—
THE JAMHS K, MOFFITT FUND.
LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
GIFT OF
i JAMES KENNEDY MOFFITT
OF THE CLASS OF '86.
Accession No,, Class No.
. ■ •
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
Microsoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/fourgospelsashisOOIondrich
THE FOUR GOSPELS
AS
HISTORICAL RECORDS
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH
1895
[AU rights resefved]
T^^v^f
tHOfflTf
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constabi^e, Printers to Her Majesty
:k.
PREFACE
I HAVE had no other object in the present work than
the ascertainment of fact. Nothing wholesome can be
obtained from that which is not true. The traditionary
beUefs of EngHsh- speaking men depend largely, if not
wholly, on statements which are not true but which are
held to be beyond doubt or question.
The soundness of the foundation on which these
popular beliefs are said to rest can be determined only
by a complete examination of the history contained, or
supposed to be contained, in the New Testament writings.
I have entered on such an examination in this volume ;
and I have done so, I hope and believe, in a reverent
and temperate spirit. ^ Are these things so ? ' is the
only question which I have cared to answer ; and they
who feel that their first and last duty is to the truth
will ask no other.
109288
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Obligations of the Clergy and Laity of the Church of England
The Teaching of the Church of England
Judgements of the Sovereign in Council
The Principle of the Royal Supremacy
The Teaching of the Traditional Schools
Spiritual Interpretations of some alleged Historical Propo
sitions in the Creeds ....
Theology of the Nicene Creed
The Guidance of the Spirit into all Truth
The Position of the Traditional Schools in the Church of
England
Interpretation of the Fourth Article .
The Right Hand of God
The Language of the Eucharist
The Sixth Article
Judgement of the Court of Arches in the Case of Essays and
Reviews
The Theology of the Nicene Creed the Theology of the Church
of England
Need of a rigorous Examination of the History said to be con-
tained in the New Testament Writings .
Tactics of the Traditional Parties in the Church of England
Ambiguous Teaching
Its Mischievous Effects
The Perfect Picture of a Perfect Life
The Idea of such a Picture a Delusion
The Divine Work a Revelation or LTnveiling
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CONTENTS
The Manifestation of the Father in the Eternal Son
The Office and Work of the Eternal Son
The Agony of Creation
The Incarnation and Conflict of the Eternal Son
The Death and Eesurrection of the Eternal Son
The Sacrifice and Ascension of the Eternal Son
The Eevealing Spirit
The Three Persons .
The Catholic Church
The one Baptism for the Eemission of Sins
The Eternal Wisdom
Infallible Books and Churches
Theology and Science
Signs, Wonders, Prodigies, and Marvels
Purpose of the Present Volume
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BOOK I
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER I
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
The Trustworthiness of the Gospel History dependent on that
of the Acts of the Apostles
Means for Testing the Trustworthiness of the Latter .
Account of the Doings of the Apostle Paul after his conversion
as given in the Acts ....
Paul's First Journey to Jerusalem, according to the Acts
His Second Journey .....
Controversy on the Circumcision of Gentile Converts .
General Council of the Church in Jerusalem .
Formal Decree of the Council
Account given by Paul himself of his Relations with the
Church at Jerusalem ....
His Defence as given in his Letter to the Galatians .
Complete Antagonism with the Apostles at Jerusalem
His Sojourn in Arabia ....
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CONTENTS
His First Journey to Jerusalem
The History in the Acts garbled with a Purpose
His Second Visit to Jerusalem
The Second Visit in the Acts a fiction
The Narrative of the Council in the Acts unhistorical
His Charges against the False Brethren
The Peter of Acts, and the Peter of Paul's Letter to the Galatians
The Difference between Peter and Paul one of Fundamental
Principle ....
Peter at Antioch ....
The Council of Jerusalem mythical
The whole Narrative in Acts incredible
Peter's reference in the Council to the story of Cornelius
The Story. of the Council irreconcileable with that of Corneliuf
The Lessons inferred by the Story of Cornelius
The Story of Cornelius composed by the Writer of Acts
Supposed' References of Paul to the Story of Stephen .
This Story inconsistent with Paul's narrative in his Letter to
the Galatians .....
The Speech of Stephen ....
The Persecution after the Death of Stephen .
The Gifts of Tongues at Pentecost
The Articulate Speaking of Languages never learnt
Paul's Description of the Gift of Tongues
Gifts of Healing .....
The Signs of an Apostle ....
Paul's Comparison of the Gift of Tongues and of Prophecy
The Gift of Tongues not the utterance of Articulated Speech
Peter's mode of meeting the Charge of Drunkenness at Pentecost
The Tongues at Pentecost not the utterance of Articulated
Sentences .....
Alleged Community of Goods in the Church at Jerusalem
The Story of Ananias and Sapphira .
External Evidence for the Existence of the Book of Acts
The Prefaces to the Third Synoptic Gospel and to the Acts
The Author of Acts anonymous
The Author of Acts not a companion of Paul .
The Book of Acts entirely discredited as a History
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER II
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS IN THE
FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES ^^^^
Thaumaturgy of the Acts of the Apostles . . .61
Complete Discrediting of the Acts . . .62
Impossibility of maintaining the Credit of the Gospel History
on that of the History of the Acts . . . .63
Paley's Twelve Witnesses . . . . .63
The Four Independent Evangelists . . . .65
The Synoptic Gospels . . . .65
The Johannine Gospel . . . . .65
The Conditions of Independent Reporting . . .66
Supplement to the Johannine Gospel . . .66
Sources of the Synoptic Gospels . . . .67
Supposed Citations from our Gospels in Early Christian Writings 67
Alleged Nature of these Citations . . . .67
Preface to the Third Synoptic Gospel . . .69
Sources of Citations from the Words of Jesus . . 70
Futility of referring them in all cases to our Canonical Gospels 70
Historical Sayings of Jesus the common property of all who
heard them ....
Extent of Testimony afforded by these Citations
History of the Texts of Gospels
Papias and the Gospel of Mark
Interpolations in the Pauline Epistles
The Epistle of Clement —
Question of Date and Genuineness of this Epistle
References to Book of Judith
The Epistle of Barnabas —
Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard
The Shepherd of Hermas —
No Sign of Acquaintance with our Gospels
The Epistles of Ignatius —
Must, if genuine, date from the Reign of Trajan
The Seven Letters mentioned by Eusebius
The Long and Short Recensions
The Syriac version of the Letters to the Ephesians, the
Romans, and to Polycarp . . .76
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CONTENTS
IX
Dates of the MSS. of the Syriac Version
The Journey from Antioch to Rome
The Epistle of Polycarp
Apologies of Justin Martyr —
Date of the larger Apology
Citations from the Scriptures
Dialogue with Tryphon
Memoirs of the Apostles
The Apocalypse of John
References to the History of Jesus
The Genealogy of Jesus
The Birth in a Cave
The Baptism in Jordan
The Arrest on Olivet
The Flight of the Disciples
The Bribing of the Soldiers
References to the Teaching of Jesus
Not drawn from our Gospels
The Memoirs of Hegesippos —
Judgement of Eusebius
Lifetime of Hegesippos .
The Silence of Eusebius
The Gospel of the Hebrews
The Martyrdom of James
Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis —
His Reference to Gospels of Matthew and Mark
His Opinion of Real Tradition . . . •
His Exposition of the Master's Sayings .
His Account of the Composition of the Gospel of Mark .
Contradictory Legends as to Peter and Mark
The Preaching of Peter ....
Not an Orderly Narrative, and therefore not our Second
Synoptic Gospel . . . • •
Complete Absence of Petrine Influence from our Second
Synoptic ....••
Papias does not speak of the Writing of Mark as a
Gospel ......
There is, therefore, no Substitution of one Gospel for
another ....••
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CONTENTS
The Logia of the Master
The Gospel of Matthew
The Hebrew Original ....
Our First Synoptic is not a Translation
Date of Composition of our First Synoptic Gospel
The Clementine Homilies —
Their probable Date, and the Value of their Testimony
Supposed Keferences to our Gospels
The True and False Things of Scripture
Basileides —
His supposed Twenty-four Books on the Gospels
Meaning attached by Basileides to the term Gospel
No Eeason for accepting the Statements of Hippolytos
as applying personally to Basileides
Valentinus —
His Work in Alexandria and Eome
Supposed Reference to our Fourth Gospel
Irenaeus on the Story of the Daughter of laeiros
Looseness of the Language of Irenseus .
/Markion — ^
His Gospel . .
Statements of Tertullian and Epiphanios
Charge of Mutilating our Third Synoptic Gospel
The alterations of Markion not made for the Reasons
assigned by Tertullian , .
Impossibility of determining what the Gospel of Markion
was . . . .
No Evidence that Markion had any Knowledge of our
Canonical Gospels ....
Tatian —
His Address to the Greeks
Parable of the Treasure in the Field
The Diatessaron ....
His Gospel .....
Theodoret of Cyrus ....
Dionysios of Corinth —
His Letter to Soter, Bishop of Rome
His References to the Scriptures
The Preface to our Third Gospel
CONTENTS
Y
Meliton, Bishop of Sardeis —
Date of his Apology ....
The Old Books ....
His Journey to get the List of them
Scriptures of the Old Covenant .
The New Covenant of Paul not a Written Book at all
Ignorance of Meliton of any canon of New Testament
Scriptures .....
Claudius Apollinaris —
Date of his Apology ....
His Fragments on the Paschal Controversy
Athenagoras —
Supposed Eeferences to the Discourses in our Gospels
The Kiss of Peace ....
Epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons
The Testimony of Zacharias
The Protevangelion of James
Ptolemaios and Herakleon —
Date of the Work of Irenseus on Heresies
Celsus —
Question of his Lifetime
The ' Logos Alethes ' .
Origen's Opinions about Celsus .
The Canon of Muratori
Not known to Papias, Hegesippos, or Eusebius .
The Work a Fragment which has been Interpolated
Supposed Reference to the Shepherd of Hermas .
Its Testimony of no value for the Existence of our
Gospels in the Second Century
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104
CHAPTER III
THE AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
The Testimony for the Johannine Gospel weaker than
that for the Synoptics . . . . .105
Supposed Reference to the Johannine Gospel in the Epistle
of Barnabas . . . . . .106
The Shepherd of Hermas . . . . .106
The Epistles of Ignatius .... . 106
CONTENTS
The Epistle of Polycarp
Polycarp and the Paschal Controversy
Appeal to the Testimony of Justin
Justin's Theology of the Logos
Its Sources ....
The Divine Wisdom in the Old Testament Scriptures
Difference between Justin's Theology and that of the Fourtl
Gospel ......
Differences between Justin's Evangelic History and that of the
Fourth Gospel .....
Jesus ' not a Sophist ' . . . .
HegesLppos ......
Papias ......
Silence of Eusebius . . . .
Purpose of Eusebius .....
Papias and the Apocalypse ....
The Clementine Homilies ....
The Epistle to Diognetos . . ^ .
Basileides and Valentinus ....
Tatian . . . . . . ^
Dionysios of Corinth, Meliton, and Claudius Apoliinaris
The Epistle to Flora .....
Celsus ......
The Canon of Muratori ....
No mention of the Johanniue Gospel down to the second half
of the Second Century .
John, the Son of Zebedee, the supposed Author of five of our
Canonical Scriptures
Dionysios of Alexandria on the Authorship of the Apocalypse
Acceptance of the Apocalypse as the Work of John the Apostle
by Papias and Justin Martyr ....
Date of the Composition of the Apocalypse .
The Writer of the Fourth Gospel anonymous
John, the Son of Zebedee, an Apostle of the Jews
Characteristics of the Writer of the Fourth Gospel
The Fourth Gospel represents the Jews as the Enemies of the
Christ .......
The Author of the Fourth Gospel ignorant of the Customs and
Manners of the Jews .....
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CONTENTS xiii
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Idea of the Jews as Lawless . . . . .117
Language of the Discourses in the Fourth Gospel . . 118
Geographical and other Errors in the Fourth Gospel . . 118
Johannine Description of the Author of the Fourth Gospel con-
tradicted by that of the Synoptics . . .119
Supposed Age of John at the time of the Composition of the
Fourth Gospel . . . . . .119
Theory of the Changes introduced by Amanuenses in the Lan-
guage of the Fourth Gospel . . . .119
The Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel . . .120
The Fourth Gospel and the Chiliastic Literature of the First
Two Centuries . . . . . .121
Effects of the Lapse of Time on Memory . . .122
Impossibility of recollecting Conversations and Discourses
accurately for more than a short time . . .122
The Teaching of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel and in the Synoptics 123
Thaumaturgy of the Johannine Gospel . . .124
The so-called Johannine Epistles . . . .124
The Fourth Gospel and the Paschal Controversy . .125
The Testimony of Papias . . . .125
The Gospels in the Time of Irenseus . . . .125
No direct contemporary Testimony for any of the Four
Canonical Gospels . . . . .125
Lack of Information as to the Personal Followers of Jesus . 125
The Argument of Paley from the twelve incorruptible and
infallible Witnesses . . . . .126
The Nature of Human Testimony . . . .127
Paley's Description imaginary . . . .128
Conditions of Jewish Life and Thought in the First Century . 129
Distinction drawn between Scriptural and other Marvels,
"Wonders, or Miracles . . . . .129
The Question of Miracles really a Question of the narratives of
those Miracles . . . . . .130
CHAPTER IV
MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS
Absence of Contemporary Attestation for the Four Gospels . 131 ^
The Narrative of the Acts discredited by the Pauline Epistles 131
CONTENTS
It is also discredited by the Apocalypse
The Council of Jerusalem, the Conversion of Cornelius, and
the Death of Stephen are imaginary Incidents
The ultimate Test of the credibility of alleged Historical Nar-
ratives .......
TJie Early History of Eome .....
•/Fictions and Forgeries . * . . .
Application of this Test to the Acts of the Apostles .
The Question of Marvels or Wonders virtually answered already
The Jews in the First Century not trustworthy Witnesses of fact
Traditional Notions of the Evidences of Christianity
Jewish Demon ology and Superstition generally
Greed for Marvels, with rapid forgetfulness of them
Types of Miracles and Marvels
Diabolical Possession
Witchcraft .....
True and False Miracles . .
The Age of Miracles ....
Assertion that Miracles are still wrought
Supposed evidential Miracles .
Alleged raisings of physically Dead Bodies
//Testimony of Augustine
His Testimony genuine : that of the Gospels not genuine
Slight Effects of his Testimony
Evidential Value of Miracles or Wonders
Butler on the Evidences of Christianity
Employment of undefined Terms
Direct Revelation
Miracles and Discourses of the Fourth Gospel
These Miracles and Discourses not Historical
' Ambiguous ' Miracles
* Secret Miracles ' .
Spiritual Realities and visible Wonders
Ecclesiastical Miracles
Pious Frauds
Science and Religion
Miracles the alleged Basis of Christian Belief
Christianity the Religion of the Empire
Hereditary Belief in Marvels .
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CONTENTS XV
PAGE
Multiplication of Stories of Marvels . . . .151
Translation of Spiritual Language into concrete Incidents . 152
The Gospel Wonders for the most part the result of such
Transmutation . . . . . .152
CHAPTEE V
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS
Contradictory Legends ....
Apocryphal Gospels .....
Appeal to the Canon of Scripture
Supposed Original Apostolic Writings
Supposed Early Loss of these Writings
Supposed Early Knowledge of the Canon of New Testament
Writings .....
Supposed Continuous Testimony to the Books of the Canon
General Character of this Testimony .
The Appeal to Authority ....
Extent of the Authority of the Canon . * .
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157
BOOK II
THE NATIVITY
t
CHAPTER I
THE GENEALOGIES OF THE FIRST AND THIRD GOSPELS
Connexion of the Genealogies with the Gospels . . 159
Question of the natural Descent . . . .160
The Three Series of Fourteen Generations . . .160
Explanations of Jerome and Augustine . . .161
Defects in the Genealogies . . . . .161
The Line between David and Josiah . . . .162
Admissions of Jerome . . . . .163
The Genealogy in the Third Gospel . . . .163
Hypotheses of Levirate Marriages . . . .164
The Davidic Descent traced back from Joseph, not Mary . 165
Character of the Genealogy in the Third Gospel . . 165
The Genealogies probably interpolated . . .166
XVI
CONTENTS
Effects of the'Acceptance of these Genealogies
General Question of the Davidic Descent of Jesus
The Genealogies unhistorical
CHAPTER II
THE NARRATIVES OF THE NATIVITY
The Nativity Story of the First Gospel
The Topography of this Story
Sanction of the Science of Astrology
Supposed Application of Prophecy
The Star of the Magi
The Slaughter of the Innocents
Astronomical Explanations
The Sign of Ahaz
The Recall from Egypt
Invention of Prophecy
The Dreams of Joseph
The Virgin Birth .
Narrative of the Third Gospel
Points of difference from the Story of Matthew
Topography and Thaumaturgy of the Tale
The Journey from Jerusalem to Nazareth
The Annunciation and Conception
The Visit of Mary to Elisabeth
The Story of Zacharias
Question of the Birthplace of Jesus .
Notes of Time. The Census of Quirinus
The Baptism of Jesus and the Fourth Gospel
The Narratives of the Nativity altogether unhistorical
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BOOK III
THE MINISTRY
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE
The Answer of Jesus to His Parents in the Temple
Pertinence of this Answer
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194
CONTENTS
xvn
Forgetfulness of Signs and Wonders
Learning of the Child Jesus
Sources of this Learning
The Return to Nazareth
Difficulties of the Story
The Narrative unhistorical
Possible Suggestions for the framing of the Story
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199
CHAPTER II
THE RELATIONS OF JESUS WITH JOHN THE BAPTIST
Section I — The Mission of John the Baptist.
The Home at Nazareth ....
The Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes .
Influence of Alexandrine or other foreign Jews .
Date of the First Appearance of John the Baptist
Notes of Time in the First Gospel
Duration of the Career of «Tohn the Baptist
The alleged School founded by the Baptist
The Narrative unhistorical
Section II. — John as the Forerunner of the Messiah
Messianic Ideas of the Time
The Baptism of Water
Kinship of Jesus and the Baptist
The Baptist's alleged Ignorance of Jesus
The Narrative unhistorical
Section III. — The Acknowledgement of the Messiah
ship of Jesus by the Baptist.
Extent of the Evidence .
Messianic Expectations of the Baptist
The Narrative of the Fourth Gospel
Language of John in reference to Jesus .
Johannine Account of this Language
The Mission of the two Disciples of the Baptist
The Character of the Narrative .
Translation from the Spiritual into the Concrete
Chronology of the Story
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CONTENTS
PAGE
Motives for the Mission . . . .213
Position of John in his Imprisonment . . .214
Report of the "Works of Jesus . . . .214
Doubts of John and his Disciples . . .215
Estimate of John by Jesus . . . .216
The Causes of his Imprisonment . . .217
Results of the Inquiry ; the Narrative unhistorical . 218
Section IV. — The Deputation from Jerusalem to John
THE Baptist.
Supposed Messiahship of John the Baptist . . 218
Disposition of the Sanhedrim . . . .219
Its Bearing on the Story of the Deputation . . 219
Dilemma involved in the Narrative . . .219
The Narrative unhistorical . . . .219
Section V. — The Incidents of the Baptism of Jesus.
Question of the Trustworthiness of the Narrative . 220
Comparison with the Nativity Stories . . .220
Narrative of Justin Martyr . . . .221
The opening of the Heavens, and the Voice ., . 221
The Presence of all the People . . . .222
The Narrative unhistorical . . .223
Possible Materials suggesting the Story . . .223
Section VI. — The Execution of John the Baptist.
Contradictory Motives for the Execution of John the
Baptist . . . . . .224
The Place of Execution . . . . .224
The Account of the First Gospel partially historical . 225
CHAPTER III
THE TEMPTATION, OR TRYING, OF JESUS
Accounts of the Temptation in the Synoptic Gospels . . 226
The Silence of the Fourth Gospel . . . .227
The Temptation excluded by the Chronology of the Fourth
Gospel ....... 227
The Story of the Temptation unhistorical and impossible . 228
The Forty Days' Fast . . . . .228
The Visible Tempter, and the Course of Human Temptation . 229
CONTENTS
XIX
Judgement of the Author of the Epistle of James
Satan and the Vritra of the Eig Veda
Explanations of the Temptation
Zoroastrian and Christian Dualism
Supposed Manoeuvres of the Sanhedrim
The Scenes of the Temptation
The Three Suggestions
Possible Groundwork of the Story
The Story unhistorical
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CHAPTER IV
DURATION OF THE MINISTRY
Popular Chronology ....
Scenes of Action in the Ministry
The Synoptic Chronology
The Johannine Chronology .
The two mutually exclusive .
Journeys in Judsea and Galilee
Pharisaic Influence in Galilee
The Synagogue at Nazareth .
Variations in the Versions of the Incidents at Nazareth
Purpose of the Synoptics
Duration of the Ministry in the Fourth Gospel
Chronology of the Third Gospel
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239
CHAPTER V
THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES
Defective Notes of Time
The Johannine Narrative of the Calls
The Calling of Andrew and Simon
The Call of Philip and Nathanael
The Greeting of Nathanael .
The Narrative untrustworthy
The Call of Andrew and Simon in the Synoptics
Complete Contradiction of the two Narratives
Both Narratives unhistorical
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243
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244
CONTENTS
Insight of Jesus into Human Character
Influence of Old Testament Traditions
Faith in Jesus as Messiah
Confession of Andrew-
Supposed Kepetitions of Calls
Wonders connected with the Calls
The Stories of the Calling of Peter unhistorical
The Calling of the Publicans
The Twelve Apostles or Missioners .
Relative Positions of Peter and John in the Fourth Gospel
The Mission of the Seventy ....
CHAPTER VI
THE MESSIANIC MISSION OF JESUS
Belief of Jesus in his Mission as Messiah
Claim to be the Judge of the World .
His Language in the Fourth Gospel .
Contradictions between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel
Alleged Claims of Pre-existence . . . ^
Question of Political Purposes
The Law and the Prophets ....
Jesus and the Samaritans ....
CHAPTER VII
DISCOURSES IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
^/Section I. — The Sermons on the Mount and the Plain.
Time at which the Sermon on the Mount was delivered
General Character of the Sermon
No sign of this Sermon in the Fourth Gospel
Topics of the Discourse .
Versions of the First and Third Gospels
The Woes of the Third Gospel .
Similes of Salt and Light
Relation of Jesus to the Law
The Lord's Prayer
The Request of the Disciples for a Form of Prayer
Miscellaneous Subjects in the Discourse .
CONTENTS
Section II. — Addresses to the Twelve and the Seventy.
Unhistorical Sequences .....
Charge to the Twelve .....
Directions for Conduct .....
The Commission of the Seventy
Section III. — The Parables.
General Character of the Parables
Genuineness of the Parables
The First Series of Parables
Explanations of the Parables
Ebionite Parables : the Rich Man and Lazarus
The Parables of the Talents
The Parable of the Marriage Feast
The Present Form of the Parables
Section IV. — Miscellaneous Discourses.
The Imitation of Children
Verbal Connexions in the Synoptics
Discourses on the Life to Come .
Discourse on the Son of David .
Defeat of the Sadducees and Pharisees .
Discourse on Outward and Inward Cleansing
The Discourse unhistorical
Denunciation of the Pharisees
The Blood of all the Prophets .
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CHAPTEE VIII
the JOHANNINE discourses of JESUS
Section I. — General Character of the Johannine" Dis-
courses.
Discourses in the Synoptic Gospels
Contrast of the Johannine Discourses
Impossibility of reconciling the two Series
The Hearers in the Fourth Gospel
Question as to the real Teaching of Jesus
Section II. — The Conversation with the Woman of
Samaria.
Antitheses in the Fourth Gospel
273
273
274
274
275
276
CONTENTS
Preaching of Jesus in Samaria
The Conversation with the
historical
Samaritan Woman un-
Section III. — The Conversation with Nicodemus.
Declarations of Jesus in the Conversation with Nicodemus
Knowledge of the Divine Logos .
Character and Position of Nicodemus
The higher ranks of Jewish Society
The Inquiries of Nicodemus
Predictions of the Death of Jesus
Limits of the Discourse with Nicodemus
Question as to the Reports of this Conversation
Section IV. — The Discourse after the Cure at the Pool
of Bethesda.
The Work of the Eternal Son ....
The Johannine Form of Thought and Speech
Section V. — The Discourse on the Living Bread. ^
Carnal Interpretations of the Jews
Method of the Teaching of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel .
Section VI. — Discourses on the Person of the Christ
AND OTHER SUBJECTS.
Relations of the Eternal Son with the Father
The supposed Parable of the Good Shepherd
The Prophet in his own Country
Later Discourses of Jesus
Reports of these Discourses
PAGE
279
280
280
280
281
281
281
282
282
283
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
CHAPTER IX
FURTHER COMPARISON OF THE JOHANNINE AND SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
Section I. — The Question of Eye-witness.
Characteristics of the Synoptic Gospels .
Their Relation to the Fourtli Gospel
292
292
CONTENTS
Section II. — The Kinsfolk of Jesus. page
Alleged Disposition of the Kinsfolk of Jesus . .294
Implied Disposition of Mary . . .295
Truth of the Narratives . . . .296
Replies of Jesus to his Mother and his Kinsfolk . . 297
Section III. — The Disputes for Precedency.
The Synoptic Narratives of these Disputes . . 297
Time and Motive of these Disputes . . 297
Section TV. — The Purification of the Temple.
Alleged Time (or Times) of the Purification . . 298
The False Witness at the Trial of Jesus . .299
Action of Jesus in the Cleansing of the Temple . . 299
Question of one or two Purifications . . . 300
Unlikelihood of the Johannine Narrative . . 300
The Commerce in the Temple . . . .301
The Destruction and Restoration of the Temple . . 302
Section Y. — The Anointing of Jesus.
Objections made to the Anointing ... 302
Question of one or more Anointings . . 303
. Simon the Leper and Simon the Pharisee . . 305
The Plan of the Johannine Gospel . . . 305
Effects of Oral Transmission .... 305
Story of the Woman taken in Adultery . . .306
Age of the Narrative ..... 306
Character of the History of the Four Gospels . . 307
Teaching of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels . . 308
Order and Sequence in the Synoptic Gospels . . 308
Sources of Information open to the Fourth Evangelist 309
Lack of Contemporary Testimony . . . 309
CHAPTER X
the narratives of marvels, wonders, or miracles in
the four gospels
Section I. — Character of the Wonders in the New
Testament Writings.
Alternative Views of the Gospel Narratives . . 310
PAGE
311
311
311
312
313
xxiv CONTENTS
Narratives of Extraordinary Events
Inconsistencies in these Narratives
Types and Antitypes ....
Alleged Claims of Jesus to Wonder-working Power
The Casting-out of Demons
Section II. — The Expulsion of the Evil Spirit at
Capernaum.
Contradictions in the Synoptic Narratives . . 314
The Rebuking of the Demon . . . .314
Section III. — The Demoniacs of Gadara.
Statements of the Synoptic Narratives . . .314
The Demons and the Swine . . . .315
References to so-called Natural Visitations . . 316
Section IV. — The Lunatic Healed after the Trans-
figuration.
Time assigned to this Event . . . .316
The Power of Faith . . . .^ .316
Section V. — Cures of the Leprous and the Blind.
Nature of Physical Leprosy . . . .317
Congenital Blindness . . . . .317
The Blind Man in the Fourth Gospel . . .317
Section VI. — The Connexion between Sin and Disease.
State of Jewish Feeling on this Subject . . .318
The Destruction of the Galilajans . . .319
The Beatitudes in the Third Gospel . . .319
Section VII. — Involuntary Cures.
Question of the Effluence of Power . . .320
Conveyance of Power by Cloths . . . .320
Section VIII. — Cures wrought at a Distance.
Cases of Involuntary Action . . . .321
Synoptic Versions of Cures at a Distance . . 321
Questions of one Cure or of many , . .321
Parallels in the Old Testament Writings . . 322
CONTENTS
XXV
Section IX. — Cures wrought on the Sabbath Day.
Position of Jesus in Eeference to the Law
The Cure at the Pool of Bethesda
Historical Value of the Narratives of Marvellous Healings
Section X. — The Eesuscitation of the Physically Dead.
Conditions of Bodily Death
Recovery from Bodily Death
Alleged Instances of such Recovery
The Widow's Son at Nain
Subsequent History of Persons recalled after Bodily Death
The Death of Lazarus .
Questioning of the Jews
The Silence of the Synoptic Writers
Explanations given of this Silence
The Cause of this Silence
Wonders of Elijah and Elisha
Section XL — Wonders or Miracles connected with the
Sea.
Operations on Inanimate Things
The Rebuking of the Sea
The Walking on the Sea
The Finding of the Tribute Money
Section XII. — Marvels or Miracles of Multiplication
The P'eedings of the Multitudes .
The Multiplication of Food
Naturalistic Interpretations
Parallels in the Old Testament Scriptures
The Feeding of the Prophets by Elisha .
The Miracle at the Marriage Feast of Cana
Time assigned for the Wonder .
The Action of Mary
Her Prescience ....
The Event related as a Wonder
The Change of Water into Wine
Miracles of Luxury
Naturalistic Interpretations
Parallels in the Old Testament Writings
PAGE
322
322
323
323
324
324
326
326
327
327
328
328
329
329
330
330
330
331
331
332
333
333
334
334
335
335
336
336
337
337
337
338
CONTENTS
Section XIII. — The Punitive Marvel of the Fig-tree. pack
The Influence exercised on the Fig-tree . . .339
Metaphysical Difficulties . . . .340
Alleged Motives for the Wonder . . .340
The Wonder unhistorical . .340
Possible Origination of the Story . . .341
Section XIV.— The Transfiguration.
Construction of plausible Narratives . . .342
Ignoring of Difficulties . . . . .343
Declaration of the Messiahship of Jesus . . .343
Accounts of the Fourth Gospel . . . .343
These Accounts unhistorical . . . .344
The Circumstances of the Transfiguration . .344
Mental Condition of the Disciples . . • . 345
The Conversation on the Descent from the Mountain . 345
Credibility of the Synoptic Narratives . . .346
The Plan of the Fourth Gospel . . . .346
Naturalistic Interpretations . . . .346
Consequences of such Interpretations . ./ . 347
The Appearance of Moses and Elias . . .347
John the Eye-witness . . . . .348
The Coming of Elias . . . . .349
Difficulties of the Narrative . .349
The Growth of the Story . . .350
The Story unhistorical . .350
General Value of the Narratives of Wonder . . 351
BOOK IV
THE PASSION AND RESUREECTION
CHAPTER I
closing scenes of the ministry
Announcement of the coming End of the Ministry
The Idea of Necessity
The Last Journey to Jerusalem
The Conduct of the Samaritans
352
353
353
354
CONTENTS
PAGE
Johannine Narrative of the Last Journey .355
The Entry into Jerusalem . . . . .355
Supposition of Two Entries . . . .356
The Supposition not tenable . . . . .357
The Ass and the Colt . . .357
Wonders involved in the Story . . .358
CHAPTER II
PREDICTIONS OF JESUS RESPECTING HIS DEATH
The Mode and Details of the Passion . . .359
The Johannine and Synoptic Narratives . .359
The Alternatives . . . . . .360
Types and Prophecies . . . . .361
Attempts to Explain the Predictions of Jesus . . 361
The Narrative throughout Unhistorical . . .362
Jewish Ideas of the Messiah . . . . .363
The Teaching of the Hebrew Prophets . . .363
Worship of Tammuz in the Temple at Jerusalem . . 364
The Misapprehensions of the Apostles . . .365
CHAPTER III
PREDICTIONS OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
Unbelief of the Disciples . . . . .367
Their Ignorance of the Meaning of the Resurrection from the
Dead ....... 368
Preparation for Embalming . . . . .368
The Alternative Conclusion . . . . .369
Action of the Scribes and Pharisees . . . .369
Futility of Metaphorical Interpretations . . .369
The Sign of Jonah . . . . . .370
CHAPTER IV
PREDICTIONS RESPECTING THE SECOND ADVENT
Question of the Genuineness of these Discourses . . 371
The Discourse in Matthew xxiv. . . . .371
Question of the Fulfilment of the Predictions 372
Conditions of the Inquiry . . . . .373
CONTENTS
Arguments of Apologists
Absence of Notes of Time
Hermeneutic Difficulties
Supposed Meaning of the Word ' Generation '
Employment of Equivocal Phrases
Uncertainty of the Evangelic Narratives
Probable Time of the Composition of these Discourses
Character of the Writer . . . ,
PAGE
374
374
375
376
376
376
377
378
CHAPTER V
THE ENEMIES OF JESUS
1/^ Complete Contradiction between the Johannine and the Syn
optic Narratives
Causes of Offence as recorded in the Fourth Gospel
Designs for putting Jesus to Death
The Adherents of Jesus
The Johannine Account unhistorical .
379
380
381
381
382
CHAPTER VI
THE TREACHERY OF JUDAS
Alleged Causes of the Treason of Judas
Judas the Purse-bearer
The Johannine Story
This Story unhistorical
The Predestination of Judas
The Alternative Conclusion
Possible Motives of Judas
The Betrayal in the Synoptic Gospels
Possible Origination of the Story
Alleged Fulfilment of Prophecy
Stories of the Death of Judas
The Field of Blood .
Action of the Sanhedrim
Story told by Papias
The Version given by Peter
Akeldama
The whole story of Judas a Fiction
383
383
384
384
385
386
386
387
387
388
389
389
389
390
391
392
393
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER
The Upper Eoom
Marvels in the Narrative
The Johannine Account of the Last Meal
Theological Basis of this Story
The Synoptic Account
The Einal Discourses in the Fourth Gospel
Efforts of Apologists .
The Alternative
The Passover, or not the Passover
The Testimony of Matthew .
Predictions of the Treachery of Judas
The Institution of the Eucharist
CHAPTER VIII
THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN
The Agony not mentioned in the Fourth Gospel
The Synoptic Accounts
The Strengthening Angel
Silence of Matthew and Mark
The Sleep of the Disciples
The Threefold Prayer
The Johannine and Synoptic Jesus .
The Final Prayer in the Fourth Gospel
The Authorship of this Prayer
CHAPTER IX
THE ARREST IN THE GARDEN
General Character of the Narratives of the Passion
The Entrance of Judas into the Garden
Judas in the Fourth Gospel .
The Majesty of Jesus
The Smiting of Malchus
The Chief Priests and Elders in the Garden
The Young Man in the Linen Garment
The Flight of all the Disciples
PAGE
394
394
395
395
396
396
396
397
397
398
399
399
401
401
401
402
403
403
404
405
406
407
407
407
408
410
410
411
411
xkx
CONTENTS
CHAPTER X
THE TRIALS BEFORE THE CHIEF PRIESTS
Jesus ill the House of Annas .
Annas and Caiaphas .
The Denials of Peter .
The Trial before the Sanhedrim
Bearing of this Trial on the earlier History of Jesus
The Witness as to the destroying and setting up of the Tempi
The Ill-treatment of Jesus
Peter and John in the House of Annas
The Beloved Disciple and the High Priest
PAGE
412
413
414
415
415
415
417
417
419
CHAPTER XI
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE
Need of careful Examination of the Narrative
Jesus in the Praetorium
The Beginning of the Trial
Pilate's Asseverations of the Innocence of Jesus
Pilate as a Roman Judge
The Soldiers of Pilate and their Master
The Transfer of Jesus to Herod
The Story of this Transfer a Fiction .
The Dream of Pilate's Wife .
The Washing of Pilate's Hands
All the Incidents of the Trial fictitious
The Scourging and the Scarlet or Purple Robe
The Mocking of Jesus
420
421
421
422
422
423
423
424
424
425
426
427
428
CHAPTER XII
THE CRUCIFIXION
•^General unhistorical Character of the Narrative
The Bearing of the Cross
The Lamentation of the Women
The Nailing of the Hands and Feet .
The Gall and the Vinegar
The Sponge of Vinegar
429
429
429
430
430
431
CONTENTS
The Sayings on the Cross ....
The Two Malefactors ....
The Title on the Cross ....
The Dividing of the Garments
The Mocking of the Chief Priests and Elders .
The Mother of Jesus and the beloved or nameless Disciple
The Cry of Desolation ....
All the Incidents of the Narratives of the Crucifixion unhis
torical ......
PAGE
431
432
433
434
434
436
437
438
CHAPTER XIII
THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF JESUS
The Darkness and the Earthquake
These Incidents unhistorical .
The Taking Down from the Cross
The Rending of the Veil
The Rising of the Multitude of Saints
The Exclamation of the Centurion
The Spear Wound
The Burial of Jesus .
The Grave or Tomb .
439
439
440
441
441
443
443
444
445
CHAPTER XIV
THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE
The Story of the Guards at the Tomb
Statements implied in the Story
The Story both absurd and false
446
447
449
CHAPTER XV
THE BODILY RESURRECTION
The Narrative in the First Gospel
The Narrative in the Second Gospel .
The Narrative in the Third Gospel
The Narrative in the Fourth Gospel .
The Synoptic and Johannine Stories exclude each other
The whole Narrative unhistorical
451
451
452
452
453
454
XXXll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVI
APPEARANCES OF JESUS AFTER THE BODILY RESURRECTION
PACK
Duration of the Christophanies . . . . 45G
The Command to return to Galilee . . . .456
The charge of the Angels to the "Women . .456
Manifestations to the Apostles . . . .457
Time of the Ascension ..... 458
The Journey of the two Disciples to Emmaus . 458
The Ascension in the Third Gospel . .45^
The Command to tarry in Jerusalem . .461
The Narratives contradictory . . .461
The Manifestations in the Fourth Gospel .461
The Imparting of the Holy Spirit .... 462
Manifestations in Jerusalem ... . . . 462
The Narratives irreconcileable . . .463-
The ' Appendix ' to the Fourth Gospel .463
The Threefold Questioning of Peter . . . .463
The Story in the Acts . . . .464
The Visible Ascension from Olivet . . <^. .464
Astronomical Difficulties in the Story . . . 465
Further Inquiry superfluous . . . . .466
Multiplication of Christophanies in Judaea . . .467
Contradictory Narratives . . . . .468
Nature of the Risen Body of Jesus . . . .468
The Form of Baptism in the Gospels and Acts . . 469
Possible Origin of these Stories . . . .470
CHAPTER XVII
ALLEGED WITNESS OF THE APOSTLE PAUL TO THE FACT OF
THE HISTORICAL RESURRECTION
Passages relied on for the Testimony of the Apostle Paul . 471
Supposed Genuineness of these Passages . . .471
Paul does not profess here to speak from his own Knowledge . 472*
The Passages a mere Statement of the Reports of Others . 472
The Doctrine of Necessity . . .473
Order of the Christophanies . . . . .474
Character of these Manifestations . . . .474
CONTENTS xxxiii
PAGE
475
476
477
477
478
479
480
The Manifestation to the Five Hundred
The Eeliance to be placed on Paul's Judgement
His Visions .....
The Last of the Christophanies in the List
Question of Genuineness of the Text .
Extent of Interpolations
The Testimony is not that of the Apostle Paul
APPENDICES
Appendix A. — The Growth of Miracles, or of Narratives of
Thaumaturgy . . . .483
„ B. — The so-called Historical Framework of Tradi-
tional Christianity . . .492
„ C. — The Parables . . . .509
„ D. — Apocryphal Gospels. The * Gospel of Peter ' . 516
„ E. — Miracles, and the Evidence of Miracles or
Marvels ..... 524
„ F. — The Eschatology of the Synoptic Gospels . 530
Index
535
THE FOUE GOSPELS
AS HISTOKICAL RECORDS
INTEODUCTION
What is the theology and what is the real faith of the Church of
England? 'No more momentous question than this can be ad-
dressed to the English nation generally. A majority of the people
profess, it is said, to be members of the National Church ; and all
these are under precisely the same obligations. In this sense
there is no distinction between the clergy and the laity ; and the
plea that the former have signed away a freedom which cannot
be taken from the latter is not true in fact, and is worth nothing.
The clergy have, it is true, made certain promises at their ordina-
tion ; but the clergy and the laity are alike bound in the same
degree to the language of the formularies, whatever this measure
of obligation may be declared to be. The three Creeds are recited
by clergy and laity alike; and, so long as they profess to be
members of the Church of England, they are bound to assent to
them. In the Baptismal Office the sponsors are called upon
catechetically to declare their acceptance of every proposition in the
Apostles' Creed ; and in this catechetical form some of the pro-
positions are put into a shape different from that which they bear
in the Creed as used in the daily services. Whatever, again, the
clergy may recite, the laity make their own by the solemn Amen
which declares their assent to the terms of the prayer.
It is idle, therefore, to speak of any members of the Church
of England (so long as they profess to be such) as possessing or
A
2 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
enjoying a freedom which does not belong to those who, being
members, are also its officers. The supposition that any such
difference exists is at bottom monstrous. Years have passed since
Dean Stanley, dealing with the question of Essays and Reviews,
protested against the temper of certain critics who passed by the
lay contributor to that volume as ' comparatively blameless,* while
they insisted that the truth or falsehood of statements made by
the contributors in ' holy orders ' was a matter of no consequence,
as they had chosen to resign their natural liberty. For Dean
Stanley there was something peculiarly malignant in such charges ;
and he protested with all his might against the notion ' that truth
was made for the laity and falsehoo4 for the clergy, — that truth is
tolerable everywhere except in the mouths of the ministers of the
God of truth, — that falsehood, driven from every other quarter of
the educated world, may find an honoured refuge behind the con-
secra,ted bulwarks of the sanctuary.' Such a theory of the National
Church he denounced as godless; and he declared emphatically
that, if such charges could be substantiated, it would be the
bounden duty of all, both clergy and laity, ' in the naine of religion
and of common sense, to rise as one man and tear to shreds such
barriers between the teachers and the taught, between Him
whose name is truth and those whose worship is only acceptable
if offered to him in spirit and in truth.'
The clergy and the laity of the Church of England have
therefore the same duties, and are under the same obligations ;
and if they profess that the foundation of their religion is
strictly historical, the first work which they have to do is to
determine whether, and how far, this conviction is tenable. Are
then all the members of the Church of England bound to admit,
and still more to maintain, the proposition, that the cardinal
dogmas or truths of Christianity are also historical events ? I
deny the proposition. But we cannot stop here, for they who
make this claim for what they declare Catholic truth assert also,
for the most part, that they who call it into question have no right
to claim the title of Christians, and, more especially, that all who,
INTEODUCTION 3
questioning it, hold office in the Church of England, are, in plain
words, traitors and apostates. That the conditions of the fight are
laid down with sufficient clearness it is impossible to deny ; and
the answer which I have to give is given in the name of the whole
body, clerical and lay, of the members of the Church of England.
My purpose, then, is to put into the plainest form what I
believe to be the essence of the teaching of the Church of England,
and so, if it be possible, to bring to a final issue the great question
on which must depend our conceptions of the nature of the divine
work on this our earth and in the universe. The conclusions here
reached are justified and upheld, directly or by legitimate inference,
by the series of Judgements which have been delivered by the
Sovereign in Council as the final interpreter of the standards and
formularies of the Church of England. These decisions, it is well
known, have given deep offence to one or other of the great parties
or schools comprised within its limits. It was known that they
must do so. But this was not regarded as a reason for withholding
them, the very object of these decisions being, for the most part, to
define the degree of freedom allowed to the clergy and laity. The
Judgement in the Gorham case, for example, declared that the
position of the defendant in the Church of England was tenable ;
but it did not declare that the position of Dr. Phillpotts, the
Bishop of Exeter, was not tenable.
It is impossible to speak of schools or parties in a religious
body without using names which those parties might repudiate ;
and if we apply to them the terms ' high,' ' low,' or ' broad,' we do
so only because it is not easy to speak of them in any other way.
It is, indeed, a fact of the greatest moment that the position of all
these three parties is perfectly tenable in the Church of England.
Any one of them has as much right to be where it is as has either
of the other two. But not one of them can silence or exclude the
others, and all three together do not constitute the Church of
England ; and therefore, even the unanimity of all members of all
the three parties or schools could not prove the position of some
one thinker, not belonging to any of them, to be untenable within
4 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
its limits, until it has been decided so to be by the Sovereign in
Council.
It must not be forgotten that, apart from and beyond these
divisions, the jurisdiction of the Sovereign in Council is the funda-
mental principle of the Church of England, and that the inter-
pretation of its standards and formularies, and therefore of its real
theology and its real faith, belongs to the Sovereign in Council,
and not to convocations, synods, or any other ecclesiastical
assemblies whatsoever. It follows that they who accept these
interpretations are they whose position in the Church of England
is most of all legitimate and assured. There is actually no
Church of England apart from the body of which the Sovereign
in Council is the interpreter.
This principle of the Eoyal Supremacy I assert heartily. It is
not, perhaps, invidious to say that a large proportion of the
members of the Church of England, and especially of the clergy,
do not. From this special point of view they who think with me
are loyal members of that Church, and they who dissent are not.
In saying this I am simply claiming a freedom to which every
member of the Church of England has an equal right with myself.
They may avail themselves of it or not, as they may judge best.
All that is here maintained is that the conclusions set forward in
this volume are in themselves tenable, and are declared to be ten-
able by the whole series of judgements delivered in the final Court
of Appeal by the Sovereign, and that, in fact, they represent the
theology of the Church of England more exactly than does the
theology of the great High Church or Low Church parties.
These convictions differ very widely from the beliefs avowed
by the members of these parties; but the point on which it is
most of all necessary to insist is that, probably without a single
exception, all who belong to these schools admit in certain cases
the great principle at stake, by giving a strictly spiritual inter-
pretation to propositions which seem to denote historical facts,
and which certainly carry on their face only a sensuous or material
meaning. Among these propositions one of the most notable is
INTRODUCTION 5
the assertion of the visible or bodily ascent of the Eternal Son into
a local heaven, followed by session at the right hand of God. It
matters not by what methods attempts may be made to get over
the difficulty ; but the fact will not be disputed that this assertion
is spiritualised or, as some would say, explained away. The child
who is being instructed in the Creeds is told that God is a Spirit,
formless, yet present everywhere, and therefore that we cannot,
except by a figure, speak of him as having hands or feet, eyes or
ears. One such instance is as effectual as a hundred. The
principle of spiritual interpretation is conceded ; and if this pro-
position is not to be taken literally, the same may be said of the
propositions which speak of the Eternal Son as born of the Virgin
Mary, or as tried before Pontius Pilate.
But this is not the only instance in which th6 most pronounced
traditionalists interpret spiritually propositions which in the letter
are gross, material, and carnal. 'No clergyman could or would,
in so many words, tell a child that the graves of the churchyard
will all one day be opened, when the angel's trumpet summons man-
kind to judgement, — that the material particles laid in the coffin
will all be used again by the living agent, or spirit, or self, or
man, who had laid them aside, — that there will be any visible
great assize at which all men will simultaneously appear, any
vision of angelic forms in our sensible atmosphere, still less a
material trumpet sounding from our aerial heavens in the ears of
the physically living and the so-called physically dead. The child
may be left to imagine that it will be thus, and may be so taught
as to make it likely that he will so think. The extent of wrong
thus done may not be easily measured ; but the sensuous or literal
meaning cannot be baldly propounded as the real one.
Here, then, we have a series of propositions dealing with
matters of faith, which seem to say one thing and are universally
admitted to mean another, and in which the letter is discarded for
the spirit : and these matters include subjects not less momentous
than the uprising and the judging of the quick and the dead. It
becomes, therefore, logically impossible to say that, although the
6 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
letter by itself is killing or mischievous, yet the spirit in some
instances carries the letter along with it, and is true because, and
only because, it does so.
To assert this proposition would be in effect to maintain that
the theology and the faith of the Church of England rest on a
number of historical incidents, in such sense that, if these incidents
should not have occurred at some particular time or place, that
faith and theology would fall or crumble away. No such pro-
position is found or can be extracted from the Prayer-Book or
Articles; and it is not easy to see precisely how it could be
formulated. I do, indeed, maintain the converse ; and even from
the little that has been said already, it follows of necessity that I,
and they who may think and speak as I do, represent the true mind
of the Church of England more nearly and faithfully than they
who may oppose us. I believe that this mind is most fully
expressed by the Creed known as the Nicene; and with this
Creed I find myself in thorough accord. I accept as true every
sentence contained in it in its real spiritual signification. This
Creed is the expression of the doctrine of the Eternal Word (Logos,
Sophia, Wisdom), and needs no other evidence than that which
may be adduced for these doctrines, — that is, evidence simply
spiritual ; and for eternal truth is not this the only evidence which
we can have or even conceive ?
If things be thus in the Church of England, there is manifestly
a great work to be forthwith done within it, a worli which is
indispensably necessary, and immediately needed. Whatever be
the merits or the demerits of their faith, the English are certainly
a religious people ; and the Church of England is unquestionably
the most important of all the religious bodies in this country. It
is a prime necessity, therefore, that this great body should be in
the van of English thought. I am but expressing my deep convic-
tion, when I say that the result must sooner or later be disastrous,
if the Church of England should be guided by either of the two
great schools or parties within it. It cannot be said that either
of these parties lays any stress on the search for truth. Both assert
INTEODUCTION 7
at they are in possession of it. I deny the assertion. They may
issess some of it; they are blind to much more, and therefore
il to see that the promise of spiritual guidance into all truth is a
ocess to which we can assign no end. By an absurdity, the
travagance of which could not easily be exceeded, these con-
rvative theologians assume that it was a work done once for all,
a few hours or a few minutes, for the apostolic or missionary
liege at Jerusalem, and that its fruits have been handed down
er since by the laying on of hands through the long series of
eir successors, who therefore, if not infallible, are at the least
iefectible, in their possession and defence of this truth.
But these parties, happily, whether taken singly or collectively,
not constitute the Church of England, though they are included
it ; nor are those doctrines as to which they may be unanimously
reed necessarily doctrines of the Church of England. The
evalent or popular High Church ideas as to the apostolic suc-
3sion or the power of the keys, for example, are simply the ideas
a school or party, and nothing more. They may be held within
e Church of England ; they cannot be inforced on any who may
ject them. They affect to deny that the Church of England
eaks in the last resort through the Sovereign ; but nevertheless
ly from the Sovereign in Council comes the decisive interpreta-
•n which determines the meaning of the standards and formularies,
le schools or parties may, and often do, reject these interpreta-
ins ; but their rejection of them cannot affect those who accept
em ; and if such words are to be used, the latter are properly
e orthodox members of the Church of England, and the ad-
rents of the great parties are not. No one is called upon now
do more than express his general approval of the doctrine (not
ctrines) and discipline of the Church of England ; and until it
n be shown that my assertions run counter to the fundamental
inciples and essential teaching of that Church, the man who
ikes them (whether I or any other) cannot be condemned.
This at once sweeps away all obligation of adhering to each
parate proposition of any particular Article ; and still less, there-
8 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
fore, can any particular proposition found in the Creeds be isolated
and urged against him. The Articles relating to faith can and
must be interpreted spiritually, and are indeed without strength
or meaning if interpreted in any other way. We may take the
fourth Article, on the uprising. Here the real assertion of essential
truth is that the Eternal Son of God is truly risen. This is
absolutely true. He is risen, for he is eternally dead to sin,
and eternally risen from the death of sin. It is impossible
that he should be holden of this death, which is the only real
death. This is the burden of the teaching of the great apostle of
the Gentiles: it is the fundamental teaching of the Church of
England.
It may be said that this is mysticism. I deny this utterly,
except in the sense in which all theological language is mystical.
If by the expression, ' the right hand of God,' we mean the greatest
height and the profoundest depth of his goodness, his truth, and
his love, then we are using this phrase mystically ; and if we do
not use it in this mystical or spiritual sense, it has no meaning
whatever. It is the same with every theological term. If we
speak of God as the Father of all mankind, we are using the words
not in the sense of the fatherhood of human generation, but in
quite another and higher sense, — that is, in its mystical or spiritual,
and therefore in its only true and real sense. If any should be
assailed on the ground of contravening this fourth Article, the reply
is that there is absolutely no one who adheres, or professes to
adhere, throughout to its letter. There is not one who ventures,
or dares venture, to say that a visible human form is sitting in a
certain place, and that this place or throne is at the right hand of
God the Eternal Father. But, as I have already said, if one clause
or sentence is to be interpreted spiritually or mystically, why not
every other ? Who is to restrict the application of the only method
which invests any theological term with any life, force, or meaning ?
Taken literally, the phrase 'the right hand of God' is a gross
anthropomorphism. So in the Eucharistic phrases, ' Take, eat — this
is my body,' ' Drink — this is my blood,' we have, as Dean Stanley
INTRODUCTION 9
plainly said, the language of a cannibal feast, if the words are to be
taken in their literal meaning. They cease to be gross, carnal, and
in the highest degree offensive, only when they are understood
mystically, — that is, in the only sense which will make them even
tolerable to any decently minded man. To suppose that the literal
meaning could be inforced by the law of the Church of England
would be mere madness ; and if this be so, another mass of terms
relating to the highest act of Christian worship is to be taken in a
sense totally different from that which in their literal signification
they would assuredly convey.
It is of no use now, since the change in the form of subscription,
to fall back on any one Article. It would have been of no use,
even before that change, to fall back upon the sixth Article, in
order to obtain a sanction for the common notions of which the
traditional schools are apt to speak as the doctrines of Chris-
tianity. The subject of this Article is not, as it is generally
supposed to be, the authority of the Holy Scriptures, but their
efficacy for salvation. In other words, this Article affirms that a
man may get from them all the moral instruction and spiritual
comfort which he needs ; and who would deny this ? The word
' authority ' is used in the Article later on ; but no attempt is made
to define the term, which may here mean ' potency or efficacy for
instruction in things pertaining to spiritual health and strength.'
This also no one would wish to dispute. But a man may have
authority who may yet go wrong and do wrong ; and the Scriptures
may have authority without being right in all their statements.^
For the members of the Church of England, however, the whole
^ This is asserted with all plainness in the Clementine Homilies, ii. 31, iii.
50, xviii. 20, the passage quoted being one which runs parallel with xii. 24 of our
Gospel according to Mark. The latter speaks of those who err because they do not
know the Scriptures or the power of God. The Homilies utterly upset the common
notion of the infallibility of Holy Writ, which is read into the sentence. According
to this writer, the Great Teacher was not upholding the authority of the writings
of the Old Testament (none others were as yet in existence), but was warning his
hearers against their fallibility. The verse in the Clementine Homilies is followed
by the words, ' And Peter said, If therefore of the scriptures some are true and
some are false, our Teacher rightly said, Be ye trusty money-changers, as in the
writings there are some approved sayings and some spurious.'
10 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
subject has been set at rest by Dr. Lushington's well-known Judge-
ment. Some of his rulings were appealed against, and all so
appealed against were reversed; but the portions not appealed
against (and this is among them) are law. Briefly, Dr. Lushington
declared that any clergyman is at liberty to reject certain state-
ments in certain books of the Holy Scriptures, and even whole
books, whether it be on the ground that they are historically
inaccurate and untrustworthy, or that their teaching is wrong.
This is sweeping language, which admits of no exception in favour
of any book over the rest.
Nor can any positive conclusion be drawn from the declaration
that the Articles contain the doctrine of the Church of England,
and that this doctrine is agreeable to God's Word. There is no
question as to the first proposition, and there is no definition of the
second. It is nowhere said that God's Word is the Bible, or that
the Bible is God's Word ; and any proposition laid down for the
purpose of inforcing such a conclusion has been summarily and in
terms swept away by the Judgement of Dr. Lushington. According
to this Judgement the 'Holy Scriptures' are writings which are
intended to instruct and comfort men and to lead them to God ;
and to that extent, he says, they have the sanction of the Almighty,
but nothing more.
We can hardly imagine a declaration more momentous than
this, if it is to be acted upon ; and for those who feel it to be their
duty to ascertain the truth of facts, so far as it may be possible to
do so, the supreme question is whether the principle so laid down
is to be acted upon or not. The natural instinct of those who
maintain -a traditional theology will be to keep that Judgement a
mere letter, inert and inoperative. It may probably be said with
truth, that the most far-reaching propositions which any clergyman
has since that time laid down are virtually nothing more than
repetitions of the Judgement, or necessary inferences from it. If it
be said, for instance, (1) that the divine work in the world is in no
way necessarily bound up with, or dependent upon, the historical
accuracy of any written record, or (2) that religion in no way
INTKODUCTION 11
depends on the truth or falsity of the narratives or precepts of the
Hebrew or any other Scriptures, this has been practically asserted
by that Judgement a quarter of a century ago. But if such propo-
sitions be true in the general, they are true also in the particular ;
and the principle on which they rest must be acted upon every-
where, if men are to be really awakened to the importance
of it.
In other words, there must be a serious and thorough examina-
tion of the ba,sis, not only of what is passed off as the theology of
the Church of England, but of the whole mass of unauthoritative
and often extravagant and mischievous notions and superstitions
which are habitually passed off as the common creed of Christen-
dom. The waters which are flowing in a back eddy must be made
to move forwards. Except on the assumption that all the recorded
incidents of the four Gospels are veritable facts of history, this
onward movement is indispensable and immediately necessary ;
and it is useless to argue that, if religion does not depend on the
historical accuracy of the jSTew Testament narratives, it can make
no difference whether the Gospel histories be trustworthy or not.
They who insist on the scrutiny would still be mere units against
myriads, struggling desperately under the burdens of a crushing
traditional system. Should a fresh trial be followed by another
Judgement similar to, or more explicit even than, that of Dr.
Lushington, they would still set to work to ignore that Judgement,
and to keep the people at large as ignorant of it as they are now
kept ignorant of like Judgements. What then would be the gain ?
None, unless the question turned on points as to which they might
feel that they could not hold their peace, — in other words, on
points which might rouse men to think and to search for them-
selves. In all likelihood, if so stirred, they would make use of
hard words, and would throw out insinuations or open charges
of bad faith on their opponents. Charges of treachery are easily
made ; but they who make them might be confronted by the fact of
their opponents maintaining that the theology of the Nicene Creed
is a true theology, and that it is the theology of the Church of
12 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
England, — a perfectly spiritual theology resting on a purely
spiritual basis.
The battle can no longer be fought on any except essential
questions. The Judgement in the case of Essays and Eevieivs makes
it impossible to institute a prosecution against any who might
assert that the narrative of the Book of Joshua is untrue in every
particular, and deliberately fictitious, such a person as Joshua
never having lived ; or, again, that the Book of Deuteronomy was
written in the time of Josiah, or that the Books of Chronicles are
a wilful and systematic falsification of the history of the Books
of Kings. The events of the last fifty years have at least inforced
this lesson. But the scrutiny must be carried further, if it should
appear that there is need of so doing ; and in my conviction the
need is supreme. In spite of decisions which have gone against
them, the tyranny of traditional opinions continues much what
it was, and we are little, if at all, nearer to the settlement of the
great debate. We can approach this settlement only by pushing to
its logical consequences the principle sanctioned by the Judgement
of Dr. Lushington, that is, by an impartial and complete examina-
tion of the history of the ISTew Testament from beginning to end.
In theory, the freedom of the clergy and laity of the Church
of England is won. But the acknowledgement of this victory has
not been made by the members of the great traditional schools.
On the contrary, the more the right to this freedom has been
assured by the decisions of the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Judge-
ments of the Sovereign in Council, with the greater pertinacity is
the claim to the possession of an infallible authority, whether of
a Church, or of a book, or of a set of books, asserted. Nor is this
assertion made on the ground of the tenability of their position
in a Church which has been founded on, and which exists by, com-
promise. It is insisted upon with the vehemence which implies
that they who dissent from it do so to their never-ending loss, —
that they are enemies of the faith, of religion, of truth, of morality,
of all that is right and all that is good, and that, therefore, if they
are not placed beyond the pale of all decent fellowship, they ought
INTKODUCTION 13
to be. It is indispensably necessary, therefore, that they shall be
compelled to admit the existence of this compromise, to acknow-
ledge that the great parties popularly known as those of High
Churchmen and Low Churchmen are parties who are enabled to
continue to work in the same religious body only by virtue of
this compromise, which embraces the broadest as well as the highest
and the lowest. They must be made to acknowledge that the posi-
tion of the broadest is as tenable in the Church of England as is
that of any others, and that, in point of fact, it is they who repre-
sent most nearly the true mind of the body to which they belong.
No room must be left to traditionalists for the iteration of large-
sounding concessions which they instantly withdraw by re-stating,
in different words, the propositions which their concessions had
seemed to yield up. Such a result cannot be brought about, or
even hoped for, if the truth, so far as it has been ascertained, be not
proclaimed with what may be called startling clearness. No doubt
they would vehemently deprecate such disquieting language. It
is enough to say that their opponents see the absolute and indis-
pensable need of it, and have an equal right to express their
convictions. It is useless to repeat demands which involve a
complete begging of the whole question. Except in the eyes of
those who in whatever form maintain the opinions of the tradi-
tional schools, the present state of things is pre-eminently and
intolerably unwholesome. On the strength of dogmatic proposi-
tions, which have no authority whatever, the people generally are
still under the dominion of strangely material, gross, and carnal
ideas, and their minds are not clearly and properly awake. They
must be made to see that their leaders do, in fact, yield to their
opponents a great deal more than they are usually supposed to
yield. In short, the average folk (by their own fault, no doubt)
are left very much in the dark, and their guides find the state of
things not an inconvenient one for themselves. Among the
bishops and the clergy generally, not a few make use of two
different forms of expression at different times and before different
hearers. They have, for instance, as we have seen, really given up
14 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS
the notion that Jesus left the earth from the summit of a small
Judaean hill, and that he sits on a throne by the right hand of
God — in the merely literal sense of all these words. Yet to their
congregations they will speak as though the historical /ac^ of the
visible ascent from Olivet was beyond all doubt and all question.
It is here, and in all the points to which this leads, that they must
be made to avow their conclusions in the face of day, honestly,
without dissimulation and without evasion. What it comes to is
this, that they are clinging (or allowing those who choose so to
think to suppose that they are clinging) to a terribly material
interpretation of spiritual truths, while they know that some of
the popular beliefs are untrue, and even admit to educated
opponents that they are untrue. They cannot but be aware that
if they give up the material or visible ascent from Olivet, they
give up also the idea of the material, visible, or sensible resurrec-
tion. On the theory, so fiercely insisted upon by traditionalists,
that the framework of Christianity is strictly historical, — that is
to say, sensible or material, — the visible ascent was a corporeal
necessity, for a visible body must be either here or not here. The
writer of the so-called Acts of the Apostles, having stated that
Jesus was here for forty days after his resurrection, has to account
for the fact that he was here no longer ; and he accounts for it
by making him go up into the air in the sight of all the disciples.
It is undoubtedly meant to be pictured as a final leave-taking.
If they who give up this final visible ascent from the hill-top say
that after his resurrection he could come and go at will, pass
through closed doors and vanish instantaneously from a supper-
table, they do so at a dreadful cost, for they reduce the narrative
in Acts to a bit of stage-play. According to this theory, he had
ascended already many times, and might do so any number of
times more. But in the narrative of Acts this visible ascent from
Olivet is the only ascent after the resurrection, and messengers
from heaven are made to appear in order to announce his formal
visible return when the time of the great consummation has
come.
INTRODUCTION 15
Can they for whom the ascertainment of truth is the first object
and the last rest content with such contradictory representations
as these ? They cannot do so. The theology of the Creed called
the Nicene is merely killed by the traditional or historical readings
which have been introduced into it, and have been allowed to
overlie it. With these readings there comes in, of necessity, a
constant confusion or collision of two antagonistic sets of ideas.
There may possibly have been something of this confusion in the
minds of some or most of those who took part in the formulating
of this Creed. But there can be little doubt, or rather there can
be none, that men like Gregory of Nyssa knew well that they were
dealing with spiritual truths only. The language here applied to
God the Son (God the Kevealed) is absolutely without meaning
if restricted to one man who appeared, according to our fourth
Gospel for two or three years, and according to the Synoptics for a
few months only, in Judsea and Galilee.
A further consequence of this so-called historical traditionalism
is the necessity of asserting that in the Gospels we have the
picture of an absolutely perfect life, and then of proving in
detail that this is so. There is, happily, no need of entering into
the question of absolute perfection. It is enough to say that, if
we can conceive it, it is beyond the power of mortal man to exhibit
it at work in all the relations of practical life. Unless it be in
terms denied that the Evangelists, whoever they were, were men
of like passions and infirmities with ourselves, it is certain that
any portrait which they might draw would reflect those feelings
and weaknesses in greater or less measure. This would be the
case even if they were eye-witnesses of all that they relate ; but
no one pretends that more than two of the Evangelists were
personal followers of the Great Teacher, and no one could venture
to maintain that either of them set down his recollections in
writing within less than five-and-twenty or thirty years after the
time with which they deal, or that the fourth Gospel was put
together till the Evangelist was eighty or ninety years of age —
that is, at least half a century after the time of which it is supposed
16 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
to be a record. It is folly to put out of sight the natural action of
time upon the strongest memory, even when aided by habits of
the most exact thought; and deep as the impression of their
Master's goodness may have been on the minds of Matthew and
of John, this impression, as the years went by, must have been
modified indefinitely by the gradual change wrought in their own
intellectual and spiritual condition. Of the authors or compilers
of the second and third Synoptics, all that can be said is that their
evidence admittedly comes to us at second hand, and that those
writers, and all who like them tried to furnish a picture of perfect
life in thought, word, and deed, would inevitably paint a picture,
the atmosphere of which would be their own. We may endow the
Evangelists themselves with faculties far beyond those of the
ordinary folk of their own day, although we have no special
grounds for so doing ; but we cannot forget that the words of Jesus,
as given in all the Gospels, speak of his disciples generally as
among the dullest and grossest of the most dull and stupid
peasantry in the world. But Englishmen, even of the most
thoughtful kind, never stop to think of the moral and intellectual
conditions under which the whole Jewish people lived at the time
when the Christian Church first began to take shape. It was, in
truth, an age of the most degraded and deadening superstition,
— an age in which an order of the universe was a conception
unknown to all except two or three minds at the most, and
to them present most dimly and imperfectly, — an age in which
men were as ignorant, intolerant, and bigoted as they were super-
stitious, and therefore as prejudiced and cruel as they were
intolerant. How would it be possible for men born and bred
under such conditions to hand down the picture of a life which
would appear perfect in the eyes of a remote posterity ? They
might write under the most profound conviction that they were
doing so, and they might strive to the utmost of their power to
realise their idea. But there would remain a multitude of state-
ments which nineteen or twenty centuries later would appear
inadequate, imperfect, mistaken; others which would seem ill
INTEODUCTION 17
judged or wrong, and others, again, which would be set aside as
altogether repulsive.
There is absolutely nothing in all this which needs in the
smallest degree to reflect on the character of the Great Master;
but if beings higher than ourselves can watch the drama of human
life, it must assuredly be to them one of the saddest sights to see
sincere and conscientious men striving vainly to justify all the
details of the picture so drawn — striving to show that things im-
perfect, wrong, and repulsive are not wrong or repulsive or im-
perfect, merely because they will not take the trouble to look into
all the circumstances and conditions under which that picture was
produced. The prodigy of the swine and the devils in the Gadarene
country is repulsive ; the finding of the tribute-coin in the mouth
of the fish is grotesque ; the multiplication of the loaves and fishes
implies a thousand insuperable difficulties of which they who
framed the narrative never dreamed. The fierce denunciation of
the Pharisees in the house of a Pharisee who had offered the
hospitality of his roof scarcely agrees with our ideas of ordinary
courtesy, and would never be thought now so to agree but for
theories of Biblical or other infallibility which must be maintained
at all costs.
It cannot, therefore, be too often or too earnestly repeated that
we say not one word in disparagement of the Great Teacher, if we
criticise, as we must criticise, the pictures which the Evangelists
have left us of him. These pictures come to us from unknown
hands ; and it is impossible to say how far any of the features,
may be faithfully drawn, although we know that many of theni
are distorted, and some may be actually unsightly. If we choose-
to take such portraiture as absolutely faultless, it is we only who.
are to blame, and we must pay the penalty ; and this penalty is:
the necessity of speaking to the ignorant or half-educated, or the
unthinking, in terms which for us involve a habit of dishonesty.
Such a habit of speaking must eventually be fatal in any religious
body. It is not merely fatal but without excuse in the Church of
England, which imposes no such necessity upon any of its members j
B
18 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
and in turning away from these traditional notions to the real
teaching of the English Church, we seem to pass from a vitiated
and choking atmosphere into clear and wholesome air.
This teaching asserts that there is a revelation (or as we
Englishmen should rather say, an unfolding or unveiling) of truth
going on before men, and in all men in all times and in all places.
This work is the work of God ; but God in himself, in his wisdom
and his power, is both unrevealed and unrevealable. No finite or
bounded mind can comprehend or apprehend his infinite perfection.
He is ' everlasting, without body, parts, or passions, the Maker and
Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.' He is in all
things, and all things are in him; for in him all live, and are
moved, and are. Human language, which is a poor vehicle for
the expression of any spiritual truth, is utterly inadequate when
applied to the one living God, the eternal Mind, in whose life
alone we have life ; and so, being driven to use a sign miserably
poor and weak, we speak of God in himself, unrevealed and un-
revealable, as God the Father.
But God is, nevertheless, manifest or being manifested. He is
made known in all his works, in the laws which sustain and guide
all worlds, in the hearts and consciences of all men ; and the name
by which we speak of God thus being manifested is God the Son.^
1 In a paper published in the Christian Reformer (February 1886), Dr.
Martineau says that for the men under whom the Trinitarian theology grew up
God the Father is ' God as he exists in himself, ere he at all appears,' and then
adds : ' Let now the silence be broken, let the thought burst into expression,
fling out the poem of creation, evolving its idea in the drama of history, and
reflecting its own image in the soul of man, then this manifested phase of the
Divine existence is the Son, i.e. it is the Logos, Verbum, Word. . . . The one
fundamental idea by which the two personalities are meant to be distinguished
is simply this, that the first is God in his primeval essence — infinite meaning
without finite indications ; the second is God speaking out in phenomena and
fact, and leaving his sign wherever anything comes up from the deep of things or
merges back again. ' This, in Dr. Martineau 's judgment, explains the fact that
the Creeds or Symbols have very little to say of the Father. ' You cannot fail,'
he says, ' to remark that one thing only is said respecting him in the Nicene
Creed, viz. that he is Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and
invisible, and that even this does not distinguish him from the Second Person, of
whom it is affirmed that by him all things were made.' But inasmuch as 'it is of
the very essence of bis perfection not to remain self-enclosed,' and as ' a manifest-
INTRODUCTION 19
All that we can say of him flows necessarily from this one asser-
tion. God the Son is God being made plain and clear to us, and
he must, therefore, be the very brightness of the Father's glory
and the very character of his substance. He must be co-equal
with him and co-eternal. If we use the word or sign ' begotten '
to express in some sense our conception of God as being unfolded
before us and in us, we must of necessity speak of him as begotten
before all worlds, as God of God, Light of Light, very God of very
God, — as being (to use another weak sign) of one substance with
the Father. We must speak of all things as being made and
sustained by him, without whom nothing has been made that is
made. In the conception thus formed of him he is the Son, the
Son who is the only begotten, in whom God the Father is seen by
his children ; and the path, so pointed out, at once leads to and
accounts for the language which attempts (however poorly) to
express his relation to the Father and the Father's work. He is
the way, the truth, and the life, and except in and through him
we cannot come to the Father (John xiv. 6). He alone has seen
and sees the Father by whom he is sent and comes (or is made
manifest) to us. The Father's work is therefore his work ; the
ing universe is the everlasting efflux of his will,' it follows that * the Word is
eternal as himself. This then is what is meant by the assertion that the Son is
co-eternal with the Father ; and, so understood, it is an attempt to correct our
first and false impression that God existed for a period before he acted. ... It
denies that the difference is one of time, brings the two in that respect into
coalescence, and for the relation of after and before bids us substitute that of
ever-rising phenomena and ever-abiding ground. . . . The moment anything
arises, it is the Son, upon whom, therefore, all the finite facts and objects which
express and exemplify for us the divine nature and providence crowd to form and
fill up his attributes.' On this point Dr. Martineau rightly lays the greatest
stress. The Nicene theology would be idolatry ' if the Trinitarian, speaking of
the Son, intended the historical Jesus of Palestine ; if, taking up that image and
starting from that point of chronology, he began to expand it till he enthroned it
in the heavens and let it pass as an equal element into the previous light of God.
But his way of thought is, in fact, the reverse of this method. The Son comes
before him not as an historical personage at all, but is God's eternal expression of
himself, the thought he puts forth in all his works and ways, manifested through
all ages by nature and history, but concentrated with unique brilliancy in the
character and existence, the holy life and redeeming work of Jesus, in whom
the Spirit so dwelt without measure that he was the very Word made flesh. '
20 THE FOCJR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
Father's will is his will. He judges not of himself, because his
judgement is the judgement of his Father ; and they who come
to him can come only by the will, the working, the drawing of the
Father.^ As being thus manifested for man and to man, he is
said to come down from the heavens. He must so come down, for
otherwise he could not be manifested or made known to us at all.
He must be unfolded to our senses and our mind, to our hearts
and to our consciences : in other words, he must lower himself to
the measure of the faculties which he himself has given to us.
He must draw all men to himself (John xi. 32); and thus the
work which God the Son has to do is the work of advancing and
bringing about the kingdom of the Father, the kingdom of truth,
righteousness, and love. To this kingdom all his creatures are to
be brought ; and not until they are so brought can sin and evil be
destroyed and God be the all in all. Weak and ignorant now,
they are to be made strong and filled with wisdom. Imperfect
and diseased, they are to be made sound and whole. As doing
this work in them and for them, he is the anointed one, the
healer (Jesus the Christ), of whom we think as leaving the
heavens to stoop down to our poor minds and our narrow abode.
Having reached this point, we come to another class of signs
which may seem to express conceptions which outwardly are not
altogether in accordance with some others (already noticed) which
seek to set forth the work and the office of the Eternal Son. In
himself, in the infinitude of his perfection, the Father is unknown
to us, and must be so always. In himself, the Father is without
body, parts, or passions. But to us the Kosmos, or Universe,
which declares the glory of God and sets forth what we call his
handiwork, is full of a bitter agony. It is groaning and struggling
in pain together from the beginning until now. On this earth in
which we live there is weakness of body and of mind ; there is
1 John vi. 44. The contradiction between this sentence and John xiv. 6 is
apparent. In the latter none can come to the Father but through the Son, the
only way. In the former none can come to the Son except by the act of the Father.
The two propositions are both logical inferences from the conception of the
unrevealable God and God the revealed.
INTKODUCTION 21
blindness, perversity, obstinacy, disobedience, rebellion, foul un-
cleanness, cruelty, and unutterable wrong. This wrong is to be
conquered and put out for ever. Truth is to destroy falsehood,
righteousness is to vanquish all iniquity ; and this extinction of
evil, and of the misery and death which come of it, will be the
consummation of the Divine work in the universe. This is the
work of the Father, and it is, therefore, also the work of the Son.
' My Father works always, and I work.' It is the Father's work
as made known to us in the working of the Son. It is a conflict
in which it may be said that the Son humbles himself, is tried or
tempted, suffers and conquers, so that his work may become
apprehensible by beings as weak and dull-sighted as men. But the
life of men is the life of God, who is the source and the support of
all life. All live to him and in him ; and therefore they live also
in the life of the Eternal Son, who knows all their want and all their
weakness more fully than they can know them themselves. He
thus unites their imperfect nature with the fulness of his own
perfection ; and the manhood and the Godhead are hence joined
together in an inseparable union. His creatures form in him one
organic whole. He takes up his tabernacle in their flesh, and they
are thus enabled to behold his glory, full of grace and truth
(John i. 14). He is thus (if we must use Latin rather than
English words) incarnate ; and the blessings of his incarnation are
assured to, and will in the end become the lot of, all his rational
and moral creatures. The world, the universe, is full of struggle
and pain, of the wear and tear of life ; and it was made subject to
this waste or vanity, not of its own will, but by the will of the
Father, who has so made it subject on the footing of hope (that is,
in truth, of a fixed purpose), because the whole creation shall in the
end be brought to the freedom of the glory of the children of God.i
^ I believe that these words fairly give the meauing of Rom. viii. 20, 21.
The R.V. translates ev' iXiridL on by the words ' in hope that.' It is hard to see
how oTL can express anything but a reason or fact. The sentence does not
express a hope that something may take place, but declares that the present
state of things is the result of a will which has brought it about on the footing of
a sure expectation, on the ground that the whole creation shall one day be set free.
22 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
So, becoming man, he undergoes the conflict with evil, and is
tried as they are tried, only (of necessity) without sin, for he is
absolutely and eternally dead to all sin. Were he not so dead, he
could not be the Eternal Son of the infinitely perfect Father.
This death to sin^ is the absolute rejection of all sin, the
eternal choosing of truth over falsehood, of righteousness over
wrong. But this choice is the choosing of life and light. It is
itself life and light ; and therefore the death of the Eternal Son is
also in itself the uprising to life, — in Greek and Latin phrase, a
Kesurrection and an Anastasis. But this his death and this his
life are death and life for all. There is not one of his moral and
responsible children who must not be partaker of his death in
order that he may be a sharer of his life. This death and this life
are both blessings coming from him and flowing out from him to
all. In his death and in his life he is spotless ; and his death is,
therefore (in the familiar Latin phraseology), the full, perfect, and
sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the
whole world or Kosmos, — for all sin. So being dead; and so living,
he ascends to heaven by an eternal ascent to the glory of the
unrevealed and unrevealable Father. So triumph follows conflict
and is assured by it. Truth, righteousness, and love are doing
battle now with all that is opposed to them ; and this is the first
coming of the Eternal Son in lowliness and weakness. When the
battle is over and evil is extinguished for ever, he will have come
for the second time in power and great glory, and all his children,
being cleansed and made sound and whole, shall shine forth as the
stars in heaven.
1 It is a favourite, and may be a necessary, practice with self-styled Catholic
theologians to attempt to shut up their opponents to a dilemma presenting only
one alternative. The writer of the essay on ' The Incarnation as the Basis of
Dogma,' in Lux Mundi, asserts (p. 235) that the Anastasis of Jesus ' must stand
its ground as a mere historical event. ' * All will be overthrown if this fact be not
fact.' But for this fact all historical evidence fails us utterly; and it follows
that the writers in Lux Mundi are on a wrong quest. What the writer of
Romans vi. 10 says is that the Eternal Son dies eternally to sin and lives
eternally to God ; and with this plain assertion the dilemma of the essayist
vanishes.
INTEODUCTION 23
The divine work is thus a work for and in every man. It is a
process and a training, for which there must be a teacher and
trainer, ever abiding in them, ever guiding and raising them ; and
this guide and strengthener (or comforter) is the revealing and
unfolding Spirit, God the revealer, God the Holy Ghost, the
divine and quickening breath of the life of the unrevealed and
unrevealable Father, who is manifested to our thought in the life,
the work, the conflict, the death, the uprising of God the revealed,
of God the Eternal Son. These three are one, — one eternal, living,
and true God, in whom all live and are moved and are.^
It is enough, therefore, to speak of God the revealer as we
speak of God the unrevealable and of God the revealed ; and as
we speak of God the revealer we think of the Giver of life who
must come (or proceed) from, or be the spirit or breath of, God
the Eternal Father and God the Eternal Son, — of the divine teacher
who speaks always and in all places by the mouth of all prophets
and righteous men, guiding all towards all truth, not at once or by
an instantaneous act, or by leaps, or by the conferring upon any
vicars or vicegerents of an official immunity from errors, mistakes,
blunders, and falsehoods, but by a training which is sure to attain
the end proposed, and which has for its object the building up of
one society or fellowship, universal and indivisible, of those who
love the truth, and, loving the truth, love God, — one catholic and
apostolic Church, which acknowledges one baptism only for the
putting away (in Latin remission) of sin and evil, the baptism into
the death of the Eternal Son, the death to sin, absolutely and for
ever. This one individual fellowship or society has one faith, or
1 The later Creed which bears the name of Athanasius introduces the Latin
term persona with a connotation which the word did not originally carry ; and a
perfect labyrinth of confusion, and of equivocation more or less disingenuous,
running on often into downright shiftiness and falsehood, has been the result.
The history of the word has been given by Professor Max Midler in hia
Biograj^hies of Words ; and the theological contradictions and absurdities which
have come up from the modern meanings atfeched to it are disposed of effec-
tually, if we go back to the meaning of the word in the later ages of the Roman
repuijlic. It is enough to cite the words of Cicero: ' Tres personas unus
sustineo, meam, accusatoris, judicis.' — Whately, Logic, s.v. Persona.
24 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS
trust, or hope. It looks for the uprising of the dead, — the raising
of all who are dead in sin from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness, and for the life (and tlie life only) of the world to
come, — of the world in which all shall be cleansed from their
impurity, — in which all shall have their w^ounds healed and the
misery of evil assuaged for ever, — in which not one single creature
that shares (as all share) the life of God shall be left in the dark-
ness and anguish of sin, because all sin and all evil shall have been
brought to an end for ever. In this faith we await the change
which will take us away from this world of the outward senses,
and of which we speak as the uprising of the body, the living
power ^ which here makes use of the sensible particles which,
when it has done with them, it lays aside altogether.
I have here given what I believe to be, in its essence, the
theology and the faith of the Church of England. I have striven
to give it as briefly as possible, not at all as meaning to exclude
inferences legitimately flowing from any of these statements, but
as purposing deliberately to reject all that is not, by implication at
least, contained in them. It would be rash, and indeed it would
not be honest, to maintain that the whole of this theology is
peculiar to the Church of England, or to Christendom generally.
Much of it is older than Christianity in any shape; and many
factors have worked together to bring out this form of thought as
I have tried here to set it down. The conception of the Eternal
Wisdom has given place to the conception of the Eternal Son ; but
the language applied to the former is applicable, with but slight
modification, to the latter.
To a still greater degree the theology which found expression
in the ISTicene Creed has been affected by the phraseology belonging
to the ancient systems of sacrifice. It is not necessary here to trace
in detail the various steps of the refining process which has got rid
of very foul dross and left a large measure of pure ore. In so far
as the idea of a gross material offering, intended to appease the
wrath of an angry demon, or to satiate his appetite for blood, has
1 Butler, Analogy, Part i. ch. i.
INTEODUCTION 25
given place to the idea of the spiritual submission of a contrite
heart longing only to grow in goodness, this is the work of God
the revealer, the Holy Ghost or breath ; but there is no room for
surprise or wonder if the terminology of the old practices has
survived in the language of the newer and higher faith. The
death of the Eternal Son is the death to sin, which is for all
creatures the pledge that all shall in the end die the same death
and therefore rise to his eternal life. But as so dying and so
living on their behalf, he is spoken of as humbling himself to
death, and as being in this immolation himself the victim and
himself the priest. We thus find ourselves brought at once to the
language of the Eucharistic Office, in which the terms ' flesh ' and
' blood/ ' bread ' and ' wine,' are employed to denote the nourish-
ment of the spiritual life. In a like way the words which
expressed the old ideas of baptismal purifications kept their
ground, when the baptism to which they pointed became the
baptism into the death of the Eternal Son.
In no sense can it be said that either in Christendom or any-
where else has an indefectible heritage of truth (that is, of a
definite body of final propositions) been possessed and maintained
intact, unchanged, unmodified through a long series of centuries.
This is the great fallacy of those who have misconceived the
nature of that universal church or fellowship of which the Nicene
Creed speaks. The idea of such immobility is in direct antagonism
with the office and work of God the revealer, the Holy Spirit, in
bis abiding presence within the hearts of all men. The outward
societies known as Christian churches have life only so far as they
are growing in the truth ; and they can so grow only by getting
rid of that which is defective, erroneous, or false, so soon as it is
seen to be such. In other words, if their existence is to be
justified at all, their work must be to modify, so far as it may
be needful to modify, the views popularly taken of Christianity
and of the education of mankind generally. Not one of them
has fully and fearlessly discharged this duty; many of them
may never have attempted it. But the Church of England
26 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
certainly essayed the task, and in part achieved it at the Ee-
formation.
Much more of like work is needed still. But even now, in
this outline of the faith and the theology of the Church of England,
there is nothing which should come into collision with the thought
or the scientific method of the nineteenth or any other century.
This theology does not oppose itself to the method of the historical
critic, for it has nothing to do with any incidents of history. It
cannot come into conflict with science in any of its myriad
branches, because it does not deny, and has no motive for disput-
ing, any facts which are proved to be facts, nor does it demand
submission to any propositions which involve a rejection of these
facts. But it does involve the rejection of a crowd of popular
notions which form in a strange jumble the traditional creed of the
vast majority of Christians. It does imply the falsehood of the
idea which deludes them into the notion that they possess a
literature of sacred books, gathered into a single volume, exact,
flawless, free from all blemish and from all possibility of error.
It does imply the summary rejection of many of those books, or
of portions of them, as being both inexact and inaccurate, and
sometimes erroneous, wilfully false and mischievous. It does
sanction the duty of casting aside as unhistorical whatever may
come to us without sufficient historical attestation.
In saying all this I need scarcely add that I have not dreamed
of lessening by the smallest fraction the liberties of any of the
schools or parties within the limits of the Church of England.
I am not called upon to uphold positively the whole of the vast
number of propositions contained in the Thirty-nine Articles ; but
there are few of them which I care to impugn, or should wish
flatly to deny. I can say honestly that I approve the doctrine
and discipline of the Church of England; and I am far from
having any quarrel with the statements made in the Articles with
reference to the writings of the Old Testament or the New. It is
of vital importance to mark that these statements speak not of the
authority of Holy Scripture, but only of their sufficiency for what is
INTEODUCTION 27
termed salvation. I have already said that in the body of these
books all may find 'sufficient' instruction, comfort, and guidance in
the training which is to heal them from the plague and wounds of
sin. But it can scarcely be necessary to say that the tyranny based
on their supposed ' authority ' has become an unbearable burden, of
which Christendom must be rid before anything like a full and
free growth can be looked for.
Here, then, is the broad issue — on the one side an iron and
deadening bondage to a series of books, or to classes of men as
guardians or interpreters of those books ; on the other, a
living faith or trust in the indwelling and the abiding work of the
Divine Spirit — of the love which is stronger than the death of
disobedience, uncleanness, and sin, and which will, therefore, in the
end deliver us from that death. This faith or trust is at present
choked by an overgrowth of narrow and debasing superstitions
with which the Church of England has nothing whatever to do.
These superstitions rest on, and are nourished by, the fallacy that
the evidence for Christianity is to be found in what are termed
signs, wonders, prodigies, miracles, or in the utterances of men
whose words have been interpreted so as to suit events or incidents
of ages long subsequent to their death. No fallacy can in the
present age be more mischievous, or, indeed, more fatal.
On this ground, then, as members of the Church of England,
whether clergy or laity, we may take our stand. As such, our
first duty is to fix the attention of Englishmen on questions which
cannot be put out of sight or out of mind. If there be no books
anywhere which have a title to be exempted from the vigorous
scrutiny and impartial judgement to which all books are subjected,
it follows that the New Testament writings must be weighed in
the same critical balance with those of the Old. The present
volume lays bare the process, and gives the result of this strictly
historical scrutiny ; and we have to take all possible care that the
bearings of this investigation on the liberties of the members of
the Church of England shall not be misunderstood, and the
controversy diverted to any false issue. In spite of all that has
been done, we have to deal with books which are still held by
28 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
vast numbers to be in every way infallible. In this controversy
all that we have to do is to ascertain whether certain alleged
events took place as they are said to have taken place, or whether
they did not. The books which record these events leave the
question of their own authority absolutely untouched ; and no
distinction in kind is ever claimed for or by any of them over the
rest, or indeed over any other writings.^ But the plea is still
vehemently urged by the adherents of the traditional schools
generally, that the ordinary methods of historical inquiry are not
applicable to the writings comprised in the Canon of the New
Testament, and that the attempt so to apply them involves the
tremendous risk of shattering the faith of Christendom. This plea
has been met and refuted by a statement of the faith and theology
of the Church of England, and by the demonstration that this
faith and this theology do not rest on any events or incidents of
history. If there be a danger to the faith of Christendom in the
Divine righteousness, goodness, and love, the danger lies in reliance
on a supposed historical foundation, which on examination is
found to have no solidity. But it is well, and indeed it is
necessary, to show that the true force of the theology of the
Church of England is only then brought out when it is spiritually
interpreted. The Eucharist is by common acknowledgment the
most solemn act of Christian worship. Into the question of its
relation to the rites of other religious systems which may be more
ancient we are not called upon here to enter. The traditional
belief binds it all up in the wrappings of supposed historical
incidents, and makes the death of the Eternal Son an event which
took place on a particular day and in a particular spot. Here,
then, we have a crucial test. If on examination the incidents of
the Gospel narratives become misty and shadowy, we do but show
that the stripping away of their supposed historical vesture is the
only possible means for bringing into clearer light whatever of life-
giving and life-sustaining power this faith and theology may possess.
^ The last sentences of the Apocalypse anathematise all who mutilate the text
of that composite book by adding to or taking away any of the reports of visions
contained in it ; but it says nothing of any other books.
BOOK I
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS
CHAPTEE I
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
The book commonly known under the title of the Acts of the
Apostles relates, or professes to relate, the history of Christianity
and of the Christian Church in the first stages of its growth. The
subject is of the greatest possible moment, for, if the narrative of
the Acts be found to be generally self-consistent, and if it be borne
out by the statements of known contemporary writers, our con-
fidence in its truthfulness will rest on a sure foundation. More
than this, we shall be able to start with a presumption in favour
of the books which tell us of the life and teaching of the great
Master whose name was said to be borne by the new society. But
if it shall be found that the picture of the Early Church drawn for
us in the Acts of the Apostles is not borne out by facts otherwise
ascertained, then not only is the book itself deprived of historical
authority, but a strong suspicion is cast upon earlier documents
(if they be earlier) which the book of Acts is supposed to confirm.
The testing of this book of Acts is, therefore, a matter of supreme
importance ; and the power of testing it is furnished by the only
undisputedly genuine writings contained in the Canon of the New
Testament Scriptures.^
1 Substantially, the letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians are
allowed by universal consent to have been written by Paul ; but it does not
follow that the whole of these letters severally are also acknowledged by
30 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
The book of Acts gives a minute and circumstantial account of
the history of the apostle Paul after his conversion, and of his
relations to the rulers and members of the Christian Church in
Jerusalem. We are told that after the incidents which are said
to have brought about the sudden change in his life, he remained
blind, without food or drink, for three days, after which he was
baptized and then at once ^ entered on the task of pointing out
the differences which at this time distinguished the Christians
from the Jews. This work, begun, we may say, within a week
after his conversion,^ he carried on in the various synagogues of
Damascus (ix. 20) : and the work itself, whatever it was, differed
in no respect from that of the other disciples. In this task many
days^ were spent, — but not more, probably, than two or three
months at furthest, — when a plot of the Jews to kill him led to
his hurried escape from the city and to his first journey to
Jerusalem after his conversion. Thus within a few weeks or
months after the great change, Paul finds himself among the chief
missioners (apostles) of the body which held that the Messiah had
universal consent as coming from his hand. The Epistles have been largely
interpolated ; and the passages so inserted are in the eyes of many among the
most important in the New Testament writings.
1 ei)diw$. Acts ix. 20.
2 He is said to have spent some days [ijfi^pas riy as) with the disciples before he
began to preach ; but the word evdiujs, coming immediately after, limits the time
to a week, or at the utmost to a fortnight (ix. 19, 20).
3 Tjfi^pat 'iKavai (ix. 23). We shall find that in this instance there is a motive
for so interpreting this phrase as to cover a period of three or more years. But
the expression occurs in other passages in this book. Peter sojourns ijfiipas
IKavai in the house of Simon the tanner (ix. 43). No one probably will suppose
that he spent three years under his roof. In xviii. 11, Paul spends eighteen
months in Corinth before he is brought up in the presence of the proconsul
Gallio. After this he remains in Corinth ijfiipas 'iKavds (xviii. 18). Here the
words mean, in any case, a time less than eighteen months, and probably mean
five or six weeks at furthest. In Acts xxvii. 6 Paul embarks at the Lykian port
Myra, and has a slow voyage eV iKavais ijfjL^pais by Cnidos and Crete ; but this
certainly does not mean that it took more than three years, or even eighteen
months, to sail along half the southern coast of Asia Minor. The Septuagint
translators use the phrase, in 1 Kings ii. 38, to denote a sojourn extended over
three years. But it is clear that in Acts ix. 43, xxiii. 18, xxvii. 6, the phrase
denotes a period of not more than a few weeks or months ; and it seems somewhat
rash to interpret it differently in ix. 23. The point, however, is of very little
consequence.
I
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 31
already come, and risen to glory after his humiliation and passion.
So short, indeed, had been the time, that, although there was
constant communication between Jerusalem and Damascus, he
was regarded by the disciples with a simple feeling of fear. They
had heard nothing of his wonderful history, and they refused to
believe that he was a disciple at all, until Barnabas vouched for
his trustworthiness. Their suspicions being thus removed, Paul
carried on with boldness and zeal the work which he had begun at
Damascus, and remained going in and out at Jerusalem (ix. 28).
The expression seems to point to missionary journeys in Judgea;
and this supposition is fully borne out by the words put into
Paul's mouth in his pleadings before Agrippa. Here (xxvi. 20)
Paul says that, having first spoken at Damascus, he then preached
at Jerusalem and throughout all the coasts of Judsea. Throughout
he is in perfect harmony with the apostolic or missionary body in
the holy city ; and there is no sign that he had any motives and
aims which were not shared by them all. Of the Gentiles nothing
is said here ; but while Paul was at Tarsus, whither he had been
conveyed to screen him from the plots of Hellenist Jews (ix. 29,
30), the ministry of Simon Peter was employed to make known to
all that the blessings of the divine kingdom were designed not
less for the Gentile than for the Jew.
Not long after the calling of Cornelius, Barnabas, having joined
Paul at Tarsus, brings him to Antioch and returns with him to
Jerusalem with contributions for those who might be suffering
from the famine (xi. 30). This, then, is the second journey of
Paul to Jerusalem after his conversion. Of this visit no further
notice is taken; but after his return to Antioch (xiv. 26) we are
for the first time informed of a controversy which is said to have
roused no small discussion and questioning. By some who came
from Judsea (and in Judoea we must include Jerusalem) the
Christian society at Antioch was curtly informed that they could
have no spiritual life and strength unless they submitted to
circumcision after the manner of Moses. To deal with this
question Paul is sent along with Barnabas and others to Jerusalem,
32 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
this being his third journey to the holy city after his conversion.
Here he is received by the whole body of the apostles and elders
(xv. 4), to whom he relates the result of his work among the
Gentiles, and from whom he receives an invitation to attend a
formal council, the first General Council of the Christian Church.
In this solemn assembly Peter treats the matter as virtually
foreclosed. He himself had been already chosen as the one who
was to throw open the door of the divine kingdom to the Gentiles,
and he now spoke of the covenant-ordinance of Judaism as a yoke
which neither they nor their forefathers were able to bear. After
this speech Paul and Barnabas again relate the results of work
done by them among the Gentiles ; and then the Council, having
heard the judgement of James, passes a formal decree which releases
Gentile converts from the obligations insisted upon by certain of the
sect of the Pharisees (xv. 5). In all this there is complete harmony
between Paul and the missioners or apostles in Jerusalem. Peter
uses language scarcely less strong and clear than that of Paul
himself; and Paul, having appeared simply as ambassador from
the society at Antioch, returns quietly to that city. Of Peter and
his colleagues we hear no more. They become silent after the
point at which they are brought into thorough agreement with
Paul. Paul is not spoken of as actually an apostle or missionary ;
but in work, in motive, and in aim they are all one. There is not
the faintest hint that either then or thereafter was there the least
breach of concord between them.
But it so happens that Paul has also left us an account of his
relations with the Christian Church in Jerusalem and with the chief
men in it ; and the circumstances under which it was drawn up
invest it with the greatest importance, and (on the supposition that
Paul was an honest and truth-speaking man) with supreme authority.
The picture brought before us by his words stands out in astounding
contrast indeed with that which we have been looking upon in
the narrative of the Acts. Instead of appearing as the delegate of
others, and hearing his own language from the lips of Peter or other
missioners, we see a solitary champion, fighting, single-handed, a
Chap. L] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 33
battle with a compact phalanx which looks upon him as little
better than a seducer and a traitor. Instead of being united with
them in motive and aim, he sees that he has one work to do, and
that they are doing another. With the bitterness which a man
can scarcely help feeling when he finds himself struggling with a
force beyond his powers of resistance, he shows the depth of the
antagonism which separates him from them. He is preaching one
gospel, the good tidings of a love which embraces all men alike, be
they Jew or Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free ; and they
are preaching another, which, because it sets the Jew before or
above others, is no gospel at all. As to this he is in no doubt
himself, and he cannot allow any over whom he may have influence
to remain in doubt. Were he himself to set bounds to the universality
of his message, he should be a liar. It is not a question of high
place, or power, or authority. If an angel from heaven come and
say that there is in the divine mind preference or partiality for
one man over another, let him be anathema. In truth, all the
power and influence, which resided in the whole Judaic Christian
body, had been, and was being, exercised against him. Were he
seeking to please men, were he anxious to win the favour of those
with whom he was connected by the strongest ties of education
and association, his course would be clear. He would only have
to say that all Gentiles must continue to bear the burden which,
in the formal Council at Jerusalem, Peter is represented as saying
that neither they nor their fathers had strength to carry, and all
would be well. All the weight of their authority would then be
on his side ; but the penalty which he would have to pay would
be that he could no longer call himself a slave of Christ (Gal. i.
10), a slave of the great Healer who is lifting up and taking away
the sin of the whole universe.
He knows, however, that there is misrepresentation, deliberate
misrepresentation, at work. He has thought and striven and
spoken by himself, and it has been said that he had received from
the missioners at Jerusalem a charge to which it could scarcely be
held that he had been faithful. He had displayed a spirit of
34 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUE GOSPELS [Book I.
determined independence ; and there had been suggestions, and
more than suggestions, that he had been afraid to run counter to
the feeling and opinion prevalent at Jerusalem. To do away with
all these false impressions he must lay before his Galatian disciples
the truth, and the whole truth. He will hold back nothing. He
will show them the whole extent, as well as the nature, of his
relations with the Church and its officers at Jerusalem; and he
does this under the most solemn asseveration that he is speaking
truthfully and with absolute sincerity. ' In the things which I am
writing to you, behold, before God, I am not lying or false ' (i. 20).
He then goes on to tell his tale, when he had shown them first under
what authority he had been writing and speaking. He had been
preaching the gospel of the Eternal Son of God ; but he had not
received it from men, or from Jiny human teaching, but from his
direct revelation.^ The thought of this charge given to himself
from above carries him back to the time when his faith was
bounded as that of the apostles or missioners at Jerusalem was
bounded still. The very contrast shows him that his life had been
an education in which God was the teacher. He had been blind ;
but the manifestation of the divine love had been to him as the
falling of scales from his eyes ; but not even by the use of such a
phrase does he give us any warrant for supposing that the great
change had come, as it is said to have come, in the narrative of
Acts (ix.). Nowhere does Paul himself make even the most distant
allusion to the incidents which are there said to have preceded
or accompanied his conversion. They are, rather, discredited by
the words in which he speaks of God as being pleased to reveal
1 This at once discredits the whole story of the intervention of Ananias (Acts
ix. 10-17). Paul's distinct declaration is that on his conversion, or rather after
the revelation or unveiling of the Son of God in himself, he would have nothing to
do with flesh and blood (Gal. i. 16) ; and this excludes Ananias as well as all
others. But the ministrations of Ananias were needed on account of Paul's
helplessness ; and this helplessness is the result of the bodily blindness
caused by the light from heaven which had struck him to the earth on the
journey to Damascus. If Ananias did not go to Paul, then these previous
occurrences become unhistorical ; and, further, Paul never makes the least
reference to them in any of his letters. The narrative in the Acts is nothing
more than the outward or concrete representation of a purely spiritual change.
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 35
his Son in himself, and of his resolution to sever himself from all
human counsels.
When, then, the true nature of the divine kingdom had been
made known to him, he did not hurry at once into the synagogues
of Damascus, as he is said to have done in Acts. He preached to
none ; he disputed with none. More particularly he is careful to
say that he did not go up to Jerusalem within a few weeks or a
few months after the great change which had passed over him.
He had no wish to see those who were apostles before him : he
had no desire to ask their sanction for the course which he
proposed to take. He must think over the work which God
himself had given him to do ; and to this end he w^ent into
Arabia (it matters little, or not at all, where this Arabia may be),
and thence returned to Damascus, after how long a sojourn we
cannot say. But he does distinctly say that three years had
passed away before he undertook his first journey to Jerusalem
after his conversion, and that he went with the purpose, not of
preaching in the synagogues or of disputing with Hellenists, but
of seeing Peter. With him he remained for fifteen days, and he
left Jerusalem without seeing any other member of the apostolic
body except James, the Master's brother. According to the
narrative of Acts, he did not leave Jerusalem until the Christian
society there had become familiarised with his presence. According
to Paul himself, he remained unknown to them by face, during his
sojourn in Syria and Cilicia, although they now knew the great
spiritual change which had transformed his life (Gal. i. 23).
Such, according to Paul, were the circumstances of his first
visit to Jerusalem after his conversion ; and in every particular
his story is irreconcilable with that of the Acts. If his tale be
true, then that of the Acts is not historical.^ But the main point
^ Paul flatly contradicts the narrative of the Acts in the following particulars.
He says that he did not preach to the Damascene Jews immediately on his con-
version ; and the Jews had no opportunity of expressing in his presence their
astonishment at the change which had come over him. He did not at this
time go up to Jerusalem. He did not make any attempts to introduce himself
to the missioners there, and these missioners did not express any fear or suspicion
36 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
is that while the writer of the Acts garbles the history, he does so
with a purpose. It is clear that, during the three years which
had passed before he went to the holy city, Paul was becoming
more and more aware of the gulf which was widening between
himself and the other apostles, and that he was resolved to debate
the matter at issue with Peter alone. In the letter to the Galatians
Paul asserts his own independence: in Acts he is strictly sub-
ordinate. In the former he declares that he will take his own
course : in the latter the reader is left to suppose that Paul was at
all events ready to follow the directions of his colleagues, or rather
of his superiors. The manifest purpose of the narrative of this
first visit in Acts discredits it quite as much as do its perversions
of the real facts.
Before Paul's next visit to Jerusalem fourteen more years had
passed away.^ But in the interval the Acts records another visit,
when, with Barnabas, he went up with alms for the relief of sufferers
from the famine in the time of Claudius. Of this visit Paul
takes no notice ; and there is no gap in his narrative into which
it may be inserted. The plea has been urged that there was
nothing in the visit to invest it with any special importance ; but
it cannot be maintained. The impression that he was acting, or
had acted, in subordination to the apostles at Jerusalem, must
before all things be removed; and if, in order to remove it, he
went into the question of his relations to them, it is clear that his
of him, nor did Barnabas vouch for the reality of his conversion. Paul did not
at Jerusalem address himself to the Jews, and the Jews did not seek to kill him.
He was not taken to Ceesarea. He did not preach throughout the coasts of Judsea.
He did not go from Palestine to Tarsus, and he was not brought back from Tarsus
by Barnabas to Antioch. He was not sent with alms to Jerusalem during the
famine said to have been foretold by Agabus {i.e. according to the chronology of
Acts, about nine years after his conversion) ; and he was not set apart in the
following year by ' certain prophets and teachers ' for a joint mission with
Barnabas to the Gentiles.
1 Gal. ii. 1. This visit would, therefore, be more than seventeen years after
his conversion. The time may be reduced by three years, if we choose to count
the fourteen years as meaning from his conversion. It is a matter of little conse-
quence ; but the natural meaning of Paul's words seems to be that the fourteen
years had passed since his return from his first journey to Jerusalem,
Chap. I.] FUENISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 37
purpose would be entirely defeated unless he gave a complete
account of all those relations. The omission of any visit, however
insignificant in itself, would have laid him open to the retort that
he had had opportunities of intercourse with the apostles, which
he had not chosen to enumerate ; and his mere silence would have
been turned to his discredit. If he omits none, then his second
visit in Acts (xi. 30) is unhistorical. It follows that Paul's
second journey to Jerusalem is the third in the narrative of Acts,
for no attempt has been made to identify it with any later visit.
In Acts XV. 2 Paul and Barnabas are elected and sent as
delegates of the church at Antioch. In his letter (Gal. ii. 2) he
goes in obedience to a revelation, or, in other words, by no human
appointment ; and his companions are Barnabas and Titus, the
latter of whom, for a reason which will soon become plain, is not
here mentioned in Acts. But as before, in his purpose of subjecting
Peter to examination, Paul has no intention of seeking a public
reception or obtaining a public audience. Instead of being
welcomed by the whole body of missioners and elders, he con-
fines himself to private conversations with those who were of chief
repute, and to these ^ he gave an account of his own labours as an
apostle or missionary, not as wishing to obtain their sanction for
the gospel which he had preached to Gentiles, but simply as
justifying himself for the discharge of a duty imposed on him
directly from God. Then follows the recital of incidents, of
which the narrative in Acts gives no inkling — incidents which had
left on the apostle's mind memories so bitter, that in the expres-
sion of his feelings his language becomes involved and his
grammar confused. His thoughts outrun his speech ; but every
word that he utters shows that the narrative in Acts of the first
public reception and audience given to Paul and Barnabas, and of
^ There is not the slightest room to doubt that the words aveOifiriv avroh are
merely explained by the following toU 8oKo0ai. Nothing but the exigencies of a
hopeless position would lead any to suppose that the aurols refers to the formal
reception of the first day, and the rots doKovai, to private interviews on sub-
sequent days. The private interviews were superfluous if everything had been
debated and decided in previous public assemblies.
38 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOE THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
the subsequent Council with its formal debate and still more
formal and solemn decree, is merely the result of a settled purpose
to keep out of sight facts as disgraceful as they are painful, and
to parade a fellow-feeling and harmony which never existed. Is
it possible that, if the Council with its large-hearted utterances in
debate, and the definite concessions of its decree, had been realities,
Paul would know nothing about them, or, knowing them, should
have said nothing about them ? Such a supposition is the very
acme of absurdity. Had Peter and James spoken as they are said
to have spoken in this Council, and had the decrees been passed,
then the terrible contention of which Paul goes on to speak could
never have taken place. According to the narrative of Acts, the
whole body of the church at Jerusalem, assembled in solemn
council, had defined the obligations to be imposed on Gentile con-
verts, the covenant rite of circumcision being expressly excluded
from the number. Yet at this very time, when the decree
was literally a thing only of yesterday, a violent attempt was
made to inforce the rite upon a Gentile convert. Paul had been
assuring his disciples that, if they submitted to circunicision, Christ
should profit them nothing ; and now here, in Jerusalem, after the
passing of a decree which absolved them from this obligation,
something like main force was used to get it carried out in
the person of Paul's companion Titus. As he writes his letter to
the Galatians, he cannot think of this attempt without a vehement
indignation, which shows itself in the very construction, or mis-
construction, of his sentences. He says indeed that the attempt
failed ; but he does not hesitate to speak of those who made it as
false brethren, whose purpose it was to enslave every Gentile
convert ; and then, having declared that he would not yield to
them even for an hour, he goes on to speak of the attitude of the
apostles and chief men towards himself.
But in all that he says there is not the remotest reference
either to the Council or to its decree ; and without going further,
we are justified in treating both the Council and the decree as
unhistorical, if they should not rather be termed fictions with a
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 39
purpose. Had Paul heard the speech of Peter at that solemn
assembly, he must, if he had never been made acquainted with
the story of Cornelius, have asked for the meaning of the statement
that he, Peter, had some years before been chosen by God as the
instrument through whom the Gentiles should, on confessing their
faith in Jesus as the Christ, be admitted to the full benefits of the
Abrahamic covenant. He must, if he had known them, have
pinned Peter to his own words before the household of Cornelius,
and still more must he have pointed to the decree of the Council
on which the ink was scarcely yet dry. But in his letter to the
Galatians, he knows nothing of the story of Cornelius, nothing of
the Council, nothing of its decree. The only possible inference
is that all these were put together by the writer of the book for
the one purpose which is betrayed throughout the whole of the
narrative.
The words which follow are a strange comment indeed on that
picture of Paul's perfect subordination, exhibited in the narrative
of Acts, to the chief men of the Church in Jerusalem. In the
narrative of the council, Peter declares plainly that he had learnt,
years before, the absolute equality of Jew and Gentile in the sight
of God (Acts XV. 8, 9). In the letter to the Galatians he has no
more learnt this lesson than if the conversion of Cornelius had
never taken place, and if he himself had had nothing to do with
it. Of the alleged authority of the apostles Paul speaks only with
a biting irony or sarcasm. They might be spoken of as men of
repute (ol BoKovvre^;); but whether they seemed to be anything or
not, it made no difference to him, as God accepts no man's person ;
and whatever they might appear, they imparted nothing to him,
and offered him no help in his work. All that they saw was the
distinction between the gospel of the circumcision and the gospel
of the uncircumcision ; and on the basis of this distinction they
were willing to give him the right hand of fellowship, the under-
standing being that their paths w^ere thencelbrth to diverge. Paul
with Barnabas was to deal with the Gentiles, while the whole
apostolic or missionary body (whatever their number might be)
40 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
were to confine their ministry to the circumcision. Paul was to
go on almost single-handed in the battle with human sin and
misery everywhere, while their whole force was to be employed
within the narrow limits of Jewry. It seems an amazing sequel
to the command, that they should all of them go into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature. Paul started with this
conviction : the others seemingly never reached it.
In short, there is virtual unanimity throughout between
Paul and the chiefs of the church at Jerusalem in the narrative of
Acts : there is the widest divergence between them, whenever
Paul speaks of them in his own letters, whether to the Galatians
or the Corinthians. Nor is the difference superficial. It involves
a fundamental distinction of principle. Once only it seems that,
under the influence of Paul, Peter was induced to hold some-
thing like free communion with the Gentile Christians who had not
submitted to the covenant rite of Judaism ; and this occurred at
Antioch some time (it may be months or years) after that visit to
Jerusalem during which, according to Acts, the first General Council
of the Church met and issued its decree. But how does Peter here
behave ? Is he here the man who spoke with all the freedom of
Paul in the house of Cornelius, and who avowed the same convic-
tions in the Council-chamber at Jerusalem"? His liberalism at
Antioch is a brief passing phase, and nothing more. He can eat
with Gentiles so long as he is not under the eye of Jewish Christians
from the holy city. As soon as some of these, armed apparently
with the authority of James, present themselves at Antioch, he
withdraws himself at once from their fellowship. The timidity
of Peter clearly attests the strength of the Judaic exclusiveness
among the Christians at Jerusalem ; and this exclusiveness rests
not less clearly on the supposed paramount need of circumcision
for all who professed themselves believers in the gospel of the Son
of God. Here then was Peter insisting on the closest theory of
Jewish privilege, and here was Paul withstanding him to the face,
because he stood self-condemned (Gal. ii. 11), but without making
the slightest reference to Peter's declarations before Cornelius, or.
Chap. L] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 41
again, in the Council at Jerusalem. The decree of that Council
had settled the question solemnly, in the name and under the
professed sanction of the Holy Spirit, for all Gentile converts.
The silence of Paul and his failure to avail himself of the benefits
of that decree are complete proof, were other proof wanting, that
the Council and its decree are both mythical.
It would, indeed, be wellnigh impossible to imagine any
narrative more absolutely incredible than is that of the Acts,
when compared with the genuine statements of Paul. In the
letter to the Galatians we have a vehement dispute on the very
question of the relation of the Gentiles to the society of the
Judaic Christians at Jerusalem ; and, throughout, Paul never
gives a hint that the whole question had been formally discussed,
and solemnly decided by the society gathered in a regular council,
at which he had himself been present, and had recounted the
results of his work among the Gentiles. Instead of taking his
stand on the acts and decree of the Council, all that Paul can do
is to assert his own principles and to demand that they shall be
respected by Peter. He knows that the conduct of Peter has been
both inconsistent and timid ; and he charges him with this
cowardice in language sufficiently clear. He allows that, as a
Jew, Peter must regard the covenant rite of circumcision as of
supreme importance : nevertheless Peter had at Antioch associated
freely with Gentile Christians who were not circumcised; and,
having so done, he withdraws into his old exclusiveness on the
coming of 'certain from James.' He, therefore, confronts Peter
with himself, while to the emissaries from Jerusalem he has
nothing to say. Yet, according to the story in the Acts, Peter and
these emissaries were alike bound by the decree of a Council,
solemnly passed with their own approbation and vote, which
defined the terms of communion for the Gentile Christians. That
,Paul should not have insisted on obedience to this decree, and
have charged them with disobedience and treachery if they refused
[to obey it, is beyond all belief. He did not take this course,
^because he knew nothing of the Council or its decree; and he was
42 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
ignorant of them, simply because the Council had never been con-
vened, and the decree had never been passed.
The result is not merely that the writer of Acts is discredited
as a historian. The picture which he has drawn of the internal
harmony of the Church vanishes into air. The fabric which he
has taken pains to build up falls to the ground ; and we see
clearly that, if it had not been for Paul, the society of Judaic
Christians at Jerusalem would have remained a mere Jewish sect,
or more probably would have come to a speedy end. The apostles
or missioners of Jerusalem were assuredly all of one mind ; but
they were united in the resolution to allow no full communion
to Gentile converts, except through the door of the covenant rite.
If this point were not yielded, Paul might carry on his work by
himself. As they could not hinder him, they would tolerate him,
and, as tolerating him, they would clasp him by the hand ; but
beyond this they would not go (Gal. ii. 9). Even wdth this scant
measure of fellowship Paul was content. It was no part of his
purpose to provoke a quarrel or carry on a controversy with those
of whom he speaks as pillar apostles or, at all events, as seeming
pillars. Against these personally he never inveighs; but for those
who act under them he has no indulgence. Throughout his whole
narrative, however, this much is clear— that the apostles, or
missioners, of Jerusalem did what they could to counteract the
work of Paul, although they would not in set terms condemn and
denounce it. The emissaries who issued from the holy city
came with letters of commendation from them ; and although
Paul undertook the journey to Jerusalem for the express purpose
of winning their more active approval (Gal. ii. 2), he could obtain
from them nothing beyond a cold assent to the continuance of his
work among the Gentiles, while they confined their ministrations
to the Jews or to such as were willing to submit to the covenant
rite. In short, the narrative in Acts is contradicted in every
particular by the narrative of Paul.
But we are still scarcely beyond the threshold of our inquiry,
and each step discovers some fresh feature in the story, which the
Chap. L] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 43
writer of Acts wishes to pass off as the true version of the earliest
stage in the history of the Christian Church. Not only had Peter
in the formal Council declared that God had put no difference
between Jew and Gentile (Acts xv. 9), and that there was no
reason or excuse for laying upon the latter a yoke which had
long been unbearable, but he had spoken of certain events at
some previous time, with which he supposes all his hearers to be
familiarly acquainted. 'Ye know,' he says, 'how that a good
while ago, God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my
mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.' The
marks of time in this book are often indefinite ; but it is clearly
implied that some years had passed since the events here referred
to, whatever they were, had taken place. The longer the interval,
the more wonderful becomes the fact which is immediately forced
on our notice.
If Peter was justified in speaking of those events, and of his
own part in them, then how is it possible to put the smallest trust
in any part of the narrative of this Council or of the circumstances
which led to it? If the great Searcher of hearts had obliterated
all difference between Jew arid Gentile, bestowing his Holy Spirit
on the latter as on the former, then this fact must have been
known to Paul as to all his other hearers. But, in this case, is
it conceivable that Paul would have allowed himself to be elected
as a delegate for the discussion of a question long since closed
with the utmost solemnity ? It is not credible. Eather, his letter
to the Galatians is the proof, that when the * certain men who came
down from Judaea ' declared that Gentile converts must submit to
the covenant rite (Acts xv. 1), Paul would have started up at once
with an indignant protest against the re-opening of a question
settled years ago by the instrumentality of Peter himself. He
must have denounced the treachery which thus bade defiance
to lessons plainly taught by the Holy Spirit, whose sanction the
Council claimed for its decree ; and he must have refused to go
to Jerusalem on any such unholy errand. The events to which
Peter referred are astonishing indeed, and are heralded and accom-
44 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
panied by wonders on both sides. The church at Jerusalem was
growing up in the tranquil conviction, not merely that circumcision
was a matter of obligation upon all converts, but that the preach-
ing of the gospel, whatever this might be, was to be confined to
the Jews. That they had ever heard of the command which bade
them go into all the world and bear the good news to all creatures
there is not the faintest sign. The duty is first brought home to
Peter by the vision vouchsafed to him while he tarried in the
house of the tanner, Simon. According to the writer of Acts
(x. 28), this vision was to disabuse his mind of a more than Mosaic
exclusiveness. So strong was the distinction between clean and
unclean, that in his opinion it was unlawful for a Jew to keep
.company with or to come to any one of any other nation. Without
going further, we see at once that we are not reading a strictly
historical narrative. Such isolation was altogether impracticable
for the trafficking Hebrew; nor was it eitlier enjoined upon or
expected from them ; and Peter had already been guilty of some-
thing approaching to a real infringement of law or custom by
taking up his abode with a tanner.
Of the great importance of the lesson conveyed by these inci-
dents, the double vision of Peter and Cornelius leaves us in no
doubt at all. The vision said to be sent to Peter would seem to
show that the distinction between clean and unclean meats was
done away; but the alleged decree of the Council of Jerusalem
takes no notice of this fact. So far, however, as it touches the
difference between Jew and Gentile, the lesson taught by the
vision is decisive. Peter is convinced by it that God is no respecter
of persons, and that in every nation he who fears God and works
righteousness is accepted with him. Paul never maintained any-
thing beyond this ; and the conviction thus impressed on the mind
of Peter is shared also by all ' them of the circumcision ' which
believed, that is, by the whole Christian church at Jerusalem
(Acts X. 45). The whole question was settled at once and for
ever. Cornelius was nothing more than the first-fruits of the
great harvest of Gentile Christians who were to be admitted to
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 45
all the privileges of the Abrahamic covenant without undergoing
the covenant rite.
How, then, comes it about that of this wonderful story no one,
when the Judaic emissaries reached Antioch years afterwards
(Acts XV. 1), knows anything? It is not said even here that Paul
had ever heard of it, and in his genuine letters he is beyond doubt
absolutely ignorant of it. Is it possible that if he had learnt the
lesson then, Peter could have behaved as he did behave when Paul
withstood him to the face ? Still more, is it credible that Paul
could have treated the matter as a subject for controversy, when
he could have appealed to a divine decision which Peter could not
have dared to question ? Cornelius himself is never named again ;
and the reference to his conversion, made by Peter in the Council
(Acts XV. 7), goes for nothing, because Paul is represented as
letting it pass without notice. Peter speaks of the believing Jews,
that is, of the whole Christian Church at Jerusalem, as knowing
both the story and its lessons ; but, nevertheless, those of them
who went down to Antioch ignored both the one and the other.
The episode of Cornelius has no effect whatever ; and with Paul
a silence which can be the result only of ignorance is conclusive
proof that the whole story is nothing more than a composition by
the writer of Acts, or by some from whom he received it.
But in this story Paul, seemingly some years after the Council
of Jerusalem, is represented (Acts xxii. 20) as referring to a narra-
tive of incidents, which had occurred many years before that
Council was held, and even before the conversion of Cornelius,
and in which Paul had himself played a prominent part. Accord-
ing to this statement, Paul declares that he had not only been
present at the trial of Stephen, but had approved and urged his
tumultuary condemnation, and kept the clothes of those who
carried out the sentence. In the circumstances which attended
this event there was everything not merely to impress the memory
but to kindle the affections of such a man as Paul. Whatever
may have been Paul's failings, lack of generosity has never been
supposed to be one of them. Stephen, according to the history
46 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
of the Acts, had been suddenly seized and charged before the
Council or Sanhedrim with treating the Mosaic customs or law
as things which were to be changed (Acts vi. 14). So deeply was
his heart filled with the divine love, that all who looked upon
him are said to have been struck with the superhuman beauty of
his countenance ; and in the defence which we are told that he was
suffered to make, he showed at least that the whole training of the
Jewish people, or of the thinkers among them, pointed to a purely
spiritual faith, even if his words did not actually formulate the
universalis m said to have been avowed by Peter on the conversion
of Cornelius, and set forth by Paul as the sum and substance of
the Christian gospel. Paul had heard from Stephen words the
memory of which in later days or years must have made his heart
burn within him. But for all this he never makes any mention
of Stephen. There could be no one for whose utterances he would
have a more grateful remembrance ; and yet he never notices him,
even when (if these words be genuine) he speaks of himself as
having beyond measure persecuted the Church of God. On the
supposition that he had taken part in his trial and execution, his
silence is as incredible as is his appearance at the Council at Jeru-
salem to debate a question which had been solemnly settled years
before by a divine interposition. But if we are thus driven to
ascribe his silence to ignorance, then the whole story of the Proto-
martyr crumbles away, and Stephen himself vanishes into mist.
He is mentioned in no other part of the New Testament writings ;
and thus we have no contemporary evidence of his existence,
while, if we look to the story of the trial, we are at once driven
to ask how his speech has been preserved. He had been hurried
to the judgment-seat without a moment for preparation ; nor could
the spectators have known that he would make any speech at all.
The assertion that it was reported by Paul himself is a mere guess
which is worth nothing. The inferences to be drawn from Stephen's
defence are abundantly clear ; but Paul not only never speaks of
him, but declares emphatically that he received from neither flesh nor
blood the gospel which it was his life's work to preach (Gal. i. 16).
Chap. I.] FUENISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 47
But what are the characteristics of the speech in itself ? The
question carries us to a consideration of all the speeches found in
the Acts, and involves an inquiry into which we cannot enter.
Nor is there any need to do so.^- For the speeches given in his
history, Thucydides makes no claim beyond that of a general
fidelity to the thoughts, and therefore in some measure to the words,
of the actors. The speakers in the Acts not merely speak alike,
but think alike. The minds of all move in tlie same groove.
They employ the same arguments, and for the most part express
them in the same words. Even when the clothing is not the same,
the search for any essential differences under the outward form
is vain. The broad conclusion that all the speeches in Acts are
the composition of the author of the Acts has not been answered,
and is in fact unanswerable. The speech of Stephen, in particular,
is one which it is almost impossible to think that the accused
could make on the spur of the moment ; nor is it to be supposed
that his hearers should be able to follow his spiritual interpreta-
tion of facts which had hitherto left on their minds a very different
impression. There was, therefore, no alternative but to charge
them openly, after a certain point, with wilful and determined
blindness ; and when this point was reached, the patience of his
hearers was exhausted also. The tumultuous accusation is followed
by a tumultuous condemnation ; and as soon as the purpose of the
tumult is attained the rioters again become orderly.
In short, we find ourselves wandering about in a marsh ; and
the experience of previous inquiries leaves us with little hope of
finding any firm ground. Every statement is a tax on our powers
of belief The death of Stephen is followed (Acts viii. 1) by a
persecution, which scatters the whole Christian community at
Jerusalem, leaving the apostles only undisturbed. What other
efforts for repressing opinion have ever left the leaders unmolested
1 This task has been exhaustively accomplished by the author of the work
entitled Supernatural Religion, vol. iii. part iv. It is useless to go into the
linguistic analysis, unless we carry it out thoroughly. To do so would be only
to reproduce what has been done already with a fulness and force to which sub-
stantially and practically no reply has been made.
48 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
and pressed only on tlieir followers ? In the sequel Peter goes to
Samaria in order that the converts there made by Philip the
deacon may receive the Holy Spirit ; but to this mission, or to the
conversion of the Ethiopian which follows it, Peter nowhere again
makes any reference. Events are forgotten, seemingly, as soon as
they have occurred.
