Life of Jesus
By
(1861)
AUTHOR
OF "THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF
"LIFE OF JESUS," "FUTURE OF SCIENCE," ETC.
WATTS
& Co.,
5
& 6 JOHNSON'S COURT,
Dost thou recall, from the bosom of God where thou reposest
long days at Ghazir, in which, alone with thee, I wrote these pages, inspired
by the places we had visited together? Silent at my side, thou didst read an
copy each sheet as soon as I had written it while the sea, the villages, the
ravines, and the mountains were spread at our feet. When the overwhelming light
had given place to the innumerable army of stars, thy shrewd and subtle
questions, thy discreet doubts, led me back to the sublime object of our common
thoughts, one day thou didst tell me that thou wouldst love this book -- first,
because it had been composed with thee, and also because it pleased thee.
Though at times thou didst fear for it the narrow judgements of the frivolous,
yet wert thou ever persuaded that all truly religious souls would ultimately
take pleasure in it. In the midst of these sweet meditations, the Angel of
Death struck us both with his wing: the sleep of fever seized us at the same
time -- I awoke alone! ... Thou sleepest now in the
LIKE many another "infidel," Ernest Renan grew up
in an atmosphere of piety. He was born in the Breton fishing-town of Treguier
in 1823. When he was only five years old his father, a ship-outfitter, was
drowned at sea. Henceforth the home influence of a sensitive and impressionable
child was exercised by two women, Renan's mother and his sister, Henriette, who
was twelve years his senior. The latter was the bread-winner of the family and
proved a second mother to the young Ernest. In his manhood she became his most
trusted counsellor and friend.
Renan's mother remained a Catholic to the end of her life, but Henriette
lost all belief in the Supernatural long before her brother had entertained a
single doubt of his hereditary faith. Yet she put no obstacle in the way of his
cherished ambition to become a priest. His first school was the ecclesiastical
college at Treguier, where he soon showed such brilliancy that, through the
kind efforts of Dupanloup (afterwards Bishop of Orleans), he was sent to a
superior college in
When he announced his decision -- he was now twenty- two -- the older men
among his instructors sought to dissuade him, hoping that his faith might
return when he had settled down to his clerical duties. Dupanloup, however,
agreed that he ought to choose a lay career and offered to help him with money.
He was encouraged to take the final step by Henriette, who sent him 500
francs while he was looking for employment. It was not long before Renan
obtained a post as usher in a boys' school, where he started a lifelong
friendship with Berthelot, the famous chemist, who was then eighteen. His
duties occupying only the evenings, Renan had plenty of time at his disposal
for reading during the day.
In 1849 the French Government sent Renan on a scientific mission to
The chair of Hebrew and Chaldaic at the Collage de France now became vacant,
and Renan offered himself as a candidate. Naturally, he was bitterly opposed by
the Catholics. Napoleon III was then the ruler of
Renan sailed for the East with the devoted Henriette as his companion, and
they made their first stay at Beyrout. A few months later his wife joined him,
but was compelled by her home duties to return to
In July, 1861, Renan had finished his work, and the two paid a visit to the
The brother and sister went back to Beyrout, in order to prepare for a
journey to
Shortly before the issue of his most popular work Renan had obtained the
chair of Hebrew and Semitic languages in the
His inaugural address provoked more than one interruption, the climax coming
when he referred to Jesus as "a man so great that ... I should not wish to
contradict those who, impressed by the unique character of his movement, call
him God." This damning with faint praise, as they were bound to consider
it, gave offence to the Catholics. Four days later Renan was suspended from his
professorial duties, although he retained his salary and for two years taught
Hebrew in his own house to those students who desired it. The publication of
the 'Vie de Jesus' prevented his reinstatement. The French ministry offered him
a post in the Bibliotheque Imperiale, which he declined with scorn.
The Vie de Jesus was only the first of a series dealing very fully with
Christian origins. Three years later appeared 'The Apostles.' To this were
subsequently added 'The Gospels and the Second Christian Generation,' '
The great French scholar's 'New Studies of Religious History' (collected in
1884) show the catholicity of his interests, dealing as they do with such
themes as the Islamic mystery play of the martyrdom of Hussein, the growth of
the legend of the Buddha, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. His 'History
of Israel,' which was published in 1887-91, revealed Renan's competency to
handle Old Testament problems with the same skill and learning that he applied
to those of the New.
It will always be gratifying to Englishmen of broad sympathies and culture
to remember that Renan delivered in
Renan's exquisite 'Recollections of My Youth' (1883), which is perhaps his
best known work after the 'Vie de Jesus,' must have endeared him to the hearts
of millions. Seldom has a more touching story been told, or one so candid and
dignified, of the struggle of a soul thirsty for truth and ready to sacrifice
everything in its service.
The political fluctuations of Renan, at one time Suspicious of democracy as
a possible foe of culture and finally reconciled to it and hopeful of its
future evolution, hardly concern us here. Nor need we dwell on his experiments
in drama, which would never have won him fame.
