Part 4 (1/2)
While we are on the topic of the authenticity of the gospels, it may be worth while to discuss the other synoptics as briefly as possible. The majority of critics regard Mark as the oldest but this is mere guesswork when all is said and done. In its present form it is briefer than the others and this fact has impressed many students. Besides, it does not contain an account of the infancy of Jesus. But it, itself, is evidently a compilation of other doc.u.ments since it repeats the same event in slightly different forms. In all probability, it was written in Greek for a h.e.l.lenistic audience and emphasizes those traditions which would be the most likely to impress its readers. It is not known who wrote it or exactly when it was written.
The gospel according to Luke did not originally make any claim to have been written by Luke. Scholars are agreed from internal evidence that it could not have been written until long after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The author of Luke was acquainted with the _Antiquities_ of Josephus and this shows that he must have made his compilation and free reworking of traditions in the second century.
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If, then, our gospels were not written by eye-witnesses, and represent the beliefs and traditions of at least the next half-century after the death of Jesus, to what can we give credence? What is myth and legend and what is historic fact? Can we find a clew to guide us?
It is a canon among historical critics to regard those pa.s.sages as the oldest which conflict most with the outlook of the later centuries. We can understand why they happen to be there but there would be no good reason for their later creation and insertion. Let us try to determine whither this canon will lead us.
All scholars agree that the birth stories are a later addition. They are a product of h.e.l.lenistic beliefs, perhaps even of Hindoo influences. The Virgin-Mother myth was very common in ancient times and the whole machinery of the story was undoubtedly absorbed from tales widely current in those days. For instance, the father of Plato, the Greek philosopher, was warned in a dream by Apollo so that Plato was virgin-born. What can we think of the intellectual state of Churches which excommunicate ministers who have the decency to inform their congregation what disinterested scholars.h.i.+p has determined? So far as there is intellectual dishonesty or incompetence here, it will bring its own punishment in the att.i.tude adopted by sincere men toward the Churches. The best we can say, then, is that there is no very good reason to doubt that Jesus was the son of a carpenter, by the name of Joseph, and his wife, Mary. He was not the only child, for Mark represents his fellow townsmen as saying: ”Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters {79} here with us?” Quite a goodly family, you see. The Ebionite Christians, who were the Christians of Palestine and probably had the safest traditions on this point, believed that Jesus ”was the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation.” His kinsmen were the leaders of the Christian community for several generations. But there is little use in laboring a point which is so obvious.
Of his early life we know practically nothing. He was probably not trained as a rabbi but worked at the trade of his father. We may a.s.sume that he knew how to read and write, since an opportunity to learn was usually offered in the synagogue. It is likely that his reading was largely confined to the religious literature of his people, especially the psalms and the prophets. His spirit was more in harmony with the deep ethical fervor of these champions of righteousness and lovers of justice than with the formal prescriptions of the Law. If we may judge from the general tone of the traditions, he was a close student of men and a lover of nature, a silent, reflective man who noted the events pa.s.sing around him. His youth pa.s.sed in this way without any overt step being taken; and, perhaps, without any clear message having developed in his mind. He was simply one of the dissatisfied few who are always to be found. Now and then, it may be, he spoke pa.s.sionate words against the evils that were apparent on every hand, quoted the prophets in their outbursts against similar evils and subsided into a brooding silence. There are many such in our land to-day, sincere and pa.s.sionate and kindly men who eat their heart out witnessing the course of events.
The Jews of the day cherished the idea that a {80} Messianic kingdom would be established. Jesus shared in this expectation; but it is certain that he thought of it less as a restoration of the Jewish state to power than a change in the position of the ma.s.s of the people. In other words, he infused the belief with a finer ethical meaning more in accordance with his concept of G.o.d and his sense of what was really valuable and important. There is no means of knowing his entire att.i.tude toward this popular belief in a supernatural kingdom to be established by G.o.d upon earth, but he undoubtedly retained its main outlines. He was a child of his age although a notably sincere and high-minded one.