But the narrative of Acts brings before us not merely certain
wonderful incidents which compelled Peter himself to acknow-
ledge that the love of God was all-embracing, and that in his sight
there was and is no distinction of Jew or Gentile. It tells us also
of special means provided for the leaders of the church in
Jerusalem (if not for others) to smooth their work in converting
all the nations. Not only are they to set about the work as one
which might occupy the life of generations ; but they are endowed
with extraordinary powers which shall remove from their path diffi-
culties which might otherwise be insurmountable. The curse of
Babel had placed barriers between man and man : the blessing
of Pentecost should undo the mischief.^ In short, men shall be en-
abled to speak many languages, and some languages without having
had the trouble of learning them ; and in a moment, by the action
of a divine power, a knot of ignorant Galil^eans are enabled to
address Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cretes, Arabians, and others,
each in the articulate and grammatically constructed words of their
several languages. No such power had been accorded to any
before : no such power is known now. Nay, it never has been
1 It is surely unnecessary to say, that, whatever be the antecedent probability
or improbability of wonders, prodigies, signs, tokens, miracles (or whatever other
names we choose to give them), we should never dream of believing a man who,
having recounted some event of this kind, should be convicted of misrepresenting
or falsifying ordinary matters of fact. On what ground, then, are we to accept
the stories of sudden death inflicted by a word and a look, of prison doors flying
open, of chains dropping off" from the hands of captives, when we find that the
writer who tells these tales gives an account of the relations of the two principal
actors in the history which is utterly denied by one of those actors themselves ?
We know that the author of the Acts has not left us a true account of the
Council of Jerusalem, where we can check him by the evidence of a contemporary
writer ; it is the veriest excess of credulity, if we accept his extraordinary
narratives in which we cannot check him at all.
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 49
known or mentioned in any other book than in this of the Acts of
the Apostles. Of any results produced by it we never hear. Some
of those who received the gift are said to have written books in-
cluded in the Canon of our New Testament writings ; but those
books are written by people who seem to have had no small diffi-
culty in expressing their thoughts in the language which they use.
In truth, this gift or power of intelligibly speaking actual
languages without having learnt them is nowhere mentioned ex-
cept in a solitary chapter of the solitary book of the Acts : and
yet this single and unsupported statement in an anonymous and
non-contemporary writing has sufficed to convince wellnigh the
whole Christian world, from the time of its composition to
the present day, that this gift is strictly historical fact. But this
statement is not only unsupported ; it is contradicted and denied
by the only contemporary witness who can be cited. That a gift
of tongues, as it was called, was known at all events in some parts
of the primitive Christian Church is beyond doubt ; and Paul, who
has left us an elaborate description of it, claims to have been en-
dowed with it in pre-eminent measure. His account of it is, indeed,
of inestimable value. It is the account of a zealot or enthusiast,
if we choose to call him so ; but his very enthusiasm adds to the
weight of his evidence. The gift itself is, he tells us, one only of
a large number which are all ranged under the one class of powers,
signs, or wonders. Nor only this. These gifts are all spoken of
as coming from the Spirit, the Spirit of God. The naming which
follows (1 Cor. xii. 8-11) is most significant. Among them ar©
faith, the word of wisdom, and the word of knowledge ; and these
are gifts which may be seen among us now as clearly as ever they
were seen then. With these are joined gifts of healings, of works
of powers (wrongly translated by the word 'miracles'), of prophecy
or preaching, of the discerning of spirits. Last of all comes the
mention of tongues, or kinds of tongues, and of the interpretation
of them. The possession of all these gifts Paul unequivocally
claims for himself; and for that of tongues he expressly thanks
God that he can speak with them, and has spoken with them, more
D
50 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
abundantly than any others, be they who they might. But unless
an exception be made for this one gift or power (and such an ex-
ception would imply its severest condemnation), he does not hint
that any of them belong to what we speak of as the sensible or
material world. He does not imply that the power exercised in
the gifts of healing was a power of working visible wonders or
prodigies. He does not say that it meant the healing of broken or
paralysed bodily limbs or the curing of bodily diseases. He leaves
it manifestly to be understood that the healing was the moral
healing and spiritual strengthening of those who were bruised in
heart and sick in soul. If we are to regard the epistles to the
Philippians and to Timothy as genuine utterances of the apostle of
the Gentiles, it is certain that these powers were not (or possibly
could not be) exercised in the cases of Epaphroditos (Phil. ii. 27)
or of Trophimos (2 Tim. iv. 20). If they were tried and failed,
the fact of failure should have been mentioned ; but there is not
the slightest warrant for supposing that any such mere bodily cures
were ever so much as looked for. The imagination, or it may be the
lack of imagination, which characterised the seventy disciples, led
them, on their return from the mission with which they are said to
have been charged, to speak of the very devils as being subject to
them in their Master's name (Luke x. 17). They meant, however,
nothing less than this, that the most hateful of tempers, and the
most vindictive of dispositions, had been brought into subjection
and tamed by them so long as they worked in the spirit of the
Great Teacher whose force was the force of love. It is to these
triumphs of a divine love, to which (and to which alone) Paul
refers when he asserts that the signs of an apostle had indeed been
wrought among them, in all patience, in wonders and mighty deeds
(2 Cor. xii. 12). Would there have been the least ground for this
appeal, if one had been relieved of epilepsy, another of leprosy,
another of bodily deafness or blindness, the spiritual conditions of
all remaining unchanged ? It is clear that the credentials to
which Paul appealed were entirely spiritual, and that they were
found in the moral changes, the spiritual cleansings and healings
Chap. I.] FUENISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 51
wrought by his teaching and his life. The moral result of his
labours won for Gregory, bishop of ISTeo-Csesarea, the title of
Thaumatourgos, or the wonder-worker ; the fancy of the age soon
invented and ascribed to him a multitude of sensible prodigies, and
buried under a mass of fictions the true meaning of the name.
With the gift of tongues Paul, our only witness, deals happily
far more fully and explicitly than with any other of the powers ex-
ercised by himself or by any one else. His own use of it constrains
him to admit its reality, and he clearly does his best to appreciate
such good as might come from it ; but he has no hesitation in
criticising the gift itself and passing his judgement upon it. He
takes it along with the gift of prophecy : and prophecy is simply
the preaching (predicating) or setting forth of anything. With
this gift or power of preaching he compares and contrasts the
kinds of tongues with a candour which is mercilessly severe.
Both these gifts are used, or are supposed to be used, for the
benefit of the whole Church, and therefore for the bettering of all
mankind ; and he insists pointedly that if any prophesy or teach,
and there comes in one who believes not, or is unlearned, he is
convinced of all, he is judged of all, and the secrets of his heart
being thus made manifest, he worships God and reports that God
is in them of a truth (1 Cor. xiv. 25). Everything here is clear and
intelligible. The appeal is made straight from the heart and sense
of one man to the heart and the sense of another. But what of the
kinds of tongues ? This is a gift which, apart from the good which
possibly it may bring to him who is endowed with it, is, he
•declares (not without some vehemence), of not the slightest use in
itself. It may, he 'admits (and without denying the reality of the
gift he could not do otherwise), be made useful, if the man who
has the gift will interpret what he says, or if he can find any one
to do this work for him : but otherwise it is worse than worth-
less, — it is eminently mischievous, as fostering a confusion and
disorder which made the Corinthian Church a scandal lo the
world without. No one but the speaker or the interpreter could
-extract any meaning from a series of unintelligible ravings ; but
f2 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOE THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
how or why the speaker or the interpreter should deserve to be
trusted, Paul does not explain. The question involved a difficulty
with which for obvious reasons he could not deal ; but, short of
handling this question, he did all that he possibly could to put
the truth before his disciples. To bring the matter within our
comprehension he has left absolutely nothing wanting. He has,
in fact, little or no patience with the power or gift as exercised in
public. ' I had rather,' he says, ' speak five words with my under-
standing, that I might teach others also, than ten thousand words
in a tongue ' (1 Cor. xiv. 19). The inference is that the speaker in
the tongues cannot always, or often, understand himself, and
that the interpreter has to make an appeal from the senseless or
frenzied zealot to the more sober thinker before he can reduce his
cries to a form which may carry some meaning for the hearers
generally. Nor does Paul stay even here. The gift may possibly
(he scarcely affirms, though he does not in terms deny, this) edify
the possessor, but it is sure to disgust strangers. * If the whole
church,' he asks, * be come together into one place, and all speak
with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned or un-
believers, will they not say that ye are mad?' (1 Cor. xiv. 23.)
Not a word more is needed. The judgement is absolutely decisive.
Whatever the gift was, it was manifested in a mere utterance of
strange and unintelligible sounds, not articulate, not belonging to
any earthly language, sounds flowing from some uncontrollable
excitement, of which Paul, while he says that he shared it himself,
clearly saw the dangers. A grammatical and correct utterance of
known or real languages it most certainly was not, and never
pretended to be.
A more complete contradiction to the story of the day of
Pentecost in Acts cannot possibly be imagined. There we have the
distinct declaration that the disciples suddenly spoke correctly and
intelligibly the dialects of Persians, Arabians, Greeks, Eomans, and
other peoples; and it is also perfectly clear that the power so
given was not confined to the apostles. The whole Church was
gathered together, and the number was at least the 120 mentioned
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 53
in the first chapter (Acts i. 1 5). The immediate consequence was
a general amazement and wonder ; but the feeling took two forms
of expression. The fact of the bestowal of new powers of speech
had no sooner been perceived than it was noised abroad, the result
being that the crowd came together (Acts ii. 6). This crowd, we
must suppose, consisted, in part at least, of the devout persons
' out of every nation under heaven/ mentioned in the preceding
sentence, and probably of some others who received a different
impression from what they heard. The devout foreigners from
Phrygia, Pamphylia, Persia and the other countries, heard the
disciples (so we are told) speak, each in his own tongue, the
wonderful works of God. But in the crowd were others, who did
not, or would not, recognise in these sounds the articulate utter-
ances of their own languages. The former asked with wonder the
meaning of the power which thus enabled a company of Galilaeans
to speak in languages of which thus far they had been ignorant.
The latter declared positively that the speakers were filled through
and through with new wine.
Without going further, one thing stands out as clear as the
unclouded sun at noontide. Had the disciples been articulately
speaking the languages of all the strangers there assembled, the
reply to this charge of drunkenness must have taken the form of
an indignant appeal to those who recognised in their utterances
each his own native speech. Beyond all possibility of doubt, Peter
must have bidden them, in common fairness and common justice,
• to stand forth and to say that sounds not intelligible to Jews of
Jerusalem were really good Greek or good Latin, good Arabic or
good Persian. Of any such course we have not a hint ; or rather
kthe sequel shows (if the whole story be not a fiction) that no such
course could have been taken. When Peter obtains a hearing,
he tells the men of Judsea and all who dwelt at Jerusalem, not
that the disciples are beyond doubt possessed of the power of
speaking languages of which thus far they had known not one
word, but merely that ' these men are not drunken, as ye suppose,
54 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOE THE FOUE GOSPELS [Book I.
cite from the book of Joel some sentences which say nothing
whatever about the bestowal of any such power, although they
specify some manifestations of quite other sorts.
The words put into Peter's mouth virtually admit that the
sounds produced in this assembly at Jerusalem were precisely like
those of which Paul speaks as produced among the Christians of
Corinth. In either case they were inarticulate, incoherent, and
unintelligible ; and the alleged power of speaking real languages
without any previous acquaintance with them is thus proved
beyond all question to have existed only in the imagination of the
writer or writers of this anonymous book. The narrative which
affirms the bestowal of this power is altogether untrue ; and another
link is added to the chain of evidence which proves the untrust-
worthiness of the whole work as a historical record. The Council
at Jerusalem was never held : the decree ascribed to it was never
passed. Of the conversion of Cornelius and of Peter's utterances
after it Paul knew nothing ; and the stories in the Acts relating his
own conversion and the martyrdom of Stephen run counter to all
that we receive from the one witness who really belongs to the time ;
and this witness, we need scarcely say, is Paul himself. As Paul's
account of himself in his letter to the Galatians discredits the
story of the intervention of Ananias, so his description of the
power of tongues as exhibited in himself and in the church of
Corinth shows the unhistorical character not only of the mani-
festations on the day of Pentecost, but of the picture of a golden
age of faith which immediately follows.
According to this story there was a universal community of
goods in the new society (Acts ii. 44, 45). But this narrative
seems to be convicted of exaggeration (to say the least) by details
given later on. In Acts ii. 44 the surrender of all private pro-
perty is stated to be a condition of communion. Yet at a time
when not one member of the Church retained any property in
houses, lands, or moveable goods, the reply of Peter to Ananias
for keeping back part of the purchase-moneys of land is that
whilst it remained it was his own, and that even after it was
Chap. I.] FURNISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 55
sold, the price was still in his own power — in other words, that
the guilt lay not in departing from the practice of a community
of goods, which was not treated as essential, but in representing
the produce of the sale as less than it really was. The story
itself is inherently incredible, and can have no claim on our
belief as occurring in a book which we have seen to be wholly
unhistorical. The whole society must have been gathered in one
room, and must there have remained, with the exception of the
young men who carried out the body of Ananias and buried it.
Otherwise his wife could not have remained for three hours in
ignorance, not only of his death but of his burial. She could not,
of course, have come across the young men as they carried away
the body of her husband. Thus in a small knot of people two
instances of sudden death occurred in three hours, — the persons
being landowners, and therefore not altogether insignificant. Yet
no information is given of their deaths to any one in authority,
and the bodies are carried away at once for burial. Nor is any
notice taken of these events by the chief priests and rulers, who
had here a golden opportunity for crushing men whom, according
to the story, they both feared and hated. A previous chapter had
related how for curing a lame man the apostles had been im-
prisoned and charged to speak no more in the name of the Christ ;
and in the immediate sequel the priests and rulers again lay
hands on them for performing certain works which, if done, were
unquestionably beneficial. But when after a miraculous or por-
tentous deliverance from the prison the apostles are again brought
before the Sanhedrim, not one word is said of this mysterious
disappearance of persons scarcely of such little worth as to be thus
unceremoniously passed by. Are we to suppose that Jerusalem
was without any police at all ? The mere celebration of the
Eucharist sufficed, we are told, at a later time as a ground for
charges of cannibalism. It is strange, therefore, that nothing
should be said of an event, which they might, nay nmst, if they
had known it, have characterised as a double murder, and which
would certainly be investigated as such, if it took place in a
56 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
revival meeting at the present day. The narrative itself speaks
of the events as striking terror into the hearts of the disciples,
and as being freely talked of in the city (Acts v. 11). There
was nothing to hinder this; but that the priests and rulers
should give no heed to these reports is altogether beyond belief.
The narrative is explained by its purpose. Peter had by his
denial fallen lower than any of the apostles, except Judas ; and
his authority must be vindicated by some striking display of
power which shall place him on a level even higher than that of
the great apostle of the Gentiles.
It follows that on all historical grounds the writer of Acts and
his work are alike discredited ; and were he to relate nothing but
what is known in the ordinary course of human things, his testi-
mony must be set aside as worthless. But we have not said all,
when we have said that his history goes into tatters at the touch.
He not only ascribes to Paul a line of action which Paul em-
phatically repudiates for himself; but he sets down a series of
incidents as attending and following his conversion of which Paul,
to say the least, takes no notice whatever. These incidents are
marvellous and portentous. They are prodigies, or miracles, or
wonders. It matters not much by what name we describe them.
They are, at all events, occurrences to which we should give credit
only on the evidence of strictly contemporary witnesses, whose
trustworthiness and accuracy have been tested and everywhere
found good in the relating of ordinary matters. But it is just here
that the author of Acts fails utterly. His book has been written
with a purpose. This purpose made it necessary for him to dis-
tort all the events with which he had to deal, and to invent much
which never took place at all. If, then, we can put no faith in
him as a narrator of things of everyday life, what is to be said of
the astounding multitude of extraordinary and in themselves in-
credible incidents with which his narrative is garnished at every
step ? It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, in comparison
with the Acts of the Apostles and its exuberance of miraculous
or wonder-stirring incidents, the Gospels are sober histories. We
Chap. I.] FUENISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 57
are, therefore, wholly freed from any duty of exaraining all or any
of the astounding occurrences which meet us in his pages at every
turn. As works of history, the books of Chronicles in the Old
Testament Canon and the Acts of the Apostles in that of the New
stand on precisely the same level.
All that we need say further is that no clear evidence even of
the existence of this book is found for more than a century and
a half after the time when Paul abandoned the exclusiveness of
Judaism for the task of preaching a gospel which knew no dis-
tinction of race or condition. Efforts innumerable have been
made to discover references to this work in the epistles which
bear the names of Clement, Barnabas, and Ignatius, in the Shepherd
of Hernias and in the Canon of Muratori. But the authority of
all these is, as we shall see later on, questionable, and some are
certainly spurious. Clement assuredly needs not to be regarded
as referring to Acts, when he speaks of seven imprisonments of the
apostle of the Gentiles, and of his reaching the extremity of the
west in his work as a missionary. The paragraph in the Canon of
Muratori speaks of a book which contained the acts of all the
apostles. Our book of Acts certainly does not contain them.
The writer speaks of Luke as the author ; but this, as well as the
belief of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenseus, and others,
proves only that towards the end of the second century the idea
of the authorship of Luke was more or less widely spread. That
the book, as it now stands, professes to be the continuation of a
work written for the use of Theophilus (whatever or whoever this
may be) is certain. But it is scarcely less certain that the pre-
faces to the third Synoptic Gospel and to the Acts do not come
from the writer or writers of the books to which they are prefixed.
That they both come from one and the same person is by no
means unlikely ; but even the supposition that this person was the
author of Acts would prove nothing for their genuineness. The
preface to the third Gospel makes the frank admission that many
generations had passed away from the time of which it pro-
fesses to treat. No one would speak now of a tradition coming
58 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
down from those who had been eye-witnesses from the begin-
ning, if by this he was referring only to the days of George iv.
Nor can anything be gained by laying stress on the sentence
in the epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, which
speaks of the sufferers under persecution as praying for their
tormentors, 'like Stephen, the perfect martyr, Lord, lay not this
sin to their charge.' This prayer is certainly uttered by Stephen
in the Acts ; but Stephen is a historical personage, or he is not.
If he be, then a knowledge of his trial and death might be gained
from other sources besides the Acts ; and only on the supposition
that he was brought into being in the mind of the writer of the
Acts, and in no other way, can we assert that the letter of the
Gallic Churches implies a knowledge of the book. But the date
of this epistle is about 177-8 ; and from this we could gather only
that the book of the Acts was known then, while we should learn
nothing more of the author or of the time when he wrote.
In truth, so long as we lack earlier evidence, it matters nothing
whether ten or a thousand writers towards the close of the second
century make distinct references to the book. The author is
anonymous ; and we have no means of learning who he was. ■ The
belief that it is written by Luke, and that Luke was a companion
of Paul, had taken shape by the end of the second century ; but we
can scarcely venture to say that Paul knew anything about him.
We certainly cannot do so except by affirming the genuineness of
the letters to the Colossians and to Philemon and of the Pastoral
Epistles also; but if we grant them to be genuine, they show only
that a man named Luke was with Paul in Eome, but give no hint that
he had travelled with the apostle, or had written a Gospel, or had
composed anything like a memoir of Paul and his labours.^ Had
^ I have been able to give a few sentences only to this subject for which the
author of the inquiry into Su2^ernatural Religion admits that some chapters leave
him but scant space. There are many points which I cannot notice at all. But
of the sections in which the travelling companion of Paul speaks of himself and
the apostle in the first person, a few words must be said. There is nothing
whatever to show that these sections were written by Luke ; and if they were,
they do not in any way bear out the statements of the book on any matter of the
least importance. These sections are full of the most minute details ; but the
Chap. I.] FUENISHED BY THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 59
the author of Acts been really an intimate friend and the constant
travelling companion of Paul, he must have known the apostle's
mind as well as the circumstances of his history. As we have
seen, he knows neither ; and the epistle to the Galatians stands
out in glaring contradiction with the whole narrative in Acts.
According to Paul, his relations with the church at Jerusalem
involved one constant and ceaseless battle ; according to Acts,
there was no battle at all. If we believe Paul, he never submitted
himself to the leaders of the party of the circumcision: if we
trust the wTiter of the Acts, he was never in opposition to them.^
It is quite impossible that any close friend and trusted companion
could have thus misunderstood and misrepresented his character
and motives ; and therefore, if Luke was his companion and friend,
it follows conclusively that he was not the author of the Acts
of the Apostles. Had he been sent, and had Paul intrusted
details are merely commonplace, and the narrative is out of all proportion with
the rest of the story. The passages are seemingly extracts from a diary ; but we
know neither by whom they were written, nor the purpose for which they were
embodied in the Acts.
1 The history of the supposed Council of Jerusalem and its formal decree
would suffice to show this ; but the ' Acts ' provides even for the instances of
Paul's subordination to the missionaries or apostles of Jerusalem. He makes
many journeys to Jerusalem to attend the feasts (xviii. 21, xix. 21, xx. 16,
xxiv. 11, 18). He shaves his head at Kenchreai, because he was a Jew (xviii. 18).
He complies with the request made to him to go through a Nazarite purification
in the temple (xxi. 23). He circumcises Timothy (xvi. 1-3), although the story,
strangely enough, says that they knew that his father was a Greek. This would
be a reason for not circumcising him. The author should have said that they
knew that his mother was a Jewess. But with still greater boldness (if we look
to the letter to the Galatians) he speaks of Paul as invariably confining his
ministrations to the Jews until they determinately reject him. (xviii. 6) ; and to
crown the picture, the Jews of Rome, when Paul calls them together, declare
their utter ignorance of him some thirty years after his conversion. They had
received no letters from Judaea about him, and certainly they had heard no harm
of him, although they were well acquainted with the existence of the Christian
society, which was for them a sect everywhere spoken against (xxviii. 22). But
Paul's epistle to the Romans was evidently written before he had been at Rome ;
and after they had received it, he could not possibly be a stranger to them. It is
simply incredible that on reaching Rome he should not go to the Christian Jews
to whom he had written with so much affection, until the non-Christian Jews
had rejected him. The Acts gives no hint that there had already long existed in
Rome a society of believers or Christian Jews ' whose faith was spoken of through
the whole world' (Rom. i. 8).
60 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
him with the task of defending the character of his life and work,
it must surely be said that he could scarcely have betrayed his
trust more effectually. Of those facts on which Paul lays most
stress he takes no notice ; but his narrative is full of incidents of
the most momentous kind, of which Paul is absolutely ignorant.
'Nor is this all, for they are incidents which, if known to Paul,
must have made his Epistle to the Galatians impossible. The
question, in brief, is : Are we to believe Paul, or are we to give him
the lie by putting faith in some unknown writer, or writers, of
whom no mention is made till towards the close of the second
century of the Christian era ? We shall do so at the cost of giving
credit to a narrative which has been convicted of untrustworthiness
in all its stages, and which was put together with a set purpose,
which Paul, if he wrote the letter to the Galatians, would have
denounced with indignant reprobation. No professed history has
been rejected on grounds more overwhelmingly conclusive.
CHAPTEE II
EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS IN THE FIRST
AND SECOND CENTURIES
In the Acts of the Apostles we have the only professedly-
historical narrative of the New Testament Scriptures which we can
submit to a comparison with genuine writings belonging to the
time described in it and included in the same Canon of Scripture.^
The results of this examination have been given in the preceding
chapter. We have seen that the express statements of Paul not
only invalidate the testimony of the writer of the Acts on all
points which concern the apostle, but destroy all confidence in
him when he relates any other events. When the author of Acts
has been convicted of deliberately misrepresenting the great
apostle of the Gentiles, the remainder of his narrative can scarcely
be regarded as trustworthy, even if it were thoroughly self-
consistent, thoroughly free from contradiction, and borne out by
the direct or incidental statements of writers known to be con-
temporary with the events recorded. But as though the compiler
of the Acts had been smitten by judicial blindness, the human
and natural sequence, which to a certain extent characterises his
narrative of Paul's labours, is lost in an atmosphere of incongruous
and superfluous miracle, whenever he speaks of the acts of others.
Even in the case of Paul the author cannot forego an opportunity
for multiplying wonders. Handkerchiefs taken from his body
1 We can also compare the Apocalypse with the Acts and with the letters of
Paul : but the Apocalypse is not a narrative ; and the little that needs to be said
of it will be said further on.
62 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
heal diseases. But in other cases prodigies are still more wantonly
introduced. Prison-doors fly open to set free prisoners who are
brought back again the next day (Acts v. 26), or to deliver an
apostle whose escape is followed by the slaughter of the keepers
who had nothing to do with his flight. Yet the miracles or
prodigies, of which there is no lack when they are not wanted, fail
to deliver Stephen from the stones of the Jews, or James, the
brother of John, from the sword of Herod. If we are to give any
credit to such narratives as these, it is absurd to speak of the duty
of examining the evidence for any historical narrative whatever.
Sir Cornewall Lewis has shown that down to the Punic wars the
history of Eome is full of contradictions, and that of the alleged
chronicles, family inscriptions, and popular epics, from which it is
said to have been compiled, we have no knowledge whatever.
Yet the contradictions of early Eoman history are certainly not
greater than those which are brought to light on a comparison of
the writings of Paul with the books of the New Testament
Scriptures. In Paul, and in Paul alone (unless indeed we must
make an exception for the authors of the Apocalypse) we have one
who may be regarded as a strictly contemporary writer. We may
therefore compare Paul with Thucydides ; but we have to test the
statements of both. Thus, when in the midst of a narrative in
which the sequence is as thoroughly human as that of Napier's
Peninsular War we come across an event (the Melian conference)
which is treated ethically, we begin to doubt whether that event
took place precisely as the historian has narrated it. When we
see, further, that this event is the crisis of the war, and that the
tide of Athenian victory, thus far constant, was now followed by
an ebb, not less constant, of failures and disasters, we are at once
led to examine the arguments urged by the Athenians in their
controversy with the Melians. When, further, we find that these
arguments are not at all those which the Athenians had been in
the habit of maintaining, we begin to suspect that Thucydides has
been tempted into making pictures ; and the suspicion is converted
into certainty when we compare the narrative with the history of
Ohap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 63
Herodotus and find that the Melian conference presents a turning-
point precisely 'analogous to the attack of the Persians on Delphi.
If, then, this rigid scrutiny is to be applied to historical narratives,
when in the chain of political sequences we pass suddenly to an
event treated ethically, what is to be said of narratives which
display an almost incessant series of extraordinary and marvellous
interferences, and fairly realise, as Cardinal Newman admitted
that he longed to realise, the conditions of the Arabian Nights
fiction ?
We have no warrant, therefore, for giving credence to any one
statement in the Acts on the authority of the writer himself. If
we believe that Paul laboured at Antioch or at Ephesus, or
journeyed through Asia Minor, we do so not because the author of
the Acts tells us that he did, but because we have the facts from
Paul himself. Hence the book known as the Acts in the New
Testament Canon possesses no credit which can be transferred or
extended to any other writings; and statements in the Gospels
would, therefore, receive no corroboration, even if they were in
harmony with statements in the Acts. But we shall see that they
are not in harmony.
We need scarcely say, then, that from a book which, describing
the events of a later time, is found to be throughout untrust-
worthy, no authority can be derived for writings which, like the
Gospels, go back to a much earlier period. If the latter are to
be credited, it must be because they are self-consistent, or borne
out by the statements of contemporary writers, or in general
agreement with the known history of the age. But the great
traditional argument in favour of the popular belief has lain in the
alleged testimony of twelve independent and incorruptible witnesses,
who have no motive to deceive others and could not be deceived
themselves, who persist in their testimony in the face of imprison-
ment, tortures, and death, and who by their labours sealed the
doom of heathenism. Of these witnesses it is admitted that we
have no knowledge, unless it be obtained from the Acts ; and the
Acts, apart from the fact of its lying discredited, does not even
L
64 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
profess to say anything except about three or four, and the main
point connected with these is their flat refusal to preach to any
but to Jews. We have seen that, in fact, we have not from this book
the genuine testimony of any one of them. In its place we have
the allegations of some unknown writer, who for his own purposes
has deliberately misrepresented the character not only of Paul but
of Peter also. In the Acts these two apostles alone have any
substantive existence. The rest, with but one or two exceptions,
are mere nameless shadows that flit across the scene, when their
presence is needed at a council or for public worship. So far as
this book is concerned, of their real lives and characters we know
nothing; and the argument of Paley, which has led myriads to
regard as a rock-built castle that which is a mere house of cards
or of sand, receives its death-blow. It is a mere work of superero-
gation to carry the battle further by showing that these apostles,
if they lived at all, lived in an atmosphere steeped in prejudice
and credulity, that they knew nothing of a natural order, and saw
in everything the signs of supernatural or miraculous, in other
words, of arbitrary and capricious action.^ It is, indeed, needless,
for the purposes of the present argument, to show that they
accepted stories of the most astonishing interferences with the
sequence of phenomena as unconcernedly and as calmly as we
should hear of a division in the House of Commons. We have no
evidence which may legitimately satisfy us of their existence ; far
less can we pretend to the power of discerning their characteristic
features.
But even if the idea of the testimony of a complete society of
twelve men to certain extraordinary historical incidents (not, it
must be remembered, to any spiritual truths) must be given up,
1 Neither here, nor elsewhere, am I concerned with the question of the
possibihty or impossibility of what are commonly called miracles. The super-
stition of the ancient Jews generally is a plain fact, which must be weighed with
the utmost seriousness. To ascribe to them our modes of judgement is merely
ludicrous. The picture drawn of it in Supernatural Religion, Part i. ch. iv., is
under-coloured. For men living in such a state, the historical faculty can scarcely
be said to have any existence.
Chap. II.] IN THE FIEST AND SECOND CENTURIES 65
there still remains, it may be urged, the testimony of four in-
dependent evangelists, two of these being of the number of the
twelve, while the writer of the second Gospel is stated to have
been the personal attendant of Peter, and the author of the third
a close and trusted companion of Paul. The reply is plain. Peter
may have had a coadjutor, Mark, and Paul a coadjutor, Luke ;
but this does not show that that Mark and that that Luke wrote
the two Gospels which bear their names. In fact, it is quite clear
that the first three Gospels are founded on one or more common
documents. Internal evidence proves that no one of the three
writes from personal knowledge; and one of them admits the
existence of a tradition extending over some generations before
his own day (Luke i. 1-4). Nor, indeed, had Paul any personal
knowledge of the life of Jesus to communicate to Luke, while
Mark adds little to Matthew, or Matthew to Mark. The three
Synoptic Gospels are manifestly not three independent narratives,
but merely different versions flowing out of a common tradition ;
and what can such versions be worth ?
Here, then, the subject divides into two streams. The matter
of the fourth Gospel is substantially different from that of the
other three. There is throughout it the stamp of distinct author-
ship except in the comparatively few passages which relate to
events recorded in some or all of the other Gospels. We have
then before us two inquiries, — one which must determine the time
when the fourth Gospel was written, or, at all events, when it was
first heard of ; and another, which must settle whether the other
Gospels are really three narratives or varying forms of one original
tradition. If for the former it be proved that the time of composi-
tion could not be earlier than the middle of the second century and
that it may be later, the testimony of one more witness is lost, for
it could not in that case be the work of John the son of Zebedee. At
best it can but exhibit the impression made by the teaching and
conversation of John on the mind of some familiar disciple ; and
we are left, finally, to determine whether in the other Gospels we
have the testimony of three several persons, each speaking, from
E
66 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
his own knowledge, of events which had occurred in his own life-
time, or from the information of men whom he knew to have taken
part in these events and whose trustworthiness he had tested.
Now nothing is more certain than that any number of persons,
speaking of events which they have seen, will describe each event
in his own way. The mode of regarding them will vary. The
turn of thought and language will be different in each case, and
the narrative will give play to the associations and the prejudices,
the wisdom or folly of the speaker or writer. There are, of course,
certain cases in which we should expect them to use the same, or
nearly the same, words. If they quote from a published document
or proclamation, they will quote alike, in proportion to their
general accuracy of thought. If they record a speech which they
may have heard, these reports will agree in proportion to the
strength and fidelity of their memory ; but if we found that the
letters of three or four correspondents of newspapers, describing
the aspect of political affairs in Lisbon, Paris, or Vienna, contained
here and there a sentence couched in precisely the same words, we
should regard the circumstance as singular and suspicious. If we
found two or three consecutive sentences in each exactly alike, we
should conclude that all had copied from some common document,
or that the original writing of one of them had been plagiarised by
all the rest. If, in addition to this, we found event after event
described, and question after question discussed in precisely the
same phrases by each, we should dismiss the matter as too clear for
an instant's thought. Yet this is the phenomenon which comes
before us in the passages which are common to two or more of the
four Gospels ; such passages being, of course, far more numerous
in those which have received the name of Synoptic Gospels, to dis-
tinsuish them from the fourth. No fact could well be more moment-
ous. The supplement to the fourth Gospel informs us that if all
the unrecorded acts of Jesus were reported the world would not
contain the books that should be written. Whatever this state-
ment may be worth, it implies at all events a belief that the
wealth of material stored up in the memory of the disciples (if not
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 67
committed to writing) was great; and we know that there were
many Gospels, of some of which not even the names have come
down to us. Yet the Synoptists (if this barbarous word must be
used) relate but a few and for the most part the same events,
often in precisely the same words. On this point no room is left
for doubt. Down to the subtlest turns of thought and the nicest
details of expression there is a substantial identity which proves
that the narratives bearing the names of Matthew, Mark, and
Luke are in the main one and the same tale coloured with a few
peculiar touches here and there according to the taste or judgement
of the composers or copyists.
Thus, then, the witness of the four independent evangelists is
reduced at once to the testimony of two narratives which must be
authenticated, or in lack of authentication rejected, the one form-
ing the nucleus of the Synoptic Gospels, the other supposed to
exhibit the thoughts and convictions of the apostle John. In the
case of the former the result is that we find ourselves in a strange
labyrinth. That there was a story which underlies our Synoptic
narratives is clear: but this very fact shows that, where other
writers quote expressions or sentences found in one or more of our
Synoptic Gospels, we cannot venture to say that they may not
be quoted from earlier versions of the tradition, and that such
quotations are, therefore, no necessary proof of the existence of
our Gospels in their present shape at the time when the quota-
tions were made. Much stress is laid on such alleged quotations
and references in the writings attributed to Clement, Barnabas,
and others, as establishing the fact that our Gospels were acknow-
ledged as authoritative in the first century. The date of these
writings must be ascertained before any such assertion can be
made ; but the quotations themselves may be derived from the
sources accessible to, or used by, the evangelists. They are in
almost every instance more or less different from the corresponding
passages in our Gospels ; and on the supposition that the matter
of these portions is historical, they are just such traditional say-
ings as might easily be retained by oral transmission for many
68 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
generations. It is probably to this fact of oral transmission that
some at least of the inconsistencies and contradictions of our
Gospels are due. The tradition may have started, conceivably,
with as many versions as there were hearers, who might impart to
it each his own colouring ; and until it has been committed to
writing, the tendency to multiply variations is irresistible.
But when we say broadly that no direct references are made to
the four Gospels of the Nicene Canon for a century and a half
after the occurrence of the events which they are supposed to
relate, it is not meant that no words found in the Gospels as
we have them are to be found also in works belonging to the
first two centuries of the Christian era. Passages may be quoted
from the writings ascribed to the Eoman Clement and others,
which in spirit and substance agree with passages in our own
Gospels ; but unless the verbal agreement is exact in the sentences
which are expressly given as quotations, it cannot be allowed that
the quotations are made from our Gospels as we have them, and,
therefore, that these Gospels were regarded as authoritative before
the close of the first century. In many cases the differences
are many and serious; in almost all of them they are considerable.
The favourite means adopted by traditional critics to account for
these differences is the assertion that the early Christian writeri5/
were in the habit of quoting from memory, and that so they
often pieced together their sentences from passages scattered over
many parts of our Gospels. It is, however, to say the least, a
strange and perplexing thing that writers like Justin Martyr, who
are thus loose in quoting from our Gospels (i.e. from certain writ-
ings of the New Testament Canon) are in the main accurate, not
only in their quotations from, but in their references to, the
passages which they cite from the writings of the Old Testament.
The supposition that they had two sets of sacred books, one of
which they treated as authoritative and from which they quoted
exactly, while in their quotations from the other they patched their
sentences together much as they chose, is obviously untenable and
is indeed absurd. In the vastly larger number of instances tha
.Chap. II] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 69
divergence is so great that no one could ever have thought of
referring these citations to our Gospels, had not this course been
forced upon orthodox writers by the exigencies of their position.
It is assumed that our Gospels are contemporary documents written
by the persons whose names they bear : that they were known
and received as such even before the close of the first century;
and that in this fact we have a sufficient warranty for their trust-
worthiness. Of this fact anything is taken as evidence. The
recurrence in early Christian books of such phrases as ' the last
shall be first and the first last/ or ' many are called but few
chosen/ or ' give to every one that asketh thee/ is at once asserted
to be proof positive that the writer was referring to one or other of
our Synoptic Gospels. It may be that the passages are given with
quite a different context, or are manifestly meant to convey a very
different meaning, or that a verbal agreement cannot be affirmed.
But no difficulty is ever admitted on such grounds as these. The
habit of quoting from memory accounts for and explains all these
and all possible variations.
It is enough to repeat that these writers cannot legitimately be
accused of being in the habit of citing from memory, loosely and
without verification, the passages which they quote from the Old
Testament writings ; and therefore that there is no reason why
they should thus systematically treat the writings of the New. But
the question before us is of a wider range. The four Gospels which
the Nicene Council distinguished as canonical are but a few out of
a large class of such records, most of which have been lost and
some of which are known only by name. How soon after the
lifetime of the Great Teacher the harvest began to spring up we
cannot say; but that some of them were taking shape, or had
taken shape, not many years later than the life of the apostle
Paul may be affirmed with tolerable safety. There is probably no
reason for regarding the so-called preface to our third Gospel as
part of the record to which it is prefixed ;^ but both that and the
^ Whether this preface was, or was not, written by the compiler of the Gospel
which follows, or of any part of it, is a question of very slight importance. It may,
70 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
prefatory verses of the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles set
forth at least the knowledge of the writer that at the time
when he wrote, the crop of Gospels was already a large one, and
that the traditions embodied in them had existed for many genera-
tions. No one would speak of the religious teachers of the age
immediately preceding his own as those who ' from the beginning
were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.' It is not easy to lay
too much stress on these unconscious indications of time ; but it
does not follow that such prefatory sentences were written by the
composer of the narratives which follow them. The Gospel which
bears the name of Luke may be a century earlier than the preface
attached to it ; but this preface shows that at the time when it
was written this Gospel was regarded as one of a class, and that
other members of the class were looked upon as more or less
authoritative. Now in the Synoptic Gospels there are very many
passages between which there exists a close verbal agreement,
though the words may not be precisely the same. If, then, in
early Christian writings we have quotations professing to give the
words of Jesus, but differing in any measure from the form which
they have taken in any one or more of our Gospels, it is altogether
inadmissible to infer that the citation is loosely made from
memory from the latter. They may in fact be taken from other
Gospels which have been lost.
If it be said that this fact, far from setting aside the value
and authority of our Gospels, shows that a much larger number of
Gospels were looked upon with reverence and trust, the answer is
that, if our four Gospels do not form a class by themselves, the
whole matter in dispute is from the traditional point of view con-
ceded. If the early writers invariably, or almost invariably, quote
or it may not, be the work of the man who introduced the narratives of the
nativity into a work which had begun with what is now the third chapter ; or
the author may have given its present shape to the whole Gospel. With perhaps
not less likelihood it may come from some one who had nothing to do with the
work to which he attached it. The history of the prefatory sentences of the
fourth Gospel, which began with the record of the mission of John the Baptist,
may be of a like kind. The real point .of interest with reference to these pre-
faces lies in the question of literary morality connected with them.
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 71
from records differing from our own, how is this fact to be ex-
plained, when we have given up the theory of loose quotations from
memory ? The falsity and fallaciousness of this theory have been
conclusively shown without travelling beyond our own Gospels. We
have only to imagine that one or two of our three Synoptic records
had been lost, and that there were found in some early writer a
quotation, from some source imnamed, running thus, ' He said to
them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few : pray ye
therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth labourers
into his harvest. Go your ways. Behold, I send you forth as
lambs in the midst of wolves.' According to the traditional way
of dealing with such passages it would be declared that this was a
citation from two passages in our first Synoptic (Matt. ix. 39 and
X. 16). The quotation, however, reproduces literally Luke x. 2, 3,
which we have supposed had been lost. So, again, we might find
a quotation standing thus, ' Take heed to yourselves of the leaven
of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Tor there is nothing
covered up which shall not be revealed, and hid which shall not
be known.' On the supposition that we had only the Gospel of
Matthew these words would certainly be regarded as a free collo-
cation of the two verses, xvi. 6, and x. 26 ; and yet the passage is
found verbatim in Luke xii. 1, 2.
One or two such instances (and they may be multiplied
indefinitely) are worth as much as a thousand for proving that
even slight verbal variations are a sufficient reason for refusing to
refer quotations in early Christian books to our Gospels, unless
these Gospels were referred to with unmistakable clearness. But
the Gospels are not referred to, and in almost all cases the verbal
variations and even the differences of meaning are not slight. In
truth, the precipitate haste with which passages like those in our
Gospels are assumed to be taken from those Gospels is very
wonderful. On the supposition that the Great Teacher really
lived, that his teaching made a profound impression upon his
hearers, and that he organised a society for the permanent carrying
on of his work, would it not follow that his words would be handed
72 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
down by a real and widely spread tradition and be preserved in a
multitude of records, crude and ill arranged, it may be, at first,
but more carefully shaped out afterwards ? His maxims and
sayings would be a common property of the whole body of
believers, so far as their memory might serve them ; and it must
iiot be forgotten that the references are in a large proportion to
his words, and comparatively seldom to his acts or to any wonders
wrought by him.
It follows that the citations made from his sayings cannot be
held to prove more than the existence of the passages so cited. It
does not follow that a reference to the parable of the sower and
the seed proves that the document quoted contained any other of
the parables ascribed to Jesus in our Gospels. Nothing less than
the quotation of the whole record could prove that that record was
one of our four Gospels, for apart from the fact that the cita-
tions of early Christian writer's exhibit marked and striking
variations from our Gospel texts, it is altogether impossible for
us to determine the extent to which all those recor4s were modi-
fied during the ages for which we have no manuscripts.^ This
is a fact which traditional critics commonly pass by with singular
lightness, but which is really of supreme moment. That in this
long interval some of the documents were interpolated is admitted,
it may be said, without a dissentient voice; and these interpolations,
it will probably be seen, were more serious than the most rigorous
critics have thus far suspected. The changes effected during this
time extended in some cases to the substitution of a whole book
for another. Papias, as we shall see presently, gives an elaborate
account of a Gospel which he ascribes to Mark. His description
makes it certain that that Gospel was not the second of our
Gospels. By unanimous admission the interpolator was at work
long before the date of our oldest manuscripts ; and in the absence
of manuscripts, interpolations can be detected, in the last resort,
only by the experience and the judgement of the critic. But the
^ As to the extent of such modifications or corruptions of the text, see Super-
rmtural Religion, i. 246, 247, 260, 267.
I
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 73
reasons for rejecting passages as thrust in are in almost all cases
obvious, the chief among them being that the passages so thrust
in do not agree with the context, and that they violently interrupt
the course of the argument or narrative, which on their removal is
seen to run on with perfect coherence. On the strength of two
such interpolated passages (1 Cor. xi. 23-25, and xv. 3-9), it has
been vehemently maintained that we have the authority of Paul
for the principal incidents of the Gospel histories, for the institu-
tion of the Eucharist, for the visible or sensible Anastasis, and for
the various Christophanies which are said to have followed it.
We shall see further on that he could never have written these
passages, and for any confirmation of the Gospel narratives we
must, therefore, look elsewhere.
We may see at once how little can be built on citations in
such writers as Justin Martyr or (the pseudo) Ignatius, even if the
citations agree word for word with passages in the four Gospels ;
but of such verbal identity we have scarcely a single instance.
How loose the agreement generally is will be made plain by the
summary examination on which alone we can enter here, but
which, as it so happens, is amply sufficient for our purpose. It is
commonly supposed, or taken for granted, that a reference to our
Gospels in the epistle ascribed to the Eoman Clement would
prove both the existence and the authority of those Gospels before
the close of the first century of our era; and the assertion is
confidently advanced that such a reference is made in the following
sentences. Here the writer says : ' Eemember the words of our
Master Jesus, for he said, "Woe to that man; it were well for
him if he had not been born than that he should make one of my
chosen to stumble. It were better for him that a millstone should
be fastened on him and he be drowned in the sea than that he
should scandalise one of my little ones." '
Now, there is no passage in either of our Synoptics which
exhibits anything like this quotation in its integrity. The nearest
approach that can be found to it is furnished by taking some of
the words said to have been spoken by Jesus in reference to the
74 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOE THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
betrayal of Judas (Matt. xxvi. 24), and piecing them on with
some of his expressions on setting up the little child in the midst
of the disciples (Matt, xviii. 6). Whether in this and the other
passages in which the words of Jesus are cited the Clementine
writer is quoting from an unknown record or reproducing merely
oral tradition is a question of no great moment. In either case
he prefers an unknown record or a tradition merely oral to the
versions which have come down to us, and so shows that the latter
had for him no authority, even if he was aware of their existence.
But we do not know when this so-called epistle of Clement' was
written. It bears no name, and professes to come simply from
the church in Eome to the church in Corinth. According to
Eusebius, Clement became bishop of Eome A.D. 91, and died nine
years later. If so, it would seem to follow that he was not the
author of the epistle, which furnishes internal evidence for a
much later date. It refers the Corinthians to the letters addressed
to them by Paul ' in the beginning of the gospel ' (a phrase which
could not well be applied to letters written only some thirty
years, even if so long, before), and speaks of ' the most ancient
and steadfast church of the Corinthians,' which would be absurd
if that church had existed only for one generation. It refers also
to the book of Judith, which is supposed to belong to the year
117-118; and in that case the epistle of Clement cannot be earlier
than 120-125. The point is one of little moment, for, whatever
be its age, it cannot be shown that the writer was acquainted with
our Gospels, and these Gospels can therefore derive no authority
from his letter.
An appeal of the like sort is made to the epistle ascribed to
Barnabas, the colleague of the apostle Paul.. In this writing we
have the words, ' Let us beware lest we be found, as it is written,
Many called, few chosen.' This is taken to be a direct reference
to our Matthew and an acknowledgement of the authority of that
Gospel. But the expression is just one of those which, on the
supposition that it comes from the Great Teacher, would be the
common property of all who heard him utter it ; and it is a very
Chap. IL] IN THE FIEST AND SECOND CENTUKIES 75
singular thing, that, although it occurs twice in our first Synoptic
(xx. 16, xxii. 14), in neither case has it the least connexion with
the context. In the one case it is attached to the parable of the
labourers in the vineyard, in which all who are called receive an
equal recompense, or, in other words, all are chosen ; and in the
other to the parable of the wedding guests, in which one only of
the called is rejected. The phrase is clearly dragged in, as many
another has been dragged in, because some scribe had written it
on the margin, and another could not resist the temptation of
inserting the gloss in the text. It is found only in later MSS. in
Matthew xx. 1 6, and not at all in either Mark or Luke, as we
have them. The other passages cited from the epistle of Barnabas
are equally inconclusive; and the epistle itself cannot be older
than that which is ascribed to Clement. Neither here, nor in the
so-called Shepherd of Hermas have we the least evidence of the
existence of our canonical Gospels in the shape in which we have
them now.
The quotations of passages resembling others in our Gospels,
found in the epistles ascribed to Ignatius of Antioch, are not a
whit more conclusive ;*but the epistles themselves lie under such
a cloud of suspicion that their value for any purposes of evidence
becomes in any case worthless. At best, if the fact of any
such reference could be established, it would only prove that the
Gospel referred to was in existence during the reign of Trajan;
but such references cannot be found, and the whole Ignatian
literature must be set aside as a vast mountain of forgery. Fifteen
letters in all bear his name. Seven only are mentioned by
Eusebius; and the remainder are therefore, it would seem, uni-
versally rejected as spurious. But the process of winnowing does
not stop here. These seven letters exist in two versions, a long
and a short one. The long one is rejected with scarcely a dis-
sentient voice, as containing nothing more than the matter of the
shorter version swollen out by multitudes of interpolations. That
the shorter version itself was full of interpolated matter seemed to
be proved, when in 1845 Dr. Cureton published a still shorter
76 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
Syrian version of the epistles to the Ephesians, to the Eomans, and
to Polycarp. It was natural that critics who, on the supposed
authority of Eusebius, still upheld the genuineness of the shorter
Greek version, should regard the Syrian version as an epitome of
that version; but, in truth, there is no evidence for this. The
letters read altogether more clearly, coherently, and consecutively,
than in their Greek dress ; but it is noteworthy that those passages
which chiefly brought the epistles into suspicion are not found in
the Syrian version at all, and that the MSS. of this version are
older by some centuries than the Greek. This proves only that in
the Syrian we have the earliest form of the Ignatian literature
which swelled out afterwards into so large a mass. The problem
which lies beneath it remains unchanged. Of these three, as of all
the other letters, the same account is given. Is that account
worthy of the least credit ? In any shape these letters are pitiable
specimens of ignorance, superstition, and intellectual degradation ;
but this does not prove them to be false. The difficulty lies in the
tale that they were written on his journey, by l^nd, from Antioch
to Eome, where he was to be thrown to the beasts in the amphi-
theatre. According to the complaint of the martyr he was treated
with terrible cruelty. ' From Syria even to Eome/ he says, ' I fight
with wild beasts, by sea and by land, by night and by day, being
bound amongst ten leopards, which are the band of soldiers who,
even receiving benefits, become worse,' in other words, are rendered
more exacting by bribes. But if it be so, whence came the time
and the opportunity for writing these letters, and for the inter-
views which he admits that he had with his friends at the several
stages of his journey ? Still more, how came it about that these
guards should allow a man condemned to death for professing him-
self a Christian to write letters inforcing the very doctrines which
had brought down his sentence upon him ? The story of the
Eoman journey is altogether incredible. There are, however, good
reasons for saying that his martyrdom took place at Antioch itself,
after the panic caused by the great earthquake in the year 115.
But in this case not one of the epistles is genuine ; and therefore
Chap. II.] IN THE FIEST AND SECOND CENTUEIES 77
even if they contained direct references to any of our Gospels,
those references would be worthless, as not belonging to the age to
which they are assigned ; but no such references are forthcoming.
Of the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, which deals with
the martyrdom of Ignatius, it is enough to say that it speaks not
only of his journey to Eome (which we have seen to be incredible)
but also of the spurious letters not found in the Syrian version.
These are, therefore, older documents than the latter, which are
meant to be regarded as the earlier. Nor is this all. The letter
in one chapter speaks of Ignatius as dead, holding him up, like
Paul and the other apostles, as examples of patience, and in a later
one treats him as living, and asks how he and they who are with
him are faring. The epistle of Polycarp is, therefore, spurious;
and its testimony to the existence of our Gospels, if any such
could be found, would be of no value. Thus far, we have met with
no evidence which supports the theory that our Synoptic Gospels
were known to any who lived and wrote in the first century of
our era or the earlier half of the second.
The writings of Justin Martyr are of greater importance. It
is true, indeed, that his authority is simply that of a man speaking
in the latter half of the second century ; but he is one who speaks
deliberately in answer to a serious charge, making his citations
with the care needed, not so much to insure his own acquittal (for
about this he was probably indifferent) as to justify his faith in
the sight of his judges. He is, therefore, we might suppose, the
last man against whom traditional critics would make charges of
loose citations from memory, and of the patching together of
passages which occur in quite different connexions in our Gospels.
Of the date of his first, or larger, Apology, there is happily
no doubt. The so-called second Apology has little value or
interest. His martyrdom took place in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, about a.d. 166-167; and his Apology speaks of the birth
of Jesus as having taken place a century and a half before the
time at which he was writing. As we might expect, this treatise
is full of Scriptural citations; and by Scripture Justin means
78 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOE THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
strictly the writings of the Old Testament, to which his references
are generally exact. Of references to the sayings of Jesus, and to
the supposed incidents of his history, the larger Apology and the
Dialogue with Tryphon furnish considerably more than a hundred.
If of these it may be broadly said that not one agrees exactly with
the text of our Gospels, further evidence cannot be needed to prove
that the latter were not then in existence, or, if they were, that
Justin deliberately preferred others to them — in other words, that
they had at the time no authority. That he had a Gospel from
which he claims to make precise quotations is indisputable, and
of this Gospel he repeatedly speaks under the title of Memoirs of
the Apostles, meaning by this not recollections of their labours,
but records drawn up by them of the life and teaching of the Great
Master. But although he speaks of these Memoirs as the work of
the Apostles, it is only in a single instance that he mentions the
name of any one as having written any of them. This instance is
that of the Apocalypse, which he ascribes to John as ' one who
prophesied by a revelation made to him ;'^ but <; the fact that he
only names him thus, shows that he had no Gospel which he at-
tributed to the same writer. As to the Gospel history followed by
Justin, it may be said that it differs more or less in every par-
ticular from the versions preserved to us in our canonical Gospels,
just as these differ from one another. The genealogy of Jesus is
traced through Mary, not through Joseph. The angel bids Mary
call her child Jesus, because he shall save his people from their
sins — a declaration which is not made in our third Gospel, but
which in the first is addressed in the vision to Joseph. Her child
is born not in a stable but in a cave ; and Justin, arguing from old
prophecy that he must be so born, shows indisputably that he had
this statement in the Gospel which he followed. When Jesus is
baptized, a fire is kindled in Jordan, and the voice from heaven
proclaims, ' Thou art my beloved Son : this day have I begotten
thee ' — a citation which Justin certainly would not have made, had
he had before him the version given in our first Synoptic (iii. 1 7),
^ Supernatural Religion, i. 298.
k
Chap. IL] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 79
which makes his Sonship eternal instead of dating it from the
moment of his baptism. Discrepancies of the like sort run through
his whole narrative. When Jesus is arrested on the Mount of
Olives, Justin says that ' there was not even a single man to run
to his help as a guiltless person ' — a statement which cannot be
reconciled with the story of Peter and Malchus. According to
our Gospels, the disciples forsake their Master and fly before his
crucifixion : according to Justin they do so after that event, and
the whole body of the apostles deny him as plainly as Peter.
Here, if anywhere, Justin would be careful to state nothing for
which he had not ample authority. The fact that he makes this
statement shows that he was following not the versions of our
canonical Gospels, but another which differed from them in-
definitely. In our first Synoptic (xxvii. 62-66) we have a story of
the Sanhedrim bribing the Eoman soldiers to tell the governor
that the disciples of Jesus had stolen his body while they, the
guards, were sleeping at their post. Justin has quite another tale,
that the Jews selected and sent forth from Jerusalem throughout
the land chosen men, saying that 'the atheistic heresy of the
Christians had arisen from a certain Jesus, a Galilsean impostor,
whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the
tomb where he had been laid when he was unloosed from the cross,
and they now deceive men, saying that he has risen from the dead
and ascended into heaven.' There is not a word here about the
Eoman soldiers ; but there can be no doubt, as Justin tells the
story twice, that he found it in the Memoirs of the Apostles, and
without going further, we can see how easily a vast crop of stories
might, or rather inevitably would, spring up from the mythical
matter which was taking shape in one form or another. The story
of Justin is not the same story as that of the guards of Pilate in
our first Gospel ; and by no process can the two be brought into
agreement. But there is no reason why there should not be
twenty different versions of a tale which started from the notion
of stealing from the tomb the body of one who had been taken
down from the cross. The crowd of evangelists mentioned in the
80 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOE THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
preface to our third Gospel was not bound to adhere to one version
of the incidents rather than to another. But the astounding fact
remains that, amidst the multitude of references to the teaching of
Jesus and the alleged incidents of his life, there are scarcely more
than one or two instances in which we can say that there is a
verbal agreement between the text of Justin's citations from the
Memoirs of the Apostles and the text of our canonical Gospels.
Even when there is an approach to verbal agreement, we have seen
that the circumstance proves, and can prove, nothing, when the
citation in question refers to a saying of Jesus which may be
historical. All such sayings became the common property of all
who heard them, and might reappear, word for word, in a dozen
different records.
Three consecutive chapters (xv.-xvii.) in the first Apology of
Justin are taken up with an exposition of the fundamental
teaching of Jesus, in other words, with utterances preserved to us
in our first and third Synoptics, in the sermons said to have been
delivered from the mount and on the plain. There is undeniably
a substantial agreement with both. The spirit is throughout the
same, and to a certain extent there is a likeness of language. All
these citations Justin professes to make from the Memoirs of the
Apostles; and it is vehemently contended by theologians of the
traditional schools that the Memoirs are thus proved to be
identical with our canonical Gospels. Yet what are the facts ?
The passages in Justin are clearly continuous, except where he
himself shows that he has left one passage and gone to another.
It follows that the passages which he cites continuously were
found continuously in the Gospel of which he was making use ;
and the result is this, that, if it be assumed that he was quoting
from our Gospels, we have to admit that he picked out not only
from the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain but
from other parts of our Synoptics a number of passages which he
(Jovetails into a coherent whole, showing not the least regard to the
prder in which he finds them, frequently altering their meaning,
more frequently setting at naught their context, and in almost
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 81
every single instance misquoting more or less seriously the
passages themselves, — and yet, while he does this, claiming in the
clearest and most formal manner to be quoting accurately.
To any who do not start with the foregone conclusion that
Justin must have had our Gospels before him, because to allow
that he had not would damage the cause of the traditional
theology, such conduct as this is really incredible. Justin
nowhere names our Gospels, and nowhere quotes them. It becomes
a sheer assumption, therefore, to affirm that he knew anything
about them, or even that they were then in existence in their
present form. We have already seen from an inspection of our
Synoptic Gospels ^ how dangerous and how worthless are attempts
to account for differences of words, of meanings, and of context on
the hypothesis that the writer was quoting loosely and inexactly
from memory, and so pieced together clauses and sentences which
in our Gospels appear in different places and with different
connexions. The conclusion with regard to Justin is obvious
and inevitable. He does not quote from our Gospels; there-
fore, he quotes from a different Gospel ; but it is no part of
our duty to determine the source of his citations. He calls
the records which he quotes Memoirs of the Apostles. These
Memoirs may, or may not, have been the same as the Gospel of
the Hebrews, or any one of the many others which have been
altogether lost. The exactitude of his citations we have no right
whatever to call into question. His language is invariably that
of a man who knows what he is about ; and it is impossible to
doubt his truth when he declares in some instances that he quotes
the words of Jesus, and then goes on to make his comments and to
draw his own conclusions from them.
Hegesippos, a contemporary of Justin, is a man of some note,
as being the first historian of the Christian Church. Coming to
Kome during the pontificate of Anicetus (Aniketos), he composed
five books of Memoirs, in one of which he speaks of Eleutheros
as then Bishop of Kome. This book, therefore, must have been
1 See p. 69 et seq.
F
82 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
written after the year 177 of our era. Eusebius speaks in high
terms of his authority as a contemporary with the first successors
of the apostles. The expression is scarcely accurate. The deaths
of the apostles, or missioners, named by the Great Teacher could
scarcely have taken place more than forty years after his own ; and
if we give another forty years to those whom they themselves
elected, this would bring us to the year 110, when Hegesippos, if
born, could have been only a child. He would, however, be only
one generation later ; but this would give no value to his testimony
as to the existence and the genuineness of our canonical Gospels,
unless this testimony should be borne out by that of writers older
than himself. Unfortunately his work is lost ; and we have only
some extracts which have been preserved to us by Eusebius,
together with one other fragment. But Eusebius confesses the
great anxiety which he had to bring together all attainable evidence
for the antiquity and authority of our canonical Gospels; and if
he could have found any such evidence in the pages of Hegesippos
he would beyond all doubt have embodied it in his own work. His
silence is proof that they furnished none ; but Eusebius makes no
attempt to hide the fact that Hegesippos made use of the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, of which something must be said
by and by. Hegesippos was a Christian of Palestine, and his
Christianity had a very strong Jewish tinge. He speaks not of
Peter or John, but of James, as being the chief of the apostles ;
and his account of James shows how small was the difference
between him and those of the circumcision. He declares that
after reaching Eome he put together the records of the history of
the Eoman Church to the time of Eleutheros; but with every
succession, he assures us, and in every city, ' that prevails, which
the Law and the Prophets and the Master enjoin.' The only
written authority which he recognises is the Old Testament
Scripture. Apart from this, he holds to the * infallible tradition of
the apostolic preaching.' But this is an oral tradition; and of
any Canon of I^ew Testament Scriptures, or even of any gathering
of apostolic epistles, he clearly knows nothing. Attempts have,
Chap. IL] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 83
nevertheless, been made to prove that Hegesippos was not only
acquainted with our Synoptic Gospels, but that he also quotes
them. The proof is as shadowy as in the case of Justin. Speak-
ing of the martyrdom of James, Hegesippos says that, like Jesus
and like Stephen, he prayed for his murderers, and gives his prayer
in the words, ' I beseech thee, Lord God Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.' This agrees exactly neither with the
prayer of Stephen nor with that of Jesus ; but we have seen that
the prayer of Jesus, on the supposition that it was historical, would
become the common property of all who heard it, and might be
recorded in a multitude of writings, some of which might even
owe nothing to each other. From Hegesippos, therefore, we get
no evidence of the existence of our canonical Gospels in his
own day.
A contemporary of Hegesippos, and possibly a fellow-martyr
with Justin, is Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, whose death is said
to have taken place about 164-167. As Hegesippos is our first
ecclesiastical historian, so Papias is the first who speaks of
Gospels written by Matthew and Mark; and the leap is made
to the conclusion that these Gospels are identical with those which
bear these names in our Canon. Unlike Justin, he cares little for
written records in comparison with oral tradition. His great wish,
he tells us, was to know ' what Andrew or what Peter said, or
Philip, or Thomas, or James, or any other of the disciples of the
Master, and what Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of
the Master, say, for I held that what was to be gotten from books
did not so profit me as that which came from the living and
abiding voice.' If, then, he had met with our canonical Gospels, or
with any others, it is quite clear that he had no special regard for
them, and that the idea of their authority never passed across his
mind. The idea that he knew anything of a Canon of New
Testament Scriptures is merely ridiculous. Whether the presbyter
John, who is named after the unknown Aristion, was the Evangelist
or some other person, is a question of not much moment. Papias
<does not say that he heard either of them himself, and indeed it is
84 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
scarcely possible that a man who was living in the time of Marcus
Aurelius could have been a hearer of any one of the apostles.
Whoever he may have been, Papias in his 'Exposition of the
Master's sayings ' (or oracles, Logia) tells us that this presbyter
spoke, of Mark as one who ' having become an interpreter of Peter,
wrote down exactly what he remembered, though he did not set
down in order the things which the Christ said or did, for he never
heard the Master nor followed him, but later on followed Peter,
who adapted his teachings to the wants of his hearers, but
had no intention of making any set exposition of the Master's
sayings. Mark, therefore, failed of nothing in what he put down
from memory, writing with the sole purpose of omitting nothing
that he heard from Peter and of making no false statements.'
This is in the highest degree important; and obviously the
question turns on the identity of this Gospel of Mark with the one
which bears this name in our Canon. Later writers are found
whose words agree more or less with those of Papias ; but it must
be remembered that they are all later writers, and therefore that
they may be telling us merely what they may have learnt from
Papias, with the variations which must come with the passing of
the tradition from one hand to another. In what sense did Papias
speak of Mark as an interpreter of Peter ? Does he mean that
Mark translated a treatise of Peter from Aramaic into Greek, or
that he wrote as a secretary to the dictation of Peter ? Whatever
he wrote, it is clear, according to Papias, that he did not draw up
any consecutive record of the acts or the discourses or the sayings
of Jesus. This statement is of supreme importance, for the later
writers who notice this matter bring in elements of confusion and
uncertainty. Irenseus ^ says simply that after the death of Peter,
Mark set down in writing the substance of the preaching of the
apostle. Clement of Alexandria, cited by Eusebius,^ tells us that
many who had heard Peter preach in Kome requested Mark to
write down what he had spoken, and that he drew up his Gospel
accordingly. Peter, he adds, on hearing this, said nothing in the
1 Adv. Hcer. iii. 1. 1 ; Eusebius, H. E. v. 8, '' H. E. vi. 14.
Chap. IL] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 85
way of either encouraging or hindering the work. That Peter
should be thus neutral and passive seems strange, when we re-
member that he was one of those who, we are told, had been
solemnly charged to go into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature. The version which Eusebius himself gives of
the matter presents Peter in quite another light. With his usual
inflated speech, he tells us that Peter's hearers at Eome were so
struck by the effulgence of his piety that they could not content
themselves merely with his unwritten teaching, but insisted that
Mark should reduce this teaching to writing. It might be supposed
that any one of the hearers who had a good memory would be as
equal to the task as Mark. But the rest of the story, as told by
Eusebius, carries us into the regions of wonder. Peter learns what
Mark was doing, or had done, not by means of ordinary speech,
but by the revealing of the Holy Spirit, and is so delighted that
he sanctioned the reading of Mark's book in the churches. Why
he should not himself have done the work of which he thus heartily
approved we are left to wonder, especially as even to a slow scribe
it would hardly have furnished occupation for more than eight or
ten days.^ But, whatever the task may have been, we must not
for a moment forget that it was nothing more than a record of the
preaching of Peter, and neither was, nor pretended to be, a narra-
tive of the life and teaching of the Great Master. It is equally
certain, therefore, without going further, that the book written by
Mark was not the second of our four canonical Gospels, and was
not an orderly narrative.
But, although it is in no way essential to our purpose, we may
yet note that Mark, according to all these stories, wrote as one
saturated with Petrine influence ; and our Gospel bearing Mark's
name exhibits not a sign or trace of such influence. It takes no
notice of Peter's walking on the sea ; of his declaration that the
Master whom he followed was the Christ; of the reply which
^ This supposition would probably hold good, whatever the Gospel might be.
Few, probably, of the evangelic narratives which were multiplied in the second
century of our era much exceeded the length of our first Synoptic.
86 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book!
spoke of him as blessed ; of the further declaration that he was
Peter, on whom the Church should be built ; of the finding of the
tribute-money in the mouth of the fish ; of the assurance that
Jesus had prayed for him that his faith might not fail. In short,
our first Synoptic is immeasurably more Petrine than is the second.
But in no sense is our second Synoptic an irregular narrative,
without plan and without order, of the life and teaching of Jesus.
It is short and concise, no doubt ; but it has all the appearance
of an epitome done with great skill by a thorough master of such
work. It has been well said that this Gospel exhibits 'every
characteristic of artistic and orderly arrangement, from the striking
introduction by the prophetic voice crying in the wilderness to
the solemn close of the marvellous history.' In no one respect,
therefore, does our second Synoptic answer to the description of
Papias ; and, moreover, Papias does not speak of the work of Mark
as a Gospel at all. It is strictly an exposition of the teaching of
Peter, and nothing else. The title of Gospel, Evangelion, is an
embellishment of later writers who buried the old tradition beneath
a mass of their own fancies. It is in no way, therefore, necessary
for us to account for the substitution of our present Gospel of
Mark for an older one, for Papias does not say that an older
Gospel of Mark ever existed ; but even had he said so, there would
have been no ground for wonder or perplexity. Books held to
be of the highest importance in the earliest ages of the Christian
Church have been rejected later on, and other books, not much
heeded at first, have worked their way to the front. In the mass
of forgeries multiplied during the first Christian centuries there
was room for any amount of such substitution. But in this case
there is not the faintest evidence that there was any substitution
at all.
The remarks of Papias about Matthew are not less important,
and have given rise to more prolonged controversy. But if we
keep strictly to his words, the difficulty disappears. All that
Papias says is that ' Matthew put together the sayings (of Jesus)
in the Hebrew dialect, and each man interpreted them as he was
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 87
able.' Why some or any of these men did not set about trans-
lating the work is a question with which we need not trouble
ourselves. The main point is, that Matthew, according to this
account, wrote in Hebrew ; and of this fact we must not lose sisht
for a moment. From the way in which Eusebius cites this sen-
tence, it does not of necessity follow that Papias had his informa-
tion about Matthew from the presbyter John, as he unquestionably
had what he tells us about Mark. But there is no substantial
ground for calling it into question, or for attempting to maintain
that the word Logia (oracles, sayings, terse precepts, etc.) included
historical narrative. It has been said that Philon applied the
term to the narrative in the opening of the book of Genesis ; but
for Philon this was not narrative, but allegory, in which precisely
the oracular sayings of the Holy Spirit were imbedded. It is
impossible for any, except those who are determined to adhere to
a foregone conclusion, to maintain that our first Synoptic, starting
with the narrative (jf events preceding the birth of Jesus, and
going on continuously with the record of his words and works to
his final charge to the disciples on the Galilsean mountain after
his resurrection, can in any sense be described as an exposition
of the Master's oracular sayings. Still more desperate is the
assertion that the idea of a Hebrew original of Matthew's work
(whatever that may have been) was a mistake. If so, it was a
mistake made by Papias, and shared by all the patristic writers
who had occasion to mention the subject. Where all are unanim-
ous, there is no need to cite the expressions of any one in parti-
cular. Jerome, however, not only mentions that Matthew wrote
in Hebrew, but confesses candidly that he does not know by whom
the book was translated into Greek ; nor does any other writer
pretend to greater knowledge. But we may now treat as univer-
sally admitted the fact that our Gospel according to Matthew is
an original Greek work, and not a translation at all, although this
leaves us as completely in ignorance as we were before of the date
and composition of our first Synoptic. Hence we have no right
to say that our first Synoptic existed in the days of Papias, and
88 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
even less to affirm that it came directly or indirectly from the
apostle whose name it bears. That Papias was acquainted with
the Gospel according to the Hebrews is certain; but whatever
may have been the number of Gospels known to him, he ascribed
less authority to any of them than to that of which, as we have
seen, he speaks as the living and abiding voice of oral tradition
extending from the apostolic days to his own. At what time our
Matthew was brought into its present shape we cannot tell ; but
it must have been at some date not earlier than the election of
Marcus Aurelius to the Empire.
Precisely the same phenomena come before us when we turn
to the writings which have been ascribed to Clement, bishop of
Eome. It is, indeed, a work of supererogation to go minutely
into the question which turns on the evidential value of the
Clementine Homilies and Eecognitions. They exhibit a multitude
of references to the sayings and doings of the Master ; but in no
case is the source of the citations mentioned. In most instances,
but not in all, passages bearing some likeness to them in our
Gospels can no doubt be found ; but there are always marked
differences, and the likeness is often far-fetched. In almost all
cases the comparison can be carried out only by dint of convenient
theories of quotations from memory, of combinations of passages,
or of citations made according to the drift rather than the exact
words of the sentences adduced. That these writings are not the
work of the Eoman bishop to whom they are ascribed is univer-
sally admitted. It has been asserted that the Homilies are
directed against the teaching of Markion ; but on this supposition
they cannot be earlier than a.d. 160, and thus their testimony
can prove nothing for the genuineness of our Synoptic Gospels.
In short, by the common judgement of critics, these compositions
are assigned to some time between the middle of the second and
the latter part of the third century.
Having seen in the case of Justin the results of the hypothesis
of loose quotation from memory, and of deliberate combination
of passages not connected with each other in our Gospels, we are
Chap. IL] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 89
scarcely called upon to test this hypothesis again in reference to
the so-called Clementines. The great fact is that in the vast
number of citations of the sayings of Jesus scarcely two sentences
are found which agree exactly with passages in our Gospels ; and
these are references to sayings which, if historical, would be the
common possession of hundreds or of thousands. In the immense
majority of instances the divergences are wide and striking ; and
for this very reason even small differences in quotations, which
otherwise agree with sentences in our Gospels, become important.
Thus in our Luke vi. 46 we have the words, 'But why call ye
me Master, Master, and do not the things which I say ? ' and in
the Homilies, viii. 7, we read, ' But why callest thou me Master,
Master, and doest not the things which I say ? ' It might be
thought that the differences here are altogether insignificant ; but
when we note that in the Gospel the words are addressed to a
whole multitude in the plural number, and in the other, in the
singular number, to one who frequently called him Master, yet
did nothing which he commanded, we see, without going further,
that the Clementine writer had another text before him. We may
take, again, our Mark xii. 24 : ' Do ye not therefore err, not know-
ing the scriptures, nor the power of God?' and the Clementine
Homilies, iii. 50: 'Therefore ye err, not knowing the true things
of the writings, for which reason ye are ignorant of the power of
God.' In our Gospel the words occur in the reply to the Saddu-
cees on the subject of marriage as connected with the resurrection.
In the Homilies they are found three times, and each time they
introduce the assertion that there are true and false things in the
Scriptures, and that error came from not distinguishing between
them, the conclusion being, 'And Peter said, If therefore of the
scriptures some are true and some are false, our Teacher rightly
said. Be ye approved money-changers,'^ — a saying not found in
our Gospels. Nothing more is needed to demonstrate that the
Clementine writers had before them some Gospel which has not
been included in our Canon ; nor could we have clearer proof that
^ See, further, Supernatural Religion, ii. 31.
90 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
they were not acquainted with our Synoptic Gospels, or that, if
they were, they deliberately set them aside in favour of Gospels
which would now be called apocryphal.
In spite of all efforts to the contrary, no greater help has been
obtained from those writers of the second century who have left
behind them a reputation for heretical opinions and teaching.
On the authority of Agrippa Castor, Eusebius ^ states that Basi-
leides, the propounder of a system of Gnosticism at Alexandria
in the second quarter of the second century, ' composed twenty-
four books upon the Gospels.' This, it has been asserted, must be
a commentary on our four canonical Gospels; and with equal
assurance it has been contended that he admitted the historical
truth of all the incidents mentioned in our Gospels, and therefore
that he recognised their exclusive and supreme authority. This
statement rests on one sentence of a work attributed to Hippolytos,
who, speaking of the followers of Basileides, says that after the
generation of Jesus ' all things regarding the Healer (or Saviour),
according to them, occurred in like manner as they have been
written in the Gospels.' ^ The assertions are practically self-
refuted. No mention is here made of any Gospels by name ; and
when we remember that there was a crowd of Gospels now re-
garded as spurious or apocryphal for no other reason than that
they have not found their way into our Canon, nothing is gained
towards establishing the genuineness and authority of our Gospels
by asserting that certain writers in the second century admitted
the truth of incidents mentioned in ' the Gospel ' or ' the Gospels.'
But the Commentary of Basileides has been lost, and no clear
opinion can be formed of it from the fragments preserved in the
quotations of later writers. It appears also that Basileides attached
a peculiar sense to the word Gospel. It was the good news of a
Being who had not been made known to men in the Jehovah or
Yahveh of the Old Testament. It ' came first from the Sonship,
through the Son, sitting by the Archon, to the Archon;' and
therefore it 'is the knowledge of supermundane matters.' What-
1 H, E. iv. 7. ^ Bef' omn. Hear. vii. 27-
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 91
ever it may have been, then, it cannot have borne the least likeness
to any of our Gospels. According to Clement of Alexandria,
Basileides claimed to have obtained his knowledge from his own
teacher Glaukias, of whom he speaks as the interpreter of Peter ;
and in this case he, like Papias, invested tradition with an autho-
rity greater than that of any written records, and consequently
set aside our canonical Gospels as of no moment, if he knew of
their existence. But in all this we have no clue to what Basileides
himself may have said or taught. Hippolytos was writing some
three generations later, and he takes little, or rather no, pains to
distinguish between the opinions and teachings of the heresiarch
and those of his followers. These disciples of Basileides in the time
of Hippolytos may have been acquainted with our Gospels. This
would have to be proved ; but even Hippolytos nowhere asserts
that they were known to Basileides himself. It is admitted that
Hippolytos, writing with the utmost looseness, applies the phrase
* he says ' indiscriminately to Basileides and to his later disciples.
Having mentioned Basileides, and with him his son and follower,
'Isidores, and their whole band,' he goes on to give details of
their teaching, using the term 'he says' with an indiscriminate
application to all of them. It is obvious that from such state-
ments nothing definite can be ascertained as to the opinions or
words of the heresiarch himself.
N'or is the case altered when we turn to Valentinus, another
Gnostic teacher, who left Alexandria about a.d. 140, and was
active in Eome for some twenty years from that time. Of him
also it is asserted that he made use of our four Gospels. With
our Gospel which bears the name of John he is said to have been
acquainted, on the strength of the following passage from the
Philosophoumena of Hippolytos, which for this purpose is quoted
thus : ' Because the prophets and the law, according to the doctrine
of Valentinus, were only filled with a subordinate and foolish
spirit, Valentinus says, On account of this the Saviour says. All
who came before me were thieves and robbers.' The sentence
really runs as follows : ' All the prophets, therefore, and the law
92 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
spoke from the Demiourgos, a foolish god, he says, being foolish
themselves, knowing nothing. On this account, he says, the
Healer says. All who came before me were thieves and robbers.' ^
Valentinus is not named either in this passage or in its context;
and in fact we have no evidence as to what Valentinus himself
thought or said. When Irenseus speaks of the daughter of laeiros,
dead and brought to life again, as a symbol of the Wisdom who is
the Mother of the Master- worker, he uses the plural, ' they say,'
not the singular, ' he says.* No doubt he is opposing Gnostics, and
especially aiming his blows at the school of Valentinus ; but fifty
years may do a great deal to modify the attitude or the language
of a school in itself. By the end of the second century our
canonical Gospels were coming to the front, and were acquiring
authority. It is perfectly intelligible that the followers of Valen-
tinus in the days of Irenaeus should make use of these Gospels,
although it might have been impossible for Valentinus himself to
use them. But for the most part, neither Irenseus nor Hippolytos
cared to write with true critical accuracy. They apply the inde-
finite 'he says' without any name, so as to make it sometimes
possible to assert that he was really speaking of the founder of
the school. But this cannot be done alwa3^s. When Irenseus in
the preface to his first book explains his reasons for undertaking
his work, he says that he has read the commentaries of the
disciples of Valentinus (not, therefore, of Valentinus himself), and
then goes on to say that he proposes to set forth the doctrines
of those 'who are now teaching falsehood, — I mean especially
Ptolemaios and his supporters, an offshoot of the school of
Valentinus.' Here then we have demonstrative proof that Valen-
tinus himself was not the antagonist whom Irenseus sought to
overthrow ; and any evidence for the existence of our Gospels
coming from Ptolemaios and his disciples is a very different thing
from the same evidence if it came from the master Valentinus.
If the value of the latter would not be great, that of the former
would be absolutely nothing ; and clearly it is nothing less than
1 Hippolytos, Ref, omn. Hcer. vi. 35 ; Supernatural Religion^ ii. 66.
Chap. II.] IN THE FIEST AND SECOND CENTURIES 93
absurd to argue that a faint likeness between some words of a
Gnostic writer and a passage which may be found only in one of
our Gospels constitutes a reference to the latter, unless it can be
shown that the passage in our Gospel was not included in some
one or more of the many other Gospels which have been excluded
from our Canon, and have subsequently been lost. It is sheer
absurdity to argue, on the strength of such distant references,
that Valentinus agreed with the catholic writers of his day on
the authority of the Canon, when neither in catholic nor in
heretical writings is there the least evidence for the existence of
a New Testament Canon at the time.
The life and writings of Markion have furnished a subject of
still more keen and impassioned debate. A contemporary both
of Basileides and Valentinus, he taught at Eome from about a.d.
140 to 160. With the character of his teaching we are not con-
cerned; but it is a matter of importance to determine whether
he furnishes any evidence for the existence of any of our canonical
Gospels in his day. He is said to have recognised and used one
Gospel only, with ten epistles written by, or ascribed to, Paul.
The Gospel unfortunately is lost, and our knowledge of it comes
only from the opponents who undertook to refute him; but of
these opponents one, Tertullian, wrote about half a century after
the time of Markion, and the other, Epiphanios, a century later
still. We are thus at once brought to face the possibility or the
likelihood that the Gospel which they condemned him for using
was really not a Gospel used by Markion at all. According to
them, he altered and mutilated our third Synoptic, for the expressed
purpose of proving that the God of the Old Testament was not
the same being with the God of the New. Both these writers
adduce a large number of passages found in our third Gospel,
which, according to their story, Markion cut out and cast away.
A linguistic examination applied to these excised passages has been
held to show that they come from the same hand which composed
the rest of our third Gospel, and consequently that this Gospel was
substantially in the hands of Markion. In this case the Gospel
94 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
of Luke in our Canon must have taken shape not later than the
middle of the second century. It is a large inference to draw
from such evidence as we have before us. His antagonists (living
and writing, as we have seen, long after him) were as inaccurate
as they were intolerant ; and it is enough to say that, whatever
Markion's Gospel may have been, his excisions were not made for
the purpose which TertuUian ascribes to him. This object,
Tertullian says, was the proving a disagreement between the
religion of the Old Testament and that of the Xew. Whatever
favoured this opinion in the third Synoptic he retained: what-
ever went against it he carefully cast aside. But according to
Tertullian himself, Markion's labour in both these processes
was entirely wasted and thrown away. What he has left, Ter-
tullian declares, is as much opposed to his system as that which
he rejected, and both alike suffice for his summary and complete
refutation. In other words, it is Tertullian, not Markion, who
refutes and convicts himself. Markion, whether right or wrong in
his theology, was by universal admission a very Me man : the
course which Tertullian charges him with taking would show him
to be a fool. The truth is that Tertullian is not to be trusted in
such matters. He has no hesitation in charging the disciples of
Markion with daily altering their Gospel, as they are daily refuted
by catholics. But if so, how can we tell that the mutilated
Synoptic was Markion's Gospel at all ? The evil doings ascribed
to him may on this hypothesis have been wrought altogether by
his disciples. As Tertullian desired to prove that the Gospel so
treated was our third Synoptic, he would naturally make his
citations from Markion's so-called work in the words of that
Gospel; and thus the agreement between the language of the
passages said to have been cut out by him with that of our third
Synoptic proves absolutely nothing. Markion's text is gone;
and we cannot convict him on the unsupported assertions of his
enemies. It is impossible to show that the excisions were made
by Markion himself, or what was the wording of his text before it
was mutilated. Until further evidence be forthcoming, it must
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 95
be held that from Markion we get nothing which shows that our
four Gospels (or any of them) existed in their present shape in
his day.
Another teacher, who, as having joined the society of the
Encratites, became known as a heretic, is Tatian, an Assyrian who
on his conversion to Christianity became a disciple of Justin
Martyr. Of his works, his ' Address to the Greeks ' is the only one
which has been preserved. In this is found the following passage :
' he became master of all that we possess by means of a certain
hidden treasure, in digging for which we were filled with dust, yet
we give to it the occasion of abiding with us.' This, we are told,
is a distinct reference to the parable of the hidden treasure given
in our Matthew (xiii. 44). There is really no likeness at all be-
tween these passages ; but were it ever so close, it comes simply to
nothing, unless we are prepared to prove that the parable of the
treasure hidden in the field was not found in any one of the now
apocryphal Gospels which were at that time in use, and more or
less widely held in honour. By such a method as this almost any
conclusion could be established without difficulty ; and a position
must be desperate indeed which makes it necessary to resort to
such courses. The Diatessaron of Tatian has been lost;^ but
the title has led some to suppose and to maintain that it was
a harmony (whatever that may be or mean) of our four canonical
Gospels. But the work is sometimes called Diapente as well as
Diatessaron, and so this theory falls to the ground. The time of
its composition must remain uncertain. During Justin's life
Tatian was, or was supposed to be, perfectly orthodox ; but in his
Gospel he was charged with omitting certain passages because
these did not harmonise with his own convictions, and this would
imply that it belongs to a time later than the death of Justin. It
is clear that Eusebius knew nothing of the work, and had never
^ This statement is not affected by discoveries relating to Ephraem's com-
mentary on the Diatessaron. It is unnecessary for me to enter into the question,
■which has been fully treated by the author of the Inquiry into the Reality
of Supernatural Religion in his Re2^ly to Dr. Light/oofs Essays, 1889, pp. 145
et seq.
96 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
seen it, as he says that Tatian, ' having composed a certain con-
nexion and bringing together of the Gospels, I know not how,i gave
it the name of Diatessaron; and the book even now has some
currency.' Eusebius is manifestly writing from hearsay. But in
fact there is no evidence that Tatian himself ever called the
book by this title, and some spoke of it as the Gospel of the
Hebrews. It is of not the slightest use to cite the judgment of
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus. Theodoret's learning was neither
deep nor solid, and he wrote three centuries after the lifetime of
Tatian. It is enough to say that the word Diatessaron is first heard
of in a work of the fourth century, and the superscription is thus
seen to be totally destitute of authority. Even for the existence
of our Gospels Tatian affords no evidence whatever.
Nor can any help towards this conclusion be obtained from
Dionysios, bishop of Corinth, the author of some epistles, of which
a few fragments only have been preserved. Of these letters one is
addressed to Soter, bishop of Eome, who is said to have held the
See A.D. 168-176. Of direct references to New Testament writings
these fragments furnish none; but the letter to Soter had a
passage, in which Dionysios complains of the mutilation of his own
letters by heretics, and adds that ' it is not surprising if some have
recklessly ventured to adulterate the scriptures of the Master when
they have formed designs against writings which do not pretend
to be of the same importance.' Here, it is argued, Dionysios is
speaking of the writings of the New Testament generally. The
argument is altogether extravagant. We have found thus far not
a trace of the existence of any Canon of New Testament writings ;
nor does the expression of Dionysios point necessarily to any books
which were afterwards included in it. The writers with whom we
have had to deal know of no authoritative writings but those of
the Old Testament; but in the eyes of Justin and others these
^ In spite of Bishop Lightfoot's assertion to the contrary, there can be no
doubt that Eusebius in this phrase expresses his own lack of acquaintance with
the book. Why should Eusebius regard as an absurdity anything designed to
add to and estaT9lish the authority of our four Gospels ?
Chap. II.] IN THE FIKST AND SECOND CENTUEIES 97
were, in truth, the Scriptures of the Master, inasmuch as all the
Old Testament writings were held to apply to, and to speak of, the
Anointed One, or the Christ. But if the term be taken to denote
Gospels, we find it impossible to determine to what Gospels this
reference is made. Papias, Hegesippos, Justin Martyr, and many
more, made use of the Gospel according to the Hebrews ; and long
before our Gospels were heard of, writings like the Shepherd
of Hermas and the epistle of Barnabas had acquired a wide, al-
though it may not have been a permanent, authority. Whether
the preface to our third Gospel be genuine or not, it is clear that
the writer of it was aware of the existence of a multitude of
Gospels, on the truth of which he throws not the least aspersion,
— all that he claims being that his own is written with a full con-
viction of its truth. He does not even say that his own sources
of knowledge were greater or better than theirs, or that they had
done their work unconscientiously, or, in short, that their Gospels
were in any way inferior to his own. They, like himself, had
taken in hand to arrange a narrative of the life of the Master ;
and he likewise thought it his duty to do all that he could to
keep alive a right memory of it. It is unlikely that this preface
was written by the author of the Gospel; but these admissions
are of supreme importance in estimating the literary morality
of the time.^
It may be thought that enough has been said to show that
Christian writers to the sixth or seventh decade of the second
century were either ignorant of the existence of our canonical
Gospels, or deliberately preferred other Gospels to them. Not one
of them, as far as we have gone, quotes from any one of them, and
each of these cites, as coming from the Master, sayings which are
not found in any of our Gospels. It is needless to come to writers
of a still later age. Every decade enormously lessens the value
of their evidence (if there should be any) for the genuineness and
authenticity of our Gospels. But there still remain a few writers
who may be regarded as contemporaries of Justin ; and to these
1 See pp. 57, 69.
G
98 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
we have confident appeals from the upholders of a traditional
theology. One of these is Meliton, bishop of Sardeis, whose
Apology was seemingly written after Commodus had been admitted
to share the imperial power with his father Antoninus. This
writer, it is argued, was acquainted not only with our Gospels, but
with the Canon of the New Testament Scriptures. The assertion
is made on the strength of a passage cited by Eusebius, in which
Meliton says that his friend Onesimos had asked for citations from
the Law and the Prophets, and also for an accurate account of the
Old Books. This title, we are told, furnishes clear proof that
Meliton had before him the books of the New Testament, in con-
tradistinction with those of the Old. We are concerned here, not
with conjectures, but with facts ; and what Meliton says is this,
that, having gone to the East, and reached the ,spot where the
things were said and done, he there learnt accurately the books of
the Old Testament, of which he sends his friend the list accordingly.
Of anything beyond their titles he might, so far as his words go,
be profoundly ignorant. Of books of a written New, Testament no
mention is made; and far from showing any acquaintance with
them, it is clear that Meliton, though a bishop in the Christian
Church, did not even know the titles of the books of the Old
Testament, and could not, when asked, give a list of them. He is
enabled to do this only when he has made a long journey for the
purpose. The admission is startling indeed, and as important as
it is startling.
The arguihent that because Meliton speaks of books of the Old
Testament he therefore referred to a Canon of written books of the
New Testament, is the result of nothing less than a blunder. Our
canonical books of the New Testament received their title from the
distinction already drawn between what should be called the Old
Covenant and the New. Neither Paul nor any other writer of the
first century denied the existence of a covenant between God and
the children of Abraham ; but in their belief that Covenant had
grown old, and must give place to the New Covenant made with
them in and by him who is the Anointed Healer, the only begotten
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 99
Son. This contrast is drawn with the utmost clearness and sharp-
ness not only by the writer of our epistle to the Hebrews but by
Paul himself. At the last supper Jesus is represented in our
Synoptic Gospels as speaking of the blood of the New Covenant
(Matt. xxvi. 28; Luke xxii. 20); and Paul pointedly contrasts the
two in his genuine letters (Eom. ix. 4 ; Gal. iv. 24), describing the
new covenant as that of the Spirit, not of the letter, and speaking
of the veil which is on the Jews ' on the reading of the Old Cove-
nant ' (2 Cor. iii. 14). Here, then, we have a distinct mention of the
written books of the Old Testament, which are read : but no one
will contend that the words of the institution of the Eucharist
imply the existence of a Canon of the E'ew Testament Scriptures ;
nor will any one dare to say that any such Canon had been put
together when 'Paul spoke of himself and his fellow- workers as
sufiicient ministers of the New Covenant (2 Cor. iii. 6)} It is
needless to say that even on the supposition that Meliton was
acquainted with a written Canon of ISTew Testament Scriptures, we
have not even the most distant hint as to the books which he
would have included in it. The idea, however, is a delusion from
beginning to end.
Efforts, not less futile, have been made to draw evidence for the
early recognition of our canonical Gospels from some fragments
ascribed to Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, whose
^ Who the writer of our epistle to the Hebrews may have been is a matter
of little consequence to us, or none. The general fallaciousness of his reasoning is
a point of much more importance ; and probably few pieces of more fallacious
reasoning could be found in any book than the sentences in which this writer
gives what he might wish others to regard as his views on the subject of a Cove-
nant and a Testament. With an astounding audacity he assumes that the two
words denote necessarily the same thing, and that as a testament may be a will
drawn up by a mortal man for the guidance of his executors after his death, it
is impossible for God to make a covenant with any without dying himself. The
notion is an egregious absurdity. This hypothesis he supports by a fictitious or
ceremonial death, the blood of calves and goats representing the death of the Al-
mighty Father who had entered into a covenant with Abraham and his children.
The divine covenant is, of necessity, in force from the moment in which it is made,
and it is hard to think that in arguing to the contrary the writer was consciously
honest. It is still harder to understand how he could suppose that his arguments
would carry the least weight with the Jewish people generally.
100 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book I.
Apology presented to Marcus Antoninus must, if it refers to the
alleged miracle of the Thundering Legion, have been written
about or soon after a.d. 174. Those fragments, which relate to
the Paschal controversy, are preserved in the preface to the
Paschal Chronicle; but this Chronicle is a work later by five
centuries than the lifetime of ApoUinaris ; and the genuineness of
these fragments has been seriously questioned even by strenuous
traditional critics. Interested as Eusebius was in this contro-
versy, it is extremely unlikely that he should have failed to
mention ApoUinaris had he written on this subject either on one
side or the other. He quotes the works of Meliton, Irenaeus,
and Clement of Alexandria; and had any of these referred to
ApoUinaris, Eusebius must have noticed it. If, as the fragments
imply, he took the side opposed by Victor of Eome, it is wellnigh
incredible that no mention should be made of his having done so.
Until we have evidence proving that these fragments are genuine,
it is quite useless to adduce his authority for the existence of our
canonical Gospels. But whatever his evidence might have been,
it could carry no more weight than evidence coming from any one
else at an interval of considerably more than a century and a half
from the time with which he is supposed to deal.
Of Athenagoras, another apologist of about the same period, it
is unnecessary to say anything. Like Justin and others, he is
supposed to quote from the Sermon on the Mount and other
discourses of our Gospels ; and like those of Justin, his quotations
in no instance agree exactly with our text, while most of them
diverge widely, and some are not found in our Gospels at all.
The attempt to adduce his authority for the existence of our
Gospels in his day is open to the same fatal objection, that his
citations may, and indeed must, have come from writings which
have been excluded from our Canon. It is quite impossible that
he could have obtained from our Synoptic or Johannine Gospels
the saying of the Logos on the subject of the kiss of peace — that
* if any one kiss a second time because it pleases him,' he sins.
' It is needful, therefore, to be careful about the salutation, as, if
Chap. II.] IN THE FIEST AND SECOND CENTUEIES 101
it should be defiled ever so little by the intention, it places us
outside of the life eternal.'
The persecutions under Marcus Aurelius, which called forth
the vindications of Justin and other apologists, led the churches
of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul to send to their brethren in Asia
and Phrygia, and also to Eleutheros, bishop of Eome, an account
of the martyrdom of the bishop Pothinus, the predecessor of
Irena^us. This epistle, in part preserved by Eusebius, speaks of
Vettius Epagathus, one of the sufferers, as one who ' was thought
worthy of the testimony of the Elder Zacharias : he had walked
in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless,
being unwearied in all good works for his neighbour, having
much zeal for God, and fervent in spirit.' The phrase * testimony
of Zacharias ' may be either the witness borne to the devout life of
Zacharias, or the witness borne by Zacharias — in other words, his
martyrdom. The sentence in which it occurs has been regarded
as a clear reference to Luke i. 6. No one seemingly has supposed
that any reference is intended to Luke xi. 51 ; but it is generally
agreed that the person here named is the father of John the
Baptist. As, however, our third Synoptic makes no mention of
the martyrdom of Zacharias, it is far more likely that the citation
is made from some Gospel which gave an account of that event,
while there is the further probability, if not the certainty, that the
opening chapter of Luke is not an original portion of the Gospel
which bears his name. It is enough to say that even Tischendorf
regards this passage as evidence for the use, not of our third
Synoptic, but of the Protevangelion of James, which may be the
same with the Gospel according to Peter.
The evidence already adduced amounts practically to demon-'
stration that our Gospels were not known down to the seventh or
eighth decade of the second century ; and the multiplication of
like instances is of little use indeed — or, rather, of none, Great
efforts have been made to turn to account some fragments of the
Gnostic teachers Ptolemaios and Herakleon. But at best their
testimony is of less value far than that of Justin Martyr; and
102 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
there is really no valid ground for carrying them further back
than the later lifetime of Irenseus himself, who speaks of them as
strictly his own contemporaries; and the work of Irenseus on
Heresies was not written until after he became bishop and had
returned to Gaul, about a.d. 1 80.
The lifetime of the writer called Celsus, whose refutation was
undertaken by Origen, is a subject of equally fruitless controversy.
Origen wrote this refutation in the second quarter of the third
century ; but, strangely enough, he knew nothing of his opponent,
and in the course of his work he passes through some curious
changes of opinion about him. In his preface he writes under the
belief that he was an Epicurean w^ho wrote in the time of Hadrian
(117-138), and speaks of him therefore as long since dead. Later
on he becomes puzzled at his being intitled an Epicurean, when
his opinions seem to be of a very different kind. The Celsus of
the time of Hadrian wrote a work on Magic. Origen expresses
his inability to decide whether the man whom he is refuting is
that Celsus or not. Later still, he speaks of him as not only
living and active, but as under promise to write a new book setting
forth his system of philosophy, which is not Epicureanism but
Neo-Platonism ; and he asks his friend Ambrosius to get a copy of
this new book and send it to him, that he may examine and refute
it like the one with which he had already dealt. It would follow
that Celsus, whoever he may have been, was living in the second
quarter of the third century, and the 'Logos Alethes,' which
Origen criticises, cannot have been written very long, if at all,
before that time. His testimony in favour of our Gospels would
therefore, had he given any, have been of extremely insignificant
value; but his alleged references to passages in them are not
exact, and therefore may have come from other sources. But he
names no Christian books ; and, so far as Celsus is concerned, the
question as to the age of our Gospels remains just where it was.
The so-called Canon of Muratori has been a source of much
disappointment to traditional critics. It exists in a single MS., w^hicli
Muratori, who published it in 1740, ascribes to the eighth century.
Chap. II.] IN THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES 103
It was found in the Ainbrosian Library at Milan, and had belonged to
the monastery of Bobbio. That the work should have come down
in one copy only is itself a strange thing ; but the book is curious
in more ways than one. It is anonymous, and nothing can be
gathered about the author. It deals with a subject of supreme
interest for Eusebius. Yet Eusebius knows nothing of it. Had
Papias and Hegesippos made any citations from it (and if they had
known it, they must have done so), Eusebius could not have failed
to mention, if not to reproduce, them. They must, therefore, have
been as ignorant of it as he was himself. The inevitable inference
is that it was not in existence in the time of any of them; in
other words, that it is later than the third century — a date
which deprives its testimony of all value.
The fragment of the work begins with the mention of the Gospel
of St. Luke, of which it says that the author, not having had any
personal knowledge of the Master, wrote as best he could, follow-
ing his own judgement — in other words, that he was no original
witness of the things of which he speaks. Having mentioned the
Gospel of John, the fragment then names the Acts of the Apostles.
This work, we are told (if we may trust a text which bad grammar
and bad writing have made almost unintelligible), relates the Acts of
all the Apostles in one book — a description which does not in the
least answer to our Acts, which takes little notice except of Peter
and of Paul, and cuts short the story of Paul abruptly after his
reaching Eome. It has been urged that the first two Synoptic
Gospels must have been mentioned in the earlier part of the work,
which has been lost. In great likelihood they were so ; but the
supposition must remain conjectural nevertheless. The writer of
Luke is described as a companion of Paul ; but as Paul was not
personally associated with the Master, the evangelist could not
gain from him much information with regard to the incidents of
his life.
The question turns on the age of the fragment; and much
stress is laid on a passage which may perhaps be translated as
follows : ' Hermas very lately in our times wrote the Shepherd in
104 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS [Book L
the city of Eome, his brother Pius sitting in the chair of the city
of Eome.' The wording of this sentence makes it suspicious, as
the phrase ' sitting in the chair of the Church ' is not known until
a much later time than the second century. It is further urged
that sentences may have fallen out from the fragment, which is
imperfect, and which may be a translation from a Greek original.
Of such an original we have no knowledge whatever ; but if the
Latin text be a translation, how do we know that the translator
did his work rightly ? and again, if it be a translation, why may
it not be interpolated 1 Why may not this very sentence be a
forgery ? The work ascribed to Hermas was little known in the
Western Church; and there is not the least reason for suppos-
ing that Hermas is a person who ever lived. The fragment
belongs to a time later probably than that of Eusebius ; but even
if we carry it back to the third quarter of the second century, it
furnishes no evidence that the third Synoptic Gospel was the
work of an eye-witness of the events narrated. On the contrary,
it pointedly denies this, declaring that the writer got his know-
ledge at second-hand, and made the best use of it that he could.
CHAPTER III
THE AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
We have now seen that the Christian literature of the first
two centuries of our era furnishes no evidence for the existence of
our three Synoptic Gospels before the seventh or eighth decade of
the second century, — that is, virtually, for a century and a half
after the alleged occurrence of the events with which they profess
to deal. It would be strange if we should find for our fourth or
Johannine Gospel evidence which is not forthcoming for the
others. It is needless to say that we do not find it ; and it
becomes wearisome to be compelled to go over ground already
trodden, in order to show that distinct references and clear allusions
are neither distinct nor clear, and that, in fact, there are no
references at all. When the source of a quotation is not named,
it is really idle to argue that it must come from some particular
book, unless it can be shown that the same or similar matter
might not be found in some other books. We are bound to bear
carefully in mind all the lessons of caution which the previous
examination should have impressed upon us. We cannot too
often repeat that all the historical sayings of Jesus would be the
common property of all who heard them ; and if these sayings
were habitually repeated, as the narratives of the Synoptic Gospels
would lead us to suppose that they were, they might be recorded
by tens or by hundreds of the hearers. The prefaces to the third
Gospel and to the Acts may not come from the author, or authors,
of those books ; but they indubitably show, as we have seen, that
105
106 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
the writers were aware of the existence of a multitude of Gospels,
and that the author of the preface to the third Gospel claimed no
special authority for his own work over the rest, except in so far
as his own information might be more abundant, and his own
method of dealing with it more exact. Nor must it be forgotten,
more particularly, that an allusion is not a reference, and that to
argue seriously from supposed allusions to the existence and
authority of important works is an utterly illegitimate process.
Yet this is the process to which traditionalist partisans seem
to be irresistibly tempted. The epistle of Barnabas speaks of the
brazen serpent as a type of the Healer (Jesus) ; the Johannine
Gospel has the prediction that the Son of Man must be lifted up
like the serpent in the wilderness : therefore the writer of the
epistle of Barnabas was acquainted with our fourth Gospel, and
recognised its authority. By such a method as this we can bring
about any results which we may desire. The Shepherd of Hermas
speaks of the Christ as ' a rock higher than the mountains, able to
hold the whole world, ancient, and yet having a new ^ate : ' there-
fore Hermas, or whoever wrote the Shepherd, was familiar with
the language of the Johannine Gospel, although the latter speaks
of the door of a fold, not the gate of a rock, and although the
image of the rock was one which must have been known to the
author of the Shepherd from his childhood.
The same treatment is applied with singular assurance to the
so-called epistles of Ignatius. Every word is held to refer to the
fourth Gospel, when Ignatius is represented as saying, ' I desire
the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, who was born at a later time of the seed of David and
Abraham ; and I desire the drink of God, which is his blood,
which is love incorruptible and eternal life.' To suppose that the
writer of this passage must have had before him John vi. 41-54
is merely extravagant and absurd. The expressions, or the equiva-
lents of these expressions, occur in the Synoptic narratives of the
institution of the Eucharist; and on the hypothesis that these
sayings are historical, they would be the common property of all
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 107
who heard them. It is not easy to be patient, when, on the
strength of such extremely distant likeness, we are told that the
Ignatian writings are ' not without traces of the influence ' of
John. As we have said before, anything can be proved by such
methods as these.i But the work of comparison is, in truth,
superfluous. Of the passages cited from the letters of Ignatius
only one is found in the three Syrian epistles ; and we have
seen that these epistles can no more be reckoned genuine than the
rest.-
With equal assurance the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians
is brought forward as proving the existence and authority of the
fourth Gospel at the time when it was written, because this letter
has some expressions which are construed into a reference to the
first epistle bearing the name of John, and as the Epistle and
Gospel are assumed to be from the same hand, any testimony for
the one is testimony also for the other. A cause which has to be
thus supported must be desperate indeed. It is enough to say
that the epistle of Polycarp is a document which is both spurious
and interpolated ; and so far as we can say anything of Polycarp
himself, we must hold that his personal evidence would be directly
against the genuineness of the fourth Gospel. In the Paschal con-
troversy Polycarp adopted the Synoptic view and sided strenuously
with the Eastern Christians in maintaining that the festival of
Easter should be celebrated on the 1 4th of Nisan, ' as the apostle
John had enjoined.' The Eoman bishop Aniketos failed to bring
Polycarp to a different mind,^ and the latter is thus shown, con-
clusively, either to have been .ignorant of the existence of this
Gospel or to have denied its apostolic origin.
1 The task of appreciating exactly these shadowy comparisons has been accom-
plished with infinite patience by the author of Supernatural Religion, vol. ii. p.
262 et seq. I have made no attempt to reproduce his exhaustive demonstrations,
which, I must emphatically say, have not been answered. It may, indeed, be
said that no real attempt has been made to answer them. All that I am concerned
with here is to give the results of the inquiry, as they bear on the existence
and authority of our Gospels in the sixth, seventh, or eighth decades of the second
century of our era.
2 See p. 76. - Eusebius, H. E. v. 24.
108 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
We have seen already i the extent to which the citation of the
Master's sayings by Justin corresponds with the text of the Syn-
optics. It is enough to say here that the efforts to represent him
as an authority for the genuineness of the Johannine Gospel are
even more daring, and therefore also, in such a case as this, less
successful ; for the argument is not so much from a resemblance of
words as from a harmony of idea. In short, the contention is that
Justin obtained his theology of the incarnation from our fourth
Gospel, and that he could not have obtained it from any other
source. The evidence for these assertions lies in such passages as
the following : ' Jesus Christ is alone peculiarly the Son begotten
by God, being his Word and first-begotten and power ' ; * ( he is)
his Son, who alone is absolutely called his Son, the Word before
all creatures, co-eternal with him, and begotten when at the first he
made and ordered all things by him.' The positive proposition
that Justin drew this doctrine from our fourth Gospel might, if
the phraseology of the latter corresponded exactly with that of
Justin, be proved without much difficulty, and admitted without
reluctance. But their language does not correspond, and we are
thus thrown back on the conclusion that Justin worked from other
sources. The negative assertion that he could not have done this
may be shown at once to be both untenable and extravagant.
Justin unquestionably had before him the book known to us as
the Apocalypse of John. It is the only book in our Canon which
is named by him, and he emphatically ascribes to it a prophetical
authority resting on direct revelation. In this book it is said of
Jesus, the Lamb, that ' his name is called the Word of God ' : ' he
is the beginning of the creation of God.' If he had before him
any of our canonical Epistles he would find there the same
language : ' Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God '
(1 Cor. i. 24). It is unnecessary to multiply instances, or to do
more than remark, that whatever is said by Justin had been said
substantially by Philon ; and from Philon we might go on to
Plato.
1 P. 80
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOUETH GOSPEL 109
But it is altogether more likely that Justin resorted to the
same sources from which Philon drew the chief materials for his
theology. The doctrine of the Divine Wisdom was, beyond doubt,
shaped to a certain extent by Greek philosophy ; but to Philon it
came chiefly from the writings of his own countrymen. In all
likelihood it was so with Justin also. There was no need for him
to go to our Johannine Gospel, when he had before him the repre-
sentation of the Wisdom of God given in the books of Proverbs
(viii. 21 et seq.), and Ecclesiasticus (xxiv. 9 et seq.), — books which
for him were undoubtedly authoritative Scripture ; and the further
fact remains, that his language and the general course of his
thought correspond incomparably more with Philon than with our
fourth Gospel. Nay, he himself cites the book of Proverbs as
setting forth his own faith: 'Another testimony, my friends, I
said, I will give you from the Scriptures, that God before all the
creation begat a Beginning, a certain rational power from himself,
which by the Holy Spirit is called also the Glory of the Lord, and
sometimes his Son, sometimes his Wisdom, sometimes Angel,
sometimes God, and sometimes Lord and Word.' So again : ' The
Word of Wisdom shall be my witness, being himself God begotten
by the Father of all (worlds), being the Word, and Wisdom, and
Glory of Him who begat him.' Of this language some does not
agree with, or is opposed to, that of our fourth Gospel, which
knows, for instance, nothing of the Logos or Word as Angel or
Apostle.
But as the language of Justin differs from that of our Johannine
Gospel, so also does his evangelic history. He knows nothing of
the special Johannine miracles or wonders, not even of the raising
of Lazarus, while his account of the incidents in the life of the
Master is in every case more or less opposed to, and sometimes
excluded by, that of our fourth Gospel. The latter takes no
notice of the nativity at Bethlehem, or the descent from David,
or the baptism in Jordan. Justin is precise in his descriptions
of these events, tracing the genealogy through Mary, speaking of
him as born in a cave, and as the son of Mary and Joseph,
no EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
mentioning the agony and prayer in the garden of Gethsemane,
which are altogether opposed to the idea of our fourth Gospel, and
holding that Jesus celebrated the passover with his disciples
before his passion. Justin further limits the ministry to a single
year, agreeing in this with our Synoptics, but differing pointedly
from our Johannine narrative. When we remember further his
emphatic assertion that the sentences uttered by the Master were
'brief and concise, for he was not a sophist, but his word was a
power of God,' it is absurd, or rather impossible, to suppose that
Justin had before him the long, elaborate, and perplexing discourses
of the I fourth Gospel. From Justin, therefore, we can get no
evidence for the existence of that Gospel in the time of the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, while all that he says tends to prove
that he had neither seen nor heard of it.
Of Hegesippos it is unnecessary to say anything. Of Papias
we need only note that Eusebius, who was most of all anxious to
adduce all the testimony that could be got together in favour of
our canonical books, makes no reference to Papias as throwing any
light on the composition of the fourth Gospel. It is not true to
say, and it is therefore useless to argue, that Eusebius did not care
to adduce evidence for the use of undisputed books. Had he said
so, his position would have belied his words. But he says nothing
of the kind. His words are to this effect : ' In the course of my
history I shall be especially careful, together with the successions
(in the Sees), to show what use the several ecclesiastical writers
have made of any of the disputed books, and also of the collected
and acknowledged writings, and also what they have said of those
which are not such.' ^ In short, it was his purpose to tell us all
that he could learn of all the books accepted and respected,
doubted, or rejected by Christian writers and Christian societies,
and not to confine himself to any one class to the exclusion of the
rest. The silence of Eusebius is, therefore, conclusive proof that
he found nothing in Papias bearing on the composition of the
fourth Gospel. If, further, Papias recognised the authority of the
1 H. E. iii. 3, 24.
I
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOUKTH GOSPEL 111
Apocalypse, and ascribed its composition to the apostle John,
then, if it be shown that the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John
could not have come from the same author, Papias becomes a
powerful witness, not in favour of, but against, the latter.
We have seen that the Clementine Homilies, whenever they
may have been written, belong to a time which would take away
all force from their evidence in favour of the fourth Gospel,^ if
they furnished any. But they do not. It is vain to argue that,
when the Clementine writer represents Jesus as saying, ' I am the
gate of life : he who comes in through me comes into life, as there
is no other teaching which is able to save,' he must have had
before him the passage, John x. 9, in which Jesus says, ' I am the
door. If any one enter through me, he shall be made whole, and
shall go in and out, and find pasture.' The value of such pleading
must depend on previous proof that the words in the Johannine
Gospel could not have been found in any other. It is impossible
to show this, while at the same time there is no reason to doubt
that they were contained in the Gospel of the Hebrews, or some
one or more of the many Gospels then in circulation. The differ-
ences in the quotations are, moreover, sufficiently marked ; and
we have seen ^ what might be the result in the case of much more
minute differences, if any one of our Synoptic Gospels had been
lost. We are bound also, it must be repeated, to remember that
all our Synoptic Gospels depended for their materials on each
other, and also on narratives afterwards rejected or lost, while the
Johannine Gospel in like manner is indebted both to the Synoptics
and to other books which have either in part or wholly perished.
In the present instance the certain conclusion is that the Clemen-
tine writer knew nothing of our Johannine Gospel. The Homilies
make it a reproach to the apostle Paul (under the guise of Simon
the magician) that he had assumed his apostolic office without
adequate authority. ' Why,' it is asked, ' did the Teacher remain
and discourse a whole year to us who were awake, if you became
his apostle after an hour's instruction?' Our fourth Gospel
1 See p. 89. ^ p. 71.
112 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
extends the ministry over two or three years. Had the Clementine
writer known of this version, he must have cited statements so
enormously strengthening his argument. But he does not cite
them ; and we are driven to infer that at that time our Johannine
Gospel was not in existence.
The epistle to Diognetos, which was for some time ascribed to
Justin Martyr, is anonymous, and cannot be said to have been
written before the latter part of the second century.^ Nothing is
known of the writer or of the person to whom it is addressed. To
any who examine it it will be clear that the writer was indebted
for his materials chiefly to the epistles of Paul as well as to some
other letters included in our Canon. A strong effort has been made
to establish a direct Johannine connexion for the following passage:
' This one he sent to them — are we to say, as some might argue,
for purposes of tyranny, terror, and bewilderment ? Assuredly
not ; but in kindness, in gentleness. As a king sending his son, a
king, he sent (him) ; he sent him as God ; he sent him as to men ;
as healing (men), he sent (him); as persuading, not forcing, —
for violence there is not with God. As inviting, not as pursuing
(them), he sent (him). He sent (him) as loving, not as judging.
For he will send him to judge, and who shall abide his presence ? '
It will be seen that there are passages in our fourth Gospel which
to a greater or less extent exhibit a likeness with these sentences ;
but there is a far closer parallel between them and passages in the
Pauline letters.^
Of the so-called heretical writers of the second century it is
scarcely needful to take any account. Keferences to our fourth
1 See further, Supernatural Religion, ii. 38.
2 Rom. V. 8, 9 : ' God proveth his love towards us, in that while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us. Much more then shall we be healed through him
from wrath.' Rom. viii. 1-3: ' There is therefore now no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus, God sending his own Son.' The writer, however,
draws most largely from Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians, where we have
precisely the language which he uses, 2 Cor. v. 19, 20, 10, 11. We may compare
also Gal. iv. 4, Eph. ii. 4, 1 Thess. v. 9, 1 Tim. i. 15, 2 Tim. i. 9, 10.
Whether these are all genuine letters of Paul is a question which is here
altogether irrelevant.
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 113
Gospel are said to be found in passages quoted by Hippolytos
from some works of Basileides : but Hippolytos writes loosely,
confusing the statements of the disciples of his school with the
sayings of the alleged heresiarch himself, and so stripping his own
words of all value historically. The same is the case with
Valentinus and with Markion. It is impossible to prove that
either of them was in any way indebted to our Johannine Gospel ;
and as its language would often have been of the greatest use for
their special purposes, it is incredible that they should not have
availed themselves of it, if only it had been known to them.
Of Tatian ^ we need only note that his doctrine of the Logos
is wholly different from that of the fourth Gospel ; but even if it
be allowed that the latter is the source of some of his ideas (and
no such concession can be made), nothing would be established
beyond the mere fact that the fourth Gospel was in existence in
the latter part of the second century, that is, a hundred and fifty
years after the time of which it professes to give a history. With
the same remark we may dismiss Dionysios of Corinth, Meliton
of Sardeis, and Claudius Apollinaris. It seems a mere extrava-
gance to insist on deriving from John xvi. 2 (' an hour is coming,
that every one who kills you may seem to offer service to God ')
the sentence in the epistle of the churches of Yienne and Lyons
which says, ' A time will come in which every one who kills you
^shall seem to offer service to God.' If the saying be historical, it
is just one of those which would find their way into a multitude
of evangelic narratives. In like fashion the epistle to Mora,
ascribed to Ptolemaios, is said to contain a reference to the opening
verses of the Johannine Gospel. But the quotation in this passage
occurs in a parenthesis which breaks in upon its sense and
coherence, and was in all likelihood inserted in it by Epiphanius
himself, when he cited it.
When Celsus charges Christians with altering a Gospel from
its first written form in threefold, fourfold, and manifold ways,
he is supposed by some to refer to our four canonical Gospels.
1 See p. 95.
H
114 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
If it be so, why, after mentioning threefold and fourfold cor-
ruptions, should he go on to speak of corruptions which are
manifold ? But this Celsus was clearly a contemporary of Origen ;
and what value towards proving the genuineness and authority
of the Johannine Gospel would there be in charges of mutilation
and corruption brought by a heathen writer of the third or fourth
century ? The so-called Canon of Muratori gives a fabulous and
worthless account of the manner in which the fourth Gospel was
composed. It is scarcely to the credit of modern theology to
adduce as testimony in favour of a canonical book an absurd fiction,
which, if it has any meaning at all, implies that the apostolic
origin of the Gospel had been emphatically denied.
There are, however, some peculiar circumstances connected
with the authorship of our fourth Gospel which must be taken into
account before we can form a deliberate judgement on the whole
case. No mention of it is made in the early Christian literature
down to the second half of the second century ; and still less have
we any evidence which lends any countenance to the notion of its
coming from the apostle John. The popular belief maintains that
this apostle is the author of five of our canonical writings, i.e. of
the fourth Gospel, of the three Epistles which bear the name of
John, and of the Apocalypse. This alleged fact makes it easier
to reach a definite conclusion on this point. The Apoca]^pse and
the fourth Gospel differ from each other so absolutely that it is
next to impossible to imagine that both can come from the same
author; and it is remarkable that in an uncritical age these
differences were the first to attract anything approaching to critical
notice. They led Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century,
to the decisive conclusion that the two books could not possibly be
works of one and the same author. His reasons, so far as they go,
are critical ; and he uses a short and trenchant method for solving
the great dilemma on which so much time and trouble has been
spent during the present and the last century. Dionysius decided
in favour of the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel ; but
the lack of critical knowledge and power deprives his opinion of
Chap. Ill] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 115
any great value. The only point for which it is worth anything is
the one assertion, candidly and unhesitatingly made, that both
books could not have been written by one man.
But for the authorship of the Apocalypse (or of part of it) we
have clearer evidence than for any other writings in the New
Testament Canon, except the genuine letters of Paul. Papias
apparently recognised the book as of the highest authority, regard-
ing it as the outcome of direct revelation ; and Justin Martyr,
who never names any other book of our New Testament writings,
most assuredly so esteemed it. According to Eusebius, Meliton
of Sardeis wrote a treatise on the book, and Eusebius, to whom
millenarian views were pre-eminently unwelcome, would, if Meliton
had thrown any doubt upon the work, have most certainly men-
tioned the fact. As to the date of its compilation there is seem-
ingly no doubt.^ It was thrown into its present form in the year
68-69. The writer repeatedly names himself John, and distinctly
claims to speak as a prophet. The writer of the fourth Gospel
nowhere names himself ; and it can scarcely be supposed that any
one of the Master's original followers could set to work seriously
to put together a record of his life without giving it the full
sanction and attestation of his name. The case of our Synoptic
^ It would be, perhaps, to expect too much if we were to suppose that Diony-
sius had fixed his mind on the actual composition of the Apocalypse. He could
but take the book, as a whole, in the form which it had assumed in his day ; and
of this book he said that it could not possibly have been written by the author of
the fourth Gospel. But in fact he was dealing with a book made up of the writings
of two, three, or more authors. Into this question I cannot enter ; nor is it neces-
sary for me to travel over ground which Dr. Davidson has surveyed with thorough
exactness. It is enough to give his conclusions, which are briefly these : that the
book was not written continuously, and is the product of diflferent minds ; that
the parts are loosely joined and inartificially welded together ; that the first two
chapters, having no connexion with the body of the work, were inserted at the
beginning of the Apocalypse proper by a later writer ; that the greater part of the
book is strictly Jewish in its character, the main body being a Jewish apocalypse,
with Christian interpolations ; and that different parts of the book consequently
justify difi"erent dates. It follows that the anathema on those who interfere with
the text is only a method employed to obtain credit for the apocalyptic visions
generally, and is probably one of the latest additions to the work. We may note,
further, that there is a close agreement in thought and feeling between the two,
or more, writers of the Apocalypse.
116 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
Gospels is not to the point. These Gospels exhibit no unity of
authorship. They have been shaped by many editors. The Gospel
of Luke, if we pay any heed to the preface, professes to be only
one of many similar narratives. That of Mark is clearly an
epitome of one or more of these Gospels, and that of Matthew is
clearly not the Gospel known by that name to Papias^ and other
writers. At the time when the Apocalypse took its present shape,
what other John could there be who could write with such tones
of authority as those which characterise this book ? How could
we for any book expect to get so close an agreement between its
language and spirit and the general picture drawn of the apostle
John in our Synoptic Gospels ? He is there emphatically the son
of thunder, forbidding men to work wonders in the Master's name,
unless they actually followed him ; eager to call down fire from
heaven on Samaritan villagers who refuse to hear him ; and, above
all, able to drink of the Master's cup and to be baptized with his
baptism, in the hope that he and his brother might sit the one on
his right hand and the other on his left in his kingdom. After
the Master's death John clearly remained in Jerusalem, as we learn
from the genuine epistles of Paul, who speaks of visiting him
during his second visit to the holy city after his conversion. Not
less decidedly than Peter and James, he was an apostle of the
circumcision — a Jew speaking to Jews, and confirming them in
every conviction as to the perpetuity of their law and of the rites
which were the warrant and the pledge of it. He is one of the
three pillar apostles who give the right hand of fellowship to
Paul, on the one condition that they are not called on to take part
in his work, which they have no heart to share. At the time
when he wrote the latest chapters of the Apocalypse (if the work
be his at all), he would be a man of nearly sixty years of age,
even if we suppose that he was ten years younger than the
Teacher whom he followed. At this asje his mental habits and
his modes of expression would all be fixed: and it would be
utterly absurd to imagine that twenty or thirty years later he
^ See p. 87.
Chap. Ill] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOUETH GOSPEL 117
would be speaking a wholly different language and thinking
quite different thoughts. Yet this, and nothing less than this, he
must have done, if any part of the Apocalypse and the fourth
Gospel come from the same hand. In place of the harsh
Hebraisms and broken grammar of the former, we have in the
latter the most highly cultivated form of Hellenistic Greek. The
fierce vehemence of the Apocalyptic prophet is altogether absent
from the Gospel ; and in its stead we have a placid gentleness,
modified only, as in the prayer of Jesus (John xvii. 9), by an
ecclesiastical exclusiveness which points to a later age in the
history of the Christian Church. In place of the denunciations of
Paul which are conspicuous in the Apocalypse, we have a theology
which is largely indebted to the Pauline epistles, and perhaps
could hardly have been developed without them. The writer of
the Apocalypse is a Hebrew of the Hebrews, for whom the
exaltation of the chosen people comes before every other considera-
tion ; the writer of the Gospel is one for whom the Jews are the
enemies of the Christ, with whom he has no sympathy, and of
whose ways and modes of worship he has no personal knowledge.
He speaks of the Jews' manner of purifying, of their ways of
burying, of their feasts, and of their law, as things with which
he had no concern. For him the Jew, as such, is obstinate
in his rejection of the Master's teaching, and in his disbelief
of the grounds on which the Divine Son claims their allegiance
From the Jews who hear him as he speaks within the temple
courts comes all the rudeness which interrupts his discourses,
and from them also come the stupid materialistic remarks
which suggest the subjects on which these discourses enlarge.