The Chair of Semitic Languages, which Renan forfeited, through his own
indiscretions and the bigotry of his orthodox enemies, under the
Seventy-two years have passed since Ernest Renan's 'Vie de Jesus,' the first
biography of Jesus to present him as entirely human, was launched on a world
already much troubled with doubts about the Supernatural. In less than six
months 60,000 copies of this momentous work were sold. Edition quickly followed
edition, no less than twenty-three appearing within the space of twenty years.
Although thousands welcomed the 'Vie de Jesus' for its lucidity and charm,
as well as for the tenderness and sympathy with which Jesus and the great
movement he is reputed to have started were delineated, the rage of Orthodoxy
against the book and its author was at least as great as that provoked by
Strauss's 'Leben Jesu' nearly thirty years earlier.
Here for the first time was a purely naturalistic biography of one whom
Christendom had so long adored as God manifest in the flesh. The 'Leben Jesu'
by Strauss can hardly be called a biography; it is a searching criticism of the
Gospels, and makes scarcely an attempt to construct a history in the place of
the legend, which Strauss did more perhaps than any previous critic to
demolish. To much the same category belong the works of those Biblical scholars
who preceded Strauss -- Herder, Reimarus, Evanson, Bahrdt, Venturini, Paulus,
and others. Arguments about the mutual relations of the Gospels, their
trustworthiness and their probable dating; conjectures (sometimes fantastic)
about what might have happened in Galilee and Jerusalem some nineteen hundred years
ago -- all this the earlier Higher Critics of the New Testament gave. But none
before Renan drew a real portrait of a man who could be loved as a man and
judged as a man.
The charm and the skill with which Renan handles his theme may well serve to
hide the critical and literary blemishes of his work. His Jesus is a young
carpenter of
Simple folk loved Jesus and eagerly listened to his discourses. Among them
he wrought many faith-cures. But his popularity with the Galilean peasants,
whose attachment to Jewish Orthodoxy was rather loose, drew on him the keen
resentment of the Pharisees, who, like Jesus, were Messianic in their outlook
and much of whose ethical teaching resembled his, and still more the hostility
of the Sadducees, who were pro-Roman and unfriendly to Messianic visions, and
from whose ranks came the great hierarchy of the Temple. Popularity with the
multitude and opposition from their religious and political leaders spurred
Jesus to greater boldness. He was no loner content with the role of a prophet
of the Kingdom, a wandering "Son of Man" (Ezekiel had borne that
title). He claimed to be himself the Messiah. He even foretold his death by
violence, his ascent to God his Father's right hand, and his eventual return in
triumph on the clouds of heaven, accompanied by a host of angels. His character
underwent a measure of degeneration. "The Galilean idyll," which
graced his earlier career, disappeared, and the gentle, persuasive teacher was
turned into an angry enunciator, and his mind became obsessed with apocalyptic
horrors. Even fraud now assisted his propaganda. According to Renan, the raising
of Lazarus was a trick, planned by the subject of the pretended miracle with
the aid of Martha and Mary.
The end was inevitable. With the aid of a treacherous disciple the enemies
of Jesus tracked him down and, after a mock trial before the High Priest on a
blasphemy charge, dragged him before Pontius Pilatus, precurator of
Renan's reconstruction of the story of Jesus does not lack plausibility in
many of its features, but he has certainly failed to present a figure worthy of
any great respect. This deluded visionary and fanatic, even stooping to fraud,
has no claim to the glowing panegyric with which Renan closes his narrative.
That Jesus was not only lovable, but, in a sense, worshipful, Renan truly felt
and would have his readers feel. Was it not his Catholic upbringing that
induced this frame of mind rather than the calm survey of the facts which he
believed a critical study of the Gospels substantiated?
At times Renan is even weakly sentimental. From an aesthetic viewpoint, if
from no other, one must condemn his surmise that Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane cast a thought on the girls he might have wooed in Galilee. No
wonder a young French lady put down the 'Vie de Jesus' with the remark:
"What a pity it does not end with a marriage!"
Renan, of course, did not accept without qualification the traditional views
on the dating and authorship of the Gospels. But his conservatism would be hard
to match to-day outside the ranks of the theologians. Bernard Shaw is hardly
more uncritical than he sometimes is. Renan adhered to the opinion, first
broached by Lachmann in the eighteenth century, that Mark was the earliest
Gospel and, broadly speaking, reliable as a biographical source -- an opinion
which is still the prevailing one among Protestant scholars (Catholics are
forbidden by the Papal Biblical Commission to maintain Mark's priority), though
it is disputed by some eminent critics, like Raschke, who regards Mark as a late
document. Renan's treatment of the Fourth Gospel is strangely arbitrary.
Although not attributing it to John the son of Zebedee, he sees in it a
valuable source of biographical data for the life of Jesus. His offensive
interpretation of the story of Lazarus has no justification whatever, and is on
a par with the vagaries of Paulus and Venturini, on which Strauss expended his
scorn. The story is, in all probability, a didactic fiction, which the Fourth
Evangelist may have built up on a basis of popular conjectures, gathering round
a legendary or historic name.
To-day the question is being seriously mooted whether any materials exist
for a life of Jesus, even conceding his historicity. No more drastic critic of
previous attempt at biographical reconstruction has been written than Dr.
