11 ff.): (i In that day will I raise up 
 
12 MESSIANIC IDEA OF HOSE A. 
 
 the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the 
 breaches thereof ; and I will raise up his ruins and I will 
 build it as in the days of old. . . . And I will bring 
 again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall 
 build the waste cities and inhabit them, and they shall 
 plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof, they shall 
 also make gardens and eat the fruit thereof. And I 
 will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more 
 be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, 
 saith the Lord." 
 
 And Hosea cannot often enough exhort Israel : (vi. 1), 
 " Come, let us return" ; (xivl.), "Return, O Israel, to the 
 Eternal, thy God, for thou stumblest over thy iniquity " ; 
 (iii. 5), " At last the children of Israel will return and 
 seek the Eternal, their God, and David, their king, at the 
 end of days" ; (i. 10, 11), " And it shall come to pass, 
 instead of being called ' not my people,' they shall be 
 called ( children of the living God ' ; then shall the 
 children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered 
 together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall 
 come up out of the land, for great shall be the day of 
 Jezreel." 
 
 This modification of the Messianic idea, introduced by 
 the northern prophets, was readily adopted by those 
 prophesying in the kingdom of Judah, without, however, 
 influencing their broader and more cosmopolitical con- 
 ception. The grand old prophecy, as cited by Isaiah 
 (ii. 2 ff.) and Micah (iv. 1 if.), which some critics ascribe to 
 Joel, always remained the basis on which the later 
 .prophets builded ; viz.: "It shall come to pass at the end 
 of days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established on the top of the mountains, and shall be 
 exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. 
 
MESSIANIC IDKA OF ZECHARIAH I. 13 
 
 And many nations shall go and say, Come ye and let us 
 go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the 
 God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways and we 
 will walk in his paths ; for out of Zion shall go forth 
 the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 
 And he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke 
 among many people, and they shall beat their swords 
 into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks ; 
 nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
 shall they learn war any more." It was a proud but 
 ennobling and elevating thought that out of Zion 
 i.e., out of the midst of Israel the law was to go forth 
 which was to make the earth an habitation of peace and 
 good-will under the divine rule; and, since the Messianic 
 king out of the house of David was to be the visible head 
 of the government, he became the king of peace and 
 justice and love, the ideal of meekness and humility. 
 
 This somewhat-changed hope we find already dis- 
 tinctly stated by Zechariah I.* (ix. 1 if.) : " The word 
 of the Lord : in the land of Hadrach and Damask will be 
 his [the Lord's] resting-place, for to the Lord is turned 
 the eye of all men, as that of all the tribes of Israel. 
 Also in Hamath, which borders on it, and in Tyre and 
 Zidon, which is very wise." Having announced the 
 
 * The book of Zechariali, as is well known, is not the work of 
 one author ; there are three little books compiled into one, proba- 
 bly because the prophets of all these speeches had the name of 
 Zechariah. Chaps, i.-ix. are prophecies of Zechariah III., a prophet 
 who returned with the Babylonian exiles and prophesied between 
 52l-. : ) 18 I'. C. Chaps, ix.-xii. contain two speeches of Zechariah I. , 
 who lived and prophesied between 748-727 B.C. Chaps, xii.-xiv. 
 form the separate little book of Zechariah II. , who lived and proph- 
 esied immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem, between 
 590-588 B.C. 
 
14: MESSIANIC IDEA OF ISAIAH I. 
 
 Lord's rebuke to the wicked of these nations, the prophet 
 continues (ix. 7 ff.) : " Their bloody deeds I take away 
 out of their mouth, and their abominations from between 
 their teeth, and it will also remain to our Lord, and it 
 will be like a tribe of Judah, and Ekron like Jebusi [i.e., 
 Jerusalem]. . . . Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ! 
 shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ! behold, thy king com- 
 eth unto thee ; he is just and victorious, lowly, and riding 
 upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. For I 
 will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from 
 Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he 
 shall speak peace to the nations, and his dominion shall 
 be from sea to sea, and from the river [Euphrates] to the 
 ends of the earth." 
 
 Isaiah I.,* the most influential of all the prophets, went 
 still further ; he, for the first time, connected these hopes 
 with a distinct personality ; viz. : King Hezekiah (724- 
 696 B.C.). Time and circumstances seemed to justify his 
 hopes. Under Hezekiah's father, the weak Ahaz (739- 
 725 B.C.), the surrounding nations, led by Rezin, king of 
 Damask, and Pekah, king of Israel, had conspired, not 
 only to make war against Judah, but to dethrone the 
 house of David and put in its place a certain Ben-Tobal 
 (Isaiah vii. 1-7). Ahaz was in despair, the population 
 trembled, only the prophet Isaiah was confident of the 
 
 * The book of Isaiah is likewise composed of the products of va- 
 rious authors, which, however, can be divided in two parts, chaps, 
 i.-xl. and xl.-lxvi. The first part, chaps, i.-xxxv., contains mostly 
 the speeches of Isaiah I., who prophesied between 755-709 B.C., 
 though some parts of these speeches must be of later date ; to this 
 are added the historical chapters xxxv.-xl. The second part, chaps, 
 xl.-lxvi., belongs mostly to an unknown prophet, probably like- 
 wise of the name of Isaiah, who lived among the Babylonian ex- 
 iles shortly before their return to Palestine ; he is called Isaiah IL 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF ISAIAH I. 15 
 
 assistance of the Lord. In his speech to the wavering 
 and unbelieving king, he gives him as a sign (Isaiah 
 vii. 14 ff.) : " Behold, this young woman" [pointing to a 
 young woman in the crowd; the erroneous translationof 
 the Hebrew Almah with virgin is too well known as 
 such to need correction] " shall conceive and bear a son, 
 whose name she shall call Emanuel" [God with us], " for 
 lie shall witness the misery breaking upon the people and 
 also the salvation of the Lord." The salvation came ; 
 Ahaz was delivered from his enemies ; but, instead of 
 strengthening himself by the national faith, he thought 
 it more political to introduce the Assyrian idolatry ; the 
 gods of his master were also to be his gods, and Judah 
 became as idolatrous as Ephraim. The faithful would 
 have been driven to despondency if it had not been for 
 the hopes they placed in the coming king, the young, 
 hopeful, and promising prince Ilezekiah, who probably 
 was under Isaiah's tuition. He was to be the Messiah, 
 and of him Isaiah sings (ix. 2 ff.) : " The people that 
 walked in darkness have seen a great light ; they that 
 dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has 
 light risen. . . . For unto us a child is born, unto us 
 a son is given, and the government is on his shoulder, and 
 his name is called Wonder, Counsellor, Mighty One of 
 the Lord, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. To 
 increase the government and never-ending peace upon 
 the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to establish 
 it and found it on judgment and justice for evermore. 
 The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this." It 
 seemed as if the prophet's hopes were literally to be ful- 
 filled, for soon the great catastrophe, so long foretold by 
 the former prophets, took place. The kingdom of Israel 
 was destroyed (720 B.C.) "the land had spewed out the 
 
16 MESSIANIC IDEA OF ISAIAH I. 
 
 people on account of their wickedness." The faithful 
 that were left of Israel now joined Judah ; in Judah and 
 Jerusalem the Jehovistic party came into ascendancy, 
 and, to a certain extent, Ephraim and Judah were 
 indeed reunited under one just and righteous king of 
 the house of David. But, alas ! it was not even the 
 shadow of all those bright hopes entertained by the 
 people and their prophets. Hezekiah was a good, pious 
 and virtuous king, but not equal to the many adverse 
 circumstances that surrounded him ; he was not what 
 Isaiah had hoped and expected. 
 
 The prophet's and the people's hopes, however, re- 
 mained unshaken ; they were only pushed forward to a 
 more distant future. To this the prophet gives utter- 
 ance in one of his latest prophecies (xi. 1 if.) : " A rod 
 shall come forth out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch 
 shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the 
 Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and un- 
 derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit 
 of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, . . . and 
 he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither re- 
 prove after the hearing of his ears. But with righteous- 
 ness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity the 
 meek of the earth ; and he shall smite the earth with the 
 rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall 
 he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the 
 girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of 
 his reins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
 the leopard shall lie down witli the kid, and the calf and 
 the young lion and the fatling together, and a little; 
 child shall lead them. They shall not hurt nor destroy 
 on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of 
 the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." 
 
^%> > o raf 
 
 (WVBESim 
 
 MES&IANIO IDEA OF MICAH. 17 
 
 The same hopes inspired Isaiah's younger contempo- 
 rary, Micah, who shows himself a worthy pupil of the 
 master he imitates. As Isaiah, so does he refer to the 
 old prophecy of the general kingdom of peace (Micah 
 iv. 1 ff.) ; he even enlarges upon it by adding " and then 
 every man shall sit under his vine and under his fig-tree, 
 and none shall disturb, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts 
 hath spoken it. For let all the nations walk every one 
 in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name 
 of the Eternal, our God, forever and ever" [that is to 
 say, though on different roads, all nations will at last 
 meet at the same goal]. "In that day I will gather 
 those that halt, and bring in those who were cast 
 off, and those I have afflicted, and the Eternal shall 
 reign over them on Mount Zion from then to evermore." 
 As Isaiah prophesies of the child that is yet to be 
 born, Micah likewise speaks (v. 3) : " how they are 
 delivered up until she that travaileth shall have brought 
 forth." As Isaiah looks for the branch that is to rise 
 out of the stem of Jesse, whose original domicile was 
 Bethlehem in Judah, Micah likewise exclaims (v. 2) : 
 u And thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be 
 little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 
 shall he come forth that is to be ruler in Israel, 
 whose going forth hath been from old, from everlast- 
 ing. " We need not say that these prophecies of Isaiah 
 and Micah which speak of King Hezekiah greatly influ- 
 ei^ced the views of later generations about the Mes- 
 siah. It became part and parcel of the Messianic 
 belief that the Messiah was not only to be a branch 
 out of the root of Jesse, but was also to be born in 
 Bethlehem ; hence the legends in the New Testament 
 of the descent and birth of Jesus. Nor is it necessary 
 
I MESSIANIC IDEA OF JEKEMlAfi. 
 
 to mention that the Almah of Isaiah was afterward 
 employed to justify the later Christian doctrine of a 
 Virgin-mother of God. 
 
 How tenaciously the Messianic idea clung to Israel is 
 best seen in their greatest calamity. Jeremiah (627- 
 570 B.C.), the gloomiest of the prophets, who had seen 
 the misery of his people, which he was doomed to an- 
 nounce for many years to an infatuated and unbe- 
 lieving crowd even he had confidence in a glorious 
 restoration. He describes it (xxxiii. 14 ff.) : " Behold, the 
 days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform that good 
 thing which I have promised unto the house of Judah. 
 In those days, and at that time, I will cause the branch 
 of righteousness to grow up unto David, and he shall 
 execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In 
 those days shall Judah be saved and Jerusalem shall 
 dwell safely ; and this is the name wherewith he shall be 
 called, ' the Lord our righteousness.' For thus saith the 
 Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the 
 throne of the house of Israel." Notwithstanding the 
 derision of the people (xxxiii. 20-1), he remains hopeful: 
 " Thus speaks the Lord, if ye can break my covenant of 
 the day,, and my covenant of the night, that there should 
 not be day and night in their season, then may also 
 my covenant be broken with David, my servant, that he 
 should not have a son to reign upon his throne." But 
 the woe and misery of the Captivity which was then 
 staring in the face of the nation again caused a change, 
 and that a very ennobling one, in the original conception 
 of the Messianic idea. The more thoughtful became 
 convinced that the Messianic time could only be brought 
 about by a moral elevation of the whole nation ; that 
 purity of heart and soul, of intention and action, must be 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF JE&EMIAH. 19 
 
 the root out of which the Messianic time would spontane- 
 ously grow and blossom, and bring the noble fruits 
 promised by former prophets. We find it first ex- 
 pressed in Jeremiah (xxxi. 31 ff.) : " Behold, the days 
 come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant 
 with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 
 Not as the covenant which I made with their fathers in 
 the days that I took them by the hand to bring them 
 out of the land of Egypt, which covenant they brake 
 so that I loathed them, saith the Lord. But this shall be 
 the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. 
 I will put my law in their inward parts, and will be their 
 God, and they shall be my people. And then they shall 
 teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his 
 brother, saying, Know ye the Lord ; for they shall all 
 know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of 
 them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity 
 and will remember their sin no more." 
 
 This new light in which henceforth the Messianic idea 
 appeared, "that by a pure heart on which the law of the 
 Lord was indelibly engraved" they could hasten the 
 days of the Messiah, was sufficient to illumine the dark- 
 ness of the Captivity, into which they went downcast, but 
 not hopeless. The Captivity did not impair, but rather 
 fostered, the old hopes, as days of great and unpar- 
 alleled calamities were thought to be the indispensable 
 precursor of the Messiah. 
 
 The prophet of the Captivity, Ezekiel, who prophesied 
 between 593-570 B.C., gives evident proof of this. He 
 closely followed in the footprints of Jeremiah, whose 
 pupil he probably was, and reiterated still more emphat- 
 ically the change of heart and mind which were neces- 
 sary for Israel before salvation would be possible. The 
 
MESSIAtflC IDEA OF EZEKIEL. 
 
 burden of his hopes for the future is everywhere the same 
 (xxxvi. 24 if.) : " For I will take you from among the 
 nations, and gather you out of all countries, and will 
 bring you into your land. Then I will sprinkle clean 
 water upon you, and ye shall be clean from your un- 
 cleanness, and from all your idols I. will cleanse you. A 
 new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I 
 put within you ; and I will take away the stony heart out 
 of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And 
 I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk 
 in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do 
 them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to 
 your fathers, and ye shall be my people and I will be 
 your God." (xxxiv. 23 ff.) : " And I will set up one shep- 
 herd over them and he shall feed them, even my servant 
 David ;^he shall feed them and he shall be their shep- 
 herd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my ser- 
 vant David a prince among them; I, the Lord, have 
 spoken it. And I will make with them a covenant of 
 peace." 
 
 Ezekiel does not speak of a Messiah-King ; David is 
 prince, the first among equals in the kingdom of the 
 Lord. With the destruction of the commonwealth of 
 Judah (586 B.C.) and the Babylonian exile the royalistic 
 tendency of the Messianic hopes loses ground, and the 
 idea again widens to its original, universal, and cosmo- 
 political meaning, as we shall see in its subsequent devel- 
 opment. But yet another thing is here to be observed. 
 With Ezekiel it is no longer a branch that is to rise out 
 of the house of David ; it is David himself, who is to be 
 raised up (from the dead). The Messianic idea has 
 again to adapt itself to a new conception. 
 
 The belief stated in Ecclesiastes (xii. 7), " and dust 
 
ORIGIN OF THE BELIEF IN RESURRECTION. 21 
 
 return eth unto dust as it was, but the spirit returneth 
 unto Him who gave it," i.e. 9 the belief in the immortal- 
 ity of the soul, was always held in Israel as a self-evi- 
 dent truth. Among the Parsees of Babylonia they met 
 with a new idea, closely allied to that of immortality, 
 which they seized eagerly; it was that of the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. There must have been tin inner want 
 and urgency for such a ready adoption of a foreign 
 idea, generally so repulsive to Israel, and this we 
 can easily explain. The present generation, despairing 
 of ever seeing the realization of their hopes, yet longing 
 for it witli all their hearts, fondly embraced a concep- 
 tion according to which the fulfillment of their hopes 
 was insured against all casualties. The time of the 
 Messiah is long delayed ; they will probably not live to 
 see it ; but no matter they will all participate in the 
 good things which he will bring about here on earth ; 
 the resurrection of the dead will restore the good and 
 pious of all generations to a new life here on earth.* 
 Ezekiel, in his renowned vision (xxxvii. 1-15), sees the 
 whole nation rise out of their graves and become united 
 
 * It took a long time before this new and foreign conception of 
 immortality, though blended with the so-much-cherished Messi- 
 anic hopes, became the belief of the whole nation. At the time 
 of Jesus there were especially the Sadducees who repudiated 
 resurrection. The Sadducees, satisfied with the aristocratic 
 position they occupied, were not desirous of a new state of things 
 which the Messiah was to bring about, and therefore smilingly 
 and incredulously looked upon the Messianic hopes of the 
 people. But the Pharisees, who were advocating the equality 
 and priestly sanctity of the whole people which, if not now, was 
 to be brought about at the time of the Messiah welcomed the 
 belief in resurrection as a consolation for their present disap- 
 pointment ; wherefore they made it one of their doctrines, which, 
 in the course of time, became a kind of dogma. 
 
22 MESSIANIC IDEA OF ISAIAH II. 
 
 under the one shepherd David, who will lead and feed 
 his flock. 
 
 Ezekiel, discarding the branch that is to rise out of the 
 house of David, speaks of David as of one who is to rise 
 from the dead with all the rest of the righteous; but 
 Isaiah II., the great agitator of the Captivity, who never 
 tires of encouraging the wavering and faint-hearted 
 exiles, now chiding with his deep-cutting sarcasm, now 
 inspiring by the sweet strains of his magnificent poetry, 
 assumes a far loftier position. Neither the house of 
 David nor David is mentioned any longer ; he sees the 
 Messiah in Cyrus, the victorious king of Persia, who 
 will break down Babylonia, Israel's house of bondage, 
 loosen the chains of the captives, set them free, and re- 
 store the old glory of Zion (Isaiah xxxxii. 1 ff.; xlv. 1 
 ff.) : "Thus saith the Lord to his Messiah, to Cyrus, whose 
 right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him ; 
 and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him 
 the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; 
 . that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, who hath 
 called thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. For 
 Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have 
 even called thee by thy name : . . . I am the Lord, 
 and there is none else ; there is no God beside me. I 
 guided thee, though thou hast not known me. That 
 they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the 
 west, that there is none beside me. . . . (xlvii. 4) : 
 "As for our Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts is his name, the 
 Holy One of Israel." He sees the returned exiles with 
 joy and glory come to Zion, and sings (lii. 7 if.), " How 
 beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
 bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ; that bring- 
 eth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation j that 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF ISAIAH II. 23 
 
 saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth ! Thy watchmen shall 
 lift up the voice ; together shall they sing ; for they shall 
 see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion." 
 To him the coming salvation is no longer national, but 
 universal (Ivi. 6 ff.) : " Also the sons of the stranger, 
 that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him and to 
 love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one 
 that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh 
 hold of my covenant ; even them will I bring to my 
 holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of 
 prayer ; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall 
 be accepted upon my altar ; for my house shall be called 
 a house of prayer for all nations. The Lord God, who 
 gathereth the exiled of Israel, saith, Yet will I gather 
 others to him beside those that are gathered to him." 
 