Not only are they constantly on the watch to kill him (v. 18,
vii. 13, 19, viii. 40, xix. 12), but to carry out their design they
are ready to dispense with all judicial processes and to inflict
death without a judge, without a charge, without examination and
without a sentence (viii. 59). The evangelist (whoever he may
have been) wrote perhaps without greatly heeding the words
which his pen wrote down ; but his words imply that within the
118 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book L
temple courts heaps of stones were provided which ' the Jews '
might at any moment use for the slaying of any one by whose
speaking they might be offended.^ Nothing can show more
clearly than this the absurd ignorance of the writer of all things
Jewish. But, in truth, it would seem that with his ignorance of
the Jewish people there was combined a studied design to put the
words of Jesus into just those forms which would be most sure to
offend and irritate them. They are represented as angered with the
saying that Moses had not given them the true bread ; and on their
saying so they are told that the Divine Son who addresses them
will give them his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, and that
unless they eat the one and drink the other they can have no life
in them. There can be no doubt that these ideas, if thus abruptly
and nakedly put before them, would in the Jewish mind generally
cause a deep repulsion, and the words selected seem to be specially
qualified to create it. This is of more importance than mistakes
made as to the tenure of the high priest's office, or in the geography
of Palestine, though these may be serious enough. It is un-
necessary here to say more as to the simultaneous high-priesthood
of Annas and Caiaphas, or on the extreme unlikelihood that a
rough Galilsean peasant should be the kinsman of one of them, or
at all events should be possessed of such influence as to be able to
go in and out of his house at will, and to introduce others into
it (xviii. 16). Nor need we say more here of the substitution of
Bethabara for Bethany, a place which never existed beyond Jordan,
nor of the impossibility of identifying ^non, where the Baptist
is said to have carried on his special work, nor of the fact that the
pool of Bethesda, wholly unknown now, was unknown also to
Josephus, although in his day it had the marvellous properties
ascribed to it in the fourth Gospel, and also that nothing more is
known of the city near to which Jesus had his conversation with
the woman of Samaria.
The way in which the evangelist is spoken of in the fourth
1 The suggestion that the stones were at hand because the temple was under-
going repairs calls for no notice.
Chap. Ill] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 119
Gospel, as compared with the description given of him in the other
three, bears more directly on the question of its authorship. The
writer speaks throughout as one who stood in a peculiar relation
to the Master; as being the only one for whom Jesus felt the
affection of what we may call a personal love ; as lying on his breast
at supper; as being the medium of communication between
the Master and others; as being intrusted from the cross with
the special care of his mother. How completely the story of the
Synoptic Gospels differs from this picture we have already seen,
^ot a word as to any personal affection of Jesus for John can be
gleaned from them or from any of the Apocryphal Gospels (so far
as they are known to us), nor is the fact noticed by any other of
the early Christian writers. None of them gives him that, pre-
cedence over the rest which is attributed to him in the fourth
Gospel ; and Papias, speaking of those whose words he had sought
to learn from oral tradition, mentions five of the apostles before
he names John.^ It is, of course, impossible even for the most
strenuous apologists to shut their eyes to these and other
differences between the Johannine and Synoptic pictures of John
the son of Zebedee. Their efforts are directed chiefly towards
magnifying the changes introduced into the Gospel by amanuenses
or secretaries during the process of composition. According to
some of these writers the evangelist was eighty or ninety years of
age, and as he dictated, his scribe altered or modified his language,
and did so with the greater readiness because the book was to be
reserved for private circulation. But the errors subsequently
spread abroad as to the duration of the apostle's life led the evan-
gelist to add a supplementary chapter for the purpose of correcting
them ; and, with this supplement, also freely altered by his friends,
the Gospel was by the apostle's permission published at once.
We have only to see what this account implies. Of the
notion of literary honesty exhibited in it we need say nothing;
nor need we dwell on the astounding inconsistency between the
conduct of the evangelist and the commands of the Master whom
1 See p. 83.
120 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
he professes himself so eager to obey. Of that Master he was one
of the twelve special niissioners, charged with the task of going
into all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature.
Yet he postpones for half a century the composition of the book
which was to record what he remembered of his teaching; and
when at length it is written, he withholds his name from it, and
declares that he has drawn it up for private circulation only.
Then, finally, with the sole design of correcting some mistakes
which concerned him personally, he gives his consent to what we
may call its formal publication. These suppositions are all in-
credible ; but, if we give any heed to them, we must conclude that
the scribes altered his language from beginning to end, sub-
stituting the most polished Hellenistic Greek for his rugged and
uncouth Hebraisms and his false grammar, keeping back his
name, but assigning to him a precedence not accorded to him in
the Synoptics, and, it would seem, converting the most Jewish of
the apostles into one for whom the Jews were the enemies of the
Messiah. It is needless to say that this would not be all, for we
may ask whence came the philosophy which makes the Gospel
throughout to be what it is ? The whole hypothesis is, however,
sheer assumption, which could never have been made but for the
need of upholding a foregone conclusion. Except on the hypo-
thesis that the apostle John dictated, and that his scribe made his
insertions as he went along, the conclusion that the writer was not
an eye-witness of the events recorded would be established by the
following words : ' He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his
witness is true : and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also
may believe ' (xix. 35). But inasmuch as the Gospel was written
by the apostle John, therefore this is an insertion of the scribe,
although the surer guarantee would have been a superscription
similar to that which we find in the Apocalypse (xxii. 8), 'I
John am he who heard and saw these things.' The modern theory
implies that John the writer of the Gospel would do anything
rather than reveal his name in attestation of his work.
It is not less astonishing (on the supposition of a single author-
Ohap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOUETH GOSPEL 121
ship for the two works) that the later one should give not the least
indication of the contents of the former. The Apocalypse, com-
pleted perhaps a quarter of a century before the date popularly
assigned to the Johannine Gospel, gives a series of prophetical
pictures which are to be converted into facts of history within a very
short time. How is it that of the book exhibiting these pictures
the writer of the Johannine Gospel is profoundly unconscious ?
According to the Apocalypse, the unfolding of the great drama
would be going on at the very time when the author of it was
writing or dictating the fourth Gospel. Had then all these
wonderful visions been fulfilled, and had their fulfilment made no
difference in the phenomena of the physical or the spiritual world ?
Or did the writer regard his former work as of so small moment
that even the most distant allusion to it seemed to be no longer
called for ? In this case we should have to conclude that the visions
of the Apocalypse remained visions still — that the work was the
result of illusion — and that the author of the fourth Gospel must
have looked back upon it with a regret bordering upon pain. If
the evangelist so regarded it, he was bound to say so ; but there
is no token of any such feeling, and no sign that he even knew of
the existence of the book. On the supposition that the two books
came from the same author such a state of things is morally
incredible. We may say more. If it had been a fact that twenty
or thirty years after w^riting the Apocalypse the author of it had
written the fourth Gospel, this fact would most certainly have
become known with wildfire speed throughout all branches of the
Christian Church ; and the result of this fact would have been so
complete a discrediting of the book called the Apocalypse as
would have made its insertion in any Canon of New Testament
Scriptures altogether impossible. The Chiliastic or millenarian
expectations of the time were fed by, if they did not actually
rest on, the visions and declarations of the Apocalypse. These
expectations could not long have survived the tidings of the deliber-
ate backsliding of its author; and a new complexion would have been
given to much of the literature of the first Christian centuries.
122 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
But even if, apart from all this, we grant that the fourth Gospel
is the work of the apostle John, what will be the value of his
narrative, and of any attestation which he may make in support of
it ? According to this supposition, he would be writing at least
half a century after the occurrence of the incidents and the delivery
of the discourses with which he professes to deal. Let us allow
him the strongest memory and the clearest apprehension with
which mortal man has ever been endowed ; and what ground shall
we have even then for the trustworthiness of his narrative and the
accuracy of his report ? No one will affirm that any head will
carry the details of orations or conversations for more than four or
five years ; and in the case of the apostle John the difficulty of
retention would be greatly increased. During the whole time, his
mind, we must suppose, had been steeped in the Master's words ;
and as his thoughts on the subjects of these discourses were
developed and expanded, his recollections would by the same
process be modified. With the most conscientious efforts to be
exact and truthful, the result might, and indeed would, certainly
be something extremely different from the words which he had
heard. His work may be, as it has been called, ' glorified gospel
history ' made up from ' glorified recollections ; ' but an accurate
report of the things said and done it could not possibly be.
We cannot do more here than merely mention the vast differ-
ence between the account of the Master's teaching in the Johannine
Gospel as compared with that of the Synoptics. This fact is now
generally, perhaps universally, admitted. It is granted that we
cannot pass from the latter to the former ' without feeling that the
transition involves the passage from one world of thought to
another. No familiarity with the general teaching of the Gospels,
no wide conception of the character of the Saviour, is sufficient to
destroy the contrast which exists in form and spirit between the
earlier and later narratives.' We shall see the extent of the differ-
ence when we come to the examination of the narratives. It may
be enough to say here that the glorified recollections of the apostle
have reduced the language of the speakers in his work to an
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 123
unvarying uniformity of expression and style. The words of the
narrator himself, and those of the Master and of John the Baptist,
are all cast in the same mould, and so completely run in the same
lines, that it is sometimes impossible to say where the one ends
and the other begins ; and this form or mould is in every respect
different from that which his teaching exhibits in our Synoptic
Gospels. The significance of this lies in the fact that the Johan-
nine teaching lays down certain conditions of belief which are to
be paramount ; and these conditions are not to be found in the
Synoptics. The latter profess to publish the glad tidings of the
Divine love for men, and to furnish for all mankind all things
necessary for their spiritual health. Yet, if the Master's teaching
followed the lines of the fourth Gospel, the Synoptics entirely fail
to fulfil their promise or to answer their purpose. To the question,
'What shall I do to inherit eternal life'?' put to him in the
Synoptics, Jesus replies by quoting the Old Testament precepts
enjoining the love of God. To the question in the Johannine
Gospel, 'What must we do that we may work the works of God V
the answer is, ' This is the work of God, that ye believe in him
whom he sent' — a condition for w^hich we look in vain in the
other Gospels. The difference between them is not merely one of
colouring ; it is an essential difference of ideas. The efforts made
to uphold the authority of all the four Gospels in spite of this
radical divergence are as desperate as they have been strenuous.
We are told, for instance, that allowance must be made for the
effect of time upon memory ; that, in the case of this apostle,
writing half a century after the events which he professes to
narrate, verbal accuracy in the reports of speeches was not to be
looked for; that, wishing to reproduce for others the peculiar
charm which the discourses of Jesus had exercised on his own
mind, he availed himself of a freedom in the revivification of those
old recollections which was fully warranted by the practice of the
greatest writers of antiquity, and that thus into the language of
his discourses he introduced that conception of the manifestation
of the Christ which had long been deeply rooted in his spirit. We
124 EXTEKNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
are thus brought back, as we have seen already, to the glorified
recollections of past history ; but we are as far as ever from being
able to determine what may come from the apostle's imagination,
and what may really be a true representation of the facts.
It is only necessary to notice further here that the Johannine
Gospel has a thaumaturgy which, with only one or two exceptions,
is peculiarly its own. The incidents so recorded are of the most
astounding kind ; and the most astonishing of all — the raising or
revivification of the body of Lazarus — is described as the proximate
and immediate cause of the arrest of Jesus and of his death. But
of this event, and of all the circumstances preceding and following
it, the Synoptic Gospels know absolutely nothing, and, in fact, they
exclude them.
We are told, lastly, that as the Johannine Epistles clearly come
from the same hand which has left us the Johannine Gospel, the
use of the first of these epistles by Polycarp and Papias is evidence
for the genuineness and authority of the Gospel. If Polycarp did
so make use of this epistle (and this is extremely doubtful), he did
not mention the name of the writer ; nor can we gather from the
passage of Eusebius that Papias regarded it as the work of the
apostle John. The first ascription of this letter to John the apostle
comes from Iren£eus and Clement of Alexandria ; and testimony of
this date is of no use towards establishing the genuineness of
either the Epistle or the Gospel. Whatever evidence we can get
as to the alleged author from the Synoptics or from other early
Christian literature goes against the notion that the Johannine
Gospel comes from John the son of Zebedee ; and the history of
the Paschal controversy is decisive against it. This question of
the day for celebrating Easter was keenly debated between the
East and the West, and the Eoman bishop Aniketos used all his
efforts in vain to persuade Polycarp to celebrate the feast two days
after the eating of the Paschal lamb. Polycarp adduced the
practice of John, as upholding the Synoptic account that Jesus
celebrated the Passover with his disciples, and was crucified on the
day after the Passover, that is, on the 15th Nisan, and rose on the
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 125
17th; and it maybe confidently concluded tliat it was the lon»
residence of the apostle at Ephesus, or elsewhere in Asia Minor,
which led to this practice. But in the fourth Gospel Jesus has
simply an evening meal with his disciples on the day before the
slaying of the Paschal lamb, and is himself, as being the true
Paschal Lamb, slain on the day of the Passover. The testimony of
Papias on this point has not been questioned ; but if it cannot be
overthrown, then the apostle John was not the author of the fourth
Gospel. ISTo process of glorified recollection could have given
shape to a narrative which belies the practice of his latest, not less
than of his earlier, years.
Thus for the first century and a half of our era we fail to get
any evidence even of the existence of our canonical Gospels, and
far less for their recognition as authoritative. When we come to
IrenaBus the scene is changed. The four Gospels of the Nicene
Canon have thrust aside the others which had contested possession
of the field, or of portions of it ; and there are high theological
reasons why their victory was inevitable. There are four quarters
of the world, and four winds. The cherubim are four-faced, and
the four Evangelists have each some one of the special charac-
teristics of these mysterious beings. The wild nonsense of these
notions throws light on the mental conditions under which the
multitude of the Gospels took shape, and which led to the ultimate
acceptance of four, and to the rejection of the rest as at all
events destitute of apostolic authority. But the four which
have won the day stand on precisely the same foundation. They
all contain more or less of matter in common with that of the
narratives which they displaced ; and we know neither the names
of the writers nor the times when they were written, except that
they had not taken their present shape before the sixth or seventh
decade of the second century. Eor not one of these Gospels, then,
have we the direct contemporary testimony of any one of the
personal followers of the Great Teacher ; nor is it contended, —
indeed it could not be contended, — that the four narratives tell
us anything about any of his personal followers for more than a
126 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
few days after the crucifixion. The only book which professes to
tell us anything more about them is the Acts ; and this makes no
mention of the twelve after the election of Matthias, and takes
no account of any except Peter, James, and John, nothing also
being said about even these after the alleged deliverance of Peter
by the angel from his prison-house. There are, therefore, only
some five or six of the personal followers of the Master of whom
we learn more than their names ; and such information as we have
even of these consists of only casual notices of a few scattered inci-
dents in their lives. "We hear of the slaying of James the brother
of John with the sword, and of occasional persecutions; but it
can scarcely be said that they are among the fiercest which the
preachers of all new faiths have had to undergo. For whatever
they may have said, done, or suffered, we have no contemporary
testimony whatever, except that which we may get from the
Apocalypse, and from Paul's letters to the Galatians, the
Corinthians, and the Komans; and these tell nothing of the
extraordinary signs, wonders, and prodigies recorded in the Gospels
and the Acts. In short, we know next to nothing of any of them,
if we put aside the five or six prominent actors in the earliest
years of the Christian Church.
Thus, without going further, the foundation laid by Paley, and
the superstructure which he raised upon it with so much care, are
both swept, not partially but utterly, away.^ He is not contending
1 With astounding audacity the writer of the Preface to the tenth edition of
Lux Mundi tells us, p. xxxvii, that the fabric is stronger than ever. ' Our
New Testament documents,' he declares, 'have passed through a critical sifting
and analysis of the most trenchant and thorough sort in the fifty years that
lie behind us. From such sifting we are learning much about the process through
which they took their present shape. But in all that is material we feel that
this critical investigation has only reassured us in asserting the historical truth
of the records on which our Christian faith rests.'
The feelings of the writer furnish a basis of argument or evidence ; and asser-
tion is an easy thing when no attempt is made to exhibit the grounds on which
it rests. We, on the other hand, might express our feelings on the astonishing
literary impertinence (in the strict sense of the term) which seems to have
prompted the words of the writer of this Preface ; but we are content to abide
by what has been already said on the relations of Paul with the chiefs of the
church in Jerusalem.
Chap. IIL] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOUHTH GOSPEL 127
that we may without extravagance profess to know something of
what they taught ; he wants their testimony primarily and espe-
cially to establish the truth of the extraordinary incidents recorded
in the Gospel histories. If the truth of these alleged facts cannot
be maintained, then we have, he insists, no warrant that God the
Father has made himself manifest to men in and through the
Eternal Son by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.. As to this
there can be no mistake. Miracles, i.e. things which make us
wonder, are, according to his position, the one indispensable
guarantee for the truth of Christian faith ; but he has this
guarantee in the lives of the apostles, and he rests upon it with
confident serenity.
' If twelve men, whose probity and goodness I had long known,
should seriously and circumstantially relate to me an account of
a miracle wrought before their eyes, and in which it was impossible
that they could be deceived; if the governor of the country,
hearing a rumour of this account, should call these men into his
presence, and offer them a short proposal, either to confess the
imposture, or submit to be tied up to a gibbet; if they should
refuse with one voice to acknowledge that there existed any
falsehood or imposture in the case ; if this threat was communi-
cated to them separately, yet with no different effect; if it was at
last executed ; if I myself saw them one after another, consenting
to be racked, burned, or strangled, — still, if Mr. Hume's rule be
my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that
there exists not a sceptic in the world who would not believe
them, or who would defend such incredulity.'
A more veritable house of cards could never have been built.
From first to last Paley's words exhibit a complete lack of appre-
ciation of the laws of evidence. What he says comes practically
to this, that, given the probity, or supposed probity, of the
witness, then whatever he may say must be accepted as fact.
Even if this be granted (and it is, of course, only a wild delusion)
his argument is not to the point here, for the ground which we
have alread}^ traversed shows us that we know nothing about the
128 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
supposed witnesses. Paley's twelve men are, of course, the twelve
apostles ; and the miracle wrought before their eyes must be the
sensible resurrection of the Master. If it be not so, his comparison
becomes altogether irrelevant. But of the history of these twelve
it is a ludicrous misrepresentation. According to all the Gospel
narratives, the visible resurrection was an event not witnessed by
any one. It was not, therefore, wrought before their eyes ; and it
is absurd to talk of the impossibility of their being deceived about
it. But to speak at all of twelve men who are incapable of being
deceived, and therefore infallible, is to put before us a greater
wonder than the prodigies which they are supposed to attest.
There is no need to go into the question of the possibility or
impossibility of what may be called miracles, or prodigies, or by
whatever other name we may choose. But we must remember that
even in everyday life a vastly greater amount of evidence is needed
for some incidents than for others, even though these may be physi-
cally quite possible. The statement that the Prime Minister had
been seen walking about Trafalgar Square for hours unclothed to
his waist would not be accepted on the mere asseveration of twelve
or twenty upright men without a very rigorous scrutiny. Yet a
certain amount of evidence would be received in proof of the fact,
for the Prime Minister might have gone mad ; but the testimony
of a thousand known and upright men would not be accepted for
the assertion that he had been at the same time carrying his head
under his arm. To find twelve men who could not possibly be
deceived about anything must be twelve times as difficult as to
find one possessed of this infallibility. The rest of Paley's descrip-
tion is pure imagination. The so-called 'Acts of the Apostles'
tells no such story, and indeed tells quite a different one. It
cannot be too often repeated that with writers like Paley the
truth of an alleged miracle means really the truth of the narra-
tive of that miracle. They do not pretend, and indeed they
would deny, that such things are, or may be, wrought in the
Christian Church now, contradicting in this the general belief
of Christendom, and especially of the Latin Churches ; and for the
Chap. III.] AGE AND AUTHENTICITY OF FOURTH GOSPEL 129
prodigies or wonders recorded in the Gospels and the Acts we
have seen already that we have no contemporary attestation
whatever. But all experience would show us that even if we had
before us these twelve upright witnesses, we should find them at
heart much more anxious for the promulgation of their spiritual
convictions than for the acceptance of the extraordinary incidents
of which they might yet have a full assurance. The story of the
Acts reads us this lesson. The high priest and his partisans are
clearly described as less anxious about the wonders than they are
about the new teaching, which may tend to the subversion of the
Mosaic law and polity. On the advice of Gamaliel they content
themselves, accordingly, with forbidding the disciples to preach in
the name of Jesus, and then let them go free (Acts v. 28, 40).
But we are concerned here only with the ascertainment of historical
facts; and we have seen not only that the twelve upright and
unerring witnesses are not forthcoming, but that of the few who
seem to be forthcoming we have no information which bears out
the narratives made up about them. Paley may, perhaps, have
been thinking of educated and intelligent Englishmen, although
even amongst Englishmen the supply of such witnesses is not
superabundant. His words are absurdly inapplicable to Jews of
the first century, and to Galilseans, who are described as more
ignorant, superstitious, and credulous than perhaps any peasantry
in the world. Such men might act and speak under the strongest
sense of duty ; but, this being conceded, the questioning of their
assurance as to the occurrence of some particular incident, and
even the total disbelief of it, would yet be no disparagement of
their sincerity in the discharge of their spiritual duty, which, by
universal admission, was that of preaching the Divine love and
mercy for a struggling and suffering world.
Eor us the controversy is thus brought within narrow limits.
A sharp line of demarcation is drawn by almost all traditional
apologists and theologians between the wonders recorded in the
New Testament Scriptures and all others. The latter are to be
disregarded; the former are the indispensable credentials of the
I
130 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOUR GOSPELS [Book I.
•
Eternal Son. The question, why this should be so, may be per-
missible, or rather it is the first which, on coming face to face with
such an assertion, calls imperatively for an answer ; and it is quite
certain that it cannot be answered except by an impartial examina-
tion of the evidence. All records of wonders are really historical
narratives, if they are anything; but historical, or professedly
historical, narratives coming from anonymous writers for whose
statements there is no contemporary corroboration, are discredited
at the outset, even if they relate incidents every one of which,
taken separately, may be of the most commonplace character, and
therefore antecedently quite credible. If these narratives abound
with incidents to which as monstrous or prodigious we should
antecedently give no credit whatever, then for us the inquiry is
on every ground closed. But for those who insist that without
miraculous testimony Christianity itself is overturned, nothing less
can suffice than a judicial weighing of all the evidence adducible
for all the wonders and prodigies which are said to have taken
place in all ages of the history of the Christian Church. We may,
therefore, well be at a loss to see on what grounds apologetic
writers summarily reject, as calling for no consideration, the
attestations of Augustine of Hippo to cases of raising of the
physically dead from their graves, which, he says, occurred in
his own time, in his own diocese, only a few months or a year
or two before he wrote of them, and, as he declares, after a careful
scrutiny of the facts. That they do so reject his testimony is
certain. The narratives attested by Augustine are to be thrust
aside. The stories of wonders in the New Testament Scriptures
are to be accepted with full assurance of their reality. According
to Paley, it is a question of credible witnesses. It is really a
question of the trustworthiness of narratives which profess to tell
us of those witnesses ; and this is the question to which we have
now to address ourselves.
CHAPTEE IV
MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS
From all points of view but one the question of the trust-
worthiness of the Gospel narratives has, we may say, been fully
answered already. We have seen that we have no evidence of
the existence of any of our four Gospels in their present form for
something like a century and a half after the occurrence of the
events of which they profess to be a record. In other words, they
are writings for which we have no contemporary attestation, and
they are anonymous. We know neither when nor where nor by
whom they were written, and we have abundant proof of early
alterations of the text, as well as of insertions, interpolations, and
additions. The books, in short, rest on no historical foundation
whatever, unless we can find this foundation in the Acts of the
Apostles. But an examination of this book has shown that every
statement in it is in the highest degree suspicious. It professes
tojgive an account of the relations of Paul with the apostles or
missioners of the church at Jerusalem, and this account flatly
contradicts the narrative of the chief contemporary witness who can
be cited for any part of the history of the first century, — the great
apostle of the Gentiles himself. There is, indeed, but one other,
and this is John the son of Zebedee, if he be, as it seems likely
that he is, the author of the latest additions to the Apocalypse.
But this book, so far as it deals at all with these subjects, bears
out the statements of Paul and wholly upsets the representations
of the Acts. According to the Apocalypse, the relations of the
131
132 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book I.
pillar apostles with Paul remained permanently antagonistic.
The feeling expressed for him in the Apocalypse is one of aver-
sion and disgust, in place of the smooth amenity pictured for us
in the pages of the Acts. In the Apocalypse Paul is denounced
as little better than an impostor ; and it is utterly impossible that
such language could be applied to him by one of the most pro-
minent followers of the Great Master, if there be an atom of truth
in the representations of the Acts. But we have seen that the
history of the Acts was for the most part the creation of the writer
as he went along in the fabrication of his story. We have seen
that there is not the smallest reason for supposing that the Council
of Jerusalem ever was held ; and the tenor of the letter of Paul
to the Galatians is decisive proof that he was not present at it,
and that the decree of that Council is a fiction. We have seen,
further, that it is impossible to regard the conversion of Cornelius,
the trial and stoning of Stephen, the deaths of Ananias and
Sapphira, and the power of speaking languages without having
learned them, which is said to have been conferred on the disciples
at Pentecost, as in any sense facts of history. The foundation,
therefore, on which the historical credit of our canonical Gospels
must rest is swept away and destroyed ; and the Gospels are doubly
discredited as claiming support from a book which can afford to
them no support whatever.
It is the surest of all the canons of historical criticism that
fidelity and accuracy in the relation of ordinary events is the true
test of the credibility of any alleged historical narrative. The
book may possibly be the only monument of a state of things of
which we have no other record. It may be without attestation,
because there was no contemporary literature to which the appeal
could be made. But if it be self-consistent and seemingly vera-
cious in the relation of ordinary events, a presumption, more or
less strong, is created in favour of its trustworthiness. The
tables, however, are immediately turned, if it be found in
any part inconsistent and self-contradictory, and, still more,
if we are introduced to a causation and sequence of events.
Chap. IV.] MIEACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 133
of which in the ordinary course of human life we have no
experience.
But it is not on these extraordinary incidents that we first fix
our attention. We may take as an example the history of Eome
before the burning of the city by the Gauls. If we examine its
chronology, we find that it is divided into three periods of pre-
cisely one hundred and twenty years each ; that there were seven
kings, whose reigns make up two of these periods ; that the ending
of the first period coincides with the middle year of the reign of
the fourth king ; and that the duration of all the reigns is deter-
mined by arithmetical considerations designed to support this
scheme. This chronology Niebuhr denounces as throughout a
forgery and a fiction, and the whole history stands condemned at
the outset, before we bestow a thought on the astounding thau-
maturgy which is one of its most prominent characteristics.
The narrative of the Acts of the Apostles has been tested
by this canon, and has fallen before it in every particular. The
holding of a Council, the passing of a decree, the conversion and
baptism of a Gentile, the trial and death of a deacon, are not
prodigies or wonders. They are incidents which might occur at
any time or in any place ; but we are driven, by reasons already
drawn out, to the conclusion that they are all fictitious, and that
the fictions, like those of the books of Chronicles in the Old Testa-
ment Scriptures, are deliberate. The whole narrative is thus con-
victed of falsehood ; and the signs, wonders, and prodigies related
in it vanish like mists dispersed and drawn up by the sun. It is,
in strictness of speech, merely time wasted to examine each story
separately. But, although the historical credibility of the book
is lost irretrievably, it is well to bestow some attention on the
mental and moral conditions under which these and other like
narratives grew up. With all questions turning on the antecedent
credibility or incredibility, possibility or impossibility, of miracles,
portents, or by whatever names they may be called, we are happily
not bound to deal. They do not in reality concern us in the least.
If we see that all evidence fails us for every particular narrative
134 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book I.
of miracles, the controversy is, in fact, ended. If, then, we touch
such questions at all, it is not as a duty which we have to dis-
charge so much as a concession to apologists who seem to find a
satisfaction in surveying the superstructure of buildings without
taking the trouble to examine their foundations.
In such books as these the commonest incidents become in-
credible, when we find, to say the least, deliberate misrepresenta-
tion at work for the furthering of a very definite purpose; and
the case is made worse when we find in what an atmosphere,
moral and intellectual, the framers of these narratives lived. In
place of Paley's perfectly trustworthy and infallible witnesses, we
have a number of uneducated or half-educated peasants, whose
roughness and rudeness, materialism and intolerance, are on a par
with their ignorance. In fact, there never was an age in which
the most upright of men then living could be less depended on
for the accuracy of their reports, or the correctness of their im-
pressions, than was the age which we speak of as the apostolic,
or any country more steeped in superstitious credulity than that
in which the apostles or evangelists lived. ^ Among the Jews of
^ The writer of the Preface to the tenth edition of Lux Mundi speaks of him-
self SuB feeling assured that 'in the apostles we have men who knew thoroughly
the value of testimony and what depended upon it, who bore witness to what
they had seen, and in all cases, save in the exceptional case of St. Paul, to what
they had seen over a prolonged period of years ' (p. xxxvii).
For these wonderful assertions we have not a shred of evidence. We have
seen that of the apostles, or missioners, with the exception of three, or, at the
utmost, of four, we hear nothing and know nothing. The rest are to us mere
names. The relations of Paul with the chiefs of the church at Jerusalem have
been noticed with sufficient fulness ; and the support which he is supposed to
give to incidents mentioned in the Gospel narratives is obtained, as we shall see,
from interpolated and spurious matter. What may be meant by ' a prolonged
period of years ' we are not told. In the Synoptics the ministry seems to be
begun and ended in a few months : in the fourth Gospel it is extended apparently
over two years. In either case the period is amazingly short, little or no time
being allowed for anything. Thus, the mission of the Seventy seems to be over
in a few days or weeks. If their work was one of spiritual reformation, the idea
of such limits is absurd. But for chronology we shall search the Gospels in vain.
The writer of this Preface allows that ' in some ages testimony has been care-
less, — so careless, so clouded with superstition and credulity, as to be practically
valueless. ' To no ages do these words apply with greater force than to those
during which the Gospels took shaj^e. (See Note 1, page 126.)
Chap. IY.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 135
that day, generally, wonders, in Dean Milman's words, ' wakened
no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on
the ever ready belief.'
This is the world, — now, happily, so astonishing to educated
and thinking Englishmen, — into which we are introduced by
theologians, who are so infatuated as to insist on raising their
systems on foundations of sand. Christianity, they argue, is a
supernatural revelation, and prophecy and miracles are the
evidences of it. This is the assertion with which Bishop Butler
starts, and this is the treacherous slough into which we find
ourselves plunged, if we attempt to follow him. Our belief in the
goodness of God, in his love for all sinners, in his will for the
final healing of all who are diseased and plagued with sin, is to
depend on the veracity of nameless historians, who tell us a
number of astounding stories about marvellous draughts of fishes,
or of the destruction of swine possessed by demons cast out from
the bodies of lunatics. While Paley is deluding himself with
imaginary pictures of trustworthy witnesses beyond reach of error
or deception, we see before us a people besotted with magic,
sorcery, astrology, demonology, and the science of dreams. As to
the exercise of impartial judgement, there was none. Everything
extraordinary was greedily believed for the moment, and therefore,
of necessity, as rapidly forgotten, l^o real impression could be
made upon the mind, and, in spite of assertions to the contrary,
none was made. We fail to see this in reading the Gospel
narratives, only because we do not take the trouble to think as we
read. If we could but fix our attention on the matter, we should
see the fiction in all its glaring nakedness. Mary and her husband
are said to be deeply struck by the visit of the Magi and the story
of the shepherds who tell them of the angels' song; and Mary
especially, we are told, pondered these things in her heart. But
she is not less astonished at the words of Simeon and Anna in the
temple, although the words of the angel to herself at the time of
the annunciation should have sufficed to fix her faith for ever in
her own high destiny and in the divine mission of her Son. A few
136 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL EECORDS [Book I.
years pass. The child disappears on their return from a passover
in Jerusalem ; and the temple, which should have been the first,
is the last place where they seek him. On finding him there,
Mary's words express, not thankfulness that her old faith and
trust are being justified, but a reproach for the sorrow and trouble
which his disappearance and the search entailed by it had caused
them. The child's reply is just what should have occurred to
herself. The wonder was that she should have sought him at all.
That she should fail to know that he must be about his Father's
business was evidence of a sinsjular lack of faith. But her faith
had sunk, seemingly, to a still lower ebb, when she countenanced
his kinsfolk in their efforts to arrest his career on the ground that
he was beside himself.
No doubt there is beauty and dignity in some at least of the
narratives of miracles, portents, and prodigies in the Gospels. The
coarser and more disgusting forms of Jewish superstition could
not be made to harmonise with the character or the words of the
Great Master to whom we owe the teaching of the sermons on the
mount and on the plain. But the difference is strictly one of
degree. All the types of Eabbinic or Talmudic superstition are
to be found, softened down in whatever measure and refined, in
the stories of the New Testament miracles, and they point to the
gross and nauseating shapes which those superstitions would
assume when better influences are wanting or have been removed.
When we find a man like the great apostle of the Gentiles declaring
that the offerings of the heathen are made to demons and not to
God, and therefore implying by his words that the heathen deities
were actual beings and not merely unsubstantial fictions, we may
form some notion of the vast strength of the popular delusions on
the subject of demonology.
These delusions are generally so disgusting that they can scarcely
be touched on at all, and must be passed over with a dry foot.
The book of Tobit brings before us the doings of the demon
Asmodeus; and here, if we please, we may find an entrance into
the elaborate hierarchy of angels and devils in which, after the
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 137
Babylonish exile, the Jews generally seem to have found an infinite
satisfaction. No fancies could be too puerile or ridiculous to be
rejected from this farrago of so-called theology; or, rather, the
more degraded and debased the notions, the more likely were they
to find favour. The whole air was filled with angels, good and
bad, wdiose offices were described with all the fulness and precision
of an Ordnance Map. Diseases of all kinds were the work of evil
demons, by whom the patients were possessed ; and the casting
out of these demons was the special function of the exorcist. That
the evangelists ascribed this power, and the exercise of it, to Jesus
of Nazareth, is a patent fact. That he claimed either to possess it
or to exercise it does not follow, and is not proved. Many or most
of these contemptible delusions are shared not merely by fanatics
like Tertullian, but by more sober thinkers like Origen and Eusebius.
Each of these superstitions was drawn out into detail with the
exactitude of scientific system ; and we have here the develope-
ment as well as the source of the horrors which come from the
notions of sorcery, magic, and witchcraft. Those who practised
those arts were not fit to live ; and who is there who may not be
practising them ? The seemingly innocent may be the most
guilty ; and any means may be employed for ascertaining whether
they are guilty or not. The sluices of the great stream were
opened wide, and Christian Churches and States have deluged the
earth with blood by way of extirpating the wizard and the witch.
The conviction of the reality of these delusions was alive and
strong among ourselves almost as yesterday ; and here and there
apologetic writers, like Archbishop Trench, can be found to uphold
them still. In truth, there is no other ground on which the
historical credit of our canonical Gospels can be sustained; and
Archbishop Trench is at least consistent in holding to it. Dean
Milman asserts that the theory of possession stands self-condemned
in the eyes of modern thinkers generally as a kind of insanity :
Dr. Trench sees that, if it be abandoned as such, the whole thau-
maturgy of the New Testament Scriptures is smitten at one blow.
He asks what any one of the apostles would think if he were to
138 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECORDS [Book I.
enter a modern madhouse. There can be no doubt that the
apostle would regard all the patients as possessed ; but this
would carry no weight with physicians now-a-days, and goes no
way towards proving the soundness of the theory then ; and with
the discrediting of this theory, by far the greater number of the
New Testament miracles are, as Dr. Trench saw, discredited also.
This, then, was the atmosphere in which the stories of the
miracles, which Bishop Butler professed to regard as the very
corner-stone of Christianity, grew up and were multiplied. They
were fostered by the stagnant waters of the mighty marsh in
which the human intellect was for the time lost. The crop of
fictions was inexhaustible in its luxuriance ; but the plants
which it produced weve, we are told, of various kinds. Some
were good ; some were bad. Some spread death ; others might
give life. How, then, were those of the one class to be distinguished
from the other? For those who assert the trustworthiness of
the Gospel narratives the matter is inexpressibly serious; and
the difficulty is aggravated by the fact that the traditional apologists
give two wholly contradictory answers to the question. That
the one set of wonders are as real as the rest they all affirm with
equal assurance. If we follow Dr. Trench, we must hold that ' side
by side with the miracles which serve for the furthering of the
kingdom of God runs another line of wonders, the counter-working
of him who is ever the ape of the Most High.' 'Nov can we resist
his conclusion that this fact 'is itself sufficient evidence that
miracles cannot be appealed to absolutely and finally in proof of
the doctrine which the worker of them proclaims.' ^ The doctrine
must first be brought before the bar of the conscience ; and not
until it has passed this ordeal is the miracle which attests it to be
received. It is not a question of fact. The miracles wrought for
an evil purpose are as real as those which are designed for the
furtherance of truth ; and if it seem to us that the teacher who
does the wonder is leading us into error, then. Dr. Trench warns
us that ' not all the miracles in the world have a right to demand
^ Notes on the Miracles^ p. 25.
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 139
submission to the word which they seal.' In short, the appeal is
after all not to the miracles but to something else. Dr. Newman is
even more precise, and, not being hampered by the self-imposed
trammels of Dr. Trench, he is also more logical. Dr. Trench
could not bring himself to assert that no true miracles ever occurred
apart from those which are recorded in the New Testament
Scriptures ; but neither could he bring himself to state candidly
that miracles may be wrought still. He takes refuge, therefore, in
the fancy (for it is nothing more) that the power of working them
was withdrawn when these ' props and strengthenings of the infant
plant' were no longer needed. The withdrawal, however, was
gradual, the power becoming virtually extinct by subdivision, as
the number of the Christian churches and of their members
multiplied, until in place of it was left the organised catholic
Church, the greatest miracle of all. With such imaginings as these
Dr. Newman would have nothing to do ; and from the facts before
him he concludes emphatically ' that there was no age of miracles
after which miracles ceased ; that there have been at all times true
miracles and false miracles, true accounts and false accounts ;
that no authoritative guide is supplied to us for distinguishing
between the two.'
In strictness of speech, then, miracles, even in the judgement
of those who accept them, have, as such, no evidential value. It
is quite possible that in any given instance the attempt to use
them as such may involve a mistake. Dr. Newman evidently felt
the difficulty. That there are counterfeit miracles is for him
beyond doubt. His only method of meeting the difficulty, or
rather of evading it, is by expressing his belief that God ' will
never suffer them to be so counterfeited as to deceive the humble
inquirer.' Dr. Mozley can allow no such concession, as this would
be to admit certain pretensions advanced by the Church of Kome ;
and virtually his position is that there are no true miracles apart
from those which are recorded in the Scriptures of the New
Testament Canon. He is, therefore, driven to the really absurd
conclusion that the New Testament miracles are, and must be,
140 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book L
readily distinguishable from the great multitude of miracles, which
are inseparable from the mental growth of average humanity. If
they are not, then, he insists, ' there is an end to the proof of a
revelation by miracles.' ^ If they are, we have still to see ' whether
the Christian miracles are thus distinguishable, and whether their
nature, their object, and their evidence vindicate their claim to this
distinctive truth and divine source.'
But it is indisputable that we can have no evidence for any
fact except from those who have seen that fact. The miracles
which Dr. Mozley looks upon as evidential {i.e. true) miracles took
place nearly two millenniums ago. Whatever evidence we may
have of them must come, then, from some records ; and, according
to Dr. Mozley, before we can decide on the value of the miracle we
have by a careful inquiry to satisfy ourselves as to the nature and
authority of the record. Why not then begin with this examina-
tion of the records, and of the testimony on which they rest ?
This is precisely what we have done ; and the result has been to
strip the Gospels of all credit as historical narratives. But Dr.
Mozley enters on no such inquiry. His method is of another sort,
and may save a good deal of trouble for those who do not object to
following a guide without ascertaining whither he means to lead
them. In fact, apologists like Dr. Mozley will do anything rather
than honestly look into the grounds on which authority is claimed
for the narratives of the New Testament Scriptures. It is com-
paratively an easy matter to discredit the great mass of what are
known as ecclesiastical miracles, this being the name assigned to
all miracles except those of which we have a record in our
canonical books. Speaking of some so-called heretics of his day,
Irenseus says, ' so far are they from raising the dead (as the Master
raised them, and the apostles by prayer, and as in the brother-
hood frequently through the constraining power of prayer offered
by the whole church of the place with much fasting and supplica-
tion, the spirit of the dead has come back and the man has been
given back to the prayers of the saints), that they do not believe
^ Bampton Lectures, p. 208.
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OE WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 141
that this can be done.'^ This passage Dr. Mozley summarily sets
aside with the remark that ' the reference is so vague that it
posesses but little weight as testimony.' Yet if the utterances of
Irenseus be worth anything, no statement could well be more ex-
plicit or more decisive. Irenseus here affirms that not once or
twice, but often, bodies physically dead have through the prayers of
the church been reanimated by the spirits which had abandoned
them. This is enough. Of details we have no need. The question
is whether Irenseus speaks the truth or whether he does not. To
dwell on the paucity of incidents, as though this had anything to
do with the real issue, is an unworthy course for an English
theologian of the nineteenth century. It is not as though Irengeus
were the only early writer who makes such assertions, nor as
though the New Testament narratives furnished us with much
more elaborate illustrations. At the outside our four canonical
Gospels bring before us only three instances of such reanimation
of physically dead bodies. Of these three one is peculiar to the
Johannine Gospel ; and the narrative of it is indeed marked by
singular vividness of colouring and multiplicity of detail. Of
this narrative we shall have more to say further on. Whatever
it be, we have already seen that it cannot be regarded as sober
history. In the Synoptic Gospels we have only the reanimating
of the body of the daughter of laeiros, if indeed we are to regard
it as such, in the teeth of the words ascribed to Jesus himself, that
the damsel was not dead, but only sleeping, i.e. in a swoon. The
only other case is the reanimating of the body of the widow's son
at Nain in the third Gospel ; and of this the other three evan-
gelists know nothing, while in the same way all the three synoptics.
know nothing of the raising of Lazarus.
But, to say nothing of other wonders, we have a number of
marvels recorded by Augustine of Hippo, who evidently felt that
too great stress could not be laid upon them; and, to establish
Dr. Mozley 's conclusions, these marvels must be explained away
or discredited. Dr. Mozley, therefore, insists broadly that 'in
1 Adv. Har. ii. 81. 2, cited by Eusebius, H. E. v. 7.
142 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book I.
the preface which Augustine prefixes to his list he cannot be said
even to profess to guarantee the truth or accuracy of the different
instances contained in it.' But, in truth, this preface, coming
from a man living at the time, and in such a position, — from one,
moreover, who stakes his own personal credit on the truth of the
alleged facts, attaches to these marvels a weight of testimony
which is wholly lacking to the narratives of our evangelists.
There is, indeed, no small force in the words of Augustine. To
the question why the wonders recorded in the New Testament
writings are not occurring still, he replies that in fact they are.
' I might answer,' he says, ' that miracles were necessary before
the world believed, in order that the world might believe. Any
one who now requires miracles in order that he may believe is
himself a great miracle, in not believing what all the world believes.'
That his argument really struck at the continuance of miracles
he seems not to have seen, and perhaps he did not care to see it.
But he freely admits that wonders occurring in his own day stand
at a disadvantage as compared with those recorded in the four
Gospels. The later prodigies, he says, ' are not brought under
the same strong light as that which caused the former to be
noised abroad with so much glory, inasmuch as the Canon of
sacred Scriptures, which must be definite, causes those miracles to
be everywhere publicly read and become firmly fixed in the
memory of all peoples.' Miracles now-a-days, he adds, are known
only in small circles, especiall}^ if the population of a city be large.
Mentioning the case of a physician at Hippo, he asks who knows
it, and adds, ' We, nevertheless, do know it, and a few brethren to
whose knowledge it may have come.' This is, clearly, a personal
attestation such as we do not possess for any single miracle
recorded in the Scriptures of the New Testament Canon. He
writes, he tells us, within two years of the time when the incidents
occurred : some of them happened in his own presence ; others, as
to which he felt doubtful, he investigated. The narratives of all
of them had been drawn up that they might be read in the
churches of his diocese ; but he could scarcely, he acknowledges.
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 143
hope for wider publication, and without this he could not expect
them to be generally accepted. The truth is that all cities and all
lands were overburdened each with its own harvest of wonders,
and that prodigies of all kinds were practically drugs in the
market.
As to Augustine's narratives, some of them are given in two or
three sentences, or in a few words, the stories of cures being
related with more detail than those of the reanimation of dead
bodies. This is just what we might expect. In cases of re-
surrection the mere statement of the fact is all that is really
wanted ; and we have little more than this in the story of the
widow's son at Nain, or of the daughter of laeiros, — in short,
nothing which serves in any way to attest the truth of the miracle
or wonder. The writing of Augustine is genuine. " Of the Gospels,
two are not even professedly apostolic, and none has any con-
temporary attestation. On every ground the evidence of the
miracles of which Augustine speaks is enormously stronger than
that which we have for any of the wonders related in the canonical
writings of the New Testament. Yet Dr. Mozley can reject this
evidence without the slightest hesitation, while with equal assur-
ance he accepts that of the Gospels as beyond all doubt conclusive.
So mighty is the force of foregone conclusions.
That Augustine, seeing that miracles were no longer needed for
the purposes of inspiring faith or strengthening it, should thus
stake his own credit on the reality of the wonders which he
records, may be, and is, sufficiently astonishing. The fact that he
did so cannot be questioned; and the information which we
receive incidentally from his statements is most instructive. The
great enemy which baffles him is the carelessness, if not the apathy,
of the people on the subject. They see or -hear, believe, and
straightway forget. It is, in short, the very picture drawn for us
by Dean Milman. ' Even in places,' says Augustine, ' where care
is taken, as is now the case amongst us, that accounts of those who
receive benefit should be publicly read, those who are present
hear them only once, and many are not present at all, the result
144 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECOEDS [Book I.
being that those who are present retain after a few days no
memory of what they have heard, and scarcely one can be found
able to give an account of what he had heard to those who had
not been there.' Wonders were, in fact, we must repeat, immensely
too common; and heedlessness to all wonders was the penalty
paid for* it. We have only to look through any three or four
memoirs in the BoUandist 'Deeds of the Saints' to understand
how inevitable must be this issue. There is a large parading of
what looks like evidence ; but it consists chiefly of small details,
and, as we read, we pass them by with a sensation of monotony
which effectually prevents these details from making the faintest
impression on our minds.
Yet, standing on a foundation so utterly rotten; admitting
that ' Jewish supernaturalism was going on side by side with our
Lord's miracles ;'^ knowing that wonders of the same kind, and in
many cases virtually identical, had, long before the Christian era,
been ascribed to the Vedic and other Aryan deities ; seeing fully
that heathenism ' had its running stream of supernatural pretension
in the shape of prophecy, exorcism, and the miraculous cures of
diseases which the temples of Esculapius recorded with pompous
display ; ' ^ admitting that an examination of their evidence,
altogether beyond the power of any except those who have learn-
ing and leisure, ought to precede the acceptance of any miracles ;
and knowing, finally, that even the good or right miracles could
guide men only to truths which, in Augustine's words, they should
be able to receive without them— Dr. Mozley can still speak of
these useless crutches as the indispensable supports of the spiritual
life. That it should be so is indeed astonishing. Mahomet, it
seems, agreed largely with Augustine, although sundry stories of
marvels have found their way into the Koran ; and Mahomet is,
therefore, denounced and dismissed as having ' an utterly barbarous
1 Bampton Lectures, 209.
2 Why a benefit received in the second or third century B.C. should not be
acknowledged with thankfulness by the receiver, or why his acknowledgement of
it should be set down to the mere love of pompous display, it is not easy to see.
Chap. IV.] MIEACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 145
idea of evidence and a total miscalculation of the claims of reason/
whereas Jesus, with a true 'foresight of the permanent need of
evidence,' admitted * the inadequacy of his own mere word, and
the necessity of a rational guarantee to his revelation of his own
nature and commission.' ^ The profanity of apologetic theologians
is, no doubt, unintentional ; but it is sometimes considerable.
The question of the evidential value of miracles has brought
us into a surging sea of fancies, fictions, and delusions. But the
greatest delusion is the conviction that this tossing ocean is dry
land. This is the conviction of Bishop Butler when he asserts it
to be ' an acknowledged historical fact ' that Christianity ' offered
itself to the world and demanded to be received upon the allega-
tion of miracles . . . publicly wrought to attest the truth of it;
and Christianity, including the dispensation of the Old Testament,
seems distinguished by this from all other religions.' ^ These last
words imply the presence of a certain amount of doubt which he
would have done well to carry into other portions of his inquiry.
Had he done so, he would scarcely have bewildered himself or his
hearers with the idea of layers of miracle on the ground that one
was needed to give support to the rest.^ Butler had a peculiar
dislike to define the terms of which he made use, and a peculiar
knack of evading the daty. Hence of miracle he says that * the
notion of a miracle, considered as a proof of a divine mission, has
been stated with great exactness by divines, and is, I think, suffi-
ciently understood by every one.' In the next sentence the term
incarnation is used after the like sort without any definition.
' There are also,' he says, ' invisible miracles, the Incarnation of
Christ, for instance, which, being secret, cannot be alleged as proof
of such a mission, but require themselves to be proved by visible
miracles.' * But Butler feels no call to specify the visible miracles
wrought for the special purpose of proving that Jesus was not the
Son of Joseph. Paley commits the same sin of using terms
without defining them, when he asks, ' In what way can a revela-
1 Bampton Lectures, p. 32. ^ Analogy ^ Part ii. chap. vii. § 3.
3 See Appendix E. ^ Analogy, Part ii. chap. ii. § L
K
146 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book L
tion be made except by miracles? In none which we are able to
conceive.' This depends entirely on the meaning attached to the
term revelation. If the unfolding be that of traditional or eccle-
siastical Christianity, the question may be fitly put, and admits
only of Paley's answer; but the connotation so assigned to the
term is absolutely false.
The words of Dr. Newman are on this point not less indistinct.
' A revelation/ he tells us, ' that is, a direct message from God to
man, itself bears in some degree a miraculous character.' But
what is a direct message ? and what is the measure in which it
has a miraculous or wonderful character ? It was a revelation, —
in Professor Max Muller's words, ' the greatest of all revelations,'
— when the idea of God as the Father of all took shape in the
human mind. That assuredly was a direct message or communi-
cation from mind to mind. The unfolding which is supposed to
come by means of prodigies, which very few have seen or can see,
and which have not been recorded when and where they occurred,
seems to be a very indirect message indeed, and as circuitous as it
is obscure and perplexing.
Again we are brought back to the conclusion that traditional
apologists rest their case on histories which are fictions, or on
statements to which they themselves attach a false meaning. Dr.
Mozley draws a picture of Jesus as uttering within the courts of
the temple the long series of discourses which are put into his
mouth in our fourth Gospel; and then, having given his own
colouring to much or most of this teaching, he asks what would be
the inevitable conclusion drawn by a sober hearer about a person
so speaking. , He answers that a judicial thinker could only regard
such a person as disordered in his understanding,^ and that, hence,
miracles are the necessary complement of such announcements as
those which he supposes Jesus in those discourses to have made,
^ Virtually, therefore, Dr. Mozley is asserting for himself, as a sober reader
and as a judicial thinker, that if these stories of healing at the pool of Bethesda
and elsewhere had not come down to him, he would himself regard the speaker
of the discourses ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel as ' a person disordered
in his understanding.
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 147
— the announcements without these miracles being purposeless
and abortive.^ We have already had abundant proof that these
discourses never were uttered, as they are here given, and that
they are virtually creations of the evangelist as he composed his
narrative.^ But we will for the moment concede that the narra-
tive is historical, and that Jesus might have been heard so speak-
ing. We are not told that signs or prodigies preceded or accompanied
these discourses. Many of those who heard them may not have
had an opportunity of either seeing or hearing of such attesting
signs or wonders ; and all such persons, until they saw or heard of
them, and were satisfied of their reality and the purpose for which
they were wrought, would, according to Dr. Mozley himself, be
fully justified in regarding him as a man of disordered mind, and
would indeed be bound and compelled to do so. By the hypothesis
these men had not seen the evidential miracles which were yet in
the future ; and therefore, for the time being, these announcements
were for them 'purposeless and abortive.' This astounding con-
clusion is involved in the words of Dr. Mozley himself. But how
could such a marvel as the cure of the blind man, or of the im-
potent man at the pool of Bethesda, attest, even for those who saw
them, the truth of discourses which were not uttered at the same
place or at the same time? But, indeed, for these and for all
other miracles, as they are called, we have no evidence whatever.
The historical credit of the Gospels depends on the trustworthiness
of the Acts of the Apostles, and the history of the Acts is discredited
and put out of court by the apostle Paul himself. The alleged
prodigies have never occurred, and all arguments founded on the
notion that they might have occurred are clean thrown away. With
the antecedent possibility or impossibility of signs and wonders we
have no concern.
But apologetic critics force us to mark that there is even
1 Bampton Lectures, p. 14.
2 The argument is in no way afifected, if it be urged that these discourses
are set down as representations of preachings, imperfectly remembered, and in
great part, if not wholly, misunderstood.
148 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book I.
greater confusion and perplexity in the matter than we had thus
far noticed. Some of them, as we have seen, insist that there is
a broad distinction, marked and prominent, between the Gospel
miracles and all others, and that the latter, having no evidential
value, may be cast aside as so much superfluous rubbish. In
giving their widest generalisations they speak as though the
differences of character between the two classes would be manifest
even to a child. But when they are (as they cannot fail to be)
driven into particulars, their tone is altered, and we find that the
spirit of doubt which has led them to reject the vast crowd of
miracles of all ages and countries, has been at work in their minds
on not a few, if not on the greater number, of the miracles recorded
in the ISTew Testament writings also. Dr. Mozley, for instance,
admits that, when he speaks of the New Testament miracles, he
means only some of them ; and seemingly he is thinking of only
three or four. The majority of them belong, he allows, to the
classes known as ambiguous, — ' cures, visions, expulsions of evil
spirits ; ' but he denies that this circumstance affects the character
of the Gospel miracles as a body, ' because we judge of the body
or whole from its highest specimens, not from its lowest.' He
specifies two, ' e.g. our Lord's resurrection and ascension ; ' and to
these he would, of course, add the secret miracle of the Incar-
nation, although Butler, as we have seen, is so far from regarding
this as of any evidential value, that he looks upon it as needing
to be attested by other signs or wonders. For the sake of these
miracles, therefore, and for these only, does Dr. Mozley, it would
seem, enter on an elaborate argument which logically calls upon
us to put faith in hundreds or in thousands ; and this he does,
only because he will regard the Incarnation, Eesurrection, and
Ascension (if we must use Latin terms), not as spiritual truths and
realities, but as sensible or physical, i.e. historical, incidents or
facts. But for this the whole question would become clear ; but
the veil is still as effectually drawn over Christianity generally,
when miracles are mentioned, as it was upon the eyes of the Jews
on the reading of the law of Moses; and in the meantime
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 149
apologists belonging to the Church of England heap up sophistical
reasons which are to justify them in rejecting as much as they
like of the thaumaturgy of the New Testament Scriptures.
They are, no doubt, justified in rejecting what they put aside ;
but not on the grounds which they allege. It is not true that all
the miracles of the Church are more ambiguous than those of the
Gospels. Dr. Mozley is bound to assert this, or to imply it as
forcibly as he can. Dr. Newman is explicit enough on the
other side. Although he allows that the miracles of ' Scripture '
have on the whole ' a peculiar dignity and beauty,' they have it,
he insists, ' only as a whole,' while some of them ' are inferior in
these respects to certain ecclesiastical miracles, and are received
only on the credit of the system of which they form part.'^ In
other words, it is only because they are found in certain books
that they are believed at all. As to evidence, we are warranted
in saying now, that for the Gospel miracles we have none ; for
those narrated by Augustine we have the testimony of a truthful
man, who declares that he had sifted the cases thoroughly within
a year or two after the occurrence of the events.^ But whether in
the New Testament narratives of miracles, or in any others, there
is nothing new, nothing original. The same incidents are said
to have taken place all over the Aryan world, and beyond it ; and
even the most honest thinkers passively acquiesced in them, and
so encouraged the credulity of more vulgar minds. As for the
earlier Christian literature, it was honeycombed with pious frauds.
In the emphatic words of Dean Milman, ' To deceive into Chris-
tianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself. . . .
The Christian lived in a supernatural world : the notion of the
Divine power, the perpetual interference of the Deity, the agency
of the countless invisible beings which hovered over mankind,
was so strongly impressed upon the belief that every extraordinary
and almost every ordinary incident became a miracle, every inward
^ Essays on Miracles, p. 160,
- Why could he not have sifted each case as it occurred, without the loss of a
month or of a week ?
150 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECOEDS [Book I.
emotion a suggestion either of a good or an evil spirit. A mythic
period was thus gradually formed, in which reality melted into
fable, and invention unconsciously trespassed on the province of
history.' 1
Thus, according not only to Dean Milman, but to Dr. Mozley
himself, the gospel miracles are accepted or tolerated only for the
sake of a few, which are supposed to constitute the highest class,
and which in fact stand apart by themselves. But although we
have this admission in one place, in others we have statements
which demand our acknowledgement' of all on grounds involving
the most amazing perversion or invention of facts. ' Christianity,'
Dr. Mozley has the boldness to assert, 'is the religion of the
civilised world, and it is believed upon its miraculous evidence/
It is judicious, no doubt, to lay this down at starting ; but he does
not add here that by its ' miraculous evidence ' he means only an
extremely small part of it. Instead of doing this, he goes on to
describe a state of things which, if true, would be astonishing
indeed. That miracles, wonders, and prodigies should be believed
by ignorant and superstitious people in a rude age is, he says,
likely enough, ' because it is easy to satisfy those who do not
inquire.' But this, he maintains, *is not the state of the case
which we have to meet on the subject of the Christian miracles '
(i.e. of all, or almost all, of them). ' The Christian, being the most
intelligent, the civilised portion of the world, these miracles are
accepted by the Christian body as a whole, by the thinking and
educated, as well as the uneducated part of it, and the gospel is
believed upon that evidence.' ^
It is not pleasant to be put off with imaginary pictures when
we think that we are dealing with facts of history, and when we
wish only to ascertain them. Dr. Mozley's language, if we give
any heed to it, would actually lead us to believe that there is not,
and that there has not been, any conflict between religion and
science, and that, in fact, all men of scientific training of any sort
have been always the most enthusiastic believers in the extra-
^ History of Christianity, iii. 358. ^ Bampton Lectures, p. 27.
Chap. IV.] MIRACLES OR WONDERS IN THE FOUR GOSPELS 151
ordinary incidents of the Gospel narratives. These wonderful
stories, indeed, are the ground for accepting the gospel at all ; and
the stories are credited by them just because they are educated
and thinking men — in other words, because they have carefully
and impartially examined them, and found the evidence for them
adequate. This must mean that they have, each and all, gone
through the whole historical inquiry which we have felt ourselves
bound to undertake. The whole history of Christendom con-
tradicts this astounding delusion. Christianity, such as it then
was, was imposed on the Empire, and from that time to this has
been maintained by the force of an organised hierarchy. Attempts
at inquiry have been generally repressed, so far as they could be
repj-essed with safety. Wherever men have thought, they have
felt, if they have not expressed, their doubts ; and these doubts
have long since swelled into open revolt among the thinkers and
critics of the Continent generally. In the English Church, or
among English nonconformists, belief for the most part comes by
inheritance, and Englishmen generally do not much care, for sundry
weighty reasons, to pry too closely into things which at present
they would be afraid to reject openly. In short, Christianity is
not believed on account of these marvels. The marvels seem to
be accepted simply because they are recorded in narratives which
are regarded as authoritative^ For the multitude, inquiry has not
yet begun. When they fairly go into the matter for themselves,
a great change will be imminent. On the thinkers of the present
day it depends whether that change shall be steady reformation or
fierce revolution.
If, finally, it be asked how such narratives grew up, we may
reply that virtually the answer has been given already. The
degrading superstition of the Jews, their eager greed for the
marvellous, the concrete character of Eastern language, the material-
ism of Eastern thought, would account sufficiently for the multi-
plication of such stories. Many of the features by which they are
characterised are found all over the world ; and they belong to that
common mythology which has coiled itself by a parasitic growth
152 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book I.
round the person of the teacher of Nazareth, as it has round that
of the British Arthur or of Charles the Great. Every metaphor
employed by such a teacher would be translated into concrete
fact ; and the teaching of Jesus necessarily abounded with such
metaphors. Looking at the Gospels superficially, we should say
that he was simply, or chiefly, a thaumaturge, and that he gave
nothing but missions of thaumaturgy to his apostles or disciples
generally. They are to heal all diseases and infirmities, to cleanse
the lepers, to give hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind, to
make the lame walk, and to raise the dead. This was substantially
the charge twice or thrice given to the twelve, and again to the
seventy. We may say that these were commissions expressly for
the performance of physical or material prodigies ; but if we do,
we shall be plunging into that debasing superstition which in
every age has sapped the intellectual life of Christendom. We shall
also be doing our best to lower the character of the Great Master
himself ; and we shall be doing so without a shadow of excuse.
If we find that in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is constantly
rebuking his followers for their stupid and unconquerable material-
ism, we must see how such commissions would be misunderstood,
if not by those who received, yet by those who recorded, them ;
and if so, then we cannot fail to perceive that Jesus spoke of
spiritual cures and spiritual healing wrought on the spiritually
leprous, lame, deaf, blind, and dead, and that his followers were
charged to bestow these blessings on others as freely as they had
received them themselves. The mental atmosphere of the age
transmuted these merciful works of spiritual cleansing into
prodigies astounding to the bodily senses ; and the records which
we speak of as the Gospel histories are the result. The reversing
of the process will show us clearly how these narratives took
shape.^
See Appendix A.
CHAPTEE V
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS •
In our Gospel narratives of the conception, birth, and infancy of
Jesus, we find two distinct sets of legends which, except in the
one idea of representing his birth as not preceded by ordinary
generation, can scarcely be said to have a single point of agree-
ment. Nay, more, the one set absolutely excludes the other, by
making the actors present at distant places in distant countries at
the same time ; by introducing conflicting motives, and sequences
of events to suit those motives, while in the few references to
really historical characters the writers fall into contradictions
which betray the nature of their materials. The need of account-
ing for the presence of Joseph and Mary at Bethlehem leads the
writer of the third Gospel to speak of the census of Quirinus, and
so to antedate it by some ten years, while he represents Herod the
Great as either knowing nothing of, or giving no heed to, the birth
of the king whom in the first Gospel he seeks to discover only in
order that he may destroy. The falsification is precisely the same
in kind as that by which the writer of the Gospel of Nicodemus
throws the narrative of the crucifixion into the form of a report
from Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius.
But the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus was one of a large
family. The preface to the third Gospel tells us that the name of
such writings was legion, while the self-styled author, claiming
seemingly for himself greater diligence and care in the sifting and
arrangement of his materials, no more claims for himself the
153
154 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book I.
character of an eye-witness than he concedes it to the writers
whose Gospels we must suppose that he had some wish to
supersede.
Yet when the contradictions running throuojh the narratives of
the birth and infancy of Jesus are fully laid bare; when it is
shown that we have the testimony neither of twelve independent
witnesses nor of four independent evangelists ; that a series of
events described in precisely the same words cannot possibly have
been so described at starting by different writers ; that our Gospels
do not belong to the earliest stratum of Christian literature ; that
there is a system in some of the omissions or variations in the
story, and that thus the narratives of the conception and birth
have no place in the fourth Gospel, the last resort of those who
would maintain the historical authority of those records is to what
is called the Canon. These Gospels, they say, have received the
authoritative sanction of the Church ; they have been selected out
of a vast number of spurious writings, and for them we have the
irrefragable testimony of an uninterrupted line of witnesses from
the apostolic age itself.
It is easier to assert than to prove. But we may content our-
selves with the admissions of traditional theologians, if we would
know the nature of the works which they have undertaken to
defend. 'It is certainly remarkable,' says Dr. Westcott, now
Bishop of Durham, * that in the controversies of the second century,
which often turned upon disputed readings of the Scriptures, no
appeal was made to the Apostolic Writings,' while 'it does not
appear that any special care was taken in the first age to preserve
the books of the New Testament from the various injuries of
time, or to insure perfect accuracy of transcription. They were
given as a heritage to man,, and it was some time before man felt
the full value of the gift. The original copies seem to have soon
perished.'
The admissions are fatal. If no appeal was made to the
apostolic originals of the Scriptures, it is equally true that not a
word is said about the existence of these originals. If it appears
Chap. V.] CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WEITINGS 155
that no special care was taken to preserve the books of the New
Testament writings intact, the assertion is justified that, so far
as we know, no care was taken at all. To say that ' the original
copies seem to have soon perished ' is to confess that we know
nothing even of the existence of these originals, and are, therefore,
still less able to say when they perished, or whether they ever
perished at all. Things non-existent cannot disappear.
The last position of the defenders of the canonical books is that
we have a series of testimonies from trustworthy writers in their
favour, together with express statements that a Canon of the New
Testament writings was known and acknowledged in the time of
Marcus Aurelius. Meliton, bishop of Sardeis, we are told, was
perfectly well acquainted with such a Canon, although, unfor-
tunately, he has forgotten to specify any of the books which were
contained in it. On this subject enough perhaps has been said
already.^ In the passage referred to by the Bishop of Durham,
Meliton of Sardeis not only says not one w^ord about any New
Testament writings, but indirectly admits his astonishing ignor-
ance of the books of the Old Testament. In truth, in his day the
phrase ' New Testament ' had not changed its meaning from the
days of the apostle Paul. It denoted simply the new covenant
(fcedus) made by God with his people in place of the old one which
was decaying and ready to vanish away. No one will venture to
say that the words used in the institution of the Eucharist ac-
cording to the first three Gospels had reference to a series of
written volumes. No one will dare to suggest that Paul was
referring to the books from Matthew's Gospel to the Apocalypse
of John as they appear in our Canon, when not one of them, pro-
bably, with the exception of his own epistles, had been written.
Whatever testimonies, therefore, may be produced in favour of
any of our books. Bishop Westcott himself interposes a momentous
reservation in the way of an unquestioning acceptance of them.
' Express statements of readings which are found in some of the
most ancient Christian writers are indeed the first evidence which
^ See m2^ra, p. 98.
156 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book I.
we have, and are consequently of the highest importance. But
until the last quarter of the second century this source of informa-
tion fails us.' The alleged quotations which belong, or are said to
belong, to an earlier time are of such a kind that, in the words
of Bishop Herbert Marsh, ' the authors might have written them,
though they had never seen the book or books to which they are
supposed to allude.' Some of these quotations are clearly made
from writings or traditions which point to an earlier stage of
thought than that even of the Synoptic Gospels. This is the
case in the account given of the baptism of Jesus by Justin
Martyr. But, as we have seen, neither Justin nor the so-called
apostolic fathers (Clement, Ignatius, Barnabas, etc.) make reference
to any of the Gospels by name ; and to a large extent the writings
of these fathers belong, not less than the Gospels, to the
pseudonymous literature of the early Christian ages. It is need-
less to add anything further on this subject of their genuineness,
as few are eager in their defence, and as their authority, even if
undisputed, might furnish some slight evidence for the existence
of writings bearing an indefinite resemblance to our Gospels, but
none for the existence of those Gospels in their present form.
From the close of the second century there is, indeed, no dearth
of testimony in favour of four (and it may be our four) Gospels.
But they come from men who, like Irenseus, maintained that by no
possibility could there be more than four, because there are four
quarters of the earth, and four principal winds, and the Church,
which is the central pillar of the truth, must send her quickening
breath to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south.
They come from men who were eager to welcome the most clumsy
forgeries ; who, like Eusebius, could put faith in the letter of Jesus
to Abgaros of Edessa ; who received as indisputably genuine the
Sibylline rhapsodies which, professing to be composed ages before
the birth of the Messiah, contained verses exhibiting acrostic
initials of his name. But the supposed testimony even of Sibyls
in the days of Tarquin was not without its value ; and Christian
Fathers scrupled not to make use of forged verses, as they scrupled
Chap. V.] CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 157
not to say that Luke, knowing himself to be in the wrong and
Matthew in the right, invented a series of links in his genealogy
to suit theories of moral propriety which objected to include
sinners in a pedigree.
But it may be urged that we have the authority of those who,
winnowing the wheat from the chaff, separated the apocryphal
from the canonical Gospels. It is for those who appeal to such
authority to show who these men were, not by mere assertions but
by clear and cogent evidence. The task of so doing seems to be
given up as desperate even by those who would most heartily
desire to accomplish it. When a zealous defender of the canonical
writings feels compelled to say that the authority attributed to the
New Testament ' seems to have grown up without any one being
able to place his finger upon the place or moment when adhesion
to it was first yielded,' we may be sure that the suggestion of a
supposed probability veils a hard and significant fact.
But to go on laying stress on such pleas, or on the refutation
of them, is to approach too near to what logicians call ignoratio
elenchi. We are really diverting the question to a false issue.
We are using, or allowing others to use, high-sounding phrases,
the employment of which is much like attempts to browbeat,
when persuasion is of no avail. It matters not whether we see
an incipient Canon in the second century, or one fully and exactly
drawn out in the fourth. In either case the books stand exactly
where they stood before. The judgement of the Nicene or any i
other Council might get rid of much that is coarse, gross, repul-
sive, or grotesque; but it can do nothing towards dealing with
difticulties for the solution of which we have no evidence. It
will not tell us when, where, or by whom any book was written,
and it will not make a single sentence trustworthy which had
been, or may be, rejected as unhistorical or false. The appeal is
made to authority, and to authority only ; and by all lovers of
truth the appeal will be firmly set aside. Whatever be the
decision of an ecclesiastical or any other assembly, the questions
of the truth of the journey into Egypt and the abode at Nazareth )
158 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book I.
must be settled on purely historical grounds; and to settle
them (if they can be settled) ia the task of the historical critic, not
iof the theologian.^
^ The most candid admissions as to the value of the Canon made during the
last thirty years have come from Dr. Irons, in his work on ' The Bible and its
Interpreters.' Briefly, he alleged its worthlessness as a conclusive reason for
submitting ourselves to an infallible external authority. Maintaining straight-
forwardly that we know nothing of the evangelists, of the time when, or of the
places in which the Gospels were written, that these narratives cannot be
harmonised, or their texts relied on, he nevertheless avowed the conviction that
we can, and ought to, trust ourselves to the authority of the Church, which insists
on our acceptance of these narratives and of the teaching built upon them. Your
Canon, he said in effect, is worthless ; your sacred books contradict each other
and themselves ; you can never appeal to them with success in the battle against
historical criticism ; but you must believe ; without faith or trust you can have
no peace ; the belief in the Bible as a series of consistent historical records is
gone never to return ; but you can believe in the Church, and on her authority
you can accept that which as critics you are bound to reject.
The boldness of this pleading failed to reconcile traditionalists to its
imprudence, and, practically, the book was withdrawn from circulation. — Cox,
Life of Bishop Colenso, ii. 84.
BOOK II
THE NATIVITY
CHAPTEK I
THE GENEALOGIES OF THE FIEST AND THIRD GOSPELS
A CRITICAL task once undertaken must be worked out in its
most minute and, as it might seem, trivial details. Not a few,
perhaps, might be well pleased if the genealogies in the Gospels
bearing the names of Matthew and Luke could be set aside upon
the plea that the Christian life has many a higher duty than that
of groping into records, the truth or the falsity of which is a
matter of no moment. But this is a mere begging of the question.
On the face of them, these genealogies nowhere, except in one
single phrase, give the least sign that the compilers regarded these
records as insignificant or unimportant. The first record is formally
set forth as the book of the generations of Jesus Christ from David
and Abraham, and therefore claims all the authority which such a
title can bestow. The third Gospel alone inserts two words,^ which
call the whole list into question. If Jesus was the son of Joseph
only by a supposition which might be false, any other entry in
the list may be in the same plight ; and it is incredible that the
compiler could prefix such a phrase to his list, so long as he
put the slightest faith in it himself. Apart from those two words,
there is no sign that the compiler looked on this long series of
names with the least misgiving ; and the conclusion follows that
^ Luke iii. 23, ws ivo/jd^ero.
159
160 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL EECORDS [Book II
the words are not his, and that in fact they are interpolated. We
may not have the evidence of manuscripts to prove that the words
have been thrust in; but it is impossible for us to set limits
to the extent of insertions, changes, or omissions made during
the ages for which we have no manuscript at all.
The removal of these two words brings out in stronger light
the fact that for the genealogist the descent of Jesus from Abraham
was strictly natural, and that any interference with its strictly
natural character would deprive it of all value. The genealogy of
Matthew makes use of the word expressive of ordinary generation,
in every case from Abraham down to Joseph ; and the words
which follow state nothing to the contrary in the case of Mary.
But the writer of the first Gospel declares it to be historical
fact, not only that Jesus Christ is the son of David, but that all the
generations from Abraham to David amount to fourteen, the genera-
tions from David to the Babylonish captivity, and again from the
captivity down to Jesus inclusive, being also in each case fourteen.
Thus, three sets of fourteen generations are said to give all the
links in the chain between Abraham and Jesus. The assertion is
of the greatest importance, for, if we confine our attention to the
genealogy itself, we find that the generations in the third
stage, including Jesus, amount only to thirteen. Among the
attempts to get over this difficulty may be reckoned the insertion
of the name of Jehoiakim between Josiah and Jechoniah, the
latter being the grandson, and not the son, as Matthew states, of
Josiah. The only result of this, however, is to make the second
set of generations fifteen; it does not supply the link necessary
to complete the even number of the third set. It needs scarcely
to be said that interpreters are at no loss to find explanations for
this as for other difficulties ; and a favourite method employed by
them is to insist that objections urged now were known and
urged long ago.
The objections to these genealogies were known long ago,
indeed; and perhaps no circumstance shows more clearly the
dishonesty and deception of some of the most illustrious of
or
Chap. I.] GENEALOGIES OF THE FIRST AND THIRD GOSPELS 161
Christian doctors. Far beyond the others in learning, Jerome is
the one who does least violence to our sense of truthfulness. Of
his suggestion, that Jechonias in Matt. i. 1 1 is Jehoiakim, while
the Jechoniah of the following verse is Jehoiachin, we need only
say that it seems to disparage the mental powers of the genea-
logist, who clearly describes them as one and the same person.
Augustine, perfectly aware that a link is lacking in the second set
of generations, and that the number of the third set is deficient,
resorts to the favourite expedient of counting Jechoniah twice, on
the ground that 'whenever a series turns out of the right line
to go in any other direction there is an angle made, and that part
which is in the angle is reckoned twice.' ^
This clearly is laid down as a general principle. But the
Exodus, surely, is as great an angle as the carrying away to
Babylon. Yet neither Salmon nor Naasson is reckoned twice.
Do what we will, then, we cannot, confining ourselves to Matthew's ^
genealogy, make up the number of forty-two generations ; but at
this point Augustine interposes with a curious quibble. If
Matthew had stated explicitly that the three sets taken together
amount to forty-two, he would, Augustine thinks, have been
telling a lie ; but Matthew, he argues, ' does not sum them all up
and say that the total is forty-two, because one of their fathers,
i.e. Jechoniah, is reckoned twice. . . . Matthew, therefore, whose
purpose was to draw out Christ's kingly character, counts forty
successions in the genealogy exclusive of Christ. This number
denotes the time for which we must be governed by Christ in this
world. . . . That this number should denote our temporal life, a
reason offers at hand in this, that the seasons of the year are four,
and that the world itself is bounded by four sides. But forty
contains ten four times; moreover, ten itself is made up by a
proceeding from one to four.' We are left in a 'bog of symbols
and types, and merely note the remark of Kemigius, that if we take
the generations as being forty-two 'we shall say that the holy
^ Be Coils. Evang. ii. 4, quoted in the Catena Aurea, ascribed to Thomas
Aquinas, in Matt. i. 17.
162 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECORDS [Boox IL
Church is signified, for this number is the product of seven and
six. The six denotes labour, the seven rest'
But without referring yet to the genealogy of the third Gospel,
we have to compare that of Matthew with statements in the Old
Testament writings, by which it may be tested down to the
Babylonish captivity, for after that time it passes altogether
beyond our control. The time from Abraham to David agrees
with the genealogies of Genesis and the later books. But in
chap. i. 8 we are confronted by the formidable statement that
Joram begat Ozias — this Ozias being also known as Uzziah and
Azariah. But the genealogist has here struck out three genera-
tions, for Joram ^ (son of Jehoshaphat, the friend and ally of Ahab
of Israel) is in the Old Testament the father of Ahaziah,^ who was
slain by the order of Jehu, when the latter conspired against
and slew the sons of Ahab. Ahaziah, again, was the father of
Joash, who is said to have reigned well during all the days of
Jehoiada^ the priest, and Joash was succeeded by his son
Amaziah, in whom at last we have the father of Uzziah.^ These
omissions, astounding in any writer with the least claim to the
historical sense, are largely explained by the eagerness of a
mystical mind to repeat in subsequent divisions the number of
the generations in the first marked stage from Abraham to David.
As these amounted to fourteen, the genealogist had no scruple
in laying the rest on the bed of Procrustes, and lengthening or
shortening them at his will. But this explanation is not less
fatal to the historical authority of the writer than are the spiritual
objects attributed to him by Augustine or Eemigius.
Either Joram was the father of Uzziah, or he was not. Either
all the generations between David and Jechoniah were fourteen, or
they were not. The goodness or badness of the persons forming
the links in the chain cannot possibly modify historical facts.
Yet with a wonderful assurance Augustine can tell us that
* Ochazias, Joash, and Amasias were excluded from the number
^ 1 Kings xxii. 50. ^ 2 Kings viii. 25 ; ix. 27.
3 2 Kings xii. 1, 21. * 2 Kings xiv. 21.
Chap. I.] GENEALOGIES OF THE FIKST AND THIRD GOSPELS 163
because their wickedness was continuous and without interval.'
Solomon, to be sure, had fallen into wicked ways, ' but he was
suffered to hold his kingdom for his father's deserts, Eehoboam for
those of his son.' Augustine means probably that Eehoboam was
reckoned for the deserts of his good grandson Asa, not of his
wicked son Abijam. The discrepancy would be of no importance
in the Augustinian view of history ; but here, as in the case of
the angles or turning-points already mentioned, Augustine makes
it a matter of principle. Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah were
struck out because they were successively evil. ' This, then, is an
example how a race is cut off when wickedness is shown therein
in perpetual succession.' There is some obstacle in the way ofl
this theory in the statement that Amaziah did that which was
right in the sight of the Lord ;^ and even the Chronicler, with
whom Amaziah is evidently no favourite, does not warrant the
summary sentence of Augustine. But the constant wickedness of
Amaziah was necessary for the bishop of Hippo ; and what should
hinder him from creating it ?
In marked contrast with all this is the admission of Jerome
that 'according to historical truth there were three intervening
kings who are omitted by the evangelist, because it was his purpose
to make each of the three periods consist of fourteen generations,'
while the particular omission of the three immediate descendants
of Joram is said to have been suggested by the fact that ' Joram
had connected himself with Jezebel's most wicked race.'^ The
inference from Jerome's admission wholly destroys the credit of
the genealogist as a historian. After such twistings of facts as '
these it seems almost needless to note that Matthew (i. 12) makes
Zorobabel a son of Salathiel, while in 1 Chron. iii. 19 he is a
nephew of Salathiel (being the son of his brother Pedaiah), or that
the name of Abiud is not to be found among the sons of Zorobabel
in the same passage of the Chronicles.
When we turn to the genealogy of the third Gospel, the
difficulties are no less serious. In Matthew, Zorobabel is the son
1 2 Kings xiv. 3, 2 Quoted by Aquinas, G. Aur. in Matt. i. 8.
164 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book II.
of Salathiel ; in the Chronicles, he is a son of Pedaiah ; in Luke,
he is the son of quite a new person named Neri. In Matthew
the son of Zorobabel is Abiud, whose name is not to be found in the
Old Testament books ; but in Luke the son of Zorobabel is Ehesa,
who is also unknown to the Chronicler, while in these two names
(Salathiel and Zorobabel) alone between David and Joseph the
husband of Mary do these two genealogies agree. From Abraham
to David the succession is in both the same ; but from David on-
wards, with the two exceptions just mentioned, these pedigrees,
which agree in deriving the lineage of Jesus through Joseph, trace
the descent through a totally different set of names. Joseph's
father in Matthew is called Jacob, in Luke Heli. In the former
Jesus is descended from David through Solomon, in the latter
through Nathan. In Matthew the line comes through the known
series of kings ; in Luke, except in Zorobabel and Salathiel, through
a succession of unknown persons.
This difficulty respecting the parentage of Joseph is commonly
explained on the hypothesis of a Levirate marriage, and that the
genealogy of Matthew gives the natural, that of Luke the legal,
descent. But it is obvious that if the two fathers of Joseph were
brothers, sons of the same father, they had one and the same
lineage ; and this would involve no difference of genealogy beyond
Heli and Joseph. Hence there has arisen the further notion that
they were half-brothers, sons of the same mother but of different
fathers, and that another Levirate marriage had taken place in the
case of the mother of the real and putative fathers of Joseph.
This same complicated arrangement is brought in in order to
account for the appearance of Salathiel and Zorobabel, Neri in
Luke and Jechonias in Matthew standing to Salathiel in the rela-
tion of Jacob and Heli to Joseph. This is, of course, conceivably
possible ; but the fact in the case of Salathiel is disproved by the
statements of the Chronicler, if indeed any dependence can be
placed on the latter.
The attempt to get over the difficulty by regarding one of the
genealogies as that of Mary is not more successful. Both the
Chap. I.] GENEALOGIES OF THE FIEST AND THIED GOSPELS 165
evangelists prefer to give the genealogy of Joseph, while neither
of them gives any support to the Davidic descent of Mary, for
the phrase 'house of David' in Luke i. 27 refers to Joseph, and
not to the more remote word ' espoused,' while the pointed ex-
pression that Joseph went with Mary to Bethlehem, ' because he
was [not ' they were '] of the house and lineage of David ' seems
to exclude the idea.
The frequent occurrence of the same names in the genealogy
of Luke can scarcely fail to give strength to the suspicion that the
list is in great part fictitious. But here the compiler of the
Catena Attrea, which bears the name of Thomas Aquinas, cites
from Eusebius a piece of special pleading not unlike that by which
Augustine, as we have seen, seeks to save the veracity of Matthew.
' If Luke,' he says, ' had asserted that Joseph was the son of Heli
in like manner as Matthew, there might be some dispute; but
seeing the case is that Matthew gives his opinion, Luke repeats
the common opinion of many, not his own, for since there were
among the Jews different opinions of the genealogy of the Christ,
and yet all traced him up to David, because to him were the
promises made, while many affirmed that the Christ would come
through Solomon and the other kings, some shunned this opinion
because of the many crimes recorded of their kings, and because
/Jeremiah said of Jechonias that a man should not rise of his
seed to sit on the throne of David. This last view Luke takes,
though conscious that Matthew gives the real truth of the
genealogy. This is the first reason; the next is a deeper one,
for Matthew, when he began to write of the things before the
conception of Mary and the birth of Jesus in the tiesh, very fitly,
as in a history, commences with the ancestry in the flesh, and,
descending from thence, declares his generation from those who
went before. For when the Word became flesh he descended.
But Luke hastens forward to the regeneration which takes place
in baptism, and then gives another succession of families, and,
rising up from the lowest to the highest, keeps out of sight the
sinners of whom Matthew makes mention, and names those who
166 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IL
had lived a virtuous life in the sight of God. To him, therefore,
who is born in God he ascribes parents who are according to God
on account of this resemblance in character.'
Absurd, mischievous, and false as these sentences may be,
they are both noteworthy and instructive. Men wlio think and
speak thus are incapable of forming any right judgement on matters
of fact. Their historical sense has been so systematically per-
verted that their conclusions on all subjects must be received with
the utmost suspicion : and we should be justified in saying that
such writers could not be relied upon for the truth in any state-
ments made by them, whatever these may be. There is, however,
no real reason for thinking that these genealogies belonged to the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke in their earlier shapes, while there
is much to lead us to an opposite conclusion. The genealogy of
Matthew is followed, while that of Luke is preceded, by a narra-
tive which undoubtedly denies the descent of Jesus from David
through Joseph by a natural order. Yet, if these genealogies are
not taken as asserting the natural parentage of Jesus through
Joseph, they are absolutely meaningless. When the Manicheari
IFaustus protested against the absurdity of tracing the line through
Joseph on the reservation that Joseph was not the father of
Jesus, Augustine could only urge the necessity of so tracing it
on account of the superior dignity of the masculine gender. But
it is scarcely necessary to remark that any one who disbelieved
the paternity of Joseph could have traced the pedigree through
Mary, if he believed that Mary also was of the seed of David :
and this, in truth, we find to be the case. Justin Martyr not
only does not admit the genealogies of the Synoptic Gospels ; he
is either ignorant of them, or he disbelieves them. According to
him, it is Mary, not Joseph, who is descended from David. If
Justin had before him our first Gospel, he clearly cared nothing
for the authority of the angel who addressed Joseph as the son
of David. In our third Gospel, Joseph goes to Bethlehem because
he was of the house and lineage of David. According to Justin,
he went thither merely because he belonged to the tribe of
Chap. I.] GENEALOGIES OF THE FIRST AND THIRD GOSPELS 167
Judah, which inliabited that region. Nor was the genealogy of
the Gospel which Justin followed the only one which traced the
descent of Jesus from David through his mother. It was so set
down in the Protevangelion of James and the Gospel of the
Nativity of Mary. It is quite possible that these and other such
works may have been drawn from the same sources with the
Gospel which Justin had before him ; and it is quite certain that
none of them corresponded with our Synoptic narratives.^
There is something not a little humiliating in the fact that
the mere appearance of authority should have secured the intel-
lectual submission of Christendom for fifteen centuries or more.
Genealogies are formal documents, which are either exact in the
statement of facts, or wholly worthless. Here are two genealogies
included in books still maintained by some, or many, to be without
flaw or error. It follows that all their contradictions must be
explained away, or their contradictory statements be accepted as
truths. The result is that slavery of the intellect which has
spread a blight over Christendom. For many or most of these lists
it is quite possible that the idea of a natural descent from David
may have followed the application of the title ' Son of David ' in
a spiritual sense, and that genealogies may have been framed in
accordance with the idea so suggested.^ However this may be,
the manifest evidences of fabrication, with the tangled masses
of contradictions which are the necessary result of fabrication,
deprive both these canonical genealogies of all historical value
and authority.
But when this has been said, the fact remains that the
genealogies inserted in our canonical Synoptics, and those which
Justin had before him, all agree in tracing the descent of Jesus
from David, and that this descent is manifestly in the natural
order. Whether it came through Joseph or through Mary is a
point of little consequence ; and the one question which we have
still to ask is whether this idea of Davidic descent according to
the flesh is described as receiving any countenance from Jesus
1 Supernatural Religion, Part ii. cli. iii. " See Appendix A.
168 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECOEDS [Book II.
himself. The answer must, it seems, be a flat negative. The
dilemma into which Jesus is said to bring the Pharisees by asking
who the Christ is, and how, if David be his father, David could
speak of him as his master or lord, implies a rejection of the idea,
and the title ' Jesus of Nazareth ' points in the same direction. It
looks as though it came from those for whom his connexion with
Bethlehem and the house of David was a thing unknown ; and yet,
if the Synoptic stories be true, the birth of Jesus had been
notorious. It had been marked by the appearance of a star and
the visit of mysterious strangers; by the slaughter of children
throughout a whole district ; by the presentation of the child in
the temple as well as by all the marvellous circumstances attendant
on the birth of his precursor John the Baptist. According to
these traditions (however contradictory and mutually exclusive
they may be) there was no man living about whose birth and
early history there could be less doubt. Eastern kings had knelt
before him as he lay in the manger. The shepherds of Bethlehem
had crowded round him after they had heard the angels singing in
the heavens. Aged saints had received him into their arms in
the temple with thankful joy and with the explicit warning that
the child was set for the rising and falling of many in Israel ; and
at the age of twelve the child himself had disputed with the
greatest doctors of Jerusalem and left them astonished at his under-
standing and answers. Yet all these traditions of his Davidic
descent are forgotten when he comes to enter on his ministry. In
Galilee he is known simply as the carpenter's son, or as being
himself the carpenter. In Nazareth the people wonder how he
had obtained his wisdom. But no reference is made to the
circumstances of his birth or to his descent, either by his hearers,
or by his mother, who is said to have kept all these sayings and
pondered them in her heart, or, as the narratives tell us, by him-
self. The fourth Gospel, which makes Jerusalem, and not Galilee,
the chief scene of his labours, betrays the same forgetfulness. In
this Gospel (vii. 15) the Jews assert positively his want of educa-
tion, and they do this in the very temple where he had astonished
Chap. I.] GENEALOGIES OF THE FIEST AND TRIED GOSPELS 169
the doctors some twenty years before; and their assertion that
they knew whence he came is not only not denied but is said to
be admitted by Jesus himself. Yet this assertion was accompanied
by the declaration that when the Anointed One comes no one
knows whence he is, although, again, some thirty years before, the
chief priests and scribes, on the inquiry of Herod, were ready with
the answer that he must be of the lineage of David, and must be
born in Bethlehem.
There is, therefore, for these genealogies, and for the ideas on
which they are based, no corroborative testimony or evidence
whatsoever.
CHAPTER II
THE NAllRATIVES OF THE NATIVITY
If a reader, taking up the first Gospel without any knowledge of
the third or of any later Christian literature bearing on the subject,
should confine himself strictly to the statements of Matthew, he
would certainly conclude that Joseph, the betrothed husband of
Mary, discovering that his future wife was with child, not by him-
self, thought of privately putting her away ; that the only intima-
tion of the true cause of her pregnancy was received by him in a
dream, in which the angel of the Lord is said to have announced
to him that the child had been conceived by the Holy Ghost (or
breath), and that he should be called Jesus, the Healer, in order to
fulfil a prophecy of Isaiah, that the Messiah should be born of a
virgin (Matt. i. 22, 23); that on the strength of this dream, and of
this alone, he took to him Mary his wife without availing himself
of his rights as a husband until after the birth of her first-born ;
that after his birth some wise men. Magi, from the East, who had
seen his star, came to Jerusalem to see if they could find him ;
that Herod the king, hearing of their errand, was troubled, and
all the people were thrown into alarm; that the chief priests,
when questioned as to the birthplace of the Messiah, answered at
once that it must be Bethlehem, in accordance with a prophecy of
Micah (Matt. ii. 6) ; that Herod, having made a careful note of the
time at which the Magi had seen the star, sent them to look for
the child, bidding them, when they had found him, to return to
him that he might go and do him reverence ; that as soon as they
Chap. II.] THE NAERATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 171
set out from Jerusalem, the star which they had seen before
re-appeared, and, guidmg them forward, stood at last over the very-
spot where the child was ; that, after spreading out before him in
the presence of his mother their gifts of gold, frankincense, and
myrrh, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
while Joseph and Mary were in like manner warned to take the
child away secretly into Egypt, and that accordingly, in order to
fulfil a prophecy of Hosea (Matt. ii. 1 5), Joseph took the child and
his mother straight from Bethlehem into Egypt, leaving Herod,
when he found that he had been cheated by the Magi, to order a
general massacre of the children ^ in Bethlehem and its neighbour-
hood in order to fulfil another prophecy of Jeremiah ; that on the
death of Herod, Joseph, again taught by an angel in a dream,
returned with the child from Egypt, but, being afraid to go to
Jerusalem, made his way by a side route to Galilee to fulfil
some other prophecies.
On further scrutiny the reader of this chapter would see that
down to the time of the preaching of John the Baptist, the first
Gospel speaks of Jesus as being present only in Bethlehem, Egypt,
and Nazareth. To Jerusalem he never goes at all, while his
^ This narrative is one of several features in the Nativity stories, which the
Hindu tales of Krishna are supposed to have taken directly from the Christian
traditions. With this question of borrowing I am not called upon to deal.
Even if it could be shown that every incident in the Krishna myth was taken
from Christian Gospels, this would not add one iota to the historical authority of
any of those Gospels. Whether the Purana stories of Krishna belong to a com-
paratively late epoch in our era is, again, a matter of complete indifference. The
Purana legends may, or may not, be constructed from materials belonging even to
prehistoric ages ; and, if we wish to obtain an answer to this question, we must
take the whole legend to pieces, and trace all its factors back to their earliest
ascertainable forms. This task has been most conscientiously accomplished by
Mr. John M. Robinson in his volume in titled Christ and Krishna, and to that
volume I must refer the reader for the evidence which proves that every single
feature in the Krishna story was commonly known in ages long preceding the
Christian era ; that if there has been borrowing, the borrowing has been rather
on the Christian side than on that of the Hindu ; that the legends with which
the name of Krishna is more especially connected had a high religious standing
in the days of Megasthenes, and that an important Krishna cultus, resting on
these legends, existed even before that period and flourished long before any
possible advent of Christian influences. From tliis point of view the controversy
must be regarded as finally closed.
172 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECORDS [Book II.
reputed father Joseph learns nothing of the circumstances of the
conception from his mother, who is wholly silent throughout the
narrative. The reader might further mark that the first tidings
of the birth of Jesus are brought to Jerusalem by the Magi ; that
a star, visible to the Magi on their journey from Jerusalem to
Bethlehem, must also have been visible to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, and have impressed still more deeply on their minds the
fact of the birth of the Anointed One ; and that the slaughter of
the innocents would still further mark by a painful memory, not
soon effaced from the hearts of mothers, the circumstances atten7
dant on the visit of the mysterious Magi.
But, before scrutinising the alleged astronomical phenomena,
he might remark that the whole tenor of the narrative is a com-
plete justification of the science of astrology; that the first
intimation of the birth of the Healer was given to worshippers, it
would seem, of Ahuromazda (Ormuzd), who have somehow or
other the power of distinguishing his peculiar star; that from
these strangers the first tidings of his birth are received by the
Jews at Jerusalem, and therefore that the theory must be right
which connects great events in the life of men with phenomena
in the starry heavens. If this Divine sanction of astrology be
contested on the ground that this was an exceptional event, in
which, simply to bring the Magi to Jerusalem, God caused the star
to appear in accordance with their superstitious science, the
difficulty is only pushed one degree backwards, for in this case
God, it is asserted, brought about an event which was perfectly
certain to strengthen the belief of the Magi, of Herod, of the
Jewish priests, and of the Jews generally in the truth of astrology.
If, to avoid this alternative, recourse be had to the notion that the
star appeared by chance, and that this chance or accident directed
the Magi aright, is the position really improved ? Is chance
consistent with any notion of Divine government at all ?
A similar difficulty recurs in the application of the alleged
prophecy that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem. The
passage in the book of Micah says nothing about his birth in
Chap. II.] THE NAKRATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 173
Bethlehem. It merely asserts that some expected governor
should come out of (not be born in) Bethlehem, and be a
descendant of David. It follows, therefore, that, as astrological
science or chance directed the Magi rightly to Jerusalem, so a
wrong interpretation of alleged prophecy guided the chief priests
aright to the birthplace of the deliverer.^
But the difficulties are as yet only begun. Herod's first anxious
question to the Magi is to ascertain the time of the appearance of
the star. He ' inquires exactly ' (Matt. ii. 7) ; and he must have
had a motive for so doing. What was this motive ? Could he have
had any other purpose than that of determining the age under
which no infant in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem should be
allowed to live ? But, according to the narrative, Herod never con-
ceived the idea of slaughtering the children till he found that he
had been * mocked ' of the wise men ; and the fictitious nature of
the story is betrayed by this anticipation of motives which at the
time spoken of could have no existence. Yet further, Herod,
who, though in a high degree cruel, unjust, and unscrupulous, is
represented as a man of no slight sagacity, clearness of purpose,
and strength of will, and who feels a deadly jealousy of an infant
who, he is sure, has been born in Bethlehem (a place only a few
miles distant from Jerusalem), is here described not as sending
his own emissaries privately to put him to death, or despatching
^ The expectations (whatever they may have been) of a deliverer looked for
by the Jews cannot l)e taken as accrediting an alleged prediction, unless we can
show that the prediction was both clear and definite. General expectations of
a like kind have been entertained among all depressed and conquered peoples.
To this expectation among the Jews at the time of the birth of Jesus, Tacitus,
in the opinion of Dean Milman, bears witness. But in the passage which Dr.
Milman quotes from his Histories, v. 13, Tacitus is speaking of the time, not of
the birth of Jesus, but of the destruction of Jerusalem, and states that at that
precise time the Jews looked for the rising of a great deliverer, and interprets
the prophecy of Vespasian and Titus. Of the prophecy of Micah Dean Milman
says simply that ' no prediction in the Old Testament appears more distinct than
that which assigns for the nativity of the great prince who was to perpetuate the
line of David the same town which had given birth to his royal ancestor. ' But
the passage of Micah says nothing about any nativity. And did Jesus perpetuate
the line of David ? If the phrase be taken in a spiritual sense, surely Bethlehem
may be spiritualised also.
174 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IL
tliem with the Magi, or detaining the latter at Jerusalem until he
had ascertained the truth of their tale and the correctness of the
answer of the priests and scribes, but as simply suffering the Magi
to go by themselves, at the same time charging them to return
with the information for which he is said to have shown himself
so feverishly anxious.^
This strange conduct can be accounted for only on the ground
of judicial blindness ; but they who resort to such an explanation
must suppose that this blindness was inflicted in order to save the
new-born child thus threatened ; and if they adopt this hypothesis,
they must further believe that this arrangement likewise insured
the death of a number of infants instead of one. A natural
reluctance to take up such a notion might prompt the question.
Why were the Magi brought to Jerusalem at all ? If they knew
that the star was the star of Jesus (Matt. ii. 4), and were by this
knowledge conducted to Jerusalem, why did it not suffice to guide
them straight to Bethlehem, and thus prevent the murder of the
innocents ? Why did the star desert them after its first appear-
ance, not to be seen again till they issued from Jerusalem ? And
if it did not desert them, why did they ask Herod and the priests
which road they should take, when, by the hypothesis, the star
was ready to guide them ? As far as the evangelist is concerned,
these last incidents were so arranged only to enable him to bring
in the alleged prophecy of Micah, which we have already seen to
be thoroughly inapplicable.
On the nature of the star it is idle to waste many words.^ In
1 Dean Milman alleges certain atrocities committed hj Herod on the discovery
of the plot of Bagoas as a fitting prelude for the slaughter of the innocents ; but
he says nothing of the silence of Josephus on this event and on the visit of the
Magi and the incidents which preceded it.
2 Dean Milman, History of Christianity, i. iii., deprecates the rigidity of
interpretation which identifies this phenomenon with a conjunction of Jupiter
and Saturn, and asks for the same latitude of exposition in the New Testament
writings which is allowed for those of the Old. But what is the latitude which
is, or which ought to be, allowed for the Old Testament ? What, again, if this
latitude be granted, did Dr. Milman take this phenomenon to be ? It was either
something or nothing. It is useless to talk of persons being awe-struck under
such extraordinary events, when he has himself asserted that they lived in an
Chap. IL] THE NARKATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 175
a narrative involved in such a web of contradictions it is a mere
throwing away of time to inquire whether at or about this time
there was, or was not, some conjunction or transit of stars or some
appearance of a comet. We may give due weight to the assertion
of Kepler, that a remarkable transit took place much about this
time; and yet we may affirm that neither that transit nor any
comet could be this phenomenon. We know well that the con-
junction of stars is by comparison only a momentary phenomenon,
and that comets, like other bodies in the heavens, will not appear
to point to, or to stand over, any particular spot, as we move from
place to place, but will appear to go forward with our movement,
and that the phenomenon here recorded, if it is to be explained
age in which events in our judgement the most astounding 'might pass off as
little more than ordinary occurrences.' Dean Milman's judgement is free when,
dealing with Jewish credulity generally, he tells us that the marvels ascribed to
the ministry of Jesus took place in an age and among a people which superstition
had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events that
' wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand
on the ever ready belief. ' But his judgement is not free, when he thinks that it
is his duty to find explanations which may satisfy the exigencies of the traditional
theology of Christendom.
In the course of this inquiry I shall have to cite from the writings of Dr.
Milman many passages which will exhibit him in his strength and in his weakness.
But at the outset I must in the plainest words say that, when I find myself least
in agreement with him, I regard his memory and his work with undiminished
reverence and gratitude. He felt honestly convinced that in the canonical
Gospels there must be a true record of events which actually took place ; and if
he found them self-contradictory or mutually exclusive, what could he do but
choose one of the versions and say nothing about the inconsistencies between
that version and the others ? The method is beyond doubt not legitimate ; but
to suppose that Dr. Milman could leap from the prevalent worship of sacred
books to thorough freedom from bibliolatry in any shape would be to ascribe to
him a superhuman strength. He did a work of vast importance, which will
continue to produce more and more fruit as the years pass by. Nor have I the
least doubt that if the weak points of his method could have been brought before
him thirty years ago as they might be brought now, he would have given up
many conclusions which might be shown to be indefensible.
I purposely in many instances quote from Dean Milman in preference to more
recent writers, not merely because I have specially scrutinised his words through
a long series of years, but because he is, on the whole, the fairest, the most
straightforward, the most truthful, of the writers who in this present century
have dealt with subjects which seem to carry with them peculiar temptations to
disingenuous shiftiness, even if they do not lead to downright misrepresentation
and falsehood.
176 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Bqok IL
at all by human experience, could only have been a body far
within the reach of the earth's attraction; and in this case its
light would have been extinguished in a much shorter time than
that which must be spent in a night journey from Jerusalem to
Bethlehem. Nothing, it is true, is said of the hour at which they
left Jerusalem ; but we may give them the benefit of the doubt,
and suppose that they journeyed by night, for, if they travelled
by day, the star would necessarily be invisible.
We have already seen that the passage adduced from Micah
to prove the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem has been misapplied.
The same remark must be made on the prophecy cited from
Jeremiah in reference to the slaughter of the innocents, and,
indeed, on all passages cited from the prophetical books, whether
in this Gospel or in any other book of the New Testament writings.
The sentence taken from Jeremiah (xxxi. 1 5) refers not to children
slaughtered at Bethlehem hundreds of years after his death, but
to persons taken captive at Eama, in the tribe of Benjamin, near
the tomb of Eachel, who is thus represented as weeping for her
children ; but these, the prophet adds, shall return and her sorrow
shall be turned into joy. At Bethlehem Leah should weep, not
Eachel, for Leah was the mother of Judah and his descendants.
The passage cited (Matt. i. 23) from Isaiah to prove the birth
of Jesus from a virgin by extraordinary generation is, if possible,
still more violently forced. The chapter in Isaiah explains itself.
The confederate armies of Eezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king
of Israel, had marched against Jerusalem, to the consternation of
king Ahaz, who is warned by Isaiah to keep quiet, and not to
heed the two tails of those smoking firebrands Eezin and Pekah.
Isaiah further bids him ask for a sign, and when Ahaz refuses to
do so, tells him that a woman shall conceive and bear a son, whose
name should be called Immanuel, and who should eat butter and
honey, and that before the child should know to refuse the evil
and to choose the good, the land abhorred by Ahaz should be
forsaken of both her kings. The words of Isaiah thus referred
to events which were to take place during the lifetime of Ahaz,
Chap. II.] THE NARKATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 177
nor do they intimate that the conception of this child was to be
in any way extraordinary, or that the young woman was to be a
virgin in the modern medical sense of the word. This child,
again, was to be called Immanuel ; but Mary was bidden to call
her child Jesus, and the meaning of the two words is not the
same. Yet more, in what sense were butter and honey especially
the food of Jesus ? and how could an event which was not to take
place for some centuries be by any possibility a sign to Ahaz ? Ee-
ferring the words, however, to events in his own day, we see that
Isaiah is represented as saying that before this child should have
ceased to be an infant, the land which Ahaz abhorred {i.e. Syria and
Israel) should be forsaken of both her kings {i.e. Eezin should be
slain and Pekah taken captive). Whether Isaiah foretold even
these events is another question. In one casual phrase the narra-
tive seems to betray the fact that he did not. The refusal of Ahaz
to ask for a sign or to tempt the Lord is followed by words of
blame on the very ground that he had been thus not only
wearying men but tempting God also ; and the incongruity of this
expostulation seems to be the result of a modification of the
original narrative. At the least, we have here no evidence that
Isaiah had any foreknowledge of events beyond that which may
be the fruit of long experience added to great natural powers
of discernment.
The misapplication, in Matt. ii. 15, of the passage of Hosea
to the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt is even more ex-
travagant. The prophetical writings are full of denunciations
against any dealings with that country or its inhabitants ; and
Hosea (xi. 1), far from speaking of things to come, refers only to
the past history of the Israelites in the words, * When Israel was
a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.' But
this call was answered only by rebellion. ' I taught Ephraim also
to go, taking them by their arms ; but they knew not that I healed
them. I drew them with the bands of love, and I was to them
as they that take off' the yoke on the jaws.' One clause alone will
serve the purpose of the evangelist; and that one clause, in
M
178 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IL
defiance of the plainest context, he takes out from a series of
sentences which he would have shuddered to apply to the Messiah.
In these instances he has forced passages to suit his purpose ;
in the last verse of the second chapter he invents a prophecy.
There is no prediction in any part of the Old Testament writings
that any one shall be called a Nazarene. They who choose so to
do may adopt the explanation of Jerome, that if Matthew had
meant to quote a particular text, he would have written not pro-
phets but the prophet, and that by thus using the plural he evidently
means to take the general sense of all Scripture, which testifies
that the Master shall be {nazar) holy.
But the motives which in this Gospel animate the living are
not less mysterious than the interpretations assigned to the words
of the prophets in former ages. A dream, or rather, it is said, an
angel in a dream, bids Joseph return with the child and his mother
into the land of Israel. Herod is dead ; but Archelaos, his son,
still reigns in Judaea. Fearing his wrath, Joseph shrinks from
going to Jerusalem, and, warned again in a dream,^, ' turns aside
1 In an appendix ' On the Influence of the more Imaginative Incidents of the
early Evangelic History on the Propagation and Maintenance of the Religion, ' Dr.
Milman traces the rapid progress and wide acceptance of the popular Christianity
to the thaumaturgy which runs through the Gospel narratives. The passages
which relate these marvellous interpositions and prodigies, and which, he admits,
' cannot accord with the more subtle and fastidious intelligence of the present
time,' are precisely those, he argues, which were ' dearest to the believers of an
imaginative age. ' By this * supernatural agency ' ' the doctrines of Christianity
were implanted in the mind,' and 'the reverential feeling, thus excited, most
powerfully contributed to maintain the efficacy of the religion for at least
seventeen centuries.' Unfortunately, in a previous passage, he had spoken of a
belief in these supernatural events as the foundation of the religion, as something
which the religion could not have invented, and as being indispensable to its
existence ; and it is precisely this proposition which he contradicts when he
speaks of these prodigies as being simply a kind of language for conveying
opinions and infusing sentiments,— in other words, as a mere dressing, or em-
bellishments to which there are no corresponding historical facts. We have
already seen (pp. 135, 175) that Dr. Milman lays stress on the unbounded
credulity of the whole Jewish people in those ages ; and indeed he sets the matter
at rest in the following decisive passage : ' That some of the Christian legends
were deliberate forgeries can scarcely be questioned. The principle of pious
fraud appeared to justify the mode of working on the popular mind. It was
admitted and avowed. To deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service
as to hallow deceit itself.' See, further, p. 149.
Chap. II.] THE NAEEATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 179
into the parts of Galilee/ as though the change of plan involved
little more of toil and difficulty, and takes np his abode in a city
called Nazareth, which, the evangelist clearly means, he now
entered for the first time. Yet to go from Egypt to Galilee it is
absolutely necessary to pass through the whole of Judsea, or else
to go through the deserts on the east and north of the Dead Sea,
as well as the country of Moab, and then to cross the Jordan into
Samaria, or the lake of Gennesareth into Galilee, before Nazareth
could be reached. And when Joseph had done all this, he would
still be in the lion's mouth, if a dread of the family of Herod was
the motive for his journey. If Archelaos was to be feared in
Jerusalem, his brother Antipas would be scarcely less formidable
in Galilee.
Such are some (but by no means all) of the difficulties involved
in the narrative of the first Gospel, considered strictly by itself.
These difficulties are certainly not lessened when we compare the
stories in Matthew with others in the Old Testament writings and
elsewhere. The idea of birth from a maiden without the interven-
tion of an earthly father was by no means new. Dr. Milman ^ cites
the instances of Bouddha and Fohi ; and with these may be taken
the stories of Asklepios (^sculapius), Epaphos, Perseus, Pythagoras,
and Plato. These virgin-born children are generally in danger
from the fears of tyrants. These lie in wait, or frame schemes to
destroy Cyrus and Komulus, Herakles and Telephos, (Edipus,
Chandragupta,^ and Moses. The children are all delivered, and all
grow up to be powerful, wise, and good ; but their deliverance may
involve the death of many in their stead. The decree of Pharaoh
seals the doom of all the new-born male children of the Hebrews ;
but Moses escapes, like Jesus from the massacre at Bethlehem.
Later Jewish legends transferred the same idea to the history of
Abraham, and spoke of Nimrod as warned by a star that Terah
would have a son who should become the father of a mighty
people. Moses, too, is taken away to a distant land; and the
^ Hiatory of Christianity, i. 99.
^ Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 290.
180 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book II.
narrative of the presentation of Jesus in the temple has a parallel
in the story of Bouddha, who is also blessed by an aged saint, who
takes him in his arms, — this child being one who afterwards said,
'Let all the sins that were committed in the world fall on me,
that the world may be delivered.' ^ Is anything gained by attempts
to prove that such legends as these have been directly suggested
by statements in our canonical Gospels ?
But when from our first Gospel we turn to the narrative of
the nativity in the third Gospel, we find ourselves confronted by
quite another story. Without noticing, for the present, the events
which are stated to have preceded and accompanied the birth of
the Baptist, we have an account of the nativity of Jesus which
is wholly different from that offc he first Gospel. Any one who
confined himself strictly to this account would learn that the
angel Gabriel appeared in Nazareth to the Virgin Mary, who was
espoused to Joseph, and told her that she should become the
mother of a child, conceived not by ordinary generation, but by
the Holy Ghost (spirit, breath, of God),^ that his name should be
called Jesus, and that he should receive the throne of his father
David; that Mary, having heard these things, went in haste to
the city where Zacharias and Elisabeth were living; that the
babe in Elisabeth's womb leaped at the approach of Mary, who
broke out into a song of thanksgiving for the providence which
fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich empty
away; that Mary, after remaining there three months, returned
to Nazareth ; and that the birth of John the Baptist, following
in due time, caused great excitement, and the circumstances
attending it ' were noised abroad throughout all the hill country
of Judsea.' He would further learn that these things took place
^ Kumarila, quoted by Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
" Luke i. ^schylus, Supp.
35. TTvevfia dyiov eirekevcrerai iiri ae' 576. 6elais eTrnrvoiais.
3L (xv\\ii\j/ri ev yaarpl, Kal ri^rj vi6v. \a^ov(xa 5' epfia Aiov d\l/€vd€i Xoyqy
35. t6 yevvdj/xevov Hyiov . . . yeivaro iraid^ Afxe/xiprj,
33. ^acrikeijaei iiri rbv oIkov 'Ia/fwj3 et's TOi>s 5t' aiCovos /xaKpoO TravoX^ov.
aiuvas.
Chap. II.] THE NAREATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 181
at the time of the taxing carried out by Quiriuus (Cyrenius),
governor of Syria (Luke ii. 2) ; that for the purposes of enrolment
Joseph with Mary goes from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus
is born in a stable ; that his birth was announced by angels, sing-
ing in the sky, to shepherds who watched their flocks by night ;
that the shepherds found the child as they had been directed,
and in great astonishment spread everywhere (Luke ii. 17) the
tidings of all that they had seen or heard ; that on the eighth day
the child was circumcised ; and that after the days of purification
(i.e. after forty days) Joseph and Mary presented him in the
temple at Jerusalem, where Simeon proclaimed that the child
was set for the rising and falling of many in Israel, and where
Anna both blessed him and spoke of him to all who looked for
redemption in Jerusalem ; and, lastly, that after a peaceable per-
formance of all things ordered in the law of the Lord they returned
from Jerusalem to their own city, Nazareth.
According to this narrative, then, the child Jesus spends the first
forty days of his life in Bethlehem, and after a few days spent in
Jerusalem, is then carried to his permanent home in Nazareth. The
appearance of Gabriel to Mary and the visit of Mary to Elisabeth
may possibly be taken as events anterior to, and supplementary of,
the narrative of Matthew ; but, as in the first Gospel Joseph receives
the intimation of Mary's pregnancy and the cause of it, not from
Mary herself, but in a dream, so here we are not told that Mary
imparted her knowledge to Joseph, who is seemingly left to dis-
cover the fact as best he may. In Luke, however, there is no
trace of Joseph's intention to put his espoused wife away privily.
In all other respects the two narratives altogether oppose and
exclude each other. Not a word is there, in the third Gospel, of
the star or of the wise men ; not a word of the alarm and jealousy
of Herod, or of the questions put to the chief priests and scribes ;
not a word of the presentation of gifts, of the sudden journey into
Egypt, of the slaughter of the innocents, or of the secret and cir-
cuitous return to Galilee after the death of Herod {i.e. it would
seem, in the following year).
182 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IL
Instead of all this, according to the third Gospel, the child,
after a few days spent at Jerusalem, is, it must be repeated, within
a few weeks after his birth, safely lodged in Nazareth. In the
first Gospel Jesus never appears in Jerusalem till the last por-
tion of his ministry (Matt. xxi. 1). In Luke he is described as
being taken quietly and openly into the temple at a time when
the first Synoptic represents him as being hidden away in Egypt,
the facts of the circumcision and the purification not being men-
tioned by Matthew at all. In Luke there is not a hint of any
fears of Herod, who seems never to trouble himself about the
child, or even to have any knowledge of him. There is no tragedy
or misery at Bethlehem, and certainly no mourning for children
slain. Far from flying away hurriedly by night, his parents
celebrate openly, and at the usual time, the circumcision of the
child ; and when he is presented in the temple, there is not only
no sign that enemies are seeking his life, but the devout saints give
public thanks for the manifestation of the great Healer. The
events are talked about everywhere. They are noised abroad in a
way likely to excite the greatest present wonder, and leave the
deepest permanent remembrance. Expressions of astonishment
run through the narrative. The shepherds at Bethlehem, the
kinsfolk of Zacharias, the people at Jerusalem, Mary herself, are
full of wonder ; and Mary ponders all these things in her heart.
Yet each event, as it comes, is followed by the same blank
astonishment, without, seemingly, imparting any real knowledge
or carrying them a step forwards. Although she had had from
the angel or messenger the announcement of an astounding event,
which, according to the story, had come to pass, Mary again
wonders when the shepherds crowd around the manger; and
when the child at twelve years of age is found in the temple, she
asks him reproachfully why he had so dealt with them as to make
them seek him sorrowing. After the experience of some thirteen
years, Mary has still to be taught by her Son that he must be about
his Father's business.
In the one story, then, we have a birth (implying the con-
CHAr. II.] THE NARRATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 183
tinuous residence of the parents) at Bethlehem, a hurried flight
(almost immediately after his birth) from the village into Egypt,
and a journey, after many months, from Egypt to Nazareth in
Galilee. In the other, the parents, who have lived at Nazareth,
come to Bethlehem only for business of the State ; and the casual
birth in the stable is followed by a quiet sojourn, during which
the child is circumcised, and by a leisurely journey to Jerusalem,
whence, everything having gone off peaceably and happily, they
return naturally to their own former place of abode, full, it is
said again and again, of wonder at the things which had happened,
and deeply impressed with the conviction that their child had a
special work to do, and was specially gifted for it.
A closer analysis reveals still more curious contradictions. In
the first Synoptic no communication is made to Mary, who (ac-
cording to the letter of the narrative) finds herself witli child, not
knowing how or to what purpose. On the supposition that the
two narratives are different versions of the same story (a position
which we have seen to be ludicrously untenable), Mary must
either have told Joseph of the apparition of Gabriel to herself in
her waking hours (instead of leaving him to learn the coming
event for the first time in a dream), or in some unaccountable
way she must have forgotten the occurrence herself. This absurd
hypothesis seems to have prompted the writer of the Protevan-
gelion of James the Less to maintain that Mary, when asked by
Joseph how she came to be with child, answered, ' As the Lord
thy God liveth, I know not by what means.' But in truth the
idea underlying the tale is in each case radically different. In
Matthew, the angel who appears to the sleeping Joseph (the action
in the first Gospel being mainly induced by apparitions during
sleep) announces to him an event of which till then he had
evidently known nothing ; he even tells him the name of the child
who is to be born, when, according to the third Gospel, it had been
imparted by Gabriel to Mary nine months before his birth. But
the announcement of Gabriel is clearly designed to prevent all
offence by explaining exactly, before the fact, the manner in
184 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book II.
which it was to be brought about. In the first Gospel there is no
sign of such purpose or of its accomplishment. The evidence of
the conception troubles Joseph. Yet he hears nothing from
Mary/ nor is he set right by the angel, until he has resolved to
put his betrothed wife away privily. The expression that ' she was
found ' 2 with child, is conclusive proof that, in the opinion of the
evangelist, the discovery was made without any announcement on
Mary's part, and, indeed, in spite of her silence. This silence is
itself inexplicable on other grounds. Is it possible to suppose
that a really pure-minded woman, when told by a visible messenger
from heaven that she was to become a mother in a way wholly
beyond or out of the course of nature, would not have hastened at
once with the tidings to her future husband, but would have
suffered him by her silence to indulge for months in suspicions
intolerable from their injustice ? Is it worth while to notice the
vain attempts to reconcile these flagrant inconsistencies und impos-
sibilities by notions such as that Joseph was at a distance, when
both the Gospels represent him and Mary as being both at the
same place, or that Mary, in deep perplexity, reserved her intel-
ligence till she should have taken counsel with Elisabeth, when
the motive assigned for her visit in the third Gospel is not anxiety
or perplexity or doubt as to her duty, but simply to assure herself
of the sign given to her by the angel (viz., the pregnancy of
Elisabeth), an assurance given almost before she crosses the
threshold, and followed by an immediate outburst of exultant
thanksgiving ? Is it worth while to waste words on the sup-
position that Mary did tell Joseph, but that he refused to believe
^ Of this momentous difficulty Dr. Milman takes no notice. Indeed, it may
fairly be said that he wove together a semi-plausible narrative by taking the
statements of each Gospel separately, without comparing them with the state-
ments relating to the same time in the other Gospels. His plan thus enabled
him to leave out of sight the notes of time and place which in each narrative are
of the essence of the story. Of Joseph's intention to put his wife away, Dean
Milman merely says that on discovering the conception of his betrothed, he
wished by a private dismissal to save her from rigorous punishment, — forgetting
that this implies the fact of Mary's total silence on the subject of the annuncia-
tion. This is a strange way of treating a very grave matter.
'^ evp^d-n, Matt. i. 18.
Chap. II.] THE NAREATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 185
her ? Are we to suppose that a man, thus incredulous about the
message of an angel who had spoken with Mary while she was
awake, should have his scruples instantly removed by phantasms
in a dream ? And, in such case, could the angel who appears to
Joseph in the first Synoptic have failed to reprove him for this
misplaced incredulity ? ^
The analysis may be extended indefinitely. No announcement
from Mary informs Elisabeth of the mercies vouchsafed to her.
No astonishment or excitement on the part of Elisabeth causes a
movement of the child in her womb. At the approach of Mary,
and before a word is uttered, the child, of its own accord, leaps in
the womb for joy (i.e. in perfect consciousness of the reason of its
moving), and the movement of the child is followed, not preceded,
by the excitement of the mother.^ This beginning is followed, not
by the dialogue of ordinary conversation, but by a hymn expressive
of Mary's thankfulness, made up of phrases from books of the
Old Testament, and more especially from the song put into the
mouth of Hannah after the birth of Samuel. Not only the
circumstances, however, of this visit, but the visit itself, are
excluded by the narrative in the first Gospel, as well as deprived of
all credit by the self-contradictions of the third; and hence no
evidence is furnished by the third Gospel for the alleged facts that
John the Baptist was only six months older than Jesus, or that
there was any kindred between the two mothers, or any intimacy
between the two families.
In truth, the narrative of the events preceding the birth of the
Baptist is not less full of difficulties than those which have been
already examined. An angel appears (Luke i. II) and informs
Zacharias that the notion of a celestial hierarchy, with marked
gradations, obtained by the Jews from contact with the Zend
religion, is true in fact, the inference being that an important truth
^ For Justin's version of the annunciation, see Snpernaturcd Religion, i. 303.
- Dr. Milman says that on this visit the joy occasioned by Mary's announce-
ment of the miraculous conception seemed to communicate itself to the child of
which Elisabeth was pregnant. The statement of the third Gospel, which is
unmistakeably clear, is precisely the reverse of this.
186 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL RECORDS [Book II.
was discovered by heathen Persians, and by them imparted to the
' chosen seed/ This angel, after announcing the Baptist's birth,
smites Zacharias with dumbness, because he asked for a sign to
assure his faith. This severity is singularly unlike the treatment of
Abraham, Hannah, and others, under similar circumstances, in the
earlier traditions of the Old Testament, as well as of Joseph accord-
ing to the first Gospel. Zacharias comes out of the sanctuary
speechless ; but although, according to the narrative (Luke i. 60), he
was able to inform Elisabeth of the future birth of their child, as well
as of his name, it does not appear that he made these facts known
to the bewildered people. He stands beckoning, but neither he nor
any one else thinks of the simple expedient of writing- tablets,
which in due time only is resorted to. The story, moreover, does
not say that Zacharias was condemned to a stale of congenital
dumbness, which is always accompanied by, and indeed is the result
of, deafness. Though he could not speak, he was as well able to
hear as ever. Why, then, when the time for naming the child has
come, are Elisabeth and her kinsfolk under the necessity of making
signs to him to learn his will about the naming of the child ? In
short, if we take the story as it stands, we are to suppose that
Zacharias and Elisabeth, both, knowing the name of the future
child, and having received no injunction to secrecy, impart their
knowledge to no one else, and that hence their kinsfolk, when the
day is come for the naming, call him Zacharias, and then for the
first time learn to their astonishment that he is to be called John.
For the first time also now the Writing-tablets are mentioned, but
in a way which seems to imply that they had not been used before.
He does an act seemingly different from any which he had hitherto
done, and his faith (if faith it can be called) is rewarded by the
restoration of his speech. These things also are noised abroad
throughout the whole region (Luke i. 65), like the incidents
which accompany the birth of Jesus, and are apparently as soon
forgotten.
Thus, then, we have two narratives, both of which agree in
placing the nativity of Jesus at Bethlehem in Judeea, while the
Chap. II.] THE NAEEATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 187
first Gospel describes that place as the ordinary abode of his
parents. In that Gospel marvellous signs accompany his birth,
the chief being the star of the Magi and the terrible slaughter of
the children. In the third Gospel the signs are of a different
kind ; but they are still more extensively known. Shepherds see
and hear angels singing in the heavens, and having by their
direction found the child, noise abroad what they had seen and
heard. The babe is brought to the temple of Jerusalem, and is
there seen openly, and spoken of as the Messiah to all who looked
for redemption. Never was a fact which should have been more
deeply impressed on the mind of the people than the birth of
Jesus at Bethlehem.^ Yet the fact is never asserted either by
Jesus himself or by others, although the statement was most of all
necessary to remove misconception, to disarm opposition, and to
win acceptance. In truth (if we take the Gospel narratives as
they stand), all knowledge of the fact seems utterly lost, although
a vivid conviction remained still that the Messiah must be born
in Bethlehem, the inference being that as he was not born there
1 Dr. Milman, who seems to have shrunk unconsciously from any real com-
parison of the narratives of the Synoptics, adduces in one place the political con-
vulsion of the time as a reason for the slender hold which these astounding facts
had on the popular remembrance. — History of Christianity, i. 87. But the more
wonderful thing is that they seem to have passed away as completely from the
memory of Mary herself. Nor is there the least sign in the narratives that the
actors and spectators of these events were affected by the political agitation of
the time. Dr. Milman also speaks of a common incredulity, which is also not
known to the evangelists, for in their narratives all who see the events believe in
the child's mission. But in another passage Dr. Milman asserts that, in spite of
all these commotions, the circumstances of the Baptist's birth ' might be expected
to excite the public attention in no ordinary degree. ' But they did not ; and
Dr. Milman is content to pass over the difficulty without one word of comment.