Albert Schweitzer's 'Von Reimarus zu Wrede' (translated under the title of 'The
Quest of the Historical Jesus'), "that cemetery of departed
hypotheses," as the late Prof. W.B. Smith so amusingly described it.
Circumspect readers of Dr. Schweitzer's lengthy work will regard his own
efforts in the way of Jesuine biography as open to the same charge of
arbitrariness which he shrewdly and wittily makes against so many other
critics.
It is not surprising that, in view of "such quantities of sand,"
the belief has been steadily growing during the last twenty- five years that
Jesus belongs wholly to the realm of myth. Ingenious attempts, sometimes
bewilderingly erudite, have been made by many scholars -- Arthur Drews, W.B.
Smith, J.M. Robertson, Kalihoff, Jensen, Couchoud, Bergh van Eysinga, and
others -- to explain the rise of Christianity without an historical Jesus. But
there has been so far little measure of agreement among the Mythicists, beyond
denial of the reputed founder's existence. The alleged traces of a prechristian
cult of a sacrificed and resurrected Savior God, named Jesus or Joshua, seem
very dubious. The final victory may well lie with the Historicists. And yet it
cannot be said that their position is rationally unchallengeable. The history
of the numerous and often contradictory defenses of the Gospels is a history of
continual critical surrenders. Did Jesus claim to be the Messiah? Wrede and
many other Historicists say no. Guignebert believes that an hallucination of
Peter was the source, not only of the myth of the resurrection, but of the
doctrine of the Messiahship of Jesus, though this seems to militate against all
psychological probability. Wrede, Hamack, and the Liberal School generally,
regard Jesus as an ethical teacher, whose views of the Kingdom of Heaven were
mystical rather than political. He was a prophet of the inner life. On the
other hand, Schweitzer discovers in Jesus an apocalyptic seer, preaching an
"interim ethic," whose value can hardly be detached from those
forecasts of catastrophe and millennial glory in which time has proved him
mistaken. According to Eisler, the Galilean propagandist was an aspirant to
David's crown, though piously refusing to enforce his rights till God should
intervene.
Many evangelical data, once proclaimed unassailable, are now seriously
questioned even by opponents of the Mythicists. Among these are the Twelve
Apostles, the treachery of Judas, and the Sermon on the Mount. Where do we
reach the bottom-rock of historical fact? Some will say that the Crucifixion is
at least certain. The late Canon Cheyne, however, expressed doubts even of this
event, and it seems possible to give an explanation of it in terms of myth. The
interesting thesis of Mr. J.M. Robertson that a mystery play underlies the
story of the Passion seems to receive support from the discovery of some
cuneiform tablets relating to the Babylonian god Marduk, whose death and
resurrection were dramatically represented long before the Christian era.
Marduk, the son of Ea and intercessor with his father for mankind, was tried,
condemned to death, slain, buried in a mountain cave, and raised to life. He is
also said to have visited "the spirits in prison" (a curious parallel
to I Peter iii. 19). Possibly some form of this dramatic mystery was known in
certain heterodox circles of Judaism. Prof. Zimmern in Germany and Dr. S.
Langdon in England, both Assyriologists of repute, hold that the Marduk
Passion-myth has some bearing on the problem of Christian origins. The Witness
of Paul, which has been cited again and again as one of the unshakable pillars
of the tradition, has become at least questionable. Not only is the formidable
attack by Van Manen on the authenticity of the whole of the Pauline Epistles to
be reckoned with, but also the fact that the defence of them to-day generally
involves the surrender of several as non-Pauline and the admission of large
interpolations in the rest. At any rate, the theology of Paul, or of those who
wrote under his name, seems to demand a longer growth of propaganda preceding
it than the Orthodox tradition assumes.
A.D. Howell Smith.
A HISTORY of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to
embrace all the obscure and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which
extend from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its
existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of all. Such
a history would consist of four books. The first, which I now present to the
public, treats of the particular fact which has served as the starting-point of
the new religion; and is entirely filled by the sublime person of the Founder.
The second would treat of the Apostles and their immediate disciples, or,
rather, of the revolutions which religious thought under-went in the first two
generations of Christianity. I would close this about the year 100, at the time
when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the books of the New
Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we now read them. The third
would exhibit the state of Christianity under the Antonines. We should see it
develop itself slowly, and sustain an almost permanent war against the empire,
which had just reached the highest degree of administrative perfection, and,
governed by philosophers, combated in the new-born sect a secret and theocratic
society, which obstinately denied and incessantly undermined it. This book
would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the fourth book
would show the decisive progress which Christianity made from the time of the
Syrian emperors. We should see the learned system of the Antonines crumble, the
decadence of the ancient civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit
from its ruin, Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the
gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession and a purely civil
government no longer sufficed. It was then that the religious ideas of the
races grouped around the Mediterranean became profoundly modified; that the
Eastern religious everywhere took precedence; that the Christian Church, having
become very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a millennium, broke its last
ties with Judaism, and entered completely into the Greek and Roman world. The
contests and the literary labors of the third century, which were carried on
without concealment, would be described only in their general features. I would
relate still more briefly the persecutions at the commencement of the fourth
century, the last effort of the empire to return to its former principles,
which denied to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would
only foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed the
position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement an
official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn. I know not
whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to complete a plan so vast. I
shall be satisfied if, after having written the Life of Jesus, I am permitted
to relate, as I understand it, the history of the Apostles, the state of the
Christian conscience during the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the
formation of the cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts
of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of
Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the foundation
of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and
the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor originated by John. Everything
pales by the side of that marvelous first century. By a peculiarity rare in
history, we see much better what passed in the Christian world from the year 50
to the year 75 than from the year 100 to the year 150.