 Alas ! reality did not come up to his beautiful dreams. 
 Indeed, Cyrus permitted Israel to return ; but very few of 
 the Babylonian exiles could be induced to participate in 
 the establishment of the new heavenly kingdom. He 
 had to feel the pangs of hopes long deferred ; still the 
 prophet's confidence in a coming time of universal peace 
 and love and justice was as little shaken as that of the 
 first Isaiah, when disappointed in his Messiah, King 
 Hezekiah. He returns (Ixv. 8-25) to the last hopes of 
 his illustrious predecessor; in the distant future he sees 
 accomplished what his sluggish contemporaries did not 
 desire to gain for themselves. In his last prophecy he 
 .again announces the day of judgment, after which all 
 nations will come up to Jerusalem (Ixvi. 23) : " And it 
 shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, 
 and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to 
 .worship before me, saith the Lord." 
 
 Henceforth David's house, formerly such, a prominent 
 
24 MESSIANIC IDEA OF THE LAST PROPHETS. 
 
 element of the Messianic idea, loses more and more of 
 its importance. Only Haggai and Zechariah III. faintly 
 refer to him, as Zerubbabel, one of the two leaders of the 
 returned exiles, was of David's house. Haggai says 
 (ii. 23) : " On that day," saith the Lord of hosts, 1 will 
 take Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, my servant, saith 
 the Lord, and I will make thee as a seal ; for thee I have 
 chosen, saith the Lord." And Zechariah III. (vi. 12): 
 " And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of 
 Hosts, saying, Behold the man [Zerubbabel] whose name 
 is The Branch, for from under him it shall branch forth, 
 and he shall build the temple of the Lord." It was the 
 restoration of the temple and the Jehovah-cult that was 
 most at the heart of the new generation ; and therefore 
 Zerubbabel, the branch out of the house of David, was 
 overshadowed by Joshua, the son of Yotsadak; the 
 priestly family supersedes the royal ; not the temporal, 
 but the spiritual influence which Israel will exercise over 
 the nations is now emphasized : " when the law shall go 
 forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusa- 
 lem." Yery significant for these changed hopes are the 
 words of the last of the prophets, Malachi. He does not 
 expect a Messiah-King, but a messenger, a forerunner, who 
 is to prepare Israel, or the world, for the great day of the 
 Lord, when he will come and judge and then rule alone. 
 This messenger is no longer the anointed king, the 
 Messiah, but Elijah the prophet (Mai. iv. 5) : " Behold, I 
 will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of 
 the great and dreadful day of the Lord : and he shall 
 turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the 
 hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and 
 smite the earth with ban." 
 
 The history of Israel during the next three hundred 
 
MESSIANIC IDEA OF THE RETURNED EXILES. 25 
 
 years, from the restoration of the second temple to the 
 Maccabean era (500-175 B.C.), shows almost a blank. 
 It was a period of rest and quietude, so necessary for 
 every rejuvenescence. The Jewish colonies in Palestine 
 were too insignificant to aspire to any political impor- 
 tance, and therefore willingly resigned themselves to the 
 supremacy of the great world-powers that superseded 
 each other; they were loyal subjects: first, of the Per- 
 sians; then the Macedonians, under Alexander the 
 Great ; and, after his death, willingly submitted to his 
 successors in Egypt and Syria. The bright hopes which 
 the enthusiastic prophets had upheld were in glaring 
 contrast to their insignificance ; there were too many little 
 practical aims which required all their attention, and no 
 leisure nor inclination was left for dreams of a dim 
 future. Nevertheless, this period of seeming relaxation 
 was well employed. During this time the Mosaic laws 
 and institutions were developed, and became so deeply 
 rooted in the mind and heart of the people, that they, 
 who formerly always relapsed into idolatry, who always 
 needed the chastening rod of the prophets, henceforth 
 showed themselves the most faithful keepers and pre- 
 servers of " the law " and the belief in the one spiritual 
 God of Israel. This faith and law became dearer to 
 them than country and nationality and political impor- 
 tance. Therefore, when Antiochus Epiphanes (176- 
 164 B.C.) threatened to deprive the Jewish colonies in 
 Palestine of this inheritance, the old heroism was re- 
 awakened. Such a time of cruel oppression and perse- 
 cution, followed by glorious victories of the few un- 
 disciplined patriots over the magnificent and dreaded 
 armies of the Syrians, naturally recalled the old Messi- 
 anic hopes of the people. The book of Daniel, written 
 
26 MESSIANIC HOPES DURING 
 
 at that time, interprets the national feeling of those 
 days. To enlist at once the interest of his contempo- 
 raries, the author ascribes his book to a certain Daniel 
 who lived during the Babylonian captivity. The first 
 chapters contain stories and legends apt to encourage 
 the people in their perseverance to obey the law of the 
 Lord, in spite of the oppression and persecution of the 
 rulers, which, the author is convinced, cannot last for- 
 ever. To give a demonstratio ad hominem, he repre- 
 sents the past as well as the future history of Israel in 
 prophetic visions, ascribed to Daniel in Babylonia. 
 Now, since the past has been fulfilled according to 
 these visions, the predictions of the future will undoubt- 
 edly likewise be true (Dan. vii. 7). The four beasts 
 are the four kingdoms of Babylonia, Media, Persia and 
 Macedonia. They destroy each other and vanish, until, 
 on the day of judgment, they are all punished; but 
 then (Dan. vii. 1?, 14), "with the clouds of heaven 
 there came one like the Son of man to the Ancient of 
 Days, and they brought him near before him; and there 
 was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that 
 all people, nations and languages should serve him; his 
 dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
 pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be 
 destroyed." The " Son of Man," who is to come 
 with the clouds of heaven, is only a poetic expression 
 for " the people of Israel," as the explanation given to 
 Daniel explicitly states (vii. 27), "and the kingdom 
 and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under 
 the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the 
 saints of the Most High." 
 
 The Messianic idea had again changed. This time 
 the change effected a return to the original conception 
 
AND AFTER THE MACCABEAN WARS. 27 
 
 of tlie Messianic idea, according to which the people of 
 Israel was to become the savior of the nations, by 
 bringing to them the law of love, justice and righteous- 
 ness, and thus preparing the world for the heavenly king- 
 dom that was to be established here on earth. Similar 
 efforts we notice in former periods (f.i. Isaiah liii. 2 if.) ; 
 but such a conception could be brought home to the 
 heart of the whole people only after the preceding cen- 
 turies of quiet preparation. Henceforth we find the 
 persona] Messiah no longer mentioned ; neither the book 
 of Daniel, the Apocrypha, nor the Sybillines speak of 
 him. But the doctrine that all the good, pious and virtu- 
 ous, who were helping to prepare this heavenly kingdom 
 would surely participate in it, i.e., the doctrine of the 
 resurrection, we find in Daniel, for the first time, 
 authoritatively announced (Dan. xii. 1,2): " and at that 
 time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which 
 standeth for the children of the people ; and there shall 
 be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was 
 a nation even to that same time ; and at that time thy 
 people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found 
 written in the book. And many of them that sleep in 
 the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting 
 life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." 
 
 This ardent desire for the day of judgment, and the 
 heavenly kingdom that was to follow, soon cooled off 
 considerably in the next century under the Macca- 
 bees, when the people enjoyed an unwonted prosperity 
 and independence. We see it best from two striking 
 incidents related in the first book of Maccabees (iv. 46) : 
 "and they laid up the stones [of the altar which the 
 heathen had defiled] in the mountain of the temple, in a 
 convenient place, until there should come a prophet to 
 
28 MESSIANIC HOPES 
 
 show what should be done with them." The same we 
 find again at the election of Simon as high priest and 
 ruler (xiv. 41) : " also that the Jews and priests were 
 well pleased that Simon should be their governor and 
 high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful 
 prophet" Henceforth the formula of the Messianic 
 belief was : " The prophet Elijah will come to spread 
 light and truth, restore everything to its true and proper 
 position, right all those who were wronged, bring near 
 all those that were removed " (Babylonian Talmud Adu- 
 yoth viii. Y). The state of affairs under the Maccabees 
 was considered temporary ; but, as it proved quite satis- 
 factory, the hopes for a different future became more 
 and more theoretical only. 
 
 This, however, changed entirely when Herod seized 
 upon the government (37-4 B.C.) He was of foreign 
 (Idumean) descent ; instead of the lion of Judah, the 
 jackal of Idumea had assumed the power, and, with 
 his craftiness and cunning, was undermining the moun- 
 tain of the Lord. With the same cruelty and un scru- 
 pulousness with which he had extirpated the ruling 
 high-priest family of the Maccabees, he now oppressed 
 the people. To do this securely, he was compelled to 
 lean on the all-powerful Romans, and acknowledge them 
 his and his country's lord and master. Under his suc- 
 cessors, who inherited all of his vices, but none of his 
 virtues, Palestine was made a Roman province, where 
 Roman oppression and greediness vied with that of the 
 Herodians to drive the people to despair. At the time 
 of Jesus, days again came when the Jews of Palestine 
 could think of the future only with trembling and de- 
 spondency. The iron hee] of the Romans was upon 
 their neck; they were prostrated, and had not the power 
 
IMMEDIATELY BEFORE JEStTS. 29 
 
 to rise ; their foremost men, the aristocracy and priestly 
 families, fawned for the oppressor's smiles ; the different 
 parties were in continual controversy and enmity what 
 was yet to be hoped for ? This world was ripe to per- 
 ish, and the new world, of which the prophets had 
 spoken so enthusiastically, if it ever was to come, must 
 now surely come. But it could be brought about only 
 by a strict observance of the Mosaic law, and by con- 
 scientiously living up to it; therefore repentance and 
 greater piety of the whole people were necessary. 
 Prophets like John the Baptist arose, who exhorted the 
 people to repent and return to the Lord, for the king- 
 dom of the Lord was near at hand; enthusiastic fanatics, 
 like Judah of Galilee, the founder of the Zealots party, 
 repudiated the rulers of this world, and declared it sinful 
 to pay tribute to the Romans. Such agitators, with 
 their religious enthusiasm, their burning patriotism, and 
 intense hatred of both native and foreign oppressors, 
 stirred up the common people to a feverish restlessness, 
 and the old hopes for the coming of a Messiah and 
 deliverer were revived. Even of those who led a more 
 quiet and retired life, many were nourishing the fond 
 hope in their bosom that things could not continue this 
 way much longer (Luke ii. 34). This corrupt world 
 must soon perish and the heavenly kingdom commence.* 
 
 * To counteract this excitement among the lower classes, 
 which, under the Roman Government, might become pernicious 
 to the whole nation, the better and more educated were driven 
 bluntly to deny the hope of a Messiah. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 
 99 .) gives no Ies3 an authority than Hillel for the remarkable 
 assertion : "Israel has no longer to expect a Messiah, as he has 
 come already in the days of Hezekiah" ; that is to say, the proph- 
 ecies of Isaiah concerning the Messiah refer to King Hezekiah only. 
 Later generations, who did not understand this timely opposition 
 
30 JESTJ8 CLAIMS THE MESSIAHSHTP. 
 
 The leaders and agitators were confident in their expec- 
 tation, but none of them aspired to more than to prepare 
 the people for the coming of the heavenly kingdom ; the 
 title and office of the Messiah remained vacant, without 
 finding one so bold as to claim it for himself. The first 
 who, after long hesitation and wavering, did claim it 
 was Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 to the wild hopes of the ignorant crowds, censured Hillel for 
 his bold assertion. Rabbi Joseph said, "May the Lord forgive 
 Hillel this error, for did not King Hczckiah live at the time of 
 the first temple ? Yet prophets living at the time of the second 
 temple, for instance, Zechariah, prophesied the coming of the 
 Messiah." This denial of the Messianic hopes by Hillel and his 
 school is very significant and extremely important for a correct 
 conception of the days immediately preceding those of Jesus. 
 
IL 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT LITEEATUKE. 
 
 WHO was Jesus of Nazareth, and what were his aims 
 and claims ? This can only be ascertained from the 
 writings which compose the so-called New Testament ; 
 for all other records which we possess of those days it 
 is very remarkable pass him over with profound silence. 
 Now, turning to these only sources of information, we 
 unfortunately find them so full of contradictions, that, at 
 the first glance, it seems impossible to obtain the truth 
 from such witnesses. No wonder that the verdicts of 
 those who listened to them have been as various as the 
 various dispositions brought to the examination. The 
 orthodox Christian takes every word they say for divinely 
 inspired truth, no matter how impossible it may be ; and 
 " gospel truth" has become proverbial in more than one 
 sense. The skeptic, on the other hand, asserts that 
 truth can never be elicited from such partial testimony, 
 which is but fit matter for mockery and ridicule. 
 Neither of these, however, is a competent judge ; the only 
 competent judge was born in our century. It is critical 
 science ; and, indeed, it is surprising what she has been 
 able to ascertain by merely placing these various wit- 
 nesses on their true standpoint. 
 
 The process by which science arrived at her remarka- 
 ble results is simple enough. She followed her lead- 
 
32 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 
 
 ing principle : to find the truth no matter to what 
 consequences it might lead, or what cherished preju- 
 dices and superstitions might be overthrown. With- 
 out any preconceptions she commenced anew the whole 
 work of examining, comparing and sifting the testi- 
 mony ; and thus, by scruuulously weighing the evi- 
 dence, and laboriously bringing together the minutest 
 data, the perplexing chaos was reduced to order, and 
 the mist that hovered over this most important epoch 
 of the history of mankind was dispelled. The re- 
 sult is, that instead of a supernatural interference of 
 the Divine will, we now see nothing but the natural 
 evolution of certain effects from certain causes; instead 
 of a monotonous unity and harmony between the found- 
 ers of Christianity, we see a very animated struggle for 
 existence between the various parties which the new 
 creed naturally called forth. 
 
 It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the vast 
 amount of talent, labor, and patience required for such 
 researches ; yet, it is but within the last forty years that all 
 this has been achieved. It was in the year 1835 that David 
 Friedrich Strauss published his critical " Life of Jesus," 
 and thereby conclusively showed to every one who was 
 willing to see that the four Gospels contain mostly a web 
 of myth and legend, woven and patterned according to 
 the conceptions of the respective authors, and the require- 
 ments of the time and party to which they belonged. 
 But how are we to trace the different threads and 
 explain the various colors that have been used ? Where 
 are we to get the standard by which to judge their work- 
 manship, and to a certainty distinguish the historical 
 from the legendary ? These perplexing questions were 
 answered effectively by Ferdinand Christian Baur, the 
 
THE FOUR EPISTLES 
 
 *?-.^^ 
 
 ingenious teacher of Strauss. He first called attention 
 to the four epistles of Paul the one to the Romans, the 
 two to the Corinthians, and the one to the Galatians 
 which admit of no doubt concerning their historical 
 authenticity. Examining these letters, written twenty 
 years after the crucifixion (that is, about 50 A.C.), what 
 do we find ? Fierce and animated struggles between 
 two very distinct and outspoken parties of young Chris- 
 tianity. Paul, in all his epistles, contended against anutln-i* 
 gospel and another doctrine, which differed decidedly 
 from what he was teaching to his converts. 
 
 And what was this different gospel ? It was the gos- 
 pel as preached during the time prior to Paul's assuming 
 the office and title of apostle ; it was the gospel as 
 taught to the church in Jerusalem by Peter and John 
 and James, the brother of Jesus ; it was the gospel which 
 the disciples who personally attended Jesus declared to 
 be that of Jesus. Paul's gospel is entirely his own, as 
 he himself declares that he never condescended to learn 
 from man (Gal. i. 12, 16, 17) ; that is to say, from those 
 disciples who personally attended Jesus. Not until the 
 third year of his apostleship was he moved to go from 
 Damascus to Jerusalem. He found the atmosphere of 
 the original church so uncongenial that he kept aloof 
 from it, and only conversed with Peter and James ; and 
 after remaining but two weeks, he departed, somewhat 
 disgusted, to resume his own gospel with renewed vigor 
 in Aritioch. His is the gospel to the heathen world 
 which declares " the law" abolished, and in the epistle 
 to the Galatians even as a hindrance to the true belief 
 in Christ. This doctrine amazed the Jew-Christians in 
 Jerusalem. Many of these frequently came to Antioch, 
 others were purposely sent, and there arose endless 
 
34 THE FOUR EPIBTLES OF PAUL. 
 
 quarrels. Paul's new converts were estranged from him ; 
 and he was represented, by those who ought to know 
 best, as a heretic, whose doctrine was entirely and fun- 
 damentally opposed to that of Jesus, his true disciples 
 and followers. Paul, therefore, to make an end of these 
 vexations, felt constrained to go to Jerusalem, and lay 
 his doctrine and plan of converting the heathen world 
 before Peter, James, and John before " those who 
 seemed to be pillars of the church," or " the very chief- 
 est of the apostles," as he sometimes ironically calls 
 them. After very stormy debates, a compromise was 
 agreed upon (Gal. ii. 7-10) ; they gave him the right 
 hand of fellowship. Paul was to be acknowledged as 
 the apostle of the heathen, while Peter was to remain 
 the apostle of the Je"ws. How weak this compromise 
 was in establishing peace between the two opposing 
 parties, is to be seen from the fact that, very soon after 
 this, Paul was again involved in ugly quarrels, and this 
 time with Peter himself, whom he charges with hypoc- 
 risy (Gal. ii. 11-13): "But when Peter was come to 
 Antioch, I withstood him to the very face, because he 
 was to be blamed. For before that certain came from 
 James he did eat with the Gentiles ; but when they had 
 come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them 
 that were of the circumcision. And the other Jews 
 dissembled likewise with him ; insomuch that Barnabas 
 [his faithful companion] also was carried away with 
 their dissimulation.'' 
 