In truth, it seems impossible to gather from his pages whether any given event
did or did not excite attention. We have already seen how he deals with the
general credulity and superstition of the Jews (note ^, p. 178). It is somewhat
bewildering, after we have read such passages, to be told that the most cogent
reason for accepting the truth of the whole narrative is that they ' relate in tl;e
same calm and equable tone the most extraordinary and trivial events.' Really,
this fact furnishes a fatal argument against their general credibility. The view,
such as it is, would tell equally well in favour of the Homeric poems, the
English Chronicle, or of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Herodotos, and a host of others
who relate in the same calm and equable tone the most astonishing and the most
trivial events.
188 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS [Book II.
Jesus of Nazareth could not be that Messiah or Christ. This con-
viction is betrayed by Nathanael's inquiry (John i. 46) whether
anything good can come out of Nazareth, and by the plain asser-
tion with which the rulers are said to reject the claim of Jesus,
that out of Galilee there arises no prophet.^ In all the Gospels he
is Jesus of Nazareth, which the third Gospel assumes as the usual
abode of Joseph and Mary. He is saluted as such by the unclean
spirits (Mark i. 24). He is sent as such by Pilate to Herod, as
belonging to his Galileean jurisdiction. As such, his aid is implored
by the blind man at Jericho (Mark x. 46). As such, he is spoken
of by the servants of the high priest at the denial by Peter. Jesus
of Bethlehem he is never called, although the simple assertion of
a fact so notorious at the time was alone needed, from the
evangelists' point of view, to heal bitter divisions and soften a
groundless antagonism. Even to Nathanael, with his deep faith,
the fact, according to the fourth Gospel, is not imparted any more
than to the unbelieving Jews. He is not told that he is
mistaken in thinking that Jesus was really of Nazareth ; but he is
asked to come and see, the issue being his conviction that a good
thing might come out of that city. We are, perhaps, scarcely
justified in citing any utterances from the fourth Gospel. But if
these are put aside, the fact remains that such indications as we
possess point, so far as they go, to Nazareth as his birthplace.
We have no ground whatever for thinking that he was born at
Bethlehem.
Nor have we any more knowledge of the time of his birth.
In the first Gospel it is, of course, placed during the reign of
Herod the Great, for otherwise Herod could not be the slayer of
the children in order to destroy Jesus. In the third Gospel, also,
Zacharias receives the announcement of the Baptist's birth from
^ John vii. 52. Had they, or had the evangelists, forgotten that Jonah and
Nahum were both of Galilee ?
The references here made to the fourth Gospel must not be regarded as con-
ceding the historical authority of any statements found in it. But that Gospel
may, nevertheless, reflect some of the opinions and thoughts of the time in
that Jewish world of which the actual scribe knew so little. See p. 117.
Chap. IL] THE NAEKATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 189
Gabriel ' in the days of Herod the king,' and the birth of Jesus
follows that of the Baptist after an interval of six months only.
But in the second chapter it is defined more clearly as taking place
while P. Sulpicius Quirinus (Cyrenius) was governor of Syria.^
This Quirinus, we are told, had been ordered to carry out an
imperial decree for taxing ' all the world/ and in obedience to this
decree Joseph and Mary came up from ISTazareth to Bethlehem,
where the child was born. According to this narrative the taxing
extended to the whole world — the orlis Bomanus; but of such a
general census at this time there is no evidence. Hence efforts
have been made to prove that the phrase denotes Judaea only ; but
even if it could be proved that Jewish writers thus absurdly
exaggerated the importance of their own small country, it is
ridiculous to suppose that the Eoman Csesar would so fall in with
their whims as to frame imperial decrees to suit them.^ But no'
such census could be made in Judaea during the reign of Herod or
of his son Archelaos, because such allied princes (reges socii)
collected their own taxes, simply paying a tribute to the emperor./
The idea that this taxing was an extraordinary measure resorted
^ Dr. Milman, who speaks of the introduction of Quirinus ten years before his
time as ' a trifling discrepancy, which would be easily pardoned in an ordinary
historian,' contents himself chiefly with remarking that he 'cannot imagine a
myth in such a plain prosaic sentence' as that which tells of this taxing or
enrolment. But, when, as in this case, we have an alleged date on which other
dates of importance may depend, the antedating or postdating of an event by
eight or ten years can hardly be passed over as a venial mistake, though perhaps
it might be forgiven in one who has a character for general accuracy. But the
character of the evangelists for general accuracy has first to be established. The
prosaic appearance of a passage is, however, no evidence for the absence of myth.
Nothing can be more prosaic than the opening chapters of the history of Herodotos
which speak of the abduction of lo, Medeia, and Helen. Every incident there
described may have taken place, or might take place any day, and yet we do not
believe them. Why ? Because we know them on other grounds to be mythical.
— Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Book i. ch. 9, vol. i. p. 181, ed. 1878.
There can be no doubt that a plain prosaic style is the best possible vehicle for
plausible fiction. We are, however, dealing with questions not of style, but of
the truth of facts.
- For the difference between the account of this enrolment given by Justin
and the narrative of Luke, see Supernatural Religion^ i. 305-307. The version
given by Justin makes it quite certain that he was not following the narrative of
Luke, and, indeed, that he was ignorant of its existence.
190 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book IL
to by Augustus during the reign of Archelaos, and before the
reduction of Judaea to the form of a province, is set at rest by the
plain assertion of the third Gospel that it took place during the
governorship of Quirinus, who was not appointed to this office till
long after the death of Herod, and whose census did not take
place till about ten years after the time at which, according to the
two Gospels, Jesus was born. Yet it will not do to say that Jesus
really was born at this later time, for such a supposition com-
pletely upsets the ivliole narrative as given in the first Gospel.^
We have already seen that the genealogies in the first and
third Gospels could have been drawn up only by men who believed
that Jesus was the son of Joseph by natural descent, and that
they were adopted by the evangelists only as coming down to
them among other materials which they found ready to their
hands. Perhaps the same conclusion may be forced upon us on a
comparison pf the second and fourth Gospels with the narratives of
the birth and infancy of Jesus contained in the other two. In
Mark, although nothing is said of his earlier years, Jiis baptism is
1 In his efiforts to get over such diflSculties as these, Dr. Milman was led to
complain that 'no cross-examination in an English court of law was ever so
severe as that to which every word and shade of expression in the Evangelists is
submitted.' It is not easy to determine precisely what meaning Dr. Milman
intended to convey by these words ; but, in their ordinary acceptation, the pro-
position may be met by a complete denial. The early history of Rome has been
submitted to a scrutiny, certainly not less severe, and probably far more rigid ;
and until the assaults of Cornewall Lewis on the narratives of Livy, Dionysios,
Diodoros, and others, have been repelled, it is useless to resort to the argumentum
ad misericordiam on behalf of the Gospel narratives. We admit at once that, if
the evangelists are to be regarded as ordinary historians, we have no right to
require more than ordinary historic accuracy. The gist of the charges against
the evangelists is that we nowhere find any such ordinary historic accuracy in
their writings, and that we see absolutely no symptom of that * inflexible love of
truth, which, being inseparable from the spirit of Christianity, would of itself be
a sufficient guarantee for fidelity and honesty. ' If by truth be meant only certain
foregone dogmatic conclusions, their love of it may perhaps have been inflexible ;
but if we mean by the phrase simply a determination to know, if we can, whether
certain alleged events took place, or did not take place, we may be much more
nearly justified in saying that very seldom have writers shown themselves so
completely dead to historical truth. It is enough to say that the best opponent
of Dr. Milman is Dr. Milman himself. See note \ p. 17S.
Dean Milman seems to enter on perilous ground when, admitting the
existence of a mythical belief in certain stages of human history, he asserts that.
Chap. IL] THE NAERATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 191
noticed as the startiug-point of his ministry ; nor can there be any
doubt, even from the wording of the accounts as they have been
transmitted to us, that the writers who drew up the earliest
narratives of the baptism regarded that event as his consecration
to his Messiahship. In the Synoptic Gospels it is immediately
followed by the Temptation, as though he were now placed in a
different relation to the world from that which he had held before.
But in the fourth Gospel neither the extraordinary conception, nor
the birth, infancy, baptism, or temptation of Jesus receives any
notice. John the Baptist is, indeed, mentioned ; but he is brought
in only to confess his ignorance of Jesus, whom in Luke he had
recognised and reverenced while yet in the womb of his mother
Elisabeth. This ignorance in the fourth Gospel continues until he
sees the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and lighting
upon Jesus, whereas in the other Gospels he knows Jesus as soon
as he approaches, and meets him with the acknowledgement of his
unworthiness to baptize him. The reason for this singular silence,
in contrast with the method of the Synoptists, may perhaps be
found in theories of the Messiahship entertained in the second
century. In the account of the baptism cited by Justin Martyr
whether certain alleged angelic manifestations or other prodigies ' were actual
appearances or impressions produced on the minds of those who witnessed them,
is of slight importance. In either case they are real historical facts. ' — History of
Christianity, i. 131. They are not, necessarily, anything of the kind. Herodotos
tells us that, before setting out on his expedition against the Greeks, Xerxes saw
a dream which assured him of victory ; and that the incredulous Artahanos was
conquered by the same dream when it visited himself. Here we have first to
determine whether the story be a fiction of Herodotos. If it be, we cast it aside
at once, and there is an end of the matter. But if we decline to do this, we may
conclude (1) that Xerxes actually saw the Dream- God and heard his voice; -and
in this case the vision is as much a historical fact as the repeal of the Com Laws,
althougli from its very nature it is impossible to verify the fact, which, therefore,
loses all value for us ; or (2) we may say that, by some means or other, impres-
sions favourable to the result of the expedition were produced on the mind of
Xerxes and his uncle. In this case the impression (which we are likewise unable
to verify, and which, therefore, has no value for us) is a historical fact ; but the
dream or vision is not a historical fact ; and nothing can set aside this distinction,
which at once severs all narratives of facts which may be verified, from fictitious
tales or from possible incidents, of the actual occurrence of which we can never
satisfy ourselves. To treat the latter in any other way is to do violence to our
sense of truth, and to impart a factitious strength to subterfuge and falsehood.
192 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOKDS [Book II.
from the ' Memorials of the Apostles/ we are told that as Jesus
went down into the waters a fire was kindled in Jordan, and a
voice was heard which said, ' Thou art my beloved Son : this day-
have I begotten thee.' Now Justin is here arguing that Jesus is
the pre-existing Son or Wisdom who has become incarnate by the
will of God ; and therefore in quoting this form of the words he
was employing a form which tells against his argument. Had he
known the version given in our Gospels he must inevitably have
cited it in preference to the one which he found in the * Memorials
of the Apostles.'^ The exact quotation from the second Psalm,
' This day have I begotten thee,' had become inappropriate when
the earlier belief had given place to the idea that his consecration
dated from the moment of his conception in his mother's womb,
as announced to Joseph in the first Gospel and to Mary in the
third. It was certain, therefore, that the words of the Divine
utterance would be modified, as they are modified in our canonical
Gospels. But Justin had already advanced to a further point than
this, and was far on the road to a belief akin to tha,t of our fourth
evangelist. When the belief that the consecration of Jesus dated
from the moment of his conception had given place to the idea of
the Logos co-existing from eternity with the Father, and only
taking upon him a covering or tabernacle of flesh ^ in order to
manifest himself to the world, and when the Messiahship became
thus the inalienable prerogative of the eternal Wisdom, the notion
of his consecration to the Messiahship by baptism, or even by the
miraculous conception, became both inadequate and incongruous.
No consecration could be needed for the true Light which
enlightens every man coming into the world ; and anything that
drew attention to events in his earthly life, as marking the moment
of his call to the Messiahship, was felt to be an interference with
the higher view which the writer of the fourth Gospel manifestly
1 It follows irresistibly that Justin was not acquainted with any of our
Gospels, and therefore that from Justin himself we have no evidence that our
Gospels existed in his day. See above, p. 81, and Supernatural Religion, i. 318
et seq.
- eaKfivuje, John i. 14.
Chap. II.] THE NAREATIVES OF THE NATIVITY 193
held to be the only true one. Hence of the opening narratives of
the first and third Gospels he could make no use, nor had he
any further need of John the Baptist than to introduce him as a
witness to the transcendent glory of the Eternal Word. John
comes in, therefore, simply to deliver this testimony; and the
narratives of the baptism, the temptation, the nativity, and the
conception are dispensed with altogether.
The conclusion is, that in reference to all the events and
incidents attendant on the birth and infancy of Jesus, our
canonical Gospels contradict or exclude each other, and that the
narratives of these events are, therefore, altogether untrustworthy
and unhistorical. It is scarcely necessary to add that this con-
clusion has nothing to do with any stories of extraordinary or
prodigious occurrences. These records are not to be trusted when
they relate to ordinary things, and are therefore of no force what-
ever when they relate to things unusual or wonderful.
BOOK III
THE MINISTRY
CHAPTEK I
THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE
According to the third Gospel, and the third Gospel only, the
perfect obscurity of the early life of Jesus was broken by an
incident which marked a visit to Jerusalem at the time of the
passover, when he was twelve years old. At this age, at which a
child, it is said, was held to be capable of taking part in public
religious services, he was brought to Jerusalem by his parents,
who, on their return after the feast, set off without the child, and
completed a day's journey without looking after him, being under
the impression that he must be with kinsfolk or friends in the
caravan. When, however, they fail to see him in the company,
they go back to the city in great anxiety, and after a sorrowful
search find him three days later discoursing with the doctors in
the temple. On being informed of their distress, he expresses his
wonder at their seeking him, and asks them how they came to
show themselves so unconscious of his divine mission.
The question was perfectly pertinent ; and it brings before us
one of the greatest difficulties in the Gospel narratives, a difficulty
which we shall have to mark again and again. If the writer, or
writers, of the third Gospel be in any way worthy of trust, Mary
had been distinctly told at the time of the annunciation that she
was to be the mother of a child who, as being the Son of the
194
Chap. L] THE MINISTRY 195
Highest, should have the throne of his father David, and reign
over the house of Jacob for ever. This plain declaration was, as
we have seen/ either forgotten by Mary or disregarded. The
former hypothesis charges her with singular stupidity, the latter
with something like unbelief, for if she had been convinced that
the angel Gabriel had told her the truth, no room would have been
left for the wonder expressed by her at the words of Simeon when
he came into the temple at the time of the presentation (Luke ii.
33). In this instance the astonishment was shared by Joseph,
who, we might suppose, must have learnt from Mary the circum-
stances of the angel's visit, and the general tenor of his message.
But even if he had not, we are told in the first Gospel (i. 21)
that in a vision specially vouchsafed to himself he was informed of
the high destiny of his reputed son. Yet so weak is his memory
or his belief, and so little do either Mary or her kinsfolk or their
friends bear in mind the events attending his birth at Bethlehem,
— the coming of the wise men, the slaughter of the children, the
song of the heavenly messengers, — that none could speak decisively,
or indeed at all, of his birthplace at a time when, according to the
mind of the evangelist, it was of vital importance that it should
be ascertained and made generally known. The whole story, in
short, seems to have passed clean out of mind, and Jesus himself is
never represented as correcting that erroneous impression of his
birth at Nazareth, which, according to the evangelist, interfered
with the acknowledgement of his Messianic character by the Jews.
From the narrative of the conversation with the doctors we
learn that this forgetfulness was as complete in his twelfth year
as ever it was in his thirtieth. Far from dismissing all anxious
thoughts at the absence of the child, of whom, even according to
our modern notions, they ought not thus to have lost sight, they
not only give no sign of thinking that he was different from other
children, but do not seek him in the temple till they have despaired
of finding him anywhere else. Yet to the temple they should have
gone, not only if they had the slightest faith in his mission and
1 See p. 182.
196 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
the faintest remembrance of past years, but because the temple
was the most likely place in which a child of the disposition
ascribed to him would be found. Instead of this, we have the
plain avowal of their distress, and the assertion, repeated on every
occasion, that his mother pondered in her heart sayings which
appear never to have produced any result.
There remain other difficulties scarcely less serious. Jesus
was found, according to Dr. Milman,^ in one of the chambers
within the precincts of the temple set apart for public instruc-
tion. ' Jesus was seated, as the scholars usually were, and at his
familiarity with the law, and the depth and subtlety of his
questions, the learned men were in the utmost astonishment ; the
phrase may perhaps bear the stronger sense, they were in an
ecstasy of admiration.' ^ Unquestionably it must have been a
wonderful display of learning which could thus excite the astonish-
ment of the wisest of Jewish rabbis. Whence, then, had this
learning been obtained ? If by any means beyond human reach,
or by virtue of his omniscience as the Word Incarnatfe, the assertion
is self-contradictory, for omniscience excludes all advancement or
degrees in knowledge, while it contradicts the express statement
that Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature as well as in favour
with God and man. Certainly, according to the Gospels, neither
Joseph nor Mary had any large stores of legal erudition ; and Dean
Milman asserts that the putting of these questions presupposes a
wide acquaintance ' with the sacred writings and institutes of the
country.' This implies either instruction by others or a marvellous
self-application. In either case it must have been perfectly well
known that Jesus was a youth, not only (as the author of Ecce
Homo phrased it) ' of great promise,' but of vast learning, acquired
in the ordinary way by reading books as well as by serious thought.
1 History of Ghristianity, Book i. ch. 3.
2 The Jewish tradition is that the scholars stood, while receiving instruction^
till after the death of Gamaliel. The point is of little consequence, except as
showing that, if the tradition be true, the evangelist has antedated the practice
by somewhat more than forty years. It follows in this case that this narrative
was not put together before the death of Gamaliel.
Chap. L] THE MINISTRY 197
Thus, then, we have the alleged historical fact, that twelve
years after the birth at Bethlehem the great rabbis of Jerusalem
were filled with astonishment, not merely at the genius, but at the
learning of Jesus. Some of these must have been alive when,
scarcely twenty years later, Jesus appeared in the temple on the
occasion described in the seventh chapter of the fourth Gospel.
The identity of his name, and his advent from Galilee, where they
knew that his reputation was growing, must have recalled to their
minds the incidents of that day on which the distressed Galilsean
parents came in quest of the child whose wisdom was so astonishing
them. Yet all that they can do is to ask, ' How knoweth this man
letters, having never learnt ? ' If it be urged in reply that they
were mistaken, it may be answered that Jesus says not a word to
correct the erroneous impression, and that his kinsfolk and friends
labour under the same delusion. At the end of the series of
parables given in Matthew xiii., the same question is asked by
those who were quite familiar with his lineage and kindred, and
who seem to assume that the sons of carpenters have no great
opportunities for acquiring deep learning. It is asked again in
Mark vi. 12, and in the same words, after the raising of the
daughter of laeiros, and in a modified form in the third Gospel,
which relates his astonishing discourse in the synagogue (Luke
iv. 22).
But great as is the learning of Jesus, his obedience to his
parents is unhesitating. This, perhaps, might be expected. Yet,
if the latter had by his question been recalled to the memory of
the very plain words spoken by Gabriel, and of the marvellous
events attending his birth, it seems strange that they should have
summarily withdrawn him from a spot where he might have
been about his Father's business, to the obscure retirement of
I^ azareth.
We may, if we please, attribute weakness of brain rather than
want of faith to Mary and Joseph ; but this will scarcely be done
by any who accept the popular tradition. Yet, if they reject this
alternative, they are confronted by a grave historical difficulty.
198 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
for if Mary had really heard the words put into the mouth of
Gabriel, if Joseph had really learnt in a vision the character of
his real or reputed son, if they had believed the shepherds of
Bethlehem and the wise men of the East, or Simeon, or Anna,
if they had journeyed in haste and secrecy into Egypt, and had
returned privately to Nazareth, it is a sheer impossibility that
they could fail to understand the question put to them by Jesus
in the temple. But we are told plainly that they did not under-
stand it ; and thus one of two conclusions is forced upon us, — either
(1) that they were unable to understand, because these earlier
events had not happened, or (2) that these events had happened,
and, therefore, that the evangelist is mistaken in saying that his
question was unintelligible to them.
In this story, then, we have a narrative which cannot be re-
conciled with the earlier or later portions of the history, and is,
in fact, completely contradicted by them. Hence, without com-
mitting ourselves to the statement that no such incident ever
took place, we are driven to the conclusion that, if it did take
place, the later recorded incidents must be false, or that, if the
latter be true, the conversation in the temple is a fiction. In
either case, we have before us a narrative which is not historical ;
and thus our knowledge of the boyhood of Jesus becomes as
shadowy as our knowledge of the events which are said to have
occurred at the time of his birth.
With this conclusion our task in reference to this narrative
is ended. We may have to use a like form of words after the
examination of every incident in the stories of the ministry and
the passion ; but, none the less, if so it should be, it is no part
of our duty to account for the mode in which the legend came
into existence. The so-called mythical theory may or may not
explain the result; but, whatever may be his own leanings, the
historical critic refuses to commit himself to any theories, how-
ever plausible or even probable they may appear to him. It may,
however, be worth while to note the parallels furnished in earlier
Jewish history. The growth of Jesus in wisdom and goodness is
Chap. L] THE MINISTEY 199
described in words almost identical with those which are applied
to Samuel (1 Sam. ii. 26), and not unlike those which describe the
early growth of Samson. The precocity of Moses answers to the
marvellous wisdom of Jesus. As the latter is found in the temple
seated among grave doctors, so Moses, according to Philon, eschews
all amusements, and surpasses all his tutors in genius and learning.
Later tradition spoke of Samuel as prophesying in his twelfth
year, and the so-called Ignatius, in the letter to the Magnesians,
relates that the wise judgements of Solomon and Daniel were given
when they were twelve years old. Greek legend furnishes a
similar instance in Minos, who, at the age of nine years,^ became
king of Crete, and displayed the profound wisdom of Menu and
Zoroaster. Such national legends as these may account for the
growth of a like tale to illustrate the boyhood of Jesus; but
whether they do so or not, the narrative remains unhistorical.
1 The laws of Minos and the Institutes of Menu are, in fact, the same thing ;
but the age of the Cretan king turns on the interpretation of the word evvecopos,
in Odyss. xi. 310. Colonel Mure, Critical History of Greek Literature, Book ii. ch.
xiii. 97, is probably right in denying that the word had originally any connexion
with the numeral nine. But there is no doubt that this was the later belief, and
it coincides with the Jewish tradition.
CHAPTEK II
THE RELATIONS OF JESUS WITH JOHN THE BAPTIST
§ 1. The Mission of John the Baptist.
That the name of Jesus of Nazareth is intimately connected with
a great change, both of thought and practice, in the Western as
well as in the Eastern world, cannot be disputed. Nor will the
most rigid impartiality seek to repress the wish to know all that
can be known of one to whom so great and mighty a work has
been attributed. More especially will every detail be welcome
which seems likely to throw light on the several influences to
which in his earlier years he may have been subjected. Now,
although contradictory reasons are given in the first and third
Gospels for the birth in Bethlehem, yet all agree in making
Nazareth his permanent abode, and in representing him as the
son, or reputed son, of Joseph the carpenter.^ If we take this
tradition to be correct, his opportunities for learning would be
those of an artisan's family in the remote districts of Galilee ; and
if, further, we accept the hypothesis of Joseph's poverty, an addi-
tional drawback is furnished in his position.^ At Jerusalem, how-
ever, on the yearly recurrence of the Paschal and other festivals,
he would obtain some knowledge of the intellectual and religious
movements of the age. With the Sadducees he would have, per-
^ See Appendix B.
^ This notion cannot well be reconciled with the assertion that Joseph took
Mary to Bethlehem because she was an heiress with landed property in that
district.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 201
haps, no great acquaintance.^ The members of this sect or party-
belonged chiefly to the higher and more wealthy classes ; and
although, from the absence of strong censures such as were directed
against the Pharisees, it might be supposed that he had a friendly
feeling for this school, their unbelief in the life to come seems
altogether to preclude this idea. With the Pharisees he had
certainly more in common. Their belief in purely spiritual exist-
ences, in the continued life, and in a progressive developement of
Judaism from the days of Moses, furnished the groundwork of a
faith so far in accordance with that which was taught by himself ;
and the dissipation of Pharisaic prejudices at once converted Saul
of Tarsus into the most devoted of Christian missionaries. With
the Essenes many have supposed that he had a still closer con-
nexion. Both favoured a community of goods, prohibited oaths,
enjoined obedience to constituted authority, and insisted on the
duty of despising riches, and of travelling without resources. But
points of difference, still more numerous and important, may be
found in the contracted spirit of the Essenes, their rigid observance
of the Sabbath, and their constant purifications. This sect, we
may add, is nowhere mentioned in the New Testament writings.
But if the influence exercised by these sects on the mind of
Jesus may not have been great, and although we have no means
of measuring that of the foreign Jews, as of Alexandria and
Kyrene, with whom he may have been brought into contact at
Jerusalem, one most important person at the very threshold of his
ministry is brought before us in John the Baptist.
The date of John's first appearance as a preacher is fixed by
the third evangelist in the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius,
when Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod Antipas tetrarch of
Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Itursea and Trachonitis.
Whether John really began to preach at this time is another ques-
tion ; but at the time mentioned, Pilate, Antipas, and Philip held
^ There have not been wanting those who have ascribed the extraordinary
powers attributed to Jesus to mystical lore acquired during the sojourn in Egypt,
forgetting that at that time he was only a few months old.
202 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL RECORDS [Book III.
the offices here assigned to them. The evangelist, however, seems
to have been misled by notices which spoke of an Abilene of
Lysanias, into thinking that Lysanias was tetrarch at that time.
No such person is mentioned by Josephus.
The other Gospels furnish no help towards fixing the date of
John's mission. The expression of the first Gospel (iii. 1), if taken
strictly, would imply that he appeared in the wilderness at the
time of the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt, — that is, when
Jesus and John himself were infants. But it may be stated, once
for all, that no chronology whatever can be obtained from the first
and second Gospels. Like beads strung on a necklace, their narra-
tives have a certain sequence ; but there is no reason why many,
if not most, of the events should be given in one connexion rather
than in another. From such notes of time as * in those days John
came preaching' (Matt. iii. 1), 'then cometli Jesus to be baptized'
(iii. 13), 'then he was led up to be tried' [tempted] (iv. 1), and
the like, we can learn nothing. It is important, however, to note
that in the first and second Gospels Jesus is described as having
not so much as entered Jerusalem after the beginning of his
ministry until he came to it for the passover which immediately
preceded the crucifixion. Nor is anything said in any of the
Synoptics which would render it necessary to suppose that the
ministry of Jesus extended over more than a single year. The
arrangement which lengthens his public life to three years is
obtained from the fourth Gospel ; but this Gospel exhibits a fatal
contradiction to the rest by describing the crucifixion as preceding
the passover, whereas, in the other three, Jesus had already kept
the passover with his disciples on the evening before he suffered.^
Hence of the chronology of the Baptist's life we learn nothing with
certainty from our four Gospels.
But the narrative is also contradicted by incidental statements
1 This contradiction (together with the fact that Polykrates of Ephesus and
the Asiatic bishops appealed to the personal authority of the apostle John as
their justification for not adopting the Western rule for the celebration of Easter),
furnishes the strongest evidence for the post-apostolic authorship of the fourth
Gospel. See above, p. 124.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 203
wliicli cannot be overlooked. There can be no doubt that the
elaborate notes of time given in Luke iii. 1 are designed to fix the
date of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus rather than that
of John. The first and second Gospels, as we have remarked, tell
us nothing definite about the time ; but they all imply that the
baptism of Jesus took place soon after the beginning of John's
preaching ; and they are more explicit in closing the Baptist's
career soon after that event. The Gospels of Matthew (iv. 12) and
Mark (i. 1 4) imply that John was arrested during the first days
of the trying or tempting of Jesus, and the mission of the two
disciples (Matt. xi. 2) is described as taking place during his
imprisonment.^
Thus, according to all the Gospels (unless possibly the third is
to be excepted), the public career of the Baptist seems to be
bounded within the space of a few months. But, on the other
hand, John is represented not merely as baptizing, but as teaching
his disciples and imparting to them a form of prayer.^ He is
described as leaving behind him a definite school, which adhered to
his baptism long after the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.^ The
language of Josephus (Ant. xviii. 5. 2) can apply only to a man
who has made a profound impression upon his contemporaries.
This is not done in a day ; and hence have arisen many expedients
for reconciling the Gospel narratives with a more extended career
for the Baptist. They are all flimsy enough ; for, if it be suggested
that Jesus after his baptism remained for a long time the follower
of John, or went again into retirement, it must be answered that
such a notion contradicts the statements of the Gospels, which
plainly speak of the Temptation as immediately consequent on
^ In Luke vii. 18 the disciples are apparently sent by John while he was
still at large.
- Luke xi. 1. The prayer of the Baptist and that which is commonly called
the Lord's Prayer are thus forms of prayer to be used as a distinguishing mark
of a separate school. It is not, of course, meant that the disciples of John or
of Jesus did not know how to pray, or had never prayed, until they severally
had these forms put before them.
^ Acts xviii. 25-xix. 3.
204 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
the baptism, and the Ministry as beginning immediately after the
trying. The first chapter of the Acts ^ gives the baptism by John
as the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. If, on the other hand,
it be urged that Jesus deferred his baptism to a late period of
John's ministry, the reply is that this hypothesis is contradicted
by express statements of the third Gospel, which represent Jesus
and John as both beginning their public career in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius, and, further, describe John as only six months
older than Jesus.
We have thus marks of time which are hopelessly inconsistent
with the work which the Baptist is said to have performed, and
the establishment of the school which adhered to his particular
rite of initiation. With the pointing out of this inconsistency and,
therefore, of the unhistorical character of the narrative, our task
is on this topic ended. The Gospel versions of the facts may, per-
haps, be in some degree accounted for by the necessities imposed
upon writers who wished to represent the Baptist, not as the
founder of a school or an independent reformer, but as a mere
forerunner of the Messiah. But whether this explanation be
accepted or rejected, the narrative as given to us in the Gospels
remains untrustworthy. In other words, it must, like the rest, be
set down as unhistorical.
§ 2. John as the Forerunner of the Messiah.
A far more important issue is involved in the inquiry whether
John ever regarded Jesus as the Messiah to whom, under such
various forms and with such different attributes, the Jews looked
for deliverance from their enemies, and who was for them an
earthly prince rather than the healer who raises sinners from
spiritual death. On this subject there was probably little difference
of thought between the disciples of Jesus and those of the
Baptist'; and the history of the Gospels is a history which seems
to show that to their idea of the secular king the disciples of
^ Verse 22. See p. 57.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 205
Jesus clung to the last. We must therefore take the stories as
we find them, and we must inquire whether the Baptist ever looked
on his kinsman as, in the Jewish sense, the anointed king who was
to sit on the throne of David for ever. This question may, indeed,
be regarded as the crucial test of the traditional belief, for, if the
relation of John to Jesus was not that which it is described as
having been, all that has been built on the fulfilment of so-
called Messianic predictions which speak of Elias as coming before
the great day of the Lord, on his testimony to Jesus as the Lamb
of God, and on the subordination of the Jewish to the Christian
dispensation in the person of the Baptist, falls to the ground.
In all the Gospels John is represented as baptizing with water
to repentance ; and it may be admitted at once, that the fact of his
using baptism as his rite of initiation is historical. This much is
expressly stated by Josephus,^ who, however, does not connect the
ministry of John with any Messianic idea. But perhaps this
silence may be sufficiently accounted for by the position of a
writer who, for political reasons, washed to keep in the back-
ground all that related to the Messianic dreams and expectations
of his countrymen.
Further, in the Gospels, Jesus and John are described as
belonging to the same family. They are cousins; and their
mothers were in each case informed distinctly, before the birth of
their children, how great the work was which they would have to
do. On the approach of Mary the babe had leaped in his mother's
womb, and the two parents had given thanks together for the
high privileges vouchsafed to them. They were thus perfectly
conscious of the relation in which their sons were to stand to each
other; and it is absolutely inconceivable that they should not
impart to their children the knowledge thus wonderfully bestowed
upon themselves. It is, in truth, incredible that it should not
be the subject of their daily and hourly talk. It is true that,
according to the first Gospel, they were separated for a few months,
perhaps a year, during the sojourn in Egypt ; but at Nazareth the
^ Ant. xviii. 5. 2.
206 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
opportunities for intercourse became just what they had been
before ; ^ and according to the third Gospel, there was not even the
interruption of the Egyptian exile, for at the ordinary time the
child is taken quietly to Jerusalem for presentation in the temple,
and is thence conveyed as quietly to Nazareth. Thus, then, John
and Jesus were from the first most intimately acquainted with
each other. There had been, in fact, no time during which they
had not known each other since they were infants ; and the
relation of John to his Master must have been a thousand times
acknowledged before the baptism in Jordan. The words of John in
the Synoptics are fairly in accordance with the subordination pre-
determined for him when his birth was announced to Zacharias.
Jesus is hailed by the Baptist on his first appearance as one higher
than himself ; and the convictions of John are in no way what-
ever dependent on the signs at the time of the baptism. In the
fourth Gospel John has no previous knowledge of Jesus. He says
expressly, ' I knew him not. But he^ that sent me to baptize with
water said to me, On whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending,
and remaining on him, the same is he who baptizeth with the
Holy Ghost.' This, sign, according to the fourth Gospel, was
vouchsafed ; but we are not told that there was any baptism. We
have already seen why there could be none in the pages of the
Johannine evangelist.^
To get rid of the grave difficulty thus caused, some have not
scrupled to suggest that John's ignorance of Jesus in the fourth
Gospel relates not to the person of Jesus, but solely to his
^ Some have not hesitated to allege the distance which separated them as a
reason for the discontinuance of the intercourse between the two families. But
it has been well asked how, if Mary should have been able to perform the
journey when she was with child, the task should deter two youths growing into
manhood, and how indifference on such a point as this can spring from anything
but unbelief in the promises which are said to have been made to Mary, Joseph,
and Zacharias, or from ignorance of them. The latter theory is virtually the
assertion that the promises were never made, and that the whole narrative is a
fiction.
" This must be God himself ; and the recognition of Jesus by Johnj's thus
the result of a special divine revelation made to the Baptist personally.
3 See p. 193.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 207
Messianic character. Iii other words, he was perfectly aware
that Jesus was his cousin, but had no suspicion that he was
more than any ordinary person. From this it would follow (1)
that neither of them had heard from his mother the story of the
incidents which preceded and attended their birth; or (2) that,
if they had heard them, they did not believe them.
It follows, further, that we have no historical grounds for
thinking that there was any genealogical connexion between John
and Jesus. No such connexion is stated, or even hinted at, in the
first two or the fourth Gospels. The first Gospel actually excludes
the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, while the third Gospel contradicts
itself. The announcement of Gabriel is here very clearly designed
to remove all possible cause of offence at the discovery that Mary
was with child. Yet Mary says not a word, but leaves Joseph to
find out as best he may the true state of a case which a pure-
minded woman would have been most eager to explain. We have,
therefore, no historical warrant for believing that John was only
six months^ older than Jesus; or that there was any kindred
between the two families, or any intimacy between the two
mothers. In other words, the narratives relating to these alleged
facts are unhistorical ; and we have nothing to do with explaining
how they came into existence.
§ 3. The Achnoivledgement of the Messiahship of Jesus by
John the Baptist.
The fact that the Baptist acknowledged Jesus to be the
Messiah looked for by himself and by the Jewish people is not
distinctly stated in any of the Synoptic Gospels. It might, further,
be very legitimately maintained that the words ascribed to him in
these Gospels have no necessary reference to Jesus. All that is
1 Acording to this notion, Christian art should represent Jesus and John with
tlie Virgin Mother as children of much the same size. As a matter of fact, Jesus
is much more commonly painted as the infant, while the Baptist stands beside
him as a youth or young man.
208 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
implied in his preaching is that his own baptism of water was
designed as a preparation for the Messianic kingdom, and that
the Messiah, or prince, or king, who should follow him, would
baptize with fire ; but although he is represented as avowing his
conviction that the kingdom of heaven had drawn near, there is
nothing to show that he regarded the actual coming of Messiah
as an event which he should live to see, still less that he looked
upon Jesus as that Messiah of whom he was the appointed fore-
runner.
Nothing more than this can be extracted from the Synoptics,
for the vague expression of unworthiness on John's part, in
Matthew (iii. 14), falls immeasurably short of the declarations
contained in the fourth Gospel, and in the fourth Gospel only.
Hence, so far as the first three Gospels are concerned, it is left
quite an open question whether, after the commencement of the
public ministry of Jesus, John began to think that his inmost and
dearest expectations might be realised in the son of Joseph and
Mary; whether, in consequence of expressions uttered by John
to this effect, some of his disciples left him and attached them-
selves to Jesus ;^ or whether, on the other hand, his school
retained its independence and failed to be convinced by the
works or the teaching of Jesus that he was the Messianic king
looked for by the Baptist. This latter conclusion receives no small
support from the facts mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles,^
if that narrative be regarded as having for any part an historical
basis.
The fourth Gospel, it is true, brings before us a w^hoUy different
picture. The difficulties involved in the Johannine statement of
John's ignorance of the person of Jesus until after he had seen
the heavenly signs which revealed his character, have been noticed
in the last section. We have now to mark those which we
encounter in the words there put into the mouth of the Baptist.
Dr. Milman considers it emphatically 'a remarkable fact in
the history of Christianity that from the very first appearance of
1 John i. 37. ^ xviii. 2l-xix. 3.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTKY 209
Jesus on the shores of the Jordan, unquestionably before he had
displayed his powers or openly asserted his title to the higher
place, John should invariably retain his humbler relative position.
Such was his uniform language from the commencement of his
career. Such it continued to the end. . . . This has always
appeared to me one of the most striking incidental arguments
for the truth of the evangelic narrative, and, consequently, of the
Christian faith. The recognition appears to have been instant
and immediate. Hitherto, the Baptist had insisted on the puri-
fication of all who had assembled around him, and, with the
commanding dignity of a Heaven-commissioned teacher, had
rebuked without distinction the sins of all classes and all sects.
In Jesus alone, by his refusal to baptize him, he acknowledges the
immaculate purity, while his deference assumes the tone of
homage, almost of adoration.' ^ In this passage Dr. Milman seems
to have formed his idea by confusing the narrative of the Synoptic
Gospels with the account of the fourth Gospel, and by interpreting
the former in the light thrown on it by his own prepossessions.
The hypothesis of an ' instant and immediate recognition ' is not
only not upheld, it is positively excluded, by the statements in
John i. 32, 33 ; and the recognition in the Synoptic Gospels is the
result strictly of previous personal knowledge. But an acknow-
ledgement of 'immaculate purity' can be inferred from John's
general admission of comparative unworthiness only by those who
have received the idea from other sources (as from the fourth Gospel
in contradistinction to the other three); nor can the utmost straining
convert the deference of his tone into anything like adoration.
Two serious difficulties, not yet noticed, are involved in
Dr. Milman's assertion that John invariably from the first retained
his humble position, and that his language in reference to Jesus
was, therefore, uniform throughout his whole career. The former
of these concerns Dr. Milman's consistency with himself; the
latter affects the credibility of the Gospel narrative. If the
Baptist's language was uniform, and if his language was that
1 History of Christianity, Book i. ch. iii.
210 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
which is attributed to him in the fourth Gospel, then John was
as thoroughly convinced of the Messiahship of Jesus, in the very
highest sense of the word, as any Christian of the present day could
possibly be. Nay, more ; John, during the whole of the ministry
of Jesus, rises altogether above the thicker mental atmosphere of
the apostles or missioners to that transcendental region which was
reached afterwards by the writer of the fourth Gospel. Not one
of the disciples before the crucifixion had, if we follow the
Synoptics, attained to the idea of a suffering Messiah. The notion,
when first propounded,^ was simply a cause of offence. But the
Lamb of God (John i. 36) is pre-eminently the image of patience;
and the idea immediately connected with it by the language of
the Old Testament writings is not merely that of suffering, but
of vicarious suffering. Further yet, John acknowledges his
Messiahship as the Eternal Logos (John i. 30). Precedence in
earthly age by a few weeks could not possibly be the meaning
attached to the words, ' he is preferred before me, for he was
before me,' by that writer in whose belief ' the Word was in the
beginning with God, and was God.' This, then, was the idea of
the Messiahship of Jesus which the fourth Gospel emphatically
attributes to the Baptist. It is an idea not merely entertained
by him in secret, but openly and repeatedly imparted by him to
his disciples; 2 and thus John was in the habit of insisting on
statements which, when made by Peter in much feebler form and
with far narrower meaning, are said to have called down upon him
a special blessing as the recipient of a divine revelation.^ This,
then, if the narrative of the Johannine Gospel is not to be rejected,
must have been the uniform language of the Baptist respecting
Jesus. It is strange that the Synoptics should not drop so much
as the faintest hint to this effect ; but apart from this, it is obvious
that such convictions cannot admit of degrees. No man could
regard another as the tabernacle in which the Eternal Logos had
taken up his abode, and then speak of him in words which imply
uncertainty or want of faith in his mission. The conception, if
1 Matt. xvi. 22. 2 jo^n j^ 29, 36. ^ Matt. xvi. 16, 17.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 211
it be present, must be clear and distinct as the lines of Alpine
mountain-forms against a cloudless sky. But, in spite of all this,
Dr. Milman goes on to say: 'It is assumed, I think without
warrant, that John himself must have had a distinct and definite
notion of the Messiahship of Jesus. He may have applied some
of the prophetic or popular sayings supposed to have reference
to a Messiah, without any precise notion of their meaning;
and his conception of the Messiah's character, and of Jesus him-
self, may have varied during different passages of his own life.'
But Dr. Milman, as we have seen, himself insisted most strongly
that John's language respecting Jesus never varied, that it was
uniform from the commencement of his career to the end; and
as his language, so, Dr. Milman affirms, was his practice : ' he
retained invariably his humbler relative position.' If, then, his
language never varied, and if his practice, as the exponent of his
belief, never altered; if, moreover, his language was that which
the fourth Gospel asserts it to have been, how can it be said that
his conceptions may have varied, or that the Baptist could be at
any time without precise notions as to the character of the Christ ?
The views of Athanasius or Augustine could not be more dogma-
tically clear. 1.^
We have now to see, in the second place, how far the notion
of a uniform testimony is corroborated or upheld by the state-
ments of the evangelists. In Matthew xi. 2 (after the narrative of
the mission of the Twelve), we are told that John from his prison
sent two of his disciples to Jesus, charging them to ask, ' Art thou
he that is coming, or do we look for another ? ' An account of
the same incident, with some important modifications, is given in
the seventh chapter of the third Gospel ; but the evangelist here
implies that at this time John was still at large.
This narrative seems at first sight to harmonise with the most
genuine human experience. We can well imagine two friends,
engaged in the same righteous and holy cause, working together
for the benefit of their fellows, until circumstances part them.
Time goes on, and their work is maintained with undiminished
212 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
zeal; but darker days come, and one of them finds himself a
prisoner. He cannot go to his friend, but he can write to him,
and in his letter he asks whether all the high hopes with which
they started must be given up, and whether, after all, the results on
which they had counted were ever to be looked for. His friend
receives his message ; and his answer is ready : ' I do not know
whether my words can give you the comfort and strength which I
heartily wish them to impart. I can but appeal to the work
which is being done. I came here to a moral wilderness, where
the very soil seemed to be poisoned, to a region full of spiritual
sickness and utter degradation. I think I may say, taking the
results of the work carried on during the years which have passed
since we parted, that on this work the divine blessing has rested.
I am sure of this, that in many and many a case the morally
blind have received their sight, the mentally lame can walk, the
deaf have recovered their powers of hearing, and the spiritually
leprous have been cleansed. N"ay, in a legion of instances, the
spiritually dead are being raised; and, most of all, those who
were utterly weighed down under the burden of evil and sin are
being awakened to something like a real trust in the divine love
of which I am always telling them. I can only hope, dear friend,
that the tidings of all this work may cheer and hearten you. It is a
day of small things for both of us ; but there is a special blessing
on those who will not allow themselves to be dismayed because
the heaven above them seems to have grown dark. Our work is
not all here ; and we seek an abiding city elsewhere.'
We can well imagine that such words as these might be uttered
or written in an age in which, to a moral certainty, any one of the
phrases or expressions which have here a purely spiritual meaning
would be translated into the language of concrete wonders. The
deaf, the lame, the blind, the dead, would all be thrown back from
the spiritual to the material world ; and the result would be that
which converted Gregory, the spiritual thaumaturge, into the per-
former of outward and sensible wonders and prodigies. It has
taken place in reference to the story of the mission sent to Jesus
Ohap. II.] THE MINISTRY 213
by John the Baptist. We see the actual process of conversion in
the narrative of the third Gospel, where, between the question and
the answer, a verse is inserted which is not found in Matthew.
This verse declares that, on receiving the message, Jesus did some
wonders of outward bodily healing, and then bade the disciples go
and tell John of the prodigies which they had heard and seen, as
though this could give him the least comfort or encouragement.
What has been done here, has been done through the whole history
of the Gospels.^
But when we have translated the lanofua^e of mere wonder-
working back into the true utterances of the spiritual life, the fact
remains that even the foundations of such a work cannot be laid
in a month or a year, and that results must be patiently waited for.
We are thus brought back to the impossible chronology of the
evangelists — a chronology which may possibly have been deter-
mined for them by causes of which they were wholly unconscious.^
As it is, if we read the story as I have just put it, we are rather
converting it into a symbolical narrative than receiving it as it is
told to us in the Gospels. We must, therefore, scrutinise it as the
record of an incident imbedded in the story of the relations of
John with Jesus.
According to the Synoptics the mission of John's disciples
could be prompted only by one of two motives. Either the
faith of John himself was wavering; or, being fully convinced
himself, he wished to overcome the disbelief of his disciples.
Did John, then, send them from the former motive? Put in
another form, the question is equivalent to the inquiry whether his
faith could by any possibility fail, or even waver, when he had
known from his infancy his own position in relation to Jesus ;
when he had been told by his father and his mother of the events
which preceded and accompanied his own birth and that of Jesus ;
when he was well acquainted with his father's hymn which told
him that he should be the prophet of the Highest, as going before
the face of Messiah to prepare his ways ; when he had heard of
^ See Appendix A. ^ See Appendix B.
214 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
Gabriel's announcement to Mary that Jesus should possess the
throne of David, and reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and
still more, when he had himself interpreted these predictions in a
sense more spiritual than any which the disciples of Jesus attained
till long after the time assigned for the crucifixion ; when he had
spoken of him as the pure and suffering Lamb of God, and
acknowledged his pre-existence as the Eternal Word. Such a
lapse may be considered as psychologically impossible. The
ascription of such doubt makes John, indeed, as ' a reed shaken by
the wind ' — an imputation summarily rejected by Jesus himself.
If it be urged, as some have thought, that these doubts were
caused in the mind of John by his own loss of liberty, it may be
replied that this involves a much graver imputation on the solidity
of his character. Whatever might be his anticipations of the
temporal as well as the spiritual kingship of the Christ, his
character could not be one of the strongest, if imprisonment thus
enfeebled his deepest convictions. John knew, as well as any
others, what had been the recompence of prophets and righteous
men in past ages ; and he must have known that so it would be
still, until the Messiah should appear in his invincible majesty — in
other words, until righteousness is finally victorious over wrong.
If the narrative of the second Gospel may be trusted, he must
further have known that he was regarded with very friendly feel-
ings by the tetrarch himself, and might, therefore, reasonably hope
to be set at liberty by him in the end.^
If the text of the first and third Gospels be correct, John sent
his disciples because he had heard of the works done by Jesus.
^ Mark vi. 20. Nothing is gained by comparing John to Galileo, Cranmer,
and others, who have recanted opinions previously avowed, in order to regain
their freedom. In all such cases men express themselves shaken in those
particular opinions which led to their imprisonment, and not in any others.
Thus Galileo, it is said, was shut up for asserting the motion of the earth round
the sun : by denying that motion he hoped to recover his liberty. On this
principle the Baptist should have expressed misgiving, not as to the Messiahship
of Jesus, which had nothing whatever to do with his imprisonment, but as to the
justice of his reproof of Herod for his alleged incestuous marriage with his
brother Philip's wife.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 215
We might be led to say that these were works of spiritual love and
mercy, works of moral healing and of deliverance from spiritual
death; but there can be no doubt that, in the minds of the
evangelists, works of mere outward palpable thaumaturgy held the
most prominent place. The thought of the higher work was not,
indeed, shut out ; but the idea of moral and spiritual healing was
buried under the mass of sensible wonders which were supposed to
accompany the spiritual works, and to serve as a guarantee of their
reality. In Luke (vii. 18) their report, if the text be correct, is
distinctly said to refer to the bodily raising of the widow's dead
son at Nain. But these wonders would, in the judgement of the
evangelists, be precisely those which would confirm his faith
instead of suggesting doubts; and, therefore, if John had really
regarded Jesus as the Messiah, the report brought by his disciples
would have tallied with his own expectations. In the alleged fact
that this report is made the occasion of a mission of inquiry we
have one of the grounds which seem to warrant the conclusion
that John had not hitherto {i.e. at any time before his imprison-
ment) acknowledged the Messiahship of Jesus.
If, then, he did not send his disciples because his own faith
wavered, did he send them for the removal of their doubts —
doubts which he did not himself share ? In this case, must we
not suppose that he had done all that he could to overcome the
disbelief of these disciples, and, failing to do so by the expression
of his own conviction and by a narrative of the incidents which
took place at the baptism of Jesus, hoped to convince them by
proofs similar to those which he had himself witnessed ? The
question is not easily answered ; but it is clear that both the first
and the third Gospels represent Jesus as understanding the inquiry
to come from John on his own account, and not for the sake of his
disciples, for his answer is, ' Go and tell John what things ye hear
and see'; and he adds a rebuke to his inconstancy, or want of
faith, in the words, 'Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me/
We are thus brought to the conclusion that this question was
suggested by doubts on the part of the Baptist himself; and
216 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
possibly it may have been such doubt, together, perhaps, with his
asceticism and the formal character of his religion, which led Jesus,
if the story be true, to speak of him as less than the least in the
kingdom of heaven, even though he were a prophet and more than
a prophet. It is also possible, and even likely, that no such words
were ever spoken by Jesus ; but if they were spoken, it becomes
impossible to regard the opening narrative of the fourth Gospel as
in any degree historical. Simon, the son of Jonas, is said to have
received his name of Peter and to have been specially pronounced
blessed because he declared Jesus to be the Anointed One, the Son
of the living God, an acknowledgement in no way inconsistent
with the supposition that his existence began with his life on
earth. To the idea of a Messiah whose victory was to be won
through suffering, Peter, according to the gospel story, never
attained before the crucifixion. The Baptist alone, according to
the fourth Gospel, pronounced him to be the Lamb of God who
takes up and puts away all sin, and proclaimed his existence before
all worlds as the Eternal Logos of God. How, then, could he
whose faith was infinitely more true, more exalted, and more
spiritual than that of any of the disciples of Jesus, be regarded as
not within the pale of the divine kingdom ? It follows, then,
either that the statements of the fourth Gospel are true, and, in
that case, Jesus never could have said what is attributed to him in
Luke (vii. 28) and Matthew (xi. 11); or that he did speak thus
disparagingly of the Baptist, and, in this case, the narrative of
John (i. 29-36) is a fiction. If we conclude that Jesus ever so
spoke of him, it is absolutely certain that the Baptist never could
have risen to the height of spiritual discernment ascribed to him
in the fourth Gospel. If, as according to this Gospel, the baptism
of John was instituted especially for the purpose of bringing
about the manifestation of Jesus as the Messiah to Israel, it
follows that, as soon as this purpose was accomplished, his rite
was no longer of any use, and, as being useless, should at once
have been given up. Indeed, after his distinct admission that
Jesus was the Lamb of God, he would, by continuing to baptize
Chap. II] THE MINISTEY 217
and retain disciples about himself, be doing a wrong to every one
so drawn and kept away from the Christ.^ With this wrong he,
alone, would be chargeable ; for, while he told them verbally that
Jesus was he that should come with the fiery baptism of the Spirit
or Breath of God, he contradicted his own words by still continuing
to administer his merely symbolical rite of baptism by water. If
he really said what he is thus reported to have said, or if he
believed what he said, it is simply inconceivable that he should
have left behind him a school of followers who, years after the
alleged time of the crucifixion, knew only his baptism, and had
never so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost, or
Spirit, or Breath.^ With such convictions he must have attached
himself to Jesus, or sent to Jesus all who came to him. As he
seems to have done neither, we can only conclude that he did not
entertain any such convictions.
On the historical doubts involved in John's power to despatch
disciples from his place of confinement, there is no need to say
much here. If the marriage of Antipas with Herodias was the
cause of his imprisonment, some of his disciples might, perhaps, still
be allowed to have access to their master. The difficulty arises on
comparing the Gospel narratives with that of Josephus, which we
shall have to notice presently.
On the whole, we have so far no actual historical evidence that
John baptized Jesus. According to the fourth Gospel it would
seem that he certainly did not. The other Gospels leave it
possible, or probable, that he did. But as to anything further, we
^ Thus the two disciples who hear him speak (John i. 37) immediately leave
the Baptist and follow Jesus ; and it was, by his own confession, his manifest duty
to urge all others to do as these had done.
It may be remarked that this transference of two disciples from John to Jesus
fills, in the fourth Gospel, the place which in the first and third Gospels is
occupied by the mission of the two disciples from the prison at Machairous.
- If we are to take the words of Acts xix. 2, 3, as historical, it would follow
that John, when he spoke of him who should come, never spoke of baptism with
the Holy Ghost, although he may have mentioned the baptism of fire. Thus at
-almost each step that we take we find ourselves confronted by propositions, of
which, as contradicting each other, one must be, and all may be, false.
218 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book III.
have no evidence that John acknowledged him as the Messiah or
deliverer ; that he used a uniform language about him ; still less
that he used the language imputed to him in the fourth Gospel, or,
indeed, that he applied to Jesus any Messianic phrases whatever.
In addition to this we have to take into account the contradictions
on the whole subject between the fourth Gospel and the Synoptics,
and the fact that a school, professing to follow the Baptist, is said
to have preserved its independence as late as the conversion of
ApoUos. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the Gospel
accounts of the relations between John and Jesus are not trust-
worthy — or, to put it otherwise, are not historical ; and, as before,
we must repeat that, having shown this, we are not bound to show
further how they came into existence.
§ 4. The Deputation from Jerusalem to John the Ba^itist.
In the third Gospel (iii. 15) the preaching of John the Baptist
rouses in the hearts of all who heard him a musing that he might,
perhaps, himself be the Messiah whose kingdom he proclaimed as
nigh. In this account the inquiry whether he be the Christ
proceeds from those who are well disposed to him, and who would
gladly have their doubts solved in the affirmative. In his reply,
John tells them simply that he baptizes them with water, but that
one should come after him (he does not say who or when), who
should baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
In the fourth Gospel this question is put to him, not by the
people, but by deputies from the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem; and
the inquiry assumes a threefold form. To the questions whether
he be the Christ or Messiah, or whether he be Elijah, or the
prophet (Jeremiah), he answers directly in the negative. But when,
having described himself as the voice of one crying in the wilder-
ness, he is asked by what authority he presumes to baptize, he
answers, not, as in the third Gospel, by saying indefinitely that the
Messiah would one day come, but by the declaration that he was
actually standing among them, although they knew him not ; and
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 219
on the following days he points out Jesus as that unknown Christ,
adding, at the same time, an admission of his pre-existence as the
divine Logos or Word.
If these two narratives refer to the same subject (and it is
hard to believe that they do not), they are inconsistent. The
crowds who accepted the teaching of John might readily in their
enthusiasm look upon him as their expected deliverer. But the
great council was composed of Pharisees and Sadducees ; and to
these Jolm, we are told, had already given deep offence by calling
them serpents and a generation of vipers. They would, therefore,
in all likelihood have decided that he was neither Messiah nor
Elias nor the prophet ; and even if they admitted the lesser claim,
they would present a more vehement resistance to the other. The
reproaches addressed to them by Jesus are said invariably to
increase their opposition. There is no evidence whatever that
they received the stinging rebuke of the Baptist in any other
spirit. Hence, if the council sent any deputies at all, their
purpose must have been simply to put to him a question similar
to that which they are described as afterwards putting to Jesus
(Matt. xxi. 23). Instead of this, they are represented in the
fourth Gospel as coming to John under the full persuasion that
he really was the Messiah, as astonished on hearing him reply in
the negative, and as then offering him the subordinate titles with
an apparent desire that he should accept one or other of them.
Either, then, the council felt no opposition to John, or they
did not put to him the questions which they are said to have put
to him in the fourth Gospel. But they were opposed to him, if
we are to give any regard to the Synoptic statements ; and, there-
fore, this narrative is not historical. What the motives were
which led to the framing of this story, it is in no way the duty
of the historical critic to explain. It is possible that the writer,
wishing to lay stress on the acceptance of John as a prophet by
representing Jesus as referring his enemies to the testimony of
the Baptist, desired to have for this testimony a magisterial
sanction. Such a sanction would not be imparted by the mere
220 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
favour of the people ; and hence the formal putting of the question
by the deputed elders.
The rejection of this explanation, it must be again noted,
cannot add to the trustworthiness of an inconsistent and im-
probable narrative.
§ 5. The Incidents at the Baptism of Jesus.
We have already (§ 3) been driven to the conclusion that
even for the baptism of Jesus by John anything like genuine his-
torical evidence fails us. A further comparison of the passages
which relate the mission of the two disciples of John to Jesus
with the first chapter of the fourth Gospel, has led to the conclusion
that the Baptist did not see in Jesus the coming deliverer when
first they met on the banks of Jordan. If John had indeed seen
the Holy Spirit descending in bodily shape like a dove and abiding
On him (John i. 32), if he had heard the voice from heaven which
declared Jesus to be the beloved Son, it seems incredible that from
that time forth his faith could ever be for an instant shaken. If,
however, these incidents did not take place, and the narrative of
the baptism be consequently unhistorical, the accounts of the
birth and early years of Jesus become more than ever doubtful
and suspicious. If the history of later events cannot be trusted,
far less can credit be given to stories relating to an earlier time.
It follows, that if the angelic annunciation never occurred, and
if Joseph and Mary had no marvels to tell to their child respecting
his birth and his high mission, then Jesus could have no con-
sciousness of his Messiahship during his earlier years ; and in like
manner, if Zacharias and Elisabeth had nothing special to tell
their son as to the work of his life, John would have no knowledge
of his own personal relations with the Messianic king. If it be
so, then to Jesus John would be simply a teacher from whom he
might learn much, and to John Jesus would be but an ordinary
disciple, although, it may be, one raised greatly above himself in
the standard of goodness.
Chap. IL] THE MINISTRY 221
On this hypothesis we can well understand that Jesus would
be attracted by the preaching of John, and ask for baptism at his
hands in expectation of the Messiah, even though he may have
advanced afterwards to the conviction that he was himself that
coming one. On any other supposition we have to face many
difficulties. If we suppose, with Justin, that baptism {i.e. an
anointing by Elias) was necessary to point out the unknown
Messiah to his countrymen, and if the furtherance of this mani-
festation was, as the fourth Gospel affirms (i. 31), the very purpose
of his mission as Baptist, then, in this case, John, far from showing
any reluctance to baptize, would have been eager to perform the
rite. If we suppose that Jesus, conscious of his Messiahship,
approached the Baptist who was unconscious of it, how, it may
be asked, could Jesus receive that rite as signifying his expecta-
tion of the future coming of Messiah, when he knew himself to
be the Messiah then present ? How, again, could he receive a
baptism of repentance which was either preceded by confession of
sins, or followed by addresses which assumed the need of repent-
ance on the part of the recipient ?
The incidents of the baptism introduce us to difficulties of
another kind. The fourth Gospel asserts, as we have seen, that
Jesus was not known to John until the latter saw the pre-
determined sign — namely, the Spirit descending like a dove from
heaven and abiding on him. The first Gospel, which states that
Jesus was recognised by John on the first meeting, adds that, as
soon as Jesus ascended up from the Jordan after the baptism, the
heavens were opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove
and alighted upon him, while a voice was heard announcing him
as the beloved Son in whom God is well pleased. But the wording
of this passage does not absolutely determine whether the vision
was seen, and the voice heard, by John as well as by Jesus,
although it seems to indicate that both saw and heard. The same
remark applies to the narrative in Mark (i. 10, 11). The third
Gospel contains the more important and categorical statement
(not of subjective visions, but of the objective facts), that the
222 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECORDS [Book III.
heavens were opened and that the Holy Ghost descended like a
dove, while a voice came announcing the beloved Son, and that
these events happened in the presence of all the people (Luke iii,
21, 22). This statement must be taken in its strict literal mean-
ing if the veracity of the Gospel narratives is to be maintained.
Any attempt to explain it away by allegorical interpretations
involves the admission that the narrative is not historically
accurate ; and it is their historical accuracy which is now on its
trial. If one tale may be modified, or tampered with, or accom-
modated, so may any other ; and the giving up of one is virtually
the abandonment of all narratives of prodigious incidents without
exception. Yet there are comparatively few to be found who will
maintain that the heaven was cloven, as a mountain may be
cloven ; that the infinite and all-pervading Spirit came down in
the likeness of a dove ; and that sounds were heard from heaven
in an articulate human dialect.
Speaking of these incidents, Dr. Milman says that ' this light
could scarcely have been seen or the voice heard by xroyq than the
Baptist and the Son of Mary himself, as no immediate sensation
appears to have been excited among the multitudes, such as must
have followed this public and miraculous proclamation of his
sacred character.' To this the only answer needed is, that the
third evangelist speaks distinctly of the heavens being opened, of
a Spirit descending, and of articulate words being uttered in the
presence of all the people, and that, unless their eyes and ears
were preternaturally closed, they must have seen visible phenomena
and heard audible sounds. How, further, if none but John and
Jesus were aware of the incidents, did the evangelist obtain his
knowledge of them ? This is a question which we may have to
ask many times ; and in each case the matter will be seen to be
of supreme importance. But of a writer so truthful and candid as
Dr. Milman, we may fairly ask why, if the sights were seen and
the sounds heard only by Jesus and John, they should be vouch-
safed at all. Being confined to them alone, they made, he admits,
no impression on the minds of the people, and hence were of no use
Chap. II.] THE MINISTRY 223
to them whatever. To Jesus and to the Baptist they were, on any
hypothesis, superfluous. They had, according to the third Gospel,
been from the first conscious each of his respective mission.
Thus, in the accounts given of the baptism, as in those which
have preceded them, we have narratives which are untrustworthy
and unhistorical ; and with this negative conclusion our proper
task in relation to them is brought to an end. The growth of the
legend may be accounted for, more or less satisfactorily ; but even
if our complete inability to account for it were demonstrated, the
story would gain nothing in point of historical value. Nor is
there much need to concern ourselves with the attempts of writers
who seek to show that the less marvellous narrative of the fourth
Gospel furnished the groundwork of the more developed thauma-
turgy of the Synoptics. The statement itself may be questioned,
and is, indeed, false ; for in the fourth Gospel, as in the rest, the
Spirit descends visibly like a dove, and the multiplication of
wonders, when one wonder is introduced, does not alter the char-
acter of the tale.
It may, however, be noted that the idea of audible voices from
heaven was familiar to Jewish tradition, and was readily adopted
by the early Christians in conformity with the Messianic theories
of the Jews ; that the declaration at the baptism, which, in the
report of Justin, is quoted precisely from the second Psalm, is
addressed to Jesus in the second person, and would thus readily
suggest the notion of a voice from heaven. Throughout the Old
Testament writings, again, the Holy Spirit is denoted by phrases
which suggest as readily the idea of a bird. In the opening
sentences of Genesis, the Spirit of God broods upon the waters ;
and the idea being once suggested, the choice of a dove, as a sacred
bird in the East, became inevitable. According to Eabbinical
interpretations, the voice of the turtle was the voice of the Holy
Spirit, and the dove from the Noachian ark announced that the
submerged world had again become fit for human habitation. To
complete the outline of the existing narrative, it remained only to
provide a way for the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove ;
224 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
and this was done by visibly cleaving the material vault of heaven,
which had its windows and its doors. We may note, finally, that
although the fourth Gospel does not expressly mention the voice
from heaven, a divine speech, addressed to the Baptist, is not
wanting (i. 33).
§ 6. The Execution of John the Baptist.
The narrative of the Baptist's death involves no thaumaturgy,
while it is tlie closing scene in the life of a person undoubtedly
historical. Here, then, it might have been supposed, we should
have a real agreement in the several Gospels. Yet it is strange
that even this event is attributed to two motives, which fairly
exclude each other. The first Gospel (xiv. 5) distinctly states
that Herod was anxious to put John to death, and was restrained
only by fear of the people, who counted John as a prophet. In the
second Gospel (vi. 19, 20) we are informed that Herod treated
John with the greatest respect, asking his counsel and acting
gladly according to his advice, while the hatred of John was con-
fined to Herodias. It is true that in the first as well as in the
third Gospel, the king is represented as sorry when he finds him-
self obliged to assent to the request urged by the daughter of
Herodias. But, in Matthew, his sorrowmust mean merely regret
at the way in which he had been tricked into giving the order for
his death, rather than sorrow for the sudden cutting short of his
life. It is worthy of remark that the narrative of Josephus^
makes not the slightest reference to the jealousy of Herodias, and
ascribes the Baptist's death entirely to Herod's apprehension of
danger which might arise from John's popularity. This expres-
sion (in spite of his pointed assertion that the baptism of John
had no reference to confession of sins but was symbolical of
purity already acquired), seems to indicate a conviction on the
part of Josephus that Herod's fears were not unconnected with the
Messianic ideas then prevalent. So great, we are told, was John's
influence, that Herod thought it more prudent to anticipate all
1 AfU. xviii. 5. 2.
Chap. II.] THE MINISTKY 225
dangers by putting him to death at once, rather than allow the evil
to come to a head.
The dramatic character of the incidents which represent the
daughter of Herodias as asking for the immediate presentation of
the Baptist's head in a charger, can be explained only on the
supposition that Herod was at that moment holding his court at
the fortress of Machairous, in ^vhicll John was confined ; and as
Josephus mentions that Herod was then at war with the Arabian
king Aretas, the explanation may perhaps be correct. Otherwise
two days at least must have passed before his head could be
brought to Herod's usual residence at Tiberias.
Thus, in the narratives which relate the death of the Baptist,
we have an undoubtedly historical event attributed to two entirely
different causes ; and if we conclude that the account of the first
Gospel is nearest to the truth, we do so, not because it is found in
a document which, like the other Gospels, is full of contradictions
and impossibilities, but because it is substantially borne out by
the history of Josephus. But this historical character extends to
the relations between John and Jesus only so far as these are
confined to the possibility or the likelihood that the latter
received baptism at the hands of the former, and in this case was,
for the time, reckoned among the number of his disciples. Thus
far the picture of Jesus himself is colourless ; but all that we have
to do here is to note the fact.
CHAPTER III
THE TRYING OR TEMPTATION OF JESUS
The Synoptic Gospels agree in saying that the trying or tempta-
tion of Jesus followed immediately upon his baptism. The fourth
Gospel, as we shall see presently, excludes this incident altogether.
But there are important differences in the Synoptic narratives of
the facts. The second Gospel (i. 13) states that Jesus underwent
the trial during the whole period of the forty days, adding a
feature not found in the rest, viz., that he was with the wild beasts.
It also represents the ministry of the heaven-sent messengers as
extending over the forty days. The first Gospel asserts that the
fast of forty days preceded the trying ; for the tempter is repre-
sented as coming to make his first suggestion only when Jesus felt
the hunger, which is described (Matt. iv. 2) as not felt till after
the end of the forty days. This Gospel then proceeds to speak of
three temptations : the first being an inducement to turn stones
into bread, the second to throw himself down from the roof of the
temple, the third to offer direct worship to the devil. The third
Gospel asserts, in the words of the second, that the fast of forty
days was occupied throughout by the temptations of Satan. But it
agrees with the first Gospel in saying that the hunger began only
at the end of the forty days, and then proceeds to give the three
temptations of the first Gospel, reversing the order of the second
and third. Thus the account of the third Gospel appears as if
made up by combining the notices in the first and second ; but if
the narrative of Luke be regarded as an independent record, then
226
Chap. III.] THE MINISTRY 227
the three temptations in the first Gospel do not sum up the whole,
nor are they the first in the series, but the last.
Without referring to the character of the incidents, we have
here three narratives inconsistent in points of no slight signifi-
cance ; but the difficulties become insuperable when we compare
the Synoptic Gospels with the fourth. This Gospel not only makes
no mention of the temptation, it leaves no room for it. We have
already noticed that the fourth Gospel does not state explicitly
that Jesus received baptism at all. The whole scheme of this
Gospel, setting forth Jesus as the Eternal Logos, led the writer
to keep as far in the background as possible an incident which
had once been regarded as marking the commencement of his
Messiahship; and his expressions (i. 28-33) seem designed, ac-
cordingly, to lead the reader to suppose that, while John was
baptizing on the banks of Jordan, he saw a preternatural light in
the heaven, and witnessed the descent of the Holy Spirit in the
form of a dove on the head of one in the multitude around him,
and thus at once, for the first time, recognised the Master whose
baptism of fire was to render superfluous his own baptism to
repentance. It may perhaps be possible to insert the incident of
the baptism between verses 28 and 29 ; but the notes of time leave
it manifest that he wished to exclude the tale of the temptation
from the cycle of Christian tradition. Otherwise we must suppose
that he was unacquainted with it, a circumstance far from likely.
The order of events in the fourth Gospel is as follows ; and it
is of the utmost consequence to note it closely. The deputation
from the priests and Levites from Jerusalem draws from the
Baptist the assertion that the Messiah, at the moment of his
speaking, stood among them, as yet unknown to himself as to them.
On the next day after the deputation John points out Jesus as the
suffering Messiah, or Lamb of God ; and as he adds that he knew
him to be so only by the evidence of heaven-sent tokens, it seems
natural to suppose that he had seen these signs at some time
subsequent to the return of the deputies from the Sanhedrim
{i.e. within the last twenty-four hours). On the next day ^ John,
228 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
walking with two of his disciples, again points out Jesus as the
Lamb of God; and the two disciples, leaving him, follow the
Messiah. On the next day^ {i.e. the third day after John's
conference with the deputies), occurs the calling of Philip and
N'athanael ; and, in the first verse of the second chapter, we are told
that on the third day (it would seem, three days after the call of
Philip and Nathanael), there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee at
which Jesus was present with his disciples. Thus, within a week
after his baptism (if he underwent that ceremony), or, at all events,
after John's announcement of Jesus as Messiah, Jesus is repre-
sented as surrounded by disciples in Galilee; whereas, in the
Synoptic Gospels, he is undergoing his forty days' fast in the
wilderness, having as yet not a single disciple.
Thus, without noticing the character of the incidents, and even
if we allow the possibility of any or all of them, we reach the
conclusion that either the narratives of the temptation or the
accounts in the opening chapters of the fourth Gospel are unhis-
torical ; and hence the task of the historical critic is, for these
stories, at this point ended.
But these narratives involve difficulties of other kinds which
may not be left unnoticed. Among these difficulties, that of the
forty days' fast is one of the slightest. Still it is a difficulty that
so long a fast could be endured without a feeling of hunger until its
close, inasmuch as the human frame cannot for more than a very
few days bear up under the total abstinence from food mentioned
in the third Gospel (iv. 2). The crucial difficulty is the sensible
appearance of the devil using the articulate language of men.
It may be worth while here to remark that the notion of a
visible tempter, if it was ever brought before them, seems to have
found little favour with the writers of the epistle to the Hebrews
and the epistle which bears the name of James. The former
states expressly (iv. 18) that Jesus was in all points tempted as we
are, yet without sin. Now, without entering into the psychology
of human action, it will be admitted that men are not tempted by
1 John i. 35. 2 john i. 43.
Chap. IIL] THE MINISTRY 229
visible devils putting direct suggestions to do certain specified
acts ; and that if this was the course of the trying of Jesus, it was,
in all respects, unlike our own. But the epistle of James (i. 13),
entering into the question philosophically, declares that men are
tempted or tried only when they are drawn away of their own lust
and enticed ; for, from the expression that every one is tried when
he is so drawn away, the inference is fairly warranted that none are
tempted in any other way, and that thus temptations, or tryings,
are not to be ascribed to any diabolical origin. If, then, Jesus was
tempted in all points as we are (save only without being led into
sin), and if human temptation follows, in all cases, the course
described in the epistle of James (i. 13-15), then, on grounds
furnished by writers in the New Testament Scriptures themselves,
we are brought to the conclusion that the Synoptic narratives are
not only unhistorical but impossible. The truer philosophy of the
letter of James is itself evidence that the notion of a devil becomes,
when the nature of human action is even approximately under-
stood, as superfluous as the idea of angelic agencies to carry on the
movements of the heavenly bodies, when the laws which regulate
those movements have been ascertained.
The truth is, that, although in the earliest Christian age the
Jewish mind was steeped in superstition,^ it had perhaps not fully
grasped the idea of an ubiquitous demon who was all but the equal
of God him.self. The idea had been received by them during their
exile in Babylonia ; and it was the fruit of Brahmanic mythology
and Zoroastrian dualism. In the earliest Vedic hymns, Indra, the
god of the heaven, wages yearly a long conflict with the snake or
dragon which shuts up the waters, and, striking him with his
invincible spear (the lightning), lets loose the floods which are
needed to supply the wants of men. But this dragon enemy, the
Vritra, becomes on Zend soil the moral enemy of the Creator, or
Principle of Good ; and the conflict of Indra with his snaky foe is
translated into the spiritual struggle between Ormuzd and Ahri-
man, and still finds its expression in Christian symbolism in the
^ See p. 134 e< seq.
230 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
fight between Michael or George and the Dragon.^ The com-
paratively late introduction of this idea becomes manifest on a
comparison of passages which attribute certain temptations directly
to God,2 ^ith other passages where the same temptations are
ascribed to Satan.^ In the Book of Job the character of Satan is
still very unformed. He is there still one of the messengers or
angels of God, and appears from time to time before His throne.
The unhistorical nature of the narrative having been proved,
we are in no way bound to examine the almost countless explana-
tions by which commentators seek to soften down, or slur over, or
evade the moral and psychological difficulties involved in it.
Interpreters, who see in the story simply a tale of ordinary retire-
ment, at the end of which Jesus is refreshed by mountain breezes,
or by a passing caravan which supplies him with the food brought
to him in the Gospels by heavenly messengers, must be left to
exercise at their own pleasure their power of making anything out
of anything. The same remark applies to critics who have main-
tained that ' what is called Christ's temptation is the excitement
of his mind which was caused by the nascent consciousness of
supernatural power.' It is enough to answer that the Gospels say
nothing about any excitement, and that they give a series of
incidents which are either historical, or not historical, but out of
which we are not at liberty to frame something else to suit our
own fancies. When such critics further assert that from the
invitation of the devil urging Jesus to offer him direct adoration,
we are to understand that ' he was tempted to do something which,
on reflexion, appeared to him to be equivalent to an act of homage
to the evil spirit,' we need only answer that, on this principle, we
may, from the tale of Troy as given to us in our so-called Homeric
poems, understand that the Trojan war bore the character and
followed the course assigned to it by Thucydides.^
Dr. Milman evidently did not accept the narrative of the trying
^ Br^al, Ilercide et Cacus.
2 2 Sam. xxiv. I ; 1 Kings xxii. 23. 3 i Chron. xxi. 1.
^ i. 1-23. Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 'J^ook i. ch. ix., 1870.
Chap. III.] THE MINISTRY 231
of Jesus as a record of facts which took place as they are said to
have taken place. But he expressed, nevertheless, no distinct judge-
ment of his own, and left the reader to choose between a number
of alternatives. Thus, when he said that, ' according to the common
literal interpretation/ the temptation was ' actually urged by the
principle of evil in his own proper person,' we certainly cannot
impute to Dr. Milman himself the belief that there is a Principle
of Evil, and that this Principle has a visible body ; but we do seem
to learn on his authority the fact that the majority of Christians
are dualists, or believers in two Gods — one good, the other evil.
It is of the essence of monotheism to hold that there can be no
apxn^ or principle, but God ; and if any other originating power
be granted, there is no escape from the dualism of Zoroaster. So
far, however, as he may be said to express any opinion. Dean
Milman inclined to side with those who think that, ' even in the
New Testament, much allowance is to be made for the allegoric
character of Oriental narrative,' and that ' some, not less real,
though less preternatural, transaction is related, either from some
secret motive, or according to the genius of Eastern narrative, in
this figurative style.'
Of these plausible theories. Dr. Milman condescended to
examine that one which saw in the tempter not Satan but the
high priest, or one of the Sanhedrim, deputed by the council for
the purpose of discovering the real pretensions of Jesus. This
person (so the theory would have it) followed Jesus into the
wilderness, and demanded, as the price of his acknowledgement
by the public authorities, some display of preternatural powers
corresponding to those ascribed to Moses. In reply to this view,
daringly impertinent as it is. Dean Milman urged the improba-
bility that, at so early a period in his career, Jesus would be thought
of so much importance by the ruling powers, or that, even if the
writer of the first Gospel had some motive for wrapping up such
a transaction under a veil of allegory, this motive could have any
weight with the writer of the third Gospel ; ' nor,' he adds, ' does
it appear easily reconcileable with the cautious distance at which
232 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III
the authorities appear to have watched the conduct of Jesus, thus,
as it were, at once to have committed themselves, and almost
placed themselves within his power.' ^ We may, however, note
that when, in the raising of Lazarus, Jesus performed a work
immeasurably beyond any ascribed to Moses, it led the authorities
only to resolve on putting the worker of the wonder to death.
But, in truth, if the faintest memory of the incidents attending
the nativity of Jesus had survived — if they had remembered any-
thing of the star and the coming of the Magi, of the murdering
of the innocents, of the angelic song in the sky over Bethlehem —
still more, if they had thought of the Galilsean child who astonished
them in the temple with his understanding and answers — they
could have been in no doubt either as to his character or to his
claims; and thus the deputation to John and to Jesus become
alike superfluous. Further, it must be admitted that the ruling
powers seem to have cared very little for extraordinary manifesta-
tions; and it is scarcely likely that men even moderately well
read in the Pentateuch could forget the caution there given ^
against workers of wonders which may be false, or that men who
promised to follow Jesus on such grounds at the beginning of his
ministry should reject him at its close for working a wonder, the
reality of which they allowed.^
We need only touch on the difficulties involved in the transi-
tions from the scene of one temptation to that of another. The
Synoptic Gospels distinctly assert that the transitions were effected
by the devil, who takes Jesus and places him on the temple roof
and the mountain summit. It follows that he carried Jesus
through the air ; and this magical notion has, naturally, been dis-
agreeable to many even who accept the idea of an incarnate devil.
Nor does the character of the suggestions made to Jesus call
for any extended notice. If there be a certain natural force in the
temptation addressed to hunger, there is none in the suggestion
to fall from a pinnacle ; while the inducement to pay worship to the
devil would at once be rejected with horror by every true Israelite.
^ Dent. xiii. 2 John xi. 47.
€iiAP. III.] THE MINISTRY 233
How the narrative came into existence we are not in any way
called on to explain. Our task was ended when the story was
shown to be not historical. Still, it may be remarked, that such
tryings as those of Abraham and Job might suggest the idea of
temptation to be undergone by the Messiah, and that the wilder-
ness was regarded as the special abode of evil spirits, like the
Asmodeus (Aeshma-daeva) of the book of Tobit. In the wilder-
ness, Moses was awakened to the consciousness of his high calling :
in the wilderness, the Messiah should awaken to the consciousness
of his far higher mission. The forty days' fast of Moses and
Elijah may have fixed the time for the fast of Jesus ; and a further
precedent is furnished by the forty years' wandering in the wilder-
ness, the dreary time during which the chosen people are said to
have undergone their temptation. As hunger was the chief trial
of the Israelites, so should hunger be the first temptation of the
Messiah. As they were induced to tempt God in the desert, so
should the Messiah be urged to tempt God by asking for preter-
natural rescue from self -incurred danger; and as the Israelites
yielded to idolatry, so should the Messiah reject idolatry, which
later Jewish notions regarded as identical with the worship of the
devil. The same idea of temptation, or trying, at the beginning
of their career, is seen in the legends of Bouddha, Herakles, and
other mythical benefactors of mankind.
But if these suggestions be rejected as of no value, the narra-
tives still remain devoid of all historical authority.
CHAPTEE IV
DURATION OF THE MINISTRY
The popular idea, sanctioned by some patristic writings, regards
the public ministry of Jesus as extending over three years. How
far such a notion may be warranted by facts will be seen on a com-
parison of the fourth Gospel with the Synoptic narratives.
In the latter, Jesus is represented as labouring altogether in
Galilee from the time immediately succeeding the temptation to
the period of the journey to Jerusalem which led to the crucifixion.
In the former, Jesus is described as performing his chief works
and delivering his principal discourses in Jerusalem, and as depart-
ing into Galilee only for some specified reasons. According to
Matthew iv. 12, Jesus, having returned from Judaea into Galilee
on hearing of the imprisonment of the Baptist, first went to Nazareth,
which he immediately left for Capernaum. This city is thence-
forth the centre from which he visits various parts of northern
Palestine, but chiefly the region to the west of Jordan and the
lake of Tiberias, which formed the province of Herod Antipas.
But neither from this Gospel, nor from those of Mark and Luke,
are we able to determine the duration of the ministry. The
expressions used would reasonably lead us to suppose that the
evangelists imagined themselves to be drawing up a definite
chronological narrative. But the notes of time given by them
are generally confined to such phrases as ' then,' ' at that time,'
* after two days,' ' in those days,' and the like. On the hypothesis
that Jesus regularly kept the Paschal feast at Jerusalem, his whole
Chap. IV.] THE MINISTRY 235
public career, according to the Synoptics, would be limited to a
period of less than twelve months, as only one passover is men-
tioned by them. If it was extended over a longer time, it would
follow that Jesus was not a regular attendant at Jerusalem during
the Paschal feast — a supposition not altogether disproved even
by the fourth Gospel, for there is no explicit statement that Jesus
himself attended the passover mentioned in John vi. 4. In either
case it is obvious that the Synoptists were either ignorant of, or
had forgotten, or took no interest in, the discourses and works
which the fourth Gospel assigns to the several visits of Jesus to
Jerusalem before the last passover. All these suppositions seem
equally incredible. According to the fourth Gospel, Jesus was
attended at each of the festivals by Galilaeans who crowded to
Jerusalem in great numbers ; and it is not to be credited that they
would carry away to Galilee no remembrance of such events as
the cure of the man with the infirmity of nearly forty years' stand-
ing at the pool of Bethesda, or the restoration of the blind man
to sight, or the raising of Lazarus — to none of which do the Synop-
tists make the slightest reference. Forgetfulness of such things
presumes a grosser stupidity than we have a right to impute even
to Galilseans; and if it be urged that a Galilsean writer would
dwell chiefly on incidents likely to glorify his own country, the
answer is, that the Synoptic Gospels are clearly designed to glorify
not Galilee, bnt Jesus. He is the central figure on which the
brightest light is shed throughout, while the cities of Galilee are
frequently reproved with the utmost severity for their hardness of
heart and unbelief.
In the fourth Gospel, Jesus, after his last interview with John,
departs, not into the wilderness for the temptation, but to Cana of
Galilee (ii. 1), and from thence to Capernaum (ii. 12). A few days
later (ii. 13), he departs to Jerusalem for the passover, and after
having spent some time in Judiea (iii. 22 ; iv. 1), he returns through
Samaria into Galilee (iv. 43). Nothing is recorded of his stay in
this region at this time but the cure of the nobleman's son at
Capernaum, after which he is summoned to Jerusalem for the
236 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
feast (whatever this was), which was marked by the wonder at the
pool of Bethesda (v. 1). In the following chapter (vi. 1) it is
stated that he went over the sea of Galilee, and remained for some
time, chiefly at Capernaum (vi. 59), until he went up in secret to
the feast of tabernacles (vii. 1). To this visit belong all the dis-
courses which extend to chapter x. 2 1 ; and these are followed
immediately (x. 22) by the mention of the feast of dedication, the
inference being that Jesus had remained in the Holy City during
the whole interval between the two feasts. After this, Jesus retires
(x. 40) into Persea, or the country beyond Jordan, where he remains
down to the death of Lazarus and the beginning of the journey
which immediately preceded the crucifixion.
Of all these events the Synoptics know nothing ; and their
ignorance presents a wholly insuperable difficulty. They are care-
ful to note not only the time at which he returns to Galilee and
that at which he leaves it, but the various excursions across the
lake of Tiberias. It is incredible that they should have said
nothing of the astonishing events attending his visits to Jerusalem,
if they had been acquainted with them. If it be argued that the
omission is accounted for by the fact that the discourses at
Jerusalem required a far higher spiritual discernment than his
discourses in Galilee, the answer is, that the former are far more
miserably misunderstood than the latter, and that large portions
of them are said to be addressed to enemies who seek to kill him.
If, on the other hand, we take the silence of the Synoptics as an
argument that these events never took place, it follows that the
author of the fourth Gospel fabricated a series of the most
astonishing events and discourses, which he has further assigned
to a place not visited by Jesus till the close of his ministry.
A further contradiction becomes apparent, when we note that
the Synoptic evangelists seem to be as anxious to state the reason
for his leaving Galilee as the Johannine writer is to explain why
he went away from Jerusalem. From the former, it seems clear
that he would not have left Galilee if he could have avoided it.
From the latter (vii. 1), we seem to learn not less plainly that he
Chap. IV.] THE MINISTEY 237
would have remained at Jerusalem if he could have done so with
safety. The two statements cannot both be true ; and the question
arises whether we have any reason for preferring the one to the
other.
If there be, it is not a reason of any great strength. If we
take the Synoptic version, it is not easy to understand how one
visit of two or three days to Jerusalem should stir up an
antagonism so vehement as to lead to the capture and death of
Jesus. If it be said that he was denounced by Scribes and
Pharisees who were resident in the towns of Galilee, then it can-
not be said that he absented himself from Jerusalem because in
Galilee he was free from all such ecclesiastical supervision. The
motive of prudence being thus taken away, there was no reason
why he should not regularly go up to the temple for every
feast.
But, though the Synoptists agree in making Galilee the scene
of his ministry, they agree in little more. The first Gospel (iv.
14) takes him to Capernaum to fulfil a supposed prophecy of
Isaiah. The third (iv. 16) represents him as first making an
attempt to establish himself at ' his own city, ISTazareth.' In the
Synagogue on a Sabbath day he announces that another supposed
Messianic prediction of Isaiah is fulfilled in his own person,
and his fellow-townsmen marvel at hearing such words from the
carpenter's son (iv. 22). On his quoting to them the proverb that
prophets are without honour only in their own country, they are
so enraged that they j)ress on him, and hurry him to the brow of
the hill on which their city is built, intending to hurl him down
over it ; but by a mysterious restraining power Jesus withdraws
himself from the midst of them and escapes.
A visit to Nazareth, which is evidently the same as the one
just described, is found in the first and second Gospels in a very
different connexion and at a much later time. It is true that no
attempt is made to put him to death ; but Jesus quotes to them
the same proverb in answer to the same expressions of disparage-
ment or unbelief on their part (Matthew xiii. 57). Here also, as
238 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
in Mark (vi. 1-4), a pointed reference is made to mighty works
wrought by Jesus, as well as to his wisdom, thus proving that the
visit to Nazareth could not have occurred immediately after his
return from Judsea into Galilee. This fact is incidentally betrayed
by the narrative in the third Gospel (iv. 23), which, while it
describes the visit as the first incident in the ministry of Jesus,
represents him as telling the Nazarenes, * Ye will surely say to me
this parable, Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard
done in Capernaum, do here also in thy country.' By this re-
ference to previous wonders wrought in Capernaum the evangelist
summarily contradicts his own statement that the visit to Nazareth
preceded any ministrations in Capernaum. If it be urged that the
account in the third Gospel belongs to an earlier incident than
that mentioned in the other Gospels, the answer is, that in this
case the Nazarenes would have been quite well acquainted with
his wisdom, and needed not to ask the same question and to re-
ceive the same reply a second time. The self-contradiction of the
third evangelist shows the thoroughly unhistorical nature of the
narrative.
The remaining incidents of the public life of Jesus are described
with no greater accuracy. The same events and the same dis-
courses are given in very different sequences, and ascribed to
different places. Hence some, who have wished to uphold the
credit of the Gospels as historical records, have urged that the
idea of giving a correct chronological order of events was foreign
to the minds of the Synoptists. It may be so ; but this hypothesis
makes it impossible for us to determine how and when the events
took place, or whether they ever took place at all.
While, then, in these Gospels the ministry seems to be limited
to a few months, in the fourth it is extended, apparently, to two
years. But in truth, all the opinions held on this subject rest on
a fanciful basis. Some, who regard the ministry as begun and ended
within twelve months, have supposed that this period is indicated
by * the acceptable year of the Lord ' ; while Irenajus and others,
who extended it to twenty years, relied on the expression, ' Thou
Chap. IV.] THE MINISTRY 239
art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? ' as
proving that he had passed the fourth and was approaching the end
of the fifth decade of his life.
Finally, if we accept the statement of the third Gospel (iii. 1)
that Jesus was baptized in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, it would
follow that the ministry may have extended over seven years, for
Pilate was recalled in the year of the emperor's death, and the
reign of Tiberius lasted over twenty -two years. But we have
already noted the chronological errors which render this passage
historically worthless. Thus, then, we cannot profess to have any
certain, or even moderately trustworthy, information either as to
the duration of the ministry or as to the principal scenes of the
labours of Jesus. What is seen clearly is that the Synoptic and
Johannine narratives mutually exclude each other. This relative
trustworthiness, or untrustworthiness, will be more apparent in
the sequel.
CHAPTEE V
THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES
The scanty and contradictory notes of time given for the
several incidents in the ministry of Jesus as well as for its general
duration render it impossible for us to do more than to take in the
most convenient order events, almost all of which appear in the
several Gospels in different sequences and relations.
By all the evangelists Jesus is represented as alone at the
beginning of his ministry, and as being afterwards attended by a
band of disciples. Here, however, the agreement ends. In the
fourth Gospel, Jesus, twice seen by the Baptist walking alone,^ is
twice hailed by him as the Lamb of God, who lifts up or takes away
the sins of the world. On the second of these two occasions the
Baptist is attended by two of his disciples, who, on hearing their
master's address, forsake him and follow Jesus (John i. 29-35).
This statement at once throws us back on all the difficulties
involved in the relations of the Baptist to Jesus.2 If the former
so clearly recognised his high Messianic character, if he saw in
Jesus that mighty one who was to baptize with the Holy Ghost
and with fire, it was eminently consistent with such a conviction
that he should surrender his own disciples to the Christ ; but it is
inconsistent that he should retain any, or that he should continue
1 According to John i. 29 there was no one to hear John's exclamation, unless
Jesus was within hearing distance. How was the evangelist made acquainted
with the fact ? We shall come across other instances of the same difficulty in
this Gospel, and, indeed, in the others also.
- See above, chapter ii. section 2.
240
Chap. V.] THE MINISTKY 241
any longer to administer his own rite of baptism. But he does
continue to baptize, even in the fourth Gospel (iii. 23), while in
the Synoptic Gospels he is described as not recognising the high
spiritual character of Jesus ; and he is spoken of accordingly as
less than the least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. xi. 11). We
have also to remember that, if any credit be given to any part of
the history of the Acts, there existed to a much later date a body
of persons who knew no baptism but that of John, and who had
not, so we are told, even heard of the existence of a Holy Ghost.^
Hence this account of the transference of the Baptist's disciples
must be set aside as unhistorical.
Of the two disciples thus transferred one is said to have been
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter ; the other, who is nameless,
has been generally regarded as the favourite disciple who lay on
Jesus' breast at the last evening meal,^ and is further identified
with John, the son of Zebedee. Thus, then, according to the
fourth Gospel, Andrew, after abiding with Jesus for a single night,
is convinced of his Messiahship, and thereupon summons his
brother Simon, who is now brought before Jesus for the first time
and receives from him the surname of Kephas, a stone (petros),
Simon is, therefore, introduced to Jesus as the Messiah ; and both
brothers are as distinctly convinced of his mission as the Baptist
is represented to have been. But in the Synoptic accounts none
of the disciples for a long time rise to this conviction ; and, when
they do arrive at it, it is Peter who first puts it into words, and no
hint is given that Andrew had long ago given utterance to the
same belief.
On the next day, in the same story (John i. 43), Jesus gives
his first distinct call ; but this call is given to Philip, described
as of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip is called
on the road to Galilee, and, having found his brother Nathanael,
brings him also to Jesus as the Messiah. It is scarcely necessary
^ If any inference can be drawn from this statement, it would be that the
words put into the mouth of the Baptist in Matt. iii. 11 are a fiction. The baptism
of the Holy Spirit was of the essence of John's teaching, as given in our Gospels.
^ Supernatural Religion ^ ii. 431.
Q
242 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
tx) notice the opinion which in Nathanael sees the apostle Bartho-
lomew. It is more to the purpose to note his incredulity when
told that the Messiah belonged to Nazareth. There is not the
slightest evidence that at this time any stigma attached to that
city more than to any other in Galilee ; and in the general con-
tempt for the whole province of Galilee Nathanael, as being
himself a Galilsean, was not very likely to concur.
But every incident in the narrative of this call is the gravest
tax on our powers of belief. As Nathanael approaches, Jesus at
once greets him as an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile ;
and when Nathanael expresses his surprise that Jesus should
know him, the answer is, ' Before that Philip called thee, when
thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.' It would be folly to
waste time on explanations which assert that Jesus had already
been informed of the character of Nathanael, as the words of Jesus
are thus degraded into a piece of gross trickery. It is indubitable
that the writer meant to describe this knowledge as preternatural,
and as such it is regarded by Nathanael. The idea that Jesus
saw Nathanael reading the law under a fig-tree, and thus had a
clue to his character, is scarcely less reprehensible. Hypocrites
may read the law under fig-trees,^ and a diligent student of
Deuteronomy (xiii.) must have remembered the solemn warning
against being led astray by any mere outward sign. Forgetting,
however, all that is there said about wonders which may possibly
be false, Nathanael without waiting, it would seem, for any moral
proof, at once acknowledges Jesus as Son of God and king
of Israel ; and Jesus, without rebuking him for believing on the
score of a mere sign, promises that he shall see greater tokens
of his knowledge and power hereafter.
How this traditi6n (which must be dismissed as not belonging
to the domain of history) grew up, we are not called upon to
determine. It is barely possible that the groundwork may have
1 It would suit the theology of the fourth Gospel to take the phrase cpra virb
T^v ffVKTJVy i. 49, as = m utero matris. It may, therefore, have been, like the
declaration in viii. 58, designed to express his pre-existence as the Logos.
Chap. V.] THE MINISTRY 243
been furnished by the second- sight attributed to Elisha, and, at his
prayer, conferred on others ; ^ but the rejection of this explanation
adds nothing to the trustworthiness of the Johannine narrative.
Thus, before the arrival of Jesus in Galilee, the fourth Gospel
represents him as attended by five disciples — Andrew and his
brother Simon, the nameless one who may be John, Philip, and
Nathanael. But in the first Gospel (iv. 18) Jesus, walking alone,
finds Andrew and Simon for the first time on the shore of the
Galiljean sea, and, promising to make them fishers of men, bids them
follow him. The call is instantly obeyed, and their fishermen's
occupation forthwith abandoned. Going onwards, he summons in
like manner James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who likewise
leave their ships and their father at his command. Thus the
places and the incidents of these calls are absolutely, and in every
respect, contradictory.
Writers who have wished to reconcile these statements have
generally taken refuge in the notion that the two evangelists
describe separate calls many times repeated ; but this hypothesis
does nothing more than substitute one difi&culty for another. If
it be supposed that the calls in the fourth Gospel succeeded those
recorded in the Synoptics, then Andrew and John, having already
followed Jesus, could not have been found afterwards among the
disciples of the Baptist ; and if Peter had already been summoned
to be a fisher of men, there would have been no need of his brother
Andrew's telling him at a later time that they had found the
Messiah. If, on the other hand, we suppose that the calls in the
fourth Gospel preceded those of the Synoptic Gospels, it is not
easy to see how Philip and the rest could have deserted Jesus
after receiving his command to follow him. Wherever else this
phrase is used, it is used as expressing an injunction which is to
be rigidly complied with; and it is construed by the disciples
accordingly. ' Lo, we have left all and followed thee. What shall
we have therefore ? ' is not the exclamation of men who think that
they may follow the Master for a day and then return to -their
1 I Kings V. 26, vi. 17.
244 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
former avocations. But even if we suppose that they could so
leave him, is it possible to imagine that, in a few days or weeks,
they could so have forgotten all that had passed as to need in
Galilee a summons which was addressed to them evidently as to
strangers? For, indeed, nothing is more clear than that the
Synoptic writers intend to describe a first call in each given
instance. Why, again, if Jesus had already given to Simon the
surname of Kephas, or Peter, which marked his special rank
among the apostles, should he afterwards invite him to become
with other disciples a fisher of men ?
We cannot, then, suppose that the Synoptic calls preceded those
of the Johannine Gospel, or that the latter went before the former.
Hence, unless we have some special warrant for regarding either
of the two as more trustworthy than the other, we must reject
both as unhistorical.
It may fairly be remarked, in the first place, that the know-
ledge of the character of men displayed by Jesus at the first
glance is scarcely consistent with the idea of any human con-
sciousness ;i nor can the instant obedience of those who are
called be accounted for on any other hypothesis than that of a
preternatural constraining force in the voice and bearing of Jesus.
According to the narrative, they had not seen, and perhaps never
heard, of him before. In any case, as Jesus was alone, he was
unannounced ; and if they had heard of him, it implied a divining
power on their part to connect what they had heard with the
stranger then present before them.
Here, again, although we are in no way bound to explain the
1 We have no definite declarations on this subject in the fourth Gospel. The
passage John ii. 25-27 seems to have been strangely wrested from its apparent
meaning. All that is said here is that Jesus did not trust himself to the multi-
tudes, because they all knew him (as the famed wonder-worker), and because
they (his enemies) had no need that any one should bear witness about the man
{i.e. Jesus), as he was himself so well known. This interpretation involves a
change in the text to the extent of one minute stroke. We must read elxov for
elxef. In the last clause, which yields no sense, we have no warrant for
rendering iv tQ a.vdpu)iri^ by in man. The passage seems to connect itself with
John ix. 22.
Chap. V.] THE MINISTEY 245
origin of these or any other traditions, we may perhaps, not
unreasonably, refer to the Old Testament legends about Elisha.
Whether, after the traditionary fashion, we choose to call them
types or give them any other name, still the fact remains that in
both we have incidents of precisely the same kind. Ploughing,
in the case of Elisha, answers to the fisherman's craft in that of
Peter and the sons of Zebedee ; and the voice of Elijah summons
the son of Shaphat to a high spiritual office with a power as
irresistible as that of Jesus. In one respect only they differ:
Elijah suffers his new disciple to go and bid farewell to those in
his father's house. It was necessary to find some point on which
the Messiah should rise above the prophet; and that point was
found here.
But, further, if the Johannine account of the calling of Andrew
and Nathanael be true, then all those narratives in the Synoptic
Gospels which represent the disciples as unaware of the Messianic
mission of Jesus, and as utterly unable to comprehend its nature,
are convicted of falsehood. According to the former, the disciples,
together with the Baptist, understood it as clearly as ever it was
understood by the apostle Paul ; and it is impossible to believe
that a faith so clear could become so clouded and dull as that of
the apostles is represented to have been during the whole of the
ministry.
In the case of Peter, we find not only the summons in the
fourth Gospel by Andrew who distinctly tells him that Jesus is
the Messiah, and the call in Matthew (iv. 19), but also another
call in Luke (v. 1-11), which is either another account of the
incident recorded in the first Gospel, or a wholly different story.
If it be the former, then all that can be said is that any event
may be identified with any other. In the first Gospel, Jesus
simply walks by the sea, and, bidding Peter and his brother follow
him, is instantly obeyed. In Luke he bids them push out into
the sea, and, sitting down in the boat, he teaches the people who
stand on the shore. In the former there is a bare command ; in
the latter there is a marvellous draught of fishes. If, however,
246 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
we regard it as a separate incident, we at once find ourselves at
a loss to determine where it is to be placed. It cannot come
before the call in the fourth Gospel, because that occurs in Judaea,
while that of Luke belongs to the shore of Geunesareth, even if
we make nothing of the difficulty arising from the circumstance
that any subsequent calls should be needed by one who had been
distinctly informed of his Messiahship. It cannot be placed
before that of Matthew, because, if by the wonder Peter had been
so convinced of his own sinfulness and of the holiness of Jesus,
a second call would have been quite unnecessary. If it be placed
later, then we have before us this phenomenon, that a disciple who
had received such a call as that described in John i., deliberately
leaves his Master ; that, having been called again in Galilee, he
again leaves him, and is finally induced the third time by an
outward manifestation of power to attach himself permanently
to Jesus. There remains, also, the difficulty that each time he is
invited as an utter stranger. Nor is the difficulty lessened, if we
suppose that the healing of Peter's wife's mother preceded this
wonderful draught, as it is said to have done in Luke (iv. 38), for
this would only show still more how little Peter would be in-
fluenced by the signs and wonders. In the first Gospel (viii. 14)
this healing is recorded in a later connexion. Thus, then, in
place of an advance from a lower faith to a higher we have a
very singular retrogression.
If, then, these narratives exclude each other, is either to be
preferred? Are we to suppose that the tale of the wonderful
draught of fishes has dropped out of the account of Matthew or
Mark, and that the promise that they should become fishers of
men (which is common to all the accounts) was in the third Gospel
worked out into a literal history? As to which would be the
more natural and likely course there can be no doubt whatever.
Popular tradition never spiritualises ; and all ecclesiastical history
is full of marvellous stories which have had some metaphorical
or figurative saying as their basis.^ When a mediaival saint,
^ See Appendix A.
Chap. V.] THE MINISTRY ^47
pointing to his crucifix, said that it was thence he derived all
his inspiration, the saying soon grew into the tale that he' had
a speaking crucifix; but the legend would never have resolved
itself into the symbolical phrase. Here, also, we must call to
mind the draught of fish^ mentioned in the last chapter of the
fourth Gospel. This narrative is regarded by Origen and other
writers as a piece of symbolism, indicating by the definite number
of the fishes and the soundness of the net the Church triumphant
in heaven; while the great multitude breaking the net in the
third Gospel represents the imperfection caused by the mingling
of good and bad, of tares and wheat, in the Church militant on
earth.
We have, therefore, no warrant for regarding the narratives of
the calling of Peter, given in the third Gospel, as historical.
On the calling of Matthew a few words may suffice. In the
first Gospel (ix. 9) it is stated that, some time after the delivery
of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, having called Matthew from
the receipt of custom, was immediately followed by the publican
and entertained in his house. In Mark (ii. 13) we are told that
after the healing of the palsied man in Capernaum, Jesus called
Levi, the son of Alphseus, from the receipt of custom, the remainder
of the narrative being the same. In Luke v. 27 we have the same
name Levi ; but the incident is placed before the Sermon on the
Mount or Plain. That, in all three instances, we have the same
tale, we cannot well doubt ; but it is far from certain that the
same person is denoted by the names Levi and Matthew. The
lists of apostles in the second and third Gospels contain the name
of Matthew ; but they do not call him a publican, nor do they
mention that he also bore the name of Levi. All that we can
say, then, is that we have here the calling of two publicans,
which is paralleled by the story of Zacchseus, who likewise obeys
instantly the call of Jesus, and makes him a feast in his house,
exciting similar murmurs among the orthodox Pharisees.
We have thus before us the callings of six of that band of
twelve who received the name of apostles or missioners. That
248 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
the choice of this number had reference to the ordinary Messianic
ideas is expressly asserted in writings as ancient as the epistle
of Barnabas. But the relation in which the twelve stand to each
other is not the same in all the Gospels. All three catalogues
place the name of Peter first ; and this can scarcely be the result
of chance, or because he was first called, since in the fourth
Gospel he is called after Andrew and the nameless apostle who
is supposed to be John. Throughout the Synoptics, also, Peter is
always the most prominent, and is the first to acknowledge the
Messiahship of Jesus, — a statement quite irreconcilable, as we
have seen, with the fourth Gospel.
A fact far more noteworthy is, that in the Synoptics, not only
does the name of James take precedence of that of John, but the
order in which the three most intimate disciples are mentioned
is always that of Peter, James, John. James, therefore, took
precedence of his brother, as Peter stood higher than James. In
the fourth Gospel the case is represented very differently. Peter,
it is true, is still in a certain sense foremost, but it is only in
a physical sense. Peter follows Jesus to the high priest's house ;
but he gains admission only through the influence of John. He
is the first to run to the tomb ; but John is the first to see
and believe. Peter is the first to cast himself into the sea when,
after the resurrection, Jesus appears to them on the shores of
the lake of Tiberias; but John is the first to see that it is the
Master (xxi. 7). In other ways also John is exalted. In the
Synoptics no disciples are witnesses of the crucifixion ; in the fourth
Gospel the beloved disciple stands by the cross with the mother
of Jesus. Peter, again, receives a command to feed the sheep ;
but it is preceded by the reproachful question, ' Lovest thou me ? '
while a promise is seemingly given to John that he shall continue
on earth until the second coming of Messiah. But in this Gospel
it must further be noticed that James has wholly disappeared.
Not even his name is mentioned, nor is his calling specified in the
passage which indicates that of the beloved disciple. No speech
is put into his mouth throughout this Gospel. These singular
Ohap. v.] the ministry 249
differences justify a doubt whether, by the beloved disciple, we are
to understand John, the son of Zebedee ; and still more whether
this John is the writer of this Gospel. If he be, why does he
thus studiously keep out of sight the brother who takes pre-
cedence of him in the Synoptic narratives ?
It remains only to notice the mission of the seventy disciples,
which is recorded in the third Gospel only. No notice is taken
elsewhere of any results produced by them ; and yet in Luke these
results are spoken of as greater than any produced by the twelve.
This circumstance not only throws doubt on the mission of the
seventy as an historical fact, but seems to point to a purpose, lying
at the root of the story, to exalt the seventy at the expense of the
twelve. If the mission of the former be historical, it is strange
that no other book of the New Testament writings should take
the slightest notice of it. If it be not historical, what confidence
can we place in writers who can thus construct events to suit their
own objects ? As to their number, the seventy may be compared
with the seventy elders of Moses, the seventy translators of the
Old Testament Scriptures, and the seventy members of the
Sanhedrim.
CHAPTEE VI
THE MESSIANIC MISSION OF JESUS
We have seen that, according to the fourth Gospel, Jesus was
at the very outset of his career recognised as the Messiah, and even
as the divine Logos, or Word, of the Father. We have seen him
recognised as such by the Baptist, by Andrew and his nameless
fellow-disciple, by Peter and ]!Tathanael; and the difficulties
connected with this recognition have been examined already. But
the question now presents itself. How did Jesus regard his
mission, and did he always make use of the same language in
speaking of it ?
That he looked upon himself as Messiah we can neither affirm
nor deny. He is said to have heard with approval the declaration
that he was the Christ (Matt. xvi. 16); nor can we well suppose
that the belief in his Messiahship could have been held by his
disciples after his death, if during his lifetime he had never
thought of inculcating it. The Synoptic Gospels also represent his
baptism as accompanied by signs attesting his high mission ; and
without reverting now to the statements of the fourth Gospel, we
may note that in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 21) Jesus
distinctly claims the character of Messiah as the judge of the
world. But the historical value of this passage can be determined
only by an examination of that discourse.
There is, however, a marked difference between the language
put into the mouth of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and that
which is ascribed to him throughout the whole of the fourth
250
Chap. VI.] THE MINISTRY 251
Gospel. In the latter, he is everywhere the divine Logos who has
taken up his tabernacle in the flesh, and who returns to the glory
which he had with the Father before the world was. In the
former, the colours are more variable. Far from proclaiming him-
self (as he does to the woman of Samaria, to Nicodemus, and even
to the hostile Jews at Jerusalem), he is more commonly repre-
sented as anxious to withhold this knowledge ; nor can the blessing
bestowed on Peter for recognising him as the Christ (accompanied
as it is by a charge to keep the fact secret) be regarded as histori-
cal, if the narratives of the fourth Gospel are to be received as true.
Kor can we well understand why he should seek, in the Synoptics,
to ascertain by questions what the disciples thought of him, if,
according to the fourth Gospel, he proclaimed even to his enemies
that he had existed before Abraham was. Not a word is here said
about keeping his declaration secret ; and the very idea of any such
caution is absurd.
If any conclusions can be drawn from the sentence with which
Jesus is said to have commenced his ministry, the bidding, ' Eepent
ye, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,' being identical with
the announcement of the Baptist, would seem to point rather to
the expectation of another than to the conviction that he was
himself the Messiah. On the other hand, the frequent charges (in
the Synoptics alone) to keep silence on the subject seem to indicate
a consciousness of his Messianic character, over which, neverthe-
less, he wished to throw a veil, although he had spoken of himself
as the judge of the world in the Sermon on the Mount. But, as we
have already noted, of this wish for secrecy the fourth Gospel
exhibits not the slightest trace ; and its absence raises an insuper-
able difficulty, inasmuch as of two contradictory narratives both
cannot possibly be true, although both may possibly or easily be
false. There is, also, the further conclusion that, if the Synoptic
representations be true, the Johannine history is, in the strictest
sense of the word, a fabrication.
Nor can it be denied that from the Synoptic Gospels we cannot
infer any consciousness of pre-existence on the part of Jesus.
252 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
This is found only in the fourth Gospel ; but it is there prominent
throughout — a necessary result of the Logos doctrine ; and hence
we have no historical warrant for holding that he expressed this
conviction himself. The silence of the Synoptic writers on this
subject some have sought to explain by asserting that the minds
of ignorant Galilseans were too dull to understand such truths if
they should be set before them. The reply is, that the Jews, before
whom they are propounded in the fourth Gospel, misunderstand
them as thoroughly and persistently as it would be possible for
any to do, and, indeed, are represented as being roused to fury by
many of them.
The same contradictions are manifest when we seek to
determine how far his ideas of Messiahship involved any political
element. It is certain, if the Gospel stories be worthy of the least
credit, that this element entered largely into the Messianic con-
ceptions of his disciples to a time far later than that assigned to
the crucifixion ; and, therefore, that when he sent forth the twelve
to preach in his name (or spirit), Jesus, according toHhese Gospels,
knew to what kind of hopes and longings they would assuredly
give utterance. Nor is it easy to see how the promise (if it was
made) of the twelve thrones (Matt. xix. 28) could be interpreted
without some political bias by men in the mental condition
attributed to the apostles. On the other hand, there is not the
faintest evidence that Jesus ever sought to form a political party.
What evidence there is tends strongly to prove that his purpose
throughout was to show that his kingdom was not of this world.
But, although there is no reasonable doubt that Jesus looked
to the employment of no earthly force for the establishment of his
kingdom, he did look for a wholly new society on a regenerated
earth ; and his language respecting this new condition of things is
quite consistent with the supposition that, far from desiring the
subversion of what was known under the term * the law and the
prophets,' he anticipated the gathering of the whole Gentile world
into the fold of Abraham. This expectation may, to some extent,
explain the charge given to the twelve that, avoiding the way of
Chap. VI.] THE MINISTRY 253
the Gentiles, they should go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel. This charge is given only in the first Gospel (x. 5), and
naturally finds no place in the Gospel which exalted the seventy
at the expense of the twelve. After the resurrection, indeed, Jesus
is represented as bidding them go and teach all nations.^ But,
apart from the difficulties arising from the use at that time of the
formula of baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, we have to reconcile with such a command the whole
tone of thought which characterises the apostolic or missionary
college in the Acts, as well as the whole history of that book.^ If
the very slightest dependence can be placed on any statements in
it, it is clear that the idea of preaching to the Gentiles as such was
among the furthest from their minds. When Cornelius is to be
baptized, Peter is prepared not by being made to understand or
remember the express injunctions of Jesus, but by a vision which
shows him that he is not to call any man common or unclean
(Acts X. 15). After the baptism has taken place, Peter justifies
himself not by saying plainly (as, if he had received such a command,
he must have said) that he was but obeying the last injunction of
his Master, but by recounting his vision, and informing them of
the spiritual gifts bestowed on the centurion and his family
(xi. 5-18). Either, then, Jesus gave this command, and then the
whole history of Cornelius in the Acts is false ; or that history is
true, and then these words of Jesus are unhistorical. There is
no escape from the dilemma.
But the book of the Acts, which represents the apostles as
averse to any intercourse with the Gentile world as such, exhibits
a very different state of feeling on their part towards the Samari-
tans. On the persecution which is said to have followed the
death of Stephen, Philip the deacon went, we are told, to the
Samaritans ; and the tidings that he had preached to them suc-
cessfully, were received with so much gladness by the missioners
at Jerusalem, that Peter and John were at once sent down to
1 Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Mark xvi. 15 ; Luke xxiv. 47.
2 See Book i. chap. i.
254 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
confirm them in the faith. Hence, perhaps, it may be not unreason-
ably inferred, that towards the Samaritans Jesus had employed a
different language from that in which he had spoken of the
Gentiles. The statements of the Gospels do not enable us to
determine this point with any certainty. On the one hand, we
have the plain declaration to the woman of Samaria ; but this
cannot be accepted as historical until the authenticity of the con-
versation has first been proved. There is also the parable of the
Good Samaritan, and the incident of the Samaritan who returned
to give him thanks for his cure from leprosy (xvii. 13), as well as
the command (Acts i. 8), to preach the gospel in Samaria. On
the other hand, there is the charge to the twelve (but not to the
seventy) that they were to avoid the villages of the Samaritans
not less carefully than the way of the Gentiles. Either, then,
some of these passages are unhistorical, or the later words of
Jesus have a wider scope than those which he uttered in the
earlier portions of his ministry.
{
/
CHAPTEE VII
DISCOURSES IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
§ 1. Tlie Sermons on the Moimt and the Flain.
In the first Gospel (iv. 23) we are told that Jesus went about
Galilee, teaching and healing, and then that, seeing the multitudes
which followed him, he went up into the mountain and there
preached the sermon which is contained in the fifth and the
two following chapters. But whether this sermon was preached
at the beginning of this circuit, or to what time it is to be assigned,
we are not distinctly informed.
The sermon itself is manifestly a summary of the whole
system which Jesus sought to establish. It enters fully into the
relation of the so-called Mosaic economy to the dispensation now
to be brought in ; and it propounds a system of ethics which is of
universal application, and which admits apparently of no excep-
tion. But with the theology or the morals of the sermon we are
not for the present concerned. Our task is to determine whether
it was spoken at the beginning of the first circuit, or whether
it was ever spoken at all in the form in which it has come down
to us.
It is a trite, yet scarcely superfluous, remark, that of this
sermon not a word is to be found in the fourth Gospel, just as of
the discourses in that Gospel the Synoptics exhibit no trace.
Neither do we find it in Mark ; but to this it may be answered
that that Gospel scarcely takes notice of any of the discourses of
Jesus. But in the third Gospel (vi. 20) there is a discourse which,
255
256 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECOEDS [Book III.
amidst many points of unlikeness, exhibits many more of such
complete similarity that the two discourses may safely be
identified. Both begin with beatitudes ; both end with precisely
the same similes ; while the intervening portions in the third Gospel
are little more than condensations of matter given at more
length in the first. If the one is delivered on the mountain
(whatever hill this may be), it is scarcely correct to say that the
other was preached on a plain. The level place ^ on which Jesus
stood may more reasonably mean a ledge or standing-place on a
liill-side. In each case, also, after the discourse, Jesus goes to
Capernaum, and there heals the centurion's servant.
All these circumstances can scarcely have occurred twice ;
nor is it likely that a teacher, propounding a new faith, would use
precisely the same words many times. It may further be urged
that the discourse could not in any case have been all given at one
time, as the multitude of topics would bewilder any hearers, and
would have made it wholly unintelligible to the ignorant crowds of
Jews and Galilseans. Nor can it be said that the topics are
throughout connected. If from the beginning of the fifth chapter
to the nineteenth verse of the next chapter the links may be
traced without much difficulty, there is, after this point, no reason
why the subjects throughout the remainder of the sermon should
be given in one order rather than in another. But the assertion
that Jesus went up into the mountain before he began it, and
came down at its close, shows that the evangelist himself regarded
it as one consecutive speech. The idea that the sermon is a collec-
tion of fragments from many discourses is thus, so far as the
evangelist is concerned, excluded ; and if the discourse be one
which could not be delivered at one time, the statement that it
was so delivered must be set aside as unhistorical.
It is quite possible, however, that of the two reports one may
be more trustworthy. If we assign this higher character to the
sermon as given in the first Gospel, we can scarcely avoid the con-
clusion that the writer of the third Gospel has twisted many portions
^ iirl rdirov TredivoO, Luke \i. 17.
OF
Chap. VIL] THE MINISTRY 257
and perverted the meaning to suit a purpose. For, whereas in
Matthew the beatitudes refer wholly to spiritual conditions, to the
poor in spirit, the meek-hearted, the hungerers after righteousness,
the merciful, the pure, and the peacemakers, in the third they are
eulogies on certain physical states, as temporal poverty and bodily
hunger. To leave no doubt on the subject, some words are
added which have no place in the sermon as given in the first
Gospel, and which are directed against those who are rich in
this world's goods, whose bodies are filled, who are merry and well
spoken of. Of these opposite conditions the future life is repre-
sented as being a complete reversal. All this is in strict accord-
ance with the Ebionite philosophy which reappears in a very glaring
form in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and which
lies at the root of both Eastern and Western monachism.
If, then, the woes in Luke vi. be not historical (and from their
total absence in the first Gospel it seems impossible that they
should be historical), they must be dismissed as deliberate
fabrications. Whether the evangelist added the maledictions,
because he thought that the Gospel, like the Law, should be
sanctioned by curses as well as by blessings, is a question which
we are not called upon to answer.
In the first Gospel the beatitudes are followed by a likening of
all his hearers to the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
In Luke (xiv. 34) the metaphor from salt is introduced in quite
another connexion. In Mark (ix. 50) it is connected by a mere
play upon words with the fire of hell. But such comparisons as
these might be introduced at any time, and nothing can be built
on their insertion in one place rather than another.
These comparisons are followed by the most important topic in
the sermon — the relation, namely, of Jesus to the law. He here
seems to speak professedly as the Messiah, as he does when he
afterwards denounces the hypocrisy and vanity of addressing him
as Master, without fulfilling his commands. But according to the
first Gospel (xvi. 13) he had not declared himself Messiah down to
a much later period. How, then, can he have spoken these words
R
258 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
at the beginning of his ministry ? If he did, he could not then
have asked his disciples at a later time whom they, or men in
general, took him to be. If he asked the question, then this
portion of the Sermon on the Mount is unhistorical or misplaced.
The following paragraph (v. 21-44) on the spirit in which the
law is to be kept, as contrasted with the carnal interpretations of
the doctors, is altogether wanting in the third Gospel, where the 27th
and 29th verses of the sixth chapter clearly point to omissions.
These injunctions are followed by the promulgation of a prayer
(Matt. vi. 9), commonly known as the Lord's Prayer, as a model
after which his disciples were to frame their devotions. We here
encounter a considerable dif&culty. In Luke (xi. 1), long after the
mission not only of the twelve, but also of the seventy, one of the
disciples is represented as asking Jesus to teach them to pray, as
John had taught his disciples. In reply Jesus gives them the
same form which he had recited in the Sermon on the Mount in
the first GospeL The incident is scarcely credible. That a
teacher introducing a wholly new order of things should give to
his disciples a model of prayer at the very commencement of his
labours is perfectly natural ; that he should continue to preach to
them without thinking of the other duty, or without even praying
with them until they ask him to do so, is in the highest degree
improbable. If he had already taught them the prayer, could they
by possibility have asked the question? or if they had utterly
forgotten the fact, and imagined that he had never taught them
any prayer, could he have done less than upbraid them for the
shortness of their memory, if not for the coldness of their hearts ?
When in the fourth Gospel (xiv. 9) Philip is mentioned as saying,
' Master, show us the Father,' the terse reproof is, ' Hast thou been
so long with me, and yet sayest thou. Show us the Father ? '
Either, then, this prayer^ formed no portion of the Sermon on
the Mount, or in the third Gospel it is dislocated from its right
connexion, and the request prefixed to it is a fabrication.
At this point the connected sequence of subjects ends ; and the
1 See p. 203, note \
Chap. VII.] THE MINISTEY 269
fact that some of the precepts which follow reappear elsewhere in
a different connexion may, perhaps, tend to prove that they are
fragments of the teaching of Jesus, which floated about on the
surface of tradition. Thus the warnings on the subject of earthly
and heavenly treasure (Matt. vi. 19-22) are found in the third
Gospel in a discourse directed against temporal care. The passage
which in Matthew (vii. 21) immediately precedes the closing
comparisons, cannot, as we have seen, have been spoken at the
beginning of the ministry, if the statement in chapter xvi. 13 be
true, that at that date Jesus had not revealed himself as Messiah.
§ 2. Addresses to the Twelve and the Seventy.
If in several books, which profess to record the speeches or
discourses of any given person, we find not only that speeches
reported at great length in one are presented in a very mutilated
form in another, but that portions of them are introduced into
other discourses, or appended to incidents quite different from those
to which they are attached elsewhere, we can only conclude that
in some of these reports the sequence is unhistorical, while it is
possible that it may be incorrect in all. That this remark applies
to all the discourses and almost all the parables given in the
Synoptic Gospels will appear on a brief examination of them.
The tenth chapter of the first Gospel contains the address of
Jesus on sending forth the twelve to preach the advent of the
divine kingdom. Of this address Luke (x. 1-12) gives a part,
slightly modified to suit a purpose,^ as the charge of Jesus to the
seventy disciples. Of the rest, those sentences which are given in
Matt. X. 26-33 reappear in Luke xii. 2-9 in a totally different
connexion. Other portions, again, are found in the final discourses
relating to the second advent (Matt. xxiv.,etc.). Hence it is plain
either that the arrangement in Luke is unhistorical, or that
Matthew has gathered into a connected address utterances which
were originally independent.
1 See p. 249.
260 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL EECORDS [Book III.
But there is no question that the evangelist intended to set
forth the whole address as one, for in x. 5 we have the beginning
of the charge, 'These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded
them, saying,' etc., and in the first verse of the following chapter
we have the announcement that when Jesus had made an end of
commanding the twelve disciples he departed to teach elsewhere.
Yet although the verbal argument between the evangelists seems
to indicate the identity of these addresses, there are differences
•between them, some of which have been already noticed. In the
case of the twelve the mission is limited strictly to the Jews. The
charge to the seventy is framed on the larger view which belongs
to the third Gospel. The former also bids the twelve to raise the
dead, a command not found elsewhere. The fact that we have
no story of the raising of the physically dead by any disciple
till after the period assigned to the ascension may indicate,
however slightly, that all these commands were given in their
true spiritual sense, and that the evangelists understood them in
a concrete or material sense.^ There are differences also in the
directions given to the twelve for their conduct. In the first and
third Gospels they are to have neither gold nor silver, staves nor
shoes. In the second they may have the staves and sandals, but
nothing more.
So, again, the reason given in Matthew ix. 37 for sending out
the twelve is the reason given in Luke x. 2 for commissioning the
seventy. But a difficulty arises in the warnings given of persecu-
tion and treachery. Both these missions, according to the Synoptics,
were carried out happily ; and the sentences which speak of these
troubles belong to a" later time. But in Luke (x. 21) it is dis-
tinctly stated that Jesus thanked God for revealing himself to
babes, and not to the wise, when the seventy returned with joy,
saying that the very devils had been subject to them in his name.^
^ See Appendix A.