Those who will consult the following excellent writings will there find
explained. a number of points upon which I have been obliged to be very brief:
--
The criticism of the details of the Gospel texts especially
has been done by Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired.
Although Strauss may be mistaken in his theory of the compilation of the
Gospels; and although his book has, in my opinion, the fault of taking up the theological
ground too much, and the historical ground too little, it will be necessary, in
order to understand the motives which have guided me amid a crowd of minutiae,
to study the always judicious, though sometimes rather subtle, argument of the
book, so well translated by my learned friend, M. Littre.
I do not believe I have neglected any source of information as to ancient
evidences. Without speaking of a crowd of other scattered data, there remain,
respecting Jesus, and the time in which he lived, five great collections of
writings -- 1st, The Gospels, and the writings of the New Testament in general;
2nd, The compositions called the "Apocrypha of the Old Testament";
3rd, The works of Philo; 4th, Those of Josephus; 5th, The Talmud. The writings
of Philo have the priceless advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the
time of Jesus, fermented in minds occupied with great religious questions.
Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different province of Judaism to Jesus,
but, like him, he was very free from the littlenesses which reigned at
Jerusalem; Philo is truly the elder brother of Jesus. He was sixty-two years
old when the Prophet of Nazareth was at the height of his activity, and he
survived him at least ten years. What a pity that the chances of life did not
conduct him into Galilee! What would he not have taught us!
Josephus, writing specially for pagans, is not so candid. His short notices
of Jesus, of John the Baptist, of Judas the Gaulonite, are dry and colourless.
We feel that he seeks to present these movements, so profoundly Jewish in
character and spirit, under a form which would be intelligible to Greeks and
Romans. I believe the passage respecting Jesus to be authentic. It is perfectly
in the style of Josephus, and, if this historian has made mention of Jesus, it
is thus that he must have spoken of him. We feel only that a Christian hand has
retouched the passage, has added a few words -- without which it would almost
have been blasphemous ["If it be lawful to call him man."] -- has
perhaps retrenched or modified some expressions. It must be recollected that
the literary fortune of Josephus was made by the Christians, who adopted his
writings as essential documents of their sacred history. They made, probably in
the second century, an edition corrected according to Christian ideas. At all
events, that which constitutes the immense interest of Josephus on the subject
which occupies us is the clear light which he throws upon the period. Thanks to
him, Herod, Herodias, Antipas, Phihp, Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate are
personages whom we can touch with a finger, and whom we see living before us
with a striking reality.
The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part of the
Sibylline verses, and the Book of Enoch together with the Book of Daniel, which
is also really an Apocrypha, have a primary importance in the history of the
development of the Messianic theories, and for the understanding of the
conceptions of Jesus respecting the kingdom of God. The Book of Enoch especially,
which was much read at the time of Jesus, gives us the key to the expression
"Son of Man," and to the ideas attached to it. The ages of these
different books, thanks to the labors of Alexander, Ewald, Dillmann, and Reuss,
are now beyond doubt. Every one is agreed in placing the compilation of the
most important of them in the second and first centuries before Jesus Christ.
The date of the Book of Daniel is still more certain. The character of the two
languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise,
dated announcement of events which reach even to the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes, the incorrect descriptions of Ancient Babylonia there given, the
general tone of the book, which in no respect recalls the writings of the
captivity, but, on the contrary, responds, by a crowd of analogies, to the
beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of the time of the Seleucidae;
the Apocalyptic form of the visions, the place of the book in the Hebrew canon,
out of the sense of the prophets, the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of
chapter xlix. of Ecclesiastics, in which his position is all but indicated, and
many other proofs which have been deduced a hundred times, do not permit of a
doubt that the Book of Daniel was but the fruit of the great excitement
produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It is not in the old
prophetical literature that we must class this book, but rather at the head of
Apocalyptic literature, as the first model of a kind of composition, after
which come the various Sibylline poems, the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of
John, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Fourth Book of Esdras.