 How strong and powerful this anti-Pauline party must 
 have been, we may conclude from the influence they ex- 
 erted even in the churches founded by Paul. Not only in 
 Antioch, which could easily be reached from Jerusalem, 
 but also in Corinth, he had the same adversaries and the 
 
EPISTLES OF PAUL. 35 
 
 same struggles. In Corintli was the church which he 
 loved most, loved with :i passion and jealousy that could 
 not be surpassed by the most enamored youth. How 
 often he prays in his epistles (1 Cor. iv. 16; xi. 1), 
 " Wherefore, I beseech you, be ye followers of me ;" how 
 often he assures them (2. Cor. vii. 3), "ye are in our 
 hearts to die and to live with you" ; how he glories in 
 them (1 Cor. ix. 1) : " are not ye my work in the 
 Lord ?" (2 Cor. ii. 4) : " For out of much affliction and 
 anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears ; not 
 that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the 
 love which I have more abundantly unto you." Noth- 
 ing pains him more than that they also should desert him 
 and his gospel. (1 Cor. ix. 2) : " If I be not an apostle 
 unto others, yet doubtless I am to you." (2 Cor. xii. 11) : 
 " I am become a fool in glorying ; ye have compelled me : 
 for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest of the apos- 
 tles, though I be nothing." Yet he has scarcely de- 
 parted and gone to Ephesus, when he again learns how 
 his opponents, even in this his pet church, are becoming 
 stronger and stronger ; there are already many who say 
 "I am of Cephas," i.e., Peter (1 Cor. i. 12). These 
 opponents decry him in every way ; they deny him the 
 title of apostle, and speak of him slightingly as of one 
 Avho has no authority (2 Cor. xii. 11 ; xi. 4-, 12, 18 ff.), 
 while they come well recommended from the very pupils 
 of Jesus in Jerusalem (2 Cor. x. 12 if.) ; they call him 
 the corrupter of the Gospel (2 Cor. x. 2, 7) : " But I 
 beseech you that I may not be bold, when I am present, 
 with that confidence wherewith I think to be bold against 
 some who think of us as if we walked according to the 
 flesh." " If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's, 
 let him of himself think this again, that- as he is Christ's, 
 
36 EPISTLES OF PAUL. 
 
 even so are we Christ's." They mock the bombastic style 
 of his epistles, contrasting it with his personal appearance 
 and heavy speech (2 Cor. x. 10) : " For his letters, they 
 say, are weighty and powerful ; but his bodily presence 
 is weak and his speech contemptible." The bitterness 
 wherewith he defends himself, and entreats his Corin- 
 thians to remain faithful to him, shows how influential 
 his opponents must have been (2 Cor. xi. 2) : " For I 
 am jealous over you with a godly jealousy" (2 Cor. 
 xi. 4 if.) : " For if he that cometh preacheth another 
 Jesus whom we have not preached, or if ye receive 
 another spirit which ye have not received, or another 
 gospel which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear 
 with him. For I suppose I was not a whit behind the 
 very chiefest of the apostles. But though I be rude in 
 speech, yet not in knowledge ; but we have been made 
 thoroughly manifest among you in all things," and so on 
 through the whole chapter. 
 
 The whole burden of his epistle to the Romans a 
 church risen from among the many Jews in Rome, with- 
 out the effort of any of the apostles is nothing but the 
 defence of his doctrine, which declares that the Gospel 
 was sent to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews, and 
 therefore "the law" must be superseded by faith. 
 There were undoubtedly evil reports of him spread 
 among them (Rom. iii. 8), which he wished to dispel be- 
 fore coming to them, as he intended to do after his jour- 
 ney to Jerusalem. He thought he could conciliate his op- 
 ponents in Jerusalem by bringing them the rich contribu- 
 tions he had' gathered from among his heathen converts 
 for the " poor saints " in Jerusalem, as he had promised 
 to do when the compromise (Gal. ii. 10) between him 
 and the original apostles was accomplished, and which, 
 
THE ACTS. 37 
 
 indeed, he very zealously did. He came triumphantly 
 to Jerusalem, but his reception was far from what he 
 expected. The money he brought was called a bait 
 held out by him to the true apostles, that they might 
 acknowledge his title of apostle and admit him to their 
 ranks. Thus, hated by the Jews as an apostate, and by 
 his own church as a heretic, he fell into the hands of 
 the Komans, who brought him first to Csesarea, and then 
 to prison in Rome, from which he was never released. 
 
 This is the plain and simple story of the first genera- 
 tions after Jesus which we read from Paul's epistle. 
 But quite a different story of the same days is offered to 
 us in the Acts, its next-door neighbor. In Paul's epistles 
 everything occurs naturally, without the interference of 
 signs and wonders ; we see and hear real men acting, 
 disputing, reasoning ; all the human passions are brought 
 into play, and a picture is unfolded which corresponds ex- 
 actly to our own daily experiences. But how different in 
 the Acts, which pretends to relate the same events ! 
 There we see angels and spirits, heaven and earth, set in 
 motion to interfere with and participate in the actions of 
 man ; everything appears in the garb of the supernat- 
 ural, marvelous, and miraculous. More yet: the charac- 
 ters of the actors, which in Paul's epistles stand out in 
 such bold relief, how indistinct and unnatural they are 
 rendered in the Acts ! Science could not be in doubt. 
 While Paul's epistles decidedly bear the stamp of truth 
 and reality, just as decidedly do the Acts bear the stamp 
 of a fictitious and artificial narration, made up for certain 
 purposes. 
 
 Every careful reader will at once observe that the 
 Acts are divided into two distinct parts; the first (chap- 
 ters i.-xiii.) having Peter for its hero, and the second 
 
38 THE ACTS. 
 
 ^chapters xiii.-xxviii.), Paul. All the wonders ascribed 
 to Peter in the first part are repeated in the second in 
 a somewhat different way, and ascribed to Paul. Peter, 
 who, according to Paul's epistles, is afraid to keep com- 
 pany with the heathen (Gal. ii. 12), and who, according 
 to the compromise (ibid. 8, 9) was to have the apostleship 
 unto circumcision, is made the apostle of the G-entiles 
 (Acts xv. 7). He and James, whose followers caused 
 Paul so much trouble in Antioch, all at once become the 
 defenders of Paul's doctrine (Acts xv. 8-22), which, it 
 is true, is not stated with the harsh and cutting distinct- 
 ness of Paul's epistles, but gracefully makes the conces- 
 sion, that the heathen converts " should abstain from 
 pollution of idols and from fornication and from things 
 strangled and from blood " (Acts xv. 20, 29) ; that is to 
 say, should observe all those laws which the so-called 
 " stranger of the gate " had to observe among the Jews. 
 On the other hand, Paul's unyielding character and 
 combativeness, his feeling of superiority visible in every 
 word of his epistles, have entirely vanished. Paul (Gal. 
 i. 11-12) says: "But I certify you, brethren, that the 
 Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 
 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught 
 
 ' o 
 
 it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." (Ibid. 15-18) : 
 " But when it pleased God . . .To reveal his Son in 
 me that I might preach him among the heathen ; im- 
 mediately I conferred not with flesh and blood : neither 
 went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles 
 before me," etc. (Gal. ii. 5-6) : " To whom [the original 
 apostles] we gave place by subjection, no, not for an 
 hour, that the truth of the Gospel might continue with 
 you. But of those, who seemed to be somewhat, what- 
 soever they were, it makes no matter to me: God ac- 
 
THE ACTS. 39 
 
 cepteth no man's person ; for they who seemed to be 
 somewhat, in conference added nothing to me." This 
 same Paul is represented in the Acts as humbly and 
 meekly seeking their company, and is very glad to be 
 introduced to them by Barnabas, his sub-apostle (Acts, 
 ix. 26-27) : " And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he 
 assayed to join himself to the disciples ; but they were 
 all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disci- 
 ple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the 
 apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the 
 Lord in the way." Paul, who firmly withstood the de- 
 mand of the Jew -Christians to have his companion Titus 
 circumcised ; who gloried that the other apostles, see- 
 ing his success, had to yield to him (Gal. ii. 3-9), is made 
 meekly to submit to the demands of the conference ; and, 
 by a kind of dissimulation, to pacify the cries of the 
 people (Acts. xxi. 18-26). 
 
 It is evident that such an intentional transformation 
 of characters can only have been undertaken to serve 
 certain purposes, which we now perfectly understand- 
 It is this: ever since Paul had commenced his mission 
 to the heathen, with declaring " the law " [i.e., Judaism] 
 not only as supplanted, but as adverse to what he con- 
 ceived Christianity to be, the original apostles stood 
 aghast ; there was nothing which could bridge the gulf 
 between their Christianity as received from Jesus, and 
 that as thought by Paul. Paul's immense success with 
 the Gentiles, however, commanded respect, and gained 
 him toleration with the moderates. But the extremists 
 hated him with the most bitter hatred, and ascribed to 
 him the worst that they could think of (we have an exam- 
 ple of this spirit in the Kevelations). Epithets were given 
 to him like Balaam, sorcerer, corrupter ; travesties were 
 
40 THE ACTS. 
 
 fabricated to make him hateful and ridiculous, of which 
 the best known was that, where Paul appears in the 
 guise of the Samaritan sorcerer Simon. It is a whole 
 romance which finally tells how Simon offers to Peter 
 many treasures, as a bribe to receive him among the 
 apostles, but is put to shame by Peter. Everybody 
 can here recognize Paul, who, like the Samaritans, was 
 teaching a religion half Jewish and half heathenish; 
 whose miracles were but sorcery ; and who brought rich 
 gifts to Jerusalem from his converted heathens, which, 
 instead of being gratefully received, were rejected. 
 
 This anti-Pauline party was powerful during the first 
 century after Jesus, and penetrated even into the 
 churches founded by Paul himself. But after the de- 
 struction of the temple and Jerusalem, when the Jew- 
 Christians gave up their hopes and expectations of seeing 
 Jerusalem, the capital of the world, to which Jesus was 
 to come down with the clouds of heaven, and reign for- 
 ever over both Jews and Gentiles ; when the conversion 
 of all the Jews was to be given up as hopeless, while so 
 many heathen were joining : there began a reaction, and 
 the Pauline doctrine came into ascendancy, the more the 
 Jew-Christian influence declined. 
 
 Still, a party does not die out in a day, especially a 
 religious party. A compromise was to be made, and 
 this compromise was accomplished in a remarkably skill- 
 ful manner by the author of the Acts. According to his 
 representation of the past (he wrote at the beginning of 
 the second century about 110 A.C.), not only Paul but 
 Peter, the representative of Jew-Christianity, was like- 
 wise the apostle of the heathen ; not only Paul; but 
 Peter likewise, receives the revelation of the abolition 
 of the law, and the election of the heathen (Acts x). 
 
THE ACTS. 41 
 
 Both are made of equal importance ; to both the same 
 miracles are ascribed ; as friends and brothers they 
 now go hand in hand ; and it is no wonder that soon 
 all of the more important churches boast of being 
 founded by both these leading apostles, Peter and Paul. 
 Their dispute in Antioch is entirely omitted, and in its 
 place a dispute, which Paul is said to have had with 
 Barnabas, his most faithful follower, is inserted (Acts 
 xv. 39). The current story of the Samaritan sorcerer 
 Simon, whom Peter punishes, is told of another Simon, 
 and introduced (Acts viii. 13-24) before Paul enters the 
 arena. The Jew- Christians could now be satisfied ; their 
 own apostle had stood up for the doctrines they repud- 
 iated, which doctrines, greatly modified, were no longer 
 set forth with that opinion ativeness as in Paul's epistles ; 
 neither was Paul a heretic, but a true apostle, like James 
 and John and Peter ; why should they not yield and com- 
 bine with the Paulines ? There is no jarring, no strife, 
 no contention between these apostles ; there is nothing 
 but harmony and brotherhood, and the foundation of 
 the Catholic Church is laid. 
 
 The secret of all the contradictions between Paul's 
 epistles and the Acts is disclosed. We now clearly see 
 that only from Paul's epistles can we learn the his- 
 torical facts ; but on this account we shall by no means 
 ill-humoredly call the author of the Acts a falsifier of his- 
 tory ; his purpose was not to write history, but to pacify, 
 to conciliate, and to compromise. How difficult and 
 delicate his task must have been we can learn from the 
 vehemence of the spirit that opposed him. Fortunately 
 the writings of the New Testament have preserved a 
 specimen of this spirit in the Revelation. 
 
42 THE REVELATION. 
 
 But what can we make out of the Revelation? A 
 book which seems rather to conceal than to reveal its 
 real meaning and intent. Yet, when we consider the 
 strange fate of this book (which, during the first genera- 
 tions after its appearance, was so much loved and so 
 well understood by its numerous readers, while later 
 generations misused it for their own fantastic dreams, or 
 treated it so contemptuously as, for instance, Luther 
 that they almost threw it out of the canon), we 
 surmise that, if the key to its secrets were found, it 
 would again become both intelligible and instructive. 
 The great merit of modern science is strikingly shown 
 in the ease with which she removed the seals that closed 
 this book to our understanding. As long as the Apoc- 
 alypse' was taken for a revelation of the future, it re- 
 mained as dark and unintelligible as the future itself ; but 
 as soon as science looked within its pages for a revela- 
 tion of its own time, it became marvelously clear and 
 instructive; so much so that the date of its composition 
 could be defined within a few months. 
 
 When the author of the Apocalypse writes (xvii. 9), 
 " And here is the mind which has wisdom," he surely 
 did not think of modern science ; nevertheless, this is 
 the mind which has the wisdom to understand him when 
 he continues, " The seven heads are seven mountains, 
 on which the woman sitteth," that this woman is none 
 else. but Borne, as he explains (xvii. 18): "And the 
 woman whom thou sawest is that great city which reign- 
 eth over the kings of the earth." It is Home during the 
 first persecution of the Christians under Nero in the 
 year 64 A.C., when he says (xvii. 6) : " And I saw the 
 woman drunken with the blood of the saints and of 
 the martyrs of Jesus." It is Rome at the time of Galba 
 
THE REVELATION. 43 
 
 when he says (xvii. 10) : " And there are seven kings ; 
 five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come" 
 (Augustus, Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Yes- 
 pasianus). He writes during the time of Galba, who 
 reigned from July, 68 to January, 69, but he also 
 knows Galba's successor Yespasianus, whom he ex- 
 pects to reign but a short time, viz., three years and a 
 half; then Nero, his Antichrist, will return to usher in 
 the glory and kingdom of Christ. He writes immedi- 
 ately before the great catastrophe in the history of 
 Israel. The country of Palestine was subdued and 
 devastated by the Romans ; Jerusalem alone was left, 
 and this also was daily threatened with the iinal blow 
 from the rude conqueror's hand. The Jew-Christians 
 had fled at the approaching danger over the Jordan, but 
 the author of the Apocalypse, in his own way, partici- 
 pates in the wild enthusiasm and extravagant hopes of 
 the heroic defenders of Jerusalem, who, to the very last, 
 expected to see their holy city, or at least the temple, 
 miraculously saved from the hands of the Gentiles. The 
 author of the Apocalypse also has implicit trust in the 
 miraculous preservation of the holy city and the temple. 
 The key to the book is given (xiii. 18) where it is said : 
 "Let him that has understanding count the number of 
 the beast; for it is the number of a man, and his num- 
 ber is six hundred threescore and six." According to 
 the custom of his days, the author of the Apocalypse uses 
 the letters in their numerical value, and summing up the 
 numerical value of the Greek letters contained in " Caesar 
 Nero" we get six hundred and sixty-six. This Nero, 
 his Antichrist, is the hero of his poem. It is well 
 known that the belief was generally entertained by the 
 common people that Nero, who was murdered in a 
 
44 THE . REVELATION. 
 
 revolt of his indignant people, had escaped to the Par- 
 thians and would soon return to take vengeance on his 
 rebellious Romans. According to this fable, which the 
 author of the Apocalypse accepts as undoubtedly true, 
 he has his visions of Nero who (xvii. 8) " was and is 
 not, and yet is " (xvii. 11) : " And the beast that was 
 and is not, even he is the eighth [king] and is of the 
 seven." His theory is : Nero is not dead, but gone to 
 the ten kings of the Parthians, who hate the whore; 
 with these ten kings he will soon return, assume again 
 the Roman empire, and take vengeance on Rome (xvii. 
 16) : " And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the 
 beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her 
 desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn 
 her with fire." After the destruction of Rome (chapter 
 xviii.), Nero, i.e., Antichrist, will make war against the 
 holy city Jerusalem; but the heavens open, Christ 
 appears with his heavenly hosts, Antichrist is thrown 
 into the bottomless pit, and the millennium begins (chap- 
 ter xix). The righteous, i.e., those who suffered and 
 died for the name of Jesus, will be resurrected and live 
 forever. After a thousand years Antichrist will again 
 break loose for a little while, and, with Gog and Magog 
 (i.e., the German tribes), make war against the saints. 
 But fire will come down from heaven and destroy his 
 hosts. Then a general resurrection will take place, the 
 new heaven and the new earth will be founded, the new 
 Jerusalem with all its splendor will come down from 
 heaven, and God will reign and be its everlasting sun 
 according to Isaiah (Ix. 19-21). 
 
 The aim and object of the Revelation is to give comfort 
 and assurance to the believers who, in the midst of the 
 hardships that had come over them on account of the 
 
THE REVELATION. 45 
 
 persecutions under Nero, almost despaired (ii. 26; iii. 
 21; xiv. 12-13). For their faithful endurance he prom- 
 ises the reward which is soon to come, if they only per- 
 severe (xx. 4 ; xxii. 12). 
 
 We know that of all his prophecies not one was ful- 
 filled : instead of Nero, Titus was the eighth king ; instead 
 of the expected miraculous salvation, it was the utter 
 destruction of Jerusalem which history had to record ; 
 Jerusalem became not the capital of the world, hut was 
 leveled to the ground ; nor was Rome leveled to the 
 ground, but retained her government over the world. 
 Christianity, indeed, persevered, and by its perseverance 
 became the great ruling power of the world, without, 
 however, introducing the celestial Jerusalem, the em- 
 pire of peace, love, and good-will. Nevertheless, these 
 prophecies are very instructive, in so far as they show 
 us the hopes and expectations of the early Christians 
 and the scope of their faith. The author is apparently 
 a Jew-Christian, very familiar with the Jewish scrip- 
 tures and Jewish traditions : his whole imagery is taken 
 from the prophets, the Psalms, and the book of Daniel, 
 only it is more extravagant and flighty, as that of every 
 imitator. But still more instructive is the vigorous war- 
 fare which he wages against Paul and his adherents. 
 The eradication of the Pauline errors is so much at his 
 heart that he opens his revelation with an address to 
 the seven principal churches to warn them against this 
 heresy (ii. 2). He lauds the church of Ephesus because 
 she cannot bear those who are evil ; "and thou hast 
 tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and 
 hast found them liars," which corresponds to I. Cor. 
 ix. 2, where Paul says, " If I be not an apostle unto 
 others, yet doubtless I am to you," and to 1 Cor. xvi. 
 