2 We can scarcely fail to see that these two missions would in no way serve
their purpose, if they were carried on for a few days or weeks only ; and yet the
chronological framework of the whole ministry is in the Synoptics comprised
within the limits of sing year. See Book iii. chap. iv.
Chap. VIL] THE MINISTRY ^1
The connexion of the words with the incident is eminently natural ;
but in Matthew (xi. 25) the same words occur without 'any
apparent connexion whatever. Hence we might be tempted to
assert the higher trustworthiness of the third Gospel in this
respect, were it not that the mission of the seventy is, as we have
noted, a subject involved in the gravest doubt. If there was no
band of seventy commissioned, and if we cannot look on the
address to the twelve as a consecutive discourse, we are thrown
back on the conclusion that historical materials have been over-
laid and perverted by oral tradition.
§ 3. The Parables.
Among the most remarkable utterances of Jesus in the
Synoptic Gospels are the parables. They have clearly in every
case one and the same object, — that, namely, of rousing minds
hitherto quite unaccustomed to think, and of quickening natures
hitherto in a state of great degradation. They are for the most
part plain and forcible illustrations drawn from familiar objects of
the outward world or from common incidents of every-day life.
They are susceptible, therefore, of the readiest explanation, and
they are calculated to suggest trains of thought which cannot fail
to be of real benefit to all who are so exercised. There is no
reason to doubt that such narratives occupied a prominent place
in the teachings of the Master, and some at least of the parables
may have come down to us much in the form in which he
presented them. This circumstance, and the general character
of the parabolic teaching, must be borne in mind, as throwing
light on the character of the discourses contained in the fourth
Gospel.
It remains to be seen whether all the parables may be regarded
as thus coming from him, and whether all were spoken at the
time and in the places to which they are severally assigned.
The first series of parables, seven in number, are contained in
the thirteenth chapter of the first Gospel; and the evangelist
262 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
clearly means us to understand that they were delivered at the
same time in immediate succession. There is, it is true, an
interruption in order to explain the parable of the sower, and
another interruption at the end of the fourth parable ; and these
points will be noticed presently. But the marks of time are
distinct. In verse 1 Jesus sits down by the seaside ; in u 3 he
begins to speak many things in parables ; and in -y. 53 we are told
that when Jesus had finished these parables he departed thence.
Hence we must suppose that all these parables were put forth in
one morning. Is this likely, or even credible ? The parables
were addressed to hearers with the weakest spiritual and moral
discernment, and the meaning of them has to be reached by their
own reflexion. If this wholesome exertion were rendered super-
fluous by an immediate interpretation, the benefit of the process
must be lessened or lost. It is clear, then, that this method of
instruction must depend for success on the measure in which
the mental food was doled out. The purpose of each parable was
to propound one leading idea ; and the minds of the uneducated
are unable to take in with profit more than one idea at a time.
How then are we to suppose that Jesus should put before such
hearers as the Galilseans a number of images which could not
fail to bewilder them, and from which they would in all like-
lihood turn away with indifference or aversion ?
Now of these parables that of the sower and the seed is
commonly taken as representing the various capacities of man
for spiritual life and growth. Those of the wheat and tares, and
of the net which gathered of every kind, denote the commingling
of good and bad as well in societies as in individuals in the
present condition of things, while by those of the mustard-seed
and the leaven is shadowed forth the silent growth and final
establishment of the divine kingdom. The treasure hid in a field
and the goodly pearl indicate the priceless value of the gift of
eternal life. Here, then, we have four distinct ideas, all having
indeed a common centre, but so far divergent that a mind un-
familiar with all of these could not be expected to take in more
Chap. VII.] THE MINISTEY 263
than one at once. That Jesus looked for nothing more seems to
be amply proved by the interruptions to the discourse ; and here
the contradictions between the several Gospels begin. In the
first Gospel (xiii. 10) the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to
others in parables; and Jesus, giving them the reason, proffers
further an explanation of that reason, for which they do not ask.
In Mark (iv. 10) they request him to interpret the parable for
their own benefit, and receive the very natural reproof that if they
cannot discern the meaning themselves, other parables could
scarcely be of much use to them.^ In the first Gospel, again, the
disciples ask him at once before the multitude, and the interpre-
tation seems to be given to them aside. In Mark they reserve
their inquiry till they are alone. But as Matthew professed to
be giving a connected series of parables in a single discourse, it
would not agree with his design to interrupt his narrative for
comments at the end of the second parable. He, therefore, adds
three, and not till then do the disciples ask him to interpret the
second parable of the tares of the field. This interpretation is
given not on the seashore, but in the house ; and hence, as v. 53
represents all these parables as belonging to a single discoiirse, it
is made to appear that the last three parables are spoken not to
the multitudes but to the disciples, in opposition to the method
which we are told (Matt. xiii. 34) was without exception adopted
by Jesus. I^or is it easy to see why, instead of ascertaining
whether the disciples understood the third and fourth parables,
he should add three more to burden their memory and tax their
powers of discernment.
We must, therefore, conclude that, whether Jesus presented
these parables in this form, or whether he did not, the connexion
in which they are given must be rejected as unhistorical. But it
1 The natural inference seems to be that they were left to find out the meaning
for themselves, — in other words, that he gave no explanation. Yet the interpre-
tation is immediately added. Surely the general conclusion is that none of the
explanations come from Jesus himself. Some of them clearly do not belong to
the same age with the parable. On any showing, they were more needed for the
multitudes who are said not to have received them.
264 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
assuredly cannot be said of all the parables that we have them
now as Jesus uttered them. If we regard the beatitudes of the
Sermon on the Mount in the first Gospel as truly expressing the
mind of Jesus, and if we take the whole sermon as embodying the
general character of his teaching, the genuineness of the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke (xvi. 19) becomes ex-
ceedingly questionable. Like the beatitudes in the third Gospel,
the parable seems to have primarily a physical application, and is
essentially Ebioiiite in its view. There is no hint that the rich
man made a wrong use of his riches, or that Lazarus was a man
of great piety. The offence of the former is his wealth ; and the
claim of the latter is grounded on his poverty. It is not suggested
that the rich man, knowing that Lazarus lay at his gate, failed to
succour him, for in this case the reply of Abraham would have
been, ' Thou wouldst not go a little way to help him : how can I
suffer him to go a long way to help thee ? ' So, again, if the rich
man had taken too much of the good things of this life, he might
have been told that he had so done ; but the assertion is only that
he had had these good things, and Lazarus evil things. Hence
the positions are to be reversed in agreement with the woes
pronounced upon the rich in Luke vi. 24. Whether this Ebionite
view was held by Jesus himself it is not easy to determine. The
general tenor of his teaching in the first Gospel would certainly
seem to discountenance this idea ; but there are other passages,
like that of the camel going through the needle's eye,^ which may
appear to propound a doctrine not unlike it. A more definite
conclusion cannot be reached without determining whether these
passages are genuine ; and for such a decision the materials are
apparently not forthcoming.
But, again, there are parables, of which all the parts may
have been uttered by Jesus, but in which portions have become
^ It matters little in what sense we constinie the words rpyfiaXias pa<pi8os. If
there was at Jerusalem a gate so called through which a camel could pass only
without its load, the comparison is much to the purpose. If we take the words
as denoting only a needle for ordinary use, the simile becomes a mere impossi-
bility. The writer of Mark x. 25 clearly speaks of a place, not of an instrument
Chap. VII.] THE MINISTRY 265
dislocated, and into which images from other parables have been
introduced, the result being sometimes an incongruous medley.
Among these must be placed the parables of the talents as given
in Matthew xxv. 14 and in Luke xix. 12. In both we have
a master who goes away ; but in the first Gospel we have simply a
rich man who intrusts his servants with capital to be laid out at
interest, while in the third it is a nobleman who goes away to
receive a kingdom. In both cases there is a reckoning on his
return; and in each case one servant is found unfaithful, the
sequel peculiar to the third Gospel being the destruction of the
subjects who would not have the nobleman to reign over them.
The question naturally arises, Why should this sequel be rendered
necessary by a parenthetical statement in Luke xix. 14 which
has nothing to do with the leading idea of the parable? The
differences manifest in the equal distribution of the money in
Luke and in the unequal sums distributed in Matthew, are of
very slight consequence ; but it is more important to note that,
if the writer gave to the parable in Luke the form in which it has
come down to us, he would, after recording the meeting of the
citizens, have intrusted to the servants not money but arms, and
would in the end have connected the recompence of the servants
with that of their enemies. This strange inconsistency, which
cannot be attributed to the imagination of the evangelist, must
be regarded as the result of oral transmission. The idea of the
rebellious citizens must have belonged to another parable. This
parable is at once restored, if we read verses 12, 14, 15, 27 of
Luke xix. together; and we see that the tale belongs to the
same class with the parable of the rebellious husbandmen in the
vineyard.
A similar confusion is made manifest on a comparison of the
parable of the marriage feast in Matthew xxii. 2 with the version
given in Luke xiv. 16. In the former the guests who are bidden
not only refuse to come, but maltreat and murder the servants
who invite them. The king, therefore, sends his armies, destroys
the murderers, and burns their city. He then sends his servants
266 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
to the highways and hedges, and gathers iu both bad and good,
nntil the wedding is filled with guests. Of these guests one is
found without a wedding garment, and is cast forth, bound hand
and foot, into the outer darkness. The version in Luke is far
simpler. The guests all make excuses, and the host sends forth
and brings in the poor, maimed, halt, and blind, none of those
who were originally invited being allowed to taste of the supper.
It can scarcely be doubted that, if this parable was ever spoken
by Jesus, it was given in this form ; but we are driven to ask.
Whence comes the mention of personal violence, and its terrible
punishment in the parable as given in the first Gospel? The
servants appear not with any demand for tribute or taxes, but
simply with an invitation to a banquet, while the language of the
evangelist points to an insurrection. Now such an insurrection
consequent on a claim for produce is found in the parable which
in Matthew (xxi. 33) immediately precedes that of the marriage
feast; and the writer, who had just spoken of the husbandmen
who refused to yield up the fruits of the vineyard, carried on the
same idea into the subsequent tale, and thus introduced an image
which altogether disagrees with the main story. A further depar-
ture from the original narrative is seen in the incident of the
wedding garment, for, if both the good and the bad were brought
in, there was no reason for surprise that one of them should be
unfitly clad. That it was the custom at that time to distribute
marriage dresses or badges to all the guests cannot be proved ; and
further, the parable, having thus far pointed to the rejection of the
Jews and the readiness of the Gentiles to share the feast spurned
by others, passes thus by an abrupt transition to the separation of
the worthy from the unworthy.
It is possible that this incident may belong to some lost
parable which represented a king as inviting guests to his feast
on the condition that they should provide themselves each with
a proper dress, the failure to do so calling down on them a not
undeserved punishment. But however this may be, the con-
clusion can scarcely be avoided that these parables have not
Chap. VIL] THE MINISTRY 267
come down to us precisely as they were uttered by the Great
Teacher. 1
§ 4. Miscellaneous Discourses.
The confusion of materials which characterises many of the
parables is seen also in some of the miscellaneous discourses of
Jesus as given in the Synoptic Gospels. Disputes for precedency
among the disciples led Jesus, it is said, to put before them a little
child as the model for their imitation in things spiritual. In the
first Gospel (xviii. 3) the disciples are told that except they be
humble as little children they cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven. The injunction has a clear and obvious force ; but it
is not so easy to understand the transition in v. 5 to precepts not
about imitating children, but about receiving them in the name
{i.e. the spirit) of Jesus, — in other words, about the mode of
behaving towards them. In Mark (ix. 33) and Luke (ix. 46)
the precepts of Jesus become perfectly irrelevant. There is no
connexion between disputes for precedence which are to be
avoided by imitating little children, and injunctions as to the
way in which the latter should be received. Jesus is thus made
in the first Gospel to branch off suddenly from the main subject
of his reproof, and in the second and third Gospels to forget it
altogether between the moment of setting up the child and
opening his lips to speak. There can be very little doubt that
we have here a confusion caused by the evangelist's memory
recalling those sentences in which Jesus had spoken of the recep-
tion which ought to be given to his disciples in his name.
The connexion with what follows (Matt. xvii. 7 ; Mark ix. 43)
is, like many others in the Synoptic Gospels, purely verbal. The
woes which precede are pronounced against those who scandalize
or mislead little children : and these are followed by warnings
not to allow our vices to scandalize or to mislead us. It is obvious
that the only link between the two is the idea of misleading, and
^ See Appendix C.
268 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECOEDS [Book III.
thus we have a mere verbal string on which topics with little or
nothing in common may be strung together. Nor can it be said
that they are strung together with much care, for in xviii. 10 the
writer of the first Gospel recurs again to precepts concerning the
little ones who are pure, humble, and guileless; and the reason
for not offending them, given in the following verse, is that the
Son of Man is come to seek and heal that which was lost. It
is, however, scarcely necessary to multiply examples of similar
confusions proving dislocation of text, for it is generally admitted
that the evangelists are in the habit of weaving into connected
discourses fragments which belong to distinct speeches. But the
writer who will introduce such scattered fragments with the
formula, ' Then Jesus said,' etc., and close with some such form
as ' When Jesus had ended all these sayings, he departed thence,'
cannot be regarded as a historian ; nor can any of his statements
be received without the most stringent scrutiny. Yet it may be
added that another merely verbal connexion is seen between
verses 14 and 15 of Matthew xviii. The former asserts that the
Father wills none of the little ones to perish; the latter declares that
we are to try to regain our offending brother by conciliatory means.
The link is thus the verbal connexion between loss and gain.
The precepts regarding divorce and celibacy (Matt. xix. 3, 12)
must be noticed here only in reference to the historical question
whether the opinions of Jesus coincide with those of modern
thought on the subject. That Jesus pronounced against all forms
of divorce known at the time is denied by none ; but many refuse
to allow that his teaching had any leaven of Ebionite asceticism.
In like manner it is asserted that the precepts of the apostle
Paul on celibacy w^ere designed to be only local and temporary,
* during the present troubles.' Yet the reason given for them is
of universal application. The unmarried, he says (1 Cor. vii. 32),
cares for the things of the Lord, while the married are taken up
with the earthly desire of pleasing their spouses. A man who
could so speak seems practically in accord with Bernard, Hilde-
brand, and Peter Damiani; nor is it much less uncertain that
Chap. YIL] THE MINISTRY 269
Jesus approved the same asceticism, if we accept as genuine the
declaration in the first Gospel (xix. 11, 12) that some only were
fitted for celibate life, the natural inference being that for such it
becomes a duty.
In Matthew (xxi. 23-27, xxii. 15-46) we have a series of con-
troversial discourses with the Jews after the final entry of Jesus
into Jerusalem. If there be any history at all in the Gospel
records, these discourses may certainly be accepted as genuine,
for they are in the closest accordance with the spirit and method
of Hebrew didactics in that day. Of these, the third (the answer,
namely, to the Sadducees respecting the woman who had seven
husbands) exhibits Jesus as an interpreter of Scripture. The
validity of the argument for life after death depends on the
correctness of the meaning here given to the words 'God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' But whether valid or not, the
argument is apparently not original. It is found in rabbinical
discourses, for which this passage could not possibly have fur-
nished the model.
The next controversy, relating to the interpretation of Psalm
ex. 1 (Matt. xxii. 41), is worthy of note, historically, in two
respects only. It looks like an enigma. Most probably it was
neither meant nor understood as such. There is no doubt (if the
passage be genuine) that Jesus regarded this Psalm as Messianic,
and that (1) from it he inferred the higher character of the Messiah
as being the lord of David rather than his son. But he may also
(2) have been actuated by the wish to remove the notion that
Messiah was to be the son of David after the flesh, and thus that
he must belong to his lineage or be born at Bethlehem. The
answer thus connects itself with the accounts of the nativity in
the first and third Gospels ; but it does so only to weaken their
testimony by silently countenancing the assertion that Jesus was
born at Nazareth, and thus casting aside the earlier stories as
superfluous, and so as worthless.
In Matthew xxii. 34 we are told that the defeat of the
Sadducees provoked the Pharisees in their turn to try Jesus with
270 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL KECORDS [Book III.
some subtle question. This statement implies a friendly feeling
between the two sects, for men are not prone to avenge the defeats
of their adversaries. But if the history of the Acts be in any
degree trustworthy, the enmity between them was so great that
Paul had only to declare himself a Pharisee in order to produce a
complete schism in the ranks of his accusers.^ If the account in
the Gospel be true, the attempt of Paul would have failed ; but if
his attempt was historical and successful, then it would seem that
this statement in the first Gospel must be set aside as unhistorical.
A comparison of the great anti-Pharisaic discourse in Matthew
(xxiii.) with the other Synoptics involves more serious difficulties.
In the former it is given as one continuous speech; in Mark
(xii. 38) a mere fragment is given as a reproof of the Scribes. In
Luke (xxii. 46) the same isolated sentences occur in the same
connexion; but it is important to note that some of the most
vehement rebukes contained in Matthew are given by Luke in the
form of reproofs uttered at feasts to which Jesus had been invited
in the house of a Pharisee. The host's wonder (Luke xi. 38) that
his guests should sit down to meat without washing calls forth the
stern reply that though Pharisees may be outwardly clean, they
were inwardly full of all wickedness and impurity. This rebuke
rouses, it is said, the anger of the lawyers; and the evangelist,
forgetting apparently the cause of the gathering, describes the
sequel as a scene of mere tumult. The rebukes given at the next
feast recorded in Luke (xiv.) are far more mild, and are indeed of
a character which might under certain circumstances be uttered
by a venerated guest without causing any deep oJBfence. It must
be noted that these invitations to feasts in the houses of Pharisees
are found only in the third Gospel.
The question now arises, Is the discourse, as given in the first
Gospel, to be regarded as historical ? In other words, are we to
suppose that it was spoken continuously in the presence of the
multitude after the final entry of Jesus into the city ? Or are we
to believe that some of the severest portions of it had been uttered
1 Acts xxiii. 6.
Chap. VIL] THE MINISTKY 27J
in the houses of Pharisees in Galilee ? or that here, as elsewhere,
the evangelist has strung together into one address sentences, some
of which are found isolated in other Gospels ? The character of
discourses in the first Gospel already examined furnishes a good
warrant for answering the last question in the affirmative; but
if so, the statement that this discourse was spoken before the
multitude must be rejected as untrue.
But was any part of it spoken in the house and at the table of
a Pharisee who was the host of Jesus ? It is incredible (it has
been felt to be incredible even by the most conservative apologists)
that Jesus, on being asked by his entertainer why he had not
washed before sitting down to meat, should instantly charge him
and the whole body of the Pharisees with ravening and unclean-
ness, should call them fools, hypocrites, murderers of the prophets
whose sepulchres they garnished, and as guilty of the blood of all
the martyrs from Abel down to Zacharias. It is perfectly possible
that all and each of these reproofs were thoroughly deserved, and
quite possible also that Jesus may have uttered every one of them ;
but it is impossible that he could have uttered them at the place
and time to which they are assigned here.
But if for a moment we suppose that they were so uttered, the
statement with which the eleventh chapter of the third Gospel
ends becomes quite superfluous. There was no need to watch and
wait for words which might justify an accusation. He had already
said more than enough ; and it is incredible that a body of men,
holding the highest rank in Jewish society, should allow such
language to be personally addressed to them, and then should
allow Jesus to repeat the whole, with additions, before the multi-
tude in Jerusalem.
Hence the accounts in the third Gospel must be regarded as
unhistorical ; and it becomes therefore far more probable that
these denunciations were not uttered until Jesus had entered
Jerusalem for the last time, and that in this instance the account
of Matthew is more nearly historical. But it is the penalty paid
by writers who are convicted of inaccuracy, misrepresentation, and
272 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
credulity, that they cannot be trusted even where their narrative
appears to be correct.
Of the reference to the murder of Zacharias, the son of
Barachias, we need say little. If we insist on attributing to Jesus
these precise words, we must understand him to be referring to an
event which did not take place until nearly twenty years after the
time assigned to the crucifixion. But it may reasonably be urged
that the evangelist, compiling after the fall of Jerusalem, confused
Zacharias, son of Barachias, with the prophet Zechariah, son of
Berechiah, and that Jesus, if he ever spoke any such words as
these, was referring probably to the violent end which in Jeremiah
(xxvi. 23) is stated to have befallen the prophet Urijah, the son
of Shemaiah.
CHAPTEE VIII
THE JOHANNINE DISCOURSES OF JESUS
§ 1, General Character of the Johannine Discourses.
According to the picture given in the Synoptic Gospels, the
teaching of Jesus may be said to be characterised by a constant
consideration for the intellectual as well as the moral and spiritual
condition of his hearers. We find in it for the most part no play
upon words, no abrupt transitions founded on a subtle and hidden
connexion of ideas, nothing irritating ; and if we do come across
passages which seem to exhibit these faults, we have also, perhaps
in every instance, found the strongest reason for assigning them to
the confusion and forgetfulness, the misunderstanding and misinter-
pretation, of the evangelists. But, generally, we have from the
Jesus of the Synoptics the language of one who seeks, not to excite
angry feeling or astonishment, but by line on line, by precept on
precept, here a little and there a little, to waken men of dull
minds and cold hearts to a consciousness of their spiritual faculties
and duties. In short, his hearers might well feel and gladly ac-
knowledge that they were listening to one who had the words of
eternal life.
To this teaching the discourses in the fourth Gospel present a
marvellous contrast. There is comparatively little in the Sermon
on the Mount which the least instructed Galilaean should find any
special difficulty in understanding : there is scarcely a step in the
Johannine argument which is not calculated to irritate and baffle
even a well-skilled dialectician. There is no trace in the Synoptics
a 273
274 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
of any attempt to confound his hearers or to convict them of folly:
there is not one discourse in the fourth Gospel which is not
designed to glorify Jesus by exhibiting those who converse with
him as wholly unable to apprehend his high spiritual meaning.
Indeed, the special characteristic of these discourses is, that words
intended to convey a recondite spiritual truth are in every case
carnally interpreted, and the misunderstanding so created is
immediately — and it would seem purposely — heightened by utter-
ances rising in mystery; the end being, in the case of all the
discourses addressed to the Jews, severe denunciations on the one
side, and loud defiance with attempts at violence on the other.
Historically, this contrast is of the utmost importance. Is it
possible that two modes of teaching so utterly antagonistic should
characterise the same teacher ? Is it possible, also, that one who
had put forth in the Sermon on the Mount a seemingly complete
summary of his faith, and a complete code of moral practice, should,
in that Sermon, make not the slightest reference to any of those
great topics which form the burden of the Johannine discourses 1
To these questions the reply ordinarily furnished is (1) that the
Synoptic evangelists were incapable of appreciating or recollecting
the higher teaching which fastened itself on the memory of John
the son of Zebedee; and (2) that the persons to whom the
Johannine discourses were addressed were better fitted to follow
his meaning than were the rude and untaught peasantry of Galilee.
Both pleas are absurdly inconclusive. (1) The former passes a
strange judgement on the disciples, and drives us to the conclusion
that, among all the hearers of Jesus, there was only one who could
attach the faintest meaning to that portion of his teaching which,
as set forth in the Johannine Gospel, was of nothing less than
paramount and supreme importance. It is, indeed, quite possible
that among the hearers of a great teacher or an eloquent orator
there may be some who will follow him more fully and give shape
to the highest elements in his teaching ; but it would probably be
impossible to produce a single instance in which the reports even
from men of the duller sort would lead us to suppose that the
Chap. VIII.] THE MINISTRY 275
higher element never existed. Xenophon was a man intellectually
by no means the equal of Plato, and for this reason it is supposed
that his account of Socrates is more historical than that of Plato ;
but even from the narrative of Xenophon we should be quite
prepared to say that there could be, and that there must have
been, a more abstruse and metaphysical side to the teaching of
Socrates. But from the Synoptic Gospels we should never be
led to expect the mysterious doctrines which form, almost ex-
clusively, the topics of the fourth Gospel. We have in the former
no elaborate discourses about the Eternal Logos, the new birth, the
eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of Jesus the
healer, no declarations about the oneness of the Son with the Father
in a sense which may not be predicated of faithful men. While these
doctrines are absent from the former, it is singular that they should
closely correspond with the philosophy which, before the lifetime
of Jesus, had sprung up on the soil of Alexandria. It is also singular
that the evangelist, who thus exhibits Jesus in an aspect unknown
to the others, should also assign to him words and actions, of most
of which the rest have seemingly never so much as heard.
But further (2) it is impossible to allow the second plea, which
rests on the intellectual superiority of the Jews of Jerusalem to
Galilaeans, for the very simple reason that it is nowhere manifest
in the gospel. The rabbi Nicodemus is as dull and carnal as any
of those who listened to Jesus on the shores of Tiberias, and the
multitude of the Jews misunderstand him far more persistently
than the Galilseans.
If, then, we conclude that Jesus did not employ both these
modes of teaching, it follows that one of them must be rejected
as unhistorical. Which of the two, then, are we to regard as
really belonging to him ? Surely not that of the fourth Gospel.
To dwell on mystical doctrines is not the way to rouse the
attention or enlist the sympathy of ordinary men ; and without
making an impression on these no new religion was ever established.
But the general teaching of the Synoptic Gospels is pre-eminently
that of one who is fitted to be a guide of men, who is sure to win
276 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
their devotion, and sure to be understood and obeyed by them.
If, then, such was his teaching, then the great body of the fourth
Gospel must be set down as a fabrication, with some slight basis,
possibly, of historical truth, but in all its main characteristics a
mere imaginary picture.
§ 2. The Conversation with the Woman of Samaria.
The contrast between the Johannine and the Synoptic Gospels
in reference to the teaching of Jesus is, indeed, an insuperable
difficulty. But in addition to this we are confronted with the
fact that the Johannine discourses are at issue with professedly
historical statements in the other Gospels. Thus, in the con-
versation^ with the woman of Samaria, Jesus declares himself
distinctly to be the Messiah. The woman speaks of him as such
to her fellow-townsmen; as such, the townsfolk invite him to
tarry in their city ; and, at the end of his two days' sojourn, they
express their conviction, grounded now not on the saying of the
woman but on their own knowledge of his words, that he was
indeed ' the healer of the world, the anointed ' (iv. 42). Thus the
fact of his Messiahship was well known in Samaria from the
beginning of his ministry. There is no attempt at concealment,
no injunction of secrecy, no reason why the many who believed
on him should not invite and bring many more to accept the
same faith. But in his solemn charge to the twelve (Matt. x. 5)
the apostles are specially commanded not to enter any Samaritan
city, either because the Samaritans would certainly reject the
proffered Gospel, or because they lay beyond the circle within
which it was to be preached. But both these reasons are con-
clusively set aside by the Johannine narrative. The Samaritans
do not reject the good tidings ; and Jesus does not refuse to hold
intercourse with them. Both these statements, therefore, cannot
be historical, and one of them must be untrue. Whether the
1 It is supposed to take place at Sychar ; but this town is not known. See
Supernatural Beligion, ii. 423.
Chap. VIIL] THE MINISTEY 277
Synoptic account be trustworthy, is not so easily determined,
owing to the number of passages, some of which describe Jesus
as holding aloof from the Samaritans, while others represent him
as kindly disposed towards them. Of these contradictions some
notice has been taken already.^
The abrupt transitions which mark all the Johannine discourses
abound in the conversation with the woman of Samaria. To the
request of Jesus for water, the woman replies by asking how he,
a Jew, can address her at all; and the answer is, that if the
woman had known what spiritual gifts he could bestow upon
her, she would have asked and obtained from him living water.
Here at once we have a method of discourse for which we shall
search the other Gospels in vain. There Jesus would have said,
much as the prophets of old had said before him, * Come to the
waters, every one of you that thirsts,' as he had bidden the weary
and heavy-laden to come to him for rest. But here, as throughout
the whole Gospel, his reply is misunderstood ; and the woman
construes his words as referring to water from the very well by
which he was sitting, and asks him how, having nothing to draw
with, he proposes to get at that water — her meaning being that
water drawn by him would be different from water drawn by
herself out of the same well — a notion savouring somewhat of
magic. When Jesus has again spoken, she takes him to promise
water from some other spring, which, once tasted, would render it
unnecessary for her to drink again, and so save her the trouble of
coming to the well to draw. To speak plainly, such stupidity as
this is a gross absurdity.^ Any one not an idiot would have known
that the man who had tasted of water which rendered physical thirst
impossible could never ask her to give him to drink, and must
therefore have seen that he was speaking metaphorically. To her
request Jesus answers by abruptly bidding her go and fetch her
husband. Why was this command given ? In order to bring her
^ See pp. 253, 254.
- The evangelist had apparently forgotten that water is needed for other
purposes besides that of quenching thirst, and that she would still have to
come for the supply wanted for washing and cleansing.
278 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
to repentance and to confession of her guilt, as some have urged.
But no confession is extorted, and the issue of the story is not her
repentance but faith in Jesus as the Messiah. To the woman's reply
that she had no husband, Jesus answers by informing her of matters
which he must have learnt from others or which he knew of himself.
The evangelist clearly means to exclude the former notion ; and
the latter supposition is incompatible with the idea of a human
consciousness in Jesus. On being thus reminded of her past life,
the woman, saying not a word in reference to her past acts, merely
replies that she sees him to be a prophet, and puts to him a
question on the old controversy between the Jews and the
Samaritans. But that a woman of so poor a mental capacity, and
(according to the story) such dubious moral character, should feel
so deep an interest in this ancient and well-worn debate as to seize
every opportunity for obtaining an answer, is, to say the least, very
remarkable, and scarcely congruous. So much has this difficulty
pressed on many interpreters that they have represented this
answer as an effort to turn away the attention of Jesus from her
own personal history to a more general subject. But inasmuch as,
in the fourth Gospel, the answers of Jesus are addressed generally
not so much to the actual words of a question as to the hidden
meaning of the speaker, Jesus, refusing to be thus diverted, should
have brought her back to the subject over which she wished to
throw a veil. Such, however, was not in this instance the object
of the evangelist. The discourse was framed to exhibit im-
mediately the Messianic character of Jesus ; and for this purpose
the woman is made to ask a question concerning the place where
worship should be offered to God, while Jesus replies by
announcing the advent of a time w^hen God should be worshipped
in spirit and in truth without the trammels of local boundaries.
To this announcement the woman replies, barely and bluntly, that
Messiah is coming, and that when he comes he ' will tell us all
things.' Here, again, if she had not been more than usually dull
she would have felt either that Jesus had already told her all
things (as she admits in v. 29) or that only one thing marred his
Chap. VIII.] THE MINISTRY 279
answer, this being the superiority still claimed for the Jews {v. 22).
But it was necessary that she should name the Messiah, in order
that Jesus might announce himself as such ; and thus the discourse
is brought to the desired conclusion — a conclusion which, it must
be remembered, according to the Synoptics, not one of the apostles
reached until long afterwards, and which was never so clearly and
explicitly forced upon them. If it be asked why Jesus should
choose a woman with such a history as the recipient of such a
communication, and why he should carry her mind into a distant
future instead of fixing it on her own defects and sins, it is hard
indeed to give an answer.^
The same method pervades the sequel of the story. The
disciples, coming to the well, marvel first that Jesus should be
talking with a woman, and then beseech him to eat of the food
which they had brought. Jesus replies that he has food to eat
which they know not of ; and, precisely, like the woman who has
just left them, they conclude that some one else has brought him
meat during their absence. But if we suppose that this mode of
teaching was habitual to Jesus, the disciples, in their familiar in-
tercourse with him, must have been perfectly aware of the fact ; and
they could not possibly have spent their time in daily and hourly
misunderstanding his words unless they were far more dull and
degraded than even the woman of Samaria. Their misconstruction
is made to give occasion to a discourse on the harvest which the
disciples were to reap on ground where he had sown the seed.
These words may, of course, refer to the general developement of
the divine kingdom ; but they may also refer, and with greater
point, to those who believed on him in that city now and to the
greater harvest which should be reaped in Samaria hereafter; and
thus these sentences seem to connect themselves directly with the
narrative in Acts (viii. 5-14). It is not stated in the Synoptics
that Jesus ever preached in Samaria ; but it suited well the plan
1 It is not necessary to notice the interpretation which treats the woman and
lier five husbands symbolically, as on this hypothesis the whole narrative is at once
taken out of the domain of history, and our inquiry is confined to that domain.
280 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
of the fourth Gospel to assert that he did, and so, if the evangelist
had seen the book of the Acts, to represent the labours of Philip
the deacon and the apostles as a reaping of the harvest which
Jesus had sown during his ministry.
This examination has apparently divested the conversation with
the Samaritan woman of all historical character. How the story
was suggested or framed we are in no way called upon to inquire
or to decide. It is possible that the groundwork may have been
furnished by those striking narratives of the Old Testament
writings with which the evangelist had been long familiar — those
beautiful tales of Eliezer greeting Eebekah, and Jacob saluting
Kachel by the well-side — the greetings being followed by the de-
parture of Eebekah and Eachel, like that of the Samaritan woman,
to summon their friends and kinsfolk. The suggestion may be
taken for what it is worth ; but its rejection leaves the narrative,
as it was, throughout unhistorical.
§ 3. The Conversation with Nicodemus.
The conversation with Nicodemus is, in no respect, more trust-
worthy than that with the woman of Samaria. It occurs at even
an earlier stage in the ministry ; and in this, also, unless we are to
suppose that the address to Nicodemus ends with the twelfth verse
of the third chapter (and there is nothing to warrant any such con-
clusion), Jesus declares himself to be the Son of God given for
the life of the world, who had come down from heaven, all who do
not believe in him being condemned already.
Thus, then, in the first four chapters of this Gospel we have a
knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of his eternal genera-
tion as the divine Logos, possessed by the Baptist, by Andrew and
the nameless disciple, by Peter and Nathanael, by Nicodemus and
the woman of Samaria with her fellow-townsmen, whereas, in the
Synoptics, none attains to the fulness of this knowledge before the
crucifixion, or, indeed, arrives at any consciousness of his Messiah-
ship until a late period of his ministry. Of the knowledge of his
Chap. VIII.] THE MINISTRY 281
pre-existence as the Logos there is no sign in any part even of the
Acts of the Apostles. The knowledge of the one and the ignorance
of the other cannot be reconciled.
But, further, the writers of the Synoptic Gospels know nothing
of Nicodemus. This is the more surprising, not only because
Nicodemus is a rabbi of high reputation, and because, as a member
of the Sanhedrim, he stands alone in seeking to get a fair hearing
for Jesus (vii. 50), but because he shares with Joseph of Arimathea
the task of preparing the body of Jesus for burial (xix. 39). The
part taken by Joseph is well known to the first evangelist (xxvii.
5 7) ; nor is it easy to see how, if he had ever heard of the facts,
he could have forgotten to mention that Nicodemus was, at the
least, as zealous as Joseph.
At once, then, the unhistorical character of Nicodemus throws
the gravest doubt on the genuineness of the conversation. How the
idea of such a conversation was suggested we are in no way bound
to explain. Possibly the statement (John xii. 42) that many
among the chief rulers believed on Jesus may throw some light on
it. The statement is itself unsupported, for there is nothing in the
Acts of the Apostles to warrant the supposition that any of the
higher classes among the Jews professed belief in Jesus. But if
the evangelist once conceived the idea that they did, it became
necessary to prove it. As their confession was not an open one,
it must be presumed to have been made in secret, and as they
could not venture to approach him in broad day, it was needful to
come under cover of night. These suggestions may be worthless ;
but their rejection adds nothing to the historical trustworthiness
of the narrative.
The conversation itself presents many difficulties similar to
those involved in that with the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus is
made (verse 4) to express his surprise at the need of a new birth
for those who are to enter the kingdom of God. This is incredible
in ' a master of Israel.' The rabbis were perfectly familiar with
the phrase as denoting the conversion of heathen to the worship
of Jehovah. To make the narrative harmonise with this fact,
282 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
Nicodemus should have been represented as expressing wonder,
not at the idea of a new birth, but at the necessity of this new
creation for an Israelite who regarded himself as possessed of an
inalienable right to the divine kingdom. But, utterly forgetting
the metaphorical sense of the words with which he was familiar,
Nicodemus construes them as denoting the need of a physical new
birth, with an absurdity even greater than any displayed by the
misconstruction of the Samaritan woman. So, when Jesus
heightens the mystery by a still more transcendental utterance,
Nicodemus asks again, ' Hoid can these things be ? ' when, if he
had been true to his Jewish knowledge and belief, he should have
said, ' Why must these things be ? Why do you impose upon us
that necessity of change which is needed only for those who are
not within the circle of the covenant made with Abraham ? '
Thus, then, every answer of Jesus tends more and more to convict
Nicodemus of stupidity and folly, and to glorify Jesus at the
expense of his hearer. The method and purpose are alike wholly
different from those which mark the Synoptic Gospels.
In answer to the last question of Mcodemus, Jesus, having
told him that he cannot expect to understand heavenly things
if he fails to apprehend earthly things, proceeds to declare to
him the mode and purpose of his own death. The Son of Man,
like the brazen serpent, is to be lifted up upon the cross for
the healing of the world ; and thus we have Jesus revealing to one
who was not even among the number of his disciples knowledge
which, according to the Synoptics, he did not impart to any of his
missioners until a much later period. Whether Nicodemus, who
had misunderstood every word thus far addressed to him, would
understand a reference to an event still future, is a question which
we need scarcely ask; and the startling contrast between this
method and that earnest simplicity which, for the most part, marks
the teaching of Jesus in the other Gospels, renders further comment
superfluous.
With the sixteenth verse all reference to Nicodemus ceases;
and we are driven to ask whether Jesus could speak of himself to
Chap. VIII.] THE MINISTEY 283
others as the only begotten Son whom God gave in his love for
the world, and as the light to which they come whose deeds do
not belong to the kingdom of darkness. If he did so speak, it was
next to impossible that any should understand him. If he did
not, then we are reading an unhistorical tale.
Finally, the question must be asked, How came the evangelist
to have any knowledge of the nature and the details of this
conversation? All theories which would make out that, where
human sources of information were lacking, the want was supplied
by the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit, are wholly out of
count. We are dealing with the canonical Gospels as historical
records only ; and it is as such that they must be judged. Apart
from such theories, we have only the alleged fact that no one was
present while Jesus talked with Nicodemus. No one probably
will contend that Jesus drew up a report of it himself ; and we
have no warrant for the assertion that Nicodemus drew up such a
report. Failing these sources of information, the only possible
conclusion is that the conversation first took shape in the mind
of the evangelist during the composition of the Gospel. This
question will be forced upon us repeatedly as we go on in the
scrutiny of the Johannine narrative.
§ 4. The Discourse after the Cure at the Pool of Bethesda.
The discourse delivered after the healing of the impotent man
at the pool of Bethesda contains the defence of Jesus for working
that cure on the Sabbath-day. Here, too, the arguments are
entirely different from any employed in the Synoptic Gospels. In
the latter they are all practical, and refer to the taking of animals
to water or pulling them out of pits on the Sabbath-day, as well as
to the eating of the shewbread by David. But in John v. 17,
instead of these practical pleas we have a mystical argument based
on the Divine Nature. The Father is unceasingly working in his
creation ; and the Eternal Son must, therefore, always be working
also. This principle of Alexandrine metaphysics was familiar,
284 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
doubtless, to Philon ; but we may fairly question if it would be
appreciated by any of those who heard Jesus at Jerusalem. Here,
then, as elsewhere in the fourth Gospel, the answer of Jesus is
made to run immediately into a discussion on his own person and
on his eternal relation to God the Father. The utter absence of
such discussions from the other Gospels is a circumstance which
must be accounted for, and which, if unexplained, destroys all
claims of the Johannine Gospel to any historical authority.
"We are here, also, brought face to face with the question of
style and form of thought — a question of the most vital importance
in dealing with such a subject as the present. Whoever may
have been the author of the fourth Gospel, we know what his tone
of thought and modes of expression were. No one will deny that
the most prominent characteristic of the style of this writer is the
pointing of contrasts. With laudable persistency or wearisome
monotony he dwells on the opposite ideas of light and darkness, of
life and death, of him who is from above and those who are from
beneath, of flesh and spirit, of living bread and the meat that
perishes. And the point is this, that not only Jesus but John the
Baptist draw the same contrasts, and use precisely the same modes
of expression. How is so astonishing a phenomenon to be accounted
for ? All the ideas just noted belong indisputably to Alexandrine
Hellenism ; and it is not pretended that this philosophy owes its
origin or its principles to this teaching of Jesus. Hence it follows
that, if the fourth Gospel be historical, both the Baptist and Jesus
did not speak as they are said to have spoken in the other Gospels ;
and, further, that if they did not, then the accounts of the
Synoptics are fictitious. But this it is impossible to admit for
reasons in part already given ; ^ and it is needless to add to them,
for we have to deal with the further difficulty that, if the Johannine
version be correct, the Baptist modelled his style on that of Jesus,
or Jesus on that of the Baptist, while the evangelist imitated
both. But it is impossible that the Baptist could have copied
Jesus, for he is represented as his forerunner, and as having in
1 See p. 123.
Chap. VIII.] THE MINISTRY 285
great part completed his ministry before the baptism of Jesus.
If, again, the evangelist copied Jesus, he is convicted of great
want of originality ; but such a charge cannot be brought against
one who shows himself so thoroughly the master of his materials,
and who handles them with so much ease and skill. The con-
clusion seems to be irresistible that the evangelist has made the
Baptist and Jesus speak in his own style and express his own
thoughts — in other words, that all the discourses in the fourth
Gospel are fictitious. It is, of course, possible that some of the
matter, thus clothed in another dress, may have been derived from
actual words spoken by Jesus ; but in the absence of any evidence
by which we may test the alleged fact, we cannot say what parts,
or whether any, are genuine.
§ 5. The Discourse on the Living Bread,
The sixth chapter of the fourth Gospel contains the well-known
discourse on the bread of life, in which Jesus is said to affirm that
none can have life unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood.
These words have been commonly referred to the institution of the
Eucharist; but it must be noted that of the alleged historical
fact of this institution by Jesus the fourth evangelist had,
according to the letter of his narrative, no knowledge; and if
these words had reference to that rite as a future institution,
they would add another to the number of those topics which
would inevitably bewilder and irritate his hearers. Like those
which have preceded it, this discourse is thrown into the form of
dialogue, and here also, as elsewhere, every spiritual metaphor
employed by Jesus is understood carnally by the Jews. Thus,
when Jesus speaks of the bread which came down from heaven,
his hearers ask him to give them that bread evermore, evidently
attaching to the words the same sense in which the Samaritan
woman understood the promise of living water. There is no doubt
of this ; for when Jesus in his next reply succeeds in convincing
them that the bread is spiritual, they murmur at him {v. 41) for
286 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS [Book III.
describing himself as come from heaven to be the living bread.
Yet by an oversight, the evangelist represents them as asking for
this bread (v. 36), when Jesus (v. 33) had already identified
himself with the bread from heaven. Still more, it is strange
that the Jews should have raised no protest against the assertion
that * Moses gave them not bread from heaven.' The statement
contradicts passages in the Pentateuch and in the Psalms, with
which they must have been familiar. They would at once have
cited the passage (put into the mouth of Jesus himself during the
tempting or trying), * Man shall not live by bread alone but by
every word of God ; ' and if they preferred a more literal meaning,
they might have reminded him that God had opened for their
forefathers the doors of heaven and fed them with angels' food —
nay, that, in the very words used by Jesus, he had rained down
manna and given them of the bread of heaven.^
Thus far they might have followed him; and if he had so
addressed them, they probably would have followed him. The
case is altered when he converts the metaphor into the eating of
his flesh and the drinking of his blood. Here it was certain that
they would not understand him ; and in complete contrast with
his method in the other Gospels, he proceeds deliberately to quench
the smoking flax (for they had prayed him to give them the living
bread) by uttering still harder sayings, until many even of his
disciples ask who can hear them. Where in all this do we see
the gentle and tender teacher, who, by his graphic and vivid
parables, by images drawn from familiar objects and scenes, leads
the dull and ignorant onward like little children, until they feel
themselves breathing a purer atmosphere, and catch some glimpses,
however faint, of the light that streams from heaven ?
§ 6. Discourses on the Person of the Christ, and other subjects.
The discourses given in the succeeding chapters are so similar
in character to the one just examined, that they may be dismissed
^ Psalm Ixxviii. 24.
Chap. VIIL] THE MINISTRY 287
with a few words. They are marked by the same language respecting
the person of the Christ. They tell us, like the earlier discourses
of his descent from heaven (vii. 18, 28), of living water (38), of
light and darkness (viii. 12), of witness received from men and
witness borne from above (13-19), of those who are from beneath
and him who is from above (23), of freedom and bondage (32-33).
All these ideas, as we might expect, are thoroughly misunderstood ;
nor can it be said that any effort is made to remove the misappre-
hension. It is quite certain that such a method applied to an
average English audience at the present day would very soon
exasperate them. No other result, indeed, was possible, for when
the Jews (vii. 27) say that they know whence Jesus is (meaning
that he was born and bred in Nazareth), Jesus answers that they
know him and also whence he is (using the words not in a geo-
graphical or historical but in a metaphysical sense), and imme-
diately goes on to use language which, without explanation, could
not fail to be offensive to them. But the whole of the discourse
in the next chapter turns upon the express assertion that they
do not know him (viii. 14, 19); and here, again (viii. 38), Jesus
suddenly draws a contrast between his Father and their father,
by whom the Jews, not unnaturally, suppose that Abraham is
meant ; nor is it until two or three more reproofs have been given
that it turns out {v. 44) that their father is the devil. Could any
mode be devised more effectual for rousing a spirit of determined
resistance, and repressing all the better feelings of their nature ?
Having brought them to a point which, seemingly, made it useless
to say anything more, Jesus adds another enigmatical phrase, that
they who keep his sayings shall never taste of death. This, of
course, is by the plan of this Gospel construed into an exemption
from physical death ; and the reply is, that Abraham and all other
good men have died, like every one else. Even now, instead of
telling them plainly that he was not, and had not been, speaking
of physical accidents, and that such gross misconstructions were
very unseemly in the handling of purely spiritual truths, Jesus
merely says that Abraham had seen his day, and thus leads to
288 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
the crowning misapprehension that Jesus, as man, was older than
Abraham. This brings Jesus to assert distinctly his pre-existence ;
and the dialogue ends with a tumult. The result would have
created no surprise in any indifferent spectator who had heard
Jesus speak of going his way whither the Jews could not
follow him, and had listened to the surmise of the Jews that he
must intend to kill himself (viii. 22).
The tenth chapter of the fourth Gospel contains the illustra-
tion of the good shepherd, which (v. 6) is called a parable. This
seems to show that the evangelist was aware of the parabolic
character of the teaching of Jesus. But the passage relating to
the good shepherd is not a parable, for from the image of the
shepherd Jesus goes on to speak of himself as the door by which
the sheep may go in and out. Thus that which is professedly
parable is really allegory ; and the conclusion forced on us is that
the inability to give a true parable lay with the evangelist, and
hence that these discourses are not historical.
At the twenty-fifth verse of the tenth chapter' begins a dis-
course delivered by Jesus at the feast of dedication, three months
later than the discourse which ends at v. 18. As no intimation
is given that Jesus had been absent from Jerusalem in the mean-
time, we must understand the evangelist to mean that Jesus was
making a stay of several months in Jerusalem. How completely
this is at variance with the history of the Synoptics, we have
already sepn.^ But another difficulty presents itself in the fact
that Jesus, after a very few words on his own person and his
relation to the Father (25), recurs to the image of the sheep and
shepherd, and repeats part of the allegory almost word for word.
It is impossible to understand this abrupt transition and sudden
resumption of an address delivered more than three months
previously. The allegory would not be prominent in the speaker's
mind at such a distance of time, and would certainly have faded
from the minds of his hearers. But it would not have faded from
the mind of the evangelist who had just written down the parable
^ See Book iii., ch. iv.
Chap. VIIL] THE MINISTRY 289
or allegory ; and the connexion of ideas in his own mind has led
him to ascribe the repetition to Jesus. The inference is unavoid-
able that the evangelist was composing his discourses as he
went on.
All the discourses hitherto noticed are peculiar to the fourth
Gospel. A few detached sayings, here and there, furnish a parallel
to sayings in the Synoptics; but they are generally given in a
wrong connexion, or in a way which shows that the evangelist
misunderstood their meaning. Thus, in ch. iv. 44, we are told
that Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honour in his
own country. This is given as a reason for his going into Galilee ;
and it is added that the Galilseans welcomed him. Moreover, by
his word at Cana Jesus heals a nobleman's son who was sick at
Capernaum. All this assumes that Galilee was not his country, for,
if it had been, then, according to his testimony, he should have been
dishonoured there. But, according to the other Gospels, Galilee
was his country, and, accordingly, the Synoptic writers say that he
was dishonoured there, at least in his own town. Thus in Matthew
(xiii. 57) these words are spoken by Jesus as a reason, not for
going among a people who will not receive him, but for not doing
his mighty works there. In Mark (vi. 4) they serve likewise as
an answer to the contemptuous words of his kinsfolk and acquaint-
ance. The contradiction between the Synoptics and the fourth
Gospel is here so great that some have insisted on substituting
although in place oifor in v. 44, and so have held that Jesus went
into Galilee although he knew that he should be dishonoured there.
But, in the first place, the translation although is wholly inadmis-
sible, and indeed, ridiculous ; and, in the next place, if admitted,
it would prove that Jesus was mistaken, for the very next state-
ment is that the Galilseans welcomed him. Hence some have
fallen back on the narrative of the nativity given in the third
Gospel, and, affirming that Jesus was born at Bethlehem, assert
that these words give his reason for departing from Judaea where
he had been dishonoured. But the fourth Gospel itself precludes
any such explanation, for that Gospel states (ii. 23) that many
290 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
believed on him in Jerusalem at the first passover after the begin-
ning of his ministry ; and the first verse of the fourth chapter
records the fact that the number of persons baptized by Jesus and
his disciples exceeded the number baptized by John the Baptist.
At the end of the fourteenth chapter we find the words, ' Arise,
let us go hence.' These words occur also in Matthew (xxvi. 46)
and in Mark (xiv. 42). In both, they are spoken in the garden of
Gethsemane immediately before the arrival of the betrayer, when
Jesus, on coming to the disciples for the third time, finds them all
asleep. Thus in the Synoptics they are a command to wake up
out of sleep. In the fourth Gospel they are spoken in the same
room in which he had with them partaken of the supper described
at the beginning of the thirteenth chapter, and they are followed
by no result, for, instead of going away, Jesus remains where he
was, and continues his discourse through the fifteenth and sixteenth
chapters, and not until after the prayer contained in the seven-
teenth chapter are we told that Jesus went over the brook Kedron.
Hence it has been argued that we have here the testimony of an
eye-witness who heard his Master pronounce the command, and
saw him rise, and continue standing, while he spoke some more
parting words of peace and love. But in this case the fact of the
delay would, in all likelihood, have been noted by the evangelist
instead of merely continuing the discourse. However this may
be, it is still certain that the words occur in the Synoptics in a
wholly different connexion ; and again we are driven to infer that
the Johannine discourses were not spoken by Jesus.
On the whole, then, speaking generally, we have in the Synoptics
methods of teaching eminently adapted to men of dull minds and
poor education, and a teacher singularly fitted to win the love and
waken the devotion of his hearers. We have discourses, most of
which are throughout practical, which teach the people how they
are to regard the Mosaic law, in what relation they stand to God,
and how they may do his will. In the fourth Gospel we have a
series of mystical addresses, grounded on principles established by
the Alexandrine philosophy, turning chiefly on the office of the
Chap. VIIL] THE MINISTRY 291
Christ, the pre-existence of the Eternal Logos (or Word), and his
relation to the Father, and presenting the recurring contrasts already
noted. These discourses, far from tending to instruct and enlighten
his hearers, seem rather calculated to irritate and repel them.
The connexion of the topics is chiefly verbal ; and the topics are
so arranged as to exhibit most forcibly the dulness and folly of
all with whom Jesus is brought into contact. When his hearers
misunderstand him, Jesus immediately utters some saying more
enigmatical or obscure than those which have preceded it, and
the rabbi Nicodemus is pictured as no more able to fathom his
meaning than the Samaritan woman or the rude Galilsean peasantry.
N"ay, it may be safely said, that, unless they are committed to
writing immediately, it is absolutely certain that such dialogues
as these will not, and cannot, be correctly reported. But there
is not the faintest evidence that the discourses of Jesus were so
taken down; and even the most conservative critics can allow
that the Johannine Gospel was not set down in writing for some-
thing like sixty, if not seventy, years after the time with which
it professes to deal. As if this were not enough to show how
unhistorical the Johannine discourses are, we are confronted with
the further and crowning difficulty, already noticed, that the
Baptist and Jesus and the evangelist all use precisely the same
language, and think in the same way. It would be hard indeed
to imagine more conclusive proof of the fact that the discourses
generally are the work of the evangelist himself and not of the
speakers to whom they are ascribed.
CHAPTEK IX
FUETHER COMPARISON OF THE JOHANNINE AND THE
SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
§ 1. The Question of Eye-witness.
The close agreement of the Gospels which bear the names of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke — an agreement extending frequently
to the actual words of whole sentences, paragraphs, and discourses —
is signified in the title Synoptic by which they are commonly
designated. It cannot, however, be denied that, with these points
of large agreement, there are other points of minute difference
which have led many to suppose that they are not all the work
of eye-witnesses. The preference is generally given to Mark and
Luke, and of these two more particularly to Mark. The notes
of time in the first Gospel are very faint and indefinite ; ^ and the
other Gospels frequently supply details and names which are not
found in Matthew. The supposed minuteness of detail which is
thought to distinguish Mark from the other Synoptics has been
regarded as justifying the conclusion that Mark was the original
document, of which the other two are expansions. If the pro-
position were reversed, we should probably be much nearer the
truth. The second Synoptic carries with it all the appearance of
careful compilation and abridgement ; and we shall see that the
seeming distinctness of detail consists really of nothing but mere
exaggeration, or of those haphazard arrangements which are in
favour with writers of plausible fiction. Oral tradition, moreover,
1 See p. 202.
202
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 293
which tends for the most part to blot out details, will, if they
seem likely to serve a purpose, add to or invent them. This
tendency is chiefly conspicuous when it treats of any subject which
it wishes to make prominent, or of a person whom it has a strong
desire to glorify. These two objects were, in a remarkable degree,
present to the minds of the early Christians. Thus in Matthew
(viii. 16) we are told simply that at eventide many demoniacs
were brought to Jesus, and that he healed them all; in Mark
(i. 33) it is said that all the city was gathered together at his door.
On another occasion, Mark (ii. 2) represents the crowd as leaving
no'froom even about the door; while Luke (xii. 1) represents the
multitude as treading on one another. But although these touches
may seem to impart reality to the tales, they do not do so really,
and they are just such pointless exaggerations as might be made
by any one who wished to embellish or enliven a story. The
mention of a blind beggar in Jericho leads Mark (x. 46) to give
his name, and that of his father. As, therefore, all the details
added by Mark and Luke are precisely of this kind, no inference
can be fairly drawn in their favour to the disparagement of the
first evangelist.
But a comparison with these three Gospels tends greatly to
disparage the fourth. In the former, it must be repeated, Jesus
generally conciliates his hearers; in John, he more frequently
rouses their anger. In the former, they are astonished at the
authority of his teaching ; in the latter, they try to stone him. In
the former, his fame is spread rapidly and noisily abroad ; in the
latter, the evangelist is careful to say that his words and works
left no impression. In the former, the people follow him from all
parts ; in the latter, the Jews send out officers to seize him. But
all this enmity and all these machinations are frustrated in the
fourth Gospel, not by any caution or reserve or prudence on the
part of Jesus, but for the preternatural reason that his hour was
not yet come. He is thus enabled to move about unharmed until
the time comes when he must make the final sacrifice.^ This
^ See Appendix B.
294 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECOKDS [Book III.
preternatural repression is seemingly the only reason for describing
a state of things so utterly different from that which is depicted
in the Synoptic Gospels; and thus, from another path, we are
brought back to the conclusion that the fourth Gospel is not
historical.
§ 2. The Kinsfolk of Jesus.
But a scrutiny of the Synoptic Gospels exhibits, in some cases
with singular clearness, the way in which oral tradition modified
the materials submitted to it. In the first Gospel (xii. 46) after the
controversy provoked by the Pharisaic accusation that Jesus cast out
devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils, we are told that the
mother and brethren of Jesus desired to speak with him, and that,
on being informed of the fact, he declared that his true kinsfolk
were not those who were connected with him according to the
flesh but they who did the will of his heavenly Father. In the
third Gospel (viii. 19) the same story is related; but it is related
not, as in Matthew, before the delivery of any of the parables, but
after the parable of the sower and the seed, some sentences (about
the lighting of a candle), which in Matthew occur in the Sermon
on the Mount, being inserted between the parable and this
incident. This of itself would suffice to show (if abundant
evidence had not been already furnished of the fact) that the
evangelists were heedless of historical order, and that no trust
can be placed in their sequences of events, unless they are
strengthened by adequate collateral testimony. In Mark also
(iii. 31) this narrative comes before the parable of the sower and
the seed ; but the passage which precedes it puts the matter in a
very different light.
With the love of minute detail characteristic of the second
Gospel, the evangelist had stated that, after the mission of the
twelve, the crowd was so great that they could not so much as
eat bread. He then goes on to say that those who were con-
nected with him, being convinced that he was beside himself,
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 295
wished to get possession of his person. At this point he inserts
the charge of the Pharisees that Jesus worked with the aid of
Beelzebub (the connexion of ideas which led him to state this
being the notion of insanity), and then adds that his mother and
his brethren sent the message expressing their wish to see him.
The inference, seemingly unavoidable, is that their real wish was
to put him under restraint ; and on this ground there is nothing
surprising in the circumstance that their request should be refused.
Many commentators, accordingly, have insisted on the historical
accuracy of Mark as explaining and justifying the apparent
harshness of his answer. But if it be granted that his mother
as well as his kinsfolk held him to be beside himself, what
becomes of the truth of the narratives which record the events
of the nativity, whether in the first or third Gospels ? We have
already had to notice more than once the marvellous apathy or
forgetfulness of all the actors and spectators in these wonderful
scenes ; and that events of the most astounding character should
leave on the memory no impression whatever, is assuredly more
astonishing than any prodigy or marvel or miracle related in the
New Testament writings, or in any other. The mother of Jesus,
who had heard from the lips of Gabriel that her child should sit
for ever on the throne of David, as well as Joseph, who is taught in
a dream that the child to be born should save his people from their
sins, can, on the coming of the Magi or the visit of the shepherds
or the benedictions in the temple, do no more than express anew
their astonishment at the things which were done or spoken of
him. As time goes on, they seem to forget even the place of
his birth. He is now Jesus the Nazarene ; and neither they nor
Jesus himself can declare, on occasions when such a declaration
was urgently called for, that, in fact, he had been born in Beth-
lehem. When, at the age of twelve years, he is found among the
doctors in the temple, his parents understood as little as ever
what must be the business of his life. Instead of recounting to
their children the marvellous incidents which had preceded and
accompanied their birth, Mary and Elisabeth leave them to grow
296 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
up strangers to each other, so that, according to the fourth Gospel,
the Baptist declares that he had no knowledge of Jesus until he
saw the Spirit in the form of a dove alighting upon him. The
doctors of the temple know nothing, or remember nothing, of the
astounding events which had troubled Herod and Jerusalem only-
twelve years previously ; and when, some eighteen years later,
Jesus taught publicly in Jerusalem, not one of them seemingly
has the faintest recollection of the boy who had astonished them
with his understanding and answers, while all now regard him as
an unlettered man (John vii. 15), his lack of education being
spoken of as a patent fact. All this, however, is as nothing beside
the narrative of Mark. Not only here, as before, has his mother
forgotten every incident in the long series of events which began
with the angelic salutation, but the ominous juxtaposition of the
two passages in the second Gospel^ implies that she now shares
the opinion of his kinsfolk, and regards him as the victim of his
own delusions.
Of these several narratives all may be, and all But one must
be, not only unhistorical but actual and wilful fabrications, without
the slightest foundation in fact. Whatever may be uncertain, it
is abundantly clear that the Gospels can in no part be regarded
as history, in any legitimate sense of the word ; while, at the same
time, it is quite possible that the colour thus thrown on this
incident in the second Gospel may be due entirely to the imagina-
tion of the evangelist.
It is singular, too, that, after the defence of Jesus against the
charge of complicity with Beelzebub, Luke also (xi. 27) inserts an
anecdote which leads to precisely the same answer which in the
other Synoptics Jesus gives to his mother and his brethren. This
reply is made to a certain woman in the company who pronounced
the womb that bore Jesus to be blessed ; but it is not easy to see
^ The phrase ol irap avroO, Mark iii. 21, is much wider than the oi ddeXcpol,
verse 31, and would include his parents as well as his kinsfolk. The fact is not
categorically stated ; but there is certainly no sign that she differed in opinion
from the rest of those who knew him.
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTKY 297
why this enthusiasm on her part should be roused by the discourse
on the return of the unclean spirits, or by the condemnation of the
Pharisees which had preceded it. It is scarcely unreasonable to
suppose that the evangelist inserted the story at this point as
involving an answer similar to that given elsewhere to the kins-
folk of Jesus.
§ 3. The Disputes for Precedency.
The various narratives of disputes for precedency among the
disciples involve historical difficulties of the same kind. Of the
versions given in Matthew (xviii. 1), Mark (ix. 38), Luke (ix. 46),
something has already been said. In addition to these (which
relate to the setting up of a child as a model for the disciples'
imitation), the first Synoptic mentions (xx. 20) the indignation
excited in the minds of the apostles by the request of the mother
of Zebedee's children. The same incident is mentioned by Mark
(x. 35) ; but it is not found in any part of the third Gospel.
Finally, there is the dispute for pre-eminence which occurs
at the last supper (Luke xxii. 24), and which is stilled by Jesus
with a reply which is almost word for word the same as that
which had been given after the request of Salome on behalf of
James and John. It is, to say the least, singular, that the words,
'whosoever will be great among you, let him be servant of all,'
should have been uttered not only when Jesus set up the child
before the disciples, and when he refused the request of Zebedee's
wife, but also in the great discourse against the Pharisees (Matt,
xxiii. 11), and, finally, at the last supper. In the incident recorded
in Luke (xxii. 24) there is no motive whatever for any such
controversy. The dispute, we are told, followed immediately the
announcement that Jesus was to be betrayed — an announcement
which, according to Matthew xxvi. 22, made them 'exceeding
sorrowful;' and surely this was not a time at which any such
trifling and angry thoughts would occupy their minds. But here,
as in so many other cases, although there is no practical motive,
298 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
the verbal connexion is clear. The evangelist had just mentioned
that the disciples began to inquire^ who should do this thing,
and the word which denotes dispute as well as search led him to
introduce a statement which he had already given in another
connexion.
§ 4. The Purification of the Temple.
The difficulties connected with the purification of the temple
are far more serious. In Matthew (xxi. 1 9) we are informed that,
after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus went into the
temple and cast out all who sold and bought there, overthrowing
the seats of the money-changers and of those who sold doves. Mark
(xi. 31) merely states that he looked round on all things in the
temple. Luke (xix. 45), agrees with the first Gospel, except in
the omission of any reference to the seats, the money-changers, and
the sellers of doves. In the Synoptics, then, this incident occurs
very shortly before the crucifixion ; and by rousing the * sore dis-
pleasure ' of the chief priests and scribes, it tends to bring to a
head the opposition already exhibited by them towards Jesus. In
the fourth Gospel (ii. 13) it is assigned, not to the passover of the
crucifixion, but to the first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem after the
commencement of his ministry. The story is also told with some
most important points of difference, for we are informed (1) that
Jesus, having made a scourge of small cords, drove out not only
the buyers and sellers, but the sheep and the oxen ; and (2) that
when the Jews demanded his warrant for thus acting, Jesus replied
by saying, that, if they destroyed the temple, he would raise it up
again in three days. The evangelist here states that Jesus meant
in these words, not the temple of Solomon, Nehemiah, or Herod,
but his own body, which would rise in three days from the grave.
Like Nicodemus and the woman of Samaria, and, indeed, like all
who converse with Jesus in this Gospel, the Jews utterly mis-
understood him ; but, strangely enough, instead of being exaspe-
rated, as they are by his later discourses, they apparently take no
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 299
notice ; nor is anything else in the fourth Gospel made to turn on
this declaration. That the Jews should contrast the forty-six
years during which the temple was in building with the three
days in which it should be rebuilt by Jesus, is really incredible.
They would know that, if the work was to be done in that time,
it must be done by no earthly instruments and no earthly
builders, and that there was, therefore, no reason why it should
not be restored in three hours or three minutes. But, as it
stands in the fourth Gospel, the story, so far as the Jews
were concerned, is absolutely meaningless. They ask what
warrant Jesus had for acting as he had acted towards the
money-changers and cattle-sellers ; and they are told that, if they
choose to pull down the temple, Jesus will build it up again in
three days. There is no connexion between the question and
the answer. They might fairly ask, further, why they should
take the trouble to pull down their temple in order to give him
an opportunity for rebuilding it in a prodigious or preternatural
way, and then, perhaps, find themselves disappointed in the
matter of its restoration. The task of demolition would, moreover,
be a work of months or of years ; and so they might ask, further,
how its future restoration could be to them any warrant for his
acting as he had done. In short, from their standpoint, the words
here put into the mouth of Jesus are wholly and absurdly
irrelevant. We cannot suppose that he uttered them, and it is
impossible, therefore, that this Johannine story can be historical.
But if nothing turns on this declaration in the fourth Gospel,
it is otherwise with the Synoptics, who mention that part of the
' false witness ' borne against Jesus at his trial was based on the
assertion that he could in three days build up the temple if it were
thrown down (Matt. xxvi. 61; Mark xiv. 58); the inference
from these statements being that Jesus had never uttered these
words, for, if he had spoken them, the testimony, though it might
be mistaken, would not have been false, nor could they be blamed
for misapprehending words which related to a still future event,
quite unconnected with the Solomonian or Herodian temple. But,
300 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [BookIIL
according to the fourth Gospel, Jesus in fact had spoken these words,
and, therefore, the witness mentioned by the other evangelists was
not false. We may take whichever alternative we please ; but in
either case, the conclusion remains that the accounts of the closing
days as well as of the beginning of the ministry contain some
false statements. Nor must it be forgotten that when, on the day
after the casting forth of the crowd and the beasts, the priests and
elders in the Synoptics (Matt. xxi. 23 ; Mark xi. 27 ; Luke xxii. 2)
ask him his reason for doing as he had done, in words closely resem-
bling those in the Johannine narrative (ii. 18), Jesus makes a reply
which has nothing in common with the mysterious — and to them
at the time, incomprehensible or unmeaning — saying respecting
the overthrow and rebuilding of the temple.
If, then, the narrative as given in the fourth Gospel be true,
nothing is more certain than that Jesus with his scourge drove out
sellers, buyers, and victims all together, and that he did this by
himself, for no hint is breathed that any took part with him in
this work. Indeed, such co-operation would not have accorded
with the plan of this Gospel, for, throughout, Jesus by his inherent
majesty keeps back his enemies, and frustrates all their attempts,
' until his hour is come ; ' and even when it is come, they who are
sent to seize him, go back and fall to the ground, at his simple
question, ' Whom seek ye ? ' Thus the conclusion is, that one man,
and that man a stranger (for it is described as his first public
act in Jerusalem) interferes with, and puts a stop to, a long-
established traffic, and expels a multitude not only of men but
of cattle.
Were there, then, two purifications of the temple, one at the
beginning, the other at the close, of the ministry ? The Synoptics
clearly know nothing of the first one ; the fourth Gospel takes no
notice of the last ; and it must be allowed that the weight of pro-
bability lies in favour of the former. The Johannine Gospel runs
counter to the whole sequence of events in the Synoptics, and
more particularly, as we have seen, represents the Messiahship of
Jesus as fully known to the Baptist, to Andrew, Peter, Nathanael,
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTEY 30i
to the nameless or the beloved disciple, to Nicodemus, to the
Samaritan woman and her fellow-townsmen, and to the Jews in
general, at a time when in the other Gospels even the apostles are
described as profoundly ignorant of the fact.
There remains the exceeding unlikelihood of the whole trans-
action as recorded in the fourth Gospel. At the last passover,
Jesus, coming from Galilee with a body of enthusiastic followers,
might not impossibly be countenanced by them in this forcible
expulsion ; but at the first passover such aid could not be looked
for, and the evangelist seems expressly to preclude the idea.
These difficulties led Dr. Milman to assert ^ that the traffic in the
Court of the Gentiles (for it was nothing more) was regarded with
general disapprobation by the Jews. There is no evidence of
such a fact. It was, indubitably, approved by the priesthood ; and
it is certain that those who conducted the traffic would have been
supported by them against any attempts at violent suppression.
The absence of this traffic is mentioned also in rabbinical writings,
not as adding to the solemnity of the place, but as a mournful
token of desolation. Hence it is not at all clear, as Dr. Milman
affirmed it to be, ' that this assertion of the sanctity of the temple
must have been a popular act with the majority of the worshippers.'
But it is undeniable that the fourth Gospel assumes the absence
of all resistance. The buyers and sellers depart abashed ; but as
it is highly unlikely that they should do so, Dr. Milman main-
tained that there was resistance, while he also lessened greatly the
share which Jesus himself took in the matter. ' Though Jesus,'
we are told, ' is said personally to have exerted himself, assisting
with a light scourge, probably, in driving out the cattle, it is not
likely that if he had stood alone, either the calm and commanding
dignity of his manner, or even his appeal to the authority of the
sacred writings which forbade the profanation of the temple as a
place of merchandise, would have overpowered the sullen obstinacy
of men engaged in a gainful traffic sanctioned by ancient usage.'
In other words. Dr. Milman had not the slightest scruple in
1 History of Ghristianity, Book i. chap. 3.
302 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
contradicting the statements of the evangelists when historical
probability called on him to do so. "Where, then, is the essential
difference between his method and that of the most rigorous
historical critics ? But if such a method is to be employed at all,
we may surely ask whether this forcible repression was really
called for. The traffic was carried on in the Court of the Gentiles,
not within the sacred precincts of the sanctuary. Assuredly it
must be carried on somewhere, if the offerings for the sacrifices
were to be supplied to those who could not bring the victims for
themselves. There was no profanation ; and there is no assertion
that either buyers or sellers were turbulent and disorderly. On
every ground it was to the interest of the latter, at least, that they
should not be so. The offering of victims for sale is not forbidden
in the so-called Levitical enactments ; and it is not easy to under-
stand why it should be. If, then, as Dr. Milman thought, the
act itself is * no more than a courageous zealot for the law might
have done,' it is still an act which would call forth vehement
opposition. Fully convinced of this, Origen attributed the sub-
mission of the buyers and sellers to the superhuman majesty of
Jesus, and hence counted this among the greatest of his marvels
or miracles. According to Dr. Milman, it was no marvel or
miracle at all ; nor is it easy to see why the pledge to raise the
temple again after its demolition should jar on the religious
sensibilities of the Jews, if only they believed that the pledge
would be redeemed by the fulfilment of the promise.
It seems strange, however, that Dr. Milman should have failed
to see the disparaging effect of his remarks. The image of Jesus,
helping with a light scourge to drive out a ponderous mass of
unwieldy cattle, has little of majesty or beauty ; while the sup-
position that others, taking his side, were aiding in expelling the
men, converts the whole scene into a wild tumult which must
have called for the interference of the Eoman police. But, lastly
the speech about the temple was, as Dr. Milman admits, com-
pletely misunderstood. The plan of the fourth Gospel required
that it should be; but Dr. Milman could not withhold some
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTEY 303
explanation. ' The gesture/ he asserts, * by which Jesus probably
confined his meaning to the temple of his body, which, though
destroyed, was to be raised again in three days, was seen indeed
by his disciples, yet even by them but imperfectly understood.'
To this it should surely be enough to reply, that an honest man
would be bound by the words which he uttered, without any
reservation, unless the hearers were distinctly made acquainted
with that reservation ; and that to escape under a reservation not
distinctly made known to them is nothing less than falsehood.
But there is not the slightest indication in the text that any
gesture was seen by any one, or that any gesture was ever made ;
and the notion that Jesus deliberately uttered words relating to
future events, privately signifying to his disciples that the
apparent meaning of his speech was not the real one, degrades
the whole act into a piece of undignified and dishonest mockery.
But the whole story is, from beginning to end, impossible ; and the
Johannine and Synoptic accounts must alike be dismissed as
altogether unhistorical. The words put into the mouth of Jesus
point in quite another direction.^
§ 5. The Anointing of Jesus. General results thus far reached.
It is mentioned in all the four Gospels that Jesus was
anointed by a woman as he sat at meat; but the accounts are
more or less inconsistent and contradictory throughout. In the
first Gospel (xxvi. 6) it is recorded as having taken place in
Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper. The woman here is
of blameless reputation, and the objection taken by the disciples
is on the ground of wastefulness. The account in the second
Gospel (xiv. 3) is substantially the same, the chief difference
being that the evangelist does not specify the persons who raised
the objection. In the third Gospel (vii. 36) the incident is
described as taking place in Galilee early in the ministry of Jesus.
Here the woman is a sinner, and she anoints not his head but
^ See Appendix B.
304 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
his feet, which she wipes with the hair of her head. The objection
in this case is taken, not by the disciples, but by the Pharisee in
whose house the incident occurred ; and the reply of Jesus has no
reference to his approaching death or to the power of always
doing good to the poor, but turns on the contrast between the
niggardly welcome of the Pharisee and the overflowing love of
the sinful woman. In the fourth Gospel (xii 1) the woman who
anoints is not only not a sinner, but she is Mary of Bethany, the
sister of Lazarus. The house in which Jesus was being enter-
tained is not named ; but Lazarus, it is added, was here, after his
resurrection from the dead, among those who sat at meat. Like
the sinful woman in Luke, Mary anoints his feet, and wipes them
with her hair; and the objection is raised in this instance, not by
all the disciples, but only by Judas Iscariot. Jesus, in his reply,
merely bids them to leave her alone, making no reference to the
memorial which shall be preserved of this event wherever this
gospel should be preached.
The contradictions are so great that the supposition of two
anointings has been commonly approved ; but if we assume that
there were two, must we not allow that there were more ? Apart
from the character of the woman who anointed him, the entertain-
ment, according to the first and second Gospels, was given in the
house of Simon the leper ; the fourth Gospel implies that it took
place in that of Lazarus. In the former, again, it preceded the
passover only by two days ; in the latter, by six ; and what is more
singular is, that the former do not know the woman's name,
although in John she is the sister of his dearest friend. Other
points of difference, already noted, need not be again mentioned
here; but enough has been said to show that the accounts in
Matthew and Mark differ from the narrative of John, almost as
much as all the three differ from that of Luke. Hence many have
held with Origen that there were three anointings ; and we are
surprised at the regularity with which, in each case, objections are
raised against the work of the woman, and the sameness of the
arguments by which Jesus defends her.
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 305
But inasmuch as Matthew, Mark, and John all place the inci-
dent in the last week of the ministry, it may, perhaps, be conceded
that all the three speak of the same event ; and on this hypothesis
there would be only two anointings. On a further scrutiny other
points of resemblance come out, which seem to show that, after all,
Luke is giving only another version of the same event, for he also
states that the meal was in the house of Simon, only he calls him
a Pharisee instead of a leper. Like the other Synoptics, Luke
makes the woman a stranger who comes in, not one belonging to
the house ; and, on the other hand, the mode of anointing in Luke
is the same as in John. The conclusion seems to be that we have
here three versions of the same event, and fresh proof is forced
upon us of the slender trust which can be placed upon any part
of the gospels as historical records.
In the present instance, it must not be forgotten that the
features introduced into the narrative of John have been rendered
necessary by the plan of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist
wished to mark the point at which the treachery of Judas
betrayed itself to the disciples ; but it is scarcely credible that, if
the objection had been raised by Judas only, the Synoptics should
not have stated the fact. It is still more strange that they should
not know, or should not mention, that the brother of the woman
was one whom Jesus had raised from the dead. We thus en-
counter one of the many circumstances which show the complete
ignorance of the Synoptics of the most stupendous marvel or
miracle ever wrought by Jesus. In this case, indeed, we may
fairly argue from their silence that they did not know the woman,
far less know that she was Mary of Bethany.
Clearly, then, we have here narratives which have passed
through the crucible of oral tradition, and have come out with
forms and colours very different from those which originally
belonged to them. But it is scarcely worth while to inquire
which of the gospel narratives may be nearest to the truth. We
have seen that mere particularity of detail is no proof at all that
the narrative is that of an eye-witness, and we have had abundant
u
306 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
evidence that none of the evangelists cared much for notes of
either time or place. Still here, as elsewhere, the balance inclines
in favour of the Synoptics. If the incidents occuired as they are
related in the fourth Gospel, it seems incredible that tradition
should have converted Mary of Bethany into a sinner, and have
transferred to all the disciples an objection on the score of waste-
fulness, which was raised only by Judas Iscariot.
The tale of the woman taken in adultery, given in the eighth
chapter of the fourth Gospel, is so beset with difficulties that the
most conservative of commentators have thankfully availed
themselves of its absence from the earliest manuscripts to declare
that it formed no portion of the original Johannine document.
They are probably right ; but the mere strangeness of the narrative
is not in itself a valid reason for asserting that it is spurious. The
story may be speedily dismissed. Jesus is represented as sorely
perplexed, although it is hard to see why he should be. The reply
which he is said to have made, after a long pause, seems to imply
that no magistrate has any business to inflict punishment for any
offence unless he feels himself guiltless of all offences — a doctrine
which would end in complete anarchy. Nor is it likely that all of
those who heard him would have been so weak and ignorant as to
be entrapped by such a fallacy. Some of them, surely, would
have said, ' I am not sinless ; but I have yet to learn that only
the guiltless may interfere to put down vice or crime. If I am
called upon to vindicate the law, I am prepared to do so.'
Whatever may be the origin of this tale, it is certainly old ; for
either this narrative, or one substantially the same, is mentioned by
Eusebius^ as being found in the gospel of the Hebrews. Indeed,
the only difference seems to have been, that in this case the woman
was charged not with one but with many sins. But this very
diversity at once carries us to Luke's account of the woman whose
many sins were forgiven because she loved much; and some
ground seems to be thus furnished for the surmise that the two
stories are connected, the idea of anointing as an act of love and
1 H. E. iii. 39.
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 307
an act of penance, serving to link the two together, and thus to
turn the sinful woman into the one who anointed him, and the
latter into a sinful woman.
Thus far, then, we have examined a series of narratives, not
one of which can be accepted as really historical. Of all that
passed before the beginning of the ministry we know absolutely
nothing. The stories of the nativity exclude each other ; and they
all belong to that charmed region in which popular fancy deals
with the phenomena of the outward world. Even when we come
to the period of the ministry, the inconsistencies, contradictions,
and even the absurdities of the narratives, are, in most cases,
so glaring that we have been enabled to dismiss them as utterly
untrustworthy, and to trace the process by which pure fable has
overlaid with fictions the slight substratum of fact on which it
may have had to work.
The amount of historical information thus far obtained, if
there be any, is very small indeed. The earlier life of Jesus of
Nazareth is hidden behind an impenetrable veil, which, at best, is
only partially lifted when we reach the period of the ministry,
for of the ministry we do not know whether it was confined to a
single year, or whether it extended over two or three. We do not
know whether Jesus appeared in Jerusalem as a teacher before his
last passover, or whether he taught there publicly two or three
times a year. We do not know, in short, whether his ministry
belonged exclusively to Galilee or was primarily for the people of
Judaea. Even those narratives in which the Synoptics agree are
found in very different connexions, while the verbal agreement is
often so close as to force us to the conclusion that they are not
independent narratives at all, but one and the same tale drawn
from some older document, which each evangelist has embodied
in his work just where it might be most convenient for him to
do so. If the Synoptic accounts of the callings of the disciples
be correct, the narrative of the fourth Gospel must be fiction.
Eeasoning from this basis, we should come to the conclusion,
warranted by express statements of the Synoptics, that Jesus did
308 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
not exhibit himself distinctly as Messiah until a very late period
in his ministry, and then only in private to his more immediate
followers ; that he never exhibited himself at all as Messiah in the
sense of the Johannine Gospel, namely, as the Eternal Logos,
which tabernacled in man ;^ and that, consequently, the Johannine
discourses in which he is made to claim and to set forth this
character are the composition of the evangelist himself. Of the
character of his disciples and the time of their respective callings
we can affirm nothing. The accounts are contradictory through-
out, and it is impossible that they can be all true, while they
may all be false. But if the Synoptic accounts be in any degree
trustworthy, the Johannine story must be rejected as a later
fabrication.
If, again, we may place any trust in the Synoptic Gospels, we
shall conclude that he taught rather by direct sermons in the
simplest and most unambiguous style, or by parables adapted to
rouse the mental and moral perceptions of a gross and degraded
people ; and that the patience and gentleness with which he led
them on, step by step, from spiritual darkness into light could
scarcely be exceeded. Here, again, if we give credit to the
Synoptic writers, we must refuse to put any trust in the fourth
evangelist, who represents Jesus as speaking riddles which bewilder
his hearers, and in many instances stir up vehement opposition.
Of the order of these discourses and of the several incidents
in the Synoptics, we have no definite knowledge, inasmuch as
between many passages there is no connexion whatever, while in
others the connexion is purely verbal ; and even for the parables,
if we say that they occupied a prominent place in his teaching,
and that some of them may have come down to us as he uttered
them, we cannot deny that some of them have been strangely
perverted, that portions of two or more parables have been blended
or twisted together, and that, whatever the parables may be, the
explanations attached to some of them are indubitably spurious.
This element of parable in his teaching is, as we have seen, wholly
^ iaK-qvuaev iv 7)fuVy John i. 14.
Chap. IX.] THE MINISTRY 309
lacking in the fourth Gospel; and this want is one among the
multitude of overwhelming arguments for the unhistorical char-
acter of that Gospel.
With regard to the Johannine discourses, it must be said that
for not one of them is there the slightest historical evidence forth-
coming, while of some, as of the conversation with Nicodemus, it
is impossible that the evangelist could obtain any information in
the absence of a report either from Nicodemus or from Jesus
himself. Moreover, in the fact that the evangelist, the Baptist,
and Jesus, express themselves in precisely the same language, we
have cogent evidence that the writer of the Gospel composed all
the discourses in it as he went along.
Finally, a comparison of the Synoptic Gospels has exhibited a
certain amount of inconsistency and contradiction on almost every
point which they have in common ; and we have seen that these
variations are precisely such as we should expect to find in
narratives handed down by oral tradition. It is enough, therefore,
to say that of the great Teacher himself we have no contemporary
picture ; and if the portrait be indistinct, we must accept the fact,
and acknowledge it as such.
CHAPTEE X
THE NARRA.TIVES OF MARVELS, WONDERS, OR MIRACLES, IN
THE FOUR GOSPELS
§ 1. Character of the Wonders in the New Testament Writings.
The gospel narratives of events which we have thus far ex-
amined do not turn on any marvellous circumstances, and are
not set forth as preternatural or miraculous. I do not, of course,
speak now of the stories of the infancy and childhood, for on
these rests the impenetrable veil of mythical tradition. But when
we have left these things behind us, we find still inconsistencies,
contradictions, and impossibilities almost everywhere. We have
now to deal with stories of another sort. In the narratives of the
ministry, the contradictions hitherto laid bare relate to the
commonest matters of fact. Either the Baptist knew Jesus from
his infancy, or he did not. After the baptism he either knew
Jesus to be the Eternal Logos, or Word, or he did not. Either
Peter was summoned by Andrew distinctly to find in Jesus the
Messiah, or he was not. Either Jesus drove out the traffickers
from the temple at the beginning and the close of his ministry, or
he did not. Either a few days after his baptism he was at a
marriage-feast in Galilee, or he was not. On all these, as on many
other points, the gospel narratives completely contradict each
other or themselves. The inevitable conclusion is, that in the
most ordinary matters of fact, the evangelists are not trustworthy
historians, and could not have been eye-witnesses of the events
which they relate.
310
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 311
But their accounts are not confined to matters which fall
within the ordinary range of human experience. They abound in
incidents which are astonishing or inconceivable, and which run
counter to all impressions derived from observation of natural
phenomena. At once, therefore, and before examining any one
of these narratives, we are bound distinctly to affirm that, whether
as witnesses or as historians of such alleged events, the evan-
gelists are not worthy of credit. The fact that the gospels are
unhistorical in common things renders an examination of all
narratives of wonders superfluous. It is quite unnecessary to
maintain that marvels or miracles are impossible. It is enough
to have shown that in the gospels, so far as we have examined
them, there is not a single story which would stand the test of
judicial scrutiny.
On these tales of marvels we need not dwell long. Yet it
may not be useless to show that, in all these narratives, we have
contradictions and mistakes similar in kind to those which run
through the narratives of ordinary events.
Although the duty of accounting for the growth of these stories
must be persistently disclaimed, it is well to note that even the
most conservative theologians see, in the wonders of the Old
Testament writings, the types of greater wonders to be wrought
by the Messiah ; nor will any such apologists feel any wish to
deny the general similarity of the latter to the former. As Moses
fed the Israelites with manna from heaven, so Jesus fed thousands
with food which he had preternaturally multiplied. As Moses
brought water out of the stony rock, so Jesus turned water into
wine at the marriage-feast in Cana. As Elisha prevented men
who were not blind from seeing, or gave them a marvellously
extended vision, so Jesus healed even those who had been born
blind. As Elijah raised from death the widow's son at Zarephath,
and Elisha restored the dead child of the Shunamite woman, so
Jesus called forth from the grave one who had been dead four days.
There is, throu^jhout, a genuine a(?reement, the chief difference
being that the miracles of the New Testament books seem to be
312 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
more complex. It can scarcely be denied, therefore, that the
narratives of wonders in the Old Testament scriptures might
furnish the germ and determine the character of similar narratives
in those of the New. Of course, the popular answer is that both
the Old and New Testament prodigies are equally facts ; but our
examination of the gospel narratives has already shown that we
can place no reliance on their assertions even about ordinary
matters. While, then, we set aside both the former and the latter
series as equally unhistorical, the Old Testament narratives un-
deniably existed, and might not impossibly excite the inventive
powers of the writers of the New.
Hence the important questions to which the answer is impera-
tively demanded are not so much whether Jesus worked wonders,
as whether he said that he had worked them, or laid claim to the
power of working them. But these are just the questions which
the evangelists or their informants have rendered it impossible to
answer. We have noticed, already, the most prominent character-
istics of the age and society in which they lived ^ — that it was an
age of boundless credulity, and a singularly elaborate and degrading
demonology — that their appetite for things prodigious was insati-
able — and that the rapid forgetfulness of one set of wonders was
immediately succeeded by an impatient longing for another. It
would be, therefore, strictly impossible for them to exhibit the
life and works of any teacher except through an atmosphere of
miracles, which must make everything dim and misty or distorted.
The more that they loved and venerated the Master, the stronger
would be the temptation to ascribe to him powers which should
leave those of the greatest prophets in the shade. At best, we
can but expect to glean from the gospels a few isolated utterances
which may throw light on the thoughts of Jesus with respect to
things of which it was impossible for his hearers or followers to
give a truthful and correct report. Any one of these strong
utterances would carry more weight than a hundred stories of
signs and wonders, to which oral tradition had given' many shapes,
1 See pp. 16, 135.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 313
and which it had often invested with very strange colouring.
His emphatic declaration that 'no sign shall be given to this
generation,' would, if we accept it as historical (and we should
wish to do so), be decisive of the question. It would assure us
that all the claims which he is said to make of such powers came
only from the imaginations of his disciples, and that he no more
shared their convictions on the subject of demoniacal possession
than he proclaimed himself a worker of outward signs and pro-
digies. But the flexibility of oral tradition seems to foil us
everywhere. The explicit assertion that no sign shall be given
is found in one passage only (Mark viii. 12). In the first Gospel
(xvi. 4) the declaration is that they shall have no sign but that
of the prophet Jonas ; and this sign (xii. 39) is explained else-
where to refer to an event yet future, which could not be a sign
to any one until it had actually occurred. It is useless, therefore,
to look for definite evidence as to the opinions of the teacher on
subjects which were completely distorted in their eyes by the
force of ancient prejudices and prepossessions.
That Jesus is said to have conferred on his disciples the power
of casting out devils (Matt. x. 1; Mark iii. 15; Luke ix. 1) we
can no more deny than that, when they returned exulting because
the very devils had been subject to them, Jesus is said to give
thanks as having seen Satan like lightning fall from heaven
(Luke X. 18). Here, then, we have what looks like an unequi-
vocal assertion of the existence of devils, and of the possibility of
their acting in the way popularly attributed to them. But we
cannot ascribe their opinions to the Master until we can get
reports which are not vitiated by the credulity and superstition
of the disciples or the evangelists.
§ 2. The Expulsion of the Evil Spirit at Capernaum.
In the fourth Gospel the first miracle of Jesus is the conversion
of water into wine at Cana. In Mark i. 23 and Luke iv. 33, it is
the silencing and expulsion of an evil spirit at Capernaum. The
314 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
contradiction is direct : but we may note that the narratives in the
second and third Gospels throw light on two subjects. If the
devil was forbidden to speak of him as the Holy One of God, this
would be a proof that Jesus had not at that time proclaimed his
Messiahship, as the fourth Gospel asserts that he had. The narra-
tives, further, furnish evidence of the mode in which the evangelists
looked at the question.
The demon is here regarded not only as usurping the con-
sciousness of the man, but as possessing a distinct personality, and
as endowed with powers of apprehension far beyond those of
mortal men. It is not less a fact that Jesus is represented as
fearing that the bystanders might receive the knowledge of his
Messiahship from the demon — the conclusion being that no
human creature at the time knew Jesus as the Messiah; that
Jesus had not revealed the fact but wished to conceal it ; but that,
nevertheless, the devils knew it as clearly as the Baptist is said
to have known it in the first chapter of the fourth Gospel.
§ 3. The Demoniacs of Gadara.
In the cure of the demoniacs at Gadara the Synoptic narratives
are not altogether consistent. According to Mark vi. 1 and
Luke viii. 26, there was only one solitary lunatic. In Matthew
viii. 28, there are two. Here, as elsewhere, some particular details
are peculiar to Mark. In the first Gospel, the demoniacs shrink
from the approach of Jesus ; in the third, the sufferer falls at his
feet, entreating that he may not be tormented ; in the second,
he runs from a distance to meet him. But why should the
demon do this, who hated the sight and voice of the Messiah ?
In Matthew, again, there is nothing to show that the number of
the possessing demons was large ; the name legion is found only
in Mark and Luke ; and far from proving that we have here the
testimony of eye-witnesses, it may be a mere contrivance to
explain the subsequent action on the herd of swine. The one
writer may have supposed that two demons might possess the
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 315
whole; the other, seemingly, thought that there must be one
demon to each brute.
If once we have so far confused our minds as to think that an
individual being may consist of two agents, the additional tax on
our powers of faith may be small when we are asked to believe
that the number of agents is indefinitely multiplied, as in the seven
devils of Mary of Magdala, and the legion of the Gadarenes. Still,
even on this hypothesis, it is not easy to see why intelligent spirits,
however impure, should wish to enter into brute forms, or why,
when they have done so, they should hurry them to instant
destruction. It is, clearly, not a case of collective action of the
spirits on the herd generally. The demons as plainly enter into
the swine as they come out of the men. It is also certain that the
demons pray to be allowed to enter into them, in order to find an
abode in them ; but, instead of doing this, they immediately destroy
their chosen habitation. There are not lacking interpreters who
tell us that the destruction was caused by the madmen rushing on
the swine with loud cries, while the keepers fled away ; and, again,
that the cure could not be complete in the men unless the spirits
were permitted to enter the brutes. The former is a story of which
the gospels know nothing ; the latter plea involves complete un-
belief in Jesus as a divine worker. The argument, indeed, becomes
ludicrous as well as profane, when we remember that all devils did
not desire to go into brutes, and that the need of their entering
them is nowhere stated to be an indispensable condition of leaving
the human body. If the narrative betrays confusion of thought, it
is not difficult to account for its doing so. The demons sought an
abiding place, and on this view the swine should have remained
alive ; but some visible effect was called for in order to show the
reality of the possession and the efficacy of the exorcism. This
feature, which is common to the mediaeval legends generally, is
seen in the story told of Apollonius of Tyana, who caused a devil,
after leaving the body of a young man, to overturn a statue which
stood near. Hence it became necessary to destroy the swine ; and
a piece of incongruous patchwork is the result.
316 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
Of the indignation felt by the owners of the herd at the loss of
their property, we need say little. It may be right enough that
violators of the Mosaic law should be punished; but it is not
proved that these men were bound to observe that law. If we
justify the mischief thus caused on the grounds on which we
explain natural visitations of drought or flood, we at once annihi-
late the human consciousness of Jesus.
§ 4. The Lunatic healed after the Transfiguration.
In the story of the cure of the lunatic, which immediately
follows that of the transfiguration, Mark (ix. 14), as compared with
the other Synoptics, exhibits the same climax as in the last in-
stance, for he makes the crowd run towards Jesus to salute him,
and represents them as greatly amazed (although it is not easy to
see why they should be so, except on the hypothesis that his face,
like that of Moses, retained some extraordinary brilliancy). In
Luke (ix. 37) we are merely told that the people met him, while in
Matthew (xvii. 14) Jesus, with the three disciples, advances to
meet the multitude.
In the second Gospel the whole matter turns on faith — faith
in the recipient not less than in those who are instrumental in
imparting the gift ; in the others, the disciples are told that this
particular kind of demon could not be expelled but by, or after,
prayer and fasting. The narratives are somewhat inconsistent;
but what the story proves is, that the evangelists or their informants
were not only convinced of the personality of demons, but assured
that a classification of them, based on their dispositions, was a
reality.
§ 5, Cures of the Leprous and the Blind.
With the alleged cures of lepers we may deal more summarily.
It is enough to mark that in each case the suddenness of the cure
is the point on which these stories turn. As the hand of Aaron
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 317
passed from health into thorough leprosy, and back again, in the
course of a few seconds, so Jesus is said to cure by his word men
who are spoken of as full of leprosy (Matt. viii. 3 ; Mark i. 42 ;
Luke V. 1 2). ITow it is a known fact that confirmed leprosy is
among the most obstinate and malignant of diseases, and that it is
so as resulting from a thorough vitiation of all the fluids of the
body. For the same reason it is a disease over which the imagina-
tion has no control. No effort of will on the part of the sufferer,
no sudden impulse or excitement, will enable him to throw off his
burden even for a moment. Hence such narratives, if they are
to be credited, need far greater corroboration than do tales of
demoniacal possession ; and no such corroborative evidence is
forthcoming.
The same difficulty applies with full force to all the narratives
which relate the cure of blind men. Healings of men partially
blind, by the employment of physical means or instruments, are in
no sense marvels or miracles; and it is quite certain that the
evangelists do not intend to describe any such natural cures. But
blindness, not less than leprosy, is a disease or defect wholly
beyond the influence of imagination ; and the slender trust which
can be placed in the gospel narratives of the most ordinary events
does not justify us in taking their word when they speak of things
which run counter to human experience generally.
Nor must it be forgotten that the fourth evangelist, in relating
the cure of a man born blind, appends to it a momentous conversa-
tion (ix. 8-20), of which the Synoptic writers know absolutely
nothing. Indeed, it is but a slight exaggeration to say, that, no
matter what may be the subject in hand, the one set of writers are
profoundly ignorant of everything stated by the other. But it
must be admitted that the narratives to which such incidents lead
are far more important than the incidents themselves, and that, if
the Synoptic writers had ever heard of such discourses, they must
have taken some notice of them, however slight, more especially
as the miracle is said to have been publicly wrought, and the
words are said to have been spoken, in the presence of the multi-
318 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
tude at Jerusalem. But they have not noticed them, and thus
the presumption, or rather the certain conclusion, is that these
discourses are altofjether unhistorical.
§ 6. The Connexion between Sin and Disease.
A far more serious, and, indeed, a vital question, is brought
before us in the narratives which exhibit, or seem to exhibit, the
relations of diseases to sins. Are the several evils to which flesh
is heir direct inflictions, by way of punishment, for secret or open
misdeeds, whether of the sufferer himself or of his fathers ? In
the popular Jewish belief undoubtedly they were so. This belief
pervades the Pentateuch, and is prominent throughout the book of
Job. It is seen not less unmistakeably in the question of the
disciples, ' Hath this man sinned, or his parents, that he should be
born blind ? ' (John ix. 2) — a question clearly pointing to the
notion that a man may sin in his mother's womb, and so come
maimed into the world. The reply, which says that' neither the
man nor his parents had sinned, is taken by many as asserting
the general proposition that bodily defects or diseases are not
necessarily the consequences of sin ; and this may have been the
conviction and the teaching of the great Master himself. Yet, far
from laying down any general proposition, the answer, speaking
simply of the particular case before him, says that this man was
born blind not by reason of sin, but in order that the works of
God should be shown forth in him. So the man who lay for eight-
and-thirty years at the pool of Bethesda is, according to the story,
told to sin no more lest a worse thing should happen to him
(John V. 14), the inference being that there was a direct connexion
between previous sins and his bodily infirmity. The attempt to
evade this issue by supposing that the man knew that he had
brought on his disease by sensual excess, does violence to the
wording of the narrative, which gives no intimation of anything
of the kind.
The other passage (Luke xviii. 1-8) on which much stress is
Ohap. X.] THE MINISTRY 319
laid, asserts that tlie Galilaeans who had perished were not to be
held sinners above all others, but that, if the hearers did not repent,
they would bring upon themselves like destruction. The great
Master may have spoken more unequivocally and more decisively ;
but the words put into his mouth say that the sin of the Galilseans
had sealed their doom, and that a like result would follow in the
case of those who heard him. If the evangelist had not intended
to convey this meaning, the reply must have been to this effect :
' They did not die for their sins, because you, who may be equally
sinful, have not been punished in the same way, and may not
be so visited hereafter.' The narrative throws little light on
the thoughts of the great Teacher; but it shows that the evan-
gelist regarded bodily afflictions as evidence of the sin of the
sufferers.
It is true, indeed, that the beatitudes in Luke (vi. 20) on the
poor and hungry of this world, and such parables as that of the
rich man and Lazarus, affirm that misfortunes and maladies are
to be regarded as tokens of favour and grace, and as furnishing
grounds for a summary compensation hereafter. The two ideas
are not consistent. On the one side, we have the old Jewish notion
of chastisement for sins in the form of bodily maladies, and on
the other, the more modern idea, which especially marked the
Essenes, that God's favour was accorded more particularly, or even
exclusively, to those who, in the temporal sense, were sick, poor,
and needy. If these two conflicting ideas are found in the teach-
ing put into the mouth of Jesus, the inconsistency is probably the
result of misapprehensions or prepossessions on the part of the
evangelists, or of those from whom they received their information.
§ 7. Involuntary Cures.
In the narratives of cures thus far examined, Jesus is exhibited
as acting entirely by his own will, although he used his power
only on behalf of those who had faith to be healed, or for whom
the outward healing would be spiritually beneficial. There is
320 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECOEDS [Book III.
another class of cures which speaks of his action as involuntary,
or even unconscious. These cures call for careful scrutiny. When
we have an affluence of power from the person of Jesus, with virtue
to heal those who avail themselves of it, we are confronted with
a fact which, if true, seems to be natural ; and we may feel
that we are dealing with phenomena akin to the influence of
herbs, or specifics of any sort, or of magnetism and electricity.
This is shown by the not very consistent accounts given of the
cure of the woman with the issue of blood (Matt. ix. 20 ; Mark v.
25 ; Luke viii. 43). In this case, according to one version, Jesus
knows not who has touched him, and becomes conscious of the
fact that he has been touched only by experiencing a sense of loss
of power. He is, further, obliged ^ to ask who it was that had
touched him, in strange contrast with the preternatural knowledge
which he had displayed on first seeing Nathanael, and in the con-
versation with the woman of Samaria. Nay, more, the moving
cause in this case is not the will of Jesus, but the deed of the sick
woman.
For reasons already many times repeated, we are not bound
to examine this narrative historically, although the scrutiny would
exhibit the same kind of difficulties which we find in other narra-
tives of the like sort ; but it is necessary to note the connexion
of this story with sundry tales in the Acts of the Apostles, in
which handkerchiefs and aprons, which had touched the body of
the apostle Paul, heal sick persons, and that, too, at a distance.
Hence, while in the gospels the touch of the clothes is effectual
while they are worn by the person in whom the power is supposed
to lie, in the Acts (xix. 12) they retain their influence long after
they have been removed from the bodies of the apostles. Cardinal
Newman might well say that such narratives are precisely parallel
to a host of mediaeval marvels which are not a whit less or more
credible.
^ If it be said that he knew, but that he went through the form of asking,
this is to make him play a part, which seems more in accordance with the morality
of the Johannine evangelist than with that of the Synoptic writers.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 321
§ 8. Cures wrought at a Distance.
If in these stories we have an action as purely physical and
involuntary as that of the flower when it emits its perfume, but
depending at the same time on actual contact, we find other tales
which represent Jesus as working cures at a distance by a mere
act of the will or the expression of a supreme command. These
two classes of legend altogether exclude each other. If the influ-
ence in the one class was so material that any one could extract
it by a touch, we can scarcely suppose that it would be so spiritual
as to be wafted by the will to any distance. If it was so, the
limitations of the former hypothesis become inconceivable. The
contradiction is thorough, and indicates at once that we are reading
narratives which are not historical.
But these are not the only contradictions manifest on an
analysis of these narratives. In Matthew (viii. 5) it is a centurion
who, at Capernaum, prays Jesus to heal his servant, and, admitting
himself to be unworthy to receive him under his roof, is praised
as exhibiting a faith which Jesus had not found anywhere in
Israel. The centurion, therefore, was a Gentile. In Luke (vii. 2)
he does not go himself, but sends the elders of the Jews to Jesus,
and makes them utter, in the form of a message, the words which
the centurion in the first Gospel had spoken in person. In John
(iv. 46) it is not a centurion, but a nobleman or officer of the royal
household, and seemingly a Jew ; and he finds Jesus, not at Caper-
naum, but at Cana. Far, however, from saying that he will come
and heal his son, Jesus reproaches him for want of faith : ' Except
ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.' On being told that
his son should live, the man goes away, and ascertains on reaching
home that the fever had left him at the very moment when Jesus
had assured him of his recovery.
These contradictions are so great that many commentators
have resorted to the usual device of asserting that these are narra-
tives of three separate events ; and thus, to save the consistency
of the evangelists, we are called upon to believe that three persons
X
322 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL KECORDS [Book III.
in Galilee had a son or servant sick, that in all three instances
the sufferer was healed at a distance, that two of them declared
their unworthiness in precisely the same words, and that Jesus
praised their faith in precisely the same phrase. In truth, we need
documentary evidence far more self-consistent than any to be found
in the gospels, before we can be warranted in giving credence to
so astonishing a recurrence of incidents. No valid reason, then,
can be urged for regarding them as independent narratives ; and
as narratives of one and the same event they must from their
self-contradictions be set aside as unhistorical.
It is possible, and perhaps not unlikely, that such stories may
have been produced as complements to the legends in the Old
Testament writings, which speak of prophets like Elisha curing
lepers without coming into contact with them, and simply by
making their recovery dependent on their complying with some
definite condition. But the rejection of such a suggestion adds
nothing to the historical credibility of self-contradictory narratives.
§ 9. Cures wroicght on the Sabbath-day.
The stories of cures which, we are told, were wrought on the
Sabbath-day, are noteworthy chiefly as indicating the position
supposed to have been taken by Jesus in reference to the so-called
Mosaic law.^ Whether Old Testament tales furnished the starting-
point for the seemingly higher marvels of the New, is a question
which we are not called on to answer; but we may note the
parallel between the withered arm of Jeroboam ^ and the withered
hand of the man healed on the Sabbath-day (Matt. xii. 10).
The most remarkable of these cures is the one wrought on the
infirm man at the pool of Bethesda. This incident has been
already noticed; but we may fairly add the expression of our
wonder that an institution like that of the pool, with its periodical
angelic disturbances, should be unknown not only to Josephus,
but to all the other evangelists. The authority of the fourth
1 See p. 257. ^ 1 Kings xiii. 4.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 323
Gospel must be indeed transcendent, if it can bear the strain put
upon it by countless improbabilities and contradictions.
Thus far we have dealt with a number of narratives, all
recording preternatural or marvellous or prodigious incidents;
but in every one of them we have, in the subjects of the wonder,
at least the power of experiencing sensations and receiving im-
pressions. The nervous organisation of the leper, the deaf, the
blind, the dumb, though more or less diseased or defective, still
remained a living system, capable in whatever measure of being
acted on by external forces. On a further scrutiny we found that,
of the maladies alleged to have been cured by Jesus, some were
entirely nervous; and in these it may be either possible or likely
that a sudden cure might be effected through the excitement or
enthusiasm provoked by the glance and voice of a dearly-loved or
venerated teacher. Others, again, there are, which we saw to be
removed altogether from the province of the imagination. No
effort of the mind or will could, it was evident, suddenly remove
diseases which lay in a vitiated state of the bodily fluids, or in
the total absence of certain organs, as in cases of congenital
blindness or deafness. That any cures of the latter class were ever
effected, we have no historical evidence whatever. That some
cures (whether permanent or temporary) belonging to the former
class may have been wrought through the medium of an intense
emotion, it would be rash to deny, although we have but slight
warrant for affirming the facts positively. All that can be said
is that such incidents do not lie beyond the range of human
experience, and that the narratives of the New Testament writings
must, like all others, have some nucleus, whether historical or
mythical, round which they have grown.
§ 1 0. The Resuscitation of the Physically Dead.
When we come to narratives recording the reanimation of dead
bodies, we come to stories of quite another class. Here the dead
body is, by universal admission, a mass of inert matter which can
324 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
no longer answer to any except chemical influences. It can no
longer feel the touch, or hear the voice of him who is to work the
wonder. Hence we are compelled to scrutinise the evidence
for such alleged events far more strictly than that which is
afforded for any other stories of marvels; and unless we find
the evidence far more conclusive, we must reject them as un-
historical.
If the resuscitation of the physically dead be, as it is often
said to be, the most marvellous and the most conclusive token
of a divine mission, then it is precisely that exhibition which,
we might suppose, would be most frequently vouchsafed. It
is strange, therefore, that at the utmost three only should be
ascribed to Jesus, that of these one only should be common to
the three Synoptic Gospels, and that one should be narrated only
in Luke, and the third only in John.
With the first (Matt. ix. 18-26; Mark v. 22-42; Luke viii.
41-56) the narrative of the woman with the issue of blood is
interwoven in all the three Synoptics ; hence they must all be
taken as relating one and the same incident. But the story is
not without its inconsistencies. In Matthew the sufferer is the
daughter of a certain ruler, and the fame of the wonder goes
abroad throughout the land. In Mark the ruler's name is given
as laeiros ; but when the healing is effected, Jesus charges them
straitly that no man should know it, although a crowd sur-
rounded the house. But is this tale a story of the bringing back
to life of one who was physically dead ? The evangelists clearly
were convinced that it was such, and they speak of the ruler, of
his servants, of the family, and of the hired mourners, as also not
less convinced of the death. On the other hand, in each of the
three versions, Jesus is represented as persistently declaring, in
spite of the scornful laughter of the bystanders, that the maiden
was not dead but only sleeping — in other words, that it was a
case of swoon. As elsewhere, so here, we can come to no definite
conclusion. If we accept the words ascribed to Jesus as historical,
the question is set at rest, and this narrative cannot be regarded as
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 325
one of the reanimation of a dead body. If so, the number of such
tales is reduced to two.
Of these two, one is the raising of the widow's son at Nain
(Luke vii. 11-15). Of this incident there is little to be said. In
this case we have no prayer from the mourners. The wonder is
the result purely of the pity and compassion of Jesus, who goes to
the bier and takes the young man by the hand. Here, according
to the story, there could be no doubt of the death as having taken
place some hours at least before the corpse was carried out to
burial. A still longer interval is placed between the death and
the resuscitation in that story of Lazarus which furnishes the
turning-point for the historical truth or worthlessness of the
Johannine Gospel. It is patent on the face of this narrative
that Lazarus is described first as dying, then as dead ; that Jesus
delayed to go to him precisely because he intended to restore him
to life, and that he expresses, or is understood to express, this
intention, as soon as he sees the sisters. As to this there can be
no question ; and there is, therefore, no room for what are called
naturalistic explanations. The notion that Lazarus had been four
days in a swoon, out of which he happened to wake precisely at
the moment when Jesus commanded the door of the tomb to be
opened, and that Jesus, happening to see that he was alive, called
out to him to come forth, only shows how readily conservative
championship runs into profaneness. Taken strictly, and without
reference to the intentions of those who propound it, this explanation
covers Jesus with infamy, and must be rejected with indignation
and abhorrence. Because we wish to show that, in some paltry
measure, the narrative is historical, we are, forsooth, to paint
Jesus as a solemn deceiver, who arrogates to himself a divine
power, while he knows that what had taken place was the result
simply of accident.
With regard to these instances of resuscitation, we may ask
why the persons raised should be so insignificant, and why, after
their restoration to life, they should never be heard of again?
How comes it that no one has been raised, who, in his previous
326 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
life, had done something to make him known ? Is it because it
was manifest to those who pretend to record such events, that
Sokrates or Isaiah, if raised again, must say or do something in
accordance with their former character, and that hence it became
more convenient to limit these wonders to persons about whom
no such annoying difficulties could arise ? The issue is plainly
this. If we put aside the story of the daughter of laeiros, there
are two instances in our four Gospels which undoubtedly profess
to be records of the resuscitation of dead bodies. If there be one
thing above another as to which men in general long for more light
and more knowledge, it is the future or the unseen life with its
conditions. If we could be told that Bishop Butler or Cardinal
Newman had returned to us from the dead, and were sojourning
again in Oxford or in Eome, can we suppose for a moment that
they would not be besieged by crowds eager to learn their experi-
ences in the world which we all have to enter ? Would not they,
in their turn, long to enlighten us on matters as to which our senses
and the instruments of our thought may woefully deceive us?
Would they have nothing to say, and would those who saw themv^
have nothing to ask, about those things which eye hath not seen
nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived, but which God, we
are assured, has prepared for them that love him ? Instead of
this we have nothing but silence. The son of the widow of Nain
never speaks. Lazarus, who is mentioned as again present at
meals, is dumb. No questions seemingly are put to either ; and
the only feeling which the resuscitation of Lazarus rouses in the-
chief priests and their adherents is a desire to put him to death v
again along with Jesus. The experience of four minutes in the
spiritual world would, we might suppose, be eagerly received and
carefully weighed. Lazarus had the experience of four days, and
he utters not one word even to him who had called him back to this
earthly life. So it is with Jesus himself. If the eyes of tradi-
tionalists generally were not as heavily holden as those of the
disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 16), they would see
how astonishingly scanty are the utterances which are put into
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 327
his mouth after his alleged bodily resurrection. A few expressions
(these being chiefly repetitions of words spoken or commands
given during his ministry, and amounting to about ten or twelve
lines in all) are the sum of his intercourse with his disciples during
the so-called great forty days; and of these utterances not one
breathes so much as a hint as to any of the conditions of the life
to come.
In the special instance of Lazarus the peculiar attitude attri- ^
buted to Jesus has excited no little discussion ; and the perplexity
caused by it is certainly not surprising. According to the story,
Jesus, of set purpose, allows Lazarus to die in order that the sight
of his resurrection might insure a more general faith in his own
mission, while in the prayer which he offers up near the grave he
plainly states that he prays solely on account of the bystanders,
not his own. Nor is this all. The disciples had long been
familiar with the figurative mode of speech employed by the
Master. Yet when he tells them that their friend Lazarus sleeps,
they immediately misunderstand him, after the fashion of the Jews,
x)f Nicodemus, and the woman of Sychar. The Johannine evangelist
could not forego the opportunity of pointing one of his favourite
contrasts.
It must, further, be admitted that either this evangelist knows
nothing of the resuscitations (if there be more than one) recorded
in the Synoptic Gospels, or he is careful not to write as though he
had heard of them. All that he makes the Jews ask (xi. 37) is,
' Could not he who gave sight to the bhnd have prevented this
man's death ? ' If he had known of the raising (if it be such) of
laeiros' daughter or of the widow's son, must he not have made
them say, 'Why does not he who has already raised the dead
restore his friend to life ? ' These events, we are told, were
bruited abroad through Galilee and Judsea and all the country
round about ; and no dwellers at Jerusalem could plead ignorance
of them. But this silence on the writer's part, and this question
said to be asked by the Jews, imply that the fourth evangelist
knew nothing of them ; and the inference is that the one set of
328 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
narratives is unhistorical, or that the narrative in the fourth
Gospel is a fiction.
But if it be strange that Matthew and Mark should know
nothing of the raising of the widow's son at Nain, it is incon-
ceivable that the raising of Lazarus, if true, should not have been
known to the Synoptics. It is the most dramatic of the miracles
attributed to Jesus, and, more particularly, it is represented as the
point on which the subsequent catastrophe is said to have turned.^
It was this which brought about, we are told, the secret meeting
of the Sanhedrim, and led to the supposed saying of Caiaphas
that one man (namely, Jesus, according to the fourth evangelist)
must die for the benefit of the nation. It was this, we are told,
which led them to plot or scheme for his apprehension, and to
plan also the destruction of Lazarus — a result intelligible on the
hypothesis that they disbelieved the story of his resurrection,
but astounding, indeed, when we see that, according to the tale,
Caiaphas and the rest believed it absolutely.
How, then, are we to account for the ignorance shown by the
Synoptics of an event which, as exciting such indignation, must
have been more talked of and more generally known than any
other in the whole career of Jesus ? The task might well appear
hopeless ; but it has been attempted, and the result is a laughable
failure. By one we are told that they said nothing about it
because the event was too well known to every one to need any
record — an argument which would have furnished to the evange-
list an excellent justification for saying nothing about the
crucifixion as being an incident too notorious to need comment.
Bj another we are told that they pass it in silence, as not wishing
to bring Lazarus into trouble ; but such advocates forget that the
gospels were not, on any hypothesis, written within a few weeks
or a few months after his resurrection, when alone there would be
any risk of persecution ; that, if they had been then written, this
would be no reason for sappressing a narrative, for the truth of
which Lazarus ought to have been glad, if need were, to bear
^ See, further, Supernatural Religion^ ii. 461, et seq.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTKY 329
testimony and to suffer ; and, thirdly, that the event was, on any
showing, so well known at the time that the risk to Lazarus could
not be increased by publishing a narrative of it. Nor can it be
urged that the Synoptic writers, being Galilseans, would not be
likely to hear of it, for the notion is in itself absurd, and we are
expressly assured that all the apostles were with Jesus at the time.
The silence of the Synoptics, therefore, implies their ignor-
ance, and their ignorance is proof conclusive that the event never
occurred. The resuscitation of Lazarus must thus be dismissed as
being entirely unhistorical, and as having not the slightest founda-
tion in fact. There is, therefore, no evidence whatever that Jesus
ever raised the physically dead.
Whether any traditional basis can be found for the story is a
question which we are in no way called upon to answer. Yet it
may be worth while to remark, again, that the raising of the
physically dead formed part of the popular notions respecting the
Messiah, and that this power is ascribed in the Old Testament
writings to Elijah and Elisha. The raising of Lazarus may seem
to exceed in degree the wonders wrought by these prophets in
their lifetime; but then we have already seen that the wonders
of the fourth Gospel present a climax ascending above those in
the other three, and that the resuscitation of the dead Moabite
merely on touching the bones of Elisha, is, if impossibilities can
admit of degrees, even more astounding than that of Lazarus. It
is quite possible, therefore, that such narratives may have given
rise to those of the New Testament scriptures ; but whether this
was so or not, the latter remain unhistorical.
§ 11. Wonders or Miracles connected vntli the Sea.
The rejection of the narratives which record the resuscitation
of dead bodies renders it almost a superfluous task to examine the
narratives of wonders connected with the sea. In one sense they
seem to rise above those already noticed, for they exhibit Jesus
as able to act, not only on the human mind or on irrational beings,
330 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
but even on inanimate nature. But it must not be forgotten that
they are in no way necessary to the history, and can have no
claim to acceptance as surviving in .self-contradictory and irrecon-
cilable documents. In themselves, as relating to operations on
inanimate things, they are not wonders or miracles in the sense
for which even the conservative schools now show a preference.
They are mere prodigies, like those of the Arabian Nights' fiction,
which Dr. Newman ^ sometimes wished might be true.
Of these wonders, one is the sudden stilling of a storm by the
word of Jesus. It is impossible not to be reminded of the
rebuking of the Eed Sea, the very phrase which reappears in
the rebuking of the waters of Gennesareth. But even if the
two be not connected together, nothing is gained for the New
Testament wonder.
The story of Jesus walking on the sea (Matt. xiv. 25) exhibits
his body as exempt from the operation of the law of gravitation.
Far from sinking into the water, his feet do not even dip beneath
the surface, and he walks as on dry ground. Either, then, the
body of Jesus was, as Doketics asserted, a phantom, and in this
case he was no true man, or he had the power of altering at will
the specific gravity of his body ; and not only this, but he could
suspend the operation of this law in the bodies of other men as well
as in his own, for Peter is bidden to come to him on the water,
and does so walk until his faith fails him. Whence the conclusion
seems to be that faith may alter the specific gravity of human
bodies. That this power was exercised by Jesus only at will,
must be conceded, because at his baptism he was submerged in the
water as much as any who were baptized by John. Either, then,
the action was arbitrary; or, subsequently to his baptism, he
acquired a power which he did not then possess. These are but
a few of the absurdities which are involved in an acceptance of
this narrative as historical. We have seen that there' is no
reason for so accepting it ; and here, too, as elsewhere, we may
refer to narratives in the Old Testament writings, which may
^ Apologia pro vita sua, p. 56.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 33I
possibly have furnished the germs for such tales. Elijah does
uot indeed walk on the water, but he divides Jordan with his
robe, and passes through it dryshod with his disciple Elisha.
He also makes an iron axe-head swim, thus directly overcomino-
its specific weight. But, in the Herodian age, stories of this kind
were multiplied over the whole Eoman world. The parallelism
of such wonders with the stories of the Hyperborean Abaris, of
Perseus, and Achilles, may be taken for what it is worth ; but its
rejection proves nothing for the historical truth of the narratives
in question. The story reappears, apparently, in a modified form
in the last chapter (or appendix) of the fourth Gospel. In both,
Jesus appears early in the morning. In the former tale the dis-
ciples take him for a spirit ; in the latter they are afraid to ask
who he is ; and in both, so soon as Jesus makes himself known,
Peter hastens to join him by casting himself into the water.
The next narrative relating to the sea is that of the tribute-
money, which is found in the mouth of the fish (Matt. xvii. 27).
The story is undoubtedly put forth as a marvel. The money is
to be found, not like the ring of Polykrates ^ in the body of the
fish, but in its mouth, and the fish is to come up as soon as Peter
puts his fish-hook into the water. All attempts to regard this
as a natural occurrence lead commentators into a perfect bog of
absurdities. Such writers, naturally perplexed by the retention
of the money in the mouth of the fish even while it snapped at the
hook, venture desperately on the assertion that Jesus told Peter to
go and sell the fish, for which he should receive (find) a stater.
It is enough to reply that the evangelist represents the piece of
money as found, not in the market-place, but in the fish's mouth.
§ 12. Marvels or Miracles of Midtijplication.
The marvellous feedings of the multitudes involve difficulties
of another kind. If we follow the Synoptics, there are two such
incidents, each differing slightly in the number fed and in the
^ Herod, iii. 42.
332 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
amount of food which furnished the basis of the meal, but
resembling each other in all other respects. They both occur in
a lonely place not far from the sea of Galilee. The motive which
animates Jesus is, in each case, compassion for the crowd which had
lingered too long with him. Each time he wishes to feed the
people from his own stores ; each time the disciples object that
this is impossible ; each time the food forthcoming is bread and
fish ; each time Jesus disregards the unbelieving objection of his
followers ; and, each time, the fragments exceed in quantity the
food originally provided. Events do not thus repeat themselves
in their minutest features ; and hence, in all likelihood, the two
narratives have grown out of one by a process which we can see at
work in the reports of the parables.^ In any case, if the disciples
had seen one marvellous feeding, it is impossible that they could
have expressed unbelief when a second became necessary ; rather,
they must have entreated him to do again that which he had
already shown himself able to do, and had done. The whole story
is, therefore, unhistorical.
We are not, then, called on to discuss the other difficulties
involved in it, although these are of an appalling kind. The
number fed is in itself incomprehensible. In Matthew (xiv. 21)
they are said to be about five thousand, besides women and children
(we may, perhaps, say six thousand); and these are all fed seemingly
by the twelve disciples or apostles. Is it possible that any such
body of followers could suffice for such distribution? and how
long would the distribution last ? But, in all probability, not one
of those who profess to believe this marvel are aware of the pro-
positions to which that belief commits them. For we have here
no instance of the acceleration of a natural process. Jesus does
not take corn and make it grow and ripen in a moment. He does
not take the ova from fish and make them develope instantaneously
into their full growth. He does far more. He takes bread,
an artificial substance, and fish which has undergone the arti-
ficial process of cooking, and in both of which all capacity for
^ See p. 265.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 333
reproduction has been destroyed. The work said to have been
wrought by him seems, therefore, to be nothing less than this : (1) he
converts the baked flour into corn, and then sums up in a single
moment the several processes of sowing, growth, reaping, grinding,
and baking ; and (2) he changes the cooked fish into a raw one, and
then, having endowed the raw fish with life, consummates
invisibly the expulsion of ova and their developement to maturity,
together with the process of cooking the raw fish. Will the most
vehement believers in these narratives of marvels assert plainly
that they accept all this ? If they will not, then seemingly we
resolve the marvel into a mere piece of magic by implying that
what was given to the multitude was neither bread nor fish, but
something which looked like them.
The shifts to which apologists are driven, who seek to explain
the incident as a natural occurrence, are scarcely less pitiable than
those which have been already noticed in the story of the tribute
money. Jesus, we are told, commanded his disciples to produce
their provisions, and his beneficent example led others to bring
forth their hidden hoards, enough being thus provided not only for
those who had brought food, but for those who had not done so.
However this may be, it is certainly not the story of any of the
gospels, which all say most distinctly that the five loaves and the
two fishes were divided among the multitudes. Whatever be the
shortcomings of the evangelists, we cannot fairly charge them
with representing as marvels incidents which they did not
regard as such ; and, still less, with exhibiting the great Teacher as
insisting on the marvellous or extraordinary character of the event.
That such wonders would be attributed to Jesus, whether they
occurred or not, may with tolerable safety be maintained. Dr.
Milman^ cites the rabbinical belief that, in the days of Messiah,
Israel shall sit down and eat in the garden of Eden, and satiate
themselves all the days of the world. This belief is, of course,
founded on the traditions which told of manna and quails as
bestowed on the hungry multitude ; and it must further be
^ History of Christianity, vol. i. chap, 5.
334 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
admitted that to these traditions the gospel narratives furnish a
close parallel. In both, the crowds are fed in the wilderness;
in both, there are murmurs of unbelief as to the possibility of
providing the food. In the former, Yahveh, in the latter, Jesus,
disregards their objection, and Moses is bidden to announce the
coming food to the people, just as the disciples are commanded
to distribute the loaves and fishes.