In the history of the origin of Christianity, the Talmud has hitherto been
too much neglected. I think, with M. Geiger, that the true notion of the
circumstances which surrounded the development of Jesus must be sought in this
strange compilation, in which so much precious information is mixed with the
most insignificant scholasticism. The Christian and the Jewish theology, having
in the main followed two parallel ways, the history of the one cannot well be
understood without the history of the other. Innumerable important details in
the Gospels find, moreover, their commentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin
collection of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained already a mass
of information on this point. I have imposed on myself the task of verifying in
the original all the citations which I have admitted, without a single
exception. The assistance which has been given me for this part of my task by a
learned Israelite, M. Neubauer, well versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled
me to go further, and to clear up the most intricate parts of my subject by new
researches. The distinction of epochs is here most important, the compilation
of the Talmud extending from the year 200 to about the year 500. We have
brought to it as much discernment as is possible in the actual state of the
studies. Dates so recent will excite some fears among persons habituated to
accord value to a document only for the period in which it was written. But
such scruples would here be out of place. The teaching of the Jews from the
Asmonean epoch down to the second century was principally oral. We must not
judge of this state of intelligence by the habits of an age of much writing.
The Vedas, and the ancient Arabian poems, have been preserved for ages from
memory, and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form.
In the Talmud on the contrary, the form has no value. Let us add that before
the Mishnah of Judas the Saint, which has caused all others to be forgotten,
there were attempts at compilation, the commencement of which is probably much
earlier than is commonly supposed. The style of the Talmud is that of loose
notes; the collectors did probably than classify under certain titles the
enormous mass of writings which had been accumulating in the different schools
for generations.
It remains for us to speak of the documents which, presenting themselves as
biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must naturally hold the first place
in a Life of Jesus. A complete treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels
would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this
question has been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly
judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves room for
many uncertainties, fully suffices for the necessities of history. We shall
have occasion to return to this in our Second Book, the composition of the
Gospels having been one of the most important facts for the future of
Christianity in the second half of the first century. We will touch here only a
single aspect of the subject, that which is indispensable to the completeness
of our narrative. Leaving aside all which belongs to the portraiture of the
Apostolic times, we will inquire only in what degree the data furnished by the
Gospels may be employed in a history formed according to rational principles.
That the Gospels are in part legendary is evident, since they are full of
miracles and of the supernatural; but legends have not all the same value. No
one doubts the principal features of the life of Francis d'Assisi, although we
meet the supernatural at every step. No one, on the other hand, accords credit
to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, because it was written long after the time
of the hero, and purely as a romance. At what time, by what hands, under what
circumstances, have the Gospels been compiled? This is the Primary question
upon which depends the opinion to be formed of their credibility.
Each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name of a Perspoenagie known
either in the Apostolic history or in the Gospel story itself. These four
personages are not strictly given us as the authors. The formulae,
"according to Matthew," "according to Mark,"
"according to Luke," "according to John," do not imply
that, in the most ancient opinion, these recitals were written from beginning
to end by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; they merely signify that these were
the traditions proceeding from each of these Apostles and claiming their
authority. It is clear that, if these titles are exact, the Gospels, without
ceasing to be in part legendary, are of great value, since they enable us to go
back to the half-century which followed the death of Jesus, and, in two
instances, even to the eye-witnesses of his actions.
Firstly, as to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. The Gospel of Luke is a
regular composition, founded on anterior documents. It is the work of a man who
selects, prunes, and combines. The author of this Gospel is certainly the same
as that of the Acts of the Apostles. Now, the author of the Acts is a companion
of St. Paul, a title which applies to Luke exactly. I know that more than one
objection may be raised against this reasoning; but one least, is beyond doubt
-- namely, that the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts was a man of the
second Apostolic generation, and that is sufficient for our object. The date of
this Gospel can, moreover, be determined with much precision by considerations
drawn from the book itself. The 21st chapter of Luke, inseparable from the rest
of the work, was certainly written after the siege of Jerusalem and but a short
time after. We are here, then, upon solid ground; for we are concerned with a
work written entirely by the same hand, and of the most perfect unity.
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have not nearly the same stamp of
individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author totally
disappears. A proper name written at the head of works of this kind does not
amount to much. But if the Gospel of Luke is dated, those of Matthew and Mark
are dated also; for it is certain that the third Gospel is posterior to the
first two, and exhibits the character of a much more advanced compilation. We
have, besides, on this point, an excellent testimony from a writer of the first
half of the second century -- namely, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave
man, a man of traditions, who was all his life seeking to collect whatever
could be known of the person of Jesus. After having declared that on such
matters he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two writings on
the acts and words of Christ: first a writing of Mark, the interpreter of
Apostle Peter, written briefly, incomplete, and not arranged in chronological
order, including narratives and discourses (OC-Yokv-rce TCPCXXoivroc), composed
from the information and recollections of the Apostle Peter; second, a
collection of sentences (16yL(X) written in Hebrew by Matthew, "and which
each one has translated as he could." it is certain that these two
descriptions answer pretty well to the general physiognomy of the two books now
called "Gospel according to Matthew." "Gospel according to
Mark"; the first characterized by its long discourses; the second, above
all, by anecdote -- much more exact than the first upon small facts, brief even
to dryness, containing few discourses, and indifferently composed. That these
two works, such as we now read them, are absolutely similar to those read by
Papias, cannot be sustained: firstly, because the writings of Matthew were to
Papias solely discourses in Hebrew of which there were in circulation very
varying translations; and, secondly, because the writings of Mark and Matthew,
were to him profoundly distinct, written without any knowledge of each other,
and, as it seems, in different languages. Now, in the present state of the
texts, the "Gospel according to Matthew" and the "Gospel
according to Mark" present parallel parts so long and so perfectly
identical, that it must be supposed, either that the final compiler of the
first had the second under his eyes, or vice versi, or that both copied from
the same prototype. That which appears the most likely is that we have not the
entirely original compilations of either Matthew or Mark, but that our first
two Gospels are versions in which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of
the one text by the other. Every one wished, in fact, to possess a complete
copy. He who had in his copy only discourses wished to have narratives, and
vice versa. It is thus that "the Gospel according to Matthew" is
found to have included almost all the anecdotes of Mark, and that "the
Gospel according to Mark" now contains numerous features which come from
the Logia of Matthew. Every one, besides, drew largely on the Gospel tradition
then current. This tradition was so far from having been exhausted by the
Gospels that the Acts of the Apostles and the most ancient Fathers quote many
words of Jesus which appear authentic, and are not found in the Gospels we
possess.