46 THE KEVELATION. 
 
 9, where he says of Ephesus, " there are many adversa- 
 ries." Paul's permission to his converts (I. Cor. x. 25 ff.) 
 to eat of the sacrifices of idols and whatever is sold in the 
 shambles, he calls (Rev. ii. 14) the doctrine of Balaam, 
 who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before 
 the children of Israel ; and (ii. 20) Paul is likened to 
 " that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a proph- 
 etess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit 
 fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols, 
 etc. The followers of this Balaam, i.e., Paul, who are 
 called Nicolaitanes (for Nicolaus is but the Greek trans- 
 lation of the Hebrew Balaam ; both mean destroyer or 
 corrupter of the people), are hateful to his soul (2 Cor. vi. 
 15) ; they are of the synagogue of Satan, and not Jews ; 
 for to the author of the Apocalypse a true Jew is syn- 
 onymous with a true Christian (ii. 9) : "I know the 
 blasphemy of those which say they are Jews, and are 
 not, but are the synagogue of Satan" (iii. 9) : " Behold, 
 I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say 
 they are Jews, and are not, but do lie." Among 
 the names of the twelve apostles engraved on the foun- 
 dation of his new Jerusalem the name of Paul has no 
 place (xxi. 14). The false prophet who worships the em- 
 pire of Nero, and with him is " cast alive into a lake of 
 fire burning with brimstone " (xvi. 13 ; xix. 20 ; xx. 10), 
 has many traits of Paul, who is said " to work miracles 
 by the spirit of devils, and going forth unto the kings of 
 the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the 
 battle of that great day of God Almighty" (xvi. 14). 
 The author of the Apocalypse firmly believes that the 
 Messiah will come especially for the twelve tribes of 
 Israel (vii. 4 ff.), and then (vii. 9) for the promiscuous 
 crowd of all the other nations. His Messiah is that 
 
THE REVELATION. 47 
 
 of the Jewish tradition (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 
 54, a / Nedarim 39, ), whose name belongs to the seven 
 things created before the world, and is stored away for 
 the appointed time, therefore the author of the Apoc- 
 alypse speaks (iii. 12) " of the new name that will be 
 given to the Messiah " (xix. 12): " it is the name that no 
 man knew but himself;" and, according to the rabbini- 
 cal explanation of Psalrn Ixxii. 17, " his name shall be 
 forever" ; the author of the Apocalypse calls his 
 Messiah the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
 ending. He is proud of being a Jew ; his Judaism is 
 only distinguished by the belief in Jesus as the Messiah, 
 who has come, died, risen from the dead as the first of 
 all men, and who will soon reappear, when the world 
 that is to come will commence. 
 
 Thus the book of Revelation which, next to the 
 epistles of Paul, is the oldest document of Christianity. 
 It represents that Christianity which was taught by the 
 immediate followers and personal disciples of Jesus, who 
 were called Jew-Christians because they scrupulously 
 observed all the laws and customs of the Jews, in con- 
 tradistinction to the Paulines, who disregarded the 
 Tewish laws. Their prerogative of being the true dis- 
 feiples of Jesus made the Jew-Christians during the first 
 generations too strong and powerful for Paul and his 
 doctrines. In the course of time, however, various cir- 
 cumstances so worked together that they had to submit. 
 The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was a 
 severe shock to their hopes and doctrines; they had lost 
 their spiritual center, and, from the very beginning but 
 few in numbers, they could no longer successfully contend 
 against the numerous Paulines, especially when Gnos- 
 ticism also combined with the Paulines to oppose them. 
 
4:8 GNOSTICISM. 
 
 What was Gnosticism ? It was this : the faith in the 
 Messiah who had come found more numerous adherents 
 among the Jews outside of Palestine than in Palestine. 
 The Jews in Palestine, oppressed by the Roman yoke 
 and struggling to maintain their commonwealth, winch 
 was crumbling to pieces under the continued batterings 
 of the relentless aggressor, could not believe that the 
 Messiah, the universal deliverer, had come, though they 
 expected him hourly. What they hoped of the Messiah 
 had not come to pass ; they had to help themselves as 
 best they could, and not give way to the vain dream that 
 all that was to be expected was done and accomplished. 
 It was different with the many Jews scattered through- 
 out Asia, Egypt, Greece ; in fact, through the whole 
 Roman empire. These always looked to Jerusalem and 
 Palestine with great concern, but in the gigantic strug- 
 gle of their Palestinian brethren against Rome they 
 were mere lookers-on ; they were outside of the storm, 
 and in comparative sunshine; with them the belief " the 
 Messiah has come " was not so inconsistent with reality 
 as in Palestine. The glowing accounts which enthus- 
 iastic admirers brought to them, from their beloved 
 Palestine, of the many miracles and wonders performed 
 by the Messiah were by far more effective than the 
 dull, commonplace facts which the Palestinians them- 
 selves had witnessed, and which, almost unobserved, 
 had occurred in their troubled life. All this, com- 
 bined with the obscure perception of Judaism prev- 
 alent among the foreign-born Jews, especially those of 
 Egypt and Asia Minor, was a powerful motive for their 
 more ready acceptance of the new faith. For a long 
 time anterior to this period, the foreign Jews had lost 
 the knowledge ol the Hebrew language, and knew their 
 
GNOSTICISM. 49 
 
 holy writings only from the Greek translation, the so- 
 called Septuagint ; they were, furthermore, strongly 
 imbued with the prevailing Greek philosophy, which 
 more or less influenced their Judaism. The main fea- 
 ture of this modified Greek Judaism was, that they 
 transgressed the sublime behest, " Thou shalt make unto 
 thee no image " (of God). It is true, their image was 
 not material, for this their culture was too far advanced, 
 but they had a spiritual image of God which they called 
 " Logos." Their conception was, that God is too ex- 
 alted above this material and physical world to have 
 any connection with it. The Logos, an emanation of 
 God, or, as Philo, the highest representative of this phil- 
 osophy, poetically calls it, the " Monogenes " the only 
 begotten of God, was he who created this world and 
 preserves it. With Philo the Logos is but an abstract 
 idea which finds its analogy in the anthropomorphic 
 Scripture expression " word, or glory of God ;" but very 
 soon it was clothed with a personality and became a 
 being of itself. 
 
 This Alexandrian mysticism had prepared the ground 
 for the reception of the new idea " the Messiah has 
 come," and very soon impregnated it with its own pe- 
 culiarities. According to the traditions, the Messiah 
 was to bring about or create a new world ; then, of 
 course, he must be the Logos by whom worlds are cre- 
 ated. If this be so, the Messiah cannot be the Branch 
 out of the house of David ; he cannot be the Son of Man 
 he is the Son of God, and, though born of a human 
 mother, he was begotten of God. Thus he came into 
 this world ; but how did he get out of it ? According 
 to the Jewish conception, the Messiah was but a man 
 with higher gifts and endowments, a means in the hand 
 
50 GNOSTICISM. 
 
 of God for the salvation of his people and the world ; as 
 such he could die, rise again, and with his resurrection 
 introduse the new world over which he was to rule. But 
 how, according to this Gnostic idea, can a divine spirit be 
 put to death by the hand of man ? Of course this is im- 
 possible ; but he can give himself as a sacrifice. This he 
 did, and had to do ; for the old world, and all mankind, 
 were corrupted, and had to perish. If this world was 
 corrupted, the germ of corruption must have existed in 
 the first Adam ; for, according to this doctrine of 
 emanation, corruption can come only from a corrupt 
 being. Adam did sin, and by his sin all mankind has 
 fallen, is suffering, and was to have perished. But did 
 it perish ? No, it did not. It did not perish for the 
 reason only that the Logos, the creator of the first 
 Adam and all mankind, gave himself up as a sacrifice. 
 Thereby everything necessary was done ; by his suffer- 
 ing he took away the sin from all who believe in him ; 
 there is nothing further to be expected ; the plan of sal- 
 vation is completed. 
 
 This was Gnosticism, just as much opposed to the be- 
 lief of the Jew-Christians and the Paulines as to that of 
 the Jews. For the Jew-Christians and Paulines, much 
 as they differed in regard to the continued validity of 
 the law, both agreed in this : that they surely expected 
 to see the resurrected Christ coming down with the 
 clouds of heaven to usher in the new world, over which 
 he was to rule supreme for evermore, while the Gnostics 
 had no room in their philosophy for a second descent of 
 the Logos. 
 
 New contentions and new struggles arose, of which the 
 New Testament has preserved some records in the writ- 
 ings ascribed to the Apostle John, viz.: the fourth Gospel 
 
ST. JOHN. 51 
 
 mid the three epistles of John. But the Apocalypse, 
 breathing a spirit diametrically opposed to that of the 
 fourth Gospel and the three epistles of John, is like- 
 wise ascribed to John, the apostle. How are we to de- 
 cide between these contradictory claims? Simply thus: 
 Since it appears very probable that the Apocalypse, 
 written about 69 A.C., if not the work of John who 
 is very characteristically described (Mark iii. 17) as "the 
 thunderer " is surely the work of one of his immedi- 
 ate disciples, it is impossible that the fourth Gospel, 
 written not before 160 A. C. or 170 A. C. (for it was 
 entirely unknown before that time) can have the same 
 author, even if the divergence of their views and doc- 
 trines were not as decided and irreconcilable as indeed 
 it is. The motive that induced the writer of the fourth 
 Gospel to assume the name of the Apostle John is very 
 obvious. Of the three apostles, James, John, and Peter, 
 those " pillars of the early Church," James was known 
 as the head of the church in Jerusalem, and Peter as 
 the "apostle unto circumcision," that is, of Jew-Chris- 
 tianity. Of John the succeeding generations knew 
 very little, and legend soon metamorphosed his charac- 
 ter, and surrounded him with a halo of wonders and 
 miracles. It was said that John reached a wonderful 
 old age, the latter part of which he spent in Ephesus; 
 there he was zealously working for the propagation of 
 Christianity. Occupied in continual circuits, he organ- 
 ized congregations, installed priests, and consecrated 
 bishops. Of the many wonderful things which he is 
 said to have performed the best known are : how he 
 converted a noble young heathen, and afterward saved 
 him a second time from perdition, when he had joined a 
 robber band; how he was thrown into boiling oil, at the 
 
52 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN. 
 
 command of a Roman emperor, but emerged from this 
 fiery baptism with renewed strength and vigor ; how he 
 was banished to the Isle of Patrnos, where he received 
 his revelation, but returned again to Ephesus to resume 
 his old labors. At last he was so old that he could no 
 longer walk, and he was carried to the church, where his 
 sermons always consisted of the same few words, " Lit- 
 tle children, love each other." He lived so long that it 
 was said he could not die nntil Jesus should reappear 
 (John xxi. 22). Isidorus Hispalensis tells us that when 
 John felt his time to be come, he ordered a grave to be 
 dug, took leave solemnly of his followers and disciples, 
 and descended into it. Augustine knew that he was 
 only sleeping there, waiting for the second advent of 
 Christ, which was proved by the perpetual heaving of the 
 sod over his grave, caused by the drawing of his breath. 
 This transfigured John could easily be made a successful 
 rival of James and Peter, and the writer of the fourth 
 Gospel declares him very ostentatiously (xxi. 15-22) to be 
 the favorite disciple of Jesus, being preferred to Peter. 
 At the same time there was too little known of John 
 to exclude the possibility of ascribing to him the pecul- 
 iar Gnostic doctrines which the writer of the fourth 
 Gospel wishes to set forth. The first sentence is the 
 tenor of the whole book: "In the beginning was the 
 Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was 
 God." Jesus is no longer a man, but God ; he does not 
 die, but voluntarily lays down his life to take it again 
 (x. 15-18). The historical fact that Jesus came of the 
 Jews, that " salvation is of the Jews " (iv. 22), cannot 
 be denied, but it is merely accidental. To the writer 
 of the fourth Gospel, Judaism is something entirely 
 foreign ; of the Jewish laws and festivals Jesus contin- 
 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN. 53 
 
 ually speaks as your laws, your passover (vii. 19-22 ; 
 viii. 17; x. 34). The separation of Christianity from 
 Judaism is complete, and the rancor at the persistent 
 unbelief of the Jews is everywhere apparent. Jesus' 
 activity here on earth, therefore, very fitly closes with a 
 strong rebuke of this confirmed unbelief (xii. 37 if.) of the 
 Jews, who are unceremoniously called the children of 
 the devil (viii. 44), who will not receive the truth ; while 
 the Samaritans and other Gentiles willingly flock to 
 Jesus (iv. 30). The real purpose of the book is to set 
 forth the new dogmas which Gnosticism had engrafted 
 upon young Christianity. To accomplish this more 
 effectually it seemed most advantageous to cast them 
 into the shape of a fictitious narrative of the life of Je- 
 sus, into which all the stories of the current tradition 
 which suited the purpose were taken up ; others were 
 made more suitable or omitted entirely. As the book 
 commences with the new doctrine of the Logos, so does 
 it conclude (xviii. 36) with the announcement of Jesus 
 which is nowhere else to be found, "My kingdom is not 
 of this world " ; and, very significantly, Jesus expires 
 (xix. 30) with "Tetelestai!" it is finished the old is 
 accomplished, the new world has commenced. 
 
 As the Acts endeavor to lay the foundation for a 
 Catholic Church, so does the fourth Gospel endeavor to 
 establish the Christian dogmas. Both are valuable 
 documents for a better knowledge of the first genera- 
 tions after Jesus, but neither is authentic in regard to 
 the life of Jesus 
 
 By this time the reader will have perceived that the 
 perfect harmony and fraternal feeling generally supposed 
 to have existed between the founders and early propaga- 
 tors of Christianity are chimeras which must be assigned 
 
54: EFISTLE OF JAMES. 
 
 to the place where they properly belong that of myth- 
 ology. The truth which may be learned even from 
 those records which are in everybody's hands the New 
 Testament writings is, that there were lively conten- 
 tions, bitter enmities, and intense hatreds between the 
 three great parties, the Jew-Christians, the Paulines, and 
 the Gnostics, of whom each claimed to be in possession 
 of the only pure and undefiled truth of Christianity. 
 But Christianity was yet in its infancy, had yet to battle 
 for existence, and all parties soon felt the truth that "a 
 house divided against itself cannot stand." The prose- 
 cutions of early Christianity also proved very salutary ; 
 they were like the storms which compel the young tree 
 to concentrate all its forces from within and try to strike 
 a deeper root ; they were powerful incentives to bring 
 the various parties closer together. The extremes (the 
 Ebionites on the side of the Jew-Christians, the Montan- 
 ists on the side of the Paulines and Gnostics) were grad- 
 ually left behind, while the intermediate stages tended to 
 concentrate on a common platform, the planks of which 
 were carefully selected from all parties, so that each could 
 easily imagine that it stood on its own principles. That 
 this could not have been achieved in one generation is 
 natural; the wide distance which separated these par- 
 ties had to be traversed step by step, and the traces of 
 this gradual advance toward each other are well pre- 
 served in the New Testament literature. The epistle as- 
 cribed to James, the head of the church of Jerusalem, the 
 highest exponent of Jew-Christianity, gives us a striking 
 instance. The author, of course, is a very pronounced 
 Jew-Christian, and passionately refutes the Pauline doc- 
 trine of faith and not works. (James ii. 14): "What 
 does it profit, my brethren, though a man say he has 
 
EPISTLES OF PETER. 55 
 
 faith, and have no works ? Can faith save him ? " Paul's 
 argument (Rom. iv ; Gal. iii. 6 ff.), by which he labors 
 to show that it was Abraham's belief alone that was 
 accounted to him for righteousness, is skillfully refuted 
 (James ii. 20-23 ft'.): " But wilt tliou know, O vain man, 
 that faith without works is dead ? Was not Abraham, 
 our father, justified by works when he offered Isaac, his 
 son, upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with 
 his works, and by works was faith made perfect?" Nev- 
 ertheless, almost involuntarily, he yields to Paul in so 
 far as to acknowledge " a royal law," " a perfect law 
 of liberty" distinguished from the common meaning of 
 " the law." 
 
 More decidedly we find Jew-Christianity giving way 
 to Paulinism in the epistles ascribed to Peter, also an 
 apostle of Jew-Christianity, but not of such an unyield- 
 ing character that he could not be made to look more 
 favorably upon heathen Christianity than James. The 
 scope of these epistles is best seen from I. Peter v. 12, 
 where it is stated that this letter was sent by Silvanus, 
 the well-known companion of Paul, who is called " a 
 faithful brother"; furthermore, the object of this epistle 
 is to testify that they (the heathen) are standing in the 
 true grace of God. It was written at a time when cir- 
 cumcision, so obstinately defended against Paul, had been 
 given up by Jew-Christianity, and was no longer consid- 
 ered obligatory for heathen converts ; baptism was now 
 generally acknowledged as sufficiently effectual to re- 
 move the " old Adam." This could be conceded to the 
 Paulines, even from a strictly Jewish standpoint, as 
 the Jews themselves, under certain circumstances, dis- 
 pensed with circumcision, and acknowledged the immer- 
 sion of a convert as sufficient to introduce him into 
 
56 EPISTLES TO THE EPHESIAKS AND COLOSSIAtfS. 
 
 Judaism (Talmud, Yebamoth, 46 a ; Josephus, Antiq., 
 Book xx., chap, ii., sec. 4 ; Bereshith Kabbah, chap. 46). 
 The author of I. Peter, therefore, expressly says (iii. 21), 
 " even baptism does also now save us by the resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ." Still more decidedly leaning toward 
 Paulinism is the second epistle of Peter, where (iii. 15, 
 16) an explicit testimony of orthodoxy is given to " the 
 beloved brother Paul," and it is intimated that those doc- 
 trines which are so odious to Jew-Christianity are not to 
 be ascribed to Paul, but to the ignorant readers of his 
 epistles. Paul, in his epistles, speaks of the very same 
 things of which the author does, but there are in Paul's 
 epistles " some things hard to be understood, which they 
 that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also 
 the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction." 
 