About 28 A. D. John appeared and preached in the wilderness. Jesus went to hear him because of the natural interest he aroused. It is quite probable that he was baptized by John. We do not know whether he a.s.sociated himself with John or not. At any rate John's message crystallized his own ideas and he felt called upon to continue his mission. He did not proclaim himself as the Messiah but simply preached that the kingdom of G.o.d was at hand and that men were to prepare for it. This preparation was of an ethical sort and largely ascetic in character.
Palestine was in a ferment at this time and his appearance and preaching aroused great interest. Like all prophets he was called upon to heal the sick and, accepting the customary views of sickness, he proceeded to exorcise the evil spirits which possessed those who were brought to him. I do not see how he could have escaped this task.
What part accident played in giving him confidence cannot be known, but it was probably large. There is no reason to doubt that there is a ground of fact for these stories of healing, although {81} they have been grossly exaggerated by later tradition when he was viewed as divine. We must always remember how late and biased our sources are.
As time went on, he gained more confidence in himself. Since he was human, he could not help being moved by the confidence of the people.
He felt that reforms should be made; everywhere was poverty and sickness and unhappiness. Could the thought help coming to him that perhaps he was the one to inaugurate the kingdom? The idea kept coming back, forced upon him by his own reflection and by the questions and a.s.sumptions of his disciples. It may be that he never made up his mind but was forced by the course of events to go to Jerusalem where his career ended all too soon. Mankind will never know the details of his inner life; his doubts, hopes, decisions, indecisions are hidden from us in an obscurity that will never be completely lifted.
His preaching became more revolutionary. More and more he set himself in opposition to the mechanical observance of the law and the fanatical wors.h.i.+p of forms and days. The opposition of the conservative members of priesthood increased in bitterness. Soon it was war to the knife between this new prophet, with his disregard for the law, and its chosen representatives. Thus Jesus had drifted into a position which he had probably not antic.i.p.ated when he set out on his ministry. But this is always the way. Mohammed began as a reformer, and the antagonism of the keepers of Caaba led to his aggressive campaign; Luther and Huss and Wycliffe changed their att.i.tude and their ideas at various moments in their career. No man's life is the working out of a fixed and ready-made plan. At any rate, he determined to go to Jerusalem--in all {82} likelihood, as Pfleiderer suggests, in order to win a victory over the hierarchy and to realize the prophetic ideal in the center of the religious life of the Jewish nation. The people received him enthusiastically but his opponents were too strong and clever for him. He feared only secret a.s.sa.s.sination while they induced the Roman power to intervene.
The story draws to a close. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus felt the possibility of a tragic end to his hopes of an early coming of the Kingdom. The real situation s.h.i.+nes clear through all the legend which a later age has woven around it. When he saw himself surrounded by a mult.i.tude of armed men, he knew that resistance was vain. He was delivered into the hands of his enemies. Through all the humiliation and pain of those days, he seems to have hoped that his G.o.d would rescue him. It was only on the cross that he finally gave up hope.
The heavens were dumb as they always have been and always will be.
The body of Jesus was probably thrown into the common pit reserved for malefactors, as Abbe Loisy suggests, while the story of the burial by Joseph of Arimathea grew up to save him from the terrible dishonor of such a last resting-place. The rest of the traditional narrative is unquestionably mythical. Paul speaks of him as buried and evidently thinks of the risen Jesus as an incorruptible or spiritual man. Paul did not believe in a bodily resurrection. The visions which led to a belief in the resurrection of Jesus were ecstatic in character. We must remember that the ancients were far less critical than we are in regard to dreams and illusions and did not consider a return to life in some shadowy form as very unusual. I have not the {83} slightest difficulty in my own mind in accounting for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus in an entirely natural way. Once this belief arose and became important as a part of a new religion, the rise of legendary details was simply inevitable.
The position I have taken is relatively conservative. Many scholars have even become skeptical whether such a person as Jesus ever lived.