It matters little for our present object to push this delicate analysis
funher, and to endeavor to reconstruct in some manner on the one hand the
original Logia of Matthew, and on the other the primitive narrative such as it
left the pen of Mark. The Logia are doubtless represented by the great
discourses of Jesus which fill a considerable part of the first Gospel. These
discourses form, in fact, when detached from the rest, a sufficiently complete
whole. As to the narratives of the first and second Gospels, they seem to have
for basis a common document, of which the text reappears sometimes in the one
and sometimes in the other, and of which the second Gospel, such as we read it
to-day, is but a slightly modified reproduction. In other words, the scheme of
the Life of Jesus, in the Synoptics, rests upon two original documents --
first, the discourses of Jesus collected by Matthew; second, the collection of
anecdotes and personal reminiscences which Mark wrote from the recollections of
peter. We may say that we have these two documents still, mixed with accounts
from another source, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without reason,
the name of the "Gospel according to Matthew" and of the Gospel
according to Mark."
What is undubitable, in any case, is that very early the discourses of Jesus
were written in the Aramean language, and very early also his remarkable
actions were recorded. These were not texts defined and fixed dogmatically.
Besides the Gospels which have come to us, there were a number of others
professing to represent the tradition of eye-witnesses. Little importance was
attached to these writings, and the preservers, such as Papias, greatly
preferred oral tradition. As men still believed that the world was nearly at an
nd, they cared little to compose books for the future; it was sufficient merely
to preserve in their hearts a lively image of him whom they hoped soon to see
again in the clouds. Hence the little authority which the Gospel texts enjoyed
during one hundred and fifty years. There was no scruple in inserting
additions, in variously combining them, and in completing some by others. The
poor man who has but one book wishes that it may contain all that is dear to
his heart. These little books were lent, each one transcribed in the margin of
his copy the words, and the parables he found elsewhere, which touched him. The
most beautiful thing in the world has thus proceeded from an obscure and purely
popular elaboration. No compilation was of absolute value. Justin, who often
appeals to that which he calls "The Memoirs of the Apostles," had
under his notice Gospel documents in a state very different from that in which
we possess them. At all events, he never cares to quote them textually. The
Gospel quotations in the pseudo-Clementinian writings, of Ebionite origin,
present the same character, The spirit was everything; the letter was nothing.
it was when tradition became weakened, in the second half of the second century,
that the texts bearing the names of the Apostles took a decisive authority and
obtained the force of law.
Who does not see the value of documents posed of the tender remembrances,
and simple narratives, of the first two Christian generations, still full of
the strong impression which the illustrious Founder has produced, and which
seemed long to survive him? Let us add, that the Gospels in question seem to
proceed from that branch of the Christian family which stood nearest to Jesus.
The last work of compilation, at least of the text which bears the name of
Matthew, appears to have been done in one of the countries situated at the
north-east of Palestine such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, where many
Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were found relatives
of Jesus even in the second century, and where the first Galilean tendency was
longer preserved than in other parts,
So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels named the Synoptics. There
remains a fourth, that Which bears the name of John. Concerning this one,
doubts have a much better foundation, and the question is further from
solution. Papias -- who was connected with the school of John, and who, if not
One of his auditors, as Irenaeus thinks, associated with his immediate
disciples, among others, Aristion, and the one called Presbyteros Joannes --
says not a word of a "Life of Jesus" written by John, although he had
zealously collected the oral narratives of both Aristion and Presbyteros
Joannes. If any such mention had been found in his work, Eusebius, who points
out everything therein that can contribute to the literary history of the
Apostolic age, would doubtless have mentioned it.
The intrinsic difficulties drawn from the peru fourth Gospel itself are not
less strong. How is it that, side by side with narration so precise and so
evidently that of an eye-witness, we find discourses so totally different from
those of Matthew? How is it that, connected with a general plan of the life of
Jesus, which appears much more satisfactory and exact than that of the
Synoptics, these singular passages occur in which we are sensible of a dogmatic
interest peculiar to the compiler, of ideas foreign to Jesus, and sometimes of
indications which place us on our guard against the good faith of the narrator?