 On the other hand, Paulinism likewise was ready to 
 make concessions, and, if possible, meet half-way its 
 Jew-Christian brethren. That the Acts very successfully 
 pursue this course, we have already seen. The author did 
 not intend to write the history of the past generations ; he 
 intended to harmonize all the discords transmitted from 
 the past generations. Not with the same effect, though 
 with the same good-will, do the authors of the epistles 
 to the Ephesians and Colossians, which are ascribed to 
 Paul, labor for the same cause. Conciliation and unifica- 
 tion of those who are separated is the main object of 
 these epistles (Eph. iv. 14): "That we henceforth be 
 no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about 
 with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and 
 cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive." 
 Paul's Christology is accordingly modified. It is no 
 longer faith, but " grace which saves through faith (Eph. 
 ii. 5-8). Works are not absolutely rejected, but they 
 
EPISTLE TO THE HEBl.'KWS. 57 
 
 are predestined (Eph. ii. 10) : " For we are his work- 
 manship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, 
 which God hath before ordained that we should walk in 
 them." Circumcision is abolished, but baptism is ac- 
 knowledged as necessary to symbolize the new man 
 (Col. ii. 11, 12; Eph. ii 11 ft., etc.) 
 
 More outspoken than this leaning toward Jew-Chris- 
 tianity is that toward Gnosticism (Eph. iii. 9 ; Col. i. 15, 
 16); and, naturally, Gnosticism also inclined more and 
 more toward Paulinism, of which the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews gives evidence. The author of this epistle 
 moves entirely within the Alexandrian mysticism, the 
 strength of which consists in allegorical explanations of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. By means of these he endeav- 
 ors to prove Paul's doctrine of the abolition of the law 
 (Heb. viii. 13) : " In that he saith (Jeremiah xxxi.31 if.): 
 a new covenant [will I make with the house of Israel], 
 he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth 
 and waxeth old is ready to vanish away." But the rea- 
 son of this abolition is not the Pauline, because the law 
 is a curse ; it is the Gnostic one, that, because the Logos 
 has given himself as a sacrifice, therefore (Heb. vii. 12), 
 " since the priesthood has been changed, there is made 
 of necessity a change also of the law." The differences 
 between Judaism and Christianity are not irreconcilable. 
 Judaism, in its laws and institutions, was the symbol of 
 Christianity that was to come. Especially was this the 
 case with the priesthood ; Christ is the everlasting high 
 priest, not after the order of Aaron, but after the order 
 of Melchisedec (Heb. iv. 14 ; v. 6 ; vi. 20 ; vii. 1 ff.) 
 This high priest has given himself for the sins of those 
 who believe in him, etc. 
 
 This work of conciliation and drawing nearer and 
 
58 SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 
 
 nearer together from all sides is perceptible throughout all 
 the minor writings of the New Testament. And how is it 
 with the first three, the so-culled Synoptic, Gospels, which, 
 setting aside the many variations and contradictions, in 
 the main give the same account of the life of Jesus ? 
 Let us see. In the Gospel of Mark(xvi. 15, 16) the resur- 
 rected Christ announces to his apostles, " Go ye into all 
 the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He 
 that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he 
 that believeth not shall be dammed." How surprising ! 
 What Paul, who never saw or heard Jes-us, said and did, 
 and what those apostles who always were in Jesus' com- 
 pany most strenuously opposed, is here the last behest of 
 Jesus. Belief and baptism, not the works of the law 
 and circumcision, are the essentials of a Christian life, 
 for which all mankind, and not the Jews only, are called. 
 And we hear from Galatians (ii. 9) how, twenty years 
 afterward, Jesus' own brother, James, and Peter and 
 John, most stubbornly oppose this doctrine of Paul, and, 
 after a long dispute, reserve for themselves the preach- 
 ing of the Gospel to the Jews, and insist on circumcision. 
 Even the Acts (xv. 1) tell us that there were, in the orig- 
 inal church of Jerusalem, those who maintained that, 
 " Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses ye 
 cannot be saved " ; and (ibid. xv. 6 ff.) we hear that, as 
 late as that, the apostles and elders had to come together 
 to consider this matter which caused so much dispute. 
 
 According to Matthew ix. 9 and Mark ii. 14, Jesus 
 sits in the midst of publicans and sinners, eating and 
 drinking; the reproach of the Scribes and Pharisees he 
 answers with, " They that are whole have no need of 
 the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to 
 call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." In Luke, 
 
SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 59 
 
 this occurrence is repeated several times (Luke xix.) 
 Jesus chooses the house of Zaccheus, a publican, for his 
 abode, and again answers the grumblers (xix. 9), u This 
 day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also 
 is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man is come to 
 seek and to save that which is lost." Again (Luke xv. 2), 
 Jesus is in the midst of publicans and sinners, and again 
 the Pharisees and Scribes murmur, " This man receiveth 
 sinners, and eateth with them." Jesus retorts by the 
 parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, and 
 the lost son, declaring that " there will be more joy in 
 heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety 
 and nine just persons, which need no repentance." The 
 same idea is set forth in endless variation, the sick and 
 lame and maimed are called to the bridal dinner, because 
 the friends and neighbors refused to come ; the former aro 
 selected and the latter rejected, etc. Luke dwells upon it 
 with special delight ; but how does this accord with the fact 
 that James, Jesus' own brother, considered it as some- 
 thing abominable to eat with the Gentiles (Gal. ii. 12); 
 and Peter, who for a little while forgot himself, has to 
 do penance for doing the very same thing for which 
 Jesus had set the example ? Even according to Acts x., 
 Peter had to receive a special revelation before he 
 would enter the house of a Gentile and eat with him, 
 and, later (Acts xi.), had to defend himself against the 
 accusations of his fellow-church-members in Jerusalem. 
 How strange, if Jesus himself had really acted as de- 
 scribed in the Gospels ! 
 
 According to all three Gospels (Matt. xxiv. 2 ; Mark 
 xiii. 2; Luke xix. 43, 44), Jesus prophesies most pos- 
 itively the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, and 
 the rejection of the Jews as a nation for their unbelief. 
 
60 SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 
 
 And about forty years later, the author of the Revela- 
 tion, who was believed to be John, the disciple most 
 beloved of Jesus, but who surely must have been of high 
 authority, or he could not have spoken to the seven 
 churches of Asia in such an authoritative tone this 
 author of the Revelation (vii. 3 ff.) sees all the tribes of 
 Israel sealed unto the living God as the true believers, 
 and after them, tolerated only, the great multitude of 
 nations " which no man numbers." And (Rev. xi. 2) 
 Jerusalem is and remains the holy city, which the 
 Gentiles may tread under foot for forty and two months, 
 but which shall never fall. 
 
 How is this possible ? How are such palpable and 
 glaring contradictions to be explained ? Science fur- 
 nishes the explanation: Jesus can never have spoken 
 nor acted as the Gospels represent him to have spoken 
 and acted. Even if Luke (i. 2) would not have told us 
 that none of those who were eye-witnesses left anything 
 written of the life of Jesus ; even if all the Gospels would 
 not tell us that they are not the Gospels of, but the Gos- 
 pels according to Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, 
 we would have to infer it from other evidence. The early 
 Christians were not so much concerned about the Christ 
 who had lived and died, as about the Christ who was 
 soon to reappear. Paul, and, long after him, the Church, 
 taught the people to look out and watch for the second 
 coming of Christ, for the world which was soon to come. 
 Now, people who daily expect to see the destruction of 
 this world, will surely not take the trouble of writing 
 history, or leaving faithful records of what has happened 
 in this miserable world to generations which are to have 
 no existence. But supposing the immediate followers 
 and companions of Jesus had been inclined to write his 
 
SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 61 
 
 history, they would not have been able to do it, for they 
 all belonged to the lowest, the illiterate class of society ; 
 they were those of whom the Gospels so often speak : 
 " blessed are the poor in mind, those babes to whom it 
 was revealed what is hidden from the wise." 
 
 This is further corroborated by other data : Until 120 
 A.C. we do not hear of any Gospel. The first isPapias, 
 a disciple of John, who speaks of a collection containing 
 the sayings of Christ which the Apostle Matthew com- 
 piled in the Hebrew language ; but our Greek Gospel 
 according to Matthew cannot be a translation of these say- 
 ings. The same Papias knows of evangelical memorabilia 
 which Mark is said to- have taken down from the dis- 
 courses of Peter, but the description he gives of them 
 plainly shows that they cannot be the Gospel according 
 to Mark. 
 
 There remains not the slightest shadow of doubt that 
 none of the Gospels were composed before the first quar- 
 ter of the second century after Jesus. According to all 
 the evidence now in the hands of critical science, the 
 Gospel according to Mark must have been the first of 
 those in the New Testament, for Luke (i. 1) knew of 
 many gospels that were current before he undertook to 
 write his. That there should have been various rela- 
 tions of the same events is very natural, as the lapse of 
 time gave occasion for modeling these events according 
 to the doctrines and opinions of those who related them. 
 This is confirmed by a closer examination of the Gospels, 
 which shows clearly that all their deviations and contra- 
 dictions are but the consequence of the various doctrines 
 and views held by the various parties we know already 
 so well ; it is easy to see that the author of the Gos- 
 pel according to Matthew was a Jew-Christian, the 
 
62 THE GOSPELS OF MATTHEW AND MARK. 
 
 author of the Gospel according to Mark a somewhat 
 timid, and the author of the Gospel according to Luke a 
 very decided Pauline. 
 
 We said that all indications point to the Gospel of Mark 
 as the first of those in the New Testament, and that its 
 author was a somewhat timid Pauline. Now, the first im- 
 pulse to write a life of Jesus must have been given by 
 the Paulines. The Jew-Christians had the authority of 
 Jesus for their doctrine; the tradition "thus, and thus 
 did Jesus speak and act" was in their possession. 
 This, however, did not hinder the Paulines from differ- 
 ing with them. But if their different opinion was to be 
 the only true one, it must be that of Jesus. How was 
 this to be accomplished ? Very easily. They had only 
 to do what other generations and later centuries, to this 
 very day, were and are doing. Every sect, party, or 
 shading of Christianity ascribes the doctrines peculiarly 
 its own directly to Jesus, whose life and teaching it 
 shapes to correspond to its preconceived ideal. Just 
 the same thing did the Paulines in their day ; and they 
 could not do it more effectively than by writing a life of 
 Jesus. These endeavors of the Paulines to represent 
 the life of Jesus in their light naturally incited the 
 Jew-Christians to do likewise, and thus we have the two 
 Gospels, that according to Mark and that according to 
 Matthew, which must have closely followed each other. 
 A comparison of these two Gospels shows conclusively 
 their different tendencies. 
 
 Matthew claims a decided pre-eminence for Peter, for 
 instance (xvi. 18) : " And I say also unto thee, that thou 
 art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church : 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," which 
 is entirely omitted in Mark (viii. 29). Matthew (xv. 1- 
 
THE GOSPELS OF MATTHEW AND MARK. 63 
 
 20) and Mark (vii. 1-23) relate one and the same story. 
 The disciples of Jesns were lax in some insignificant 
 observances; they ate with unwashed hands, for which 
 they were rebuked by the Pharisees. Jesus justly 
 replies : u not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a 
 man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this 
 defileth a man." The same story is told by Mark, but 
 quite a different meaning is put upon it. In Matthew 
 the meat seems denied to the Pharisees, because eaten 
 with unwashed hands, as he expressly explains it (xv. 
 20) : " These are the things which defile a man ; but to 
 eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man." In Mark 
 this is carefully avoided, and in its place dexterously 
 laid into the mouth of Jesus (Mark vii. 15), " there is 
 nothing from without a man that entering into him can 
 defile him," which agrees perfectly with Paul's permission 
 to his converts " to eat whatever is set before them, and 
 buy unhesitatingly whatever is sold in the shambles" 
 " (1 Cor. x. 25 ff'). Jesus, in speaking of the destruction 
 of the temple, and the hardships that will follow, says, 
 according to Matthew (xxiv. 20) : " But pray ye that your 
 flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day" ; 
 but Mark (xiii. 18) has only " pray ye that your flight 
 be not in the winter," ignoring the Sabbath-day accord- 
 ing to Paul's doctrine. Again, in the same speech 
 ascribed to Jesus by both Matthew and Mark, we do 
 not find in Matthew what is so very important to the 
 Pauline Mark (xiii. 10), ",lnd the Gospel must first be 
 published among all nations." 
 
 These discrepancies could be sliowu in a hundred 
 instances ; but those we have cited will suffice to show 
 that Matthew represents a decided, though already 
 somewhat modified, Jew-Christianity, while Mark is 
 
64 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. 
 
 modestly speaking for Paulinism. In the course of 
 time even this modified Jew-Christianity, as represented 
 in Matthew, ceased to prevail; Paulinism gained more and 
 more ground ; and, to make it a victory sure and irrevo- 
 cable, a compromise, as favorable as possible to its doc- 
 trines, was deemed necessary. The same prudent mind 
 which accomplished this task in the Acts, is to be per- 
 ceived in the Gospel according to Luke; for the author 
 of the Acts is also the author of the third Gospel, as 
 he himself declares in the introduction to the Acts. 
 With the same skillful hand with which in the Acts he 
 adroitly wipes away all unpleasantness and bitterness 
 between Paul and the original apostles, by transforming 
 the history of the first generations after Christ, he 
 undertakes so to shape the life and acts of Jesus that 
 they very strikingly represent the Pauline doctrines 
 without giving offence to the Jew^-Christians. Retain- 
 ing all the main features of the narratives of Matthew 
 and Mark, he deftly takes away every stumbling-block, 
 and complacently smooths over every rough and un- 
 even passage. Whatever is unfavorable to Paulinism 
 is omitted or toned down ; whatever is -favorable is 
 emphasized, repeated with untiring variations, and 
 greatly enlarged upon. 
 
 For instance : Jesus' command (Matt. x. 5), " go not 
 into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the 
 Samaritans enter ye not," is omitted ; the harsh treatment 
 of the Samaritan woman (Matt. xv. 24 ff.), softened down 
 in Mark (vii. 25 ff.), is entirely left out in Luke. What 
 Jesus says of t 1 e law (Matt. v. 18), " for verily I 
 say unto you till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
 one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all 
 be fulfilled," is. rendered by Luke (xvi. 16, IT), " The 
 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. 65 
 
 law and the prophets were until John : since that time 
 the kingdom of God is preached and every man passes 
 into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass 
 than one tittle of the law to fail." (Matt, xxiii. 1-3) : 
 " Then spake Jesus to the multitude and to his disciples, 
 saying, The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; 
 all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that 
 observe and do, but do not after their works, for they 
 say and do not," is rendered in Luke (xx. 45 ff.), " Then 
 in the audience of all the people he said unto his dis- 
 ciples, Beware of the Scribes which desire to walk in 
 long robes, and love greetings in the markets and the 
 highest seats in the synagogues and the chief rooms at 
 feasts," etc. The parable of the rich and the poor man 
 (Luke xvi. 19), originally the property of the Ebionites, 
 and intended to teach the blessedness of poverty by the 
 example of Lazarus, has lost its meaning and is turned 
 against the Jews, who are condemned by their own 
 patriarch, Abraham. 
 
 In the two other Gospels we read that Jesus took the 
 usual route from Galilee to Jerusalem, on the other side 
 of Jordan, through Perea, to avoid Samaria ; but Luke 
 uot only makes him go through this heathen country, so 
 hated by the Jews; he especially selects it as the arena 
 of Jesus' activity, which rivals that in Galilee (Luke ix. 
 51 ; xviii. 35). The speeches and parables of Jesus, 
 while in the country of the Samaritans, are marvelously 
 adapted to justify Paul's doctrine. There, too, that no 
 prerogative be left to the twelve Jew apostles (Luke x.), 
 seventy others are appointed who are sent to the Gen- 
 tiles (seventy, for there were then believed to be so many 
 nations) ; they are obviously preferred, and (x. 17) return 
 with the most favorable reports of their message. When, 
 
66 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. 
 
 in the Revelation (xxi. 14), no room is left for the name 
 of Paul, among the other apostles, to be engraved on the 
 foundation of the new Jerusalem, the names of these 
 seventy are written iu heaven (Luke x. 20). Every sen- 
 tence of Matthew directed against Paul, for instance 
 (Matt. xiii. 25), where the enemy comes and sows tares 
 among the wheat, is omitted ; other sententious passages 
 are dexterously changed ; for instance, in Matthew (vii. 
 21 ff.), Jesus is made to say, " Not every one that says 
 unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven, but those who perform (by work ; the Greek poion 
 leaves no ambiguity) the will of my father which is in 
 heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, 
 have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy 
 name done many wonderful works? And then will 
 I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from 
 me, ye that work iniquity." Here the workers of 
 iniquity are evidently the Paulines, who oppose the per- 
 formance of the divine will by work, and lay all the 
 stress upon prophesying and doing wonderful works. 
 In Luke (xiii. 25 if.) it is somewhat different : " And ye 
 begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, 
 Lord, Lord, open to us, and he shall answer and say 
 unto you, 1 know you not whence you are. Then shall 
 ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy pres- 
 ence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall 
 say, I know you not whence you are, depart from me all 
 ye workers of iniquity." Here all the workers of iniq- 
 uity are those who were continually urging against 
 Paul that they knew the Lord according to the flesh ? 
 that is the Jew-Christians. 
 
 It would lead us too far to show all those little, but so 
 very characteristic and significant, traits that distinguish 
 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. 67 
 
 each of the three Gospels, and by which the authors so 
 skillfully understand how to serve their party principles, 
 while apparently they are telling us one and the same 
 story. With the knowledge of their tendencies, it will 
 now be easy to ascertain how much of historical truth 
 there is left to construe therefrom the historical Jesus of 
 Nazareth. 
 
III. 
 
 JESUS OF NAZAKETH. 
 