In the so-called Mosaic narrative, the food is brought, not
multiplied ; but the miraculous increase in bulk of food already
furnished is found in the story of the woman of Zarephath,^ and
of the feeding of a hundred prophets by Elisha with twenty
loaves.2 In this instance Elisha's servant gives utterance to
precisely the same objection which is urged by the disciples of
Jesus. According to Jewish legend this power of multiplication
was a prerogative of good men. So great, we are told, was the
blessing shed on the two Pentecostal loaves and the ten loaves of
showbread in the days of Symeon the righteous, that all the
priests ate as much as they desired, and left fragments remaining.
To many these earlier legends may appear to furnish a sufficient
basis for similar narratives in the gospels. Whether they do so or
not, is a matter with which we are not concerned ; but the rejection
of this hypothesis leaves the later narratives where they were —
unhistorical throughout.
The wonder wrought at the marriage feast in Cana is certainly
not less inconceivable than the prodigious feeding of the multi-
tudes. When we are carried away to strange regions, in which no
object bears lineaments with which we are familiar in our ordinary
world, where time and space, and cause and effect, seem to be
entirely dispensed with, and where, consequently, there is no room
for the proper exercise of our mental powers, we can but register
the several mysterious and incomprehensible things brought to our
notice, and say that in the one case there may be a hundred, in
the other perhaps a thousand things, which we cannot comprehend.
It matters little what the wonders may be. If we believe that
1 1 Kings xvii. - 2 Kings iv.
€hap. X.] THE MINISTRY 335
napkins may be invested with a healing power, and the physically
dead be recalled to this earthly life, there is seemingly no reason
why we should stumble at the circumstance that water not frozen
may present a surface capable of supporting the body of the
wonder-worker, or that the latter should be able at will to render
his body lighter than water — no reason why we should not think
that, in the twinkling of an eye, cooked fish, first becoming raw,
may be restored to life, may expel ova, and these ova be brought
to maturity, and the fishes be cooked and ready for eating.
So here we have to notice, first, that this is one of the many
marvels known only to the writer of the fourth Gospel, and that
it occurs at a time during which the Synoptics describe Jesus as
withstanding the tryings of the devil alone in the wilderness.^
In the Johannine Gospel the feast at Cana takes place five days
after the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove,
on the banks of Jordan. The two accounts cannot by possibility
be true, while both may be false ; but the writer of the fourth
Gospel has nowhere established a claim to be accepted as the
more credible narrator. Further, this incident is described in the
fourth Gospel as the beginning of the wonders of Jesus. In the
Synoptics the first recorded miracle takes place at Capernaum
(Matt. viii. 5), and belongs to a different class of wonders.
The part taken by Mary in the matter is almost as mysterious
as the other incidents of the story. According to the evangelist
she went to the feast, perfectly aware that her son would perform
this miracle. Even this is astonishing enough. So far as we can
ascertain from the previous history, she seems to have forgotten
with singular rapidity each marvellous occurrence in the great
series of wonders which followed the annunciation. On this
astounding forgetfulness I have already had to insist more than
once.^ But we have further seen that the kinsfolk of Jesus re-
garded him as 'beside himself,'^ and wished to put him under
restraint ; and we saw that this intimation appears in close con-
nexion with the story of the repulse of his mother and brethren
1 See p. 227. ^ See pp. 187, 194, 206. ^ See p. 294 et seq.^
336 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book III.
when they send a message that they wish to see him.^ The
inference seems to he that at that time she had no faith in his
mission. Nor is there anything in the Synoptic Gospels which is
inconsistent with such a conclusion. These gospels, therefore,
are in direct contradiction with the chapter in the fourth Gospel
which asserts that she came to the marriage expecting her son to
perform some marvel.
But although faith in his mission might convince her of his
power to work wonders even at a time when he had not yet
wrought any, it could not possibly teach her beforehand that a
wonder would be needed at this particular feast ; and hence the
narrative ascribes to Mary a preternatural or superhuman pre-
science. She is, in fact, made to foresee that on this day he would
work his first wonder, that he would need the help of the servants
in the doing of it, and also that the guests would drink so much
wine as to exhaust the whole store of the entertainer, and render a
further supply necessary.
To escape this staggering difficulty some have ev^n ventured to
assert that Jesus had imparted to her beforehand his intention to
work this miracle ; but they have done so only to plunge from one
morass into another. That Jesus should foreknow the excessive
drinking of the guests is in harmony with the spirit of other state-
ments in the fourth Gospel ; but the assertion that he imparted
this foreknowledge to his mother, converts the whole scene at the
marriage into a comedy. The retort of Jesus to Mary in the fourth
verse becomes thus a mere pretence ; and Mary, in the next verse,
merely obeys instructions already received. If, on the other hand,
we suppose that, without expecting any wonder, she only prayed
for her son's advice, her command to the servants becomes utterly
unintelligible. Hence we are thrown back on the conclusion which
the evangelist clearly designed to inforce, that Mary foreknew the
performance of the first miracle of Jesus on that day.
Thus the time and place of this event, and the part which
Mary plays in it, are of themselves enough to warrant a rejection
1 See p. 296.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 337
of the story as unhistorical. We are not, therefore, called on to
discuss the scientific difficulties of the narrative. Yet we may-
note that, whereas, in the feeding of the multitudes Jesus multiplied
substances without changing their quality, here there is a complete
change of quality by the conversion of water into wine. To reach
this end, not only the growth of the vine from the grape-seed and
the immediate ripening of the fruit are necessary, but the opera-
tions of the wine-press and the process of fermentation must be
invisibly superadded, and the result instantaneously attained.^
To these difficulties, bewildering as they are, must be added
others of a moral kind. All the other wonders of Jesus (with one
exception presently to be noticed) are wrought for a beneficent end,
which may subserve the spiritual interests of the recipients or the
witnesses. Here no poverty is lessened, and no sickness removed.
All that is done is to minister to a pleasure which cannot be said to
be necessary, and thus to work a miracle of luxury, which in the
narrative of the temptation (Matt. iv. 4) he distinctly refuses to
do. Nor is the quantity of wine supplied less surprising. The
measure translated by the word firkin contained somewhat more
than thirty pints ; and thus the six stone water-pots, containing
two or three such firkins, would hold not less than 135 gallons;
and the servants filled them up to the brim. What must be the
effect of such a supply at a time when the guests are described as
having already received more perhaps than a fair share of wine ?
Lastly, it is not easy to understand the reproof addressed to
Mary. To the words by which it is conveyed Jesus immediately
adds a practical contradiction ; for the directions to the servants,
given almost in the same breath, show that his time had come, or
that she had anticipated it at the utmost only by a few moments.
In every part, therefore, this narrative is self-contradictory and
impossible ; and the subterfuges employed by some who wish to
prove its possibility might rouse our indignation, if they were not
deserving rather of contemptuous pity. Such writers have re-
solved the whole affair into a joke playfully palmed off by Jesus
^ See Appendix B.
Y
338 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECOEDS [Book III.
on the guests, in order to show that, even in its lighter aspects, he
shared the feelings of our common humanity. According to this
notable discovery, it seems that Jesus had brought the wine to the
feast, and reproved Mary for spoiling his jest through over-haste ;
that he asked the servants to fill the vessels with water in order
to make the guests believe that the water had been changed into
wine ; and that the wine was meanwhile brought in to the guests,
who were too much intoxicated to perceive the trick which had
been played on them. Probably, in all the chronicles of profanity,
few more mournful absurdities could be pointed out. Jesus, then,
allows his host, the guests, the servants, and his disciples to remain
under the impression that he had performed a stupendous miracle,
he alone with his mother being conscious that it had been only a
merry jest. Nay, the evangelist was not less cheated than the
disciples, for he too speaks of it as a marvel, and refers again (iv. 46)
to Cana as a place, not where Jesus had played off a joke, but
where he had turned the water into wine. Thus the attempt to
account for the occurrence as a natural event issues simply in ex-
hibiting Jesus as a hypocrite. The narrative must, therefore, be
regarded as one of marvel or miracle; and if, on account of
liistorical and other contradictions, the rejection of the story calls
into question the veracity of Christian tradition, still no defiling
touch is laid on the character of the great Master.
With the origination of the story we are not concerned. Yet
the transformation in the tale exhibits an affinity to the older
traditions which speak of Moses as bringing water from the rock,
as turning the river of Mizraim into blood, and as making the
bitter waters sweet. The same power is ascribed also to Elisha ;
it must, therefore, be attributed in more ample measure to the
Messiah. But whether there be, or be not, a connexion between
these several traditions, the narrative of the miracle of Cana still
remains untrustworthy and unhistorical, while the ignorance
which the Synoptic writers show of such a miracle wrought in
Galilee seems to warrant the conclusion that the story was
fabricated by the evangelist who has evoked Mcodemus, Lazarus,
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 339
and the Samaritan woman from the resources of his imagina-
tion.
§ 13. Tlie Punitive Marml of the Fig-tree.
The cursing of the barren fig-tree stands by itself as the only
punitive miracle ascribed to Jesus in our canonical Gospels, unless
the marvel with the swine at Gadara should also be regarded
as of this nature. As such, it has caused very serious perplexity
even to those who are anxious to believe without questioning.
Here, as elsewhere, all so-called natural explanations are useless.
The withering of the tree is traced immediately to an influence
which passed over it from Jesus, who (Matt. xxi. 21) is said to
speak to the disciples of the result as a thing done to the fig-tree —
words which could not have been used if a mere natural decay
was alone to be indicated. The same conviction is expressed by
the words put into the mouth of Peter, ' Master, behold the fig-tree
which thou cursedst is withered away.' Had the effect been
purely natural, Jesus must have been represented as correcting the
erroneous impression on the mind of his disciples.
With the metaphysical difficulties of the subject we have no
concern. That Jesus should appear to pass judgement on an in-
animate object, applied to which the words 'punishment' and
' retribution ' have no meaning — still more, that he should exhibit
anger with a lifeless tree, and indulge it to the destruction of the
tree — may be, and doubtless is, bewildering, if not inconceivable.
Hence we need not dwell on the further difficulties connected with
the time for gathering figs, or the weather of that particular season
in which the incident is said to have taken place, or the temporary
or permanent barrenness of the fig-tree.
The difficulty on which we have to lay stress is strictly
historical. When the people of a certain Samaritan town refused
to receive Jesus, some of the disciples are said to have asked him,
' Master, wilt thou that we call down fire from heaven upon them,
as Elias did ? ' (Luke ix. 65). The reply of Jesus, that they knew
340 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
not what manner of spirit they were of, is an emphatic protest
against the idea that preternatural power might be exercised for
the gratification of resentment and ill-will. Yet the narrative
ascribes to him precisely such an exercise of arbitrary power. So
again, if the evangelist (Matt. xii. 20) was right in applying to
him the phrase, ' He shall not break the bruised reed, nor quench
the smoking flax,' Jesus should have been represented as healing
the fig-tree rather than smiting it with a curse. Hence some who
have felt the force of this difficulty have urged that the marvel
had no moral reference to the fig-tree, and that it was simply a
symbolical action to impress on the disciples' mind the lesson that
* every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and
cast into the fire.' It is strange that such an outward token
should be needed by them towards the close of the ministry ; and
if it were needed, we might suppose that it would be needed every
day. But, in the first place, the evangelists nowhere state that it
was a symbolical action, while the second Gospel assigns for the
disappointment of Jesus the fact that it was not yet the time for
figs — a reason which should have disarmed his anger against the
tree; and, further, the remarks which Jesus is said to make
immediately after the event have no reference to this supposed
symbolical character of the act, but treat entirely of the power of
faith which shall enable the disciples to do more than Jesus had
done to the fig-tree.
Hence, as this narrative ascribes to the great Master a spirit
which is found nowhere else in our four Gospels (although it is
especially prominent in some of the apocryphal Gospels), and as it
cannot be made to fit in with other accounts of the teaching of
Jesus, it must be set aside at once as altogether unhistorical.
For the origin of this tale some of the Fathers attempted to
account by saying that the cursing of the fig-tree was simply the
parable of the barren fig-tree, given in the third Gospel (xiii. 6),
carried into action. Whether they were right or wrong, or how
the story took its present shape, we are in no way bound to de-
termine. All that we need say is that we have, first, the alleged
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 341
saying of John the Baptist respecting unfruitful trees, then the
parable, and lastly the parable drawn out as a history. The
general character of oral tradition renders it all but absolutely
certain that the saying furnished the germ of the parable, and that
the parable was crystallised in the history, and not that the
history, being forgotten, dwindled into the parable, while the
parable left its last faint trace in the saying.
§ 14. The Transfiguration.
' In the fourth Gospel (i. 41) we are told that when Peter first
appeared before Jesus, he stood before one of whom his own
brother Andrew had expressly spoken to him as the Messiah ; and
thus, without going further, we learn not only that Peter from
the first was fully informed of the office of Jesus, but that this
knowledge was imparted to others also. Certain words, which seem
to imply a power like that of second sight, convinced Nathanael
that Jesus was the king of Israel (i. 49) ; while in words of which
the meaning could not possibly be mistaken, the Baptist had pro-
claimed him to his disciples as the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world, Nor can it be said that Jesus himself had
treated the question as one not to be answered. Throughout the
whole of the Johannine Gospel it cannot be regarded as a secret at
all, Jesus speaks of himself to Nicodemus as one who came down
from heaven (iii. 13); and if the phrases used here leave any room
for doubt, the last uncertainty is removed when we find Jesus
himself plainly telling the Samaritan woman that he is Messiah,
the Christ. Nor was this knowledge confined to the woman.
After a sojourn of Jesus in the city her fellow- townsmen avow
openly their conviction that he is indeed the Christ, the healer of
the world (iv. 42). Nor can it be said that Jesus imparted the
secret of his mission to those only who would receive it with
meekness, and in a spirit of ready faith. His claims are urged
publicly in Jerusalem before multitudes who are said to be
exasperated by phrases, which to them, we are told, appear simply
342 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
blasphemous. He is the bread of life (vi. 48) ; he has the power
of raising all men up on the last day (vi. 44). His claims are
generally known and freely discussed. Some said that he was the
Christ ; others scoffed at his Galil£ean origin. The distinct asser-
tion of his pre-existence before the days of Abraham impels the
unbelieving Jews, it is said, to take up stones to stone him
(viii. 58), and the same effect is produced by the declaration that
Jesus and the Father are one (x. 30). Thus throughout the whole
ministry of Jesus his Messianic character is set forth with the
most uncompromising clearness; and yet Dr. Milman could
gravely say that, almost to the end of his life, the knowledge of it
was ' confined to the secret circle of his own more immediate
adherents.'^ Was it possible that it could be proclaimed more
widely ? It had been propounded not merely to individual men,
as to Andrew, Peter, Nathanael, to the nameless or the loved
disciple and to Nicodemus, but to the population of Samaritan
cities, and the promiscuous crowds of worshippers at feasts in
Jerusalem. Being thus proclaimed, it was, in fact, published to
the whole world ; for the Parthians and Medes and Elamites and
others, who are mentioned as hearing the apostles speak in foreign
dialects at the feast of Pentecost after the crucifixion, were like-
^ History of Christianity, vol. i. chap. vi. I refer again, as I have so often
referred before, to Dr. Milman's pages, as coming from one who was pre-eminently
an honest and upright thinker. Yet for those who have at heart the real
interests of historical truth, there must be something especially saddening in this
portion of the narrative to which Dr. Milman gave the authority of his venerated
name. Nor can this feeling of regret be lessened when we remember that this
narrative is the work of one who told with consummate skill, judgement, and
eloquence, the story of Gregory the Great and Hildebrand, of Berengar and
Abelard. There is, indeed, a wide difference between the strong man free and
the strong man fettered. In dealing with the pontififs, monks, or kings of the
middle ages. Dean Milman was under no unconscious obligation to tell the story
in one particular way. In dealing with the alleged facts of the New Testament
narratives he had to make it known that he regarded them as historically trust-
worthy, and that the history furnished by them was consistent and true. He
could do this only by weaving together a coherent narrative, leaving out of sight
all statements which clashed with, ignored, or excluded the statements approved
by himself. The task was not a formidable one. It has been done many times
on other materials ; and the issue of such attempts is brought out with over-
whelming force in Sir Cornewall Lewis's Credibility of Early Roman Hi-story.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTEY 343
wise present at Jerusalem when Jesus told them that Abraham
rejoiced to see his day.
These are all diametrical contradictions on a vital point.
Either the Messiahship of Jesus was proclaimed to Samaritans,
Jews, and foreigners, or it was not. Either it was a secret im-
parted, even to the disciples, only at a late period of the ministry,
or it was not. Dr. Milman, following the Synoptic Gospels, asserts
that not one of the apostles knew or confessed Jesus to be the
Messiah till the time immediately preceding the transfiguration ;
and thus he virtually sets aside the reiterated and solemn state-
ments of the fourth Gospel as absolute falsehoods. This is the
practical result. Of course, it cannot be said that Dr. Milman
purposely did this. His object required him only to put together
a coherent narrative ; and, content with performing this task, he
simply and summarily ignores all that is said in the fourth Gospel.
But it cannot be ignored ; and thus we are brought to the con-
clusion that, by the tacit admission of Dr. Milman, of the two
gospel narratives, one, at least, is false, and that this false narrative
must be a wilful fabrication. His condemnation of the fourth
Gospel is, in short, decisive, for if the Messianic character of Jesus
was kept profoundly secret till the eve of the transfiguration, it is
untrue to say that it was made known not only to the Baptist, to
Andrew, Peter, Nathanael, Nicodemus, but to the whole concourse
of Jews and strangers, believers and scoffers, at the great festivals
in Jerusalem. If, again, it was so widely revealed, the narrative
which asserts that during the greater part of the ministry it was
kept secret from all, must be set aside as in every particular un-
trustworthy. But Dr. Milman could scarcely avow in plain words
his adoption of either alternative; and hence he is obliged to
countenance the notion that he accepts two wholly contradictory
narratives, while he virtually rejects one as false. This is the
inevitable inference ; and any one who questions this may, with
equal logic, assert in the same breath that a triangle is a three-
sided figure, and that it is a figure with four sides.
When we turn to the transfiguration itself, it is difficult, if not
344 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book III.
impossible, to discover what Dr. Milman really thought of the
event, or whether he cared to reach any clear conclusion in the
matter. Yet nothing can be more certain than that the events
either did or did not take place as they are recorded in the New
Testament writings. If they did not, there is nothing more to be
said than that the narrators are not to be trusted, and that all
attempts to construct a correct account must be labour thrown
away. The Synoptic Gospels make certain unequivocal state-
ments; but we have no right to put them aside and to foist into
their place certain other statements of our own. Dr. Milman is
therefore not justified in saying that Moses and Elias 'seemed to
pay homage to Jesus,' or in treating the sounds heard at the close
of the scene as either articulate utterances of the human voice or
thunder, ' which appeared to give the divine assent to their own
preconceived notions of the Messiah.' ^ This is to treat the
gospels as documents which may be made to bear any meaning at
our will. But they do speak distinctly of an articulate utterance ; ^
and if we choose to resolve this into the mutterings of thunder, we
do not believe the Synoptic narratives, and it would be better at
once to avow our disbelief. To leave it open to doubt ' whether
the incidents of this majestic and mysterious scene were presented
as dreams before their sleeping, or as visions before their waking
senses,' is really to pour contempt upon the gospel narratives. In
the third Gospel only is any reference made to the sleep of the
three disciples ; but the evangelist adds expressly that not until
they were thoroughly awake (ix. .32), did they see his glory and
the two men standing with him. What, again, did Dr. Milman
mean by a vision presented to their waking senses ? If we are to
understand by this an hallucination to which there is no corre-
sponding reality, this is only to exhibit the apostles as deluded
dreamers, fancying that they saw what in fact they did not see.
But the Synoptics say clearly that they did see two men, and that
these men were Moses and Elias.
With the same apparent unconsciousness that he was walking
^ History of Christianity, vol. i. ch. vi. ^ 0wj'7/ in all the three accounts.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 345
in thorny paths, Dr. Milman spoke of the ' vision ' as tending * to
elevate still higher their already exalted notions of their Master.'
Here, again, we have the confusion between the two portraits
given in the Synoptic and the Johannine narratives. According
to the former, the disciples, generally, never had any exalted notions
of the character of the Messiah. Down to the alleged moment of
the ascension, and far later even than the supposed conversion of
Cornelius, they give utterance only, or chiefly, to sensual and
material ideas of the Christ and his office; nor does the trans-
figuration apparently tend to raise them into a more wholesome
atmosphere. According to Dr. Milman himself, they have a
marvellous power of forgetting whatever they see or hear. The
words of Jesus, he says, 'appear to pass away and to leave no
impression upon their minds,' and 'in a short time they are
fiercely disputing among themselves their relative rank in the
instantaneously expected kingdom of the Messiah.' Such ad-
missions in reference to narratives which are manifestly self-
contradictory, may fairly justify the suspicion that either the
disputes did not take place because the teaching of Jesus had
produced its proper effect, or that the words attributed to Jesus
were not spoken by him, because his disciples exhibited so mean
and earth-bound a spirit.
Nor does Dr. Milman take any notice of the fact that the
conversation, which is said to have been held between Jesus and
the disciples on their way down the mountain on which he had
been transfigured, excludes the idea that any personal or bodily
appearance of Elijah had taken place or was to be expected. But
the flat contradiction thus immediately given to the historical
character of the transfiguration itself, points unmistakeably to
the existence of two different states of feeling among the early
Christians, one demanding visible manifestations, the other con-
tented with spiritual realities, just as the refusal of Jesus to
perform wonders or give signs points to a different tradition from
that which has multiplied narratives of marvels.
We are thus compelled to turn from Dr. Mil man's pages to the
346 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
history of the transfiguration as given in the Synoptic Gospels ;
and we start with the important fact that, by his virtual admission,
that narrative is throughout contradicted by statements which are
interwoven with the whole fabric of the Johannine Gospel. Thus
the thoroughly unhistorical character of that Gospel is more
strikingly displayed, and we have only to see whether the Synoptic
narrative be self-consistent or credible.
The existence of plan in the fourth Gospel is betrayed by the
fact that the narrative of the transfiguration is not to be found in
it. It was impossible for the evangelist to introduce histories
which implied that the Messiahship of Jesus had been studiously
kept secret, not only from the people at large, but from the dis-
ciples also. That he was induced to omit it from a reluctance to
encourage the Doketic notions which were comincj into votjue, and
which treated Jesus as a phantom, cannot for a moment be ad-
mitted, for this Gospel contains the narrative of Jesus walking on
the sea, which, more than all others, invests him with a Doketio
character.^
As little can it be thought (as many have supposed) that the
Synoptic writers do not mean to relate the event as a wonder or
marvel. The instances of so-called naturalistic interpretation
already given have made us sufficiently familiar with a method
which can make anything mean anything. Yet it is marvellous
that men who do not wish to bring the gospels into contempt can
turn the whole scene into an optical illusion, and gravely maintain
that the three disciples, waking up from a heavy sleep, find a
thunderstorm going on, and, seeing the form of Jesus revealed by a
flash of lightning, fancy that his person and raiment are trans-
figured, and, in themselves, invested with a preternatural light ;
while they mistake for Moses and Elias two strangers, probably
Essenes, who have come during the storm or the sleep of the
disciples to converse with Jesus, and one of whom is so impressed
^ There seems to be a strong presumption that the phrase iKp6^T} (viii. 59)
points to a like notion, and that the same idea is meant to be conveyed by the
wording of Luke iv, 29.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTKY 347
by him as to say, when he takes his departure, 'This is the
beloved Son, in whom God is well pleased.' These words, over-
heard through the mist by the scarcely-awakened disciples, sound
in their ears as a voice from heaven.
A terrible penalty is paid for such attempts to bring incidents
manifestly marvellous (if they ever occurred at all) within the
range of events belonging to ordinary experience. The result is
to make the disciples fools, and Jesus a knave. Can anything less
be said, when three persons, half-stupified with sleep, will have it
that two Essenes are Moses and Elias, and when Jesus treats what
he knows to be the visit of two living men as a return of men who
had been dead for centuries ? ' Tell the vision to no man,' he says ;
and are we to suppose that such a thought would ever have entered
into his mind, if all that he referred to was a conversation with
two strangers who sought to speak with him on certain religious
questions ? If he did so speak of such an incident, he was aiding
to keep up what he knew to be a delusion, and thus proving him-
self to be an impostor.
But such interpretations do violence to the plain words, as well
as to the meaning, of the evangelists. It may be true that Luke
alone speaks of the disciples as having slept; but none of them
says a word about any thunderstorm, while Luke also asserts
positively that they were thoroughly awake when they saw the
two forms which stood on either side of Jesus ; and all three state
distinctly, not that the forms answered to the traditional repre-
sentations or portraits of Moses and Elias, but that they actually
were Moses and Elias themselves. Still less do they say that
three different men had precisely the same dream at the same
moment of time. If, again, these strangers, knowing the super-
stitious fanaticism of the disciples, enacted a farce which they
knew that these disciples would take in solemn earnest, we can
only say that greater rogues could not easily be found in any land.
But surely it is enough not only that the disciples remain, accord-
ing to the story, convinced of the actual apparition of Moses and
Elias, but that Jesus himself shares their conviction, so far as the
348 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL KEOOKDS [Book III.
narrative of the transfiguration is concerned ; and hence we may
dismiss that narrative as the record of a marvellous event in which
Moses and Elijah are said to have borne a personal share.
The honesty of the writer who drew up the narrative is not
necessarily called into question by the fact that the conversation
immediately subsequent ignores that narrative altogether. The
contradiction, fatal as it is to the hypothesis that we are dealing
with genuine history, proves only that the two passages come to
us from different sources. But it does reflect very seriously on
the compiler of the fourth Gospel, if he be John the son of Zebedee,
that he should make no mention of an event which he alone of
the evangelists witnessed. The transfiguration is surely an inci-
dent of sufficient importance to call for a record from one whose
memory must have retained many particulars which could scarcely
be preserved in reports received at second hand.
The truth is that we have here another reason for concluding
that no such incident as the transfiguration described by the
Synoptics ever took place; and a further proof is furnished by
the Synoptic writers themselves. No sooner, according to this
account, do they descend the mountain than the disciples ask
Jesus to explain why the Scribes assert that Elias must first come
(Matt. xvii. 10; Mark ix. 11). Beyond all doubt, this question
involves the fact that thus far Elias had not come in person as
a forerunner and witness to the Messiah, and, therefore, it is abso-
lutely impossible that they should have asked such a question
a few minutes after they had actually seen him. Driven to despe-
ration by this difficulty, some commentators ask us to believe
that the disciples speak, not of the mere appearance of Elias, but
of a great moral and spiritual reformation to be effected by that
prophet, whereas the apparition on the mount had come and gone
without leaving any effects behind it. This hypothesis, if it were
allowed to pass, would only prove that the disciples were imbecile
persons who could not put their thoughts into intelligible lan-
guage, or, rather, who had no thoughts to put into words at all.
For in this case they must have asked, not ' Why do the Scribes
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 349
say that Elias must come?' but 'Why do they say that he
must first restore all things ? ' Yet on the latter point, which
on this notion must have greatly perplexed them, they are silent ;
and they speak only about his coming, which, if they had just
seen him, they must have known to be an accomplished fact. But
not only do their words imply that Elias had not come, but the
reply put into the mouth of Jesus asserts distinctly that he was
not even coming, if his advent was to be regarded literally. * Elias,*
he told them, ' has come already in the person of the Baptist, and the
Jews have done to him whatsoever they listed.' ^ It is impossible
that Jesus should have converted into a metaphor an event which
had only just occurred, or even one which had taken place at any
time within his or their recollection ; and if the ordinary concep-
tions about Jesus are to be retained, it is impossible that Elias
should come at any later period, for as, according to the words
assigned to Jesus himself, the Baptist was the promised Elias
(Matt. xi. 14; Luke i. 17), Jesus would be mistaken if the Elijah
who opposed Ahab should afterwards make his appearance.
Here, then, we have a narrative of alleged facts, followed by
a conversation which ignores these facts and precludes their possi-
bility, just as the declaration that no sign should be given to the
evil and adulterous generation of the Jews runs counter to the idea
of constant wonders or miracles wrought by Jesus. Of these
passages the conversation is indubitably the earlier, and may be
historical, while the narrative of the external transfiguration sprung
up when the need of a literal interpretation of the words of
Malachi began to be felt. It is, therefore, without the least
historical basis.^
On this tradition, then, we are in no way bound to say any-
thing more. It is no part of our task or our duty to explain how
the narrative came into existence. We have shown it to be
1 These words (Matt. xvii. 12) seem to point to a tradition different from that
which made John end his days in prison by Herod's order. Jesus adds that the
Jews would treat himself as they had treated John ; but the Jews, as a people,,
had not, so far as we can see, lifted a finger against the Baptist.
2 See Appendix A.
350 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IIL
uuhistorical, and it is unnecessary, therefore, to show further that
it has no object and that it answers no purpose. We need not
trouble ourselves to ask how, even if his countenance was suffused
with an unearthly glory, his raiment also should undergo a like
change. Yet these are difficulties which all who accept the narra-
tive as fact are surely bound to meet. It is for them to explain
why the vision should be vouchsafed to the three who were
spiritually the strongest of the disciples, and sedulously kept secret
from all the rest ; or how such mere outward brightness could tend
to the glorification of Jesus as much as the effulgence of his
spiritual purity and the heavenly character of his acts and
teaching.
It may be more or less likely that, apart from its mystical
source, the germ of this tradition is to be sought in the earlier
story told of Moses, whose face, after his descent from the mount, is
said to have dazzled the eyes of all beholders ; ^ as well as in the
frequent comparison of righteous men to the sun when he goes
forth in his might, or to the stars as they glisten in the firmament
of heaven. The same thought may have laid the scene on a
mountain, as Moses was transfigured on Sinai; and the idea of
the three disciples chosen as witnesses may have been suggested
by the special mention of Aaron, ISTadab, and Abihu before the
seventy elders.^ The summons of Moses that he might worship
may have led to the statement that Jesus went up into the moun-
tain to pray, while the declaration with which the scene closes
is in part a repetition of the words said to have been heard at his
baptism, and partly a reference to the passage in which Moses is
reported as exhorting his people to obey the prophet who should
come after him.^
Whether this be the case or not, is a matter of very small
importance. It is enough that we have analysed the narrative
and found it to be in every particular unhistorical.
We have thus gone through all the classes into which the
miracles and wonders of the gospel narratives may be distributed,
^ Exod. xxxiv. 29. - Exod. xxiv. 9. ^ Deut. xviii. 15.
Chap. X.] THE MINISTRY 351
and have examined the chief (in some cases, all) the instances of
miracles and prodigies in each class. The analysis leaves no
historical residuum, except (possibly) in some of the stories of
sympathetic cures which, as we have seen, are placed by some of
the most strenuous apologists in the class of miracles called am-
biguous.^ For the miracles or wonders belonging to any of the
other classes we have no historical evidence whatever; and the
frequency with which the narratives contradict themselves and
each other on the most vital points, leads us to the definite con-
clusion that the alleged incidents never took place.
1 See Appendix E.
BOOK IV
THE PASSION
CHAPTER I
CLOSING SCENES OF THE MINISTRY
We have had to repeat more than once that over all the incidents
of the birth, childhood, and youth of Jesus of Nazareth there rests
an impenetrable veil. This veil seems to be lifted, when he enters
on his ministry ; but it is astonishing to find it falling again, long
before his public life is said to reach its close. After what may
be called a brilliant morning, on which great works are undertaken
and carried out successfully amidst expressions of thankful con-
fidence and hope on the part of the people, the shadow of death
seems to be thrown with startling suddenness across the scene.
So far as the narratives take us, there is, historically, no reason
for this bewildering change. Nothing had been said or done
to warrant the expectation of such a catastrophe. Yet accord-
ing to the Synoptic Gospels, as soon as Peter has expressed
the clear conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the announcement
is made of the events which are to bring his ministry to a
close.
Nothing so far said or done seems to furnish an intelligible
cause for the results. The whole is resolved into the single phrase,
' Thus it must be.' As it had been written, so must all things be
done. There can be no escape and no divergence. It is a setting
forth of minute particulars ; and even the minutest must not be
Chap. I.] THE PASSION 353
left out of sight. The scriptures must be fulfilled, although we
are not told what these writings are. But there is to be a handing
over to the Gentiles. There is to be insult, mockery, violence, and
death, followed by an uprising on the third day. From a time
which seems to mark something like the middle point of the
ministry the declaration is manifestly made habitually, being
introduced seemingly without any preface and without suggestion
from any outward circumstances, and being followed by no com-
ment beyond the expression of Peter's hope that such an end
might never come, and the pathetic confession (Luke xviii. 34)
that they understood none of these things, that the word was
hidden from them, and that the whole announcement had for
them no meaning. Their failure to understand was not from
lack of plain speaking, for Jesus, we are told (Mark viii. 32),
made the announcement with perfect clearness. But if words
have any meaning, the evangelists assuredly say that the disciples
felt themselves breathing an oppressive air to which they had
never been accustomed, and which filled them with dismay.
Jesus, it is said, went before them as a guide, and they followed
in a state of astonishment and fear (Mark x. 31). They are even
oppressed with this terror before Jesus recounts to them the
details of the coming passion. The dominant idea throughout is
that of inevitable and inexorable necessity,^ which for the Greek
was embodied in the stories of Sisyphos, Oidipous, and Ixion.
We are trespassing here on the regions where the Mythos reigns
supreme, and our task forbids our entering them. This inquiry
is strictly historical; but the character of the nativity stories is
impressed on those of the passion. We shall see that neither series
stands on any solid basis of fact. The narratives are brought before
us with the distinct claim that they are trustworthy as historical
documents ; and on this ground strictly must they be tested.
According to the Synoptic Gospels Jesus sets out from Galilee
to keep his last passover in Jerusalem (Matt. xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1 ;
Luke ix. 51); but although they agree in the points of departure
^ See Appendix B.
Z
354 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
and arrival, these gospels are not otherwise consistent. The state-
ment in Matthew is almost unintelligibly ; but if we may receive
the interpretation put upon it in the second Gospel, both Matthew
and Mark may be taken to mean that Jesus found his way to Jeru-
salem from Galilee through Persea or the country beyond Jordan
— in other words, that he crossed the Jordan twice in the course
of his journey. According to Luke, he never crossed the Jordan
at all, for the writer of this gospel states distinctly twice that he
reached Judsea through Samaria. It is true that his way of
putting it (xvii. 11) is, that Jesus went through the midst of
Samaria and Galilee, whereas, if he started from any place in
Galilee, he must have journeyed first through the rest of Galilee
before he could set foot on Samaritan ground; but both here
and in ix. 51, he clearly asserts that Jesus kept the western side
of Jordan. The very reason why the people of a certain Samaritan
village would not receive him is that ' his face was as though he
would go to Jerusalem ' — an objection which could not have been
taken if he had manifested only the intention of passing to the
country on the other side of Jordan.
On the further difficulty that any Samaritans should decline
to receive him after the conviction expressed by the citizens of
Sychar (John iv. 42), we need lay but little stress. The narrative
of the fourth Gospel implies that no inconsiderable body of the
Samaritans had, almost from the beginning of the ministry, been
convinced from personal experience that Jesus was indeed the
Anointed, the Healer of the world ; and it is quite impossible to
suppose that this conviction could have been kept a secret from
the other cities of that not extensive territory. Hence, in the
disinclination shown by these Samaritans to receive Jesus on his
last journey to Jerusalem, we find only another proof of the
unhistorical character of the Johannine narrative. In plain truth,
so utterly destitute is this fourth Gospel of all internal credibility,
so completely is it at variance with the accounts given in the
Synoptic Gospels, that we might be fairly justified in dismissing
its version of the closing scenes in the ministry of Jesus without
Chap. I.] THE PASSION 355
further notice. Accordiug to this gospel, Jesus does not journey
from Galilee to Jerusalem before the last festival, while his cruci-
fixion takes place befoi-e the . passover, which, according to the
other gospels, he had already celebrated with his disciples on the
eve of his sufferings. In the Johannine Gospel Jesus had quitted
Galilee many months earlier (vii. 1-10); he had been present at
Jerusalem at a passover (in the Synoptics his first passover after
the beginning of his ministry was also his last) ; he was present
at the ensuing feast of dedication (x. 22); and not a hint is given
that in the interval he had been any further from the city than the
Mount of Olives. After the latter feast he went into Peraea, or the
country beyond Jordan, from which he returns to Bethany on hear-
ing of the sickness and death of Lazarus. From Bethany he retires
only to the city of Ephraim near the wilderness (xi. 54), and return-
ing from Ephraim to Bethany (xii. 1), finally enters the holy city.
Thus we have another contradiction between the Johannine
and the Synoptic narratives; for, whereas they bring Jesus to
Jerusalem from Galilee, John carries him straight from Bethany
to Jerusalem, while, in the other gospels, his road lies quite in
another direction through Jericho. All attempts to reconcile
these contradictions have been vain. It is useless to seek to
extort from Luke (x. 38) an admission that Jesus was at Bethany,
until we have shown that the fourth Gospel agrees throughout
with the others. It is true that John speaks of Bethany as the
city of Mary and Martha ; but it is equally true that Luke makes
no mention of Bethany, and speaks only of ' a certain village '
where Martha received him into her house, while Mary sat at
his feet and heard his words, and that he does not so much as
name Lazarus as their brother.
Yet more, in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus passes in one day from
Jericho to Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 34, xxi. 1). In the fourth
Gospel he goes from Ephraim to Bethany, and on the following
day makes the simple journey to Jerusalem (xii. 1, 12). Here,
again, the contradiction is fatal. In the fourth Gospel Jesus
sleeps at Bethany ; in the Synoptics, * as soon as he came near to
356 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
Betliphage and Bethany,' he does not take up his lodging for the
night, but only sends his disciples for the ass on which he makes
his triumphant entry into the city. On the supposition that he
spent the night in Bethany the whole Synoptic narrative becomes
unintelligible. That narrative distinctly states that the demand
for the ass by the disciples in the name of the Master was followed
by an instantaneous surrender on the part of the owners ; and it is
hard indeed to see why Jesus should thus send them to secure the
ass some four-and-twenty hours before he needed it. But in truth
there is no room for any such hypothesis. In the first three
Gospels the charge to go for the ass is followed by immediate
obedience, and the animal is at once brought, and Jesus is placed
thereon. Then follows the narrative of the triumphant entry — a
narrative which finds no place in the fourth Gospel. So according
to Mark (xi. 11) Jesus enters Jerusalem late in the day or towards
dusk, and has only time to give a hasty glance round the place
before he goes to Bethany for the night — the reason being that
the journey from Jericho had occupied the whole day. From
Bethany, there was no reason why he should not have reached the
city at a much earlier hour. But as though these contradictions
were not enough, we are told in the first Gospel (xxi. 12, etc.) that
from Jericho Jesus reached Jerusalem early enough in the day to
purify the temple (an event which we have already seen to be
altogether unhistorical),^ to perform cures on the lame and blind,
and to rebuke the Scribes and Pharisees who wished him to
repress the acclamations of the little children.
To avoid this difficulty some have maintained that the evan-
gelists speak of two entries ; and we are at once driven to ask.
How is it that John says nothing of the entrance mentioned by
the Synoptics, and that the Synoptics say nothing of the entrance
related by John ? With the marvellous assurance which takes for
granted that the evangelists related chiefly those events of which
they were eye-witnesses, such interpreters tell us that John was
not present at the first entrance, because he had been sent to
^ See Book iii. chapter ix. section iv.
Chap. I.] THE PASSION 357
Bethany to announce the coming of Jesus to that village. The
Gospel says nothing of this, and we ask, Was Matthew sent any-
where, so that he was not present at the second entry ? But is it
credible that those who were present only at one entrance never
heard a word spoken about the other ? Still more, is it credible
that on two successive days Jesus entered Jerusalem in precisely
the same way, greeted by the same acclamations, and saluted by
the same suspicious remarks of his enemies, and that on both
occasions there stood an ass waiting for Jesus, the incidents
attending this part of the scene being in both cases the same ?
But, in truth, the fourth evangelist is clearly describing an
entry which he regarded as the first. If Jesus had already been
in Jerusalem on the previous day, it is impossible that the people
could have gone out to meet him on the ground that as yet they
had not seen him. Yet this is asserted in xii. 9, where they are
said to come for the purpose of seeing both Jesus and Lazarus.
Again, if the Synoptic entry had taken place on the day before
that which is mentioned in the fourth Gospel, then the tidings
that Jesus was at hand would be no news to the people, and would,
in fact, be superfluous. But in xii. 12, the Johannine evangelist
distinctly represents the tidings of the advent of Jesus as being
brought to Jerusalem on the morning of the day on which he
entered it from Bethany.
Clearly, then, the two accounts relate to one, and only one,
entrance ; and we have only to see how far they cohere with, or
contradict, each other. Some points of discordance we have
already noticed ; but there are others which must not be passed
by. The second and third Gospels speak of the animal on which
Jesus rode as a colt on which no man had sat before. This
particular, which is unknown to Matthew, at once introduces a
difficulty. Animals which have never been ridden are always
restive ; and an unbroken colt ridden for the first time in a pro-
cession could not fail to disturb its order and seemliness. Hence,
if the fact be true, we have to suppose that Jesus exercised a
preternatural power to control the unruliness of the animal — an
358 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
assumption quite illegitimate, and not set down by the evangelist ;
and thus we are driven to ascribe this expression to the feeling
that Jesus should ride an animal never bestridden by man, just as
his body should be placed in a grave in which no man had yet lain.
That the circumstances attending the finding of the ass do not
belong to the range of ordinary events, it is almost superfluous to
note. It is absurd to say that Jesus wished his disciples merely
to get one of the many animals which stood ready to be hired,
because these would all be beasts which had been broken in and
ridden ; and, further, Jesus sends them not for some beast or other
to be chosen by themselves, but for one particular animal, which
they were to find in one particular spot, and which would be given
up to them as soon as they said that it was needed by the Master.^
But, further, the first Gospel speaks not merely about one animal
which had never been ridden, but of an ass tied, and a colt with
her, and represents the disciples as placing Jesus on hoth the
beasts.2 The English translators of the Authorised Version were
evidently aware of this difficulty ; for, instead of honestly giving the
plain English words ' upon them,' they, with a dexterity which is,
to say the least, discreet, substitute the adverb * thereon.' Further
yet, the Synoptic evangelists represent the acclamations on the
entry of Jesus as proceeding wholly from the multitude of persons
journeying to Jerusalem for the feast. Nothing is said of any
coming out of the city to meet Jesus. But in the fourth Gospel
the greeting comes altogether from those who leave the city
expressly to meet him, while his followers and attendants testify
to the people of Jerusalem the resurrection of Lazarus — an event
which we have already seen to be altogether unhistorical. All that
we can say is that no trust can be placed in the Synoptic narratives
of these events, while the narrative of the fourth Gospel betrays
the deliberate twisting of materials to suit a special purpose.
1 Matt. xxi. 2, 3.
2 The translators of the Revised Version have not had the courage to treat the
matter straightforwardly. But no evasion is possible. The words e-rravu} avTuiv
may possibly be referred to the garments ; but the garments are put on hoth the
aninials, and Jesus sits on the garments spread over both. There is no practical
difference. The ass and the colt are both under the same coverings.
CHAPTEE II
PKEDICTIONS OF JESUS RESPECTING HIS DEATH
In all the Gospels Jesus is represented as predicting that his
ministry would be brought to an abrupt end by a violent death.
But here, as in almost all other instances, their agreement ends.
In the Synoptic Gospels the announcements of his sufferings are
not made till a comparatively late period of his ministry (Matt,
xvi. 21); and when they are made, they are drawn out in minute
detail. The death is to be violent (Matt. xvii. 12); it is to be
preceded by a betrayal (22); he should be mocked, scourged, and
crucified by the Gentiles (xx. 19); he should be buried (xxvi. 12),
and rise again on the third day. That this description is meant by
the evangelists to apply to bodily tortures and bodily death no one
probably will call into question. Beyond all doubt, the Synoptic
writers have no idea of inculcating the neo-Philonism which runs
through the discourses of the Johannine Gospel. In these dis-
courses the words 'death' and 'resurrection' mean, commonly,
death to sin, and the uprising which follows it. ' He that keepeth
my sayings shall never see death,' is a saying not designed to
assert immunity from bodily or physical death for those who
love God.
But, nevertheless, in the fourth Gospel, just as the Messiah-
ship of Jesus is proclaimed to the disciples, Samaritans, Jews, and
foreigners throughout the whole of his ministry, so predictions of
his death are scattered through the whole narrative, beginning
with the purification of the temple (John ii. 13) and the conversa-
359
360 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
tion held with the Pharisee Nicodemus. But they nowhere
descend to the details of the Synoptics, and are couched for the
most part in ambiguous language. In the Synoptics, the disciples
seem to receive from his words an indistinct impression of coming
disaster; in the Gospel of John no one seems to attach any
meaning to them. By an equivocal play on the word 'temple,'
Jesus is described as predicting the death and resurrection of his
body (John ii. 21) after the alleged first purifying of the holy
place ; but the significance of the phrase was, we are told, lost on
the disciples until after he was risen from the dead. Even less
does Nicodemus understand the announcement that the Son of
Man^ must be 'lifted up,' as Moses lifted up the brazen serpent
in the wilderness. Nor are these predictions made only in the
ears of the well-disposed like Nicodemus; they are published
before the mingled concourse of friends and foes. The general
throng of worshippers hear the words in which Jesus compares
himself to the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep, and
declares that of his own will he lays down a life which no one can
take from him, and which by his own will he again takes up
(x. 14-18).
Now, either Jesus predicted his sufferings and death from the
beginning of his ministry, or he did not. Either he entered into
the details of the closing scene, or he did not. Either he kept
them secret from his disciples, or he did not. Either he proclaimed
theui before his enemies, or he did not. Either he used ambiguous
phrases, or he did not. Either he expressed himself in unequivocal
language, or he did not. He cannot possibly have done both the
one and the other. Yet the Synoptics represent him as doing the
one, the Johannine Gospel as doing the other. Here, then, we
1 The matter is of the slightest possible importance; but the expression
o i;i6s Tov avdpibirov can be legitimately rendered only by * the Son of the Man. ' The
distinctively Messianic meaning of the title is supposed to be derived from
Daniel vii. 18 ; and there the Septuagint gives simply vlbs avdpihirov ; and in
viii. 17, Daniel himself is so addressed. In John xii. 34 the Jews are represented
as at a loss to understand the meaning of the phrase, ' Who, or what is this, the
Son of [the] Man ? '
Ohap. II.] THE PASSION 361
have a multitude of diametrical contradictions on vital points, and
are compelled accordingly to reject the whole narrative as unhis-
torical, unless we choose to say that the Synoptic account is to be
received at the expense of the Johannine version.
We have, therefore, to see whether the Synoptic accounts be
coherent and credible. Now, at starting, it is clear that Jesus
could obtain this foreknowledge of his sufferings and of their
details in one of two ways only. If we ascribe to him a human
consciousness, he must have reached this knowledge either by a
study of the Old Testament writings or by a direct spiritual channel.
But Jesus is described as appealing expressly to types and pro-
phecies in the Old Testament scriptures ; and hence, if the spirit
which taught him was a true and divine spirit, the sense which
he is said to have put upon the passages referred to would be the
original and right meaning. But we have no means for ascertain-
ing that he really attached to them the meaning which the
evangelists clearly supposed to be the true one. Certainly it is
not the meaning of the passages themselves.^
Not knowing how to deal with this very serious difficulty,
some have sought refuge in the statement that the natural sagacity
of Jesus would enable him with tolerable certainty to prognosticate
the issue of his labours. He must have known, they think, what
effect his works and teaching would be likely to produce on the
minds of the Scribes and Pharisees; and he cannot, therefore,
have failed to see that, at no distant day, tortures and death should
^ As in all instances of passages from the Old Testament writings quoted in
those of the New Testament, the words are either misread, or misunderstood, or
both. The chief passages here adduced are Isaiah 1. 6 and Psalms xxii. and
cxviii. ; but not one of these has any immediate reference to the sufferings or
death of the Messiah. Isaiah 1. 6 describes the ill-usage dealt out to prophets
who have set their faces like a flint, because they know that God is on their side.
Isaiah liii. gives the history of the spiritual Israel, the chosen servant and child
of God. Psalm Ixviii. is an expression of thankfulness for an unexpected deliver-
ance which might be wrought in any age, while Psalm xxii. describes the perse-
cution of the faithful under the guise, not of a crucifixion, but of a chase of wild
beasts. The piercing of the hands and feet point, not to the nailing on the cross,
but to their transfixion by darts and arrows, while the hunters seek his life with
the sword, and the dogs fasten firmly on the prey.
362 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECOEDS [Book IV.
be his recompense. Seeing this, he must further have known
that, as the Jews had no longer the power of carrying capital
sentences into execution, he must be handed over to the Gentile
governor, while the brutality of Koman judicial procedure would
warrant the expectation that his death would be preceded by
torture. But on this hypothesis of natural calculation, how was
Jesus to know that other influences might not come in to cut
short his career before his enemies at Jerusalem could lay a hand
upon him ? How could he tell that Herod, who, it is said (Luke
xiii. 31) had already been seeking to catch him, would not by
some sudden manoeuvre seize him and put him to death, as he
had seized and slain John the Baptist? How was he to know-
that the Jews might not rise in tumult and put him to death as
irregularly as they are said to have afterwards killed Stephen,
leaving the Eoman police to deal with the question after the fact
as best they might ? But, according to the story, there is not a
hint or a trace of any such natural calculations. The sequel is
but very slenderly connected (if it be connected at all) with its
antecedents, and no room is left for the ordinary issues of the
causes supposed to be at work. Indeed, there seems to be no
free agency anywhere. Every detail is mapped out with minute
exactness ; and everything is to take place precisely as the picture
has been drawn in some mysterious and seemingly unknown
writings.^
Thus, as the Old Testament passages do not relate to the death
of Messiah, the anointed King, Jesus could only have been spiritu-
ally guided to a knowledge of his future sufferings. But the
evangelists insist that he spoke only on the authority of ancient
scriptures. If they were mistaken in so thinking, it follows that
these details were derived not from the passages cited in support
of their opinion, but from a source similar to that which furnished
the colouring and incidents of the stories of the nativity. In other
words, Jesus did not give these details or utter these predictions,
and consequently the narrative is throughout unhistorical.
^ Secundum Scripfuras.
Chap. IL] THE PASSION 363
If, leaving this ground, we say that Jesus is represented as
predicting his sufferings and death, because before his day suffer-
ings and death had come, in the Jewish mind, to be associated
with the idea of the Messiah, then we are driven to inquire whether
this statement be true in fact. In other words, we have to deter-
mine the factors which went to make up the conception of the
Messiah, as it may have presented itself to the minds of the people
among whom the traditions recorded in the gospels were growing
up. It may be possible to cite passages from the prophetical
writings which furnish pictures of a healer or deliverer, ruler,
judge, or king, on whose life would rest an unfailing and unbroken
splendour. But this is scarcely the picture of those heroes and
kings to whom (if they had any acquaintance with the historical
books of the Old Testament writings) they must have looked up
with the deepest reverence. The days of Hezekiah and Josiah
closed in gloom or in disaster ; and the question remains, whether
we have anywhere else the picture of a comforter and consoler
of mankind, starting amidst the grateful praises of the people on
his beneficent career, yet oppressed at last by the treachery of
enemies who hate him without a cause, and, though done to
death by them, reappearing again in his former greatness. The
Jews, certainly, if they looked backward on the annals of their
past history, had not far to search for at least the main features
of such a suffering hero or king. Why did the women weep in
the temple for the smiting down of Tammuz or Adonis ? Was
not he the lord of life and light, bringing health and healing to
the good and the bad, to the just and the unjust, but overwhelmed
for a time by the powers of darkness? Why did they, too, as
they mourned and wept, say, as they always did say, that he for
whom they lamented would rise again on the third day, once more
to display the glories of his countenance until the yearly revolution
of the circling months brought round the time at which he must
die again? It would be absurd to suppose that the temple at
Jerusalem was the only place for the commemora,tion of this great
catastrophe and of the uprising which followed it. We know that
364 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
it was not so. The Egyptian Osiris returns from the dead to take
his seat as the eternal judge ; and from Egypt we may wander
away to find the same drama in the religious life and worship of
other lands.
All that we can do here is to get rid of popular misconceptions,
and so perhaps to clear the way before us. The instances already
cited may surely be taken as warranting the statement that the
quotations from the Old Testament writings in those of the New
fail in every case to give their real meaning. It is, therefore, bare
fact that the citations supposed to favour the evangelistic idea of
a suffering Messiah do not refer to this idea. If Ezekiel ^ speaks
of a purification from sin and idolatry, he does not in any way
connect this result with the sufferings of a Messiah; and the
prophecy of Daniel ^ simply states that this reformation will be
effected in the time of some great deliverer. The apocryphal books
say nothing about a Messiah ; the tongue of Josephus is apparently
sealed on the subject of any Messianic hopes entertained by
his countrymen ; and Philon drops no hint of Messianic suffer-
ings.
We have thus two different conditions at two different times
to deal with ; the one being the celebration of the dying and up-
rising of the Lord of Life and Light, as maintained in the temple
at Jerusalem in spite of the protests and denunciations of the
prophets generally; the other being the fact that, when Jesus
announced that this death, followed by uprising after the same time,
must come upon himself according to the Scriptures, the idea was,
as we are assured, utterly distasteful to the disciples. If we are
to take the gospel stories as trustworthy records of historical
facts, they had been charged to raise the dead not less distinctly
than they had been charged to do other works of mercy. They
may have witnessed the recall to life of the widow's son at Nain,
or other instances of the exercise of the same power ; but for all
this, it is most emphatically said that, when Jesus told them of
the issue of his ministry, they could not tell in the least what the
^ xxxvi. 25, xxxvii. 23. - ix. 24,
Chap. II.] THE PASSION 365
rising from the dead might mean (Mark ix. 10). No doubt it was
one thing to lament the death of Adonis in the temple at
Jerusalem, and another thing to be told by a loved and venerated
teacher, that he too must die and rise again. But this does not
touch the real point of the case, which is this, that even on the
hypothesis that the idea of his sufferings and death had been
utterly strange and wholly distasteful to them at first, yet if it had
been constantly and solemnly and in full detail propounded by
Jesus, as we are repeatedly told that it was after a particular
stage in his ministry, as in the Synoptic Gospels, or with less
detail from the beginning of it, as in the fourth Gospel ; if it had
been illustrated in carefully wrought discourses, which even his
enemies were allowed to hear, it is simply impossible that his
teaching could have remained unintelligible to them, that it
should have left on them no impression whatever, and that it
should have produced in them no practical effects. So far, then,,
as the gospel stories are concerned, these constant declarations
were all thrown away, and the time spent upon them was
wasted.
But this is not all. The disciples, without a single exception^
act as if they had never heard any such predictions. Far from
being prepared for his violent death, they are unable to realise
even the fact that he was to fall into the hands of his enemies ; for
no sooner is he seized than they all forsake him and flee (Matt,
xxvi. 56 ; Mark xiv. 50). Hence the repeated statements that they
did not understand, and could attach no meaning to his words
(Luke ix. 45, xvii. 24), look much like sentences introduced ta
account for facts which may have been perplexing even to the
evangelists. The words put into the mouth of the two disciples
journeying to Emmaus,^ point in the same direction, and could
not possibly have been uttered, if Jesus had repeatedly told them
in plain words (as we are assured that he habitually did), that a
violent death would be his recompense at the hands of the Jews,
1 Luke xxiv. 20. ' The chief priests and rulers have crucified him. But we
trusted that it should be he who should have redeemed Israel.'
366 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL EECORDS [Book IV.
THe very inability of the disciples to understand is explicable only
on the supposition that they had never heard the words which
they are said so persistently to misapprehend.
Hence we have not a shred of evidence that Jesus predicted
his death to his disciples ; and the statement that he did must be
set aside as unhistorical.
CHAPTER III
PREDICTIONS OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
We Lave seen that, according to all the Gospels, Jesus had foretold
to the disciples not only his sufferings and the manner of his
death but also the fact of his resurrection; and according to
the fourth Gospel, this announcement was made not only to
his followers but to friends and enemies alike to whom he
addressed himself at Jerusalem. This rising again was to take
place on the third day after his death, and, like most events in his
life, it was to be brought about according to the writings ; and
these writings or scriptures, whatever they may have been, were
not less accessible to his disciples than to himself. That such
plain and detailed announcements should be forgotten almost as
soon as they were made, is in the last degree unlikely — so unlikely
that we may fairly set it down as an impossibility ; but if they
had ever been uttered or heard at all, it is absolutely certain that
their verification could not possibly have been treated with con-
tempt, when the tidings of their accomplishment were first brought
to those who had heard these predictions. Yet this is the astound-
ing phenomenon exhibited in all the Gospel narratives. The
disciples are simply incredulous until, by an irresistible weight of
ocular evidence, they are convinced of a fact, the conception of
which had never before dawned upon their minds. It is useless
to cite all the passages which may be adduced in proof of this ;
and it is scarcely necessary to do so, as the general unbelief of the
•disciples is not denied by any one.
368 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
The great question is, whether this unbelief was really any-
thing more than ignorance, and whether this ignorance was
anything more than a result of the fact that they had never heard
the words which they are said to have misunderstood. The effects
of admitting this unbelief on the part of the disciples are momen-
tous. When, immediately after the transfiguration, Jesus warns his
disciples not to reveal what they have seen until he has risen
from the dead, we are told that they questioned among themselves
what the rising from the dead should mean (Mark ix. 10); and
yet this wonder is expressed by men who, according to the same
gospel, had already witnessed the raising (it was supposed to be
such)^ of the daughter of laeiros, and, according to the other
gospels, had seen other instances also. Either, then, they had
never spoken these words, or these wonders never took place. If
they had read of, and believed, the marvel recorded of the dead
body of Elisha, and the marvels of re-animation wrought by that
prophet and his master Elijah, they must have been familiar with
the idea from their childhood, and as they must in this case have
associated that idea with ordinary men, so must they have been in
an eminent degree prepared for the same, or for greater, results in
the person of the Messiah.
In spite of all this, no sooner is the body of Jesus taken down
from the cross and laid in the grave, than the women declare their
purpose of embalming it — a task which shows that they at least had
never heard of his coming resurrection, or that, if they had heard,
they put no faith in it ; and when on the third day they come to
the grave, their fears are only that their strength should not suffice
to roll away the stone from the entrance. If, again, Mary
Magdalene had ever heard of the predictions, and given any credit
to them, it is clear that when she saw that the body was not in its
place, she must have concluded that the promised resurrection had
occurred. But she neither remembers nor trusts, and all that she
can think is that the body had been stolen (John xx. 2). Still
more, when the women announce the fact to the disciples, the
1 See p. 324.
Chap. III.] THE PASSION 369
latter treat their words with profound contempt.^ It is absolutely
impossible that they could have thought and spoken thus, if they
had even once heard from the lips of Jesus that he should
assuredly rise again within a precisely definite time — far more
if they had heard him say this repeatedly, earnestly, solemnly,
before friends and enemies for several months, or (as in the fourth
Gospel) years.
Hence it follows, either that the predictions were made, and in
that case the disciples did not speak and act as they are said to
have done ; or that they did so speak and act, and in this case
these predictions were never uttered. In either case, the narra-
tives, as occurring in the same set of documents, are convicted of
being unhistorical.
To invest the difficulty with a still more extravagant colouring,
while the disciples are represented as not even dreaming of such
a result, the Scribes and Pharisees are said to have been perfectly
aware that Jesus had predicted his resurrection. The words seem
to be wholly forgotten by the disciples ; but his enemies ' remem-
ber that that deceiver said. After three days I will rise again,' and
ask Pilate, accordingly, that a watch may be kept over the grave
by a body of Eoman soldiers. But if they ' remembered ' that he
had so spoken, they must, it would seem, have heard him speak
thus. Hence the apostles and the Scribes both heard this
announcement. The former were incredulous ; the latter believed,
and yet thought that by some contrivance they might frustrate a
purpose which, on the hypothesis that they credited it, must have
seemed to them divine. If they did not credit it, all predictions
were superfluous. Both suppositions are alike incredible ; and
therefore the narrative must be dismissed as a clumsy fabrica-
tion.
It is unnecessary to dwell on the efforts of some writers to get
out of this difficulty by giving to his words a merely metaphorical
interpretation, that although Jesus himself might die, yet his
1 The word used is Xijpos, which Liddell and Scott, s.v., translate by 'idle
romance, humbug, trumpery.'
2 A
370 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
work would not perish with him but be carried on more effectually
by his followers. If this had been supposed to be the meaning
of Jesus, the Jews would never have asked for a guard of soldiers,
but would have insisted on a forcible repression of his disciples,
as they are afterwards said to have done when the apostles began
their work of preaching in public.^
Since, then, there is no evidence whatever that Jesus predicted
his resurrection in plain terms and with definite notes of time, as
he is said to have done, all those figurative discourses in which
we are told that he signified it must be put aside as having no
bearing on the traditional belief. The announcement made in the
fourth Gospel (ii. 19) on the purification of the temple has been
sufficiently examined already. The sign of Jonah is really a piece
of borrowing from Assyrian mythology ; and it is significant that
in one version (Luke xi. 29-32) it is not the submersion of Jonah
but merely his preaching to the Ninevites which is adduced as
the sign to be given to the evil Jewish generation— ^a sign which,
in strange contrast to most of the signs already spoken of,^ the
hearers of Jesus could really understand. Hence, also, we are
compelled to conclude, further, that all the passages which are
cited from various parts of the Old Testament writings as pointing
to the local or sensible resurrection of Jesus ^ are invested with a
meaning which does not belong to them — this meaning being
simply an interpretation put upon them after the alleged event.
1 Acts iii. 17, 18. 2 See pp. 176-177.
2 Luke xviii. 31, xxiv. 25 ; Acts ii. 25, xiii. 35.
CHAPTEK IV
PEEDICTIONS RESPECTING THE SECOND ADVENT
The four Gospels, regarded as historical records, started with a
strong presumption against them, arising from the fact that the
book bearing the name of the Acts of the Apostles (on which the
historical credit of the gospels in great part, if not wholly,
depended) had been found to be altogether untrustworthy, as,
throughout, contradicting the narrative of the only contemporary
writer of any book in the canon of the New Testament writings. ^
Unless the apostle Paul was lying, when he solemnly asserted
that he was uttering the bare exact truth, the accounts given in
the Acts of the wonders at Pentecost, of the trial and death of
Stephen, of the conversion of Cornelius, and of the Council of
Jerusalem, must be regarded as history garbled to suit a particular
purpose. In like manner, the predictions which the Gospels give
of the second advent start under an exceedingly strong adverse
presumption, because the predictions respecting the death and the
sensible resurrection of Jesus, already examined, have been found
to be destitute of any real historical character.
These predictions of the second advent form the subject of
the great discourse which fills the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth
chapters of the first Gospel, and is given in a shortened form in
Mark xiii., and in a more fragmentary shape in the seventeenth
and twenty-first chapters of Luke. According to Matthew, as
Jesus leaves the temple for the la^t time, his disciples call his
1 We have already seen in what sense the Apocalypse may be an exception.
371
372 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL EECORDS [Book IV.
attention to the magnificence of its structure, and receive for
answer the announcement that the days are coming when this
temple shall be razed to its foundations, and not one stone of its
walls shall be left upon another. To their second demand for the
time of these events and the signs of their fulfilment, Jesus replies
by warning them against false Christs, and against thinking that
the wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes, which should
precede the great catastrophe, were the immediate tokens of the
final consummation. These would be only the beginnings of
sorrows (xxiv. 8). They were, however, to be sure that the
destruction predicted was about to fall on the temple, when they
should see the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place
(xxiv. 15), or, as the third Gospel puts it (xxi. 20), when they see
Jerusalem encompassed about with armies. Then it would be
time for all who would escape the great ruin to flee from the
city ; and well would it be for those who were not with child or
mothers of infants, or if this wretched time came nj^t during the
winter. In those days the false Christs would again appear
(Matt. xxiv. 24); but they should produce no effect on those who
remembered that the coming of the Son of the Man would be
sudden and abrupt as the flash of lightning which gleams across
the heaven (xxiv. 27). Following immediately on this fearful
tribulation (xxiv. 29), the sun and moon should be darkened, the
stars should fall, and the sign of the Son of Man should be seen
in the heaven, and all mankind should be summoned to stand
before his great tribunal. On seeing these things, they might be
as sure that the end was come as they knew that summer may be
looked for when the fig-tree puts out its leaves. As to the time,
thus much further was determined, that the generation then
living should not pass away until all had been fulfilled (xxiv. 34).
Thus much was surer than the established order of the universe
(xxiv. 35). All that was left uncertain was the exact day and
hour (xxiv. 36), which was unknown even to the angels of heaven
and to the Messiah himself. Hence, although all would be
accomplished within the space of some thirty years, yet the
Chap. IV.] THE PASSION 373
uncertainty as to the precise period would leave room for all the
worldliness, sensuality and carelessness which marked the genera-
tions or days of Noah ; and thus the advent of Messiah would come
upon them as unexpectedly as if they had been told that it might
take place at any time within a thousand years. Hence the
paramount need of incessant watchfulness for all who would win
their Lord's approval at his coming.
This discourse, as given in the first and second Gospels, is to
all appearance quite coherent. If it be so, it asserts positively
not only that the temple and city should be destroyed within a
few years, but that the existing order of the world should be
brought to an end, and the final judgement of all mankind be
completed, within the lifetime of the then present generation.
But although the destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished very
closely in the manner described (so closely as to make the pre-
dictions read like a history of past events), yet after the lapse of
more than eighteen centuries this world continues much as it was
in the days of Herodotos or Thucydides. Hence it follows that in
so thinking Jesus was mistaken, and we are therefore brought to
this dilemma. Either he announced the destruction of Jerusalem
and the end of the world as events which would come to pass
within some thirty years, and in this case the words put into his
mouth have been falsified ; or he did not make this announcement,
and in this case these discourses are a fabrication after the de-
struction of the city, but lefore the time when the idea of an
immediate advent was seen to be a mistake.
In a strictly historical analysis like the present all thought of
consequences must be rigidly put aside. What we have to deal
with is the one question, whether Jesus did, as a matter of fact,
deliver the discourse in the first Gospel (xxiv., xxv.), or whether
he did not. The plea that the prosecution of such inquiries may
involve danger to the faith of Christendom is quite irrelevant.
These predictions have nothing to do with those * primal and
indefeasible truths ' which alone constitute true Christianity, and
of which, in the words of Dean Milman, ' men may attain to a
374 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
clearer, more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense, than has as
yet been generally received in the Christian world.' ^ If any will
have it that their Christianity is imperilled by the laying bare of
historical contradictions, the fault must be with themselves.
To those who seek to reconcile the phenomena of the Gospels
with the popular ideas respecting the Messiahship of Jesus of
Nazareth, the inconsistency of these discourses with the sub-
sequent history of the world presents the gravest difficulty ; and
efforts have accordingly been made to prove either that Jesus
spoke wholly of events still future, or of events all of which are
past, or that in different parts of his discourse he referred to the
destruction of Jerusalem and to the final judgement of mankind.
Of the first two pleas we need take no notice, because neither
opinion finds acceptance with any religious bodies or schools in
this country. Of the third, it is enough to say that the theory
stands or falls with the presence or absence of definite notes of
time assigning the several parts of the discourse to the two
different events of which it is said to treat.
These marks of time are not to be found ; and the commentators
move at random, parcelling out the various portions of the dis-
course to one or other event nmch at their own convenience. The
first attempt to assign all to the destruction of Jerusalem, until we
reach the 31st verse of the 25th chapter of Matthew, fails partly
because it makes much of the preceding portion unintelligible, and
in part because it is impossible to suppose that the transition from
an event which took place eighteen centuries ago to another which
is yet future would be denoted merely by a conjunction ; for the
two verses run thus : ' Cast out the useless servant into outer dark-
ness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But when
the Son of (the) Man shall come in his glory and all his angels
with him, then shall he sit on the throne.' The translators of the
English Authorised Version must have been conscious of the
difficulty, for they omitted the troublesome hut.
This attempt having failed, the next effort is to throw back the
^ History of Latin Christianity, Book iv. ch. x.
Chap. IV.] THE PASSION 375
point of transition ; and it has thus been maintained that the
destruction of the city and temple is spoken of only to the end
of the 28th verse of the 24th chapter, the remainder referring
altogether to the yet future judgement at the end of the world.
The answer is, that even in the first Gospel the final consummation
is announced as coming ' immediately after ' ^ the former tribula-
tion ;2 and to avoid this difficulty it is stated that the word
translated immediately implies not chronological sequence but the
abrupt or unexpected occurrence of an event indefinitely distant.
The words assigned to Jesus are thus taken to mean, * When the
tribulation of the days in which Jerusalem shall be destroyed
shall have passed away, then after some indefinite interval, which
may amount to myriads of years, all of a sudden the great con-
summation will fall like a thunderbolt upon mankind.' To this
the reply is (1) that if this be the meaning of the words translated
immediately^ any words may be made to mean anything ; (2) that
the parallel passage in the second Gospel* states distinctly that the
signs of the final consummation shall be seen in the very days
which follow the former tribulation ; and (3) that Jesus himself is
described as saying that everything should be accomplished within
the limits of the existing generation.
Driven to bay, yet not altogether despairing, such writers have
next sought to show that the word generation ^ does not mean that
which is popularly denoted by it, but a dispensation or constitution
of things, which may be spread over countless ages. The answer
is that Jesus, speaking to those who had asked him for the signs
which should precede the destruction of the city and the second
coming of Messiah, tells them, after speaking of the darkening of
the sun and moon and the sending forth of the angels (Mark xiii.
29-31), ' Likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that
it is near, even at the doors ' (Mark xiii. 33) ; and then follows the
^ There is, no doubt, a latent but complete contradiction between this state-
ment and the declaration that neither the angels nor the Son himself know the
time for the great final trying.
'^ evd^us 5^ fxera ttjj/ d\L\piv tQv rj/xepQu iKciuuv. eidius 8L
* xiii. 24, dW ev e/ceiVats rah rifi^pai^ fiera tt]v eXi^iv eKeivr}v. ^ -yevia.
376 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
solemn assurance that that generation should not pass away till
all be fulfilled. By referring to another passage (Mark xiii. 33)
we find not only that the great consummation would come during
that period, but that some of those who were then standing before
Jesus shall ' not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming
in his kingdom.'
It follows that in these discourses Jesus is described as placing
in the closest connexion the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of
the temple, and the end of the world, and that this connexion has
been falsified by subsequent history. The efforts made to resolve
the signs of the last judgement into a series of figures and
metaphors referring to the general education of mankind are not
worth noticing. It may be enough to say that the words could
not possibly have been understood in this sense by any who heard
them, and that, if they had suspected this to be their meaning,
they would have turned away with the painful conviction that
they had been cheated and cajoled. This idea, that^ Jesus could
thus in one and the same discourse pass without sign or notice
from one subject to another, using throughout ambiguous and
equivocal phrases which he knew would be misunderstood, would
go far towards exhibiting him as an impostor ; and we need only
add that this ignominy would be put upon him solely and wholly
by conservative apologists.
If we were to give our judgement on these grounds alone, we
should be compelled to say that Jesus, in thus coupling the final
judgement chronologically with the destruction of Jerusalem,
expressed his own belief, and that this belief was mistaken. But
the fact that we have not the slightest warrant for supposing that
Jesus predicted either his sufferings, his death, or his resurrection,
at once brings the historical character of these other discourses
into the gravest suspicion ; and this suspicion is heightened when
we find that of these discourses not a trace is to be found in the
fourth Gospel. Now it is a singular fact that in the second Gospel
(xiii. 3) these discourses are delivered, not before the general body
of the disciples, but privately to Peter, James, John, and Andrew.
Chap. IV.] THE PASSION 377
Hence John was the only evangelist who heard them, and he (if
he wrote the fourth Gospel) is the only evangelist who takes not
the slightest notice of them. Is it, then, possible to believe that
these discourses were ever uttered at all ? The desperate urgencies
of the case have induced some to say that John was purposely
silent on the subject, because he wished to give no encouragement
to a Gnostic or Doketic philosophy ; but, as we have already seen,
the fourth Gospel relates the most Doketic of all wonders, the
walking on the sea, and the evangelist would have poured disgrace
on his calling and office if he had suppressed what he must have
felt to be vital truth, merely because he feared that the con-
sequences might be not quite what he should wish them to be.
Hence, if the writer of the fourth Gospel was one of the immediate
followers of Jesus, and the only evangelist who is said to have put
to him the question about the fall of the temple, it is certain
that Jesus never spoke the discourse about that event and the
second advent which the Synoptics put into his mouth ; and, again,
if the Synoptics were right in saying that he thus spoke, then the
writer of the fourth Gospel was not one of the apostles.
For the origin of these discourses we are in no way bound to
account. It is enough to have shown that they are utterly un-
historical. Yet it may be worth while to note the singular exactness
with which every particular relating to the destruction of the city
and temple was realised in the overthrow of the city by Titus.
Thus one portion of the prophecy has been as signally verified, as
the other has been contradicted, by later history. This exact corre-
spondence between the prophecy and its fulfilment, coupled with
the fact that the fourth Gospel says nothing of either, makes it a
matter of certainty that the predictions respecting the fall of
Jerusalem are pictures drawn after the events which they are said
to foretell, and that the predictions respecting the final judgement
belong to that period during which the conviction of the immediate
return of the Messiah was present with overpowering force in the
little society of Christians. Thus we see that these discourses
were composed while the incidents of the destruction of Jerusalem
378 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
were fresh in the minds of the writers, and during that short
period in which the anticipation of an immediate general judge-
ment had not been shaken by the quiet lapse of time. Hence
these discourses were drawn up before the writer of 2 Thessa-
lonians ii. 2 found it needful to inform his disciples that they
were not necessarily to expect the return of Jesus as the judge
within their own lifetime, and before the writer of 2 Peter iii. 8
was constrained to affirm that with God one day might be a
thousand years.
For those who are not hampered by the traditional notions
respecting the authorship of the fourth Gospel it is easy to account
for its silence on this vital topic. It was written not by an apostle,
nor in the circle of those who looked for an immediate visible
return, nor within the time before the rising of the scoffers who
said that, in spite of all prophecies to the contrary, everything
continued as it had been long ago. It was the expression of a
later mode of thought, which for visible and palpable signs had
substituted a spiritual process. In this Gospel also there is a
judgement; but it is in no way connected with the fall of the
Jewish polity; nor is this judgement heralded by portentous
phenomena on the earth or in the heavens.^
^ See Appendix F.
CHAPTEK y
THE ENEMIES OF JESUS
By some singular fatality the writer of the fourth Gospel
seems incapable of describing any one incident in the life of Jesus
as the Synoptics have described it. It might have been thought
that, if about one fact more than another there could be no
difference of opinion, it would be the nature of the opposition
made to his ministry and the source from which that opposition
came. Yet in these two narratives (the Synoptic and the Johannine)
the causes of the offence, and the persons who take offence, differ
altogether. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is pre-eminently the
righteous teacher, who insists that a merely formal religion, or a
mere lip-service, is abominable in the sight of God, and who
accordingly opposes himself unshrinkingly to all who inforce the
paramount necessity of outward rites and ceremonies. Hence he
naturally rouses the fierce enmity of the Scribes and Pharisees,
whom he, in his turn, stigmatises in the severest terms. It is felt
on both sides that the struggle is one for life and death. On the
one side are the traditionalists, who challenge submission as sitting
on the seat and inheriting the authority of Moses, and who afiirm
that a violation of the outward precepts of the law places the
offender beyond the reach of divine mercy; on the other is the
tender sympathiser with all human weakness, who will not break
the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax. With him there is
no such iron rule of external ceremonies. With him it is no sin
to sit down to meat with unwashed hands, or to pluck the ears of
379
380 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
€orn as he walks through the fields on the Sabbath-day. Eor such
offences they denounce him as a friend of publicans and sinners,
as a gluttonous man and a winebibber ; nor does Jesus hold any
measured language as he upbraids them for cleaning the outside
of platters while their inward parts are full of ravening and
wickedness. Hence in the Synoptic Gospels the cause of offence
is purely moral. It is the assertion of a spiritual freedom against
the yoke of a carnal sacerdotalism.
Of all this there is not a trace in the fourth Gospel. In the
other narratives his enemies are confined almost wholly to the
ruling class ; in the Johannine Gospel they are chiefly found in
the great body of the people. Of any infraction of ceremonial
ordinance we hear nothing. They are offended, not by breaches of
the Sabbath, but by assertions of the Logos doctrine and of the
pre-eminent dignity which, for that reason, attaches to the person
of the Christ. They are roused to wrath, not because Jesus
justifies himself for healing on the Sabbath-day, but because he
defends himself in a way which asserts his equality with God
(v. 18). They cannot, we are told, tolerate the expression that in
a way which cannot be predicated of other men he and his Father
are one, or that before Abraham lived, Jesus is. They are offended,
not because he upbraids them for rejecting prophets and righteous
men, but because he speaks of himself as the living bread which
came down from heaven (vi. 41). Finally, while in the Synoptics
the opposition is brought to a height by the parable of the
husbandmen and the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 45), in the Johannine
Gospel that which determines the counsels of Caiaphas and his
adherents is the raising of Lazarus. Here they are not stung by
any personal rebuke ; all that they fear is the growing popularity
of Jesus, which may (so it is said) draw down upon them the
vengeance of their Eoman masters.
It is hard to believe that we are reading narratives which
profess to relate the life of the same person. In the Synoptic
Gospels, the opposition, slight at first, gains strength as Jesus
assumes a more uncompromising tone ; and it is only after a long
CHAr. v.] THE PASSION 38i
series of controversies that they form the design of putting him to
death. In the fourth Gospel, Jesus gives them from the first a
ground of offence which could not easily be increased, and his
opponents, accordingly, from the first seek to kill him, the ex-
pressions in V. 18 implying clearly that this wish was not then
wakened in them for the first time, but only intensified by the
higher claims put forth by Jesus.
In the Synoptics, although at Nazareth he causes a storm of
indignation chiefly because as a prophet he rebukes the men of
his own country or his own house, the common people hear him
gladly ; in the fourth Gospel they discover only irritation or
hatred. It is the crowd of common people (vi. 24) who murmur
(vi. 41) because he spoke of himself as having come down from
heaven and as being endowed with power to raise up, in the last
day, all who believed in him. It is among the mass of the people
that the conversations are held on the sincerity or the imposture
of Jesus (viii. 1 2). True, there are other passages in this Gospel
which exhibit some of the people as well-disposed towards him
(vii. 31-40) ; but the many among the people who believe on him
are only a set-off to the many of the rulers who were secretly his
adherents, and of whom, apparently, not one adhered to him
according to the Synoptic evangelists. But if anything were
needed to show the looseness of plan which the writer of the
fourth Gospel proposed to himself, it would be found in the
fact that the whole of the terrible denunciations contained in
viii. 34-50 are said to be addressed 'to those Jews who believed on
him' (viii. 31). Not a sign is there of transition from believers to
unbelievers. There is room for none. When he tells these
faithful Jews that, if they continue in his word, the truth would
make them free, they reply by calling themselves the seed of
Abraham and denying that they were ever in bondage. This
misapprehension, which is of the very essence of the plan of the
fourth Gospel, calls forth the questions which lead to the plain
statement that they are children, not of Abraham, but of the devil,
like whom they are liars and murderers (viii. 44).
382 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
If, then, in these particulars the Synoptic Gospels be correct,
the Johannine version of the events is pure fiction ; and if the
latter be taken as the true account, no dependence whatever can
be placed upon the former. The two exclude each the other ; and
the probabilities lie altogether in favour of the Synoptic state-
ments, which represent Jesus as a practical teacher of righteous-
ness, not as a theologian propounding deep and unintelligible
verities. Hence, until we can show that the whole Logos theory
was familiar to the Jews and Galilseans of the days of Jesus, the
Johannine accounts of his enemies are not entitled to the slightest
consideration ; and thus it becomes almost a superfluous task to
show that the writer of the fourth Gospel blunders in making the
office of high priest at this time an annual one (xviii. 18). It had
originally been held for life ; it was now held at the will of their
Eoman masters, who, like the Turkish sultans of more modern
times, set up and deposed pontiffs as it might suit their humour
to do the one or the other. ^^
CHAPTEK VI
THE TKEACHERY OF JUDAS
According to the first Gospel (xxvi. 14) Judas Iscariot first
formed, or first conceived distinctly, the design of betraying Jesus
into the hands of his enemies immediately after the incident
which took place in the house of Simon the leper. When the
woman poured the ointment from the alabaster box on the head of
Jesus, the disciples, we are told, were indignant at the waste.
Jesus, in reply, merely bids them not to trouble the woman,
because she was anointing him for his burial, and the poor they
had always with them. ' Then,' the narrative goes on, ' one of the
twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,' and,
having made a covenant for thirty pieces of silver, from that time
sought opportunity to betray him.
The two incidents are placed in close sequence ; but there is
no apparent connexion. Nor is any supplied by either of the
other Synoptics. In Mark the formation of the design foUows
the incident of the anointing at Bethany. In Luke (xxii. 3) we
are merely informed that Satan entered into Judas as the feast
of unleavened bread drew nigh. The fourth Gospel supplies a
distinct motive. Here, as we have seen already, the unknown
anointer becomes Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus; and
the indignation at her wastefulness, which in the Synoptics is
expressed by the disciples generally, is here confined to Judas, who
specifies the sum of three hundred pence as the money wasted,
and so withdrawn from the support of the poor. This speech,
384 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
we are told (xii. 6), was prompted not by any love for the poor,
but because he was at once a thief and the purse-bearer of the
society which had gathered round Jesus — the inference being
that he had been in the habit of purloining from the bag with
which he had been intrusted.
Yet more, while the Synoptics represent Judas as seeking
through several days to betray Jesus, the fourth Gospel (xiii. 2)
distinctly dates the formation of the design at the end of the last
meal which Jesus ate with his disciples. At this moment he
had had no conference with the chief priests and Pharisees ; but
he is set free to seek them out when Jesus bids him do quickly
that which he purposed to do (xiii. 27). On his departure, which
some of the disciples, we are told, attributed to the need of pur-
chasing things necessary for the feast, or for a dole among the poor,
Jesus delivers his farewell discourses which fill the four following
chapters; but before they are finished Judas has arranged his
scheme with the chief priests, and received from thp^m a band of
men and officers.
Can any credit, then, be given to the Johannine statement
that Judas was intrusted with the funds of the society ? Nothing
is said about any such arrangement in any of the other Gospels ;
and hence it can be accepted only on the authority of the writer
of the fourth Gospel. But we have already seen that the
whole sequence of events, and all the motives of the actors in
this Gospel, are altogether different from those which we find
in the Synoptic narratives; and therefore no internal authority
can be pleaded on behalf of this particular statement. But we
are told in all the Synoptics that Judas agreed to betray Jesus
for money, Matthew alone specifying the precise sum. Hence it
would seem that his motive, in part at least, was covetousness.
This idea might with the utmost ease grow into the story that
Judas throughout exhibited an avaricious spirit, and as he could
not do this except in reference to property, it would be natural to
represent him as the common purse-bearer, and then to fasten
upon him that objection of wastefulness which all the disciples-
Chap. VI] THE PASSION 385
are said in the Synoptics to have urged against the woman who
anointed Jesus. Thus we are led at once to the conclusion that
the statement in the fourth Gospel is not historical.
But there remain still graver difficulties. In the Synoptics
Jesus apparently has not, until a very short time before the
occurrence, any anticipation that one of his apostles would prove
unfaithful to him. In the first Gospel (xix. 28) Jesus, speaking
after the commencement of his last journey from Galilee to
Jerusalem, assures all the twelve then present before him that
they shall hereafter sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel. It is the fashion to get out of this difficulty by
saying that all the promises of God are conditional ; but all that
we need urge in reply is, that in the text of Matthew this promise
is not conditional. Hence, so far as the Synoptics are concerned,
Jesus within a few days of the event did not know who should
be his betrayer. But, according to the fourth Gospel (vi. 70),
Jesus, more than a year before this time, had declared that one
of the chosen twelve was a devil, and this prediction he is said to
have made from his general and absolute foreknowledge from the,
leginning (vi. 64) as to who they were who believed not and who
should betray him. This assertion, which ascribes to Jesus a con-
sciousness not shared by any human being, involves also a terrible
difficulty; for it implies, in fact, that Jesus, perfectly knowing
what the result would be, knowing not only that one of the twelve
was pointed out by ancient Scriptures as the son of perdition,
but who should be this wretched person, singled him out with the
eleven from the larger body of his followers, and then, knowing
that he was a thief and that ultimately he would betray his master
for a handful of silver, placed him in that precise post which would
involve for him a constant and overwhelming temptation. The
one thief, known to be a thief by a distinctly divine prescience, is
selected to handle the funds of the little community in preference
to eleven honest men whom he knew to be faithful to their trust.
When we remember that he is said to have bidden his disciples
to ask God, in the prayer which he taught them, that he would
2 B
386 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECOEDS [Book IY.
not lead them into temptation, but that he should set them free
from the evil within them and around them, we may most safely
pronounce all this to be incredible and impossible.
Hence, then, we are driven to the conclusion that, if Jesus
had the foreknowledge here ascribed to him, he would not have
placed Judas in precisely that position which must be fatal to
him ; or that, if he did place him in this position, he did not
anticipate the result, or, in other words, that he had not this fore-
knowledge. The Synoptic writers do not say that he had.
This subject has been discussed by a host of writers ; but for
my present purpose the topic is one of very slight importance.
The apologies which some have urged for Judas that his treachery
was absolutely necessary for the carrying out of the great scheme
of salvation, and that but for this act Jesus would not have died,
and man would not have been redeemed or forgiven, are purely
theological in their nature ; and they may be dismissed with the
remark that they who can urge such pleas are far on the road to
the thought that in betraying his master Judas acted wisely and
well. It is, of course, quite possible that Judas, sharing the
common notions of a Messiah who would come as a national
deliverer and reign as a temporal king, may have intended to
bring Jesus into a position which would make it necessary for
him to throw off the garments of his humiliation and smite his
enemies with the breath of his mouth. It is, in fact, the easiest
of tasks to multiply imaginary motives, and thus to say that
Judas expected a popular insurrection against the chief priests,
whom he would on this hypothesis have deliberately cheated,
and that he was disconcerted when he found that the latter
had immediately delivered Jesus over to the Eoman Governor.
We may, if we please, think that Judas wished to get out of a
dilemma which presented itself thus : ' Either Jesus is the Messiah,
and in this case the bonds which his enemies may lay on him
will fall off like the withs from the limbs of Samson ; or he is
not the Messiah, and in this case he will deserve his doom.' All
these are possible but useless conjectures. None of the Gospels
Chap. VI.] THE PASSION 387
tell us that Judas, more than the other disciples, took a political
view of the Messiahship; and thus, if worldliness was not the
sole motive of his acts, we do not know what the other induce-
ments were.
When we turn to the narratives of the betrayal, we find our-
selves in the same web of contradictions. According to the
Synoptics Judas never leaves the company after Jesus had sat
down to eat the last passover with his disciples until his treason
has been consummated. He had no need to do so. His plan had
been already concocted with the rulers, and his business was to
keep as near Jesus as he could. According to the fourth Gospel
he never formed the design of betrayal until the actual eve of the
crucifixion; and hence it became necessary for him to go out
(xiii. 30) in order to arrange his action with the chief priests.
Hence commentators have with some eagerness fastened on this
statement as showing that the traitor was not present at the
institution of the Eucharist. To this it is enough to reply that
the fourth Gospel makes no mention of this institution ; that the
Synoptics say nothing about the exit of Judas ; that we are not
at liberty to dovetail inconsistent and contradictory narratives ;
and that in the third Gospel (xxii. 21) Jesus is made to declare that
the hand of his betrayer was with him on the table immediately
after the institution of the Eucharist.
How the several details of a narrative which has been shown
to be generally unhistorical grew up, it is in no way our business
to explain. If it be possible or likely that the story of the
triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem was suggested by pas-
sages in the Old Testament writings (Matt. xxi. 9), it is not less
likely that the details of the betrayal may have been derived from
Psalms which spoke of the treachery of familiar friends who lifted
up their hands against those who had eaten bread with them.^
We come now to the circumstances attending the death of
1 The reference is to Psalm xli. 9. Like others adduced for a like purpose,
this passage has no Messianic signification ; and if it be a psalm of the Davidic
age, it refers to the treason of Ahitophel. But in its vague generality it is
applicable to all traitors in all ages.
388 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
Judas. In the first Gospel (xxvii. 3) Judas, being seized with
remorse on finding Jesus condemned to die, throws down the
pieces of silver in the temple, and goes away and hangs himself.
According to the narrative he makes no use of the money ; and
the other three Gospels say nothing about his death. In the Acts
we are told that Judas himself purchased a field with the reward
of his iniquity, and some time afterwards (how long we are not
told) he fell headlong, and burst asunder in the midst, and all his
bowels gushed out (i. 18). According to this tale his death
accounted for the field being named the field of blood. In
Matthew the field is called the Potter's Field, and it is purchased,
not by Judas, but by the priests and Scribes. We are surely not
called on to notice the attempts at reconciling these contradictory
narratives, made by apologists who tell us that they relate to
different parts of the same transaction — namely, that Judas tried
to hang himself, but that the rope broke, and that his sudden fall
ruptured his fat or dropsical body. It is enough to remark that
Matthew says nothing about the bursting, and the Acts nothing
about the hanging, while the expression of Matthew ^ implies not
the attempt only but the full accomplishment of his purpose.
Hence we are not warranted in saying more than that there
may have been a piece of ground which, in early Christian tradition,
became associated with the betrayer of Jesus. How it came to be
so associated we cannot, in the absence of all historical evidence,
determine ; nor is it our business to do so. Yet if a verse from
the 41st Psalm might suggest some of the details in the narrative
of the betrayal, the maledictions on the treacherous enemy in
Psalm Ixix. might, with some slight necessary modifications, be
with equal, if not with greater, ease embodied in the narrative of
the Acts. The Psalm speaks of enemies in the plural number.
The speaker in the Acts is thinking only of one. So he says that
his (not their) habitation was to be desolate, and none were to
dwell in his (not their) tents. Hence the accursed money is in
the first Gospel devoted to buying a resting-place for the dead,
^ dir-^y^aTo, xxvii. 5.
Chap. VI.] THE PASSION 389
and in the Acts it becomes a place of horror as the field of blood.
All this is possible; but we cannot affirm it positively. Thus
much, however, is clear, that the passage for which the first Gospel
(xxvii. 9) refers us to Jeremiah is not to be found in the book
which bears the name of that prophet, while in the margin of the
English Authorised Version the reference is to Zechariah (xi. 12
13), and even this passage is not correctly quoted. Yet, even it
it were, it would be quoted to no purpose, for the prophet is
speaking of no act of treachery whatsoever. He has broken the
staff called Beauty, as a token of the breaking of the covenant with
all the people ; and he then asks that he may be paid his price,
which they to whom he speaks may withhold if they choose to
do so. For his price they weighed him thirty pieces of silver ;
and this money, even this goodly price, he casts unto the potter
in the house of the Lord. Here, it seems more than likely, we
have the germs of the narratives both of Matthew and of the
Acts. The potter suggests the name of the potter's field. The
thirty pieces of silver are the thirty pieces received by Judas for
his treason ; and the payment in the house of the Lord is the
purchase of the field by the priests before whom Judas had
thrown down the reward of his iniquity. But in Zechariah, as
we see, the person who casts the money to the potter is neither
the traitor nor the priests, but the prophet himself and thus we
have here another specimen of that mere play upon words which,
as we have seen, marks most of the interpretations of prophecy
given by the evangelists. Hence we do not even know whether
the association of ideas, which connected Akeldama (if that really
was the name of the field) with the name of Judas, had the
slightest foundation in fact ; and of the history of Judas himself
we know absolutely nothing.
What we do see is that his action from any point of view is
uncalled for and wholly superfluous. We will suppose that the
chief priests and Scribes had made up their minds to cut short
the career of the great Teacher, and we will do them the credit of
supposing that they would employ the means which would most
390 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
easily serve their purpose. According to the fourth Gospel they
had had experience of his character and mode of life for several
years ; and therefore they knew perfectly well that he was one
who would offer no violent resistance to any officers of the law.
In other words, they were well aware that he was not one whom
it was needful to attack with a guard of soldiers under the guid-
ance of a hired traitor. They had nothing to do but to watch
him, as our police would now, from the moment of his leaving the
temple to. the moment at which it might be most convenient for
them to apprehend him. In so tracing and watching him there
could not be the least difficulty. They could follow him to the
house where he celebrated the passover with the twelve, and wait
until he left it to cross the brook Kedron ; or, if they desired
greater privacy, they could follow him further to the garden of
Gethsemane. But the point to be insisted on is that they had no
need of any guidance. They could, throughout the whole preceding
day, have so watched him as to make escape impracticable, even
if Jesus had wished to escape. As it is, there is in the Synoptic
Gospels a certain appearance of tumult, with the glaring of lanterns
and torches and the clashing of weapons ; but all the disorder and
din comes from those who are sent to arrest him, not from Jesus
or his followers. Of the latter, one inflicts a wound, it is said, on
a servant of the high priest ; but he and the rest of the twelve
forsake their master and fly. The betrayal of Judas thus becomes,
according to the Synoptic Gospels, something like a ceremony to
be gone through, and in the fourth Gospel the ceremony is dispensed
with altogether. Judas stands among the guards and their com-
panions ; but he does nothing and says nothing, and Jesus takes
no notice of him. With such conditions as these, is it possible to
treat the betrayal by Judas as a fact of history ?
There remain some points in reference to this strange story
which call still for notice. Papias, of Hierapolis, tells us (in a
passage preserved to us by CEcumenius and Theophylact) that Judas
lived for some considerable time after the consummation of his
treason, and that he walked about in this world a great example
Chap. VI.] THE PASSION 391
of impiety, his body being so swollen that he died from injuries
inflicted by a waggon which met him as he walked along. The
cart was going on easily ; but the road was not wide enough for the
cart and Judas together. The result was that he was crushed by
the waggon and his bowels were emptied out.^ This is, of course,
quite another story from that of our first Gospel. But Papias
states emphatically that he had diligently inquired what Matthew
said, and also what all the apostles said. His words, therefore,
prove that he had not our first Gospel before him, and imply that
it was not at that time known.^ Theophylact further tells us
(and seemingly he obtained his information from Papias) that the
eyes of Judas were so closed in and sunk under the diseased fat
of his face that they could not be perceived even by the aid of the
optical instruments of physicians. He lived long enough, there-
fore, to be an object of interest to medical men, in spite of the
running sores and maggots with which his body was covered.
We are thus brought to a class of legends which deal with this
method of vindicating divine justice. Herod (Acts xii. 23) is
eaten of worms; and the myth spoke of the bowels of Arius as
gushing forth at the critical moment when he ought to appear
before Athanasius. A death not unlike these also overtakes
Galerius, the persecuting colleague of Constantine.
The testimony of Peter must, it might be supposed, be more
trustworthy than that of Papias ; and Peter in the first chapter of
the Acts is represented as giving quite another account of the
death of Judas. The occasion on which he does so is one of
peculiar solemnity. The apostles and disciples are tarrying in
Jerusalem, according to the special command of the Master,
waiting for the promise of the Father (i. 4) ; and it becomes their
duty to fill up the number of the apostolic or missionary college by
electing another to fill the place left vacant by the treachery and
^ This, I suppose, is what Papias meant to tell us ; but his way of telling it
is so absurd as to remind us of the general estimate of his mental powers taken
by Eusebius. See the remarks in Supernatural Religion, i. 483.
- They also imply that our book of the Acts was no more known to him than
our first Gospel, his account of the death of Judas di£fering alike from both.
392 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
death of Judas. In the speech put into his mouth, Peter, speaking
at latest not more than five or six weeks after the betrayal by
Judas, and addressing himself in Aramaic to a body of dwellers at
Jerusalem, tells them that Judas bought a field with the wages of
his treason, and falling headlong came to a miserable end in that
same field by the just judgement of God, and that this catastrophe
was well known to all who lived in Jerusalem, so that the field had,
in their dialect, received the name of Akeldama, that is to say, the
field of blood.
Now this speech comes to us in a book which, after a careful
examination, we have found to be a history garbled from beginning
to end, and freely eked out with fiction, where fiction seemed to the
compiler necessary. But apart from these considerations, it is, to
say the least, strange that Peter should speak of incidents of little
more than yesterday as though they had happened long ago ; that
he should mention things as familiar to all who lived at Jerusalem
when those to whom he spoke were living there also ; and that he
should tell them the name of the field in Aramaic, and give the
interpretation of the name, when Aramaic was the native speech
of his hearers. The difficulty is bewildering enough ; and apolo-
gists assert that the sentences which give it this character are later
insertions. It is enough to say here that the plea cannot be main-
tained.^ We have seen that the speeches in the book of the Acts
are, like the discourses in the Johannine Gospel, compositions of
the author, or authors, of the book ; and this speech of Peter was
written at a much later time in Greek, ' for Greek readers who re-
quired to be told about Judas, and for whose benefit the Hebrew name
of the field, inserted for local colouring, had to be translated.' ^
So far then as our Canonical writings are concerned, the story
of the judgement of Judas stands thus : —
Judas died in the field which he had bought. — Acts i. 18.
No. Judas did not buy the field ; he refused to do anything
with the money. — Matthew xxvii. 3.
1 See further, Supernatural Religion, vol. iii. p. 100, et seq.
^ Supernatural Religion^ iii. 106.
Chap. VI.] THE PASSION 393
The priests bought the field after Judas was dead. — Matthew
xxvii. 10.
No. Judas bought the field for his own use. — Acts i. 18.
No. The priests bought it to bury strangers in. — Matthew
xxvii. 7.
The field is the potter's field. — Matthew xxvii. 7, 10.
No. It is the field of blood. — Acts i. 19.
Judas leaves the money in the temple, and the priests take it
and with it buy the field. — Matthew xxvii. 3.
No. Judas takes the money and with it buys the field himself,
and the priests have nothing whatever to do with it. — Acts i. 18.
For ourselves, we have no grounds for saying that the story of
Judas contains a grain of historical fact ; and a recent discovery
proves the existence of a Christian tradition in the second century
which asserts by implication that there was no betrayal of Jesus
by any of the twelve disciples.^
1 If we may regard the fragment recently discovered as genuine, it follows
that the Gospel of Peter not only takes no notice of the treason of Judas but
even excludes it altogether. See Appendix D. In the Synoptic Gospels Judas
plays a part not unlike that which Loki plays in bringing about the death of Baldur.
It is noteworthy that we find not only that the Judas stories in the Synoptics are
unhistorical, but that in one version of the Christian tradition there was no Loki
and no Judas at all.
It is also noteworthy that some of the details in the betrayal story as given
by Matthew are a result of a misunderstanding or misreading of the text of
Zechariah. *The consonants in the Hebrew text are perfectly correct; the
vowels alone require to be amended. For ha-jotser (the *' potter ") read ha-jotsdr,
which latter form represents the usual pronunciation of ha-'otsar, " the treasure-
chest." Every thing is now clear. The treasure-chest is in the house of Jahveh ;
the treasure-chest is the natural depository for the remuneration which the prophet
receives as the representative of Jahveh ; if that remuneration be too insignificant
to be carefully laid away within the chest, it must at least be thrown towards
it. ' — KuENEN, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, p. 478.
CHAPTEE VII
THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER
It must not be forgotten that the narrative of the incidents
which precede the last meal of Jesus with his apostles is essentially
one of wonder or miracle. The causation is that which we find
in the Arabian Nights' tales. The directions given by Jesus to
the disciples, that going into the city they should accost a man
bearing a pitcher of water, who would lead them to an upper room
prepared beforehand for the Master (Luke xxii. 10), are not less
distinctly the outcome of a superhuman consciousness than the
announcement before his triumphal entry that, at the crossing of
two roads, they would find an ass and her foal tied awaiting their
arrival (Matt. xxi. 2).
Thus, this narrative implies that Jesus foreknew the passing of
the water-carrier at the precise moment when his disciples should
reach that part of the road, and also that some particular person in
the city had made ready a chamber for his use without receiving
any orders to that effect. The attempts to reduce these incidents
to the level of ordinary events are so absurd that they may be dis-
missed with the passing remark that the evangelists themselves
assert his knowledge to be superhuman. Mark and Luke both
think it necessary to state that the disciples ' found even as he
had said to them' (Mark xi. 4; Luke xix. 32), a statement which
they would never have made if the whole thing was preconcerted ;
and both in this case and in that of the triumphant entry we have
instances of the alleged magic power of the name of Jesus. The
3S4
Chap. VIL] THE PASSION 395
owner of the beast instantly obeys the behest of the Master ; the
householder ushers his disciples into his room, as soon as they tell
him from whom they come.
The historical difficulties in this narrative begin with the
passage which relates the mission of the disciples. The first
Gospel (xxvi. 18) leaves the number indefinite ; the second (xiv. 13)
states that two were sent ; the third (xxii. 8) specifies these two as
Peter and John. The directions given are not in all the same,
Matthew saying nothing about the man bearing the water-pitcher.
It is thus stated that John was, with Peter, charged with the special
mission ; and we naturally look to the fourth Gospel to find the
account of the one evangelist who was an eye-witness, for if that
Gospel was written by John the son of Zebedee, it seems strange
indeed that we should not have from him a careful account of the
several incidents which marked the last days of his Master's
ministry. Yet on all these arrangements for the passover the
fourth Gospel is w^hoUy silent, while it excludes the idea that
Jesus kept this passover with his disciples. In other words, the
Synoptics represent Jesus as partaking with them of the Paschal
lamb, while the fourth Gospel asserts that he was crucified on the
morning of the day on which the Paschal lamb was to be slain.
In the one case, Jesus died after observing the Mosaic ordinance ;
in the other, he is himself the Paschal lamb, and his death super-
sedes and abolishes the Jewish passover.
This astonishing difference has an evident theological basis ;
and it may very safely be asserted that this portion of the Johan-
nine Gospel could not possibly have been written until after the
time when the Pauline Christians had definitely cast off all rela-
tions to the Mosaic law. It is the work of one for whom that law
was dead, not of one by whom its precepts should be observed in
conjunction with certain other precepts given to them by Jesus.
Our present task, however, is not to trace out the theological
animus of the writer, but to point out the contradictions which his
narrative presents to the statements of the Synoptic evangelists.
The latter leave no doubt whatever as to the character of the
396 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book IV.
meal. The disciples are sent to the owner of the chamber in the
city with the special message that Jesus willed to eat the passover
at his house (Matt. xxvi. 18); and they make ready the passover
accordingly (verse 19). Hence the meal mentioned in the verse
immediately following cannot possibly be any other than the pass-
over ; but, as if to make assurance doubly sure, Jesus, in the third
Gospel (xxii. 15), is represented as saying, 'With desire I have
desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer'; and the
evangelist himself states that the meal took place ' on the day of
unleavened bread, when it was necessary ^ that the passover should
be killed.'
'Not less clearly does the fourth Gospel speak of a meal which
occurred on the day preceding the Paschal feast. The washing of
the disciples' feet, and the discourses which fill the 14th and
following chapters are all assigned to a meal which took place
'before the feast of the passover' (xiii. 1). Immediately after
these discourses, and the prayer which follows them (xviii. 1),
Jesus crosses the brook Kedron, and is in a few moments arrested
by ' a band of men and officers.' When, in the course of this meal,
Jesus bids Judas do quickly that which he had to do, some of the
disciples understood him to mean that Judas was to buy the
things that they had ' need of against the feast' (xiii. 29), a mis-
take which they could not have made if they were at the moment
celebrating the passover. Yet more, the Jews on the morning of
the crucifixion refuse to enter the judgement-hall of Pilate, on the
ground that a defilement so contracted would disqualify them from
keeping the feast (xviii. 28). A few hours later, they beg that the
bodies of the crucified may be taken down and buried, as it was
the 'preparation' for the passover (xix. 31), the Sabbath which
began on that evening being ' a high day,' because the first day of
the feast happened to fall upon it.
Sorely pressed by these fatal contradictions, some apologists
have striven hard to show that the meal described in the fourth
Gospel is an earlier one than the meal described in the Synoptics,
1 idei (Luke xxii. 7).
Chap. VII.] THE PASSION 397
and, accordingly, they find a place for inserting the omitted portions
at the end of the 14th chapter. When Jesus says, 'Arise, let us
go hence,' the words indicate that at this point the disciples (one
of whom, it must be repeated, is said to have been John himself)
are sent to prepare the passover for Jesus ; and here follow the
incidents recorded in the Synoptics — the discourses in John xv.,
xvi., being delivered after the institution of the Eucharist, of which
the fourth evangelist takes no notice whatever. But, indeed, it is
manifest that all the evangelists intended to describe the last meal
of which Jesus partook with his disciples. The washing of the
disciples' feet is introduced as a proof that Jesus had loved them
' unto the end' (xiii. 1) ; and at this very meal (xiii. 38) he warns
Peter that the cock shall not crow (in other words, that another
morning shall not dawn), before he has thrice denied his Master.
Here, then, we have to take our choice between these two
narratives, or to reject them both. It is impossible that both can
be true. In whatever measure the balance of probabilities may
incline in favour of the Synoptics, an examination of all the
earlier portions of the fourth Gospel has long since shown us that
in no instance can its statements be relied upon, and that in
almost every instance they are in direct and flagrant contradiction
with the plain assertions, as well as with the general spirit, of
the other Gospels.
Hence any efforts to get out of the difficulty by maintaining
that in this particular year the passover fell on a Friday, and that
the Jews, not wishing to have two consecutive days solemnised as
a Sabbath, postponed the eating of the lamb from the Thursday to
the Friday, are mere labour lost. It is obviously useless to seek
for modes of reconciliation, when one of the writers in question
has been proved to have twisted his materials throughout to suit
his special purpose. But if we do, what is the result ? This only,
that Mark (xiv. 12) would be wrong in asserting that Jesus sat
down to his last meal with his disciples on the day 'when the
Jews killed the passover,' and Luke wrong in asserting that this
final meal took place on the day 'when the passover must be
398 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
killed' (xxii. 7). But, in fact, this is not a case for reconciling
two narratives which in some subordinate points are inconsistent
with each other. We are dealing with two stories, in one of which
every statement identifies this last meal with the passover, while
in the other every statement shows that it was held before the
passover.
Others have objected that the meal cannot have been the pass-
over, and that Jesus could not have suffered on the great day of
unleavened bread, because it would be against the law so to treat
a solemn feast day. The reply is ready. The Jews did not regard
the sentencing and punishment of criminals as a desecration of
feast days. According to the fourth Gospel (vii. 44), they sent out
officers to seize Jesus on the great day of the feast of Tabernacles;
and at the Dedication feast (x. 31) they tried to stone him. In
truth, on these occasions, the places for administering justice were
naturally more thronged, owing to the concourse of strangers in
Jerusalem. But, again, even if we allow that these objections are
valid, what is the result ? This only, that as Matthew is said to
have been present at this last meal, and as he is said to be the
author of the first Gospel, then, if the tradition be wrong that it
occurred on the passover day, he is himself wrong in placing it on
that day. On such a point as this, the memory of an eye-witness
can never deceive him, however weak it may have grown on
subordinate details. Hence it would follow that the writer of this
Gospel could not have been an eye-witness, and cannot have been
the apostle Matthew, nor could his narrative carry any weight.
But we have already seen that Jesus himself is represented as
declaring that the last meal which he took with them was the
Paschal supper (Luke xxii. 15) ; and this declaration must be
paramount.
There remain other contradictions. Although all the Gospels
represent Jesus as referring to his betrayer in the course of the
last meal, the way of pointing him out in the fourth Gospel is far
more minute than in the other Gospels, and the announcement is
followed by the sudden departure of Judas, of which the Synoptics
Chap. VIL] THE PASSION 399
know nothing. The latter, again, represent as the most prominent
feature of the meal the institution of the Eucharist, in place of
which the fourth Gospel introduces the washing of the disciples'
feet. But neither do the Synoptics agree among themselves. In
Matthew and Mark Jesus foretells the treachery of Judas before
he institutes the Christian supper ; in Luke he institutes the
supper before he announces that one of them is to betray him
(xxii. 21). The contradictions as to the disputes of the disciples
for pre-eminence have been already noticed ; ^ and we need only
remark further here that the incident mentioned in Luke (xxii. 38)
about the two swords is not found in the others.
These may, perhaps, be regarded as minor matters. It is, how-
ever, a subject of more serious moment when we ask how the
fourth Gospel came to be silent about the institution of the
Eucharist. It is useless to urge that this Gospel was designed
simply to supplement the rest, for it gives with but slight varia-
tions the narrative of the marvellous or miraculous feeding of the
multitude — useless also to maintain that it omits narratives which
might seem to countenance Doketic errors, for it relates the story
of Jesus walking on the sea — and, most of all, useless to argue
that the evangelist related only what seemed to him of most
importance. Was it possible that in the eyes of an eye-witness
a discourse about humility (ch. xiii.) would appear of more im-
portance than the institution of the Lord's Supper ? Was it
possible that the evangelist who had introduced into his Gospel
discourses in which Jesus is said to speak of giving his flesh as
meat and his blood as drink to all who believe in him (vi. 53),
should say nothing about the solemn act in which he bade the
apostles eat his body and drink his blood as he sat with them at
the table ? Can we avoid the conclusion that he is silent about
this act, only because he was ignorant of it ? Of course, it is not
meant that he was ignorant of the Eucharistic feast as an ordinance
of the Christian Church. The contrary is proved by the discourse
in the sixth chapter; but there is no evidence to show that he
1 See pp. 297, 345.
400 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
knew the precise mode in which it is said to have been instituted.^
If he did know it, he has deliberately, for some reason or other,
chosen to keep silence on the subject.
^ There is another account of the institution of the Eucharist which is found
in 1 Cor. xi. 23, et seq. This account, we are told, rests on the authority of the
apostle Paul, and has his full sanction. I say nothing about this passage for the
present. We shall have to examine it later on.
CHAPTEK VIII
THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN
After the several indications, which we have come across at almost
every step, of a fixed plan and a settled theological purpose in the
fourth Gospel, it can scarcely appear unfair to remark that the
Johannine evangelist has designedly omitted all reference to the
agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. But whether the
omission be designed or not, the fact remains that we learn this
incident only from the Synoptics. In the Johannine narrative
Jesus no sooner enters the garden than he is surrounded by of&cers,
to whom he surrenders himself without any greeting or salute on
the part of Judas, who stands inactive among the crowd (xviii. 5).
But with the fact that there was an agony the agreement of
the Synoptics ends. The first and second Gospels represent Jesus
as taking with him Peter, James, and John, apart from the other
disciples, and charging them to keep watch while he departs to
pray by himself. The reason assigned for this charge is that Jesus
was 'exceeding sorrowful, even unto death' (Matt. xxvi. 38); and
the sequel is that Jesus twice offers up the same prayer, in the
same words, that the cup of suffering may, if possible, be taken
from him without his tasting it, and twice on his return finds the
three apostles heavy with sleep. Departing from them the third
time, he offers once more the same petition, and then coming back
bids them rise up and go with him, because the traitor was now
nigh at hand. The story of the third Gospel is very different.
There (xxii. 42) we have only one prayer, while in the vision of
2c
402 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
the angel strengthening Jesus, and in the sweat like great drops
of blood,^ we have two circumstances not found in either of the
other Synoptics.
With the moral and theological considerations involved in this
narrative we have no direct concern. It is enough to say that the
Synoptic and the Johannine pictures severally are the outcome
of radically different conceptions. It has been urged that the
scene in the garden exhibits a depression and fear of bodily suffer-
ing not altogether consistent with the dignity and character of
Jesus; but the contrast becomes indefinitely more pointed and
bewildering when we turn to the picture which the fourth Gospel
gives us of the last hours of Jesus with his disciples. This picture
is one of such absolute tranquillity, it rises so completely into that
serene region in which perfect love casts out all fear, that the
outward signs of distress in the garden become in themselves well-
nigh incredible. We are thus compelled again to say that for
such incidents as the visible apparition of the strengthening angel
we must have the evidence of documents contemporary with the
events related and found to be trustworthy in the narration of
ordinary matters, and an amount of evidence far stronger than
that on which we receive incidents which fall within the range
of ordinary human experience. But the Gospels are not proved
to be the work of contemporary writers ; they are not trustworthy
in their accounts of the most ordinary occurrences ; and the evi-
dence which they offer for extraordinary events is even less than
that which they offer for very ordinary statements.
In the present instance we are driven to ask how it is that
Matthew and Mark make no mention of the strengthening angel.
If the narrative be true, Matthew and John were in the garden,
and John was one of the three whom Jesus kept nearest to him-
^ Justin Martyr, although he knows nothing of the appearance of the strength-
ening angel, mentions the sweat as falling like drops, uael dpbfi^oi. The tradition
is clearly a different one from that in Luke, for Justin understood the drops to be
not of blood but of water, and regards the incident as fulfilling the words of the
Psalm xxii. 14 : ' All my bones are poured out like water.' See, further, Super-
natural Religion, i. 327.
Chap. VIIL] THE PASSION 403
self. If it be said that they are represented as heavy with sleep,
and unable therefore to discern the heavenly visitant, the difficulty
is only changed, not removed ; for if these remained ignorant of
the fact, from whom did the third evangelist receive his informa-
tion ? The Gospels furnish not the slightest warrant for the absurd
idea that Jesus, in the course of that fearful night, informed his
disciples of what had occurred, or that he spoke to them of it
after his resurrection; still less do they explain why the two
evangelists who were present did not care to record it in their
Gospels, and why the stranger, Luke, alone thought it worth while
to do so. So, again, we may ask how the bloody sweat on the
person of Jesus could be known to the disciples who were on the
spot, if they were asleep ; and if they were not asleep (which yet
they are said to have been), how they could have discerned it
through the darkness of the night, for that it was a moonless and
dark night is plain from the statement (if it be historical) that
the officers who took him were lighted with lanterns and torches
(John xviii. 3).
The fact is, that for this whole incident we have no evidence
whatever. The whole body of the disciples entered the garden ;
but almost at the entrance they were told to stay and watch until
he should return to them, while with the chosen three he advances
some distance further — how far we are not told. At this point
the three were in their turn bidden to stop and to watch while
Jesus went and prayed ' yonder.' The distance to which he went
beyond the spot where he had left the three is said to be about
a stone's throw (Luke xxii. 41), which may be taken to mean
roughly some fifty or sixty yards. At such a distance the human
voice could undoubtedly be heard, if sent with sufficient volume.
But is it credible that any one in an agony of agitation and
depression would so pray as to be heard at the distance of a hun-
dred and fifty feet or more ? Even had he done so, there would
have been none to hear, for the main body of the disciples was
admittedly not within hearing distance, and the three whom he kept
nearer to him were as fast asleep as they were at the time of the
404 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
transfiguration — so fast asleep that they never heard' their Master's
voice until, addressing them for the third time, he bade them rise
and follow him. The whole narrative is, therefore, strictly un-
historical.^
The narratives of the Synoptics are thus shown to be incon-
sistent and contradictory ; but although in this story they cannot
be trusted at all, we are not bound to account for the legendary
character which they exhibit. It is quite possible that the three-
fold trial or temptation which is said to have followed the baptism
may have suggested the idea that the ministry of Jesus should
likewise close with a threefold conflict : the three prayers in the
latter case answering to the three rebukes of Satan in the former.
It remains to ask why the fourth evangelist should make no
mention of this agony. It certainly could not be because he was
asleep during its occurrence, nor because the story of the Synoptics
was sufiiciently consistent to render further corroboration super-
fluous (for this is not the case), nor because he took it for granted
that his readers would learn the incident sufficiently from other
sources (for if the traditions were already contradictory, he was
the more bound from his personal knowledge to give the true
version), nor because he dreaded to countenance Doketic or
Ebionitic or Gnostic fancies (for he does not hesitate to insert
the marvel at the marriage of Cana, or the wonderful feeding of
the multitude, or the story of the walking on the sea).
The truth is that the plan of this Gospel would not allow him
to mention it. The Synoptics represent Jesus as in great mental
1 On the attempts made to identify the agony in the garden with the reply
of Jesus (John xii. 23) to Philip and Andrew when they wish to introduce certain
Hellenic Jews into his presence, it is surely needless to waste words. If the idea
be correct, then the Synoptics were utterly deluded. If the scene took place as
they record it, at night and after the last meal, how came the fourth evangelist
to place it in the open day and long before that meal ? Why, again, should Jesus
be thus disturbed and depressed at the mere petition of some strangers who wish
to see him ? The incident may possibly have been suggested by some tradition
of the agony on the night of the betrayal, although the plan of his Gospel required
the Johannine evangelist to throw it back to a time preceding the great discourses
which follow it. But it is impossible to trace every step in the working of so
subtle a mind ; and the historian is in no way called upon to make the attempt.
Chap. VIII.] THE PASSION 405
conflict and agony immediately before his apprehension; in the
fourth Gospel there is, throughout, no conflict after the perplexing
declarations which follow the request made by the Hellenic Jews
to Philip (xii. 23-27). Long before the last meal Jesus has risen
into a far higher atmosphere which cannot be troubled by vague
fears of persecution, suffering, and death. In the long discourses
which precede his final prayer in the seventeenth chapter, Jesus
comforts his disciples and seeks to prevent them from being
dismayed when the hour of trial comes; in the Synoptic narra-
tives Jesus, at a time subsequent to that of the Johannine
discourses, seeks the aid of his friends, and implores them to
watch with him. In the former, Jesus speaks of the victory
as already won (xvi. 33); and the intervention of a strengthening
angel becomes both useless and distasteful to the writer. In
short, here as elsewhere, the Jesus of the Synoptics has the least
possible resemblance (we might almost say, has no resemblance)
to the Jesus of the Johannine evangelist. With the thrice repeated
brief prayer of the former it is absolutely impossible to reconcile
what we can scarcely help speaking of as the great sacerdotal
prayer in the latter (ch. xvii.). In this prayer Jesus says nothing
of his own sufferings, while he dwells much on the sorrow of his
disciples.
Thus, again, if we accept the Synoptic account as not wholly
unworthy of credit, we are driven to the conclusion that the
prayer in John xvii. is as unhistorical as the discourses which
precede it. It is, therefore, unnecessary to draw out in greater
detail other arguments in support of this proposition. Yet so
glaring is the contradiction that we cannot pass by in silence the
contrast which it furnishes in its general spirit to that of the
Jesus whom we see in the Synoptic narratives. In John xvii.
Jesus is, if we may so say, the ecclesiastical redeemer whose
spiritual horizon is bounded by the circle of the faithful. As in
the first epistle which bears the name of John (v. 19), so here,
the outer world lies all in wickedness; and for this world the
Johannine Jesus asserts distinctly that he has no prayer to
406 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book IV,
offer (xvii. 9). Others, it is true, yet remain to be called; but
they are the sheep who are ready to hear his voice and to obey
his call through the word of his disciples, not those who rebel
against the divine law and resist the divine will.
There remains only the question of the authorship of this
prayer. It professes to be a prayer in which the Divine Logos or
Word addresses the unrevealed and unrevealable Father. It is
a prayer which dwells throughout on the relations between him-
self and the Eternal God, from whom he has come and to whom
he is about to return. It is absolutely inconceivable that such
a prayer should be uttered aloud in the presence of a body of
disciples, one of whom was about to betray him ; and if it was
not spoken aloud, how did the evangelist obtain his knowledge
of it ? To suppose that Jesus wrote down the prayer after he had
offered it to the Father, is an impertinence, if not worse. To
imagine that it was the direct subject of subsequent revelation,
is to use words without meaning. If these modes of information
are inconceivable and impossible, there is only one other alterna-
tive: The prayer is, from beginning to end, the composition of
the evangelist himself.
CHAPTEE IX
THE AEREST IN THE GARDEN
Of the events connected with the Passion we have seen that
the whole history of Judas, of the betrayal, and of the agony in
the garden, are absolutely untrustworthy and unhistorical. But
if at the outset such conclusions are forced upon us, how can we
expect to find firmer footing when we come to deal with the
sequel ? The foundation of the history has been taken away. We
have nothing to do but to note and remember the fact, and then
go on to examine the alleged records of later incidents.
According to the first Gospel (xxvi. 47), Judas enters the
garden attended by 'a great multitude with swords and staves,
from the chief priests and elders of the people/ these being, of
course, all Jews. Then by kissing Jesus, he points him out to
those who might otherwise be unable to distinguish him. Jesus
receives his traitorous salute with the question, ' Friend, wherefore
art thou come ? ' — an inquiry which might seem superfluous if he
had already known by a superhuman prescience (John vi. 64) that
he had come to betray him. In the fourth Gospel Jesus declares,
almost at the beginning of his ministry, that one of the twelve would
betray him to his enemies ; and, according to the Synoptics, for
weeks, if not for months past, the fact of the betrayal is announced
as preceding all the ignominy and insult which was to follow.
After this incident the emissaries of the Sanhedrim seize Jesus,
and lead him away. The account of Mark (xiv. 43) is almost word
for word the same ; but, according to the third Gospel (xxii. 47),
407
408 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
the kiss is apparently not given, for when Judas approaches, Jesus
asks him, not why he had come, but ' Betrayest thou the Son of Man
with a kiss ? ' thus implying a foreknowledge of the reason of his
coming. In John (xviii. 2-5) Judas is, as we have seen, a mere
bystander or spectator; he neither kisses Jesus, nor points him
out, for as soon as his attendants enter the garden, Jesus himself
advances and asks whom they seek. On their replying that they
are sent to seize Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus answers, *I am he';
and his voice at once has such an effect on them that they all go
backward and fall to the ground ; nor are they roused from their
stupor or dismay till Jesus again tells them that he is the object
of their search, and demands that his disciples should be allowed
to go their way. Upon this they take courage, and, having bound
Jesus, lead him away.
It is scarcely worth while to notice the attempts made to
reconcile these contradictions with the notion that when Judas
entered the garden, Jesus advanced and announced himself, as
related in the fourth Gospel, and that Judas then went up to him
and kissed him. It is not to be supposed that Judas had any
abstract love of giving traitorous kisses — that it was an end with
him, and not a means; but if Jesus had already made himself
known, if at his word the whole crowd is thrown prostrate, and
if they are roused only by the second announcement which Jesus
makes, then, in going through the vain ceremony of a kiss, Judas
acts the part of a mere simpleton. Jesus was already made known
by his own acts and words: what need was there of anything
further ? The truth is that the two accounts cannot be reconciled ;
and the whole of our scrutiny has shown us that where the fourth
Gospel contradicts the Synoptics, it is always unhistorical.
In fact, the fixed purpose of the Johannine narrative comes
out in glaring prominence throughout this part of the story. The
evangelist had described Jesus as saying long since that his death
would be a voluntary offering ; it would be the death of the good
shepherd; and to prevent all chance of misapprehension, it is
added (x. 1 8), ' No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down
Chap. IX.] THE PASSION 409
of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take
it again.' With these sayings the Synoptic narrative, which
represents the captors as seizing Jesus at once, without any
announcement on his part, could not be made to fit; and thus
Jesus is, by the fourth evangelist, described not only as antici-
pating and rendering superfluous the betrayal of Judas, but as
working a wonder by the mere sound of his voice; for that a
marvel or miracle is here wrought it is impossible to disprove.