Lastly, how is it that, united with views the most pure, the most just, the
most truly evangelical, we find these blemishes, which we would fain regard as
the interpolations of an ardent sectarian? Is it indeed John, son of Zebedee,
brother of James (of whom there is not a single mention made in the fourth
Gospel), who is able to write in Greek these lessons of abstract metaphysics,
to which neither the Synoptics nor the Talmud offer any analogy? All this is of
great importance; and, for myself, I dare not be sure that the fourth Gospel
has been entirely written by the pen of a Galilean fisherman. But that, as a
whole, this Gospel may have originated towards the end of the first century
from the great school of Asia Minor, which was connected with John, that it
represents to us a version of the life of the Master, worthy of high esteem,
and often to be preferred, is demonstrated in a manner which leaves us nothing
to be desired, both by exterior evidences and by examination of the document
itself.
And, firstly, no one doubts that, towards the year 150, the fourth Gospel
did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from St. Justin, from
Athenagoras, from Tatian, from Theophilus of Antioch, from Irenaeus, show that
henceforth this Gospel mixed in every controversy, and served as corner-stone
for the development of the faith. Irenaeus is explicit; now, Irenneus came from
the school of John, and between him and the Apostle there was only Polycarp.
The part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of
Valentinus, in Montanism, and in the quarrel of the Quartodecimans, is not less
decisive. The school of John was the most influential one during the second
century; and it is only by regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident
with the rise of the school that the existence of the latter can be understood
at all. Let us add that the first Epistle attributed to St. John is certainly
by the same author as the fourth Gospel; now, this Epistle is recognized as
from John by Polycarp, Papias, and Irenaeus.
But it is, above all, the perusal of the work itself which is calculated to
give this impression. The author always speaks as an eye-witness; he wishes to pass
for the Apostle John. If, then, this work is not really by the Apostle, we must
admit a fraud, of which the author convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of
the time respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is
no example in the Apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind. Besides, not
only does the author wish to pass for the Apostle John, but we see clearly that
he writes in the interest of this Apostle. On each page he betrays the desire
to fortify his authority, to show that he has been the favorite of Jesus; that
in all the solemn circumstances (at the lord's supper, at Calvary, at the tomb)
he held the first place. His relations on the whole fraternal, although not
excluding a certain rivalry with Peter; his hatred, on the contrary, of Judas,
a hatred, probably anterior to the betrayal, seems to pierce through here and
there. We are tempted to believe that John, in his old age, having read the
Gospel narratives, on the one hand remarked their various inaccuracies, on the other
was hurt at seeing that there was not accorded to him a sufficiently high place
in the history of Christ; that then he commenced to dictate a number of things
which he knew better than the rest, with the intention of showing that in many
instances, in which only Peter was spoken of, he had figured with him and even
before him. Already during the life of Jesus, these trifling sentiments of
jealousy had been manifested between the sons of Zebedee and the other
disciples. After the death of James, his brother, John remained sole inheritor
of the intimate remembrances of which these two Apostles, by the common
consent, were the depositaries. Hence his perpetual desire to recall that he is
the last surviving eye-witness, and the pleasure which he takes in relating
circumstances which he alone could know. Hence, too, so many minute details
which seem like the commentaries of an annotator -- "it was the sixth
hour"; "it was night"; "the servant's name was
Malchus"; "they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold"; the
coat was without seam." Hence, lastly, the disorder of the compilation,
the irregularity of the narration, the disjointedness of the first chapters,
all so many inexplicable features on the supposition that this Gospel was but a
theological thesis, without historic value, and which, on the contrary, are
perfectly intelligible, if, in conformity with tradition, we see in them the
remembrances of an old man, sometimes of remarkable freshness, sometimes having
undergone strange modifications.
A primary distinction, indeed, ought to be made in the Gospel of John. On
the one side this Gospel presents us with a rough drought of the life of Jesus,
which differs considerably from that of the Synoptics. On the other, it puts
into the mouth of Jesus discourses of which the tone, the style, the treatment,
and the doctrines have nothing in common with the Logia given us by the
Synoptics. In this second respect the difference is such that we must make
choice in a decisive manner. If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he could not
have spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has ever
hesitated, or can ever hesitate. Far removed from the simple, disinterested,
impersonal tone of the Synoptics, the Gospel of John shows incessantly the
preoccupation of the apologist -- the mental reservation of the sectarian, the
desire to prove a thesis, and to convince adversaries. It was not by
pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral
sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us
that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural,
ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the
Synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they present
with the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their perfect harmony
with the natural phenomena of Galilee -- all these characteristics, compared
with the obscure Gnosticism, with the distorted metaphysics, which fill the
discourses of John, would speak loudly enough. This by no means implies that
there are not in the discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits
which truly come from Jesus. But the mystic tone of these discourses does not
correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as we
picture it according to the Synoptics. A new spirit has breathed; Gnosticism
has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is finished; the
hope of the near advent of Christ is more distant; we cater on the barrenness
of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not
there, and, if the son of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had
certainly, in writing them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the
charming discourses which he had heard upon its shores.