We cannot be certain but it seems more plausible to give a relative credence to the older strands of tradition in the New Testament. That such an ethical reformer lived who believed in the coming of the Messianic kingdom, that he was embroiled with the priestly cla.s.s and was done to death by them with the aid of the Roman governor who feared a seditious outbreak, that his disciples after his death came to believe in his resurrection and his coming Messiahs.h.i.+p upon earth, all this appears to me more than probable. Human life is a fertile field for tragedy. The more we rid the narratives of their fairy-story accompaniments and see Jesus, not as a G.o.d who foreknows his human life and plays it out gravely as an actor who knows his role, but as a human being hurried to issues he had not at first dreamed of, the more his career becomes comprehensible. Its pathos is increased by this truer perspective, while the moral grandeur of his life gains by the human atmosphere which descends upon it. He lived his life sincerely as other men have done and did not dream of the use history would make of his name.
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CHAPTER VII
THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity did not arise in the form we a.s.sociate with it. The followers of Jesus, after they had become convinced that their crucified leader had arisen from the dead and had become a spiritual agent, grouped themselves together in Jerusalem and formed a religious congregation whose distinguis.h.i.+ng tenet was a belief in the near approach of the earthly kingdom of G.o.d, whose ruler would be Jesus. In his powerful name, the members of the congregation could perform miracles of healing where the faith was sufficient. This form of Christianity did not differ very widely from Judaism in anything but this belief in Jesus as the expected Messiah. It is obvious that this difference has no essential meaning to us to-day who know the origin and import of the Messianic hope of the Jews. Let us be frank with ourselves and clear our minds of these dreams of the past. These early Christians deceived themselves; their hopes were not fulfilled; the earthly kingdom of G.o.d did not come. Jesus was not the Messiah for the simple reason that there is no such person. He was not the Messiah any more than Mohammed Ahmed was the Mahdi--and for the very same reason.
Mahdis and Messiahs and Buddhas are creations of religious and race imagination just as King Lear is the product of the poetic imagination of William Shakespeare. The {85} educated man of the present must cla.s.sify these figures as tremendous fictions whose power is waning.
When he faces them squarely and asks himself what significance they have for his life, his answer must be, ”Only historical and artistic.”
We may say, then, that Christianity in its first form has been outgrown.
But the Messianic form of Christianity gave it a vividness and concrete impressiveness that made it a force among the men of that age. Jesus was the heavenly Messiah who would return in power and rule according to righteousness. With him was bound up the hope of immortality and in his hand was dominion over the evils which beset one's path. A great world-event was impending; at any moment the last trumpet might sound and the dead and the living be delivered to judgment. Moreover, Jesus as the Christ and Lord was even now at work among men, his Spirit was active to guide and encourage those who had faith in him. In the congregation at Jerusalem, this belief in Jesus as the Messiah was closely a.s.sociated with the past history of the race and did not involve a break with the Law. The Old Testament was searched to find prophecies which would throw light upon this apparently new departure and soon pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage was found which would easily lend itself to the desired interpretation. Under the guidance of these pa.s.sages and of the new outlook, the life of the prophet of Nazareth was re-molded until it lost the greater part of its more human features.
Such an important amendment of the Jewish religion could not keep itself hidden. The Jews of the dispersion, broadened by their contact with the political, {86} philosophical and religious movements of the Roman empire, yet cheris.h.i.+ng a sincere faith in the traditions of their fathers, heard of the new sect which had arisen in Palestine. Their interest was aroused. Sometimes they felt sympathetic, sometimes they were antagonistic. Slowly at first and then more rapidly through the work of Paul, they came in more direct contact with this new movement.
By this time, it had already become h.e.l.lenistic in its spirit and att.i.tude. Around the nucleus of the life of Jesus and his resurrection, the seething, myriad-shaped ideas of the age attached themselves. The Palestinian congregation was left behind in its peaceful conservatism while the movement which it had inaugurated grew by leaps and bounds and swept outward into the tossing ocean of faiths and philosophies which extended from India to Gaul. To suppose that it could remain unchanged in such fellows.h.i.+p is to undervalue the a.s.similative tendencies in the social mind. The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians and Syrians could not think as Jews. They inevitably interpreted it in terms of their own ideas and problems in order to comprehend it.
We have already considered the interpretation which Paul gave to Christianity. It was, as we saw, dominated by the apocalyptic notion of a heavenly, or spiritual, man while it gave ample recognition to the desire for salvation from sin and partic.i.p.ation in the divine life.