If one or two men have made a momentary impression on two or
three assassins, no instances are on record in which a man, by
uttering a few words, so dismays a whole multitude to whom he
is unknown as to make them all fall to the ground. Nay, further,
the Johannine Gospel represents Judas as accompanied not merely
by emissaries from the great Jewish Council, but by a military
band and a chiliarch, who must clearly have formed part of the
Eoman garrison of the city ; and these men, who knew nothing
and cared nothing about Jesus or any Messiah, are sent staggering
backwards not less than the Jews. But, in truth, the evangelist
could not help himself. He had already represented the enemies
of Jesus as on more than one occasion unable to seize him because
his hour was not yet come ; he had spoken of the officers of the
chief priests returning baffled, with the plea that no man ever
spake like Jesus (vii. 44); and he could not now describe the
arrest as the ordinary capture of a suspected person, which in the
Synoptic Gospels it undoubtedly is. All that can be said is that
the germ of the Johannine idea is found in the assertion made by
Matthew (xxvi. 53), ' Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to
my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve
legions of angels?' It may be further noted (although histori-
cally the statement has not the least importance) that the fourth
Gospel gives an impotent conclusion to the matter by seeing in
the demand of Jesus for the free departure of his disciples (xviii. 8)
a fulfilment of the assertion made in his last prayer, ' Those that
thou hast given me I kept, and none of them was lost but the
son of perdition.' Whatever, then, be the value of the Synoptic
410 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
accounts, the Johannine narrative is thus seen to be a fabrication
to suit a particular purpose.
As to the smiting of the high priest's servant by one of the
disciples of Jesus immediately after the arrest, all the Gospels are
agreed. But Luke (xxii. 50), and John (xviii. 10), alone specify
that the ear cut off was the right ear, while the latter adds that it
was Peter who struck the blow, and that the servant's name was
Malchus. It is, at the least, strange, that the Synoptics should not
have coupled the name of Peter with so marked an action ; but
there is nothing strange in the idea that a later writer might
attach the name of a prominent and impetuous disciple to an
anecdote which had hitherto floated about without one.^ From
the third Gospel alone we receive the information that the servant
was marvellously healed by Jesus — clearly in one or other of two
ways ; for, as all represent the ear as ' cut off,' Jesus either fastened
on the ear and made it adhere to the head, or he created a new
ear in the place of that which had been cut off. Tor the mere
stanching of blood by his touch, the servant would probably have
felt no very deep gratitude, nor, in all likelihood, would the evan-
gelist have cared to record the incident.
The statement in Luke (xxii. 52), that the chief priests and
elders came in person to seize Jesus, completes the list of contra-
dictions in this narrative. In all the other accounts only their
emissaries enter the garden ; but we have here, possibly, a mingling
of two traditions — one which Luke followed himself when he
represents Jesus as uttering to the chief priests the words which
Matthew makes him speak to their oflQcers, and the other, which
^ It may be noted (as tending to prove that he had not our Gospels before
him), that Justin Martyr not merely ignores, but excludes this incident. His
emphatic assertion is that at the time of the arrest of Jesus not even one single
man was found to go to his help, guiltless and blameless though he vrsiS.—Dial.
103 ; Supernatural Religion, i. 329.
Dr. Abbott accounts for this incident of Malchus, by a blunder of the com-
piler of the the third Synoptic, in reference to the word used by the Septuagint
in translating the Hebrew of Jeremiah xlvii. 6. This word is awoKaTdaT-ndL, which
may mean ' put back in its place,' but might also mean ' cure,' or ' heal.' The
first two Synoptics interpreted it to mean the sword, rightly. The compiler of
the third Synoptic took it to refer to the ear, wrongly. Hence the miracle.
—Spectator, Oct. 7, 1893, p. 464.
Chap. IX.] THE PASSION 411
led the fourth evangelist to describe him as putting the question
to Annas (xviii. 20).
Of the incident of the young man, mentioned by Mark, who
fled away naked, leaving his garment behind him, it is scarcely
necessary to take any notice. The incident is so pointless that
many have conjectured that the young man must have been the
evangelist himself — a proposition which can neither be denied nor
affirmed ; but why he should have thought it worth while to
record the fact, it seems impossible to determine. It may be
thought, perhaps, to add to the vividness of the narrative ; and like
the incident of the people crowding about the door (ii. 2), it is just
one of those touches which a later writer might safely introduce
without fear of contradiction, the insertion being in each case
utterly insignificant. The point of vital importance is the fact, if it
be a fact, that at this juncture 'all the disciples forsook him and fled.'
If they fled, then all the repeated forewarnings of Jesus
throughout the fourth Gospel, all his assurances that the battle was
to be fought out by himself, and that, after his seeming defeat, he
would rise in a few hours from the grave, all the minutely detailed
announcements of his sufferings and uprising made throughout
the last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, were all thrown away
upon them, and were as though they had never been spoken. Nay,
more, as, even according to the Synoptics, he had laboured to con-
vince them that, of necessity, he must be betrayed, must be seized,
must be insulted, before the end could come, it is impossible that
the disciples, if they attached the slightest credit to his words,
could thus abjectly leave him on the mere threatening of a storm,
and exhibit themselves not merely cowards but fools. If they are
not to be stigmatised as either cowards or fools, or both, then not
only is the whole Johannine narrative a fabrication, but the
Synoptic writers must have enormously exaggerated, nay, rather,
they must have invented, the details with which Jesus had
announced his future sufferings. If they did not flee, then the
statement that they did is an untruth. From this dilemma
there is no escape ; and one portion, or another, of this particular
narrative is, therefore, unhistorical.
CHAPTEE X
THE TEIALS BEFORE THE CHIEF PRIESTS
From the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was led away, it is said,
into the presence of the chief priests and elders of the great
council. But the Synoptists describe the scene as an examination
before Caiaphas, while the fourth Gospel places the trial in the
house of Annas. As in the previous instances, so here, this Gospel
is in hopeless antagonism with the other three. The latter take
him to the high priest : the former brings him before the high
priest's father-in-law, who had no more authority in the matter
than any other citizen of Jerusalem. But as it states that Annas
sent him on to Caiaphas,^ some might be tempted to fancy that
there were two examinations — one before Annas, the other before
Caiaphas — were it not that the Johannine evangelist ascribes to
the trial before Annas those incidents which the Synoptists attri-
bute to the trial before Caiaphas.
At once, then, if we regard the fourth Gospel as on an equality
with the other three, we might be tempted to think that the latter
were here in error ; but it does not stand on a level with them.
We have seen that in the matter of the high priesthood the
evangelist was under the mistaken impression that the office was
1 The translators of the Authorised English Version translated John xviii.
24, ' Now Annas had sent him bound,' etc. For this they had no excuse ; and
their act can be compared only with the device which avoided the categorical
saying that Jesus was placed at one and the same time on the ass and its foal.
There is no conjunction now ; and the aorist cannot mark a definite time.
The translators of the Revised Version turn it, 'Annas therefore sent him
bound,' etc. There is, of course, no more authority for there/ore than for now.
The English ought to be simply, ' Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas.'
412
Chap. X.] THE PASSION 413
then a yearly one, and we see now that he makes the further mis-
take of supposing that there might be two high priests at the same
time. According to Josephus, Caiaphas was high priest during
the ten years ending with a.d. 36. Annas, his father-in-law (if he
was such), had been Kigh priest some time before ; but three other
high priests came between him and Caiaphas, none of whom bore
the title after vacating the office. We may see, therefore, the
value of the tale which represents one of the attendants of Annas
as smiting Jesus for an alleged insult to the ' high priest ' (John
xviii. 22)^; and what is of greater moment is that we may
measure the trustworthiness of that strange story in the fourth
Gospel (xi. 51), which tells us of the counsel given by Caiaphas to
the members of the Sanhedrim. Men never act without motives ;
and commonly their motives are seen clearly enough. Here either
Caiaphas and his associates have no motives ; or their motives are
incomprehensible. The Sanhedrim are here made to acknowledge
their belief in the wonders wrought by Jesus (xi. 47) ; and two
courses, therefore, were alone open to them. They were bound
either to 'act upon their belief by acknowledging themselves as
his disciples, or to say and to prove that his wonders were really
due to diabolical agency. But no inquiry, no scrutiny is made ;
and from the notorious fact that many miracles (which are
described as works of mercy) were being done, they jump to the
conclusion that it is their business to put the doer of those works
to death. For this conclusion they had absolutely no warrant ;
and the reason which is said to have led them to it is, on the face
of it, absurd. They knew perfectly well that the Eomans cared
nothing whether one man was (whether innocent or guilty) cruci-
fied or not, and that, so far as they were concerned, any man might
preach or teach as it might please him, so long as he did not come
forward as a disturber of the Koman peace. The supposition that
such a charge could be brought against Jesus, according to the state-
1 The same mistake is made in Luke iii. 2, where Annas and Caiaphas are
high priests together ; and we find seemingly the same, if not a worse blunder,
in Acts iv. 6, where Annas is high priest, his name being immediately followed
by that of Caiaphas.
414 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEIOAL RECORDS [Book IV.
ments of all the four Gospels, is nothing less than ludicrous. No
such danger could be feared from a teacher who, according to the
Synoptic Gospels, had not entered Jerusalem since he emerged from
private life, and whose only public demonstration consisted of the
harmless welcome of those who escorted him as he entered into
the holy city, if even this incident may be regarded as historical.
In this story of the prophecy of Caiaphas it follows that no trust
whatever can be placed ; and the whole narrative of the trial of
Jesus before him as the president of the council becomes in the
very highest degree uncertain.
In all that relates to this trial the Johannine writer leaves us
in something like Cimmerian darkness. That he transfers to
the house of Annas events which, according to the Synoptics, took
place in that of Caiaphas, seems to be quite clear. The result is a
lame one, for on the examination in the fourth Gospel nothing is
made to turn, and there is neither condemnation nor sentence.
The denials of Peter in the Synoptic Gospels occur in the house of
Caiaphas ; in the fourth Gospel they are transferred to that of
Annas. Why the Johannine evangelist should take him first to
Annas, 'the father-in-law of Caiaphas,' and then afterwards
(xviii. 14) mention Caiaphas as the giver of^ the counsel that Jesus
must be put to death, we are left to conjecture. If he gave the
counsel, and if he was the high priest, Jesus must have been tried
before him and not before Annas ; and thus the Johannine version
is shown to be, as a historical record, worthless.
But it can by no means be said that the Synoptic evangelists
are agreed amongst themselves. According to Matthew and Mark
Jesus is led from the garden straight to the council chamber
where the members of the Sanhedrim are assembled, although it is
night. There follows then a formal trial, with accusation,
witnesses, condemnation, and sentence. In Luke (xxii. 64-63)
Jesus during the night is guarded in the high priest's house, and
the council does not assemble before it is day (xxii. 66). This
makes a difficulty with regard to the denials of Peter ; for accord-
ing to Matthew they take place while the trial of Jesus is going on
Chap. X.] THE PASSION 415
or after it is ended, while in Luke they occur during the night and
before the trial. But, again, if Jesus was arrested in the early
hours of the night and the trial was not held till the following
morning, the cocks must have crowed many times in the interval,
and hence Jesus would be mistaken in saying that before the cock
should crow Peter should thrice deny him. Further, if, as Luke
says (xxii. 52), the members of the council went in person to arrest
Jesus, it is not easy to see why, having done the less dignified
thing, they should not proceed to act in their usual capacity as
judges, simply because it was not yet day. There is, in fact, no
reason for delaying the trial; and, accordingly, in the other
Synoptics it is not delayed.
It may be worth while (nay, indeed, it is needful), once again to
note that even according to the Johannine version not more than
about twenty years had passed away since Jesus in the temple
astonished the doctors with his understanding and answers. How
that incident (if it ever took place) bears upon his previous history
and future career we have seen already .^ Of those who then heard
Jesus put and answer questions not a few must have been among
the judges. If so, they must have known that they were dealing
with the same Jesus of Nazareth. Is it, then, conceivably possible
that they could have forgotten this circumstance, and forgotten,
further, that he who at twelve years of age had astounded them by
his wisdom, was one whose birth had been pointed out to all
Jerusalem by the appearance of a star and the coming of the Magi ;
that over his birthplace the heavenly host had been seen and
heard singing Hallelujahs in the sky ; and that marvels preceded
and accompanied the birth of his forerunner, the Baptist ? For all
that we hear, these things might have happened in Spain or Thule.
They have floated away like clouds scattered by the sun, and have
passed out of mind as though they had never been. Is this either
credible or possible ?
Of the charge connected with the destruction and rebuilding of
the temple we have already made a careful examination,^ the
^ See Book iii. ch. i. 2 g^© Book iii. ch. ix., Section 4.
416 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
conclusion being that the alleged historical incidents related in the
fourth Gospel are fictitious. In the other Gospels we have only
the charges founded on the words which, in the Johannine
narrative, Jesus is declared to have actually uttered; and thus
an absolute contradiction is given to the wonderful statement
with which, in the Synoptic narrative, this charge is introduced.
Here we have a grave assemblage of Jewish judges confronting a
prisoner against whom the high priest had declared that there was
a superabundance of evidence (for his wonderful works, if they
were not proofs of his innocence, must certainly be tokens of his
guilt), and the measure of whose misdeeds had been filled up by
his raising of Lazarus ; and yet not only is no reference made to
these things, but the council, we are told, had but one object in
view, and this was the finding false witness against Jesus. Were
ever judges in any country known to prefer false testimony to true,
if they could get the latter ? We move, however, from one wonder
to another. The evidence said to be given against Jesus in
Matthew (xxvi. 61) turns out, if the story of the fourth Gospel be
received, to be not false, but strictly true. Jesus had uttered the
very words; and, as we have seen, it was not the fault of the
hearers if they misunderstood him. They could not possibly have
done otherwise. The silence of Jesus is proof that the testimony was
not false. If he had not spoken the words, he must have denied
that he had ever uttered them.^ The whole story is manifestly
a fiction ; and the inference is that the trial before Caiaphas never
took place in the way in which the Canonical Gospels describe it
as having taken place. Each incident has been shown to be
fictitious ; and we thus have before us an alleged event, for each
and all of the particulars of which we have no evidence. As to the
trial itself we must leave it with the conclusion that, as the
possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it
be af&rmed.
1 There is a slight difference as to these words between the Johannine and the
Synoptic versions. In the former Jesus is described as saying, ' Destroy this
temple and in three days I will raise it again.' According to the latter he says,
' I am able to destroy the temple of God and to raise it in three days. ' With
this we may compare John x. 18. See Appendix B.
Chap. X.] THE PASSION 417
Of the ill-treatment which Jesus is said to have undergone
before the ecclesiastical tribunal we need say but little. Accord-
ing to the fourth Gospel (xviii. 22) the ill-usage came from a
servant ; but the servant was not, as he is here said to have been,
a servant of the high priest, for Annas had ceased to be such for
many years. In the second Gospel (xiv. 65) some out of the whole
number of those who condemned him, i.e. the judges, spit upon
and revile Jesus ; and in Matthew there is nothing to distinguish
those who thus disgrace themselves from the members of the
council. In Luke (xxiii. 63) Jesus is ill-treated by his guards
before the trial. We have thus a vague picture of some injurious
treatment ; but the story has no historical coherence.
The same or greater doubts hang over the denials by Peter.
In the Synoptics Peter alone follows Jesus at some distance to the
high priest's house. In the fourth Gospel the beloved disciple
goes with him, and it is through his influence, we are told, as a
personal acquaintance of the high priest, that Peter is admitted.^
The various discrepancies in the rest of the story it would be
tedious to trace out at length. It may suffice to say that in each
Gospel the denial is said to be uttered thrice. Yet the circum-
stances so vary, that if the several accounts are to be regarded as
trustworthy, Peter must have denied his Master some seven or
eight times. The narrative of the fourth Gospel implies in
portions that the first denial took place in the house of Annas, the
last two in the house of Caiaphas ; yet the 18th and 25th verses of
the eighteenth chapter, taken together, imply that all these belong
to the same place, for in the former of these two verses we are told
that as it was cold the servants had kindled a fire of charcoal,
^ This is one of many features in the Johannine narrative which are clearly
intended to exalt the beloved disciple, who is supposed to be John the son of
Zebedee, at the expense of Peter. Here John is the acquaintance, or, as some
will have it, the kinsman of the high priest. In the other Gospels, which know
nothing of a beloved disciple, he is a rough and ignorant Galilsean fisherman, who,
with his brother, receives the name of Son of Thunder. In Acts (iv. 13), the
sons of Zebedee, with their fellow-disciples, are spoken of as ' unlettered and
ignorant men.' It seems unlikely that a man so described should belong to the
family, or possess the friendship, of the high priest.
2 D
418 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL KECORDS [Book IV.
before which Peter and others stood warming themselves ; then in
verse 24 we have the statement that Annas sent Jesus back to
Caiaphas, after which we are again informed that Peter stood and
warmed himself, the conclusion being, necessarily, that it was at
the fire before mentioned in the house of Annas. We are then
told (1) by John (xviii. 17) that Peter, being questioned as soon
as he entered, by a damsel who kept the door, then and there
denied Jesus; (2) by the Synoptists that the first denial is in
answer to a maiden as Peter sits in the court of the palace (Matt,
xxvi. 69 ; Mark xiv. 66 ; Luke xxii. 55); (3) in the fourth Gospel
that the second denial was made while Peter remained in the same
position. With this Luke (xxii. 58) agrees; but (4) Matthew
(xxv. 71) and Mark (xiv. 68) place it after Peter's departure into
the porch, and say that it was made before one person, while in
John it is uttered before several ; (5) Matthew and Mark assign
the third denial to the same spot with the second, i.e. in the porch,
and before many persons. In Luke and John it is still by the
fire, and the latter describes it as an answer to a person who was
related to Malchus, whom Peter had mutilated. The attempt to
reduce all these denials to three, will, unless by an eclectic process
we accept or reject details at our pleasure, have the effect of
exhibiting not less than eight different denials. That the word
thrice said to be used by Jesus in reference to these denials is to be
taken literally, as denoting that number, cannot be doubted. In
each Gospel the denials are numerically three ; and the question
thrice repeated, ' Simon, lovest thou me ? ' in the supplement to the
fourth Gospel is clearly designed as a parallel to the thrice repeated
abnegation. Finally, even the incident of the cock-crowing is
variously reported. In one version the cock crows once, in the
other twice ; but the narrative of Luke has, in reality, no reference
to the cock-crowing at all. The details of the story are worthless.
Justin tells a different tale : that when Jesus was crucified all his
friends stood aloof from him, having denied him, this denial having
clearly been made before the crucifixion ; and this denial, as well
as abandonment, is extended by him to all the disciples.
Chap. X.] THE PASSION 419
We have yet to notice some further difficulties connected with
the relations of the nameless or beloved disciple with the high
priest. It is not stated that there was any kindred between the
two ; but the whole story implies that their acquaintance was not
a distant one, and it must not be forgotten that in the fourth
Gospel this disciple (whoever he be) is the foremost among the
followers of Jesus, as Peter is in the other three. He is, indeed,
admitted to an intimacy which is not vouchsafed to any of the
rest, and, therefore, no one would be better qualified to explain the
real character and purport of his Master's teaching. Information
on this subject (if in truth they needed any information) would,
we might suppose, be the first thing sought by the Sanhedrim ;
and in fact we are told that this was the case (xviii. 19). The
high priest asks Jesus of his disciples and about his teaching.
Yet at the very time when this question was being put, both Peter
and John (or the nameless or beloved disciple) were close at hand ;
and no effort is made to subject them to any examination what-
ever. Nay, Jesus himself in his reply refers them to those who
had heard him in the synagogue and in the temple ; and no notice
is taken of his suggestion. All these, he declared, knew what he
had spoken ; but, although Jesus is smitten for alleged insolence
to the high priest, no further questions are put (either to him, or
to his followers, or to any who had heard him), while yet he stood
before the Sanhedrim. Again, had not one of the council seen or
heard him either in the temple or in the synagogue ? But, indeed,
if the story told of the beloved disciple be true, the high priest
must have known well for months, if not for years past, that
from his friend, or acquaintance, or kinsman, he could at any
time obtain the most trustworthy information as to the life and
teaching of Jesus.
CHAPTEE XI
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE
It is impossible to separate the trial before Pilate from the
incidents which are said to have led up to it ; and our scrutiny
thus far has forced us to the conclusion that the whole story of
Judas is from beginning to end a fiction, and that, therefore, there
is nothing historical in the narratives which tell us of the agony
in the garden, of the arrest, and of the trial before the high priest
and the council over which he presided. The alleged trial before
Pilate is immeasurably more important, and we must follow it
step by step in order to see whether and how far the records
before us harmonise with what we know generally of the character
of Eoman judicial procedure. If we find evidence of this
essential agreement, the conclusions which will in that case be
rendered necessary must be admitted and acknowledged without
hesitation or qualification. If this evidence be not forthcoming,
all further inquiry as to incidents supposed to follow the trial
will become strictly a work of supererogation. We can but take
the statements of the Synoptic and Johannine narratives severally,
and see how far they can be regarded as trustworthy historical
records.
According to Matthew (xxvii. 2), who is followed by Mark
(xv. 1), Jesus is not bound till he is sent on from the Sanhedrim
to Pilate. In the fourth Gospel (xviii. 12) he is bound in the
garden, and is sent on bound by Annas to Caiaphas; in Luke
(xxii. 52) he is apparently not bound at all. Again, in the fourth
420
Chap. XL] THE PASSION 421
Gospel (xviii. 28) Jesus is led into the jiidgement-hall, or pr&torium,
while his accusers remain outside ; and thus, at each stage of the
trial, Pilate has to pass from the prisoner to the Jews, who will
not enter his court for fear of defilement before the passover meal,
which the Synoptics describe as having been eaten by Jesus with
his disciples on the preceding evening. In their version, the judge,
the accusers, and the prisoner, all stand in the same place, in the
open air, where, according to Josephus, the judgement-seat, or
Bema, was placed.
In Matthew (xxvii. 11) Pilate begins the trial by asking Jesus
whether he is the king of the Jews ; and the charge of his
accusers is made after the question has been put. In John (xviii.
29) Pilate asks, in the first instance, the reason of his being brought
before him ; and the Jews, instead of answering his question by
putting forth a formal charge, insolently inform him that if Jesus
had not been a malefactor, he would not have been brought before
him at all — an answer which no Koman governor would be likely to
put up with, and which would assuredly have defeated the purpose
of the accusers. Nothing is gained by insisting that the evangelists
were possessed of little legal experience or learning, for if the
tradition which they followed had been fairly in agreement with
the forms of Koman judicial procedure, there would have been no
ground for suspicion or downright distrust. As it is, we have
here the first in the series of incidents or statements which
prove that the story of the trial before Pilate, as given to us in our
Canonical Gospels, is not to be depended upon in any of its
particulars.
The reason why Pilate is here said to have put this particular
question to Jesus comes out, it seems, only in Luke (xxiii. 2), who
tells us that Jesus was charged with forbidding the payment of
tribute to the Eoman Caesar. We may note that throughout
the trial, Jesus, who answers some of the questions put to him,
nowhere meets a manifestly false accusation with a plain and flat
denial, and also that mere accusation seems to pass as charge and
proof of charge together. If the question mentioned in Matthew
422 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
(xxvii. 11) was really asked, Pilate must necessarily have wished
to have some proof of the fact that Jesus had styled himself king
of the Jews ; but the producing of proof or evidence is a matter
on which no one seems to bestow a thought. As Jesus, however,
is said to have answered the question in the affirmative, Pilate
must have taken the reply in the only sense in which he could
have attached any meaning to it, and therefore must have con-
cluded that Jesus designed to set his own authority in opposition
to that of the Eoman emperor. But if this be so, it is impossible
to understand how Pilate (Luke xxiii. 4) could tell the Jews
(without receiving or even asking for any further explanation
from Jesus) that he found no fault in him. This declaration
from the representative of the Eoman power should have barred
any repetition of this charge. If Pilate listened at all to the
assertions that Jesus stirred up the people by his teaching in
Galilee and Judaea, he must have insisted on being made ac-
quainted with the general character of that teaching; and, on
discovering that there was nothing political about it, he must have
dismissed the case, as Gallio is said to have done, as a matter with
which he could not concern himself (Acts xviii. 15).
In Matthew (xxvii. 11-17) and Mark (xv. 3) Jesus, after
answering the first questions, keeps silence when accused by the
Jews; and Pilate asks him if he hears the multitude of the
accusations brought against him. This incident is as impossible
as the one which has gone before it. As a Eoman judge, Pilate
must have demanded, at starting, a definite charge, and have tried
the case on that issue and not on any other. But Pilate, instead
of dismissing the case as in these circumstances he was bound to
do, is described as being perplexed by the refusal of Jesus to
plead, and as trying to deliver him by suggesting that they should
receive him (instead of Barabbas) as the prisoner who should be
set free at that feast. Even this step on Pilate's part is, however,
in the Synoptic narrative not easily accounted for. No reason is
there given for his wishing to save Jesus from his enemies. The
motive might, perhaps, be found in the fourth Gospel, where
Chap. XI.] THE PASSION 423
(xviii. 36) Jesus is made to state plainly that his kingdom is not
of this world, and that if it were his children would have fought
for him.^ But here arises a difficulty of another kind. According
to the Johannine story, Jesus was within the prsetorium, which his
accusers refused to enter. Who then reported to the evangelist
the conversation which passed privately between Jesus and Pilate,
and, indeed, the incidents generally which are said to have occurred
within the covered building? Surely not Pilate himself or his
attendants ; and there is something incongruous in the idea that
Jesus could, after his resurrection, enter into details of history in
the presence of his disciples. Indeed, the reports of the Christo-
phanies in our four Gospels render the bare supposition absolutely
impossible.
Not less impossible is the Johannine narrative of what took
place within the prsetorium immediately after Pilate's suggestion
to set Jesus free in place of Barabbas. In the first place, Pilate,
we are told, takes Jesus and scourges him, untried thus far and
uncondemned ; and then in his presence the soldiers plait a crown
of thorns and put it on his head, while they array him in a purple
garment, and then, with an abusive salutation, strike him with
their hands. Without one word of rebuke to them for the insult
thus offered to the majesty of law and to his own authority, Pilate
instantly goes out again, and solemnly tells his accusers (if such
they can be called), ' I bring him out to you that ye may know
that I find no fault in him.' Having treated him as guilty, and
having allowed his guards to treat him with cruel indignity, he
now proclaims him blameless. The incident, as related, is im-
possible ; in other words, it never took place.
The transfer of Jesus from Pilate to Herod Antipas, who is
represented as being then in Jerusalem to keep the feast, is men-
tioned only in the third Gospel. The story briefly is, that Pilate
^ The Johannine evangelist, probably feeling that spiritual obligations and
convictions should have a more constraining power than merely temporal engage-
ments, does not mention the desertion of Jesus by all the disciples, and by saying
that the beloved apostle introduced Peter into the high priest's house, wishes,
apparently, to keep that fact as much out of sight as possible.
424 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKIOAL EECOEDS [Book IV.
sent Jesus, on learning that as a Galilsean he belonged to Herod's
jurisdiction; that Herod, on seeing him, strove by questions to
induce him to work some marvel or miracle ; ^ and that on the
refusal of Jesus to do as he wished, the tetrarch and his officers
disguised him in a gorgeous dress, and sent him back so clothed ^
to Pilate, with whom Herod was now reconciled after some
squabble.
This assuredly is not history. If Jesus belonged to Herod's
jurisdiction, then Herod should have been left to deal with him
altogether ; and this he could not have done without taking him
back to Galilee, and so interfering with the predetermined course
of Messianic prediction.^ But, in truth, this was not the case for
offences which had been committed in Judaea (Luke xxiii. 5).
Hence Pilate had no right to transfer to another a duty which
was entirely his own ; and surely Herod must have had a some-
what better notion of the seemliness needed in judicial proceedings
than to think that they were consistent with putting a prisoner,
untried and uncondemned, into a ridiculous disguise, and dis-
missing him, after gross and ribald abuse. So, again, there is no
reason why Jesus should refuse to answer a ruler to whose juris-
diction he is described as belonging ; and, further, we may ask
how it was that this incident should be unknown to the other
Synoptics, and more especially to the author of the fourth Gospel,
if, as apologists will have it, he was the beloved disciple. The
story, as related, is clearly a fiction ; and the incident never took
place, as it is said to have taken place.
If the third evangelist stands alone in recording this episode,
the first (xxvii. 19) has likewise another peculiar to himself in
the message sent to Pilate by his wife, while he is still on the
judgement-seat. She, it seems, had dreamed an agonising dream,
^ This statement carries us back to the alleged relations of Herod with John
the Baptist. See page 224.
^ On this point the wording of the narrative seems to leave no room for doubt.
The incident is irreconcilable with the Johannine story of the purple garment.
* ' Thus it must be ' is, as we have seen, the key-note of all that is said about
the suflferings of Jesus in his passion.
Chap. XI.] THE PASSION 425
and accordingly warns her husband (whom she would seem not
to have seen before the so-called trial began) to have nothing to
do with that just man. What, then, was the nature of this dream ?
What was its purpose, or had it none ? Was it designed to bring
about the liberation of Jesus ? If so, then, on the popular or
traditional hypothesis that the outward bodily death of Jesus was
needed for the saving or healing of mankind, this dream should
have a diabolical origin ; and as it must not be allowed to deter
Pilate from the course which was to end in his traitorous surrender
of Jesus to his enemies, it could only deepen his guilt. We may
compare this dream with the visions belonging to the nativity
stories in this Gospel. As a supposed historical incident, it is
fictitious ; and one more impossibility is added to the others which
we have had to notice in the examination of the narratives of this
trial.
In like manner, Matthew alone of the evangelists goes on to
relate a piece of conduct which, in a Eoman governor, is inexplic-
able, incredible, and impossible. Pilate was in Judsea to exercise
an authority before which the whole world bowed down. He was
there to screen and defend the guiltless and to punish the guilty.
The idea that he was there to surrender the innocent, knowing
him and asserting him to be such, to those who were thirsting for
his blood and eager to slay him with cruel insults, was one which
the Imperator and the Senate would have scouted as treason, as
a wild and monstrous extravagance.^ Yet of Pilate, the guardian
of the Eoman peace, the first evangelist tells us that, finding all
his efforts to rescue Jesus useless, he called for water, and, going
through a symbolical ceremony which was not Koman, and which,
for a Eoman, would have neither force nor meaning, solemnly pro-
nounces wholly innocent a person whom, according to the fourth
Gospel, he had already scourged, knowing him to be guiltless, and
whom he immediately proceeds to scourge again, and then to
deliver to his enemies to suffer crucifixion — a penalty which could
^ For the acts of Pilate and his report as spoken of by Justin, see Supernatural
Religion, i. 325, et seq.
426 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
be inflicted only by Koman officers ; in other words, on his own
warrant. Whatever may have been Pilate's shortcomings, and
however much he may have feared the transmission of hostile
reports concerning him to Kome, it is altogether impossible to
believe that any Eoman governor or officer would pour such com-
plete contempt on Koman judicial processes as to commit murder at
the dictation of a few riotous men. To hand over a man to others
to be tortured and slain, when, at the same time, he solemnly pro-
claims his innocence, is to commit murder of the worst type.
That the judge should himself torture the victim before yield-
ing him up, is, if possible, to aggravate guilt already incredible.
Verres was indubitably a much worse man than Pilate, and Cicero
brings against him some astounding charges of cruelty and in-
justice; but then Verres, like Appius Claudius in the legend of
Virginia, or like Henry viii. of England, contented himself with
wresting the forms of justice ^ to his own purposes, and professed
to regard as guilty persons whom he knew to be guiltless. Pilate
does the reverse, and without formal charge, trial, condemnation,
or sentence, delivers over to an ignominious death a man whom,
in the same breath, he asserts to be wholly innocent as well as
righteous. The whole incident as related is impossible. It never
took place, as it is said to have taken place ; and this is the last
feature in the so-called trial before Pilate. Every one of these
features, as given to us, has been shown to be imaginary; and
hence it follows that we have no positive warrant for maintaining
that the trial itself is an historical reality. Taking the stories as
the evangelists relate them, we are driven to the conclusion that
there was no betrayal, no arrest, no examination before Annas or
Caiaphas, no judgement, and no condemnation, if we look merely
to the historical evidence, for of such evidence there is none. The
incidents in the trial before Pilate can only be taken one by one.
They have been so taken, and each incident is shown to be ficti-
^ This is the charge brought against Warren Hastings in the matter of Nund-
komar. Hastings was, perhaps, never technically in the wrong, and he never pro-
fessed to punish men whom at the same time he declared to be guiltless.
Chap. XL] THE PASSION 427
tious. The trial cannot therefore be legitimately treated as an
antecedent to any events which are said to have happened subse-
quently.i The examination of these later events is, therefore, in
strictness of speech, superfluous.
There are a few points connected more immediately with the
trial itself which remain still to be noticed. Thus in Matthew
(xxvii. 26) the scourging is inflicted; in Luke (xxiii. 22) Pilate is
represented as saying that he will scourge him and then let him go ;
and thus the scourging is seemingly not inflicted, because the mob,
stirred up by the priests and scribes, insists on the crucifixion. In
the fourth Gospel Pilate scourges not as a preliminary to crucifixion,
but in the hope that by exhibiting him, after scourging, in the
purple robe, and with the thorny crown on his head, he may excite
the pity of his accusers and the bystanders ; and in this also Pilate
is said to fail. We might well ask how he could expect to succeed.
The accusers had charged him with claiming falsely a regal title.
What could the wrapping him in the robe denoting consular or
imperial dignity do but show them that Pilate at bottom favoured
their accusation, and would have no scruple, if duly pressed, in
complying with their demands ?
We have thus before us already two instances in which Jesus
is disguised in a dress which was not his own : the first being the
gorgeous apparel ^ in which he is said to have been arrayed by
Herod and his officers, and the second the purple robe which,
according to the fourth Gospel (xix. 2), the soldiers put upon him
lefore the ending of the trial. To these must be added, therefore,
as a third instance, the disguising with the scarlet cloak, which
Matthew (xxvii. 28) and Mark (xv. 17) place after the sentence,
^ This is a point on which I must not be misunderstood. The record of each
incident taken separately has been shown to be untrustworthy and unhistorical.
But it is possible that events may take place, the reports of which may be in every
particular incorrect. It may be thus in the case of the trial before Pilate. I
fully admit the possibility of a trial without any of these incidents and without
such termination ; but I am bound not less clearly to say that we have no warrant
of historical evidence for affirming the reality.
2 'Ecr^^Ttt Xa/xTrpdv, Luke xxiii. 11. The epithet carries us back to the picture
of the transfiguration. See Appendix B.
428 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
or, rather, the surrender of Jesus to his enemies. In these two last-
mentioned passages the evangelists specify not merely the brilliant
robe but the crown of thorns and the reed sceptre. But as we can
scarcely suppose that all these incidents were thus exactly repeated,
the conclusion is, that the Gospel accounts are here, as elsewhere,
contradictory, and that no reliance can be placed on any of them,
the Johannine version being always the least trustworthy. Hence
it is not worth while to examine the final statement of the fourth
Gospel, that Pilate, when he found himself unable to deliver Jesus,
relieved himself by asking the Jews, derisively, whether he should
crucify their king, and on hearing from the Jews an expression of
loyal devotion to the emperor, which must have been at least as
unexpected as welcome, gave Jesus over to their will.
CHAPTEE XII
THE CRUCIFIXION
We enter now on an inquiry which, as we have seen, is, in
strictness of speech, superfluous. If there was no formal trial and
no formal sentence, there could be no carrying out of- a judgement
never given — in other words, no crucifixion carried out by Eoman
officers on the warrant of the governor. If in such case there was
any execution, it could be nothing more than the result of mob
violence acting in defiance of law, as the story of the Acts repre-
sents the Jews as acting in the matter of Stephen. There is,
perhaps, little rashness in saying that we shall not find the inquiry
more free from difficulty as we go on.
The innumerable instances in which the fourth Gospel is at
variance with the Synoptic narratives may surely justify us now
in saying that the Johannine story was put together by one who
lived in a very different condition of thought and society from the
compilers of the Synoptic accounts. They have, in fact, next to i
nothing in common ; and we feel, therefore, no surprise, when we 1
find that in the fourth Gospel (xix. 1 7) Jesus bears his cross him-
self to the place of execution, whereas the Synoptics (Matt, xxvii.
32 ; Mark xv. 21 ; Luke xxiii. 26) tell us that it was carried by
one Simon, a Jew from Kyrene, who was compelled to perform
that office.
In recording the circumstance that a crowd of people, and
especially of women, followed Jesus, bewailing and lamenting him,
the third Gospel (xxiii. 27) stands alone. There is nothing im-
429
430 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
possible in such an occurrence ; but as it is not corroborated by any
other writer, this is all that can be said for it. On the other hand,
it looks much like an incident suggested by the passage in his last
Synoptic discourse, in which Jesus foretold the misery of those who,
as mothers or about to become such, might be compelled to flee
from Jerusalem. The rest of the address of Jesus to the women
(xxiii. 30) is merely a translation of Hosea (x. 8).
The precise mode in which crucifixion was carried out is a
matter of controversy. Probably the practice was not invariable ;
and hence we cannot determine in any given case whether the
feet as well as the hands were nailed to the cross. We cannot de-
termine it in the instance of Jesus. In the fourth Gospel (xx. 20),
when he appears to the disciples, he shows them his hands and
his side, clearly to point out the marks of the wounds — nothing
being said of the feet. But no statement of the fourth Gospel can
of itself carry the least weight; and in Luke (xxiv. 39) the risen
Jesus invites the disciples to handle his hands and his feet, thus
indicating assuredly that both hands and feet had been wounded.
But it is impossible to accept the Synoptic account as historical,
merely because we are referred to a Psalm (xxii. 17), in which a
piercing of hands and feet is spoken of, but where nothing is said
about nailing, and where, certainly, there is not the most remote
reference to the subject of crucifixion. Knowing the peculiar
method of interpreting the Old Testament writings adopted by the
evangelists, we may very reasonably suspect that this piece of detail
was suggested by the wording of this Psalm, which has likewise
supplied, in all probability, very many other incidents in these
closing scenes.
According to Matthew (xxvii. 33) the soldiers who led Jesus
had no sooner reached Golgotha than they offered to him a
beverage of vinegar and gall, which he tasted but refused to drink.
In Mark (xv. 23) the drink offered at the same time is wine
mingled with myrrh, a totally different compound. Here, again,
we are referred back to the Psalm (Ixix. 21), where it is said,
-* They gave me gall to eat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar
Chap. XII.] THE PASSION 431
to drink'; and at once we see that the phrase may have suggested the
whole scene, and must have suggested some of its features, for the
Psalm speaks of eating gall, and this part of it was certainly not ful-
filled. The second Gospel seems clearly to be an epitome ; but we
cannot even venture to say that Mark, having the narrative of
Matthew before him, and being conscious of its improbability, substi-
tuted another drink to give the narrative a more plausible colouring.
This, however, is not the only sentence in which a drink is said
to have been offered to Jesus. In Matthew (xxvii. 48), when he
utters the cry, 'Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani,' some of the by-
standers, prompted by a kindly feeling, put a sponge filled with
vinegar to his lips, while others seek to prevent them. In Mark
(xv. 36) the persons who at this juncture offer the vinegar, do so
not from sympathy, but in derision. In Luke (xxiii. 36) the only
occasion on which any drink is presented to Jesus is after the
crucifixion, when the soldiers, mocking him, offer him vinegar
(seemingly, the posca, or vinegar and water, commonly given to
Eoman soldiers). In John (xix. 29) vinegar is ofi'ered; but the
circumstances are wholly different. It is presented, not on his
despairing cry, ' My God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' but when,
apparently with the express purpose of fulfilling a prophecy, he
exclaims, ' I thirst.'
These contradictions are irreconcilable ; but these incon-
sistencies in reference to the vinegar or wine bring us to other and
more important contradictions relating to the sayings of Jesus
upon the cross. If the evangelists had no clear ideas respecting
the time when it was offered ; if one places it after one exclamation
and another after a very different one ; and if the evangelist who
mentions the one exclamation takes no notice of the other, what
reasonable grounds have we for inferring that Jesus ever spoke the
words at all ? Erom whom did they receive the report of these in-
cidents ? According to the Synoptics, his acquaintance and the
women who followed him from Galilee, all stood afar off; and all
his disciples, they tell us, had forsaken him and fled. Here, as in-
deed everywhere, the fourth evangelist puts before us quite another
432 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
story. The others had abandoned their Master : he alone stood
close to the cross, by the side of his mother Mary, and all that
passed between them is unknown to the Synoptic writers. These,
again, contradict each other. According to Matthew (xxvii. 50)
and Mark (xv. 37) Jesus yielded up his breath merely after
uttering a loud cry. In Luke (xxiii. 46) he dies after uttering
with a loud voice the exclamation, ' Father, into thy hands I will
commend my spirit.' In the fourth Gospel (xix. 30) his last words
were, *It is finished.' Here, again, the contradictions are irre-
concilable ; nor is it of any avail to gather up all the exclamations
in all the Gospels, and make them up into seven or any other
number, because (whatever may be said of previous utterances) it
is impossible that more than one set of words can be the last words
uttered by a dying person.
That two other prisoners were crucified with Jesus is asserted
in all the Gospels ; but here their agreement ends. _, In Matthew
(xxvii. 38) and Mark (xv. 27) they are thieves or plunderers ; and
the latter evangelist adds that thus the prophecy respecting the
numbering with the transgressors was literally fulfilled. In the third
Gospel (xxiii. 32) they are styled evil-doers, a term of no distinctive
meaning; in the fourth we have no description of them at all.
In Luke, however, one of them seems to be scarcely a transgressor,
for he not only refuses to revile Jesus, but points out to his
fellow-sufferer that Jesus is wholly guiltless, and then, turning to
Jesus, he beseeches him to remember him when he comes into his
kingdom, and receives the assurance that he should that day be
with him in paradise. Here, then, at a time when all the disciples
of Jesus are described as smitten with overpowering dismay, a
criminal, styled a thief, in the agonies of death, is enabled to
apprehend the idea of a suffering Messiah and a purely spiritual
kingdom. The circumstance is altogether impossible. Not one of
the disciples had thus far risen to this high spiritual level; not
one of them, if we are to place any trust in the narrative of the
Acts, reached it for a time long subsequent to the resurrection.
Hence the assertion has been hazarded that this was no common
Chap. XIL] THE PASSION 433
criminal, but had probably been numbered among the seventy-
disciples. Why, then, it may be asked, did he leave that band ?
We know that it was no very difficult thing for a Jew to incur a
capital sentence under a Eoman administration. Yet there must
have been some reason for this man's condemnation (if it ever
took place) j and some have not hesitated to connect it with
schemes arising out of the expectation of a political or temporal
Messiah. This only makes matters worse, for if such were his
convictions, the idea of a suffering Messiah is the last to which he
would rise, and the least likely to present itself to him in the
tortures of a violent death. It must, however, be noted that of
the behaviour of these malefactors the fourth evangelist says
nothing : in the first two Synoptics they both simply revile Jesus ;
in the third alone does one of them recognise his true character.
The silence of John may, perhaps, be imputed to ignorance. The
account of Luke may be, not unfairly, ascribed to the natural
growth of tradition which sought to find throughout the whole
scene parallels to the favourable testimony borne to Jesus, both
by Pilate and by the Eoman centurion, who, as soon as
Jesus died, exclaimed, according to one account (Luke
xxiii. 47), ' Truly, this was a righteous man ' ; and, according
to another (Matt, xxviii. 54 ; Mark xv. 39), that he was a Son
of God.
On the cross of Jesus Pilate, we are told, placed an inscription.
As to the fact all the evangelists are agreed ; but as to the wording
of it they differ more or less widely. Whatever the inscription
may have been, the third and fourth Gospels agree in saying that
it was set up in three versions — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, a state-
ment which would be suspicious even in a really historical record.
In the first Gospel, the form is said to be ' This is Jesus, the King
of the Jews.' The second gives it simply as ' The King of
the Jews.' The third affirms it to have been ' This is the King
of the Jews.' The fourth Gospel amplifies it into 'Jesus of
Nazareth, the King of the Jews,' and adds that the chief
priests, objecting to the inscription as being a formal recogni-
2e
434 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
tion of his pretensions, applied in vain to Pilate to have it
altered.^
As to the division of the garments worn by Jesus, it looks much
as though the details of the incident were all suggested by inter-
pretations of supposed Messianic prophecies. That the clothes of
prisoners were a perquisite of the executioners is not to be dis-
puted; but in Matthew (xxvii. 35), Mark (xv. 24), and Luke
(xxiii. 34), the soldiers are described as casting lots for all his
garments ; and Mark is careful to add that they did so in order to
know what every man should take, no room being thus left for
any exceptions. In the fourth Gospel we have, of course, quite a
different story. Far from casting lots for all the clothes, they do
so only for one ; and whereas the Synoptic narratives imply that
the number of soldiers was considerable, the Johannine version
speaks of them as merely a quaternion, who divide the rest of his
raiment into four portions, and then, not knowing how to deal with
one garment, agree to cast lots for it. With the incident the
evangelist connects the reason, that it was a seamless robe, woven
from the top throughout.^ The whole account is so removed from
the region of history, that we may most reasonably trace it to a
literal interpretation of the passage,^ ' They parted my garments
among them, and for my vesture they cast lots.' Want of ac-
quaintance with the system of parallelism in Hebrew poetry led
the Johannine evangelist to distinguish between the garments and
the vesture, although the two clauses denote one and the same thing;
and his narrative of alleged facts is the result of his mistake.*
The accounts given of the conduct of the spectators are not
without significance. All seem bent on insulting and reviling
1 The point is one of little importance. Apologists have said that there is no
sufficient reason for supposing that all the evangelists proposed to give the same
or the entire inscription. But when they speak of a form of words as affixed to
the cross, it seems impossible to suppose that they did not intend to give the exact
form, and we are driven to the conclusion that this was their deliberate purpose.
^ See Appendix B. ^ Psalm xxii. 18.
^ With this we may compare the ass and the foal of the ass in the story of the
entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The evangelist took ' the ass and the foal ' to be
two animals. The passage cited speaks only of one. See p. 358.
Chap. XIL] THE PASSION 435
Jesus; but, in the case of the ordinary bystanders, it takes the
form of a reference to the so-called false witness borne against him
at the alleged examination before Caiaphas. They dwell on his
destruction of the temple and its re-erection in three days. The
theme of the mockery of the chief priests (who are made to be
present at the execution) turns on the saying that he who saved
others could not save himself ^ (Matt, xxvii. 39-41 ; Mark xv. 29).
To these details Luke (xxiii. 35) adds that he was also insulted by
the elders, that is, by the members of the great council ; but on
this whole topic the fourth Gospel is silent. The picture, whatever
it be, exhibits no great verisimilitude. They cannot possibly have
said many things which are put into their mouth. The words
which they are made to utter are taken straight from the twenty-
second Psalm, in which they are said to be uttered by the ungodly.
The very gestures are borrowed, down to the shaking of the head
and the shooting out of the lips. In plain English, the whole
thing is incredible and impossible. The Scribes and Pharisees
certainly did not professedly range themselves among the enemies
of God, and it was impossible that they should make use of
language which would infallibly give the impression that they did
so account themselves, and took pride in doing so. Hence the
words which the Psalmist ascribes to the blasphemers are just the
very last words which they, being perfectly acquainted with the
Psalm, would have thought of using. If for a moment we try to
imagine the chief priests and Sanhedrim as deliberately adopting
the ribaldry of profane scoffers, the absurdity of the scene is at
once forced upon us ; and we see clearly that the Pharisees are
made to speak, not as they would and must have spoken in real
life, but as the Christian legend of a later day required that they
should speak.
According to Matthew (xxvi. 56) and Mark (xiv. 50), it would
appear that none of the apostles witnessed the crucifixion. Some
Galilsean women only are mentioned, and among these they name
Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the
1 For these two forms of mockery see Appendix B.
436 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
mother of the sons of Zebedee, who may be the same as Salome.
In Luke (xxiii. 49) we are told that he was followed by all who
knew him; and in this number the apostles would certainly be
included. The contradiction is fatal; and here, as elsewhere, we
find the fourth Gospel at variance with all the others. In this
version the beloved or nameless disciple is present with the
mother of Jesus, at the foot of the cross, the other women present
being Mary Magdalene and the wife of Cleopas. Thus not
only the persons vary, but the positions in which they stand are
different. In the Synoptics, they remain afar off": in the fourth
Gospel, Jesus looks down on the beloved disciple standing near
him and commends his mother to his care. Of this striking
incident the Synoptic writers clearly know nothing. If they had
heard of it, could they have spoken of all the disciples as having
fled ? and is it possible that they could have passed by in silence
the farewell charge ^ of Jesus respecting his mother, whose heart
was pierced through with the sword of her son's agony ? So,
again, as we read the plain statement that from this hour the
beloved disciple took her to his own home,^ we may ask, not
merely why the Synoptic Gospels should not record the fact, but
why the writer of the Acts of the Apostles should record quite a
different fact. In that book (i. 12-14) she is spoken of, not
as dwelling in the house of John, but as sojourning with the
society of the eleven apostles and the other disciples. Indeed, if
the Johannine evangelist had been acquainted with the narrative
of the Acts, he might have avoided what looks like the mistake of
speaking of the private abode of the beloved or nameless disciple
at a time when it would seem that, by the communistic rule of the
Christian society (Acts ii. 45), he could have no private house to
which he might take her. To say that he took her to Ids own
house by taking her to the place where the whole company of the
1 There is something strange in the fact of such a charge being given, if the
anastasis, or resurrection, was to follow in a few hours.
^ If this disciple was, as it is contended, John the son of Zebedee, his home
would assuredly be in Galilee, not in Jerusalem.
.Chap. XIL] THE PASSION 437
apostles (i. 1 3) dwelt together, is obviously nonsense. Thus, then,
if the Johannine narrative be true, the statement in the Acts is
false ; and if the latter be true, the story in the fourth Gospel is a
fabrication.
The exclamation of despair uttered by Jesus on the cross
introduces us to theological and psychical difficulties, which
cannot be dealt with in a strictly historical inquiry. Eegarding
the subject from this point of view, we need only note that this
incident is absent not only from the fourth but also from the third
Gospel; that it cannot possibly have been the last, and, at the
same time, not the last^ exclamation uttered by Jesus on the
cross; and that the true nature of the narrative is revealed,
when we find that the expression is only a quotation from that
Psalm (xxii.) which, as we have already seen, supplied a great
part of the imagery of the crucifixion.
The discovery that no two narratives of incidents accompanying
the crucifixion agree together, that not a few exclude each other,
and that not one of them is self-consistent, leaves no room for
surprise when we further find that the notes of time are likewise
contradictory. According to Matthew and Mark Jesus gave up
the ghost about the ninth hour (3 p.m.), the darkness having been
on the land since noon, while Mark states definitely that Jesus
was crucified about the third hour (9 A.M.). In the fourth Gospel,
which always has a version of its own, Pilate at midday is sitting
in judgement at the so-called trial of Jesus, who, according to Mark,
had now been three hours upon the cross. If, further, Mark be
right in his statement of time, it is not easy to see how the rest
of his narrative, or that of Luke, can stand ; for in Luke, as we
have seen (xxii. 66), the Sanhedrim is not assembled until the
morning of the day following the evening on which Jesus is said
to have been arrested ; and how between, let us say, the hours of
5 and 9 A.M., there would be time for the examination before the
Sanhedrim, for the transfer of Jesus from the great council to the
praitorium of Pilate, and thence to the house where Herod was
^ Supernatural Religion, iii. 419-425.
438 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
staying, as well as for the return from Herod to the Eonian
judgement-hall, and, lastly, for the journey thence to Golgotha, it
is hard (we may very fairly say, impossible), to conceive.
We have, then, in the narratives of the crucifixion a series of
incidents, not one of which is related with that degree of con-
sistency which would entitle it to a moment's consideration in a
British court of justice; and we have to remember that it is
preceded by antecedents which have been shown to be absolutely
impossible.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF JESUS
Many marvels and prodigies are said to have accompanied and i
followed the crucifixion and death of Jesus ; but here, as else-
where, the fourth Gospel is utterly opposed to the Synoptic
narratives. The Johannine writer apparently knows nothing of
all these wonders ; at least, he has not cared to notice them. In
Mark (xv. 33), with whom Luke agrees, we are told that from the
sixth to the ninth hour there was a thick darkness over all the
land, and (xv. 38) that when Jesus gave up the ghost the veil of
the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom ; but no
visible or sensible cause is assigned for this phenomenon. In
Matthew (xxvii. 51) we have the same story of the rending of the
veil at the moment of his death ; but here the cause is an earth-
quake, which also split the rocks ^ and opened the cave sepulchres.
Out of these opened graves, ' many bodies of the saints which slept
arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went
into the holy city and appeared unto many.'
All that we have to do is to range in their order the pro-
positions which are involved in this astounding passage. In the
first place, the darkness was not the result of an ordinary eclipse
which (as was known to Thucydides ^ four hundred years before)
1 The rending of the veil is one of the occurrences as to which it is difficult
to see whence the evangelists could be supposed to receive their information.
Would the chief priests, who alone had access to the sanctuary, be likely to reveal
it ? See further. Supernatural Religion^ iii. 425.
2 ii. 28.
439
440 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOKDS [Book IV.
can take place only at the new moon. Yet the gospel of Mco-
demus absurdly attributes to the Jews the opinion that this
darkness, occurring at the Paschal full moon, was an ordinary
Bvent. The assertion is ridiculous. An incident so marked as the
Bnveloping of a whole land (the text says, of all the inhabited
world) in darkness, must have made a profound impression and
tiave been . also duly recorded. Hence much toil has been
)estowed on attempts to verify this extraordinary event ; but
Qothing better has been obtained than an extract in Eusebius
from Phlegon, which at most fixes only the Olympiad, i.e. brings
bhe event within a limit of four years. The attempt to corro-
borate the narrative by reference to eclipses which are said to
have taken place at the death of Csesar or Komulus is mere folly.
jAs for Eomulus, we might as well bring forward an eclipse at the
/death of Herakles, or on the chaining up of Prometheus ; and at
the death of Caesar not only did the sun, according to Virgil,^
grow pale, but the Alps were shaken to their base — events which
we know did not take place. The truth of one statement cannot
be proved by bringing forward another which is false. The com-
parison is forced on us that as all Nature is described as agitated
when Caesar falls or Balder is slain, so also in the Gospels it
mourns when the Messiah dies.
The time during which Jesus hung upon the cross involves a
multitude of difficulties and contradictions. According to the
fourth Evangelist (xix. 31-37) the Jews requested Pilate to insure
the avoidance of pollution to the Sabbath by applying what was
called the crurifragium, and so removing the bodies at once. The
soldiers are accordingly ordered to break the legs of the prisoners.
This is done in the case of the two fellow-sufferers with Jesus ;
but not in that of Jesus, because they find him already dead. To
assure himself, however, of this fact, one of the soldiers pierces his
side with his spear, the result being an outflow of blood and water,
and also the fulfilment of the two prophecies which said that a
bone of him shall not be broken, and that they shall look on him
1 Geo. i. 475-478.
Chap. XIIL] THE PASSION 441
whom they pierced. It is impossible that the Synoptic writers
should have passed these incidents in silence, if they had occurred.
None of the three gives any hint of them ; and Mark concludes the
tale (xv. 43) by saying that the evening had already come when
Joseph of Arimathea begged the body of Jesus. Even at that
late hour Pilate marvels that death had occurred so soon ; but this
fact goes to prove that the order for the crurifragium had not been
given. But, otherwise, the tale is absolutely incredible. Here are
Eoman soldiers, the most disciplined, perhaps, that the world has
ever seen, charged to carry out a certain order, and they fail to do
so because, in one case, they judge it to be unnecessary. One of
them, however, has some migivings, but to make matters sure
substitutes a device of his own, in place of strict obedience to
orders; and his action is so overruled because there are two
prophecies which would otherwise remain unfulfilled.^
The first Synoptic evangelist has, it is true, supplied in the
earthquake a force quite adequate to the rending of a veil; but
even conservative apologists have admitted that an earthquake,
which split the rocks and rent asunder a flexible substance like a
curtain, would have thrown down no small part of the solid
building ; but we have no evidence that any such event occurred.
At once, then, the whole account is seen to belong to the region of
what the Greek called mytlios, to which our Anglicised ' myth ' has
imparted a slightly different connotation; but, further, it may
most reasonably be urged that, if such an incident had taken
place, it must have been constantly referred to by the apostles as
amongst the strongest proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus. In
point of fact, if the least credit is to be given to the narrative of
the Acts, it was clean forgotten ; and although the epistle to the
Hebrews (x. 19-20) draws a pointed inference from the temple veil
in reference to the priesthood of Jesus, it says not one word about
its having been rent at the time of the crucifixion.
The story of the resurrection of the saints from the graves
tin-own open by the earthquake is found only in the first Gospel ;
^ See, for these prophecies, Sujiernatural Religion, iii. 433.
442 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
and as we have already seen that the narratives of the raising of
Lazarus, of the daughter of laeiros, and of the widow's son at
N'ain are all unhistorical, so must this incident also be dismissed
at once as wholly without foundation in fact. After reaching
this conclusion by the road of historical criticism, we must ask
further the purpose of such a prodigy. It could not have refer-
ence to the spiritual growth of the raised persons, for they are
all raised at the same moment. If, again, they woke to conscious-
ness as soon as Jesus died — i.e. if they rose on the Friday evening,
but did not go into Jerusalem till the beginning of the following
week, after what must be called the phenomenal or sensible
resurrection of Jesus, where were they in the interval? and,
again, to what life were they raised? When Lazarus and the
centurion's daughter were raised, they need food and they receive
it. They return, in short, to the ordinary conditions of human
life. In this case, these risen saints must have needed hospitality.
If they did not need it, they were phantoms like those whom
Virgil mentions as having been seen in the dusk when Caesar
died; or, in other words, this was not a resurrection of dead
persons at all, in the received sense of the term. Finally, we
have to ask, what became of this large body of men who had
returned to life from the dead ? ^ An answer is scarcely needed.
The tale is a mere legend, which has grown up from that associa-
tion of ideas which linked the image of the Messiah with the
notion of a resurrection of the just.
It may, perhaps, be thought that the third evangelist, by making
Jesus expire after commending his spirit into his Father's hands,
^ Dean AKord, declaring that their graves or sepulchres were opened at the
moment of the earthquake, adds that inasmuch as Jesus is the firstfruits from
the dead, the bodies of the saints in these sepulchres did not rise till he rose
(that is, for some thirty-six hours after the earthquake), and that, having appeared
to many after his resurrection, 'possibly during the forty days,' they 'went up
with him into his glory. ' This is very wonderful. The opening of the sepulchres
would only expose the bodies within them to the attacks of beasts and birds of
prey. Of the appearances of these saints, during the forty days, nothing is said ;
nor is any hint given in the Acts, that when Jesus went up into the heaven, a
large company ascended up visibly with him. Archbishop Thomson seems to have
Chap. XIII.] THE PASSION 443
supplies an adequate reason for the exclamation of the centurion,
' Certainly this man was just' (xxiii. 47), while Mark represents
him as saying that Jesus was a Son of God, merely because he
cried out with a loud voice immediately before his death (xv. 39).
Hence it might be urged that the narrative of Luke may be
regarded as the more trustworthy, were it not that we are dealing
now with a long series of incidents, of which every one is seen
to be unhistorical, while not a few are palpable fictions; and
almost the next step brings us to a fresh marvel in the statement
that all the spectators returned to Jerusalem weeping and beating
their breasts — a fact of which we have elsewhere not the faintest
trace, and which embodies seemingly the Christian sentiment of
a later generation.
Neither is it necessary to dwell long on the spear-wound in
the side of Jesus. It is recorded only in the fourth Gospel, and
may, therefore, be set aside at once as deserving of no credit. But
the passage which relates it is ambiguous; and the word used^
may denote either a mere needle-prick, or scratch, or a mortal
wound. We cannot, therefore, say that the weapon used was the
javelin or the spear. From the later passage, however, where
Jesus is described as bidding Thomas thrust his hand into his
side, it would seem to have made a large opening. Nor does the
word translated side determine whether the wound was inflicted
in a vital part; and all that medical science attests is the fact
that if the lance pierced the body within a few minutes after
death, while the blood is still fluid, blood would have flowed
without water. If, at a later time, nothing would have flowed;
thought that the matter was explained by supposing that * they returned to the
dust again after this great token of Christ's quickening power had been given
to many.' The statement has not even the testimony of one of the Gospels in
support of it. See further, Colenso, Natal Sermons, second series, 124. The
assertion of Dr. Alford that these saints could not rise before Jesus, because Jesus
was the firstfruits of them that slept, is a virtual denial of the fact of the raising
of Lazarus, of the daughter of laeiros, and the son of the widow at Nain, as also
of the stories told of Elijah and Elisha in the Old Testament writings. What
does this implicit rejection mean ?
444 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
but in no case would blood and water have been poured out.
Finally, we have here one of those Messianic interpretations of
prophecy which, in every case, lead us away from the region of
fact to that of fiction. The passage in Zechariah (xii. 10) is a
mere figure or metaphor, which is here hardened into a visible
incident.
The accounts of the burial of Jesus are not more harmonious.
According to Matthew (xxvii. 57) a rich man named Joseph^
of Arimathea went alone to Pilate, who gave an order that the
body should be delivered to him. Joseph then wrapped the body
in a clean linen cloth, and having laid it in his own new tomb
hewn out of the solid rock, rolled a great stone to the door, and
departed. Here, then, we see that the strength of one man
suffices to move the stone. The account of Mark (xv. 42) and
Luke (xxiii. 50) is much the same, the chief difference being that
the act of Joseph is described by Mark as being a bold one. In
the fourth Gospel we have, as usual, a very different version.
^ The third evangelist speaks of this member of the Sanhedrim as a good and
upright man who had refused to join the majority in their condemnation of Jesus
(xxiii. 50, 51). These words seem to have a direct bearing on the historical
trustworthiness of the repeated predictions put into the mouth of Jesus as to the
details of his coming sufferings. These predictions all take the form of an in-
vincible necessity. He must endure certain specified indignities, and a violent
death accompanied by many marks of shame ; but in this case there must also be
agents to inflict them ; and if these agents do not act of their own free will, they
must be constrained by an irresistible power so to act as to bring about the things
ordained * by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God ' (Acts ii. 23).
Now, however unlikely, it is quite conceivable that Joseph of Arimathea might
have won over the whole body of his fellow-councillors to his own opinion ; and
in this case there would have been no condemnation of Jesus, and therefore no
violent death. There would, in short, have been a defeat of the divine counsels.
But Joseph is praised here for resisting the schemes of the rest of the Sanhedrim ;
and as to the matter generally, they who condemned Jesus either acted as free
moral agents, or they did not. If they were constrained to act so as to bring
about certain predetermined results, then they were not acting freely as moral
creatures, and as they could not be responsible for their acts, so neither could
they be blamed for them. So far as the evangelists are concerned, there is no
morality in the matter. Certain predictions must be fulfilled, and certain persons
must be forthcoming to fulfil them. The inference is, that the alleged utterance
of these predictions by Jesus on the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem is not
historical. As to the nature of the necessity proclaimed in these predictions, see
Appendix B.
Chap. XIII] THE PASSION 445
Far from going boldly, Joseph, 'for fear of the Jews' (xix. 38)
goes secretly; and after he receives the body he is joined by
Mcodemus, who brings about a hundredweight of myrrh and aloes,
and helps him to wrap the body in linen clothes, and to place
him in a sepulchre, never yet used, in a garden. This Johannine
narrative may be soon dismissed. We have seen long ago that
the conversation with Mcodemus is unhistorical, and that Nico-
demus himself is a visionary personage. Hence the introduction
of his name at once suffices to mark the story as a fiction. In
the other Gospels there is no actual embalming, although there
is an intention to embalm the body, and such a purpose implies
necessarily the complete rejection, or absence, of any notion that
this body would soon be restored to life. In Luke (xxiii. 56 ;
xxiv. 1) the women set about preparing spices on their return
from the grave : in Mark (xvi. 1) they do not buy the spices
till the Sabbath is ended. Matthew alone has no reference to
any embalming; and in this Gospel we have manifestly the
earliest form of a legend which grew up while it was still remem-
bered that the embalming of the body of Jesus really preceded his
death, when the woman at Bethany 'anointed his body for the
burial/
As to the grave itself, according to the Synoptics, it is the
property of Joseph, who had constructed it for himself, and in
which he lays the body with all deliberation. In the fourth
Gospel we have a garden, of which the other narratives make
no mention, and the sepulchre is clearly not the property of
Joseph. It is chosen simply from its proximity to the place of
crucifixion, and because the immediate approach of the Sabbath
rendered urgent haste necessary. The contradiction is complete.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE
According to a story given only in the first Gospel (xxvii. 62)
the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate and informed him
that, during his lifetime, Jesus the deceiver had announced that
after three days he would rise from the dead. They demanded
accordingly that the sepulchre should be made sure till the
third day, lest the disciples should come by night and steal the
body and say to the people, ' He is risen from the dead,' and thus
the last error should be worse than the first. Pilate, without
further comment says, 'You have a watch; go and make it as
sure as you can.' The guards, thus placed, were astonished on
the following morning at seeing an angel of the Lord descend
from heaven and roll back the stone from the door of the sepulchre.
This sight made them shake and become as dead men. The angel
then told the two Maries, who had come to the sepulchre, to go
and announce to the disciples that Jesus was going before them
into Galilee. As they depart on this errand, some of the watch,
getting the better of their terror, go into the city and show the
chief priests all the things that were done. Upon this the chief
priests assemble the Sanhedrim, and, after taking solemn counsel
together, bribe the soldiers to say that the disciples came by
night and stole the body away while they slept, promising
that, if the matter should come to the governor's ears, they
would persuade Pilate, and secure the guards against all punish-
ment.
Chap. XIV.] THE PASSION 447
Of this notable t^le the other Gospels know nothing. Let us
see the several propositions stated or implied in it.
(1) It asserts that the Jewish Sanhedrim, or some of its
members, had a perfect knowledge that Jesus had foretold his
resurrection from the dead on the third day. But, according to
Matthew and the other Synoptic writers, Jesus had not an-
nounced either his Messiahship or his sufferings, death, and
resurrection even to the disciples until a comparatively late
period in his ministry. It is expressly stated that they did not
in the least understand the meaning of his words when he spoke
of these coming events ; and we have seen that the declarations
in the fourth Gospel are throughout unhistorical. Thus we have
the astounding phenomenon that the enemies of Jesus are per-
fectly acquainted with the meaning of expressions which his
disciples altogether failed to understand, or refused to believe.
But if so, whence did they derive their knowledge ? Surely not
by any process of intuition or by what is called inspiration ; and
if not from Jesus himself, then also, surely, not from the disciples,
who, if the Gospel narratives deserve any credit, never expected any
sensible resurrection. Not only do these enemies of Jesus believe
these declarations, but they nowhere say or imply that they had
any diabolical origin ; and yet they think that they may be able
to prevent their fulfilment, and to put down the teaching which
they hate and dread.
(2) We infer from the story that the other evangelists knew
nothing of these incidents. Yet it is inexplicable and incredible
that, if they occurred, the apostles should not make the slightest
reference to them in their teachings after the sensible resurrec-
tion of Jesus ; but no such reference is to be found throughout the
book of the Acts.
(3) We infer, further, that the fears of the two Maries, whose
one perplexity is as to the weight of the stone before the sepulchre,
are quite unfounded, for if the soldiers were faithful to their trust,
they would not and could not have allowed the women to touch
the stone ; and if they were ready to connive at this, they were
448 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
quite able to remove it for them. Joseph of Arimathea, it would
seem, was able to move it himself (Matt, xxvii. 60).
(4) The story also implies that the guards believed in the power
of the Sanhedrim to persuade Pilate not to punish soldiers who
admitted that they had committed -the grave military offence of
sleeping at their post. But every Eoman soldier in Jerusalem
must have been perfectly aware that the Sanhedrim and the
governor lived in a state of chronic and cordial enmity, and,
knowing this, the guards would have set a very low price on
the intercessory powers of Scribes and Pharisees.
(5) But (the most astonishing circumstance of all), the story
asserts that the priests and Scribes believe the report of the guards.
Being up to that moment convinced that Jesus was a deceiver, and
professing, of course, to put no faith in the predictions of his
bodily resurrection, they now at once believe the story of the
guards, and feel assured that he is risen from the dead. But
unless they were all bereft of their senses (and even the history of
the Acts, if in any degree trustworthy, does not exhibit them in
quite so poor a light), they must in their turn have charged the
soldiers with wilful and impudent lying, and have instantly
informed Pilate of their breach of trust. As to the tale of the
descent of the angel and the rolling away of the stone, they must
have treated this as a mere blind and cheat to turn away attention
from their disregard of military duty. In short, their conclusion
must inevitably have been that the guard had allowed the body to
be stolen, or connived at it, and that the story about the angel was
simply a lie with a circumstance. Instead of this, the whole
Sanhedrim, after solemn debate, agree to bribe the soldiers,
necessarily as being convinced of the perfect truth of their story,
and as only anxious to keep up the idea that a man was still dead
whom they thoroughly well knew to be alive.
(6) It further implies that these things did not come to the
governor's ears. The reader may judge for himself of the likeli-
hood of Pilate's remaining ignorant that a prisoner whom he had
crucified a few hours before, was again alive, and that a college of
Chap. XIV.] THE PASSION 449
seventy men had in solemn conclave bribed his guards to cheat him
with a preconcerted story. The reader may further judge whether,
on learning this, Pilate would have been iuclined to deal more
gently with the soldiers, or whether these circumstances would
have placed his relations with the Sanhedrim on a more friendly
footing.
Well may the story be dismissed as being not less absurd than
it is f alse.^ The Sanhedrim may have been dull ; they would not
have been so stupid as to bribe soldiers with the words here put
into their mouth. How could soldiers be supposed to know what
took place while, by their own admission, they were asleep ? It is
a malicious tale wilfully invented; and the evangelist himself
supplies the clue to the growth of this fiction when he tells us that
a certain saying connected with this tale was commonly reported
among the Jews down to his day. This very confession is proof
that the evangelist was writing after the lapse of many genera-
tions ; and the saying which had thus been handed down to him,
was that the disciples of Jesus had stolen away his body. But
this very saying (if we allow that it was traditional), implies clearly
that no guard was set, that no guard saw an angel, or returned to
announce the bodily resurrection, or was bribed by the great
council. If the saying originated among the Jews, it would be
really an objection made by them to the assertion of a bodily
resurrection, for it implies a thorough disbelief in such a resurrec-
tion, whereas the narrative of Matthew, grafted upon the saying,
is based on its absolute certainty. The legend is thus traced
unmistakeably to a Christian source, and belongs to a comparatively
late time. The details are just those which might suggest them-
selves to believers, fervent in their faith or their credulity and
wholly innocent of all discrimination of character.^
1 Colenso, Natal Sermons^ second series, sermon xi. p. 125.
^ Justin, who clearly had another story before him in the ' Memorials of the
Apostles,' directly charges the Jews with so slandering the Christians. * When,'
he says, ' you knew that he had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, as
the prophets had foretold, not only did you not repent . . . but at that time you
selected and sent forth from Jerusalem, throughout the land, chosen men, saying
2F
450 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
that "the atheistic heresy of the Christians had arisen . . . from a certain
Jesus, a Galilsean impostor, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by
night from the tomb where he had been laid, when he was unloosed from the
cross, and they now deceive men, saying that he has arisen from the dead and
ascended into heaven."' Justin's reiterated quotation of the passage may be
taken as showing that he received it from the ' Memorials of the Apostles ' ; but
it does not prove that the story originated with non-Christian Jews. The Jews
had not the right of inflicting crucifixion in the days of Pilate. See further,
Supernatural Religion^ i. 339, 343.
f
CHAPTEE XV
THE BODILY EESURRECTION
The narratives of the bodily resurrection exhibit, if possible, even
greater inconsistencies and contradictions than those which have
preceded them.
In Matthew (xxviii. 1), we read that ' Mary Magdalene and
the other Mary ' {i.e. two women), came to the sepulchre as the
day began to dawn ; that there was a great earthquake, and that the
messenger of the Lord (one angel), came down from heaven, and,
rolling away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, sat upon it.
Then, bidding the two women not to be afraid, he told them that
Jesus was risen, and that his disciples should see him in Galilee,
whither he had preceded them. It is added that the women obey,
and depart on the errand, running in order to bring the tidings the
more speedily to the disciples, and that while they are so running,
Jesus himself meets them and tells them just what the angel had
said to them a few minutes before, thus making the apparition
and message of the angel, and perhaps also the earthquake, quite
superfluous.
In the last chapter of the second Gospel, three women (Mary
Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome), come to the
sepulchre, after the sun had risen, for the purpose of anointing the
body of Jesus. As in the first Gospel, they are at a loss to know
how they shall remove the stone from the door; but when they
reach the spot, instead of seeing an angel sitting on the stone, they
simply see it rolled on one side (of the great earthquake we hear
451
452 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
nothing) : and it is only when they enter the sepulchre (which the
women in the first Gospel do not enter), that they see one ' young
man ' (sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment),
who gives them the same message which the angel gives to the
two Maries in Matthew. But they altogether disobey the angelic
command. ' Going out quickly, they fled from the tomb, for they
were trembling and in ecstasy, and they said nothing to any one,
for they were afraid ' (xv. 8). But Jesus does not meet them or
stop them in their flight, and therefore, of course, gives them no
message for the disciples.
In the third Gospel (xxiii. 55), we are told that the women
(seemingly the large company who had come up to Jerusalem
with Jesus from Galilee), visited the sepulchre very early in the
morning (xxiv. 1), bringing spices for the purpose of embalming the
l)ody — they, like the women in the other Gospels, having not the
slightest expectation that he would rise again. These also found
the stone rolled away from the tomb, and, entering the sepulchre,
they see two men in shining garments, who ask them why they
seek the living among the dead, and remind them (of what every
one of them had utterly forgotten), that Jesus had distinctly fore-
warned them of his sufferings, death, and bodily resurrection ; but
no message is given that the disciples are to go to Galilee to see
Jesus, nor does Jesus appear to them himself as he does to the two
Maries in Matthew. The evangelist then adds that they went and
told all these things to the eleven and all the rest, and that the
apostles especially received their information from Mary Magdalene,
Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, the names being for the third
time different. Far from believing their report, the apostles deride
them as babblers of nonsense.^ Still Peter, incredulous as he is,
has curiosity enough to go to the tomb, where, stooping down, he
beholds the linen clothes laid by themselves, and, fully convinced
by this somewhat slight evidence, departs, ' wondering in himself
at that which has come to pass.'
In the fourth Gospel (xx. 1), Mary Magdalene comes alone
^ X^pos, Liddell and Scott, s.v., Luke xxiv. 11.
Chap. XV.] THE PASSION 453
' early, when it was yet dark ' (in Mark the sun had risen), and
sees the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Where then was
the guard who thus suffered her to approach near enough to find
out, in the dark, that the sepulchre was open ? Instead of entering
the tomb, as the women do in the second and third Gospels, or
seeing any angel or man, as they do in all the Synoptics, Mary
Magdalene at once hastens back to Peter, James, and the beloved
disciple, and informs them not that Jesus is risen, but that ' they
took the Master from the tomb, and we do not know where they
laid him ' ; thus implying that she had not gone thither alone, as
stated apparently in the first verse. On hearing this, Peter and
the other disciple hasten to the tomb, both running, but the other
disciple outruns Peter, and, stooping down at the sepulchre door,
looks in and sees the linen clothes lying, but does not go in.
Peter then comes up, and, going in, sees further that the napkin
which had been about the head of Jesus was not lying with the
linen clothes, but was wrapped together in a place by itself. The
other disciple then goes in, sees, and believes.^ "Without waiting
for anything further, the two disciples go home again ; but Mary
lingers, weeping, not having reached their assurance of conviction ;
and why, we may ask, did not the two apostles, seeing her in this
grief, stay to comfort her, and make her share their belief that
Jesus was risen ? Stooping as she wept, and looking into the
sepulchre, she saw two heavenly messengers in white, who, as
they came since Mary and the two disciples stood at the door,
must have entered through the solid rock or earth. These angels
are seated, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where
the body of Jesus had lain. In Mark the young man is seated
on the right side. When they ask Mary the cause of her sorrow,
she replies that it is because she knows not whither the body of
Jesus has been taken. Without waiting for any further words
^ The visit is related in words which are almost verbatim the same with those
in which Luke records the visit of Peter, the only difference being that the credit
of being the first believer in the bodily resurrection is here transferred to the
beloved disciple.
454 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
from the angels, of whose real nature she seems to have no notion,
Mary turns herself back and sees Jesus standing, but fails to
recognise him.^ The question of Jesus, ' Why weepest thou ?
whom seekest thou ? ' sounds to her as coming from no familiar
voice ; and as she looks at him she sees, apparently, nothing especi-
ally spiritual or remarkable about his person, for, supposing him
to be the gardener,^ she beseeches him, if he has taken the body
away, to tell her where he has placed it. Jesus answers by
simply calling her by her name ; and the spell which has thus
far held her is dissolved. Mary, turning round, greets him as
Rabboni, her Master, and seemingly seeks to touch him. But
although in the Synoptics Jesus, on his first appearance, allows
the women to embrace his feet, here he says to Mary Magdalene,
* Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father ' ; and
then he gives her a message for his ' brethren,' which, however, is
not a charge (as in the other Gospels) that they should return
to Galilee in order to meet him, but the announcement, ' I
ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and to your
God.'
This tale is, in almost every particular, a totally different story,
which excludes the Synoptic narratives ; and the latter again differ
from each other in most important particulars. As these, the
Synoptic accounts, cannot be dismissed as less trustworthy than
the fourth Gospel, the Johannine story must at once be cast aside
as wholly without foundation, while the contradictions of the
Synoptic narratives are such as to deprive them of all credit.
^ In the Synoptics the women know him at once, at the mere sound of his
voice, and, as in Matthew xxviii. 9, hold him by the feet and worship him.
2 We may remember that, when Jesus walks on the sea of Galilee, the dis-
ciples in the boat do not recognise him until he speaks to them. So in the
transfiguration he is said to have been metamorphosed before them ; in other
words, his form was changed. The inability of those who knew him best to
recognise him is evidently increased after the resurrection. Apart from Mary
Magdalene, the two disciples on the way to Emmaus fail to know him.
He is, in short, polymorphic; and the reasons why he should be so are
theological as well as my thioal. — ^M^erna^wroZ Religion, ii. 283, 291, 293. See
Appendix B.
Chap. XV.] THE PASSION 455
Hence, of what is called the historical resurrection of Jesus, we
have no evidence whatever.^
Beyond this point we are in no way obliged to advance.
Volumes might be filled with an examination of the pleadings of
harmonists who refuse to grapple with the real question at issue,
namely, the glaring inconsistencies, contradictions, impossibilities,
and even deliberate and malicious fictions, in the reports of what
are clearly supposed by the evangelists to be the same incidents.
^ The theological questions involved in the terms Uprising, Anastasis, Resur-
rection, lie beyond the bounds of my present subject ; and any detailed examina-
tion of them would, in a historical inquiry, be obviously out of place. It may be
enough to remark that nothing is gained in the way of historical testimony from
the belief which the Apostle Paul (in those epistles, or portions of epistles, which
may be taken as genuine) expresses in a risen Christ. He nowhere speaks of the
uprising as historical. We may further note that the term resurrection is am-
biguous. Mr. Maurice, in his Theological Essays, viii., believing firmly in the
uprising, denies distinctly that the material particles deposited in the grave are
ever reanimated. Butler, in his Analogy, maintains seemingly the same position.
According to him the body is a living power, and living powers cannot be de-
stroyed. Hence the moment of the change which we call death is the moment
of Anastasis, or rising up from the dead. It is strange that the Analogy of Butler
should have been for generations used familiarly in the schools of Oxford without
any marked attention being called to his most significant statements. It may
now be some thirty years ago since Dr. Tait thought it to be his duty to speak
of some of the London clergy as ' not believing in the resurrection of Christ.' Dr.
Tait, of course, knew that any one may accept heartily the whole argument in
the first chapter of Butler's Analogy, and, at the same time, reject not less em-
phatically, as a string of fables, the stories related in the Gospels of a material
reanimation of what we call the dead body of Jesus. It was impossible that the
thinking portion of his clergy, who had critically examined these narratives,
could put faith in a series of absolute contradictions ; and if they have before
them only a number of stories which are throughout inconsistent with each other,
it is obvious that they have no historical grounds for saying that they believe in
some physical resurrection, the conditions of which were quite different from
those recorded in the Gospels.
CHAPTEE XVI
APPEARANCES OF JESUS AFTER THE BODILY RESURRECTION
If we accept the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles as trust-
worthy, the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection of his body-
extended over forty days, at the end of which time he ascended
visibly from Mount Olivet into the heavens. For so long a period,
the appearances were but few in number, and for the most part
they were but momentary. He comes, utters a few words, and
vanishes, the words being commonly utterances similar to those
made before his passion. The chief exception is the conversation
with the two disciples on their Sabbath day's journey to Emmaus ;
but although this extends apparently over some hours, it is only
just before he vanishes that they recognise his countenance and
form. "We must look at each Christophany separately.
In the first Gospel (xxvi. 32) Jesus is described as saying to
his disciples that, after he is risen again, he will go before them
into Galilee ; nor does he say anything to them about appearances
elsewhere. In accordance with this the angel of the Lord is
represented as bidding the women go quickly and tell the disciples
that ' he goes before you into Galilee. There shall ye see him ;
lo, I have told you.' These words imply, with the utmost clearness,
that they were not to see him except in Galilee, or at the least
not until they had returned into Galilee ; and, in further accord-
ance with this idea, we are informed (after the episode about the
Roman guards and the Sanhedrim) that the eleven disciples went
away into Galilee, where, we are told now for the first time, that
Jesus had pointed out a particular mountain as the place of meet-
ing (Matt, xxviii. 16). The Gospel closes with the statement that
466
t
Chap. XVI.] THE PASSION 457
Jesus appeared to them there, and charged them to go and teach
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Breath. Nothing is said about the ascension
of Jesus, or about any later appearances in Galilee or elsewhere.
Thus, taking verses 6-9 along with verses 16-20, we have a
coherent narrative; but in verses 9, 10 we have what seems evi-
dently to be a later insertion. Whether it be so or not, this much
is certain, that they inform us of an apparition of Jesus, who simply
repeats the message just given to the women by the angel ; and we
may reasonably ask the purpose of this manifestation. It assuredly
was not needed to remove any disbelief on the part of the women,
for they are described as running to bear to the disciples the tidings
which they had received from the angel. In the first Gospel, then,
we have only one appearance of Jesus to the disciples ; and this
takes place on a distant Galilsean hill. Of any renewal of the
old intercourse we hear nothing. The charge to preach and to
baptize is given, and the Gospel comes to an end ; but not without
the significant statement that, at this solitary manifestation, ' some
doubted' (xxviii. 17).
In the second Gospel (xvi. 2), as we have seen, Mary of Mag-
dala and Mary the mother of James, with Salome, come to the
tomb with spices very early on the first day of the week, but after
the rising of the sun. There they see the angel, or young man,
whose command that they should announce to the disciples the
tidings of the resurrection they disobey from sheer terror. They
say nothing to any one ; and we have here, thus far, no manifesta-
tion of the risen Jesus. At this point the readers of the Eevised
Version are informed that the last eleven verses of this chapter
may perhaps be spurious. The two oldest Greek manuscripts
omit these verses, and other copies exhibit a different supplement.
But this is of very slight importance. What is noteworthy is,
that these concluding verses profess to give a history of all that
follows the burial of Jesus. First (xvi. 9), after his rising he
appeared to Mary Magdalene, who goes to those who had been
with him ; and these, as they mourned and wept, refused to believe
458 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
her story (v. 11). He next appeared in another form^ to two of
them as they walked on their way into the country. So far, this
looks like a tradition which Luke may have expanded into the
narrative of the journey to Emmaus. But when these go and tell
the news to the rest, they ohtain no more credit than Mary Mag-
dalene. Then follows the third manifestation to the eleven them-
selves, as they sat at meat. On this occasion he upbraids them
with their unbelief and hardness of heart; and then proceeds
to give them his final charge about the preaching of the Gospel
throughout all the world. When these commands have been
given, Jesus, we are told, was received up into heaven, and sat
down at the right hand of God.
Here we have no notes of time ; but as Mary Magdalene is
certainly described as being at this time at Jerusalem with the
rest of the company, it would follow that the three manifestations
in these concluding verses of the second Gospel alL took place at
or near Jerusalem, and on the same day, the ascension immediately
following the third. We have seen that the first evangelist makes
no mention of any ascension. Here we have an ascension which
takes place on the day of the resurrection. The concluding state-
ment is that they went forth and preached everywhere, ' the Master
working with them and confirming the word by the signs which
followed,' thus implying that there was no Pentecostal outpouring
of the Spirit, or, at all events, that the apostles or missioners of
Jesus were immediately, after that outpouring, scattered in all parts
•of the world — a statement explicitly contradicted and excluded
by the whole narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
In the third Gospel, we are informed distinctly that on the very
day of the resurrection (xxiv. 13) two of them left Jerusalem to
walk to the village of Emmaus, distant about seven miles,^ and
that, while they were discussing recent events, Jesus drew near to
them ; but their eyes were holden (i.e. a preternatural power held
^ See p. 454, note 2.
- The narrative so far agrees with Mark xvi. 12. In both there are two dis-
ciples : both leave Jerusalem early on the morning of the first day of the week ;
and both walk into the country. But of the sequel Mark says nothing.
Chap. XVL] THE PASSION 459
them, xxiv. 16), so that they could not recognise him. When
Jesus asks them the subject of their sorrowful conversation, they
express their surprise at his ignorance, and add that in the crucified
Jesus they had hoped to find *him who should have redeemed
Israel,' thus clearly implying the extinction of their belief in Jesus
as the Messiah, and their continued disbelief or forgetfulness of his
reiterated and detailed predictions on the last journey from Galilee
to the holy city. They then tell him of the report of the women
and of Peter as something to which they gave no credence. Jesus,
then, it is said, rebuked them as fools, and slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets had spoken, and pointed out to them that the
Christ or Messiah must suffer these things and so enter into his
glory ; and then, ' beginning at Moses and all the prophets,' he
expounded to them ' in all the writings the things concerning him-
self.' Still they make no sign either of recognition or even of
surprise ; and yet, if they were at all like other men, they must
have had many things to answer to him. Is it possible that they
could fail to express their wonder that the stranger who was thus
learned in Messianic interpretation should profess total ignorance ^
of the events which had within the last few days occurred in
Jerusalem ? Is it possible that they could fail to retort, ' Who art
thou, that knowest all these things so well, and hast reached a faith
far beyond that which we have been able to attain ? Thou art a
believer in Jesus more fervent and thorough than we have been ;
whence did thy conviction come ? ' Instead of this, all that we
are told is that they journeyed on together, and that, on reaching
the village, Jesus made as though he would have gone further, but,
at their entreaty, he went into a house to tarry with them. There,
as he sat at meat with them, he was made known to them in
breaking of bread, and ' vanished out of their sight.' ^
^ If he had known some, he would have known all. If he did not know all,
he would know none. There had been two, or more, severe earthquakes ; and
these are not, commonly, forgotten in a few moments.
2 There are laws which determine the recognition, or non-recognition, of one
man by another. We do not forget those with whom we were in familiar inter-
course a few days ago ; and these disciples had been parted from their Master not
\ R R A oT^
460 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
Leaving for a while the narrative in itself, we may note par-
ticularly that the two disciples rose up the same hour (the day
being still that of the resurrection), and returned to Jerusalem,
where they found the eleven gathered together and heard that
Jesus had been seen by Simon. They then told their own tale ;
and as they spohe {i.e. still on the day of the resurrection), Jesus
himself stood in the midst and greeted them with the salutation
of peace. Then seeing that they took him for a spectre,^ he bade
them handle him and see, and showed them his hands and his feet,
thus implying distinctly that his feet had been nailed as well as
his hands. He then ate before them a piece of a broiled fish and
of an honeycomb ; after which, opening their mind that they might
understand the Scriptures or writings, he spoke to them in the
same tone of thought which had marked his words to the two
disciples on the road to Emmaus. Here, as in the previous
Gospels, repentance and remission of sins are to be preached
among all nations; but nothing is said of baptism or of the
baptismal formula given in the first Gospel ; and, instead of a com-
mand enjoining immediate departure for Galilee, the disciples are
bidden to tarry in Jerusalem till they be endued with power from
on high. The evangelist then adds that Jesus led them out as far
as Bethany (clearly, still on the day of the resurrection), and thence
ascended up to heaven. The disciples, we are told, did obeisance
to him, and, returning to Jerusalem with great joy, were continually
in the temple, praising and blessing God.
Here we have to remark especially that all reference to mani-
festations in Galilee has vanished. The angels or messengers from
eight-and -forty hours. That they should not be reminded of him during his long
exposition, is altogether incredible. It is true that after his disappearance they
ask each other, * Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the
road and opened to us the writings ? ' This, however, implies no recognition. It
merely expresses the depth of feeling stirred up by his comments. In fact, if we
keep to the story, they had, up to the last moment, not even the remotest sus-
picion that the speaker was Jesus himself.
1 Literally, ' took him for a breath,' the word is irvevfia, spiritus. In the story
of the walking on the sea, Mark vi. 49, it is <f>dpTaafia. But we cannot argue
from such words.
Chap. XVI.] THE PASSION 461
heaven do not tell the women to inform the disciples that Jesus is
going before them into Galilee ; and, as in Mark, the appearances
to Simon, to the two disciples, and to the eleven, are either in
Jerusalem or in its immediate neighbourhood. The journey of the
eleven to Galilee in the first Gospel (xxviii. 16) is altogether ex-
cluded, and the disciples are expressly commanded to remain in
the holy city.
Thus at once we have before us two wholly contradictory
narratives, one of which must and both of which may be false. It
is demonstrably certain that if the eleven journeyed into Galilee,
according to the bidding of Jesus before his passion, and of the
angel after his bodily resurrection, they could not at the same time
have remained in Jerusalem, which in Luke they are said to have
done.
In the fourth Gospel, we have (as we have already in part seen)
a narrative wholly irreconcilable with that of either of the
Synoptics, in which the women to whom he first appears embrace
and hold him by the feet. Here Mary Magdalene is charged not
to touch him, because he has not yet ascended to his Father. But
as Jesus bids her go and say that he is ascending ^ to his Father
and to their Father, to his God and their God (xxii. 1 7), and as in
a subsequent interview he allows Thomas to handle him, it seems
to follow that, according to the Johannine evangelist, the ascension
must have taken place at some time between these two manifesta-
tions — in other words, that some of the Chris to j)hanies took place
after the ascension.
The scene described in John xx. 19 is apparently the same as
that which is spoken of in Mark xvi. 11, and Luke xxiv. 36, the
time being the same in each, namely, the evening of the day of the
bodily resurrection. But the expression in the Johannine narrative
that, ' when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled,
Jesus came and stood in the midst,' implies seemingly that Jesus
passed through the doors or walls. At this visit Jesus gives his
apostles, as in the Synoptics, certain final commands, and endows
462 THE FOUR GOSPEIiS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
them with certain powers ; but the mode in which they are given
differs altogether. There is no command to go into all the world
and preach the good news to every creature ; not the least hint
that they are to exercise the power of working physical or palpable
miracles or marvels ; and even the third Gospel tells us merely
that repentance and remission of sins must be preached in the
name of Jesus. In the fourth Gospel, the announcement of re-
mission has resumed a shape which seems to favour what is
popularly known as the power of the keys (xx. 23)} Nor is any-
thing said, in the other Gospels, of the gesture or sign which
accompanies the imparting of this power in the Johannine story.
It cannot, indeed, be too carefully noted that, according to this
evangelist, the apostles, as Jesus breathes on them, then and
thereby, as his words tell them, receive all the affluence of the
Holy Breath which they need for the due discharge of their exalted
office ; and thus the fourth Gospel virtually excludes that story of
the Pentecostal outpouring which we have only in the Acts of the
Apostles.
It must, further, be remarked that as in Luke, so here, all the
manifestations of Jesus take place in Jerusalem, and that except in
the confessedly doubtful supplementary chapter (xxi.) not a word
is said about journeys to, or appearances in, Galilee ; and thus we
are brought to the question of the genuineness of this concluding
record. For us this question resolves itself into the simple inquiry
whether it was written by the author who drew up the previous
chapters ; and the topic is certainly one of very slight significance
or interest. The utterly unhistorical character of the whole Gospel
has been amply shown ; and it matters little whether a few more
unhistorical statements be or be not appended to it, whether by the
same or by any other hand.
^ I do not question the wisdom and the beauty of Dean Stanley's treatment
of this subject, Christian Institutions, chapter vii. But here the apostles are, by
the inspiration of Jesus {he^va-rjaev), invested with a power to be exercised by
them personally : and I think it can scarcely be questioned that this statement
of the fourth Gospel is thrown into a form favourable to the growth of the sacer-
dotal theory.
Chap. XVI.] THE PASSION 463
'Nov must it be forgotten that, in regard to all these latter
narratives, our task was virtually ended with the examination of
the so-called trial before Pilate, when we found that the reports
of every incident belonging to that trial were throughout irre-
concilable, and that, in such tales as that of the Sanhedrim and
the guards, we have to deal with transparent fictions. If we have
not a shred of evidence for the physical or sensible resurrection
there described, it is manifestly a work of supererogation to
examine accounts which relate appearances after that event. This
superfluous task we have undertaken ; and the result is only to
show that the later stories are as shadowy and self-contradictory
as any that have preceded them.
It becomes, therefore, quite unnecessary to examine the so-
called appendix to the Johannine Gospel. Yet it is in itself
curious as a storehouse for the symbolical theology of later ages,
and as exhibiting the growth of a tone of thought which marks
the more complete development of the Christian Church. We
have first the parallelism between the incidents here described
and those which accompanied the first calling of Peter in the
fifth chapter of the third Gospel. But there the number of fishes
in the marvellous draught was indefinite, and the net broke.
Here they are one hundred and fifty and three, and in spite of
their size the net is not broken — a favourite topic with those who
wish to draw a contrast between the Church triumphant and the
Church as militant here, with the meshes of its net broken by the
crowd of good and bad fish inclosed within it. It is scarcely
worth while to remark that here, as in the Synoptics, Jesus asks
for food and eats it before his disciples.
From the fifteenth verse onwards the remainder of the chapter
is taken up with a narrative of the three questions put to Peter,
demanding a threefold assertion of his love and loyalty, to com-
pensate his threefold denial in the house of the high priest, and
also with a reference to the future fortunes of Peter and the
beloved or nameless disciple. But although the lapse of Peter
is thus closely brought home to him, nothing is said about the
464 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
denial and desertion which, as we have seen, Justin extends to
the whole body of the apostles. The idea of the almost immediate
return of the Messiah to judgement still so far retains its force
that the beloved disciple is represented as probably, or possibly,
living to see it — a singular comment on the assertion that the
generation alive during the ministry of Jesus should not pass
away till all be fulfilled. Whether the words which describe the
closing scenes in the life of Peter refer to his alleged death by
crucifixion, or to the mere weakness of old age which sometimes
needs the support of a guide, is a matter of very little consequence
and of very slight interest. When the whole story is apocryphal,
it matters little what becomes of subordinate details.
We have thus already three contradictory narratives of the
period following the crucifixion. To these must be added the
story in the first chapter of the Acts,^ which differs from all of
them. In this book we are informed that the period during
which the Christophanies were vouchsafed was extended precisely
to forty days ; that during this period Jesus was seen to be alive
by many infallible proofs — these proofs, however, as we are told
(x. 41), being given not to all the people, but to a few chosen
witnesses; and that, at the end of this time, while they still
looked for the immediate restoration of the temporal kingdom of
Israel (i. 6), he led them out as far as Mount Olivet, and there,
having charged them that they should not depart from Jerusalem
until the promise of the Father had been fulfilled, was taken up
even as they looked on him, and a cloud received him out of
their sight. ^
In this narrative, as in that of Mark and Luke, all reference to
Galilee is pointedly excluded, and Jerusalem is the one theatre of
^ The question of the authorship and authority of this book has already been
carefully examined.
1 do not know that I have there omitted anything which is material to the
question now before us.
2 With him, according to Dean Alford, ascended the whole company of the
saints whose sepulchres were opened at the earthquake which attended the death
of Jesus. See p. 442.
Chap. XVI.] THE PASSION 465
all the Christophanies. But the account of the Acts is, further,
the only one which relates in detail a visible ascension from the
ground to a celestial abode supposed to be raised above it, and to
the throne on which, by the common anthropomorphic conception,
God the Father sits eternally. In Mark we have merely the
statement that 'after the Master had spoken to them, he was
received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.' In
Luke we are told that he was parted from the disciples while in
the act of blessing them, and was borne up into the heaven. In
Matthew and John there is no reference to any visible ascension.
But the writer of the Acts has learnt that, while the disciples
stood gazing up into heaven after Jesus, two men had placed
themselves^ by their side, clothed in white raiment. Whence
they came we are not told; but nothing is said of a visible
descent from heaven, or of any aerial apparition, as in the case of
the angelic hosts seen in the sky over Bethlehem. These ' men *
tell the disciples, ' This same Jesus who is taken up from you into
heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into
heaven ;' but there is no explicit assurance that the generation then
living should not pass away till all be fulfilled. Without further
questioning these men the disciples returned to Jerusalem, and
there waited until the Spirit was poured out upon them on the
feast of Pentecost.
The absence of any definite promise that the return to judge-
ment shall take place within the lifetime of those then living tends
to show the comparative lateness of this composition. The writer
of the first letter to the Thessalonians, who is probably not Paul,
is under the impression (iv. 1 5) that some, at least, of those to whom
he was writing would be alive at the Parousia, or second advent of
Jesus, and would be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. This
drawing upwards from the earth would be the lot, it is said, of all
saints who may then be living throughout the whole world ; and
we have to face the astronomical difficulty which renders these
passages worthless for whose who have but a slender knowledge
^ irapecffTTqKeiaav, i. 10.
2 a
466 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
of modem astronomy. As long as the earth was regarded as a flat
plane, and the heaven was conceived as a solid firmament in which
the stars were fixed, and heneath which the planets moved as in
grooved courses, it was easy enough to suppose that the inhabitants
of the earth, if drawn up from it, might converge to a focus in the
upper air. But when the earth is known to be spherical, when it
is perceived that the idea of a solid firmament is a delusion, and
that height and depth in reference to the stars or the earth are
purely relative terms, it becomes the merest absurdity to speak of
heaven as placed at some definite spot above the earth, or of the
inhabitants of a sphere rising at the same time from all parts of
that sphere to a common centre placed at some distance above it.
The Copernican system implies that such a dra wing-up of people
from all parts of the earth at the same time would result in an
infinite divergence. It follows, that such a convening of the
saints as is described in this letter to the Thessalonians is im-
possible, and hence that the whole eschatology^ of the New
Testament writings is without foundation, for there is clearly no
warrant whatever for saying that, although the visible manifesta-
tion in the clouds and the visible converging to a common centre
in the upper air cannot take place, yet the great truth of a
chronologically contemporaneous judgement of mankind remains
untouched. It is not so. These features are of the very essence
of the early Christian idea; and if we reject them the whole
notion falls to the ground. It may be true, and it is true, that
the rejection of this ancient eschatology cannot affect the righteous
judgement of God, as exercised whether in this life or any other ;
but assuredly it destroys the idea of that visible spectacle which
the Latin Church has imaged in its sombre hymn, the Dies Irce.
For this reason alone we are absolved from the necessity of
examining the narrative of the Acts historically. If there be no
solid heaven, if there be no one particular spot where God im-
mediately dwells, if the bare idea of such a thing be absurd, it
follows irresistibly that the visible ascent of Jesus from Mount
^ See Appendix F.
Chap. XVL] THE PASSION 467
Olivet is as impossible as the great gathering spoken of in the
Epistle to the Thessalonians. Any further scrutiny is thus doubly
superfluous. The Gospel narratives of the resurrection being
shown to be unhistorical, the narrative of events in the life of
Jesus later than the resurrection loses at once all historical value.
It is not worth while, therefore, to waste many words on the
attempts which have been made to present, in the form of a
coherent narrative, the contradictory accounts of the Christophanies.
The assertion that when Jesus, according to Luke's account,
charged the disciples to remain at Jerusalem, he did not mean to
exclude slight walks or excursions (such as the journey to Galilee)
is pardonable, only because it is clearly a last despairing effort to
evade an insurmountable difficulty. Far from being a slight walk
or excursion, the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee was nearly the
longest which a Jew could undertake within the limits of his own
country ; and it is demonstrably certain that if Jesus had intended
his disciples to remain in Jerusalem till after Pentecost, he could
not possibly have enjoined them to go to Galilee in order to see
him for the first time after the resurrection.
By commanding them to return to Galilee, Jesus was, in fact,
commanding them to return home ; and it can scarcely be doubted
that the tradition embodied in Matthew xxviii. (excluding verses
9-15) is the oldest. This tradition assigned the Christophany (for
at this stage there was seemingly but one) to Galilee. But as time
went on, a natural desire sprang up to show that Jesus had
manifested his victory over bodily death in the very place where
he had appeared to be overcome by it; and as the church at
Jerusalem was more developed and consolidated, so was it also
natural to put into the mouth of Jesus words which would describe
that city as the centre from which the various Christian missions
should radiate. In Matthew (xxviii. 16-20) it is clearly from
Galilee that the apostles are charged to set out on their journeys
for the conversion of the Gentiles. We should thus have two sets
of Christophanies, for those in Galilee would not necessarily be
superseded by the manifestations in or near Jerusalem. They
468 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
might, indeed, be multiplied indefinitely ; and accordingly we have,
in the so-called appendix to the Johannine Gospel, the account of a
Galilsean Christophany not found in any of the Synoptic narratives.
It would be easy to point out other difficulties ; but the task is
almost as superfluous as that of carrying owls to Athens. In the
first Gospel (xxviii. 7) the heavenly messenger or angel distinctly
charges the women to bid the disciples journey into Galilee in
order that they may see Jesus. If these words have any meaning,
they imply that they would not see him until they reached Galilee.
Who sends to a friend in England a message that he should join
him weeks hence in Italy, if he purposes on the same day on
which he sends his message to call at that friend's house in
London? The command enjoining the journey into Galilee
clearly excludes the idea of any earlier Christophany in Jerusalem,
and belongs to an earlier time than that in which a belief in other
manifestations sprang up. No human ingenuity can show that
the two ideas could have grown up side by side. If Jesus was to
appear to the disciples in Jerusalem on the first day of the week,
the angel must have told them, not that they must go into Galilee
to meet him, but that they should see him where they then were
before the sun went down.
Lastly, it may be worth while to remark that the notions of
the evangelists, in this portion of their work especially, betray a
supreme carelessness as to the laws or conditions which regulate
the sensible universe. They know nothing about them, and
manifestly wish to know nothing about them. The body of Jesus
after his resurrection may be embraced and handled ; it has flesh
and bones, and it can eat and drink ; but it passes through walls
or closed doors, or, rather, appears in a room of which the doors are
closed ; and, doing this, it can vanish instantaneously at his will.
Space is for him no difficulty, and time is not needed for the
prosecution of journeys over the tangible earth. The truth is,
that we are dealing with conceptions precisely similar in kind
with those of angelic visitants in Genesis and other Old Testament
writings. These visitants may be seen walking, and may also be
Chap. XVI.] THE PASSION 469
seen to eat, and are also palpable, and able to apply bodily force,
as when they drag Lot within his house and shut his door against
the angry crowd outside ; but although they can do these things,
they are not trammelled by the conditions of human life. Eating
and locomotion are for them no necessities, but merely visionary
operations performed for the benefit of mortal men. With this
conclusion one whole class of expressions used in the Gospels
corresponds with singular closeness. The appearances of Jesus
after his resurrection are all spoken of, strictly, as visions. The
phrase in Acts (i. 3) ^ is just one which would be used to describe
any phantasy or mere optical impression as distinguished from the
sight of a real object in the material or phenomenal world.^ We
have, in short, a number of phrases which point only to visionary
manifestations, and with these a number of statements which
apply to all living men. The two notions are antagonistic ; but
the evangelists were manifestly unaware of the conflict ; and we
must take their ideas and statements as we find them.
After all that has been already said, it may seem almost
useless to advert to other difficulties in these narratives, which yet
may be multiplied almost indefinite^. We may notice, in
passing, the fact that the parting commands of Jesus differ widely
in the several narratives. In one, we have a charge to preach
repentance and remission of sins * in the name of Jesus ' ; in another,
a charge to baptize all nations * in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost,' a formula which is, apparently, un-
heeded in the Acts, where the apostles are represented as baptizing
always * into the name of the Lord Jesus.' The contradiction is
fatal ; but in the same way, we have, as we have already seen in
the Johannine Gospel, an imparting of the Spirit by the breath of
Jesus, while, in the Acts, this has grown into a separate incident
subsequent to the ascension, and his breathing has become * a
rushing mighty wind.'
^ 67rTav6/x€vos.
' The word used in Luke xxiv. 84, and by the writer of 1 Cor. xv., is &^6ri, a
word of the same kind, with which we must class the icpdpr} and ecpavepibdij of
Mark.
470 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL KECOEDS [Book IV.
How these narratives, unhistorical as they have been shown to
be, came into existence, or assumed their present form, it is not
our business to explain ; and once again, at the end of my task, as
at the beginning and throughout it, I must emphatically disclaim
the obligation. Whether a reasonable hypothesis may be advanced
to explain their growth, or whether it may not, the narratives are
not narratives of historical fact. With regard to the records of
incidents subsequent to the bodily or sensible resurrection, we
can but say that the seemingly earlier forms of the tradition give
no precise period during which Christophanies were vouchsafed,
and, indeed, appear to limit them to the one day of the resurrection
itself, which is also the day of ascension. But as the manifesta-
tions were multiplied in the conception of the disciples, it was
natural to extend them to the period suggested by the fact of the
forty days immediately succeeding his baptism. If, however, he
once appeared to the outward senses of his disciples as a conqueror
over physical death, or, as it is called, the grave, he must vanish
unseen, or depart from them visibly, to resume his majesty in
heaven. Our Canonical Gospels give us, chiefly, the former notion :
the latter is found in the Acts, and it carries us at once to the
ascent of Elijah on the fiery chariot. As in that narrative the
descent of his prophetical powers on Elisha is made to depend
on Elisha's seeing his master taken up, so here the disciples are
represented as standing with Jesus and as gazing upwards while
he rises from earth into the heaven.
CHAPTER XVII
ALLEGED WITNESS OF THE APOSTLE PAUL TO THE FACT OF THE
HISTORICAL RESURRECTION
It has been asserted with supreme confidence that, although the
Canonical Gospels, in spite of some difficult or perplexing state-
ments, are trustworthy and accurate historical narratives, yet, if
they had all been lost, the practical difference to Christendom
would not have been overwhelming. As things are, it is urged
that, in these Gospels, we have the testimony of twelve men whose
sincerity and truthfulness cannot be questioned, and on whose
authority every incident related in these records is to be received
as indubitable historical fact. The loss of these Gospels, together
with the Acts of the Apostles, might deprive us of the witness of
these twelve men ; but this loss would be by no means irreparable,
for we could then fall back upon the evidence of one who, in every
sense, was their equal, and who, in a certain sense, was superior to
them all. Although the genuineness of much in the Canonical
books of the New Testament writings has been called into question,
that of the letters to the Eomans, Corinthians, and Galatians, has,
it is argued, never been doubted ; and it is in the first letter to the
Corinthians that we have a solemn statement of the apostle Paul
himself, which completely establishes the truth of the universal
belief of the Christian church in the (bodily, or physical, or
phenomenal, or sensible) resurrection, or anastasis, of Jesus of
Nazareth. This authoritative guarantee covers the whole time
from the arrest of Jesus in the garden to the manifestation vouch-
471
472 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
safed many years later to the apostle himself. The passage in
question, we are told, gives 'a very circumstantial account' not
only *of the testimony on which the belief in the resurrection
rested,' but also of the events to which that testimony is held to
relate. This passage, in the first letter to the Corinthians (xv. 3-8),
runs as follows :— * For I gave over to you among (the) first things
that which I also took from (others), that Christ died on account
of our errors according to the writings, and that he was buried,
and that he has been raised on the third day according to the
writings, and that he became visible to Kephas, then to the twelve.
Then he was made visible to above five hundred brethren once for
all, of whom the more remain till now, but some also fell asleep.
Then he became manifest to James, then to all the apostles. Last
of all, as it were to the child untimely born, he became visible
to me also.'
With reference to these sentences two questions at once suggest
themselves. Can the account here given be legitimately regarded
as in a high degree circumstantial ? If it may, from whom does
the account come ? The genuineness of the passage cannot, it is
clear, be assumed as wholly beyond reach of challenge, unless it
be first proved that it is found in a book the text of which has
never been tampered with; and this is a proposition which can
scarcely be maintained with regard to any one of the New Testa-
ment writings. This question of genuineness will be forced upon
us in the sequel. For the present, we must examine the passage
on the assumption that it is the writing of the great missioner
of the Gentiles.
At starting, then, we have to note that the writer of these
sentences affirms, at most, one fact only, of all that he mentions, on
his own knowledge or experience or authority. All the rest, he says,
that he has in some way or other taken over or received ; and as he
does not claim to have received it in any particular way, we must
conclude that he received the knowledge of these incidents just as
we receive the knowledge of any events of which we are not eye-
witnesses—that is, from the testimony of others. It is true that
Chap. XVII.] THE PASSION 473
in his letter to the Galatians (i. 12) he does lay claim to having
received his mission as a preacher of the good news of God, and
his knowledge of those good tidings, in a special and peculiar
manner. But this is a knowledge of no historical incidents, but of
eternal truths, and of the divine purpose in regard to all moral and
responsible creatures. It was brought home to him that he was
to preach the universal love of God for all; and this lesson he
declares that he learnt without any human intervention, but by
the immediate action of the divine spirit. There is no pretence,
and no colour, for the assertion that the revelation was a revelation
of historical events, or that it was anything which needed human
witness in any way. The sentences which are supposed to give * a
very circumstantial account of the testimony upon which the belief
in the resurrection rested ' deal only with historical events ; and if
the writer was the apostle Paul, they are events of which (with
the exception of the last) he had no personal knowledge at all.
The evidence, therefore, whatever it be, does not come to us from
Paul at first-hand ; but if even we allow that it did, have we here
the faintest corroboration of the narratives of the resurrection as
given in our Canonical Gospels ? The answer is, that we have here
nothing more than a bare statement that certain persons who
believed Jesus to have died on the cross, affirmed, or are said to
have affirmed, that after his death they had seen him alive. Of
the actual reanimation of the dead body not one word is said.
But of the events thus related at second-hand we have the
significant assertion that they took place because they rn.ust take
place, * according to the writings ' ; and thus we are thrust back on
one of the greatest difficulties involved in the accounts of the later
portion of the ministry.^ What those writings may have been, or
whether there were any writings, we can scarcely venture to say.
If they were those to which the evangelists refer us, they are all
misquoted or misinterpreted, and, in short, make no reference
whatever to a bodily resurrection.
The writer of these sentences, whether he be Paul or any other,
^ See Appendix B.
474 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL KECORDS [Book IV.
merely says, in the passage, that he had heard of six Christophanies
over and beyond the one vouchsafed to himself. He does not say
from whom he received his information as to the rest. He does
not say that he took any pains to sift it or to verify it, or that he
even saw any need for so doing. Beyond the mere assertion of
the Christophanies we have literally nothing. But he seems to
give the list in what looks as if it were meant to be a chronological
order ; and in this case the first Christophany was vouchsafed to
Peter. It is not so vouchsafed in any of the Gospels ; and to say
that the manifestations to the women are purposely left out of
Paul's list because the apostle had some peculiar notions as to the
proper position of women in the church, is really to impute to him
dishonesty of the worst sort, and might almost tempt us to abandon
the inquiry in disgust. In Luke only, after the return of the two
disciples from Emmaus, is it said that ' the Master was risen and
made visible to Simon' (xxiii. 34). Not one of the other evan-
gelists takes the least notice of this manifestation.
The next Christophany is said to be given to the twelve ; and
this incident has been by many identified with the manifestation
recorded in John (xx. 19), Luke (xxiv. 36), and again, some urge,
in the fourth Gospel (xx. 26). As no particulars are given, it may
be rash either to affirm or to deny ; but in any case it was a
manifestation, not to the twelve, but to the eleven. The incon-
sistency is, perhaps, not insignificant.^ As to the manifestation to
five hundred or more at once, it is nowhere else mentioned.
Harmonisers have insisted that it is the instance mentioned in
Matthew (xxviii. 16); but the evangelist there speaks of the
presence only of the eleven, some of whom, it is said, doubted. It
seems a strange thing thus to read into the story the presence of
five hundred, or more, men who are not mentioned in the text as
it has come down to us. The absence of all other reference to a
Christophany on so large a scale is surely a circumstance altogether
^ See Appendix D. We can scarcely insist on the number twelve, unless we
commit ourselves to the version followed by the writer of the Gospel of Peter,
which cannot be said to leave room for the treachery of Judas, or any other of
the twelve.
Chap. XYII.] THE PASSION 475
more suspicious.^ Are all others silent, because they had never
heard of it ? How could this be ? Or is it because the great
assembly was not unanimous in thinking that they saw the risen
Master? Again, when did this Christophany take place? and
where? When Matthias was chosen to fill the place of Judas
Iscariot, the whole number of believers is said to have been about
a hundred and twenty. The plea that the incident took place in
Jerusalem, when the number was swelled by the influx of pilgrims
from Galilee and other parts, is pure guessing for which there is
not the faintest groundwork or warrant. From the statement
that most of these five hundred survived at the time when these
sentences were written down, we can extract nothing. The writer
does not say that he questioned any of them, or even had seen any
of them ; and certainly they were beyond the reach of examination
by the Corinthians. As to the vision to James, no notice is taken
of it in our Gospels or in the Acts, Jerome, however, tells a tale
that James had made a vow that he would not touch bread until
he had seen his risen Master ; and that, accordingly, Jesus came,
and, ordering bread to be brought, broke it, and gave it to James.
This is certainly not history ; and the appearance next recorded as
having been granted to all the apostles looks much as if it were
simply the second mention of the vision which, in the fifth verse,
is said to be vouchsafed to the twelve.
If, then, these sentences be the work of the great apostle of the
Gentiles, with what authority do they come, as coming from him ?
* We must bear in mind, throughout, that all these alleged facts have, ac-
cording to this narrative, come to Paul by tradition — that is, from men of a
generation older than his own. We are thus at once plunged into contradictions.
The Christophany vouchsafed to Paul himself in 1 Cor, xv. 8 is a part of the
irapdX-qxpLs and 7rapd5o(rts mentioned in the third verse. But in Galat. i. 11, 12,
Paul denies absolutely that there is any irapaX-n^j/LS in his own case. The Christo-
phany to himself (if it be a fact at all) is a fact of his own experience ; and to
make Paul speak of this as received by him only betrays the clumsiness of the
forger. Again, the manifestation to the five hundred is part of a irapddocns as it
comes to himself. In other words, the five hundred also belong to a former
generation. But, according to the sixth verse, most of them are still alive, and
capable of being questioned ; only thej'' never are. All that we can gather from
this is that the passage is forged.
476 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
Have we any reason whatever for supposing that he ever bestowed
a moment's historical criticism on matters in which his sympathies
were stirred ? Can we suppose that he ever examined stories of
wonders, if they were put before him ? Certainly the incidents
which we have thus far noticed, do not fall within his own experi-
ence. From whom, then, did he gain his information ? Did he
get it from the chosen witnesses mentioned in the Acts (x. 41) ?
On this special point we may say that we have something like a
definite answer from Paul himself. In his letter to the Galatians
he sets down, exhaustively, all the occasions on which he had any
intercourse with any of the apostles, and they amount to nothing
more than this — three years, at the least, after what we call his
conversion, he went to Jerusalem to put questions to Peter, and
spent a fortnight with him. His errand was, indeed, a momentous
one ; and we have not the slightest ground for supposing that his
questions included any on the subject of long past Christophanies ;
nor is there a word to imply that the matter was one which had for
him any interest whatever. He tells us, further, that he saw none of
the other apostles, and, therefore, he clearly could have no conversa-
tions with them on this or any other subject (Gal. i. 19). Fourteen
years later he again went to Jerusalem ; and the business which
brought him there would, manifestly, leave no time for cross-exa-
mining any of the apostles in reference to these Christophanies.^
It comes, then, to this, that if these sentences are from Paul
they give us only second-hand information, obtained we know not
from whom ; and it is information as to which not the least
reliance could be placed on his judgement. The truth of the
singularly solemn defence given of himself in the first chapter of
his letter to the Galatians, cannot be questioned. His honesty in
dealing with the question of the Charismata cannot be doubted,
although he not merely confesses candidly his belief in the reality
of the gift of tongues, but puts forth his own claim to the posses-
sion of it in extraordinary measure. But when he comes to visions
and revelations of the Lord,^ we can but wait in patience, while he
1 I have already dealt carefully with this subject. Book i. chapter i.
"" 2 Cor. xii. 1.
Chap. XVIL] THE PASSION 477
tells us of the unspeakable words which he heard when caught up
into the third heaven. Here, however, a question forces itself upon
us, the importance of which cannot easily be exaggerated. How
can we tell that a man given to such dreams would be careful and
impartial in the sifting of evidence for the bodily rising of the
great Master, whose good news of an all-embracing love it was his
duty and his joy to make known to all the world ? In detecting
notions or methods which were really opposed to this universalism,
his insight was indescribably keen and exact ; but as to the occur-
rence, or the non-occurrence, of alleged past incidents, he probably
had no idea that any laws of evidence existed. Without care and
impartiality in the testing of evidence, his mere acceptance of the
assertions of others adds nothing to their value. Nothing is said
in these sentences about the ascension. Are we to suppose that
for the writer the anastasis and the ascension were one act ? ^ That
this was the belief of the apostle himself there can be no doubt.
After giving the list of Christophanies,^ the writer goes on to
speak of the vision granted to himself. But he simply names it
as he names the others. He gives no details in his own case, as
he had given none in the other, while yet he is seemingly made
to declare that he has received from others his knowledge of a
fact coming within the range of his own experience. Of the time,
place, or mode of the manifestation he says not a word. The term
used ^ is applied to all alike ; and we may therefore conclude that
the writer put all the manifestations on the same footing. Paul, it
is true, asks, ' Have I not seen the Lord ? ' * and connects with this
condition his mission to the Gentiles; but then, even if we take
him to refer to mere bodily vision, he merely states that he
saw him, without adding a single detail. We are thus thrown
back on the narrative in the ninth chapter of the Acts. But this
narrative does not say that Paul saw Jesus, although it implies
^ Supernatural Religion, iii. 498.
2 If Paul was one of the accusers of Stephen, it is strange that he should not
have included in this list the Christophany said to have been vouchsafed to the
protomartyr. Stephen is made distinctly to assert the fact (Acts vii. 56).
^ 1 Cor. ix. 1, The genuineness of the clause remains an open question.
478 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
that he heard him. What it says is, that he fell to the ground on
heing smitten by the dazzling effulgence around him; that he
heard a voice ; and that when he rose up, he was blind. It is
plain beyond doubt that Paul did not see him. Of this story it is
almost enough to say that Paul makes no reference to it in any of
his genuine letters ; nor, indeed, is any such reference found in any
of the letters which bear his name. When he speaks of its pleas-
ing God to reveal his Son in him, in order that he might preach
him among the Gentiles, it is nothing less than absurd to suppose
that he must be referring to the blinding vision which, according
to the story of the Acts, he is said to have seen on the road to
Damascus. He is not necessarily speaking of anything beyond
the great spiritual enlightening which revealed to him the real
nature of the divine kingdom. Indeed, he pointedly insists that
he had been set apart for this work, even in his mother's womb ;
and the expression is significant, when it is compared with the
passionate self-accusations which, if the text be genuine, he makes
in his letter to the Galatians.^
If, then, we look to these sentences for evidence to establish the
fact of the bodily or sensible resurrection of Jesus, we shall search
in vain. No such evidence is here given. We have at most the ex-
pression of a belief said to be entertained by some few persons that,
after the bodily death of Jesus, they had seen him alive ; and this
expression comes, not from the witnesses, but from one who does
^ It is hard to suppress a feeling of suspicion, when we regard the connexion
of Gal. i. 13, 14 with the context. The connexion of the twelfth with the
fifteenth verse is as close as it can possibly be. These two sentences break it up
completely. It is singular too that Paul, speaking of matters which do not seem
much to trouble him elsewhere, should in two sentences make use of three words
which he never employs in any other part of his letters, and which are not
found in any other book of the New Testament writings. Of these words, two
are avvrjXiKidJTTjs and irarpiKds — the third being the more remarkable term
'lovSa'Ccfids. The whole phrase, irpoKbirTeiv iu r^ 'lofSat'cr/Ay, is strange, and seems
to point to distinctions of a considerably later time. Between this passage and
the speech put into Paul's mouth in Acts xxii. 3-5, there are some strong points
of likeness. In the latter, Paul is made to speak of himself as ^tjXuttjs V7rdpx(av
Tov GeoO ; in the former, as ^rjXurrjs virdpxoiP tQv irarpiKQv fiov irapadSa-ecov. The
whole passage is in harmony with the language of the Acts ; and the intrusion of
these sentences into the apostle's text by one of the writers of Acts is not an
impossibility.
Chap. XVII.] THE PASSION 479
not even say that he had known or questioned them or had even
seen them. But the subject cannot be summarily put aside, as
though these sentences must come necessarily from the writer of
the letter in which the words are found. It may be said with but
with little exaggeration (perhaps with none) that the texts of the
New Testament writings are honeycombed with interpolations of
every kind. Marginal glosses have found their way into the body
of works which they were intended to illustrate or to interpret ;
and in this way the authority of the highest names has been
obtained for utterances which they never set down on parchment
or on paper. When, further, we consider that these insertions
have, in almost every instance, been made in the interests of the
growing Christian dogma, which tended more and more to rest
the faith of Christ on the basis of alleged historical facts or events
or incidents, we shall see at once that to obtain the sanction of
the name of the apostle Paul would be a matter of supreme
importance. Of these insertions made in the text even of those
letters which we may regard as in substance genuine, some betray
themselves almost at the first glance, the interruption and disloca-
tion of the argument being among the surest of signs that the
interpolator has been at work ; and, if we look to the age of our
manuscripts, we must admit that he had a long lease of power.
Our earliest manuscripts carry us back only to the fourth century,
and very much less than one-half of three hundred years would
sufi&ce for the leisurely accomplishment of this task.^ Nor can it
^ ' It is well known,' says the author of Supernatural Religion, * that numerous
interpolations have been introduced into the text. The whole history of the
Canon and of Christian literature in the second and third centuries displays the
most deplorable carelessness and want of critical judgement on the part of the
Fathers. Whatever was considered as conducive to Christian edification was
blindly adopted by them ; and a vast number of works were launched into
circulation, and falsely ascribed to Apostles and others likely to secure for them
greater consideration. Such pious fraud was rarely suspected, still more rarely
detected, and several of such pseudographs have secured a place in our New
Testament. ... It is clear, from the words attributed to the Apostle Paul in
2 Thess. ii. 2 ; iii. 17, that his epistles were falsified ; and setting aside some of
those which bear his name in our Canon, spurious epistles were long ascribed to
him, such as the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and a third Epistle to the Corin-
thians,' ii. 166.
480 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
be denied that many of these insertions have been made with no
little skill ; and, in many cases, the matter inserted may be even
more valuable than that of the treatise on which it may be
regarded as a comment. The third and fourth verses of the fourth
chapter in the letter to the Ephesians are certainly a good speci-
men of much matter compressed into small space, and it has the
effect of securing the authority of the apostle's name for the
assertion of the preaching of Jesus to the spirits in prison in the
interval between the crucifixion and the resurrection. But it
betrays its true nature by the awkwardness with which it cuts
the argument which says (verse 8) that on his ascending the
Christ led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men, and goes on
(verse 11) to say, 'and he gave some to be apostles, some
prophets,' etc.