 A SCIENTIFIC examination of the Gospels has shown 
 that they were written long after Jesus, when there were 
 no longer any eye-witnesses, and that the motive for 
 their composition was not to give a faithful record of the 
 life of Jesus, but to justify the doctrines and positions of 
 the parties to which their respective authors 1 elonged. 
 With this double bias the sayings and traditions which 
 (Luke i. 2) " they had delivered unto them who from the 
 beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
 word " were collected. Early Christianity was too much 
 Wrapped in the anxious anticipation of the destruction 
 of this world and the second coming of Christ to 
 have any thought left for the Christ that had already 
 been in this world. When, therefore, at the beginning 
 of the second century A.C., the various parties, in order 
 to defend their own position, found it necessary to go 
 back to the life of Jesus, very little was actually known 
 of it. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? The first thirty years of 
 his life were passed in secluded obscurity. Jesus grew 
 up in the simple, quiet home of Joseph the carpenter 
 and- Mary his mother ; and, as the oldest son of a 
 numerous family (Matt. xii. 46 ; xiii. 55, 56 ; Mark iii. 
 31 ; Luke viii. xix.), he soon took up the trade of his 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 69 
 
 father. When he began his short but eventful career, 
 his towns-people were not a little astonished, and ex- 
 claimed (Mark vi. 3) : " Is not this the carpenter, the 
 son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Juda 
 and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us, and they 
 are offended at him." This public career at which his 
 own house and family took offence, lasted only one, 
 according* to others three, years. How much of it could 
 there be known after a hundred years, when Josephus, 
 the historian of those days, who never omits anything 
 wonderful or remarkable which may possibly redound to 
 the glory of his people, and who speaks of many other 
 greatly inferior prophets living about the same time 
 (Jos. Antiq., Book xviii., chap, v., sec. 2 ; Book xx., chap, 
 v., sec. 1) lias not a word to say concerning him ; for it is 
 well known that the passage in Josephus (Book xviii., 
 chap, iii., sec. 3), where allusion is made to him, is a very 
 palpable and disingenuous interpolation. 
 
 Nevertheless there was one infallible guide for the 
 composition of the Gospels. Jesus was the Messiah. 
 If so, then all that the prophets had said of the Messiah, 
 and all which at that time was interpreted into the Scrip- 
 tures about the Messiah, had to be fulfilled in Jesus. 
 Prototypes of such a life were given in the lives of 
 Moses and Elijah, which could easily be copied and 
 enlarged upon. To give one instance: There was noth- 
 ing known of the birth and early life of Jesus. Mark, the 
 oldest and most trustworthy of the Gospels, omits them 
 entirely, and hastens to the one or three years of Jesus' 
 public activity ; but Matthew and Luke give us very 
 detailed particulars of them. Where did they get them ? 
 Well, according to Micah (v. 2), " But thou Bethlehem 
 Ephratah, thougli thou be little among the thousands 
 
70 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me 
 that is to be ruler in Israel," the Messiah was to be born 
 in Bethlehem. It is true the prophet only speaks of a 
 king after the manner of David, who will rise out oi 
 David's house ; but the common explanation of this 
 verse among the Jews of that time was that it meant the 
 Messiah ; the Messiah, therefore, was to be born in Beth- 
 lehem. But Jesus was too well know r n as a Galilean and 
 not a Judean ; he was of Nazareth. How can this be 
 explained ? 
 
 There are two modes of explanation possible. The 
 one is, that Joseph and Mary originally lived in Bethle- 
 hem. And what induced them to move to Nazareth ? 
 Nothing but the danger which threatened the life of the 
 new-born Messiah from the wicked King Herod, just as 
 the life of the new-born Moses, the first savior of Israel, 
 was endangered by the cruel commands of the wicked 
 King Pharaoh. And how did Herod know that the 
 savior of Israel was born ? Why, the same men who, 
 according to the Midrash, (Jalkut, sec. 165) the common 
 popular explanation of the Scriptures advised Pha- 
 raoh of the birth of Moses, also announced the birth of 
 Jesus to Herod, viz. : the magicians. And how did the 
 magicians know ? In the case of Moses they read it in 
 the stars ; they could surely do the same in this case as 
 well, which would also coincide remarkably with an 
 announcement of the Scriptures (Numbers xxiv. 17), 
 where it is said " a star shall rise out of Jacob." But in 
 Jerusalem the magicians were not so abundant as in 
 Egypt ; they had therefore to come from the far East, 
 which again, very fortunately, gave occasion for the ful- 
 fillment of other Scripture verses (Isaiah Ix. 6 ; Psalm 
 Ixxii. 10), where it is said that foreign princes and nations 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 71 
 
 will bring gifts and presents to the savior king of Israel, 
 etc. As Moses had to flee from the wrath of the wicked 
 king, so has this second Savior ; but, instead of from 
 Egypt, he flees to Egypt, which at that time was the 
 general refuge of those persecuted in Palestine. When 
 Joseph and Mary afterward learn of the death of the 
 wicked king they return to Palestine, but are too much 
 frightened to go to their old home (Matt. ii. &2) ; they 
 seek an out-of-the-way place in Galilee, viz. : Nazareth, 
 and to this place they are led providentially, that another 
 Scripture verse (Judges xiii. 5)" may be fulfilled, which, 
 though it is said of Samson and has quite another mean- 
 ing, shall account for Jesus being a Nazarene. And 
 now everything is nicely arranged. Thus Matthew, the 
 Jew-Christian, who is conversant with Jewish traditions. 
 Quite different it is with Luke, the Pauline, who does 
 not wish to see in Jesus merely a second Moses. Ac- 
 cording to him Joseph and Mary always lived in Naza- 
 reth (Luke i. 26) ; how then could Jesus be born in 
 Bethlehem ? Well, they were accidentally there. And 
 what caused them to go such a distance ? The author of 
 the Gospel according to Luke has heard something of 
 the census at the time of Augustus, to which the Jews so 
 reluctantly submitted. That this census took place six 
 or ten years after the birth of Jesus he probably did not 
 know ; but even if he did know, such an insignificant 
 anachronism could not detain him from using the census 
 as the best means of removing the whole difficulty. To 
 bring Joseph and Mary at the nick of time to Bethle- 
 hem, he supposes, likewise against historical truth, that, 
 for the purpose of this census, every Jew had to go 
 to the city of his fathers. The imagination of the 
 author, once started in this direction, very soon supplies 
 
72 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 all the rest. All the inns are occupied, Joseph and Mary 
 have to lodge in a stable, and from the Acts we have 
 seen the writer's fondness for introducing in his narra- 
 tives hosts of angels that hold sweet intercourse with the 
 favored children of men, and we are not in the least 
 surprised to find here the same machinery employed to 
 the same purpose and effect. 
 
 These two narrations of Matthew and Luke of course 
 contradict and preclude each other on all points, but 
 those who have a critical insight into the various ten- 
 dencies of the Gospels will no longer call it contradic^ 
 tion ; they will see how the same legends, when told 
 by the Jew- Christian Matthew, necessarily take forms 
 quite different from those which the Pauline Luke im- 
 parts to them. The one derives Jesus' pedigree from 
 David, the Jewish king; the other from Adam, the 
 father of all men. These various premises^ determine 
 the course of events in the life of their hero. The grad- 
 ual formation and conglomeration of these legends can 
 yet be traced by these often so palpable, still oftener 
 almost imperceptible, deviations of the Gospels from 
 each other. We see that each is trying to construe the 
 life of Jesus according to the doctrines and opinions of 
 his party, to which the current legends and sayings have to 
 adapt themselves. From their various standpoints they see 
 fulfilled in him whatever of the Scriptures they deem ne- 
 cessary of fulfillment to justify their faith in the Messiah. 
 
 But at last the main question will naturally arise : 
 How much do we know of the life of Jesus ? We must 
 confess it is very, very little, much less than even those 
 scientists, who by their untiring labor and researches 
 have contributed most to these discoveries, are willing 
 to admit. It is about this: 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 73 
 
 Jesus was born and reared in Nazareth, a small city 
 of Galilee. Galilee, according to all the information we 
 have, was a pleasant, fruitful, but over-populated prov- 
 ince of Palestine, inhabited by Jews. Not so secluded 
 by natural boundaries as Judea, the surrounding heathen 
 countries exerted upon the customs and opinions of the 
 Galileans a greater influence than on those of the inhab- 
 itants of Judea. The system of education then prevail- 
 ing among the Jews made it almost impossible for any 
 man to be without some knowledge of " the law" (Baby- 
 lonian Talmud, Megila 24 a ; 25 a) ; and the weekly 
 discourses in the synagogues on the Sabbath made even 
 the common people acquainted with the wisdom of the 
 great teachers in Jerusalem. The higher education, 
 however, could only be acquired in Jerusalem, from 
 which Galilee was cut off by the interlying Samaria. 
 The Galileans, therefore, were generally considered 
 ignorant ; their language was mixed with foreign phrases, 
 their pronunciation corrupt, and so strongly marked that 
 the Galilean was thereby at once recognized. (Matt, 
 xxvi. 73 ; Mark xiv. 79 -, Babylonian Talmud, Erubin, 
 53 #, >). Their ignorance, as is generally the case, 
 made them bigoted ; they were very scrupulous and 
 strict in conforming to the minutest religious observ- 
 ances. Superstition is not inconsistent with bigotry ; 
 and the common superstition of those days, the belief in 
 evil spirits that possess man, grew very luxuriantly 
 among the Galileans. They were a good-natured but 
 very excitable people, easily turned into fanatics, which 
 made Galilee the hot-bed of politico-religious insur- 
 rections. All the demagogues and agitators of the peo- 
 ple came from this province ; we know of Ezekias, Judas 
 his son, and Teudas ; there the Kanaim or Zealots had 
 
74: JE8US OF NAZARETH. 
 
 their origin, and there they found most of their adher- 
 ents. 
 
 This was the general character of the Galileans, but 
 Jesus lived at a time when the waves of political and 
 religious excitement rose very high. The Edomite fam- 
 ily of the Herodians had only offended the national 
 pride ; but the all-powerful Romans were trying to sub- 
 vert their whole commonwealth, their political and reli- 
 gious institutions. The hope to resist successfully the 
 enemy grew weaker and weaker, and the longing for a 
 deliverer more intense It was generally believed that 
 this deliverer would soon appear if the people were 
 worthy of him; and there were not men wanting to 
 exhort the people to greater piety and purity, that the 
 promised deliverer might thereby be conjured down. 
 
 One of these men was John the Baptist, who lived 
 by the side of the Jordan. He called upon the people to- 
 repent, and, to impress them more deeply, he used im- 
 mersion in the waters of the Jordan as a symbol of puri- 
 fication quite usual among the Jews. Many people 
 flocked to this John, and " were greatly moved by hear- 
 ing his words" (Josephus, Antiq., Book xviii., chap, v., 
 sec. 2). Among these was Jesus of Nazareth. " The king- 
 dom of heaven is at hand," was the prophetic announce- 
 ment of John, which must have made a deep impression 
 upon Jesus' sensitive mind, saturated as it was with the 
 wild hopes of his Galilean surroundings. That the deliv- 
 erer of the people must soon come was the firm convic- 
 tion of many, but where he was or who he was nobody 
 could or dared to tell. 
 
 John, like the old prophets, had no respect for per- 
 sons. Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, had married 
 Herodias, his brother's wife, who had unceremoniously 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 75 
 
 divorced herself from her former husband. Such a fla- 
 grant violation of the law could not remain unnoticed by 
 John. He openly rebuked Herod, and the tyrant, fear- 
 ing John's influence upon the people, had him impris- 
 oned in the fortress Macbaerus, where he was soon be- 
 headed, upon the instigation of Herodias. 
 
 The imprisonment and subsequent death of John 
 were the signal for Jesus to step into the vacant place, 
 to become, like him, a prophet, and to stir up the people 
 to repentance, for " the kingdom of God is at hand." 
 In his own city (Nazareth) he found more opposers 
 than followers. He turned to Capernaum, a small city 
 on the northwestern shore of the sea of Genezareth. 
 There, among the simple fishermen and the lower classes 
 of the people, he found many followers and adherents. 
 The house of Peter, one of his disciples, became his 
 home and the center of a large circle of ardent admirers. 
 A new prophet had arisen in Israel, and as such he had 
 to perform wonders and cures, and especially to drive 
 out the evil spirits which haunted the imagination of this 
 simple populace. Those who believed were easily cured; 
 those who were not cured, at least,for the moment, pro- 
 fessed to have their troubles alleviated or cured, lest they 
 should be counted sinners past redemption. " I believe, 
 O Lord ! help thou my unbelief," was probably the lead- 
 ing thought of many who approached him for help. 
 This success, and the extravagant praise of his compan- 
 ions and followers, soon awakened in Jesus the thought, 
 " How if thou thyself wert the promised deliverer, the 
 Messiah ? " Timidly and hesitatingly he yielded to this 
 bold and proud thought, to which he himself did not 
 dare to give utterance. To hear from others what in our 
 inmost heart we wish to hear, but dare not express with 
 
T6 JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 our lips, gives us more assurance ; and thus Jesus con- 
 tinually solicits others to tell him what, as the most 
 secret but also the most cherished thought, is buried in 
 his own bosom ; yet, as soon as it is uttered, his soul is 
 startled, he shrinks back, and requests its concealment 
 from all other men. 
 
 In Galilee he had already many followers who implic- 
 itly believed in the new prophet-, but this was of no con- 
 sequence so long as Judea, and especially Jerusalem, 
 would not acknowledge his claims. There, he felt, the 
 most difficult part of his prophetic career was yet to be 
 performed. The higher and better educated classes of 
 Jerusalem not only looked with disdain upon an ignor- 
 ant Galilean, but also dreaded every commotion of the 
 people, and therefore explicitly denied the popular hopes 
 of a Messiah (See note, p. 21). Still, if his budding fame 
 was not soon to fade, it was necessary to establish it in 
 the capital ; and, after much wavering, he resolved, at 
 the approach of the Passover festival, to go to Jerusa- 
 lem among the other pilgrims. The Passover ^festival 
 was the most opportune time for such an agitation ; 
 during this festival there were not only many Gali- 
 leans his friends and adherents in Jerusalem, but 
 also a great many of the country people, whose kin- 
 dred spirits could more easily be moved and con- 
 vinced than the cold and reflecting minds of the citi- 
 zens. Surrounded by his friends and adherents, he 
 entered Jerusalem, and, going up to the temple-moun- 
 tain, he at once created a disturbance by overturning 
 the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those 
 that sold doves in the temple courts (Mark xi. 15). Such 
 an act was no unusual piece of presumption for a prophet. 
 But prophets and agitators, in those later days of the 
 
RESITS Otf KA2ARETH. 77 
 
 Roman oppression, had become rather dangerous to the 
 commonwealth, as they always gave the Romans a pre- 
 text for interference, new cruelties, and new slaughters. 
 On the Passover festival the Romans usually took 
 special precautions. The Roman procurator, who re- 
 sided in Csesarea, came to Jerusalem ; the garrison was 
 increased and kept under arms, so that, at a moment's 
 notice, the rude soldiery could, fall upon the people, if 
 any tumult should arise. (Jos., Antiq., Book xx., chap. 
 v., sec. 3). This festival, therefore, was greatly dreaded 
 by the Jewish authorities of those days, on account of 
 the frequent collisions between the congregated Jews 
 and the Roman army. 
 
 Jesus, it is true, endeavored to avoid the political 
 danger by declaring a new world and a new state of 
 things as coming which was to have nothing in common 
 with this world. But if this world was to perish, the 
 then-existing temporal powers were likewise threatened. 
 The ruling party, i.e., the Sadducees, opposed to all 
 innovations, and principally to the belief in a coming 
 world, were the more eager to suppress this new move- 
 ment, as the head of their party, the high priest, was 
 generally held responsible for every public disturbance. 
 The natural consequence was that those in power, to 
 avoid such great calamities as might ensue from the 
 declaration " a new world is coming," had Jesus impris- 
 oned before the beginning of the festival. That this 
 imprisonment took place on Passover-eve is very im- 
 probable, as it is against the Jewish law to hold court 
 during a festival., or to commence a trial in the night 
 time. The fact is, that before the beginning of the Pass- 
 over festival Jesus was brought before the high priest, 
 who hastily convened an informal court, which declared 
 
THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. 
 
 that Jesus' claim to be the expected Messiah was noth- 
 ing but blasphemy, for which he should suffer the 
 penalty of death. This, however, could only be inflicted 
 by the Roman procurator. Pilate was then in office, and, 
 according to all we know of him, he was the last person 
 to hesitate for a moment in putting to death a man who 
 declared himself the Messiah, i.e., the anointed king 
 of the Jews. Thus Jesus found an untimely death on 
 the cross ; it was the death of the enthusiast, who dies 
 heroically for an idea. What this idea was is to be 
 seen from the doctrines laid down by Jesus. 
 
 WHAT ABE THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS ? 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth who assumed the role of the Mes- 
 siah, then so anxiously expected by the masses of the 
 Palestinian Jews as the deliverer from all their oppres- 
 sion and the founder of a new world that is to say, of a 
 new order of things, in which those now oppressed would 
 be the rulers, and the present rulers be the oppressed ; in 
 whicli the first would be the last and the last first is gen- 
 erally believed to be the founder of Christianity as it now 
 is. To be true followers of Jesus, to adhere to his doctrine 
 and believe in him, as he believed in himself, is the com- 
 mon ground on which all the multifarious denominations 
 of Christendom stand. Even those who, on account of 
 the light which modern science is continually spreading, 
 feel compelled to separate from all these denominations, 
 cannot tear themselves away from a veneration and 
 belief inculcated in the minds of so many preceding gen- 
 erations. For their breaking away from the denomina- 
 tional bounds, they generally give the same reason for 
 which all the others deem it necessary to remain within 
 them, viz. : to be true followers of Jesus. Now, if we do 
 
THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. < 5> 
 
 not wish to wrong Jesus and violate historical truth, we 
 must abstract from this idolizing and sublimating process, 
 and simply state, the facts which the three Synoptic 
 Gospels, under their legendary and mythical garb, have 
 preserved. 
 
 This compels us, in the first place, to exonerate 
 Jesus from the grave imputation of having declared him- 
 self God, or equal to God. No (Mark xii. 29) : " Hear, 
 O Israel, the Eternal our God, the Eternal is One," 
 is held up by him as the first of all the command- 
 ments ; what he claimed was the Messiahship, for which 
 he thought himself specially chosen and predestined. 
 Even in making this claim, we can distinctly see how his 
 heart is palpitating and his conscience disturbed, for it 
 was inconsistent with the traditions of the people, accord- 
 ing to which the Messiah was to come out of the house 
 of David, These noble emotions, however, were soon 
 calmed down by his unexpected success, the implicit 
 faith and boundless praise of his followers, until he 
 could reason them away in the manner then so much in 
 vogue by taking a Scripture verse and letting it say 
 just what you wanted it to say. We read (Matt. xxii. 42 
 ff. ; Mark xii. 35 if. ; Luke xx. 41 if.) : " And Jesus 
 answered arid said, while he taught in the temple, How 
 say the Scribes that Christ is the son of David ? For 
 David himself said by the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto 
 my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine 
 enemies thy footstool. David, therefore, himself called 
 him Lord, and whence is he then his son ? And the 
 common people heard him gladly." The psalm is evi- 
 dently addressed to a king or prince to whom the poet 
 announces victory, and sings : " The Eternal said to my 
 Lord [the king] Sit on my right hand, etc." ; but in the 
 
80 I-HE DOCTRINES Otf JESTTS. 
 
 manner and taste of those days, the application of the 
 psalm to the Messiah is quite conclusive to show that it 
 is not absolutely necessary for the Messiah to be a 
 descendant of David, and the application is ingenious 
 enough to please the common people and satisfy Jesus 
 that, though not a descendant of David, he may never- 
 theless be the promised Messiah. 
 