The grounds on which the genuineness of the concluding
chapters of the letter to the Eomans has been questioned are very
strong, and something like a general assent has been reached for
the proposition that almost the whole of these chapters are from
other hands than those of Paul.^ If we find the opening sentences
at the beginning of an epistle couched in a strain of extravagant
eulogy, we may reasonably suppose that we are reading a formula
of greetings of which there could never fail to be an abundant
supply. Thus the passage in the letter to the Eomans (i. 8-12)
is, in this sense, suspicious, while the last clause in the sixteenth
verse of the same chapter is manifestly spurious.^ A more glaring
instance is furnished by the exultant thanksgiving with which
the first letter to the Corinthians begins (1 Cor. i. 4-9) as
compared with the charges brought against them later on. But
the most potent of all motives was to obtain the apostle's sanction
and win his authority for what is commonly called the historical
framework of Christianity. This, in the second and third cen-
turies, was a matter of paramount need, and it was achieved by
inserting in 1 Cor. xv. the passage occupying verses 3-8, and the
^ Supernatural Religion, iii. 330.
2 Ibid, iii, 289, et seq.
Chap. XVII.] THE PASSION 481
passage on the institution of the Eucharist contained in verses
23-25 in the eleventh chapter of the same letter. Nine verses in all
suffice for the accomplishment of this great task. In both passages
there is the same marked breaking-in upon the coherence of the
context, the same interruption in the argument; and in both
there is the Paradosis.^ But in the eleventh chapter the Para-
dosis is said to come ' from the Lord ; ' and this knowledge is
handed on by the writer to the Corinthians. If, then, it comes
from Paul, it follows that he looked to the divine Spirit to give
him historical instruction, and that he received it. There is not
a single genuine passage in his letters which gives the least
countenance to such a notion. But the expression in 1 Cor. xv. 3
leaves, and is clearly meant to leave, the impression that Paul
received the tradition of the Christophanies from the apostolic
college, and by doing so, recognised their authority, which, in his
letter to the Galatians, he pointedly and flatly rejects. This con-
clusion is, in truth, in complete contradiction to every statement
in his letter to the Galatians. The apostle there denies that there
has been for him any Paradosis from any mortal man ; and for
the enumeration of Christophanies he seems to have neither
thought nor care.
We have seen that even if it came from Paul, this 'very
circumstantial account of the testimony on which the belief in
the resurrection rested' would have no value. But it does not
come from him, and we cannot look to his letters for the
1 The words in which the Paradosis is spoken of are in both cases the same ;
and the account of the institution in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25 is not in the least wanted
for the argument, and, indeed, interferes with, and breaks it up. If we take away
these three verses, the context becomes both coherent and luminous. What the
apostle is then seen to say is this : ' If you wish merely to have a social meal,
cannot you have this in your own houses? As it is, we have only disorder.
Shall I praise you while you so behave ? I cannot do so. What you profess in
eating the Lord's Supper, is that you are setting forth or proclaiming the Master's
death till he come. He then who eats it in an unseemly or disorderly fashion,
will be guilty in reference to the body and blood of the Lord,' etc.
That the verses 23-25 are an insertion, seems to me a matter of no doubt ; but
the insertion may extend even further. The connexion is much closer if, from the
end of the twenty-second, we go to the end of the twenty -ninth verse.
2h
482 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS [Book IV.
upholding of what is called the historical framework of Chris-
tianity.^
^ If we wish to have a coherent text for the last six chapters of the first
epistle to the Corinthians, we must connect xi. 22 with xi. 33, and, having read
on to the end of xii. 31, go on to the first verse of chapter xiv., and then, having
reached xiv. 40, pass on to the first verse of the sixteenth chapter. This involves
the omission of the episodical chapter on Agape, or Love, and also the discourse
on the Anastasis. The latter it seems to me quite impossible to read without
the very strongest suspicion that we have here the handiwork of two or three
difierent writers, belonging to widely different schools of thought, not one of
them having much in common with the spiritual education through which Paul
had passed. The chapter on Agape is wholly unlike anything else in what we
may reasonably regard as the genuine writings of the great apostle. But it is this
dislocation which more than anything betrays the fact of intrusion. Can any
thing be weaker than the opening of the fourteenth chapter as it now stands ?
After having so spoken as he has, in the thirteenth chapter, of the eternal love,
it seems a bathos indeed to bid his disciples to follow after it, and to come down
to petty details of organization and administration, after having risen into the
heaven of heavens on the wings of the all-embracing and never-failing Agape.
Taking this chapter away, we have what may perhaps be a less highly exalted,
but is in reality a more appropriate lesson, for his Corinthian converts. Having
warned them against jealousies and divisions, he bids them covet the better gifts,
but says that he can show them a better way than even the very highest of these
gifts (xii. 31). This better way is that of Love, and this way they must follow
(xiv. 1), and their first care should be to obtain the strictly spiritual gifts, and
especially that of prophecy. Then follows the comparison and contrast of
prophecy and the gift of speaking with a tongue. Prophecy, then, is that which
they should strive for, while the speaking with tongues should still be tolerated.
' Let everything be done decently and in order ' (xiv. 40). As to the collection
for the saints (xvi. 1) they were to follow the directions which he had given to
them. With a few more practical injunctions the letter comes to an end.
The statement in verse 8 of this chapter of his purpose to remain quietly in
Ephesus till Pentecost is in direct contradiction with verse 32 of chapter xv.
He could not have so continued to live there, if he had been condemned to appear
in the arena, and if the sentence had been carried out.
On the mere score of disagreement with the context, Galat. i. 13, 14, looks a
suspicious passage. This excessive self-accusation seems quite inconsistent with
what follows in verses 15-16. We must remember that the narrative of Paul's
actions in the Acts is not to be trusted, and that the Stephen story is a fiction.
See Book i. chapter L Even in Acts (xxiii. 1) we have an assertion which seems
to point in quite another direction.
APPENDIX A
THE GROWTH OF MIRACLES, OR OF NARRATIVES OF THAUMATURGY
(See pp. 152, 167, 213, 246, 260, 349.)
We have seen that charges given for the doing of spiritual works will,
amongst ignorant and credulous folk, pass readily into narratives
which speak only of material wonders. The idea of the former to the
Eastern mind immediately suggests and grows into the latter ; and so
far as we can trace this process going on in the narratives of the New
Testament writings, so far do the records cease at once to be historical.
It may be well to see to what extent this tendency accounts for the
special forms assumed by the stories of miracles and wonders in the
Gospels. The process went on in every direction, and to a large
extent it was not perceived ; but in spite of this it is scarcely
illegitimate to speak of the work going on as a systematic manufactur-
ing of miracles. We have seen already what was the condition of the
so-called apostolic age in reference to sobriety and trustworthiness of
judgement. Of their credulity we have abundant evidence. The mere
existence of the Gospel narratives is full proof at least of this ; and it
is needless to say that the Gospel records can establish nothing unless
they are borne out by adequate contemporary testimony. The stories,
indeed, tell us over and over again that the people were astonished at
the wonders which they saw. But this is merely a statement made by
writers who belonged to a later generation or a later century. We
have no proper evidence that any one of the persons mentioned in
these records ever saw any of the prodigies which are said to have
been witnessed every day and almost every hour.
But we can readily understand how stories of wonders should spring
out of metaphors used by a great teacher ; and we need not speak only
of his words. In a thoroughly superstitious and credulous age his
works of mercy and love would be translated into outward or bodily
or tangible miracles. The essence of his work must necessarily be the
484 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
freeing men from sin. But sin is ignorance (blindness). Sin is infirmity
(lameness, halting). Sin is defilement (leprosy). Sin is dulness and
deafness (deaf, dumb). Sin is death (not the death of the body, but
the death which is the lack of spiritual life). The charge which on
this hypothesis the great Teacher would give to those whom he sent
forth would be to deliver men from this blindness, lameness, leprosy,
deafness, dumbness, and death. Just in so far as his life and his work
made a right impression on their minds, he would be giving them power
to cure all these diseases and to raise men from this spiritual death. So
far as they shared his goodness and his zeal, nothing could hurt them
and nothing should be able to withstand them. They might go
amongst the worst of men ; and they would not be injured by the
poison of their evil language, by the tempers which make them worse
than beasts, by the rage and fury which consume them. They would
be able to tread down the scorpions of malice, the snakes of slander,
the tigers of cruelty and lust. All this they would do by the power
of the divine love in which they dwelt. The worst of tempers
would give way before their merciful influence, and they who had
been dead to all that is good would be awakened to the life of truth
and righteousness. They would, in short, be fellow-workers with
God ; and this work would be a process, — the process which prepares
the way for the incoming of the kingdom of God. But this process
is certainly not one which could be described as the result of a short
excursion into Judaea or Galilee during a short portion of the single
year which, in the Synoptic Gospels, seems to constitute the whole
period of the ministry of Jesus. This, in truth, is all that seems to be
assigned to the mission of the Seventy in Luke x. 9, 17. The alleged
historical character of the mission is examined elsewhere.
The work to be done, then, would be wholly spiritual. But a
grossly superstitious age, under the general conditions of Eastern
thought, could not fail to translate the terms used in describing it into
the language of material marvels ; and the spiritual teacher would in a
little while become the mere Thaumatourgos, or wonder-worker. That
they would be sent to work these material wonders is impossible.
Such work would be wholly removed from the limits of the task which
is to end in the conquest of all spiritual evil. Men would soon cease
to trouble themselves about these prodigies, and, in fact, so the Gospel
narratives represent them as doing. Most of the stories of outward
and material marvels have been examined in the preceding pages,
with the result that each has been proved to be destitute of historical
value. But the inquiry will appear to be almost superfluous, if we hold
that all such stories are translations of spiritual work into a material
APPENDIX A. 485
dress. At the utmost there remain by comparison only a few which
cannot be so explained; and these few agree in ascribing to the
great Healer and Deliverer power over the forces of the outward
world.
In like manner, it is beyond all question that the Master, when he
refers to his own acts, refers strictly and only to his spiritual works.
Were these works to be jumbled up with material wonders, the con-
fusion would be overwhelming. It follows, therefore, that when he
answers the two disciples of John the Baptist, he is referring them to
the spiritual works by which he is everywhere quickening the spiritual
life. Clearly in Matthew xi. 2-5 these works alone are spoken of ; and
they fall into six classes : —
I. The blind are gaining sight.
II. The halt and lame are walking about.
III. The lepers are being cleansed.
IV. The deaf are hearing.
V. The dead are being raised.
VI. The poor are being evangelised.
There are here six spiritual conditions — the last one meaning the
spiritually poor, — poor as being starved, or stunted, or distorted in
their minds, — poor as having a scant sense of what is good, true, pure,
lovely. Under one or other of these classes the vast majority of al)
the stories of wonder or miracle in the Gospels may be arranged.
That these six classes are in the first Synoptic (xii. 2-5) purely
spiritual, no one probably will deny or doubt. The answer is given
at once, i.e. the disciples of John are referred to the moral and
spiritual work which has been, and is being, done. It is not a work
which could be examined or judged of in a few minutes, as it might be
if it consisted merely of material wonder-working.
In Luke vii. 21, the answer, as the text has come down to us, is
not immediate. A sentence is inserted which makes the spiritual
work material. It has all the appearance of an interpolation ; and in
great likelihood it is such. If it be, then the original compiler of the
Gospel cannot be charged with this low conception of the Master's
work. But for the writer of this interpolated verse, it is clear that
the works to which Jesus appealed were outward and material, — were
what are called miracles or wonders 3 and thus, if we confine ourselves
to the mind of this writer, we see the outward miracle in the process
of birth and growth.
The following list contains all the wonders in the Synoptic and
Johannine Gospels, which fall under the six heads already mentioned.
486 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS
I. The blind are gaining sight.
Matt. ix. 27-30. The healing of the blind men.
„ xii. 22. Blind and dumb man, possessed.
„ XX. 30-34. Two blind men, as in ix. 27-30.
Mark viii. 22-25. The blind man at Bethsaida.
„ X. 46-52. The blind Bartimaios at Jericho.
Luke xviii. 35. The story of Bartimaios (Mark x. 46) without
his name.
John ix. 7. The cure of the blind man at Siloam.
IL The lame or halt are walking.
John V. 5-9. The halt or impotent man at Bethesda.
IIL The lepers are being cleansed.
Matt. viii. 2, 3. The leper at the foot of the mountain.
Mark i. 40-42. Perhaps the same story as in Matt. viii. 2, 3.
Luke V. 12, 13. The same probably as in Matt. viii. 23, and
Mark i. 40, 42.
„ xvii. 12-19. The cleansing of the ten lepers.
IV. The deaf are hearing. -^
Mark vii. 32-35. The deaf man with impediment in his speech.
„ ix. 20-27. The child with the deaf and dumb spirit.
The two are connected. "With deafness goes dumb-
ness (the spirit of obstinacy, perversity, obduracy).
Matt. ix. 32, 33. The dumb possession.
„ xii. 22. Blind and dumb possession.
Mark ix. 17-27. The child with the dumb and deaf spirit.
Luke xi. 14. Dumb possession.
V. The dead are being raised.
Matt. ix. 18. The ruler's daughter (if this be not swoon).
,, xxvii. 52. The resurrection of the saints. But this seems
given up on all sides as mere cfiavTaata.
Mark v. 39. The same story as in Matt. ix. 18.
Luke vii. 11-15. The son of the widow of Nain.
„ viii. 41, 42, and 49-55. The daughter of laeiros, the same
as in Matt. ix. 18, where it seems to be swoon.
John xi. The raising of Lazarus. This story is built up on the
thought of the spiritual uprising (for sin) and of the
life which follows it, — 17 dmo-rao-is Kal -q ^lorj^ 25, ' He
that believeth on me ' (he who has any faith or trust
in the divine goodness) 'shall live, even though he
should have died' (spiritually); 'and he who lives
and believes on me ' (whose life is in the divine life)
APPENDIX A. 487
' shall never die ' (the death of sin). Translated
into merely material phrases, the words have no
meaning, or become the statement of that which is
manifestly not fact. So in John v. 25-28, the refer-
ence is to things spiritual. In any other sense the
words have no meaning. 'The hour is coming, and
now is, when the dead (in sin) shall hear the voice of
the Son of God, and they who hear shall live — live
though they must be judged,' Trai/re? kv rots /xvi^/xciot?
being the only word of material metaphor, the graves
of sin or of darkness. There is some confusion here
in the language of the evangelist, the Kpia-is applying
to all, and not being confined only to ot ra <fiavXa
Trpd^avres.
VI. The poor are receiving the good news (of the divine love). The
poor are poor in spirit, — in the poverty of spiritual life. But
the words speak for themselves too clearly to allow of their
being translated into the language of outward and sensible
miracle or prodigy.
As it is quite impossible to believe that the great Teacher of
Nazareth was a mere worker of outward wonders, so it is not less
impossible to suppose that he could commission any body of men to go
forth in order that they might work only or chiefly outward signs or
wonders among the people. But we are told that he did give com-
missions to bodies of men, to the twelve and to the seventy , and the
terms of the commission are much the same for both. The charge
then was either that they should do spiritual works and achieve
spiritual wonders, or that they should do physical works and exhibit
sensible marvels. The commission has not a word which says or
implies that they were to do works of more than one kind. Either
then they were to do what are vulgarly called miracles, or they were
to be workers of great spiritual changes ; and as it is impossible to
suppose that they were intended to be mere workers of sensible
marvels, it follows indisputably that they were sent forth as spiritual
workers only.
The commissions given to the Twelve are said to be as follows : —
Matt. X. 8. ' Heal the sick ; cleanse the lepers ; raise the dead ;
cast out devils ; freely ye have received, freely give.'
Mark iii. 14, 15. *Sent them forth to preach, and to have
power to heal sickness and to cast out devils.'
,, vi. 7. 'Gave them power over unclean spirits.'
488 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
Mark xvi. 17, 18. * These signs shall follow them that be-
lieve. In my name they shall cast out devils ; they
shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up
serpents ; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall
not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover.' So far as the translating of
spiritual commands into biddings to accomplish out-
ward wonders is concerned, it matters nothing whether
this passage be spurious or not.
Luke ix. 12. 'Gave them power and authority over all devils,
and to cure diseases; and he sent them to preach
the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.'
To the Seventy : —
Luke X. 9, 19. 'Heal the sick. ... I give unto you power to
tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the
power of the enemy ; and nothing shall by any means
hurt you.'
The language used by the Seventy on their return is scarcely in
harmony with that which is commonly used elsewhere on the same
subject. ' Master, even the demons are subject to us in thy name '
(Luke X. 17). According to Jewish belief the most obstinate of
demons might be exorcised, without causing any great feeling of
astonishment. Here the Seventy are represented as full of wonder,
because the worst of men, very brutes or savages, were tamed in and
by the spirit (name) of the great Teacher. The answer is, *I was
seeing Satan like lightning fall from heaven,' — that is, his eye could
range onward to the great consummation when all evil shall have been
conquered and extinguished.
Hence comes the whole class of thaumata, or wonders connected
with the casting out of devils (evil tempers, perversity, obstinacy,
obduracy), recorded in the following : —
Matthew iv. 24, Curings of all manner of diseases.
(It follows that when Jesus 'heals all manner of diseases and
sickness among the people,' the spiritual work would in each case
become a material wonder.)
Matt. viii. 16. The expulsion of devils, and cures, in the
evening.
„ 28-34. The two possessed men in the Gergesene country ;
the devils being sent into the swine.
„ xiv. 35. Cures in the land of Gennesareth.
„ XV. 22. The daughter of a woman of Canaan.
APPENDIX A. 489
Matt. XV. 30. The healing of a multitude of possessed and sick.
„ xix. 2. Cures of multitudes beyond Judaea.
Mark i. 23-26. The man with the unclean spirit.
„ iii. 10-11. Cures of many sick and possessed.
J, V. 2. 11. The possessed in the country of the Gadarenes
— in Matt. viii. 28-34 the possessed belongs to the
Gergesene country.
„ vi. 56. Cures of touch, or by touching garments.
Luke vi. 17. Healing of the multitudes possessed and sick.
„ viii. 2. Woman cured of infirmities and possession.
,, xiii. 11-15. The woman with the spirit of infirmity.
From the general statement it is easy, as we may see from some
of the foregoing, to get into details of specific maladies. Thus we
have those- who are Sick of palsy.
Matt. viii. 6. The palsied servant of the centurion.
„ ix. 2-7. The bedridden man with palsy.
Mark ii. 3. The same story as in Matt. viii. 6.
Luke V. 18. The same story, substantially, as in Mark ii. 3.
Sick of fever.
Matt. viii. 15. Peter's wife's mother.
Mark i. 30. ,, „ „
Luke iv. 39. „ „ „
John iv. 52. The son of the ruler in Cana.
lAinatic.
Matt. xvii. 13.
Unclean spirit.
Mark i. 23.
„ vii. 26. The Syrophenician woman.
Luke iv. 13. The man in the synagogue.
Epilepsy.
Luke ix. 38.
Dropsy.
Luke xiv. 2.
Issue of hlood.
Matt. ix. 20.
Mark v. 25.
Luke viii. 43.
Withered hand.
Matt. xii. 10.
Mark iii. 1.
Luke vi. 10.
490 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
There remain a few instances of wonders (for the most part already
examined) which exhibit features peculiar to themselves, e.g. the
destruction of the demon-possessed swine, and the healing of the ear
of Malchus, Luke xxii. 51. These, with the following, point to power
over the external world : —
Matt. viii. 24-26. The stilling of the stormy sea.
Luke viii. 24. „ ,, „
Matt. xiv. 17-20. The multiplying of loaves and fishes.
„ XV. 32, 38. The same story, with the numbers altered.
Mark vi. 38. The same story as in Matt. xiv. and xv.
Luke ix. 13. „ ,, ,,
John vi. 5-14. ,, „ ,,
Matt. xiv. 32. The walking on, and stilling of, the sea.
Mark vi. 48-51. „ „ „
John vi. 19. The same story, without the incident of Peter.
Matt. xvii. 27. The fish with the tribute coin.
„ xxi. 19. The withering of the fig-tree.
Mark xi. 13-20.
Luke V. 4-7. The draught of fishes : the number indefinite.
John xxi. 11. „ „ ,, definite.
Matt. xvii. 2. The transfiguration.
Mark ix. 2. ,, „
Luke ix. 29. „ „
These marvels are seemingly instances, not of the petrifaction of
phrases denoting spiritual truths or facts into material wonders or
prodigies, but of ideas belonging to the great mythical storehouse from
which the popular beliefs of traditional Christianity have been in great
part derived. The others seem, without exception, to point to their
origin as translations of spiritual into material language; and this
remark applies strictly to the narratives of what are called the In-
carnation, Resurrection, and Ascension.^ The book Lux Mundi seems
written on purpose to insist that the historical reanimation is the
very basis of Christianity. 2 If the historical reanimation falls, ' all the
rest will drift away ' ; and by way of clinching this conclusion, we are
referred to 1 Cor. xv. But in that chapter the Anastasis of Jesus the
Christ is made to depend on the present rising of the dead. ' If the
dead are not now rising, then Christ has not been raised' {v. 16).
But the dead are not being raised in this sense, or in any except a
spiritual sense ; and what the writer of this chapter is saying is that
1 See Colenso, Natal Sermons, ii. 301 ; Life, ii. 113-115.
2 P. 236 ff., 10th ed.
APPENDIX A. 491
if the dead in sin are not being raised to the life of righteousness, then
it is useless to talk about belief in the rising of the eternal Son from
the death to sin, the death and the uprising being alike eternal. This
is the Nicene faith ; but, apparently, it does not satisfy the writers of
that volume, which may be said, without much injustice, to beg every
question with which it deals.
APPENDIX B
THE SO-CALLED HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK OF TRADITIONAL
CHRISTIANITY
(See pp. 200, 213, 293, 303, 337, 353, 416, 434, 435, 444, 454, 473.)
The most deeply-rooted conviction of the Greek mind was that of the
absolute independence of each Hellenic city from all other Hellenic
cities. With barbarians the Hellenic tribes had nothing to do ; with
each other they had certain bonds of union and certain grounds of
sympathy. They spoke a common language, in dialects understood by
all. They had some moral instincts which distinguished them from
all other races. They could meet as Amphiktiones to deal with
matters affecting their common interests. In some of the great games
all might take part who were entitled to bear the Hellenic name.
Every Hellene might, if he so chose, be initiated in the great Athenian
mysteries at Eleusis. There was, further, the influence of art, which
gave to their festivals their marvellous magnificence and beauty.
But apart from these grounds of union which may not undeservedly
be called national, their political instincts were all centrifugal. The
jealousy of each Hellenic city extended to every thing which might
help to distinguish it from all others ; but it guarded with special care
all that affected the local religion — in other words, all that was linked
with the name and the exploits of the Eponymos, or founder. Argos,
Athens, Thebes, Megara, Delos, had each its own local epos, which
belonged to itself alone. Argos had the story of the great deeds of
Perseus ; Athens took pride in the glory of Theseus ; Thebes told of
the victories of Oidipous in the discomfiture of the Sphinx. But the
fact on which it is impossible to lay too much stress is this, — that all
these stories and a thousand others were, to the several tribes or cities,
genuine records of actual events, the independent chronicles of kings
or heroes whose fortunes ran each in its own peculiar channel, and
that this conviction was from first to last a delusion. Instead of being
492
APPENDIX B. 493
each a separate mirror, these traditions strictly resemble a prism in
which a thousand pictures flash from a few planes, while all are
reflected from a single piece of glass, and all reflect one object only, —
the orb of the light-giving sun. Of the inhabitants of all these cities,
of the great poets who wrought out their mighty works from the
materials of these traditions, not one saw that they were all con-
structed on the same lines, and that all told substantially the same
story. The events recorded took place, it was admitted, long ago,
just as every incident in every popular tale happened once upon a
time, and only once; but no one was there to say that Herakles,
Perseus, Kadmos, Oidipous, were all of them variations of one and the
same deliverer and conqueror, and that Dana^ and Alk^stis, Eur6pe,
and Aithra, are one and the same dawn-maiden. So it has been with
the traditions of the Teutonic lands. No one in days much before our
own had stood up to say that Brynhild and Aslauga, Ashputtel and
Cinderella and Briarrose are essentially one being, their names only,
and some of their outward garb, being changed. But this identity is
universally acknowledged now, and the stories told about them are
looked upon by some as fictions of poets and dreams of old crones,
though for the comparative philologist they have a perpetual value.
They are, in fact, reflexions of the phenomena of the outward world
in the course of the day, the month, or the year. The local colouring
will vary; the incidents will come in different order, and their
character may undergo as many changes as the sun himself undergoes
in his daily journey across our heaven. The men of old time who
marked these changes gave the sun a name according to each of these
modifications, and every one of these names either did or might furnish
the foundation of a story which might grow up into an epic poem.
Many of these names and stories are quite transparent. When we are
told that, after slaying the black sorcerer Naraka, who had stolen
them away, Krishna weds sixteen thousand one hundred maidens all
at the same moment, each in her separate mansion, no one doubts that
he has here a tale of the love of the sun for the dew, as in that of
Prokris we have the solitary drop slain in the deep thicket by the
unerring spear of him who loves her. The significance of these tales
escaped notice for many reasons, the chief being that scrutiny and
comparison were things unknown, and, under existing conditions, un-
attainable. The Greek or the Eoman knew no language but his own.
He might see that incidents in the Argive legend are repeated in that
of Athens or of Thebes ; but as he could not compare his own tradi-
tions with the hymns of the Eig Veda, he could not tell that the Zeus
and the Ouranos to which he daily looked up were the Dyaus and
494 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
Varuna of the Hindu, and that in Ushas, the ever-young dawn, who
makes men old, we have the earliest conception which has embodied
itself in the forms of Antigone and Helen, Athene, Artemis, or Aphro-
dite. If in each story there were features more or less alike, his very
familiarity with the ideas brought before him prevented him from
making any attempts to trace them back to their origin. The heroes
were almost all maiden or virgin-born, in the sense that they had no
human father ; and the Greek accepted the statement at once as one
which he had no reason for calling into question. Perseus was the son
of Danae ; but the babe was the child of the golden shower, and the
purity of the brides of Zeus or Phoibos was in no way tarnished by
their becoming mothers of children of the eternal gods. Alkestis,
again, was taken away by Thanatos, or death, and was brought back
from the dark land by Herakles. There was nothing more in this than
the poet or the story-teller found in the legends of Eurydike or Ask-
lepios, Memnon, or Adonis, or Sarpedon. Far from being strange, the
ideas of maiden mothers and of slain and risen gods were almost more
familiar to the mind of the Greek than many of the possible, or even
ordinary, experiences of life are to us.
But, having traced the growth of popular tradition thus far, we are
suddenly told that although these stories, which are described and dis-
missed as heathen or pagan, are mere fiction, and although the
incidents recorded in them never took place and never could take
place, there is nevertheless another story, the latest of all such stories,
as to which we must come to a wholly different conclusion, inasmuch
as the veracity of it rests on the statements of books, the authority of
which is not to be questioned. This, too, is a story which tells of a
babe who has no human father ; who is born in a stable or cave ; at
whose birth angels are heard singing in the sky; whom the tyrant
seeks to kill ; who grows up an embodiment of marvellous wisdom ;
who gives himself to the work of doing good ; who is tempted by the
spirit of evil to self-indulgence or ambition; who, like the solar
wanderers in a thousand myths, has no place where to lay his head ; ^
who shows his power on the surface of the sea, and makes a ship in-
stantaneously reach the haven for which it was making ; who heals the
sick, and raises the dead, like Asklepios ; who assumes many forms ;
who promises to draw all men to him if he be lifted up from the earth ;
1 Matt. viii. 20 ; Luke ix. 58. This is mere mythos. The very request thus answered
implied that the Teacher was a wanderer. How long he had been such, and why he
should become such, are other questions. Till his thirtieth year we are told that he followed
the settled occupation of a carpenter in Nazareth, and his kinsfolk had their settled
abodes.
APPENDIX B. 496
who is brought before an unjust judge like Dionysos before Pentheus ;
who is crucified ; who goes down among the dead ; who rises again
from his rock-hewn grave, and vanishes by a visible ascent into heaven.
A patient and minute examination of the narratives of all the four
Gospels has forced us to the conclusion that, whatever else they may
be, histories, in the proper sense of the word, they are not in any part
of them. But were we at the beginning of our inquiry instead of at
the end of it, we might well ask on what grounds of logic we are to
reject a thousand such stories as worthless, and then to insist that the
thousand and first is absolutely true, not as a symbolical picture of
spiritual verities, but as an exact recital of events which have occurred
in particular times or places. What is there on the face of the Gospel
stories which proves their exactness, while it condemns all the others ?
What right have we to say that one incident is a fact because it is
found in our Gospels, while the very same incident, when found in any
other sacred books, is indubitably a fiction ? No one probably expects
nowadays to get a hearing for the absurdities which assumed that the
older stories were mere diabolical illusions framed to cheat, if possible,
even the true believers, and that all later ones are parodies of passages-
in the Christian Scriptures. It is easy to assume and to assert ; but
neither process is scientific.
But, strange to say, there survives even yet a temper of mind which
completely inverts the order of the discussion, and which insists on the
truth of the Christian tradition (which they style the Christian revela-
tion), on the ground that the fundamental ideas involved in it are
such as the unaided human mind could never have formulated. These
fundamental ideas are said to be especially those of the incarnation
(taken as an historical incident) and of the resurrection (in the sense
of the reanimation of a dead body). Men singularly truth-loving in
themselves, men of more than ordinary powers, men of no careless
training, may be heard to affirm, not, perhaps, without a look of
nervous uncertainty, that birth from a virgin, and the reanimation of
what we call a dead body, must be true in reference to the narratives
of the Christian Gospels, because no one had ever seen or heard or
thought of such things before.
Of the two pleas we cannot urge both at once, for the former
declares that these ideas were as familiar to Athenians of the age of
Perikles as they can well be to us ; and as to thefts from the Christian
Sacred Books, we must have somewhat more of proof and something
less of mere assertion. That in lo, the mother of the god incarnate in
the form of Epaphos, we have a virgin or maiden-birth, there is no
question. The language of ^schylus asserts her purity with marked
496 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL RECORDS
reverence, and declares that the breath or spirit of Zeus made her a
mother. 1
According to our third Synoptic Gospel Jesus is born in a stable.
The statement of Justin that he must be born in a cave shows clearly
that the Gospel which he had before him mentioned this fact. It has
been the common practice with Christian painters (whether purposely
or unconsciously) to reconcile the two traditions by representing the
stable as a cave used for the cover of cattle. It is scarcely necessary
to say that the number of cave-born gods is not small. Zeus himself
springs to light in the cave of Dikte, or, as others call it, Lyktos. So,
too, Hermes is cave-born ; so is Mithras ; so is Krishna ; and into the
cave of Latmos (or forgetfulness) the sun-god sinks on the ending of
his journey in the evening, as the body of Jesus is laid to rest in the
rock-hewn tomb of the Arimathean Joseph.
How far the stoties of the angelic song and of the slaughter of the
innocents are independent or borrowed narratives in the Vishnu
Parana, it is unnecessary to discuss. The Purana tales and the Gospel
narratives may have a common source, without being borrowed by
either one from the other. Still we may note the fact that the Purana
story speaks of the angelic chorus, and of the murder wrought on the
children of two years old and under, in order to insure the destruc-
tion of the babe who is lord of all worlds. ^
But although a scrutiny of details may yield results of great
significance, we shall probably miss the force of many of them unless
we look at the Gospel narratives as each a whole. In the case of the
Synoptic Gospels we can do so without difficulty. That there is a
certain agreement between these records in geography and chronology
1 See Book ii. ch. ii. p. 180. Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Tryphon, says :
' When I hear that Perseus was born of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent
counterfeited also this.' But this is distinctly an admission that the idea of maiden-birth
had been rendered familiar to the human mind by diabolical agency for centuries before
his own time. It has been well said, to take one example, that ' if the Mithraists had
simply imitated the historic Christians, the obvious course for the latter would be simply
to say so. In that case there would be no need to talk of demons ; it would be far more
effective to charge human plagiarism.'— Jlfi^^ra wm, by J. M. Robertson, in Religious
Systems of the World, p. 208.
2 The power of the myth in inforcing its own chronology was great ; but the incidents
belonging to each date might be regarded in more ways than one. The Syrian devotee
associated the winter solstice with the death of the sun and with his rising again to new
power. In the Christian year the event commemorated is the birth of the new sun with-
out reference to any preceding suns. The crucifixion is the lifting up upon a height in the
sight of all men, and therefore follows the spring equinox. The rising on the third day is,
in this connexion, misplaced. It belongs to the uprising of the sun after his death at the
end of the year, while the rising on the following morning is common to all the days of
the year.
APPENDIX B. 497
is admitted universally. Those who adopt or put faith in the chrono-
logy of the fourth Gospel still allow that in the other three there is
only one passover, and that Jesus celebrates it with his disciples before
his passion. There is thus a period of only eleven or twelve months
for the whole of the ministry. In the third Gospel Jesus is said to be
about thirty years of age before he begins his mission ; but, except for
the solitary incident in his thirteenth year related in our third Gospel,
the previous time is an absolute blank, and no more than fifty-two
weeks are left for the achievement of the great task of preaching the
good news of God. When we consider the journeys to be undertaken,
the time needed to make an impression on the average Galilaean or
Samaritan or Judaic mind, the charges given first to the twelve, then
to the seventy, and the amount of work undertaken and finished by
the latter, the limit of time assigned is wholly incredible. Missions to
benighted, ignorant, superstitious, and godless folk cannot be estab-
lished and produce good fruit in the compass of a few weeks. If this
period of one year be not historical, it must be mythical,^ — that is, it
must be the framework of a life which represents the course of a solar
year; and into this framework all the phases of that life must be
made to fit. Thus looked at, all chronological difficulties cease ; and
details which had seemed strange and perplexing become clear enough.
Thus Apolldn, as the sun-god, has power on the water as well as on
the dry land. In the so-called Homeric Hymn, the vessel in which he
sits is propelled at wonderful speed without oar or sail. As the
dolphin, he can move on or in the water ; ^ and Jesus has the same
power, for the Johannine Gospel (vi. 21) asserts plainly that, as soon
as he had entered the vessel, the ship was immediately at the land
whither they went. In this tale the disciples do not recognise Jesus
as he walks on the sea, so completely has he the power of assuming-
many forms. Meek and lowly while doing his good work, he can, as
in his Transfiguration, invest himself with the splendour of his eternal
majesty ; and so again, after his resurrection, he is not recognised by
Mary Magdalene or by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
1 Not a few sayings in the Gospel narratives, which are otherwise strangely obscure
and perplexing, become transparently clear when they are seen to be the Logia of the
myth. It has long since been noted that on the great heroes of Aryan mythology
generally there is laid the doom of perpetual pilgrimage ; and so the Son of Man ' has
not where he may lay his head.' The sun is never stationary. Other phrases of a like
kind are : ' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men to me ' ; * Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will build it up ' ; ' He healed others ; himself he cannot heal.' The giver
of life, strength, and health, must sink into darkness as he approaches the horizon, but
after this there must be the anastasis. The sayings and writings must be fulfilled.
2 Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Book ii. ch. ii. sec. 10.
2 I
498 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
That some details, which do not occur in the Synoptics, should be
found in the Johannine Gospels,^ is in no way surprising. The Gospel
is throughout Hellenic ; and if there be any truth in the tradition that
it was put together at Ephesus, it was composed among a people
steeped in Greek myth. It is from this Gospel that we get the
significant declaration, ' I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto me.' The evangelist adds that the saying pointed to the
manner of his death. If it be so, and if that death was by penal
crucifixion, the words can scarcely be said to have any fulfilment. In
this servile punishment the feet of the suff'erer were scarcely more than
a few inches above the ground, and he was no more lifted up from the
earth than is any one who sits on a scaff'old or in a carriage. It served
the evangelist's purpose so to divert the words ; but the saying points
to one of the most familiar myths of the Greek world. The Lamb
takes away the sins of the world by lifting them up. The action is
that of the sun, which lifts up the noxious vapours from the soil, and
then disperses them ; and in this sense the saying fits the myth exactly.
The myth itself is transparent. Ixion (the sun as a wheel whirling on
its axis through the sky) becomes, as he rises in the sky, the lover of
Here the queen of heaven herself, and is in requital fastened to the
four-spoked cross ►J^.^ The myth is correlative to that of Sisyphos. The
zenith is the summit of the arch beyond which he is not suffered to
rise. It follows that the highest point of exaltation marks the
beginning of the descent which must end in gloom and darkness as of
death. Irresistible during the time of his ascent until noon, he begins
to sink from that moment to his inevitable doom. There are no
possible or conceivable means by which that issue can be avoided. It
can neither be averted nor delayed nor modified in any way ; and we
are thus brought to the Greek doctrine (so uncongenial to the Hellenic
mind) of invincible and irresistible necessity.^ Hence, also,
necessarily, the saying thus ascribed to Jesus is placed in close con-
nexion with his death ; and this connexion is brought out still more
clearly in the Synoptic Gospels. Here, when something like half of
the period assigned to the ministry has passed away, he suddenly,
without any warning to lead up to it, tells his disciples that he must
1 On the other hand, the Johannine Gospel knows nothing of Jesus as being the
Carpenter's Son, Matt. xiii. 51, or as being himself the Carpenter, Mark vi. 3. Yet the
phrases belong to the old mythical language. Odysseus is especially the riKTUv, whose
craft reflects the work of the great architect of the universe.
3 TerpdKvafiov 54(Tfwu. Cox, Mythology/ of the Aryan Nations, p. 283.
3 Cox, ih. , Book ii. ch. ii. section 9. There can be little doubt, or none, that the ideas
of the sun sinking from the meridian, and of the suflFering Messiah, are the same. The
former passed naturally into the latter.
APPENDIX B. 499
go up to Jerusalem, and there, after suffering many things, be killed,
and on the third day rise again. In the narrative of the first Gospel ^
this declaration is met by Peter's expressing a hope that nothing of the
sort may happen. In that of Luke,^ his words leave them in a state of
blank astonishment, the fact being especially stated that they could
attach no meaning to the resurrection from the dead.
How this could be when they had themselves witnessed the recall-
ing to life of the widow's son at Nain (to say nothing of stories like
those of the man revived by touching the bones of Elisha, and of the
wonders wrought by Elijah and Elisha during their lifetime ^), we cannot
understand. But the astonishment from another point of view seems
to be amply justified. The announcement of Jesus was like the sudden
darkening of a scene which', had thus far been full of brightness.
There seemed to be nothing to call for so immediate a change. The
work had been little more than begun, and it had been carried on
without any very discouraging resistance. Why then these sudden
tidings of disaster which had seemingly no connexion with the past ?
Was the idea conveyed by these tidings one with which they might be
expected to have any familiarity, or even any acquaintance ? What
and where were the scriptures or writings which were said to predict
his sufferings even down to the most minute details ■? Why, again,
should his resurrection or uprising be fixed chronologically for the
third day 1 Could this in any way be made plain to them 1 Had they
never come across the prophetical denunciations of the women who, in
the temple of Jerusalem itself, mourned and wept for Tammuz, and
then rejoiced when on the third day he rose again and started on his
career of victory 1 We have seen already that there is no history in
all this ; but the accordance of the narrative with the mythical imagery
is exact. The solar mythology, which had been crystallised in the
religions of Egypt and Persia, of India, Babylon, and Nineveh, has
fastened itself with increased tenacity on the traditional creeds of
Christendom.
We have nothing to do here with attempts to determine the
historical residuum which may underlie the Gospel narratives, or
whether there be any. This part of our work has been done ; but we
may nevertheless mark in the Synoptics the significant fact that, on
the evening before his passion, Jesus bids his disciples eat bread and
drink wine in remembrance of himself, and that this bread and this
wine are to be regarded as symbolical of his body and his blood.
Indeed, he is represented as saying that the one is his body and the
other is his blood, and that both are given for the remission of sins.
1 Matt. xvi. 21. 2 Luke xviii. 31. 3 i Kings xvii. 22 ; 2 Kings iv. 36, xiii. 20.
500 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
But in the Synoptics there is nothing whatever to lead up to the
institution of this rite, if a rite it is to be called. According to the
Synoptic records there is nothing liturgical about it ; and we find not
a word which might prepare the disciples for this addition to the
Paschal festival. In short, it comes upon them as suddenly and un-
expectedly as the announcement of his sufferings, death, and uprising
came upon them in Galilee.
In the Johannine Gospel, as we have seen, all this is changed.
Here we have no institution of the Eucharist ; nor can there be on the
evening before the crucifixion any celebration even of the passover,
because he is himself to be offered up on the passover day as the true
Paschal lamb. But instead of the memorial commands as given by
the Synoptics, we have a series of elaborate and complicated discourses
which seem to be designed to educate the hearers in such a way that
they may have at least some apprehension of the doctrine which
underlies the Eucharistic offering. Of these discourses which form the
main body of the Johannine Gospel we have not the faintest inkling
in the Synoptics. Nay, the very words of administration as we have
them in the Synoptics are changed in form in the fourth Gospel, and
made to carry a different meaning. In the former we have the eating
of bread, which he says is his body ; in the latter the Christian life is
made to depend for its growth on the eating of his flesh. The two
things are not the same. But whence came all this imagery or
symbolism? There is no doubt that throughout Christendom an
immense majority are entirely assured that the outward visible signs
in the Eucharist were ordained by the Christ himself in such sort that,
up to the last evening of his ministry, they had never been used at all.
This belief is an absolute delusion. The partaking of bread and wine
was a rite as familiar to all the initiated in the Eleusinian and other
mysteries as it is to ourselves.
But the reference to the old mysteries only pushes us a step further
back. Whence, as used in these mysteries, had these symbols come 1
In the remarkable Gospel of John, few things are more remarkable than
the way in which the objections, jeers, and sneers of the Jews are
made to suggest or to draw forth higher and higher statements of
esoteric doctrine. The conversation which leads up to these state-
ments begins with a plain exhortation to think more of spiritual than
of bodily sustenance. The 'people' in reply ask what they should do
to work the works of God. In the Synoptics similar questions are
answered by a bidding to keep the commandments. Here they are
told that they must first of all believe in him whom God has sent ;
and here, seemingly, the lesson might have ended, if the people had
APPENDIX B. 501
not gone on to ask for a sign as a condition of their belief, a sign like
the manna, which is here treated as the credentials of the great law-
giver. To the answer that Moses did not give them the true bread,
but that this bread was himself, the Son, who comes down from heaven,
they reply only by a prayer that they may evermore be nourished
with this bread. Here, again, there is only the temper of earnest
longing for instruction. The antagonism is roused only when Jesus
goes on to charge them with unbelief ; and the difference is widened
when he adds that the bread which he will give is his flesh, which he
will give for the life of the world. They had heard nothing of the
sort. The idea was quite new to them ; and it would have been an
astounding marvel indeed if a Galilaean crowd had understood his
words in any but their literal and seemingly carnal sense. As it is,
they only ask how he can give them his flesh to eat. But instead of
saying anything which might in any measure lighten their darkness,
Jesus is represented as taking a further step which could not fail to
irritate them still more. ' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of the
Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.'
It seems, therefore, that these harder sayings, which^made many of
his disciples fall off", would not have been uttered had not the Jews
(for so the evangelist now styles them instead of ' people ') provoked
them by what Jesus is said to denounce as systematic unbelief; and
the conclusion follows, that in this way the bread was made to become
the symbol of flesh, and the flesh to become the symbol of flesh and
blood. Before this declaration (in vi. 53) there had been no mention
of any liquid. But for the flesh and the blood there must be the
platter and the cup ; and thus a full significance is given to the bread
and the wine as administered in the Eucharistic rite. That this,
however, should be the origin of this symbolism in itself, is as completely
incredible as the announcement of his future suff'erings, death, and
rising again is in the middle of his ministry. These symbols. Dean
Stanley^ allowed, suggested in their literal sense a cannibal feast.
His inference was that therefore they had nothing to do with such a
feast. But was he right as to the fact 1 Did these symbols come into
being for the first time from phrases used but as yesterday 1 Was the
spiritual interpretation of the Eucharistic language really more ancient
than the signs which it employed, or do the signs point in the first
instance to a practice which the words in their literal sense denote 1
Who will venture to maintain the former of these two propositions,
when he surveys the dismal records of cannibalism ? Who can fail to
see that, in the dim and remote past, the whole human race seems to
1 Christian Institutions, cli. vi.
502 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECORDS
have gone through this terrible stage of life 1 The tokens of it meet
us everywhere ; and the conclusion forced upon us is, that this horrible
practice became gradually restrained to the eating of prisoners taken
in war, that this eating became more and more a matter of formal
ceremony to be seriously taken in hand, and assumed more and more
a sacramental character, until, finally, a sign or symbol was substituted
for the victim. That ceremonial cannibalism, when it became a
religious rite, was grounded on the doctrine of the most intimate and
profound connexion with the slain man, there is not the least doubt.
To devour the heart of your enemy was to make his strength, his
bravery, and wisdom your own ; and this was a rite, therefore, which
might be practised with great devotion by men who would shrink with
horror from man-slaying apart from this rite. The ancient religions of
America have come to be our instructors; and they are the most
absolutely trustworthy of witnesses in this awful history, as the wildest
dreamers will not venture to assert that they had come into any
connexion with the religions of what is called the old world, for, it
may be, one or more millenniums. The Mexicans in the days of
Cortez died by thousands of starvation during the siege of the city.
They were not, therefore, cannibals in the sense in which the Fijians
were cannibals till but as yesterday. With the Mexicans ritual canni-
balism was the very essence of their religion, as maintained by a terribly
powerful and not unlearned or immoral priesthood. The penitents
who came to confess were bidden to ' clothe the naked and feed the
hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee, for, remember, their
flesh is like thine, and they are men like thee. Cherish the sick, for they
are the image of God.' But the same exhortation went on to warn
them that before all things they must furnish slaves for the sacrifice.^
It is quite certain, then, that the discourses in the Johannine Gospel
do not furnish any explanation of the very short narrative of the Synop-
tics. We have seen further that these discourses were never uttered,
and that they were slowly and systematically worked out of the devout
imagination of the evangelist, as he sat quietly with his writing
materials about him. That the authors of the Synoptic Gospels know
nothing about them, is also certain, for their Gospels exhibit not the
faintest trace of them. The work of the ministry is, by the Synoptics,
confined within the limits of a few short months. The adoption of
symbols known all over the world for, it may be, myriads of years, is
represented in the Johannine Gospel as having been brought about for
the first time in the reign of Tiberius Csesar. The one is as completely
incredible as the other.
1 The religions of ancient America, in Religious Systems of the World, p. 366.
APPENDIX B. 503
Our examination of the Gospel narratives has shown us that, what-
ever may be said of the previous record, we are left in hopeless darkness
for every event or incident which follows the celebration of the passover
by Jesus with his disciples. We are free, therefore, to mark in these
later passages any features which seem to belong to the great treasure-
house of mythical phrases and imagery. In mythology almost every
single being may be presented under a multitude of forms. The sun
may journey through a cloudless sky, or he may have to fight his way
through armies of vapours which assail him with overwhelming perti-
nacity. He may sink down to his rest in inefi'able majesty, or he may
die like Herakles, with his raiment torn, and his limbs mangled, by his
own convulsions. In the case of Jesus, the formal and public humiliation
begins, according to the third Gospel, when Pilate sends his prisoner
to Herod, who with his soldiers sets him at naught after putting on
him a gorgeous robe. If we take the Synoptics as independent narra-
tives, Jesus was twice robed in gleaming raiment, once by Herod, and
once by Pilate's guards. In Matthew, the robe is scarlet ; in Mark, it
is purple. In Luke, the soldiers of Pilate do not repeat the mockery of
Herod. In the fourth Gospel we have, as in the second, the purple robe ;
but we have also a garment not mentioned anywhere else, — his coat,
namely, or tunic, which is without seam, woven from the top through-
out. Its colour is not mentioned ; but the raiment distinguishes him
from all others. We have to compare this with the undivided or
seamless robe of Osiris and with the chequered raiment of Isis, the
former representing the all-pervading light of the sun, while the latter
is a symbol of the varied and broken brightness of the night. In
short, we have here the robe of Helios which figures in a multitude of
Greek and other traditions. This tunic is one of the solar character-
istics which are peculiar to the fourth Gospel, as is also the turning
of the water into wine at Cana, a work performed by the sun alone,
as he drives the sap through branch and leaf until it is matured in the
juice of the grape.
In the cross on which Jesus dies we have a feature which assumes
a thousand forms. As an instrument of punishment, it is an object of
terror and dread ; but the imagery associated with the cross is most
commonly that of life, light, and fertility. In this case the two things
are confused together, just as it is difficult in every instance to deter-
mine whether the term death in the New Testament writings is used to
denote the death of the body or that of the spirit, the death of sin or
the death to sin. Now, however, we may assert without any fear of
contradiction that the Stauros, which is everywhere the emblem of
reproduction, is the T cross, or Phallos, associated invariably with the
e04 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
oval or circular ring. In connexion with both is the serpent; and the
serpent and phallos are both the same thing under different conditions.
In the marvel wrought by Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh the rod
becomes a serpent, and the serpent is again changed into the rod. It
is this phallic serpent which brings about the transgression of Adam
and Eve ;^ it is this which is reproduced in all the ancient cone-shaped
buildings of the eastern or western world. It is the rod of fertility
and wealth which is given to Hermes by the Sun-god ApoUon. It is
the rod of Aaron which puts forth buds and leaves in the mystic ark,
and which becomes at length the Maypole of our ancient English
village-greens. These are but a few of the countless forms which this
emblem may assume. The rod may become a spear, a sword or crook,
a lituus, a crosier ; and in every form it is connected with the oval or
round emblem which represents the female power in the material
universe. Generations may come and go ; youth may give way to old
age ; but the rod of Hermes and Phoebus can never lose its force ; and
by it alone are the races of men and animals multiplied. It is hence
regarded as the symbol of all that is joyous and glad, of all that is
vivifying and healing. As the mythology founded on these symbols
is developed, the signs themselves become refined and purified. It
becomes the tree under which all living things find shelter, — the tree
which is planted for the healing of the nations. As such, it may
become the object of worship, contemplative, ecstatic, or frenzied, and
may call forth language of the most passionate devotion. The erotic
hymns of the Latin Church are legion. The same erotic or sensuous
language may be seen in our modern English hymn-books, and seems
not unlikely to give a fresh lease of life to the most ancient cultus in
the world. The cross of Calvary may be spoken of as a tree of humi-
liation and shame. It may even be called an accursed tree ; but the
victim who suffered on it was the great Healer ; and it was inevitable
that the instrument of his death should be invested with the splendour
of the life-giving and life-renewing Stauros. Such a Stauros, im-
mensely magnified, is the world-tree Ygdrasil, on which Odin himself
declares that he hung ' nine whole nights, with a spear wounded, and
to Odin ofi'ered himself to himself on that tree of which no one knows
from what root it springs. '2
Thus, without approaching or dealing with any Christian writings,
we are brought face to face with what may fairly be called the highest
1 That this fact should stUl be determinately kept out of sight in the teaching of the
people IS one of the most disgraceful characteristics of the religious thought of the age.
Cox, Mythology o/tlie Aryan Nations, Book 11. ch. i. sect. 6.
APPENDIX B. 506
Eucharistic phraseology.^ We have here, in short, the germs, if not
the full developement, of a sacramental system, and therefore the
foundation of all sacerdotalism. It is hard to discern any essential dif-
ference between the sanguinary ritual of Mexico and the daily renewed
offerings of the Christian mass. In the former we have both the literal
and symbolic form ; in the latter the sacrifice has become symbolical
only. The language, however, is strictly that of cannibalism ; and the
lives of saints furnish many instances in which the babe is seen in the
act of being mangled and torn beneath the altar, while the saint is
going through the Eucharistic formulae above it. The Mexicans, we
are told, consumed the body of the slain human victim with gestures
and expressions of profound penitence and devotion. On Christian
altars the death is only commemorated ; but the bread and the wine
are, nevertheless, declared to be actually the body and the blood of the
great Healer.
An expression here and there may throw a strong light on the
sources of a narrative generally. We have already found parallels for
a large number of seemingly mythical statements in the four Gospels ;
but there are yet others. The enemies of Jesus are driven to surround
him with a halo of glory, while their purpose is merely to torture him.
The crown of thorns became, in the hands of painters, a circle of light.
Again we have the expression of that invincible necessity which brings
the career of all the solar heroes to an end. Jesus was the Healer,
who had wrought his works of mercy on all who had asked for them ;
but for himself it was, according to all the Gospels, immutably ordained
that he must suffer under strictly specified conditions. He healed
others ; himself he could not heal. The sun, which evokes all sensible
life, must sink in darkness when the day is done. There is no possi-
1 It may almost be said that, in whatever direction we turn, we encounter this phrase-
ology, sometimes in a rudimentary, sometimes in a fully developed form. * The Akkadian
name of the seventh month is Tul-ku (the illustrious-mound), an allusion to the building
of the famous Tower, which traditionally took place at the vernal equinox ; and on the
summit of the great tower of Babylon was the shrine of the Sun-god, who was the pre-
siding divinity of the month. Similarly, on the summit of the various Euphratean
zigguratu (temple-towers) was placed the altar of the divinity to whom the temple was
dedicated ; and hence the temple-tower was itself a huge altar. Now I have shown else-
where that the sky is the original altar upon which is offered the daily sacrifice of the
solar photosphere, Tammuz-Duwuzi, ' the only Son ' of the diurnal heaven, who in the
Phcenician myth appears as Yedud (the Only-begotten) sacrificed on an altar by his father
El-Kronos.'— J. Brown, The Celestial Equator of Aratos, p. 467. The traditional argu-
ment that the Eucharistic language of Christendom must rest on facts of history as well
as on spiritual truth, and must be true because no such thoughts had entered into
the human mind before the institution of the Christian Eucharist, breaks down on the
rock of the oldest Akkadian inscriptions, as it does also on the mass of mythology
generally.
606 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS
bility of avoiding this doom.^ But as in the agony of Herakles or of
Baldur, so here, all Nature sympathises with the pain of the divine
victim. There is darkness over the whole land, and strange figures of
the dead are said to rise from their graves in the time of most profound
gloom. But all these things happened at the death of Julius Caesar ;
and the idea that Virgil was indebted for his picture to our Synoptic
Gospels (the Johannine Gospel knows nothing of it) is one which even
the most determined traditionalist would not venture to maintain.
Earthquake, thunder, and darkness, precede in like manner the death
of Oidipous, who is pre-eminently the man of sorrows, which surround
him from night to morning and from morning to night. ^
In short, the solar day is done ; and as the sun sinks down into
his unseen abode beneath the horizon, so the great Paschal victim, as
he was born in a cave, is placed in the rock-hewn sepulchre of the
Arimathean Joseph. But some thirty-six hours must pass before the
declining and dead sun can start again on his career of victory. What
work was the great Healer to do in the interval 1 What had become
of all the generations of men who had passed away 1 Had they not
all gone to the unseen land, with all their hopes and fears, their faults
and sins 1 Poets had long ago given their answer to this question.
In the Odyssey and the jEneid we have two narratives of descent into
the regions of the dead. We need but one ; and a hundred such tales
would bring with them no benefit to us, for the details of the descent
would soon become monotonous and wearisome. There is action ; and
the action is unseen ; and thus unseen the work of the great Healer is
renewed in the land of the departed. The so-called Petrine epistle
speaks of Him as preaching to the spirits in prison; and later
theologians asserted that the realm of Satan was left without a
single inhabitant. For Gregory of Nyssa this tradition justified the
universalism which led him to exult in the assurance that on the final
extinction of evil there should go up thanksgiving from the whole
creation. But for all this the mythical substratum remained; and
on this foundation has been raised the many-sided fabric of later
theology.
We have seen that the most mythical of all the narratives of the
passion is that which deals with the Eucharist. For the other great
sacrament of baptism no one would venture to say that the sign of
water was for the first time employed by Jesus of Nazareth It is,
however, to be noted that the signs of both these sacraments are
included in the ritual of the great mysteries. It is not unreasonable
to conclude that the two sacraments were also formally developed in
1 Supernatural Religion, i. 338. 2 Soph. Oid. Tyr. 11. 1242-48.
APPENDIX B. 507
them. Of the cake and the cup all the initiated partook; and the
name of the former seems to survive in that of the 'mass.' The
words Ite missa est are clearly misplaced in the Latin office ; but they
may as easily be an invitation to a rite about to begin as a dismissal
from one just ended.^
The traditional theology and religion of Christendom is thus seen
to be a result of many factors ; and no doubt there may have been at
work in it many influences which it may be difficult to trace out and
to estimate. Within two or three centuries following its own earliest
days the Christian Church either absorbed, or put down, the worship of
Mithra. It did so just because the two systems exhibited resemblances
of the strongest kind. No one probably at the time could have
ventured to say which of the two would prove to be the more enduring.
Constantine avows himself a Mithraist after his so-called conversion
to Christianity. For the period of Eoman occupation of this country
there is no lack of Mithraic monuments, while no Christian monuments
have been discovered. Both the systems had in large part the same
esoteric doctrines, with the same mythical framework. Mithra, the
god of the sun, the embodiment of the wisdom and glory of Ahura-
mazdao, is essentially, and pre-eminently, the Mediator between
Ormuzd and man as liable to the seductions of the evil tempter. He
is rock or cave-born and cave-buried. The similarity of the Eucharistic
symbolism in both provokes the wrath of Justin Martyr, who com-
plains that 'wicked devils have in the mysteries of Mithras com-
manded the same thing to be done; for that bread and a cup of
water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one
who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.' ^ But in spite
of all points of contact, although Mithraism spoke of mediation and
would have all to be washed in the blood of the lamb, and although the
mystical rites in both systems were to so large an extent the same, the
Christian Church nevertheless took in hand the task of putting its rival
out of sight. The sun-gods of Hellenic or other ancient faiths might
live in the songs of lyric poets and the wonderful works of the Greek
drama ; but their forms were apt to fade, if gazed upon too long or with
too highly-strained devotion. In the Christian creed the worshippers
had, in the great Healer and Consoler, a visible, tangible man, who,
reflecting the glory of the Eternal Father, had, it is said, shown his
1 Dean Stanley regards the words, Ite missa est, as an ' accidental phrase at the end
of the service' {Christian Institutions, p. 44.) It may to a certain extent be so ; hut it
must have been used in some part of the office ; and if it is not now in the right place,
the dislocation remains to be accounted for.
2 Mithraism, in Religious Systems of the World, p. 205.
508 THE FOUK GOSPELS AS HISTOKICAL EECOEDS
love and patience in every place which he had visited. Still the
traditional Christianity retained so much of the Mithraic system that
a Mithraist entering a Christian church might almost persuade him-
self that he was in one of his own temples. The fight was between a
weaker and a stronger mythology ; and in the victory of the traditional
Christianity the stronger mythology buried the weaker.
appe:^dix c
THE PARABLES
(See Page 267.)
The examination of the parables attributed to Jesus leaves us pain-
fully conscious of the dearth, if not the total absence, of historical
material even for the period of the ministry. But even if we see
clearly that of these parables some have not come to us as he spoke
them, and that some were in all likelihood never spoken by him at all,,
we can scarcely repress the wish to know something more of the
sources of these famous narratives. From first to last it is never
stated, or_, perhaps, even hinted, that these stories all came originally
from him, and not from any one else ; and there is, perhaps, no reason
why they should be all in this sense original. For a satisfactory
scrutiny the materials are inadequate ; but it is scarcely necessary to
remark that the parables labour under the full weight of the presump-
tions raised against the books in which they are found. Unless in
some way or other they carry their own evidence with them, their
credit must depend on that of the Gospels, and these in their turn
rest on the credit of the Acts of the Apostles. What the result of
this inquiry has been we have seen already (Book I. ch. i.), and thus
we are left to deal with the parables, separately, as best we may.
Whatever else may be obscure, this at least is manifest, that they
have been as much misunderstood by the evangelists as the prophetical
writings themselves. The evangelists, indeed, seem quite incapable of
quoting from the words of the great prophetical teachers without mis-
applying and more or less distorting them. In the same way they
have taken details from different parables and thrust them into places
where they have no meaning; and if their reports of some of these
utterances may be fairly correct, the explanations put into the mouth
of Jesus never are correct. Of these we may safely say that they could
never have come from the teacher who put forth these stories for
509
510 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
the first time. Nay, if we look to the evangelists for the motive and
purpose of this parabolic teaching, we should come to conclusions
diametrically opposed to the truth.
If the parables be short stories conveying, each, one idea for the
instruction of persons incapable of taking in more than one idea at a
time with any advantage to themselves, then this form of teaching was
for their good, for their enlightenment, for their comfort. But the
evangelist actually tells us that it was designed to keep them in the
dark, and so to prevent them from prying into secrets, the knowledge
of which was to be confined to a small knot of more intimate followers
(Matt. xiii. 11-16). This is emphatically asserted in the first Gospel.
In the third (viii. 10) the purpose of keeping the people in comparative
darkness is even more forcibly set forth. The form, I'va fxrj, is the
strongest possible expression of deliberate will.^ We may, therefore,
be absolutely certain that the passage from Isaiah was never so twisted
and perverted by the great Teacher himself. If we go back to the
words of the prophet, we find that they were, every one, to be uttered
in the ears of the people whom by these very words he condemned.
VGo tell this people,' was the command given, 'and Say, Hear but
understand not, see but perceive not, make their heart fat and their
ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see, hear, understand, turn,
and be healed.' It was to be, in short, a last despairing appeal
addressed to thoroughly hardened hearts. It was the warning that
their recompense would be the direct result of their own acts. It was
the last expression of hope that the stronghold of darkness might at
last give way. But of secrecy or of mystery there is here not the
faintest trace. Light, ever more light, was the blessing which the
prophet was striving to give to his countrymen. He had nothing to
bestow on others which he did not freely offer to them. The idea of
any esoteric teaching hidden away behind these words is ludicrous
indeed. The evangelist has misunderstood the utterances of the
prophet from first to last, and applied them to a subject with which
they have not the most remote connexion. The misapplication is not
.quite so absurd as that of the words of Hosea, which are made to
predict the return of Joseph with Mary and the child from Egypt;
but the method of dealing with the prophetical writings is in either
case essentially the same. In short, the setting of all the parables
is absolutely unhistorical ; and it is not without misgiving that we
1 The ascription of judicial blindness to the Jewish people generally is not less
strongly made in the fourth Gospel (xii. 37-41) than it is in the Synoptics, the passage
from Isaiah being cited as the reason for their unbelief, did tovto ovk 7)d{iuavTo Tnare^eiv
. 8ti TrdXiv elirev 'Hcaias, k.t.X.
APPENDIX 0. 511
can speak of each particular parable as coming, or not coming, from
the great Master.
It is, no doubt, true that justice is not done to a parable, unless we
fix our minds closely on the one idea which dominates it, abstracting,
so far as we may be able, other ideas with which the central idea may
be most closely connected. Unless we do this in the case of the first
parable, we shall find ourselves involved in some very bewildering per-
plexities, for unquestionably its details refuse to fit in with any con-
ditions of earthly agriculture. Not a thought seems to be given to the
preparation of the ground, or to protecting it against the attacks of
mischievous vermin. In short, we have not a hint that the sower owes
any duty to the soil, and that this duty should be thoroughly discharged
before he takes the seed into his hand. Again, in all cultivation, even
in that of the merest savages, the sowing of seed along the road (Trapol
TYjv 686v), on stones, and over thorns, would be looked upon as in-
excusable folly, which, if persisted in, must be forcibly put down. Hence,
however far we go back, we shall fail to arrive at conditions which at
all resemble those of this parable ; and if it be needful to find them,
we should have to put back the composition of it for millenniums.
But it does not follow that the sower is restricted to sowing seed only
on what may be called first-rate soil, as representing the good ground
of the parable. The needs of the people, as well as his own interests,
may compel him to make the best with heavy, sandy, strong, thin, damp,
or otherwise defective land. It follows, that the soils mentioned in the
parable answer to these varying qualities in the soils with which the
husbandman has to deal ; and the chief point becomes not so much the
result in each case, as the unfailing and unwearied bounty of the
divine sower. The whole world of man is the field, over every portion
of which his seed is sown, even though it may seem in parts to exhibit
nothing but mere stones, brambles, and hard wayside tracts. The
sower is, therefore, God, the Father of all, who makes his sun to rise
on the just and on the unjust, and sends his rain on the unthankful
and the evil. All are in his loving care, and the very worst shall be
partakers of his bounty until the unprofitable desert shall become the
fruitful field.
Enough has been said to show that we can place little trust in the
adjuncts of the parables, or even on the text of the parables them-
selves. Of the explanations we may say with greater confidence that
not one of them comes from the great Teacher himself. They are not
offered to those who need them most ; the disciples, as they are plainly
told, ought never to have needed them at all; and, further, these
interpretations introduce features not found in the parables them-
512 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
selves. The language of the parable of the wheat and the tares raises
a strong presumption that each individual man is the field in which
the wheat is sown. It receives the good seed ; in other words, man
has a constitution (of appetites, passions, mind, will, and conscience),
which is good. It is the wrong choice which calls up tares, and fosters
moral weeds which grow up along with the better impulses of his
being. These tares shall be rooted out in the end, and consumed or
destroyed ; all that is good shall be carefully housed ; and the field
shall remain good soil for ever. The explanation takes no cognisance
of the good and evil in each individual man. All, according to this
illustration, are either wholly good or wholly bad, so that the one set
of men may be bound up in bundles to be cast away, while the re-
maining human beings are stored up in the barn. But the parable
had spoken of tares to be plucked up, not of men to be rooted out ;
and there is no warrant for the gloss put upon it in the commentary.
The two may possibly come from the same source j but it is to the last
degree unlikely. In common with this parable, it must not be for-
gotten that in the Eden story there are two gardens, one the paradise
with its four streams, the other the garden of the human body. Of
the tree in the midst of the latter garden they are not to eat ; and the
eating of it is the sowing of the deadly crop of tares. But the divine
purpose is not therefore to be frustrated; and the end will be the
uprooting and burning up of these noxious weeds, and the purifying of
the soil in which they had been allowed to grow.
In addition to these illustrations, some of the parables have affixed
to them certain brief statements which, from their very brevity, carry
with them great weight, and fix themselves on the minds of average
readers with singular tenacity. Two such summary utterances may
be found at the end of the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard
(Matt. XX. 16). The one is, that the last shall be first and the first
last, — the reason for this being furnished by the second saying, that
many are called, but few are chosen. This latter saying occurs again
in the same Gospel (xxii. 14) with a very different context, and is not
found in either the second or third Gospels. I avail myself here of the
unanswerable remarks made by the author of Supernatural Eeligion.
Of the parable to w^hich this phrase is appended, he says that —
' The householder engages the labourers at diff'erent hours of the
day, and pays those who had worked but one hour the same wages as
those who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and the re-
flexion at the close is xx. 16 : "Thus the last shall be first, and the
first last; for many are called but few chosen." It is perfectly
evident that neither of these sayings, but especially not that with
APPENDIX C. 513
which we are concerned ' [as supposed to be cited in the Epistle of
Barnabas] ' has any connexion with the parable at all. There is no
question of many or few, or of selection or rejection ; all the labourers
are engaged and paid alike. If there be a moral at all to the parable,
it is the justification of the master, "Is it not lawful for me to do
what I will with my own ? " It is impossible to imagine a saying
more irrelevant to its context than ''many are called but few chosen "
in such a place. The passage occurs again (xxii. 14) in connection
with the parable of the king who made a marriage for his son. The
guests who are at first invited refuse to come, and are destroyed by
the king's armies ; but the wedding is nevertheless " furnished with
guests " by gathering together as many as are found in the highways.
A new episode commences when the king comes in to see the guests
(v. 11). He observes a man there who has not on a wedding garment,
and he desires the servants to (v. 13) "Bind him hand and foot and
cast him into the darkness without," where " there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth": and then comes our passage {v. 14), "For
many are called but few chosen." Now, whether applied to the first
or to the latter part of the parable, the saying is irrelevant. The
guests first called were in fact chosen as much as the last, but them-
selves refused to come, and of all those who, being " called " from the
highways and byways, ultimately furnished the wedding with guests
in their stead, only one was rejected. It is clear that the facts here
distinctly contradict the moral that "few are chosen." In both places
the saying is, as it were, " dragged in by the hair." . . . The total
irrelevancy of the saying to its context, its omission by the oldest
authorities from Matt. xx. 16, where it appears in later MSS., and its
total absence from both of the other Gospels, must at once strike
every one as peculiar. . . . Certainly under the circumstances it can
scarcely be maintained in its present context as a historical saying of
Jesus.' 1
1 Supernatural Religion, i. 244. — We can scarcely doubt that the proverb, bidding
the healer tend himself, said to be cited by Jesus in Luke iv. 23, is another instance of a
saying which, after floating a while on the sea of tradition, has at length been assigned to
a place with which, as the narrative now runs, it has nothing to do. Why should Jesus
cite this saying at this time? His hearers were rejoicing in his gracious utterances
{v. 22), and clearly were not even thinking that their teacher needed to undergo any
process of healing. How, again, could this self-healing be obtained by, or consist in,
doing in Nazareth the works which he had done in Capernaum ? No connexion with the
idea of the physician healing himself can be traced in verses 24-27 ; and it is hard
indeed to see why a reference to Elijah and Elisha should rouse into a fit of murderous
rage {v. 28) the same hearers who, a few minutes before, had been bearing joyful witness
(v. 22) to the words of grace which came from his mouth ? We are, probably, reading
here a confused narrative which refers to many separate and unconnected incidents of
which the reports have been dislocated, and the fragments clumsily put together.
2k
514 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
The uncertainty which attaches to those sayings is brought out
still more clearly if we turn to the earlier clause of this sentence.
The Epistle of Barnabas (Book i. chap. 2) quotes the following
passage : * Again I will show thee how, in regard to us, the Lord saith,
He made a new creation in the last times. The Lord saith, Behold, I
make the first as the last.' The sense of this is, manifestly, quite
different from that of the sentence given in Matt. xx. 16. 'The
application of this saying in this place in the first, and indeed in the
other Synoptic Gospels, is evidently quite false, and depends merely
on the ring of words, and not of ideas. In xix. 30, it is quoted a
second time, quite irrelevantly with some variation.' ^
In short, these sentences do not belong to the parables with which
they are connected ; and the illustrations and comments are, not less
clearly, also thrust into a text with which they had nothing to do.
The idea that the Epistle of Barnabas is citing a passage from the first
Gospel is seen to be preposterously absurd.
When the first Synoptic says that Jesus taught the people by
parables, and never employed any other method (xiii. 34), he may
mean that Jesus never spoke without some illustrations thrown into
the form of parables. Thus every discourse would have two or three
such tales interspersed among other matter. This may have been his
general practice; but even according to the Synoptics, it seems to
have been not without exceptions. The so-called Sermon on the
Mount exhibits no trace of what can with any accuracy be spoken of
as parabolic teaching. Still less does it give any countenance to the
meaning assigned to his adoption of this method in the Synoptic
Gospels. In fact, it leaves no room for any distinction of esoteric
from exoteric teaching. Unless we include the transcendental theology
of the Johannine Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount rises to the highest
level of human thought. The citation from the sixth chapter of
Isaiah, by way of justifying this distinction, is, therefore, labour thrown
away. But with the disappearance of this distinction, the historical
foundation assigned for this alleged parabolic teaching is seriously
weakened.
But after all that has been said, the question remains. When, and
in what country, were these parables composed? The lifetime of
Jesus is said to fall within the reigns of Octavius Caesar and Tiberius ;
and in this case, during the whole time of his ministry, Judsea was
governed by a Roman procurator. Whence then came those features,
characteristic of the extremest Oriental despotism, which are ex-
hibited with so much prominence in these parables 1 If these narratives
1 Supernatural Religion, i. 245.
APPENDIX C. 615
are illustrations of heavenly truth drawn from common or well-
known incidents or occurrences of ordinary life within the experience
of the hearers, then were the inhabitants of Judaea and Galilee at that
time accustomed to the sights and words with which these parables
would suppose them to be familiar 1 Could any one in Judaea or
Galilee at this time have ordered a guest to be bound hand and foot
and cast into outer darkness because he had not some badge on his
dress which his host looked for? (Matt. xxii. 13.) Did any existing
law allow, in Judasa or Galilee, the selling not merely of an insolvent
debtor and all his goods, but also of his wife and children 1 (Matt,
xviii. 25.) By what law was the nobleman (Luke xix. 12) empowered
to order to summary execution those who had sent an embassy repudi-
ating their allegiance to him? They may have been rebels in
intention, if not in act ; but so far they were following some form of
law. Were they not entitled to some formal process of accusation
or trial ? All this would agree entirely with the atmosphere of the
court of the Great King at Sousa. Can it be said to agree with the
condition of things in the days of Herod the Great or his son
Archelaos 1 If these parables were composed for persons familiar
with the life and action of the Persian Shah, then they were not
composed by one whose life w^as spent at Nazareth and Capernaum ;
and the whole question is brought to an end with the negative con-
clusion that Jesus never spoke these parables, or that, if he did, he
had received them from others. They would thus be simply short
stories of which he so far approved as to make use of them in his
teaching. In what ways their text has been tampered with, corrupted,
and mutilated, we have seen in part already, and in part we have no
means for determining with precise exactness.
APPENDIX D
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. THE 'GOSPEL OF PETEFv '
(Seepagesl53, 393, 474.)
A ftLVNUSCRiPT containing a small portion, seemingly, of the Gospel of
Peter, has lately been found in the Christian cemetery of Akhmim.
As the narrator speaks, or is made to speak, of himself in the first
person (verse 60), and calls himself ' Simon Peter,' we may reasonably
infer that we have here a fragment of the record which, in the days of
Justin Martyr and later writers, went by the name of that apostle.
If, then, this was the Gospel cited by Justin, this document was in
existence early in the latter half of the second century. For its
existence at any earlier time there is no evidence. It is therefore
removed by perhaps a century and a quarter from the alleged time
of the events with which it professes to deal.
Whether this fragment belongs to that particular Gospel of which
Serapion and Eusebius speak as the Gospel of Peter, and which they
both condemned, is a question with which I need not concern myself.
The language of Serapion is sufficiently decisive. That of Eusebius is
severe. Whether this fragment deserves and justifies all that was
said by both about the book which they call the Gospel of Peter, is a
point on which we shall do well to satisfy ourselves.
In this fragment the day of the resurrection is called the Lord's
day, and it was during the night which preceded the dawn of this day
that a loud voice ^ was heard in the heaven by the soldiers on guard,
who at once saw the heavens opened, and two men descend from the
heaven, and draw near to the tomb (36). The stone which blocked the
entrance to the cave then rolled itself aside, and left an open way to
the sepulchre into which the two young men entered (37). The
soldiers, seeing these things, wake up the centurion and the elders of
1 The words, /xeydXT) (fiwvq, clearly denote articulate utterance. A few lines ftxrther
on, the voice speaks again, and the words uttered are given {vv. 35, 42).
516
APPENDIX D. 517
the Sanhedrim, who had shared their watch. While the soldiers are
telling their tale, they all see three men come out of the tomb, into
which two had entered, the two supporting the third, and the cross
following them. Of the two, the heads reached up to the heaven ; the
head of the third, whom they each led by the hand, rose above the
heaven ; and they (it is to be supposed, the elders and the soldiers, as
before) heard a voice from heaven, saying, ' Thou hast preached to the
sleeping,' — a reference doubtless to the preaching of Jesus to the
spirits in prison (1 Peter iii. 19). To these words the cross, with
articulate utterance, announced its assent.
The soldiers now debate whether, or not, they ought to go and
inform Pilate of all these things ; but before they have made up their
mind, the heavens are again opened, and ' a certain man ' descends and
enters the sepulchre. AVhat this second descent may mean we are
not here told. But it is said to have determined all who were present
(i.e. the centurion, the soldiers, and the elders of the council) to go at
once to Pilate and acknowledge that the man whom they had crucified
was Son of God (45). Pilate's answer (which seems to be addressed
to the mind of the elders rather than to the soldiers), is that he is free
from the guilt of his blood, and that his condemnation was of their
doing, not his. It is, indeed, impossible that this can apply to the
soldiers, who were simply acting under orders ; but, practically, in this
fragment there are no definite distinctions of time, place, or person.
Having heard Pilate's answer, they all (grammatically, these are the
elders, the centurion, and the guard) beseech him to command the
witnesses to say nothing of what they had seen. Clearly the evan-
gelist did not mean that the soldiers wished this order to be given to
themselves ; but this is the meaning which the construction carries.
The reason given (and this again must come from the elders exclusively)
is that they would rather incur the deepest guilt in the sight of God
than run the risk of being stoned by the Jews. Pilate gives the
order, and so ends this version of a story which is scarcely more
amazing than the version given in Matthew (xxviii. 11-15).
The verses which follow tell us of the doings of Mary Magdalene,
who, however, does not see her risen Master, although the angel
(seemingly the one who had last descended from heaven, a young
man, beautiful, and clad in glistering raiment) bids her stoop down
and see the place where the body had lain. The last sentence of the
fragment runs as follows : —
(88) ' It was the last day of the feast of unleavened bread, and
many people kept on coming out of the city, returning to their homes,
as the feast was over. (89) But we, the twelve disciples of the
518 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
Master, were weeping and in grief; and each of us, grieving for what
had happened,! went to his own home. (90) But I, Simon Peter, and
Andrew my brother, went to the sea, taking with us our nets. And
there was with us Levi, the son of Alphseus, whom the Master . . .'
So on the resurrection morning, there were twelve disciples.
Judas Iscariot was, therefore, present with them.^ Matthew (xxviii. 16)
is careful to say that they were eleven, although he sends them,
not each to his separate home, but all in a body to Galilee. We may
note, that here the disciples know nothing of what had taken place,
the circumstances of the resurrection having been witnessed only by
those who had brought about the condemnation of Jesus, and by the
soldiers who had carried out the sentence. In Matthew the women (and
the women only) see him. Here none of the men knows anything
before they begin their journey to Galilee. The circumstance that Peter
and Andrew had brought their fishing-nets from the Sea of Tiberias
to Jerusalem, and now took them back again, is not found in any of our
four Gospels. To say the least, they were a mighty weight for two men
to carry (twice), over a distance of some seventy miles. In Matthew the
message brought by the women raises in the apostles the hope that the
risen Master would manifest himself to them in Galilee. Here, know-
ing nothing, they make their northward journey in an agony of grief
and sorrow.
There remains the question of the time when the Gospel took
shape. That the writer worked in complete independence of our
Canonical Gospels may be very safely affirmed. We may, with equal
reason, conclude that he followed some earlier form of the tradition to
1 This must refer to the crucifixion, not the resurrection.
2 The existence of a version of the story of the Passion which had no traitor in it
would, if we had any trustworthy and conclusive evidence that such a version existed,
be a very noteworthy and important fact. All that we can assert from the recovered
fragment is that, according to the story, the treachery is not to be laid to the charge of
Judas or any of the twelve. But there may have been other traitors who may have been
mentioned elsewhere in the Petrine narrative, although the silence of the fragment makes
such a conclusion most unlikely. All that it tends to establish is the complete acquittal of
the whole body of the twelve. The result is unfortunate for the credit of the Canonical
Gospels. In all of these there is a traitor, and the traitor is Judas Iscariot ; but in the
fourth Gospel the treason of Judas is woven into the very fabric and essence of the
narrative. In the Johannine story (vi, 64) Jesus speaks of one of the twelve as being a
devil. In the Petrine tale all the twelve are plunged in the same sorrow on the morning
of the resurrection. According to the Johannine Gospel (vi. 64) Jesus knew from the
beginning which of the twelve would be the traitor ; in the Petrine fragment none of the
twelve was a traitor. The statements in John xiii. 10, 11, seem to imply that the pre-
dictions of the treachery of Judas were repeatedly made. The Petrine version asserts or
implies that the declaration was altogether groundless. The one fact proved by the
fragment is the existence of many conflicting versions of the story of the Passion, which
more or less excluded each other, and destroyed the historical authority of all.
APPENDIX D. 619
which the writers of all the Gospels had access, and on which they all
worked. Should either, or both, of these propositions be refuted, the
issue would not be material to our argument. So soon as it has been
shown that our Canonical Gospels (whatever else they may be) are not
trustworthy historical records, we have, speaking strictly, nothing
more to do. The story of Judas, as given in our four Gospels, has been
shown to be from beginning to end, and in every part, a fiction ; and
we stand in need of no further evidence for this conclusion. Whether
in this story we have a version of the Loki legend in the chronicle of
Baldur is a question with which we are not concerned. But, if the state-
ments of the fragment of the so-called Petrine Gospel may be regarded
as deliberate (and there is not the faintest warrant for regarding them
as anything else), the Judas tale is absolutely discredited. The
recovered fragment leaves no doubt that one form of the great Christian
legend had no story of treason on the part of any one of the apostles.
Here, on the resurrection morning, Judas fasts, mourns, and weeps
with the rest of the twelve ; and thus we have an account which
cannot possibly be reconciled with the predictions and representa-
tions of the Canonical Gospels, and more especially of the Johannine
Gospel.
In spite of these and other like considerations, a strong effort has
been made to show that the writer of the Petrine Gospel worked with
our Canonical Gospels before him, and that where he does not follow
them, the apparently new matter found in the fragment is, in almost
every instance, taken from the Old Testament by a process commonly
spoken of as the Gnosis. The method of interpretation here followed
was systematised in the second century, and more especially in the second
half of it ; and the system may be fairly described as a way of making
anything mean anything. Thus because the prophet Zephaniah (iii. 8)
speaks of God as rising up for a testimony (martyrion), Cyril inter-
prets the rising up as denoting the resurrection, and the martyrion as
pointing to the Martyrion, or Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 'Ihe
bringing of the ass and the ass's colt to Jesus is suggested by the
passage in which Joseph is said to bind his ass to the vine and his ass's
colt to the choice vine ; and thus the prophecy gives birth to an incident
of the history. In other instances this method, it is said, affects only
the style ; the parables, for example, in the first Synoptic being in-
troduced by the phrase, * he opened his mouth and taught them,' as in
the Psalm (xlix. 4) which speaks of the dark sayings. This method is
seen in its greatest force when we come to the exegesis of Cyprian.
According to him Jesus is ' the rock or stone in Genesis, which Jacob
set for his head, because the head of a man is Christ ; and sleeping, he
520 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTOEICAL EECORDS
saw a ladder, reaching to the heaven on which the Lord stood ; which
stone he consecrated, and anointed with the sacrament of unction,
signifying Christ thereby. And this is the stone in Exodus, on which
Moses sat on the hill when Jesus the son of Nav6 was fighting against
Amalek, and by the sacrament of the stone and the firmness of the
seat of Moses, Amalek was overcome by Jesus — that is, the devil was
conquered by Christ. And this is the great stone in the Book of Kings,
on which was placed the ark of the covenant when it had been sent
back by the Philistines,' etc. So, again, the prophet Amos had spoken
of a day in which the sun * should set at noon, a day which shall be cold
and bitter ' ; and a Father was ready with his interpretation. On the
day of the crucifixion there was darkness over the land from the sixth
to the ninth hour ; and the cold was so great that they lit a fire, and
Simon Peter came and stood with them to warm himself.
It must be added that this system was worked out unflinchingly,
and that few systems have had more influence, for good or for harm,
on the course of human thought. A treatise, entitled Peregrinatio ad
loca sancta, ascribed to Sylvia of Aquitaine, shows the working of this
system at Jerusalem in her own day ; and shows also the persistency
and the thoroughness with which the work was carried on. For three
hours daily, during the forty days of the Lenten fast, the people were
taught, as Sylvia puts it, that ' nothing took place which had not been
previously foretold, and nothing had been foretold which had not
obtained its fulfilment.' Prophecy thus reacted on history, or on
what passed for such. Nay, it not merely furnished details of in-
cidents ; it supplied materials for incidents, and even for whole series
of incidents. So great, we are told, was the success achieved that it
becomes difficult to distinguish what may be a direct reference in a
prophetical book from a trick of style borrowed from the prophets, or
pure legend invented out of their writings. Whatever other results
may be produced by such a system as this, it cannot fail to make
havoc of the historical sense, and practically to destroy it. It surely
cannot be necessary to say that an incident, suggested by words or
phrases in any book, cannot be an incident of history at all. The
colouring of an incident is one thing ; the fact, even if it be described
in high-flown or exaggerated language, is another. But if the sup-
posed fact itself owes its birth to a supposed prediction, it has no
foundation, and it answers to nothing beyond the imagination or
inventiveness of the writer.
This argument has been pressed vrlth great force against the Petrine
Gospel. ^ The author is said to be an adept in this method of pro-
phetical interpretation, and is therefore marked as one who has worked
APPENDIX D. 521
up or fabricated his history from the most advanced Gnosis of his day,
which can scarcely be set down as earlier than the closing years of the
second century.
It is a broad and sweeping conclusion to draw from rather slender
evidence. A few verses of the Petrine Gospel are all that have been
recovered as yet from the sepulchres at Akhmim ; but we need not
say more here than that the discredit attaching to this Gospel, from
the supposed way in which it has been put together, must affect all
other narratives which betray the influence of the same system of
exegesis. I am in no way concerned to defend the author or authors of
this Gospel ; but at all events some justice will be meted out to them, if
it be shown that their sin is fully shared by the compilers of our four
Canonical Gospels. It is altogether inequitable to discredit the former
for constructing their narrative on a framework furnished by the
language of ancient prophecy, unless it can be shown that the charge
does not apply to the latter. But throughout the present inquiry the
conclusion has been forced upon us, that all incidents of any importance
in the Canonical narratives are referred to passages in the writings of
the Old Testament; and that of all the passages so cited there is
scarcely one which has not been misunderstood, misinterpreted, mis-
quoted, or else so twisted as to deceive all those who are not on their
guard against this so-called Gnosis. These passages have all been con-
sidered in their proper places. It is enough here to say that the passage
cited as the warrant or sanction for the flight to Egypt and the return
from it has been obtained by cutting away the whole context of only
five or six words, which are thus made to mean that God the Father
called Jesus out of Egypt, although this call in the prophecy is strictly
and solely the call of a rebellious house and of children given over to
idolatry. If the charge brought against the Petrine evangelist can be
sustained, then the whole story of the flight into Egypt and its sequel
has as much, and as little, reality as the Gnosis which spied it out in
the sentences of Hosea.
Nor is it true to say that the language of the Psalms has affected
only the style of the first Synoptic evangelist when he comes to speak of
the parabolic teaching of Jesus. The intent and purpose of this teaching
is declared to be the blinding of the people, in order that they should
not be healed and their sins be forgiven them. This openly acknow-
ledged purpose is declared to be set forth by the prophet Isaiah ; but
when we turn to the prophetical page, we find that the words have
precisely the opposite meaning; and it is, of course, clear that the
evangelist misrepresents the Great Teacher quite as much as he mis-
represents the prophet whose words he professes to cite. But if the
522 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
Gospel of Peter is to be discredited on the grounds of a Gnosis which
has suggested the incidents of the narrative, then the introduction of
the long series of parables is due to the same Gnosis applied to a
passage of Isaiah, which means something totally different.
Still more significant is the astounding change which suddenly
comes over the Synoptic narratives when Jesus sets his face to go to
Jerusalem, and puts before the apostles the details of the coming
passion. There is no reason for this amazing change in previous
occurrences; and the catastrophe now predicted is set forth, not in
mere indefinite outline, but in the most minute detail. The whole is
put before the disciples as an issue to be brought about by an inexor-
able necessity, and to be brought about also in exact accordance with
the sayings of prophets who had lived in the old time. We have
seen ^ how particular and minute these details are ; and if the charge
brought against the Petrine Gospel is to be pushed home here, it will
follow that the whole history of the passion is built up on a collection
of sayings gleaned from the old writings ; or, in other words, that they
are not histories at all. But that they are, or that they may be, the
outgrowth of a Gnosis applied to old prophetical writings, there is no
reason to deny. It is needful only to remember that all the passages
cited are more or less misquoted and misunderstood, and some of them
unscrupulously mutilated and garbled.
But the exercise of this Gnosis is openly avowed in the Synoptics.
It receives its supreme sanction from the risen Teacher himself in the
closing narratives of the third Gospel. The two disciples on the way
to Emmaus are rebuked, not for the shortness of their memory and
their disregard of facts made known to them in their own experience,
but for their unbelief of what the prophets had spoken. The things
which perplexed them must happen because they had been foretold ;
and because they had been foretold, therefore, the Christ must suffer
them (Luke xxiv. 25, 26). So in the manifestation which subsequently
took place, Jesus tells them that all the things written in the law of
Moses and in prophets and psalms concerning him must be fulfilled.
Their eyes are then opened, not that they might be able to weigh the
evidence of facts, but that they might understand the witings, which
must be fulfilled (Luke xxiv. 44).
We have here not, perhaps, the exact words ascribed to Sylvia
of Aquitaine, but we have a clear statement of the two canons laid
down in the Peregrinatio ad loca sanda: (l)5..that nothing took place
which had not been previously foretold, and (2) nothing had been
foretold which had not obtained its fulfilment.
1 See Book iv. ch. 2.
APPENDIX D. 523
So far, then, as the knowledge and application of the Gnosis is
concerned, the Canonical Gospels have nothing to distinguish them from
the Gospel which is said to come from Peter. In this argument we
have most assuredly not the smallest justification for assigning the
Gospel of Peter to an author who had before him all, or any, of our
Canonical Gospels.
APPENDIX E
MIRACLES, AND THE EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES OR MARVELS
(Seepages 140, 151, 351.)
In the text of this volume (Book in. ch. 10) I confine myself strictly
to the examination of the Gospel narratives of marvels, prodigies,
wonders, or miracles, as records of historical facts, and nothing else. No
one could probably so much as dream of denying that they are related,
in the writings both of the Old and New Testaments,^ as occurrences
which have actually taken place. If they have not taken place, they
are unmeaning or nonsensical tales, on which it is useless to waste time.
But neither, if they did actually happen, can we be expected to credit
them apart from any evidence. The apologists for miracles or marvels
often write as though all Christians were bound to accept those
miracles on which they insist as true, without doubt and without
question. ' A man,' we are told, * cannot state his belief as a Christian
in the ternis of the Apostles' Creed without asserting them. ... If
a miracle is incorporated as an article in a creed, that article of the
creed, the miracle, and the proof of it by a miracle, are all one thing.' ^
Taken strictlj^, this utterance involves the complete abnegation of all
thought. Yet these apologists talk of evidence, and into this the
question must resolve itself. For this evidence we are referred to the
New Testament writings.
I have examined a large proportion of the four Gospels, with results
which may, perhaps, be thought sufficiently clear ; the conclusion being
that the New Testament histories, and the marvels recounted in them,
are alike put out of court, because the records are seen to be histori-
cally untrustworthy. They contradict each other and themselves
continually on the commonest matters of fact. In other words, there
is no proper evidence for the ordinary occurrences which they record,
and therefore absolutely none when they deal with extraordinary and
^ Mozley, Bampton Lectures for 1865, p. 21.
524
APPENDIX E. 525
preternatural incidents. This being the real issue, it is nothing
less than absurd to go off into general discussions on the possi-
bility or the necessity of wonders, or signs, or miracles, as proofs of
revelations such as those which are set before us in the systems of
traditional Christianity, or in any other. Until such narratives as
those of the purification of the temple are shown to be historically
trustworthy, all discourse on the paramount need of miracles as
evidence for ecclesiastical or popular Christianity is a mere ignoratio
elenchi.
I must, therefore, steadily resist the temptation which might lure
me to mingle in the fray. The temptation is not without a certain
degree of force ; but the controversy must be left to others, if, indeed,
it be not already, for all practical purposes, brought to an end. So
far as I may venture to form a judgement, the controversy has been
virtually set at rest in the pages of the work on Suj^ernatural Religion,
to which I have expressed my obligations. It is, therefore, unne-
cessary for me to go again over the ground which the author of that
work has traversed ; but I may be allowed to notice some facts con-
nected with the discussion which seem to have a bearing on the
historical aspect of the question.
In another Appendix (A) I have expressed the opinion that some
of the narratives of marvels or miracles contained in our Gospels are
the result of that petrifaction of language which must take place when
spiritual metaphors are put before coarse and ill-educated minds.
With this opinion few probably would care to quarrel; but if it
may be so with some, why not with more ? If with more, why
not with all ? In the record of the sending of the two disciples
of the Baptist to Jesus we have seen the actual process which con-
verted the spiritual metaphor into the thaumaturgic tale. It is, there-
fore, to say the least, possible that all the narratives of prodigies,
marvels, or wonders, set down in the Gospels or elsewhere, may have
so taken shape ; and in this case it follows that the great Teacher never
wrought any bodily or physical miracles, and never refused or claimed to
work any. It may also be fairly urged that all the commands for the
working of spiritual benefits might be obeyed and carried out into an
abundant harvest, while the same charges, interpreted in gross concrete
fashion, would issue at best in a few outward cures, or in bringing at
most two or three of the physically dead back to this earthly life.
How poor a result for so high-sounding a commission ! ' Heal the
sick ; cleanse the lepers ; give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf,
and life to the dead. Freely ye have received ; freely give.' Yet in
the Gospels Jesus raises but one or two of the physically dead, and
526 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
cures here and there some who were diseased or possessed or maimed,
halt or blind. By the apostles, no one physically dead is, during the
ministry, said to be raised to life ; in other words, if it was his mean-
ing and purpose that the physically dead should be brought back to
their former life, the command of the Master was not obeyed or
fulfilled. Again, the thought that a body of missionaries was to be
sent forth chiefly for the purpose of impressing earth-bound minds by
these poor outward signs or tokens, is humiliating.
But if it be granted that this is the mode in which miraculous
narratives generally have grown up, it follows that the concrete story
of material wonders is wholly discredited as history. It rests on no
material fact, while the old spiritual meaning has vanished into mist.
It is a misinterpretation, and that is all. How long the process of
converting the one into the other might last, it is impossible to say.
The question probes our ignorance of the time when the great Master
lived and taught. We have seen that no dependence can be placed on
notes of time such as the census of Sulpicius Quirinus, or the fifteenth
year of Tiberius. Nor, on the other hand, can we^ say when our
Gospels were written ; but there is little room to doubt that they were
removed by at least a hundred years from the time of the events with
which they profess to deal; and a century of oral tradition would
amply suffice for the completion of the process.
We should, therefore, be justified on these grounds alone in rejecting
the Gospel narratives as altogether unhistorical. But although it
follows that these material wonders never took place, the evangelists,
and all whom they addressed, were firmly convinced that they did take
place. They have set them forth in the form of historical narratives,
and as such, therefore, we are bound to treat them. No doubt the
task is one calling for great care, for it might seem as though the
Teacher himself had certain notions on the subject of diabolical
possession, or instantaneous bodily cures. Yet for all we know, these
might be reflected upon him by the imagination, first, of his hearers,
and then of those who thought that, in giving shape to oral traditions,
they were telling the real story of his life. Of all such folly he,
therefore, stands absolutely acquitted ; and it must never be forgotten
that we have before us not necessarily his actual thoughts, but only
the opinions and acts ascribed to him by the gross minds of those
among whom he laboured.
But the question whether these were his opinions, or whether they
were only what the evangelists supposed to be his convictions, utter-
ances, and acts, is a mere question of evidence ; and this evidence is,
and can only be, historical. To this evidence, therefore, the apologists
APPENDIX E. 527
of miraculous narratives should address themselves immediately, so
that we may at the least know what that is with which we are dealing.
Instead of doing this, they seem to be contented to lay down certain
general propositions which virtually beg the question, and then to
reduce to a minimum the number of wonders or miracles which they
impose as a matter of faith upon others, and, if they be sincere, on
themselves also. Thus Butler i declares that * revelation itself is
miraculous, and miracles are the proof of it.' But what is revelation,
and what are the miracles which are to prove it? The terms are
undefined, as Butler's terms for the most part are ; and it looks very
much as though the revelation and the wonders were the same thing.
Whatever revelation may be, it must be something intimately and
inseparably connected with the miracle. In other words, the revela-
tion must be one of facts as well as truths. It cannot be, for instance,
the theism of Xenophanes, which no more needed the attestation of
outward facts than such support is needed for the theology of the
Nicene Creed. Naturally the reader of Butler may suppose that he
must mean the Incarnation, as it is understood by traditionalists
generally ; and, accordingly, Butler speaks of that miracle (if it is to be
so called). But he does so only to place it in the class of ' invisible
miracles,' which, * being secret, cannot be alleged in proof of such a
[divine] mission, but require themselves to be proved by visible
miracles.' Where, then, are we to assure ourselves that we may find
the proof ? The Eesurrection is quite as much an invisible miracle
or wonder as is the Incarnation. No one witnessed it.^
Both these wonders, then, according to Butler, need the attestation
of other wonders; and how are we to know which are the wonders that
were wrought specially to furnish these proofs ? When from Butler
we turn to Mozley, whose comparatively recent defence of the New
Testament wonders was hailed as a crushing defeat of those who
ventured to impugn them, we are, instead of being enlightened, plunged
into deeper darkness. Butler relied on all or some of the other
miracles in support of those which he put aside as invisible miracles ;
but according to Mozley these other miracles cannot be legitimately
employed for this purpose. We now find that, of the whole number
of the New Testament prodigies or marvels, a large portion are
1 Analogy, Part ii. chap. ii. section 1.
2 Even in the recently discovered fragment of the Gospel of Peter, it is only certain
incidents preceding or following the actual reanimation of the dead body of Jesus which
are seen ; and these are seen by the soldiers and elders, not by the disciples. How did
the report of what these soldiers and elders thus saw reach the evangelists ? See
Appendix D.
528 THE FOUE GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECOEDS
* ambiguous,' ^ and that the instances of ' cures, visions, expulsions of
evil spirits ' are to be put aside as such, — the reason being that * the
current miracles of human history ' are chiefly of this type.2 We must
then conclude that the narratives recording these wonders are also to
be set aside as unhistorical. But these wonders are amongst the signs
on which Butler relied as proofs of those miracles which need proof as
being invisible. The sacrifice is seriously large; but the Bampton
Lecturer regarded it without alarm. The circumstance, he affirmed,
'does not affect the character of the Gospel miracles as a whole,
because we judge of the body or whole from its highest specimen, not
from its lowest.' In other words, he was thinking of ' e.g. our Lord's
Resurrection and Ascension.' But of these two the former must be
placed in Butler's class of invisible miracles, which, instead of serving
as proof of a revelation, need other miracles in their own support.
There remains only what is called the Ascension ; and the report of
this comes to us from one anonymous non-contemporary work, of
which the most important assertions are directly and absolutely
contradicted by the great apostle of the Gentiles himself. This is the
conclusion to which we are brought after arguments which, in order to
obtain standing-ground for two or three miracles, deny that we can
reason from an order of nature, or that such an order exists. Dr.
Mozley's contention is that we have, and can have, no warrant for
assuming the continuity of natural phenomena, — that is, of cause and
sequence in the sensible universe, — in other words, that all inductive
science is a dream. We seek to know the will of God; we can only
learn it from certain incidents which we call miracles or wonders, that
is, really, from the narratives which tell us of these wonders ; and, as
we have seen, these are narratives which are discredited as histories
even when they tell us about the most ordinary occurrences.
May it not be fairly said that both Butler and Mozley are, to a large
extent, destructive critics 1 To say the least, their arguments in great
part invalidate each other. It is quite clear that the later apologist
lays no stress on the acceptance of any wonders, ' except those which it
is considered an article of faith to maintain ' ; ^ and it is not less
certain that the greatest success in proving theoretically the possibility
of marvels or miracles generally can do nothing more than raise a
presumption in favour of narratives of miracle in general. Such
1 I suppose that we may take this word as meaning that the occurrences of these
marvels cannot be regarded as historical, or at all events cannot be asserted to be such ;
in other words, that they answer no evidential purpose.
2 Bampton Lectures, p. 214 ; Supernatural Religion, i. 188.
3 &ipematural Religion, i. 191.
APPENDIX E. 529
narratives are found in the sacred books of all religions ; and they are
both more frequent and more detailed in other scriptures than in those
of the Christians or the Jews. According to modern apologists no
wonders are to be credited except those which belong to Christianity,
and very few of these, — i.e. some of the miracles related in the New
Testament writings. The succession of phenomena, it is said, tells us
nothing of the will which produced or caused those phenomena. But
an exceedingly small number of what are said to be preternatural events
or phenomena can reveal the will of God ; and any one of these
preternatural phenomena must consist of sequences of sights and
sounds, as do all phenomena. How, then, can the sequence of certain
sights and sounds at the time of the so-called Ascension prove any
thing more than any other sequences of sights and sounds, which, we
are assured, can furnish no evidence of causation whatever 1
Almost all miracles, then, are rejected by those who profess to be
upholders of miracles generally ; and hence honest thinkers, who read
their general propositions, have only themselves to blame if they do
not insist on the production of details. The physical incarnation and
resurrection cannot logically be cited, these being according to Butler
invisible miracles, which need to be attested or proved by other
wonders, and the inverted pyramid stands on its apex, which has the
solitary narrative of the Ascension in the Acts of the Apostles to rest
on. For this wonder, as for all others, it is admitted that evidence is
needed. What is the worth of the evidence produced ? We are thus
brought round again to the historical inquiry, which is the legitimate
subject of my present task, and beyond which I cannot travel.
2l
APPENDIX F
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
(See pages 379, 466. )
With the eschatological discourses of the first Gospel my task is
strictly ended so soon as I have shown that the reports of these dis-
courses are not trustworthy, and that the discourses themselves are
unhistorical. I am under no obligation to show how they took shape,
or from what materials they were constructed. But I feel myself free
in an Appendix to deal with a subject which goes to the very root of
the traditional beliefs of Christian Churches.
The book known as the Apocalypse is full of pictures which are
popularly supposed to refer to a time still future. In the epistles
bearing the names of Peter and Jude, we have language of a like sort
with that of the Apocalypse ; and in the first Gospel the description of
the accomplishment of the age, or aion, is said to come from the lips
of Jesus himself. According to the popular or traditional notion or
belief, it is absolutely essential that the discourses in which these
descriptions are embodied should have been uttered substantially as
they are here given, and, still more, that they should be the revelation
or unfolding of things not yet made known to his hearers or to any
who had lived before them. The epistle of Jude (which is little more
than a piece of eschatology) cites an utterance or prophecy of Enoch,
which must either have come down to the writer as an oral tradition,
or have been derived from some book already written. But the words
are found in the book of Enoch ; and it is reasonable to conclude that
this is the quarry from which the writer of the epistle of Jude draws
his materials. But if it was so for the writer of Jude, it was so no
less for the writer of the second Petrine epistle, for both these
epistles contain a considerable amount of matter, of a most peculiar
kind, which in both is verbatim, or as nearly as may be verbatim j the
same.
APPENDIX F. 631
Now the book of Enoch was composed, according to Archbishop
Laurence, in the latter half of the century immediately preceding our
own era. In a very short time it acquired among the Jews the repu-
tation of a veritable authentic document ; and if mention of it in a
book included in the canon of the New Testament writings is to be
regarded as settling the question, the book must be both genuine and
authentic. But if the epistle of Jude itself be not genuine, then ' it
would follow that a book received in the church as canonical, could be
regarded also as apostolical under a mistaken opinion as to its author-
ship ' ; 1 and so the titles of all the books in the canon of the writings
of the New Testament lose all authority. In truth, the influence
exercised by this book of Enoch on the earliest Christian writers is
very wide. ' In the language attributed to our Lord himself, in that
of St. Paul, especially in his early epistles, we can distinctly trace an
intimate acquaintance with it, and recognise its forms of expression.
But above all, this is true of St. John in the Apocalypse, where, it is
plain, much of the imagery has been distinctly adopted from that of
the book of Enoch.'
Of this book it has been said that the writer ^ describes in full out-
lines the resurrection of the dead, and the Messianic judgement on the
dead and living. It represents the Messiah not only as the king, but as
the judge of the world, who has the dominion over everything on earth
and in heaven. In the Messiah is the Son of Man, who possesses
righteousness since the God of all spirits has elected him, and since he
has conquered all by righteousness in eternity. But he is also the Son
of God, the elected one, the prince of righteousness. He is gifted
with the wisdom which knows all secret things. The spirit with all
its fulness is poured out upon him. His glory lasts to all eternity.
He shares the throne of God's majesty. He pre-existed before all
time ; and although still unknown to the children of the world, he is
already revealed to the pious by prophecy, and is praised by the
angels in heaven. Even the dogma of the Trinity is implied in this
book. It is formed by the Lord of the spirits, by the elected one, and
by the divine Power. They partake both of the name and the omni-
potence of God.' 2
The book of Enoch is, in short, a perfect quarry of the imagery
found in every part of the New Testament writings which speak of
the last things, and of the winding-up of the age. ' The " everlasting
chains " in which the fallen angels are " kept under darkness unto the
judgement of the great day," the " everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels," the " son of man sitting on the throne ... of
1 Colenso, Pentateuch, etc., part iv. p. 523. 2 ij^id. p. 596.
532 THE FOUR GOSPELS AS HISTORICAL RECORDS
his glory," choosing for the righteous their countless habitations, and
destroying the wicked with the breath of his mouth; the " book of life
spread " before the Judge ; earth, hell, and the grave " giving up their
dead " ; the joy of the righteous, the shame and confusion of the
wicked, who are led off by the angels to punishment ; the " new
heavens " and the " new earth," old things having passed away, — the
furnaces of fire and the lake of fire, — all these appear in the book of
Enoch, and the last, the lake of fire, is manifestly a figure introduced
Avith distinct reference to the Dead Sea; and, accordingly, in the
same connexion, we find the " angels who kept not their first estate,"
coupled with " Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities round about them"
(Jude 7), which are spoken of as " going after strange flesh," like the
angels, and being " set for an example," suffering the vengeance of
aionian fire. Nay, those awful words, spoken of Judas, " it had been
good for that man if he had never been born," find their counterpart
also in the language of this book.' ^
This fact, momentous enough in itself, becomes still more momentous
when we remember that all these were popular expressions with Avhich
all devout thinkers of the age which followed the appearance of the book
of Enoch were familiar. It follows, therefore, of necessity that if any
teacher speaking to an audience on the Mount of Olives, or anywhere
else in or near Jerusalem, should put before them a picture of the great
assize of the good and the bad, and of the separation of the one from
the other by the Son of Man, he would be regarded as one who was
simply exhibiting to them the scenes of a familiar drama, but certainly
not as one who was imparting to them a new revelation, far less as
being himself the judge by whom that judgement should be exercised.
Now, the eschatological discourses in the first Gospel are set forth
emphatically as a new revelation, of which, even if the general pur-
port had been to some extent foreshadowed, the details had never yet
been embodied in human speech. But it is just these details with
which an audience at that time in Jerusalem would be most of all
familiar. The conclusion is inevitable. The eschatological discourses
of the first Gospel were not, and could not, have been uttered in the
form^ in which they have come down to us in that Gospel, or with
the intention that they should in any sense be received as a new
revelation, that is, as the drawing aside of a veil which had hidden
things thus far unseen ; and, of course, there remains the possibility or
the likelihood that they were never delivered at all.
Whether these discourses were ever delivered, and, if so, in what
form, are questions which I am not in the smallest degree called upon
1 Colenso, Pentateuch, part iv, p. 596.
APPENDIX R 533
to answer. They must be settled on their own merits by such evidence
as may be at our command, or else be left as questions which can never be
answered. But in the form in which they have come to us, they have
lost their own authority (whatever that may have been), for it is obvious
that their authority is now nothing more than that of the rough-hewn
materials found in the book of Enoch. But it is impossible to stop
short here. There is no sign that any distinction was meant by the
evangelist to be drawn between these discourses and any others. All
the discourses in all the Gospels must, therefore, be weighed in the
same balance ; and if there be grounds even for doubting that any of
them have come down to us in their original form, or that they were
delivered at all, these grounds must be stated, if it be our wish and
resolution to be straightforward, honest, and truthful. The Sermon on
the Mount and the discourses in the fourth Gospel must be submitted
to the same scrutiny ; and even portions which some might be dis-
posed to regard as mere trifles must be taken into account, as they
may possibly turn out to be of the utmost importance. We have to
see whether, or how far, the discourses, or any portion of them, could
be intelligible to those who are said to have heard them ; and we have
to determine how far the manifest mistakes and misapprehensions of
the evangelists detract from their trustworthiness as recorders of dis-
courses dealing with the realities of the spiritual world. Some of the
mistakes or blunders of the Johannine evangelist have been noticed
already, but in spite of these mistakes he might yet be deserving of
some trust as a recorder of the sayings of the great Master ; and if we
should have the least warrant for such a supposition, then we should
have to go on and weigh impartially the discourses themselves, accept-
ing the results so reached strictly on the evidence furnished by or for
each of them. This is the task which I have set to myself, and
which I have endeavoured to accomplish in the body of this work.
/ or THE ^"\
'( UNIVERSITY
";
INDEX
Acts of the Apostles, 29, 56 ; external
evidence for, 57.
Adonis, 363.
Advent, the second, 22.
Ahaz, the sign of, 176.
Akeldama, 392.
Akkadian mythology, 505.
Ananias and Paul, 34, 54.
Ananias and Sapphira, 55.
Anastasis, Christian legends of the, 449)
450.
Annas, the priest, 412.
Annunciation, the, 183.
Antipas, Herod, 423.
Antitypes, 311.
Apocalypse, 28, 78, 114 et .9eg., 370.
Apollon Polymorphos, 497.
ApoUonius of Tyana, 315.
Apostles, Memoirs of the, 80.
Arabia, Paul's sojourn in, 35.
Archelaos, 189.
Article, the fourth, 8.
the sixth, 9.
Articles, the Thirty-nine, 10, 26.
Ascent of the Eternal Son, 5.
the visible, 14.
Assize, the great, 5.
Athenagoras, 100.
Authority, appeal to, 157.
argument from, 12.
Augustine of Hippo, 130, 141 et seq.,
149, 161.
Baptism, the one, for remission of sins,
23.
Baptismal formulae, 457, 489.
Barnabas and Paul, 31.
Barnabas, epistle of, 74, 106.
Basileides, 93.
Beloved disciple, and the high priest,
419.
Bethesda, 283.
Bethlehem, the birth at, 173.
Bread, living, 285.
Bodily diseases and sin, 318.
Body, uprising of the, 24.
Butler on wonders in relation to Chris-
tianity, 145.
C^.SAR, death of, 440.
Caiaphas, the high priest, 413.
Cannibalism, ritualistic, 502.
Canon of New Testament writings, 93,
154.
Canonical Gospels, the, not known down
to the seventh or eighth decade of the
second century, 101.
Carpenter, the, 498.
Cave-born gods, 496.
Celsus, 102, 113.
Children, treatment of, 267.
Chiliastic, or millenarian, literature, 121.
Chronology, artificial, 133.
Church of England, standards and for-
mularies of the, 3.
parties or schools in the, 3.
teaching of the, 7.
Church, the Universal, 25 ; militant and
triumphant, 463.
Cinderella, 423.
Claudius Apollinaris, 99, 113.
Clement of Alexandria, 124.
of Rome, epistle of, 68, 74.
Clementine Homilies, 9, 88, 89, 111.
Clergy, obligations of the, in the Church
of England, 1, 2.
535
536
INDEX
Coat, the seamless, 434.
Community of goods in the early Chris-
tian society, 54, 436.
Cornelius, the conversion of, 39, 43, 253.
Covenants, Old and New, 98.
Creation, agony of, 20.
Credibility, historical, 62.
Creeds, the three, 1.
Cross, the symbolical, 503.
Crucifixion, modes of, 430.
Crurifragium, 441.
Cyprian, 529.
Cyrenius (Quirinus),
Dead, subsequent history of persons said
to have been raised from the, 325 et aeq.
Death of the Eternal Son, 22.
bodily and spiritual, 359.
Demonology, Jewish, 135, 229, 314.
Descensus ad Inferos, 506.
Diognetos, epistle to, 112.
Dionysius of Corinth, 96.
of Alexandria, 114, 115.
Disciples, the twelve, 126.
Dogmas, based on historical events, 2,
Doketic theology, 377.
Dreams, interposition of, 178 et seq.y 191.
Dualism, Christian, 231.
Easter Festival, time of keeping the,
107, 124.
Ebionite philosophy, 257, 268.
parables, 257.
Egypt, the call from, 177, 521.
Enoch, book of, 531.
Epiphanios, 93.
Eschatology, New Testament, 372.
Essenes, 201.
Eucharist, institution of the, 399, 500.
Eucharistic office, language of the, 25, 504.
Eusebius, his testimony in favour of
Hegesippos, 82, 103, 110 ; on the Gospel
of Peter, 516.
Evangelists, the four, 67.
Evidence for Christianity, 27.
Evidence, laws of, 128, 132.
Exorcism, 489.
Famine, the Claudian, 36.
Fatherhood of God, 8.
Faustus on the genealogies of Jesus, 166.
Fishes, draughts of, 247.
Flora, epistle to, 113.
Fourth Gospel, supposed reference to, in
early writers, 106 ; authorship of the,
113 et seq. ; chronology of the, 227;
discourses in the, 273 et seq. ; author
of the, 417.
Frauds, pious, 149, 178.
Galatians, statement of Paul to the, 36.
Galilee, as the country of Jesus, 289.
Genealogies in the first and third Gospels,
159.
Genealogies of Jesus, 109.
Generation, 375.
Glaukias, 91.
Gregory Thaumatourgos, 51, 212.
of Nyssa, 15, 506.
God the Father, 18.
the Son, 18.
the Revealer, 23. ^
Gnosis, the, 519.
Gospels, text of the canonical, 72.
Growth of Trinitarian theology, 19.
Healeu, the, 505.
Hebrews, Gospe according to the, 82,
96, 97.
Hegesippos, 82, 110.
Herakleon, 101.
Hermas, Shepherd of, 75, 104, 106.
Herod and the Magi, 173.
Herod Antipas, 423.
Hippolytos, 80, 92.
Historical information, sources of, 222.
Holy Ghost, or Breath, 462.
Ignatius, epistles ascribed to, 57.
Incarnation of God the Son, 21.
Information, question of the sources
of, for the conversation with Nico-
demus, 283 ; for the threefold prayer
in Gethsemane, 403; for the final
pi^ayer of Jesus on the eve of the
passion, 406 ; for the speech of
Stephen, 47; for the last words on
the cross, 431 ; for the rending of the
temple veil, 439 ; for the belief of the
Sanhedrim in the Anastasis, 447.
INDEX
537
Interpolation in the New Testament
writings, 72, 478.
Id, 180, 495.
Irenseus, 85, 92; his work on Heresies,
102 ; on the Gospels, 125, 156 ; on
miracles, 140.
Isidoros, son of Basileides, 91.
Jerome, and the Gospel of Matthew, 88.
Jerusalem, Council of, 32, 38, 41 ; entry
of Jesus into, 358.
Jesus, sayings of, 72, 78, 105, 513.
learning of, 196 ; baptism of, 417 ;
temptation of, 226.
Jesus, the carpenter, 197, 498 ; his know-
ledge of human thought, 242, 244;
Messianic character of, 250 ; as judge
of the world, 250 ; as the Eternal
Logos, 252 ; teaching of, in the Syn-
optics and in the fourth Gospel, 273 ;
and the Samaritans, 279 ; kinsfolk
of, 294, 335 ; enemies of, 379 ; the
mother of, 436 ; polymorphic, 454, 497.
Jewish superstition, 16, 135 et seq.
Jews and Samaritans, 254.
John, Gospel of, 65, 112 et seq. ; the
beloved disciple, 119.
John, the son of Zebedee, 120, 131, 377.
John the Baptist, School of, 203, 241 ;
his relations with Jesus, 204, 209 et
seq. , 240 ; deputation to, from Jeru-
salem, 218 ; Messianic expectations of,
220 ; as a historical personage, 224.
Jonas, sign of, 311, 370.
Joseph of Arimathea, 444.
Judas, treachery of, 383 ; foreknown,
385 ; excluded by the Petrine Gospel,
518.
Justin Martyr, 68 ; citations of, 69 ;
apology of, 77 ; dialogue with Tryphon,
78 ; Memoirs of the Apostles, 80 ; not
acquainted with our Gospels, 81 ; his
theology of the Logos, 108 ; and the
fourth Gospel, 109; the Gospel his-
tories, 110 ; on the genealogy of Jesus,
166, 167 ; on the baptism of Jesus, 191 ;
on the resurrection, 449, 450 ; on the
myth of Perseus, 496.
Kephas, 241.
Keys, power of the, 4G2.
Krishna, stories of, 171, 493.
Laity, obligations of the, in the Church
of England, 1.
Lazarus, raising of, 328.
Leprosy, 317.
Letter and spirit, 5.
Life, picture of the perfect, 15.
Logia of the Master, 87 ; of the mythos,
497.
' Logos Alethes ' of Celsus, 102.
Logos, the Eternal, 308.
Luke, relations of, with the apostle Paul,
58.
Luke, Gospel of, preface to, 57, 69, 70,
97 ; said to be mutilated by Markion,
94.
Lushington, Dr., judgement in the case
of Essays and Beviews, 10, 12.
Luxury, miracle of, 337.
Magi, star of the, 172.
Malchus, wounding of, 410, 419.
Manuscripts of the New Testament
writings, 72.
Mark, Gospel of, 86, 292.
Markion, 93 ; his supposed mutilation of
the Gospel of Luke, 94.
Mass, the, 507.
Matthew, Gospel of, 87.
Mediator, the, 507.
Megasthenes, 171.
Meliton of Sardeis, 98, 113.
Messiah as Son of David, 269.
Ministry, duration of the, 202, 234, 497.
Minos, 199.
Miracles or wonders in relation to the
Johannine discourses, 146, 147.
secret, 148 ; of luxury, 337 ; primi-
tive, 339.
education, and thought, 150, 151.
mythology, as a source of, 151, 152.
forgetfulness of, 195, 205, 295, 451.
invisible, 527.
ambiguous, 528.
Mithra, 507.
Mithraism, 507.
Multiplication, wonders of, 331.
Muratori, Canon of, 57, 102.
538
INDEX
Mysticism, 8.
Naraka, 493.
National Church, 1.
Nativity, narratives of the, 170 et seq.
Nazareth, 183, 188.
Necessity, doctrines of, 352, 498.
Needle's eye, the, 264.
Nicene Creed, the theology of the, 6, 11.
Nicodemus not known to the Synoptics,
281, 445.
Nyssa, Gregory of, 15, 506.
Odin on Ygdrasil, 504.
Oidipous (CEdipus), the man of sorrows,
506. ■
Olivet, ascent from, 464.
Only-begotten, Yedud the, 505.
Oral tradition, 83, 84, 305, 309.
Origen and Celsus, 102, 114; and the
purification of the Temple, 302, 304.
Paley and the twelve witnesses, 64.
Papias, 72, 83 ; knew nothing of a canon
of the New Testament Scriptures, 84 ;
and the Gospel of John, 110, 115 ; his
account of the death of Judas, 391.
Parables, instruction by, 308.
explanations of the, 262, 509 ;
origin of the, 514 ; composition of the,
515.
Ebionite, 264.
Paradosis, 481.
Parousia, the, 465.
Paschal controversy, 100, 107, 124.
Lamb, 395.
Pastoral epistles, 50.
Paul the apostle, conversion of, as re-
lated in the Acts, 30 ; as related by
himself, 32.
genuine writings of, 30.
gift of tongues, 49 ; signs and won-
ders ascribed to, in Acts, 61.
and the pillar apostles, 132, 476.
on the Anastasis, 471.
and the Paradosis, 481.
Pentecost, the marvel of, 48.
Perseus, 493.
Persons, the three divine, 23.
Peter and Cornelius, 37, 44 ; and John,
248.
Peter and Mark, 85.
Gospel of, 516.
Phallos, 503.
Pharisees, 201.
Philon and t 1
108, 109.
Pilate, as a Roman governor, 421 et seq. ;
his wife's dream, 425 ; and the San-
hedrim, 448.
Plato and Socrates, 275.
Polycarp, epistle of, 77, 107, 124.
Polykrates of Ephesus, 202.
Possession, theory of demoniacal, 137,
314 ei seq.
Potter's Field, 388.
Prayer, the Lord's, 203, 258.
Prophecy, gift of, 51.
Prophecies, alleged, misapplications and
misquotations of, 177, 510.
Ptolemaios and Herakleon, 101.
Publicans, callings of, 247.
QuiRiKUS, census of, 181, 189, 526.
Remigius, 161.
Resurrection, 22, 455 note 1.
Revelation, 146.
Right hand of God, 8.
Robe, the gorgeous, 427 ; purple, and
scarlet, 427 ; the seamless, 434, 503.
Rod of Aaron, Apollon, and Hermes,
504.
Rome, Jews in, 59 note.
Sacred books, 27.
Sacrificial phraseology, 24.
Sadducees, 200, 269, 270.
Samaritans and Jews, 254.
Satan, the Jewish, 229, 230.
Scriptural and ecclesiastical miracles^
129.
Serapion, 516.
Serpent, the phallic, 504.
Seventy, mission of the, 249, 259, 407.
Signs, 176, 370.
Simon of Kyren^, 429.
Son_of God, 19.
' of Man, 360.
Sovereign in Council, Judgements of
the, 4.
INDEX
539
Sponsors in Baptism, and the Apostles'
Creed, 1.
Stauros, 503.
Stephen, trial and death of, 45, 47.
defence of, 47 ; and the Churches of
Lyons and Vienne, 58.
Sufficiency of holy scriptures, 26.
Siiperstition, Jewish, 135.
Supremacy, royal, 4.
Sylvia of Aquitaine, 520.
Symbols, Eucharistic, 501.
Synoptic Gospels, sources of the, 65,
520.
Tammuz, 363, 499.
Duwuzi, 505.
Tatian, Diatessaron of, 95, 113.
Temple, purifications of the, 298, 416.
rending of the veil of the, 441.
Tertullian, 93, 94.
Texts, earliest, of the New Testament
writings, 72.
Testaments, Old and New, 98.
Thaumatourgos, Gregory, 51, 212.
Theodoret, 96.
Theology and Science, 26.
Third day, 363, 369.
Thorns, crown of, 505.
Three days, 363, 369, 435.
Titus, case of, 31, 38.
Tongues, gift of, in Acts, 48, 53.
in Paul's letter to the Corinthians,
50.
Tradition, oral, 305.
Transfiguration, the, 345, 497.
Twelve, mission of the, 259, 497.
Types and Antitypes, 311.
Uprising, or Anastasis, 22.
Ushas, 494.
Valentinus, 91, 92.
Varuna, 494.
Veil of the Temple, rending of the, 441.
Vettius Epagathus, 101.
Vienne and Lyons, epistle of the churches
of, 101.
Vineyard, labourers in the, 512.
Virgil on the death of Csesar, 506.
Virgin birth, 176, 179, 180.
Vishnu Purana, 496.
Vritra and Satan, 229.
Water, living, 277.
Wheat and tares, 512.
Wisdom, the eternal, 24.
Witchcraft, 137.
Witness, the false, borne against Jesus^
> 299, 415, 416.
Witnesses, the twelve, 63, 126, 134.
Wonders or miracles, true and false, 138,
139.
spiritual and material, 212.
in the New Testament writings,
310.
Xenophon, accounts of Socrates, 275.
Xenophanes, 527.
Yedud, 505.
Zacharias, 185.
Zebedee, the sons of, 243.
Zechariah, prophecy of, 398.
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