 The Messiah, according to the Jewish conception, was 
 to be a man specially chosen by God for the redemption 
 of his people and the rest of the world ; Jesus, therefore, 
 did not claim any higher than human nature ; he did 
 not claim sinlessness, or he would not have gone to John 
 to be baptized and cleansed from sin ; he would not have 
 prayed so fervently " forgive us our trespasses ; " nay, 
 he could not have prayed at all, if he considered him- 
 self God or equal to God, for what possible benefit 
 can prayer have when directed to oneself? Jesus, who 
 declined even the attribute of goodness, could not fall 
 into such an error (Matt. xix. 17; Mark x. 18 if.; Luke 
 xviii. 19) : " Jesus said, Why callest thou me good ? there 
 is none good but one, that is God." 
 
 As a Jew he could not do otherwise, and Jesus was 
 nothing but a Jew. Even if the authors of the Revela- 
 tion and the Acts would not tell us that the most faith- 
 ful imitators of and believers in Jesus were zealous 
 Jews, and wished to be nothing but Jews, we would 
 learn it from the Gospels, which characterize him as a 
 perfect type of the Jews of those days. He is averse to 
 the rigorous application of the rabbinical laws for 
 instance, the Sabbath laws, purification laws, etc. and is 
 in favor of straining the moral laws to their utmost 
 extent, for instance, the ten commandments (Matt. v. 
 21, 27, 31), etc. But this was nothing unusual since the 
 
THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS, 81 
 
 time of the prophets, and in his days was especially 
 advocated by the reform movement of Hillel. Such 
 difference of opinion was never considered heresy among 
 the Jews ; the same thing happened daily in the schools 
 of Hillel and Shammai. The difference of opinion very 
 seldom affected the practice, and thus we hear Jesus 
 continually exhort his adherents to bring the sacrifices 
 prescribed by the law of Moses, just as we hear from 
 the Acts that they always did as long as the temple 
 existed. He reiterates his intention to fulfill and not to 
 destroy the law; of the laws not a jot nor tittle shall 
 fail ; his disciples are commanded to observe and do 
 whatever the Scribes and Pharisees, who are sitting in 
 the seat of Moses, bid them observe. He was a Jew in 
 every respect, and never dreamed of establishing a 
 new religion. If anybody had foretold Jesus that his 
 exertions would lead to a new religion, by which his 
 own Judaism would in time be persecuted with the most 
 bitter hatred, lie would have denounced such a man as a 
 false prophet and a malignant slanderer. He, who most 
 positively declared (Matt. xvi. 28 ; Mark ix. 1 ; Luke ix. 
 27) : " Yerily, I say unto you, that there be some of them 
 that stand here who shall not taste of death till they 
 have seen the kingdom of God come with power," 
 could not think of establishing a new religion for the 
 short time this world was yet to last. On the contrary, 
 he was so strongly imbued with the Judaism which then 
 prevailed among the lower and more ignorant classes, 
 that his whole being was taken up with it, and his 
 course of life ordained by it ; he was so much a child of 
 his own time, a son of his own people, that he indeed 
 might serve as their strongest representative. It was a 
 time in which the national and religious feelings of the 
 
82 THE DOCTRINES OF .TEStJfl. 
 
 Jews in Palestine were goaded to the verge of despair. 
 The conviction that this world was too corrupt to last 
 any longer was held by many ; this world deserves to 
 perish arid therefore must shortly perish. The time is 
 fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand ; all that is left 
 is to repent and prepare for the world which is soon to 
 come. The genius of the people, eminently a religious 
 one, was sick and sore at heart and soul, and a sickly 
 religious exuberance was the natural result. 
 
 John the Baptist was indeed the forerunner of Jesus. 
 His self-imposed task of calling the people to repentance 
 and preparing them for the coming world was taken up 
 by Jesus where John had left it, But the hopes of 
 the people became daily more and more impatient ; 
 Jesus, carried forward on the waves of the popular cur- 
 rent, had to complete the work of John the Baptist by 
 advocating maxims adapted to the belief in a world 
 which was soon to come. And here it is that we can 
 speak of a doctrine peculiar to Jesus only. In every 
 other respect it cannot be repeated too often Jesus 
 was a true son of his people, a child of his time ; the 
 morals, laws, and doctrines he taught were those of his 
 time and people ; even his method of teaching in para- 
 bles and symbols was taken from the popular teachers of 
 those days, who employed this method whenever they 
 did not believe there was a higher theological train- 
 ing among their auditors ; he used proverbs, sayings, 
 and stories for his illustrations, just as the popular 
 teachers of the Midrash did ; but whenever he gave 
 advice or directions for the life here on earth, he followed 
 his own theory, which, indeed, deviated decidedly from a 
 sound and healthy conception of Judaism. 
 
 This theory we know already ; it is : " this world is 
 
THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. 
 
 83 
 
 soon to perish," and his doctrines in regard to the life 
 here on earth are but the natural consequences of this 
 theory. If this world is soon to perish then it is not 
 worth while to take any care for to-morrow, or to accu- 
 mulate earthly treasures ; on the contrary, it is wise to 
 give away all you have to the poor, and share their 
 blessedness of poverty. * It is not worth while to resist 
 evil in this world, but " whosoever shall smite thee on 
 thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ; if anybody 
 takes away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also ; " to 
 maintain justice and equity in this world is impossible ; 
 and as another is soon to come, why labor in vain to 
 establish it ? Suffer meekly and submissively, for great 
 is your reward in heaven, f 
 
 * It would be surprising if this sentiment, which was but a 
 natural outgrowth of the insecurity of all property and the pre- 
 vailing lawless violence which made worldly goods often a very 
 dangerous incumbrance, should be found only with Jesus and 
 his adherents. And, indeed, the Talmud gives us sufficient indi- 
 cations that it existed in wider circles. In Jerusalem Talmud, 
 Peah 15 b we read that Rabbi Jeshobeb gave away all his prop- 
 erty to the poor. He lived at the time of Jesus, for Rabbi Gam- 
 aliel disapproved of his action ; and (Babylonian Talmud, 
 Kethuboth 50 a ; Arachin 28 a ) we hear that a convention of 
 rabbis, held in Usha, a small town of upper Galilee, at the begin- 
 ning of the second century A.C., had to decree that he who wished 
 to give his property to the poor, must not be allowed to give 
 more than one-fifth of all he had ; no such decree would have been 
 necessary, if the mania to divest oneself of all property had not 
 been prevailing. 
 
 f Jesus' doctrine of non-resistance, so foreign to Judaism, which 
 teaches : "justice must prevail, though it have to pierce the moun- 
 tains, " is likewise but a sad testimony of the hardships of his 
 days, when resistance to injustice was useless and even danger- 
 ous ; sympathetic chords we hear sometimes sounded in the Tal- 
 mud ; for instance (Yoma 22 &, and parallels) : " rather be of those 
 who are humbled than of those who humble others ; be of those 
 who are offended and answer not ; of those who perform joy- 
 
84r THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. 
 
 There is no time for fastening and cherishing the ties 
 of the family, of society, and the commonwealth which 
 are all to perish; the sanctity of the family relations 
 between father and son, mother and daughter, brothers 
 and sisters and friends, held in such high esteem among 
 the Jews, must fall away and be disregarded under such 
 pressing circumstances. There is not a word in favor 
 of all these family bonds, but many intimations that 
 they are a hindrance to the fulfillment of his mission. 
 Jesus himself is separated from his family, does not 
 even grant a hearing to his mother and brothers, when 
 they come to see him (Matt. xii. 46 ; Mark iii. 31 ff. ; Luke 
 viii. 19), because his disciples and followers are his all 
 in all, his mother and brothers, for they likewise have 
 left fathers and mothers, wives and children, to follow 
 him (Matt. xix. 27 ; Mark x. 28 ; Luke xviii. 28). He 
 distinctly announces that he has not come to bring peace 
 but war into the family circle : " the son shall be at 
 variance against his father,' and the daughter against her 
 mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in- 
 law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own house- 
 hold (Matt. x. 34 ff.) The thoughts of man shall be 
 entirely diverted from this world, and directed toward 
 the world to come. This is the only object worth living 
 for. Can we yet be astonished to find such a confusion 
 of ideas, wherever he condescends to give directions in 
 regard to the affairs of this miserable world ? 
 
 For instance : Hillel had given the so-called golden 
 rule (Babylonian Talmud, Sabbath, 31 #), " whatsoever 
 thou wouldst that men should do to thee, do thou even 
 so to them," to a heathen, who wished to know the sum 
 
 fully the will of their Heavenly Father, and rejoice over the 
 afflictions that come over them." 
 
THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. $5 
 
 total of Judaism in as short a time as he could stand 
 on one foot. But this law of mere reciprocity, easily 
 comprehended even by a heathen, remains far behind 
 the obligations of a Jew, which Jesus likewise states 
 (Mark xii. 29 ft'.): " The iirst of all commandments is, 
 " Hear, O Israel ! the Eternal our God, the Eternal is 
 One. And thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with 
 thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy 
 whole might. And the second is like it, namely : 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." This love 
 of God and man, as the disputing Scribe affirms, is the 
 real characteristic of Judaism, and not the so-called 
 golden rule. For this very important distinction Jesus 
 has no understanding; he places this rule of recip- 
 rocity not only on the same level with the love of 
 God and man, but makes it the keystone of all morality ; 
 while, inconsistently enough, he commands m another 
 place, what is impossible, to love our enemies, with which 
 is coupled the erroneous statement that of old it was 
 commanded to hate our enemies, which commandment 
 is nowhere to be found. 
 
 Such impracticable doctrines, much more foreign to 
 Judaism than his claim to the Messiahship, carried him 
 to the extremest limits of Judaism, from whence but a 
 few steps were necessary to be outside of its pale. Be- 
 sides, just what was sublimest in Jesus was apt to give 
 offence to the true Jewish spirit : we mean his childlike 
 trust and confidence in God. Jesus undoubtedly was a 
 religious genius, his whole being was drawing away 
 from the real toward the ideal ; and thus the childlike 
 confidence in the goodness and mercy of God, as taught 
 by Judaism, could easily be turned in his mind into the 
 childish idea that, whatever man may pray for from his 
 
Sr6 THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS. 
 
 Heavenly Father, if he does it with true faith and implicit 
 trust and does it persistently it will be granted, just as 
 an indulgent father will grant everything to his beloved, 
 crying child, though it be irrational. (Matt, xxvii. 20 
 if. ; Mark xi. 22 if. ; Luke xvii. 6 if.) : " And Jesus saith, 
 Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, that 
 whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed 
 and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his 
 heart, but shall believe that those things which he says 
 shall come to pass, he shall have whatever he saith," etc. 
 Psychologically we may trace the source of this belief 
 to the miraculous cures which he, as well as his adher- 
 ents, believed to have been accomplished at his bidding. 
 At the beginning of his career these miracles were, un- 
 doubtedly, an inexplicable mystery to himself; but the 
 growing faith in his Messiahship suggested the explana- 
 tion that it was the result of his prayers and faith in God. 
 
 Such a faith naturally stimulated him to persevere in 
 his adopted role to the bitter end. With God every- 
 thing is possible; his kingdom may come any time, and 
 then the Messiah will be revealed to all mankind. 
 It was the staff and support on which he leaned securely, 
 while he had to suffer for his idea, which he never gave 
 up until, perhaps, in the last moment, in the agony of 
 death, when he exclaimed, in the Psalmist's words: 
 " My Gpd, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " 
 
 After this tragic death his frightened disciples and 
 followers scattered and fled to Galilee, as the Gospels 
 indicate. It is too late, in our age, to offer any argu- 
 ments against the presumed resurrection. The death 
 of Jesus is testified beyond dispute ; of his resurrection, 
 setting aside the many contradictions in the three rela- 
 tions, we have only the testimony of Mary Magdalen, a 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 87 
 
 nervous, amorous, and excitable woman, out of whom 
 Jesus had driven seven devils ; that is to say, a woman 
 afflicted with periods of insanity. It is scarcely neces- 
 sary to say that this resurrection took place only in the 
 imagination of Jesus' followers, and the process by 
 which this was accomplished was a very natural one. 
 
 We all know our state of mind when one who is 
 near and dear to us has departed to the mysterious 
 realms of eternity ; we know that for some time we 
 cannot comprehend it. Even if we ourselves have 
 closed his eyes, have brought the dear relics to their 
 last resting-place, it seems that we must meet the dear 
 departed one whenever we enter the house; we hear 
 his voice, the fall of his footsteps in the hall, on the 
 stairs ; we cannot believe separation forever to be pos- 
 sible. Thus it is in every common case ; but here were 
 men and women excited by unusual hopes and fears, 
 who had left everything else in this world, and followed 
 their dear master, in whom they had the never-flinching 
 faith that he would introduce the new world, and reign 
 over it in glory, in which they all would participate. This 
 beloved friend and teacher had gone they knew not 
 whither. Was he dead ? It was impossible. Could he 
 have died a common death? Then he must have been 
 a false prophet, and was justly put to death. It was 
 impossible. Even if he did die, he would rise again and 
 fulfill what he had promised. He will rise ; perhaps he 
 is risen already. The thought was scarcely conceived, 
 when the excited imagination saw the resurrected 
 Christ Such an excitable spirit as that of Mary Mag- 
 dalen had to see him first. " She saw him," was spread 
 abroad among the disciples, who had now recovered from 
 their first fright and flight, of which they felt somewhat 
 
88 THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
 
 ashamed. With their returning confidence and trust, 
 especially as they had to redeem their reputation, what 
 was more natural than that Jesus should soon appear to 
 some or all of the apostles, and, at last, to a multitude 
 of people ? Jesus was no longer a false prophet ; he was 
 the Messiah, who would soon come again with the new 
 world, " when the last will be the first, and the first 
 last." 
 
 Why should such a comforting thought be given up ? 
 To remain faithful to the beloved teacher was very 
 pleasing to their expectations. They soon returned to 
 Jerusalem, formed a congregation of the saints, who 
 differed from the other Jews in nothing except the 
 belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and as such would soon 
 return, when the new earth and the new heaven would be 
 founded. Of his doctrines they carried out as much as 
 was possible to be carried out in this miserable world ; 
 but the distinguishing points were too insignificant to 
 make them appear as a special sect of the Jews. They 
 would undoubtedly soon have relapsed into the ranks of 
 the other Jews, had not another master-mind taken 
 hold of this new idea of the resurrected Messiah, to lead 
 it victoriously to the conquest of the world. It was 
 Paul who founded Christianity ; and as his spirit entire- 
 ly overshadows that of Jesus in the system of Chris- 
 tianity, we cannot conclude without giving a sketch of 
 this remarkable man. 
 
 PAUL. 
 
 The actual results of Jesus' life and activity were very 
 insignificant, as the author of the Acts testifies (i. 15), 
 telling us that the adherents of Jesus were no more than 
 120 ; while we learn from Josephus, Antiq. (Book xx. ? 
 
89 
 
 chap, v., sec. 1 ; chap, viii., sec. 6), that other prophets, 
 who, very soon after Jesus, agitated the people by 
 similar promises, had thousands of enthusiastic follow- 
 ers. Under the leadership of the more prominent 
 disciples of Jesus this little band of the faithful formed 
 a small congregation, or rather community, which led a 
 quiet, unostentatious, communistic life, but did not devi- 
 ate in the least from the laws of Moses and the doctrines 
 of Judaism, as then taught. Their communism, intro- 
 duced by Jesus, was quite sufficient to undermine their 
 future existence, for it led to poverty, which, with the 
 accompanying faults and vices, is a dry rot, that will sap 
 the strength and vigor of any society where it has once 
 set in. But, besides, they were occasionally exposed to 
 the petty annoyances and persecutions of some fanatics, 
 who made them suffer for their slight differences those 
 penalties and penances which the church discipline had 
 the authority to inflict. Among these fanatics there 
 was none more zealous than a certain Saul. 
 
 Saul was born in Tarsus, in Cilicia, a city renowned 
 for Grecian culture, of which Saul, however, had not 
 even a smattering. "When quite a young man, he came to 
 Jerusalem to receive the higher theological training, and 
 was said to have been a pupil of Gamaliel the elder. 
 According to the Jewish customs of those days, his theo- 
 logical pursuits did not relieve him from the obligation 
 of learning a trade *, he was a tent-maker, or rather 
 weaver of that coarse tent-cloth called cilicium. In 
 Jerusalem he soon showed his inborn fanaticism, by 
 seeking distinction in the persecution of the harmless 
 followers of Jesus, who were called Nazarenes. By his 
 exertions mainly they were scattered from Jerusalem 
 along the coast of Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. But 
 
90 PAUL. 
 
 Saul's fanaticism had no rest; he heard that those 
 scattered from Jerusalem were gathering in the Grecian 
 cities, and he obtained letters from the high priest to the 
 heads of the various synagogues, by which he was 
 authorized to take all Nazarenes, wherever found, and 
 deliver them to the court of Jerusalem, the highest 
 court in religious matters. With these letters he went 
 to Damascus, but before he entered this city a sudden 
 change came over him. He had a vision of the cruci- 
 fied Jesus, and henceforth became as zealous and fan- 
 atical in the propagation of the new doctrine as formerly 
 he was in its persecution. 
 
 Of this vision the Acts give us three contradictory 
 versions (ix. 3 ff. ; xxii. 6 ff. ; xxvi. 12 if.), according to 
 which a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, sud- 
 denly shone round about him, and a conversation 
 between him and an apparition took place. The 
 legendary nature of these relations is obvious ; the words 
 of Jesus, in one relation, are put into the mouth of Ana- 
 nias in the other ; here the companions of Paul remain 
 standing, there they fall to the ground ; in one relation 
 they hear the voice, but see nothing ; in the other they 
 see the light, but hear nothing. His own version of this 
 event is simple enough (Gal. i. 12 ff.; I. Cor. xv. 8 ; ix. 1). 
 He saw Jesus just as all the other apostles had 
 seen him. This gives us a clearer idea of what the 
 apostles have seen, and what the apparitions of the 
 resurrected Jesus were. 
 
 Saul's physical constitution was very weak j he was 
 continually complaining of his bodily infirmities, among 
 which there must have been one especially harassing, 
 which he calls " the thorn in his flesh, the messenger of 
 Satan that buffets him " (II. Cor. xii. 7). It was nothing 
 
PAUt. 
 
 but the fiery, indomitable spirit within him that could 
 battle against so many hardships, and bear such fatigues 
 as he imposed upon himself. But he had to pay the 
 penalty for it ; his whole nervous system was deranged ; 
 he was subject to trances and hallucinations, of which he 
 often speaks ; for instance (II. Cor. xii. 2 ff.) : " I knew a 
 man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the 
 body, I cannot tell ; or whether out of the body, 1 can- 
 not tell : God knoweth). How that he was caught up 
 into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is 
 not lawful for a man to utter." A man with such a 
 constitution and disposition had traveled for eight days 
 from Jerusalem, through the desert, and now approached 
 the surroundings of Damascus, described as a garden of 
 God in beauty. There his cruel labors were to begin 
 again. His mind, all the way along, was naturally 
 occupied with his victims, the followers of Jesus, whom 
 they believed to be the Messiah. Of Jesus he knew 
 no more than he had learned from the confessions 
 and ejaculations of those he had persecuted. He had 
 seen the joyful suffering of those who persevered, and 
 heard the recantations which those weaker ones had 
 uttered with trembling lips and agony of mind. He had 
 probably witnessed similar visions of some of his victims, 
 who, in the midst of their suffering, were so carried away 
 by their ecstacy and wrought-up imagination that they saw 
 the heavens open and the resurrected Christ come down 
 with the clouds of the sky, as the Acts (vii. 56) tell us of 
 Stephen. Pondering over all these experiences, his 
 excited brain, wearied nerves, and heated imagination 
 created the same vision; he saw the crucified Jesus whom 
 he persecuted, and at once his passionate soul was thrown 
 into the opposite direction. He came to Damascus, not 
 
92 
 
 i 
 
 as a new man, but with a new faith and new convictions, 
 for which he would do battle with the same energy and 
 the same fiery spirit as he did for the old. 
 
 Without conversing with any of the apostles, or tak- 
 ing advice from any of the adherents of Jesus, he at 
 once entered upon his new career of preaching the Gos- 
 pel of the resurrected Christ, as he understood it, accord- 
 ing to his knowledge of the Scriptures and the Jewish 
 traditions. That the Gospel of Jesus and his disciples 
 was quite different from his own was nothing to him. 
 
 The disciples of Jesus always held, as did Jesus himself, 
 that the most faithful compliance with the laws of God, 
 as taught by Judaism, were the only preparation for the 
 world that was soon to come by some wonderful divine 
 interposition ; then all the concomitant circumstances 
 that were to accompany the time of the Messiah, accord- 
 ing to the Jewish traditions as for instance, the conver- 
 sion of all nations to the true belief in God were 
 likewise, by some miraculous powers, to be brought 
 about. In the meantime, Judaism had to be rigorously 
 observed, together with those preparatory doctrines 
 divulged by Jesus. But Paul was not the man to go for 
 instruction to those simple fishermen; he was not to be 
 influenced by any teacher. Jesus had appeared to 
 him just as he had appeared to others, especially 
 to the apostles; he had his revelations and visions, 
 and these he was to preach. " Jesus is the Messiah ; 
 lie was innocently put to death ; he has risen again, 
 and will soon return to introduce the world to come." 
 This 'was all he knew and wanted to know of Jesus; 
 and it was quite sufficient for him to found a new reli- 
 gion on these premises. 
 
 Jesus was the Messiah ; then everything expected of 
 
PAUL. 93 
 
 the Messiah must be fulfilled. The Messiah, according 
 to the Jewish traditions, though of the Jews, was to 
 come for all mankind; the whole heathen world, there- 
 fore, was now to be gathered within the folds of the new 
 faith. The converted Saul could only become an apos> 
 tie of the heathen.* 
 
 With the coming of the Messiah the Holy Spirit, as 
 promised by the prophets, was to pour itself upon all 
 flesh; and it now did pour itself upon all those who 
 believed in Jesus as the Messiah, who was risen from 
 the dead, and would soon reappear. By embracing this 
 belief every one was created anew and stripped of his 
 former sinfulness. 
 
 With these glad tidings he addressed himself to the 
 Gentiles, who, after the appearance of the Messiah, were 
 all to accept the Jewish religious and moral ideas. 
 But the laws and institutions historically connected 
 with, and, to a Jewish mind, inseparable from, these 
 ideas, had no meaning to the heathen ; they were a yoke 
 too heavy to be borne. Paul, brought up among the 
 heathen, knew this better than anybody else ; and, fortu- 
 nately, according to the theory that Jesus was the 
 Messiah, the laws were superfluous. Jewish tradition 
 had it that, with the appearance of the Messiah, all laws 
 and institutions would cease. The laws and institutions, 
 therefore, were abolished, and there was no hindrance for 
 
 * For the ruling thought of the new apostle, it is very significant 
 that henceforth he always calls himself Paul ; it is true, it was 
 quite customary for the Jews of those days to have a Roman 
 name beside their Jewish one, as formerly homophonous Greek 
 names were adopted by many Jews ; in this case, however, the 
 adoption of the heathen name was at the same time a declaration 
 of hie adoption of heathenism. 
 
94: PAUL. 
 
 receiving the Gentiles into the bosom of the new faith 
 without burdening them with the laws. 
 
 He went to Damascus (35 A.C.), and there, to the 
 greatest astonishment of all who had heard of him as 
 the bitterest persecutor of the new sect, he preached, to 
 Jew and Gentile, Christ crucified. For three years he 
 continued his work in Damascus and Arabia, before he 
 went to Jerusalem to confer with the original apostles 
 (38 A.G.) But his self-willed, combative character did 
 not allow a more familiar intercourse with the congrega- 
 tion of the saints. With Peter and James, the brother 
 of Jesus, he had some private conversation, but saw 
 none of the others (Gal i. 18, 19). The atmosphere in 
 Jerusalem did not suit him, and after two weeks he left 
 for his native city, Tarsus. From thence he was soon 
 called by Barnabas to Aiftioch, where the corner stone 
 of his great structure was to be laid. Antioch, after 
 Rome and Alexandria, was the largest city of the 
 Roman empire. Situated as it was on the boundary 
 that separated the European from the Asiatic world, it 
 became the conflux of the most various nationalities, the 
 depository of all the vices and corruptions prevalent in 
 both Europe and Asia. Since the time of Alexander 
 almost every nation of these two parts of the globe had 
 contributed to contaminate the very air which Antiochian 
 society breathed ; there heathenism appeared in its most 
 loathsome immorality, but there also were thousands upon 
 thousands thirsting and longing for something better. A 
 large congregation of converted Gentiles was formed ; and 
 here, for the first time, the name of Christiani was (mock- 
 ingly) given to the adherents of Jesus by the witty Anti- 
 ochians. Antioch, therefore, was the real cradle of Chris- 
 tianity, a name soon adopted by the faithful themselves. 
 
PAUL. 95 
 
 But in Antioch were likewise many Jews and Jew- 
 Christians, who maintained an active correspondence 
 with the mother congregation of Jerusalem. The rumor 
 of what Paul and Barnabas were doing came to Jerusa- 
 lem, and there were soon great contentions between the 
 Jew-Christians and the Paulines, i.e., the converts of 
 Paul. Paul was accused of teaching another gospel ; 
 he was declared a heretic, and his converts were told 
 (Acts xv. 1), " except ye be circumcised after the man- 
 ner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." To allay these 
 controversies, Paul went with Barnabas and Titus, one 
 of his converts, to Jerusalem (52 A.C.) After long dis- 
 putes, a compromise was agreed upon between Paul and 
 the original apostles, viz. : Paul should be received and 
 acknowledged as apostle of the heathen, who might 
 remain free of the law, and be considered " proselytes 
 of the gate " ; the disciples of Jesus, however, would 
 continue to labor as apostles of the Jews, for whom the 
 law remained valid and binding. 
 
 Such an expedient could not be otherwise than very 
 unsatisfactory. It was soon to be seen, when, shortly 
 afterward, Peter came to Antioch, and, at first, lived 
 and ate with the Gentiles ; but withdrew as soon as some 
 of James' church came from Jerusalem and remon- 
 strated with him. This example of Peter, one of the 
 chiefest of the apostles, naturally influenced many of 
 Paul's converts, as even Barnabas had followed Peter. 
 The inconsistency of allowing to the heathen Christians 
 what was prohibited to the Jew-Christians, and the 
 disadvantage under which the newly-founded religion 
 would have to labor by maintaining two separate camps 
 within her pale, were plainly to be seen. It was impos- 
 sible to gather all the heathen into her folds, as long as 
 
96 PAUL. 
 
 the Jew-Christians, with their observance of the law, 
 remained a kind of aristocracy, who tolerated the large 
 class of the Gentiles only as those who lagged behind. 
 Paul now took a very decisive step, by boldly cutting 
 loose the new religion from its parent trunk Judaism. 
 He declared the Jewish law to be not only superfluous 
 and obsolete, but a hindrance and a curse ; the observ- 
 ance of the law to be not only immaterial and unmerit- 
 orious, but a sin against the Holy Spirit and the true 
 belief in Christ. 
 
 This new departure he had to justify by remodeling 
 his Christology, which, in the manner of those days to 
 let the Scriptures and traditions tell whatever the inge- 
 nuity of the expounder wanted to prove was no difficult 
 task for a man of Paul's acuteness in combining the 
 remotest ideas. He reasoned thus : Christ, the Messiah, 
 has died, innocently died ; to what purpose? Only to 
 take away the sins of mankind. He is the lamb of whom 
 Isaiah (chap, liii.) speaks, who had to be offered for the 
 transgressions of the world. The atoning death of 
 Christ took away our sins, which our own obedience to 
 the law could not accomplish. To what purpose, then, 
 was the law given ? It was given to make the world, 
 through the example of the Jews, conscious of their 
 sins ; it was the continual reminder of how sinfully man 
 lives, how by his own exertions he can never come up to 
 what God demands of him ; it was, therefore, a curse 
 which was only given to prepare mankind for him, who 
 died as a curse (Gal. iii. 13) : " Christ hath redeemed us 
 from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us ; 
 for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on 
 a tree" ; through him perfect righteousness may be 
 acquired, which could not be done by observing the law. 
 
PAUL. 97 
 
 Now the Messiah has suffered for our sins, by his 
 death we may obtain righteousness, when we become cru- 
 cified in him and live anew in him, depending solely on 
 this grace of God, through the sacrifice of his Son. But 
 if we cling to the old law, seeking in it for righteousness 
 by our own exertions, even after the death of Christ, we 
 deny Christ and his innocent death (Gal. ii. 18 ff.) : 
 " For if I build again the things which L destroyed I 
 make myself a transgressor. For I, through the law, 
 am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am 
 crucified with Christ ; nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the 
 flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved 
 me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the 
 grace of God : for if righteousness came by the law, then 
 Christ is dead in vain." The breach between the new re- 
 ligion and the old was now complete. According to this 
 doctrine it was no longer the accomplished hope of 
 Judaism, but a new religion, of necessity hostile to 
 Judaism. 
 
 Such a doctrine was too repulsive to the Jew-Chris- 
 tians to be countenanced. Paul and his Gospel are 
 henceforth most intensely abhorred ; he is represented as 
 Balaam, the seducer of the people, and other not very 
 flattering epithets are given to him. This opposition 
 among the Jew-Christians he has to explain to himself 
 and his congregations; the easiest way of explaining it 
 is, "they are blinded," blinded by the will of God; there 
 is such a thing as election (Rom. xi. 7) : " What then ? 
 Israel hath not obtained that which he seeks for ; but the 
 election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." 
 Thus we have the rejection of Israel as a people, and 
 the election of the Gentiles, as many of them as will 
 
98 PAUL. 
 
 believe ; Christianity has abandoned her mother, and 
 thrown herself without reserve upon the heathen world. 
 Henceforth her language is no longer Hebrew or Chal- 
 dean, no longer the language of Jesus, but Greek and 
 Latin. The influence of heathenism, the consequence 
 of Paul's doctrines, may be resisted yet a while by 
 the handful of Jew-Christians ; but in the course of time 
 they will have to yield. Heathenism more and more 
 absorbs the new religion ; and those truths brought over 
 from Judaism are soon lost sight of, for they are swept 
 away or buried under the deluge of Paganism. The 
 new religion has no longer anything in common with 
 Judaism, except whenever she takes her weapons, as 
 her founder Paul always did, from the treasures of the 
 sacred literature of the Jews, to turn them against 
 those who furnished them. 
 
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 139 Eighth Street, New York, 
 
THE CHIMST OF 
 
 Or, THE ENIGMAS OP CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 St. John never in Asia Minor. Ireneus the Author of the Fourtli Gospel. 
 The Frauds of the Churchmen of the Second Century Exposed. 
 
 By GEORGE REBER. 
 12mo, Extra Cloth, 400 pp. Postpaid, $2. 
 
 CONTENTS. Chapter I. Death of Stephen. Conversion of Paul. His retirement 
 to Arabia, and return to Damascus and Jerusalem. 
 
 Chap. II. Paul and Barnabas start west to preach, the Gospel. The prevailing 
 ideas on religion in Asia Minor. Theology of Plato aud Philo. The effect pro- 
 duced by the preaching of Paul. Chap. III. Therapeutee of Philo, and Essenes of 
 Josephus. An account of them. Their disappearance from history, and what be- 
 came of them. Chap. IV. The origin of the Church. Chap. V. Review of 
 the past. What follows in the future. Chap. VI. How the Four Gospels originated. 
 
 Chap. VII. John, the eon of Zebedee, never in Asia Minor. John the Presbyter 
 substituted. The work of Irenseus and Eusebius. John the Disciple has served to 
 create an enigma in history. John of Ephesus a myth. 
 
 Chap. VIII. The Gnostics. Irenseus makes war on them. His mode of warfare. 
 The Apostolic succession and the object. No church in Rome to the time of Adrian. 
 Peter never in Rome, nor Paul in Britain, Gaul, or Spa'n. Forgeries of Iremeus. 
 
 Chap. IX. The claim of Irenaeus, that Mark was the interpreter of Peter, and Luke 
 the author of the third Gospel, considered. Luke and Mark both put to death with 
 Paul in Rome. Chap. X. Acts of the Apostles. Schemes to exalt Peter at the ex- 
 pense of Paul. Chap. XI. Matthew the author of the only genuine Gospel. Re- 
 jected, because it did not contain the first two chapters of the present Greek version. 
 
 Chap. XII. The character of Irenteus, and probable time of his birth. His partial- 
 ity for traditions. The claim of the Gnostics that Christ did not suffer, the origin of 
 the fourth Gospel. Irenaeus the writer. Chap. XIH. Why Irenaeus wrote the fourth 
 Gospel in the name of John. He shows that the Gospels could not be less than four, 
 and proves the doctrine of the incarnation by the Old Testament and the Synoptics. 
 The author of the Epistles attributed to St. John. 
 
 Chap. XIV. Four distinct eras in Christianity from Paul to the Council of Nice. 
 The Epistles of Paul and the works of the Fathers changed to suit each era. The 
 dishonesty of the times. Chap. XV. The Trinity, or fourth period of Christianity. 
 
 Chap. XVI. The Catholic Epistles. 
 
 Chap. XVH. No Christians in Rome from A.D. 66 to A.D. 117. Chap. XVIII. 
 The office of Bishop foreign to churches established by Paul, which were too poor 
 and too few in number to support the Order. Third chapter of the second Epistle 
 to Timothy, and the one to Titus, forgeries. The writings of the Fathers corrupted. 
 
 Chfcp. XIX. Linus never Bishop of Rome. Ciemeut, third Bishop, and his successors 
 to the time of Anicetus, myths. Chronology of Eusebius exposed; also that of Irenaeus. 
 
 Chap. XX. The prophetic period. The fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter of 
 Isaiah explained. Chap. XXI. Bethlehem the birthplace of Christ, as foretold by the 
 prophets. Cyrus the deliverer and ruler referred to by Micah the prophet. The pas- 
 sage from the Lamentations of Jeremiah quoted by Matthew, chap, ii., verse 18, 
 refers to the Jews, and not to the massacre of the infants by Herod. 
 
 Chap. XXII. Christ and John the Baptist. Chap. XXHI. The miracle of the 
 Cloven Tongues. Misapplication of a prophecy oi Joel. 
 
 Chap. XXIV. Miracles. Chap. XXV. Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. 
 
 Chap. XXVI. The controversy between Ptolemseus and Irense.is as to the length 
 of Christ's ministry. Christ was in Jerusalem but once after he began to preach, 
 according to the first three Gospels, but three times according to John. If the state- 
 ments made in the first three are true, everything stated in the fourth could only hap- 
 pen after the death of Christ. 
 
 Chap. XXVII. The phase assumed by Christianity in the fourth Gospel demanded 
 a new class of miracles from those given in the first three. A labored effort in this 
 Gospel to sink the humanity of Christ. His address to Mary. The temptation in the 
 wilderness ignored, and the last supper between him and his disciples suppressed. 
 Interview between Christ and the women and men of Samaria. A labored effort to 
 connect Christ with Moses exposed. 
 
 Chap. XXVIII. The first two chapters of Matthew not in existence during the time 
 of Paul and Apollos. A compromise was made between their followers at the Coun- 
 cil of Smyrna, A.D. 107. The creed of the Church as it existed at that day deter- 
 mined, and how Christ was m.;de manifest. Catholics of the second century repu- 
 diate this creed and abuse Paul. Further proof that Irenaeus never saw Polycarp. 
 Injuries inflicted upon the world by the fourth Gospel. 
 
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THE CHRIST OF PAUL; 
 
 Or, THE ENIGMAS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 BT. JOHN NEVER IN ASIA MINOR. IREN^EUS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 THE FRAUDS OF THE CHURCHMEN OF THE SECOND CENTURY EXPOSED. 
 
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 Paul was a thorough Unitarian, believing and preaching every- 
 where the human origin of Christ, whose pedigree he traces 
 through Joseph, and never alluding to the immaculate concep- 
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