One circumstance, moreover, which strongly proves that the discourses given
us by the fourth Gospel are not historical, but compositions intended to cover
with the authority of Jesus certain doctrines dear to the compiler, is their
perfect harmony with the intellectual state of Asia Minor at the time when they
were written, Asia Minor was then the theater of a strange movement of
syncretical philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism existed there already. John
appears to have drunk deeply from these strange springs. It may be that, after
the crisis of the year 68 (the date of the Apocalypse) and of the year 70 (the
destruction of Jerusalem), the old Apostle, with an ardent and plastic spirit,
disabused of the belief in a near appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds,
may have inclined towards the ideas that he found around him, of which several
agreed sufficiently well with certain Christian doctrines. In attributing these
new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a very natural tendency. Our remembrances
are transformed with our circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have
known changes as we change. Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John
could not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the
truth.
If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had little
share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him. One is
sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the Apostle, have
been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive
Gospel spirit. In fact, certain portions of the fourth Gospel have been added
later; such is the entire twenty-first chapter, in which the author seems to
wish to render homage to the Apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the
objections which would be drawn, or alrbady had been drawn, from the death of
John himself (ver. 21-23). Many other places bear the traces of erasures and
corrections. It is impossible at this distance to understand these singular
problems, and without doubt many surprises would be in store for us, if we were
permitted to netrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which,
more than once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a decisive
test. Everyone who sets himself to write the life of Jesus without any
predetermined theory as to the relative value of the Gospels, letting himself
be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in numerous
instances to prefer the narration of John to that of the Synoptics. The last
months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of
the features of the passion, unintelligible in the Synoptics, resume both
probility and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the
contrary, I dare defy anyone to compose a Life of Jesus with any meaning from
the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner of incessantly
preaching and demonstrating himself, this erpetual argumentation, this
stage-effect devoid of simpplicity, these long arguments after each miracle,
these stiff and awkward discourses, the tone of which is so often false and
unequal, wouId not be tolerated by a man of taste compared with the delightful
sentences of the Synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions, which
represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render us the
conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the variations of a musician
improvising on a given theme. The theme is not without some authenticity; but
in the execution the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope. We
are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss. Let us
add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognised in the portions of which
we speak. The expression "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to
the Master, occurs there but once. On the other hand, the style of the
discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel presents the most complete
analogy with that of the Epistles of St. John; we see that, in writing the
discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat
monotonous movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is
introduced, a language of which the Synoptics had not the least idea
("world," "truth," "life," "light,"
"darkness," etc.). If Jesus had ever spoken in this style, which has
nothing of Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus
express myself, is it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well
kept the secret?
Literary history offers, besides, another example, which presents the
greatest analogy with the historic phenomenon we have just described and serves
to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, never wrote, is known to us by two of
his disciples, Xenophon and Plato; the first corresponding to the Synoptics in
his clear, transparent, impersonal compilation; the second recalling the author
of the fourth Gospel, by his vigorous individuality. In order to describe the
Socratic teaching, should we follow the "dialogues" of Plato or the
"discourses" of Xenophon? Doubt, in this respect, is not possible;
everyone chooses the "discourses," and not the "dialogues."
Does Plato, however, teach us nothing about Socrates? Would it be good criticism,
in writing the biography of the latter, to neglect the "dialogues"?
Who would venture to maintain this? The analogy, moreover, is not complete, and
the difference is in favour of the fourth Gospel. The author of this Gospel is,
in fact, the better biographer; as if Plato, who, while attributing to his
master fictitious discourses, had known important matters about his life, which
Xenophon ignored entirely. Without pronouncing upon the material question as to
what hand has written the fourth Gospel, and while inclined to believe that the
discourses, at least, are not from the son of Zebedee, we admit still that it
is indeed "the Gospel according to John," in the same sense that the
first and second Gospels are the Gospels "according to Matthew" and
"according to Mark." The historical sketch of the fourth Gospel is
the Life of Jesus, such as it was known in the school of John; it is the
recital which Aristion and Presbyteros Joannes made to Papias, without telling
him that it was written, or rather attaching no importance to this point. I
must add that, in my opinion, this school was better acquainted with the
exterior circumstances of the life of the founder than the group whose
remembrances constituted the Synoptics. It had, especially upon the sojourns of
Jesus at Jerusalem, data which the others did not possess. The disciples of
this school treated Mark as an indifferent biographer, and devised a system to
explain his omissions. Certain passages of Luke, where there is, as it were, an
echo of the traditions of John, prove also that these traditions were entirely
unknown to the rest of the Christian family.
These explanations will suffice, I think, to show, in the course of my
narrative, the motives which have determined me to give the preference to this
or that of the four guides whom we have for the Life of Jesus. On the whole, I
admit as authentic the four Canonical Gospels. All, in my opinion, date from
the first century, and the authors are, generally speaking, those to whom they
are attributed; but their historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently
merits an unlimited confidence as to the discourses; they are the logia, the
identical notes taken from a clear and lively remembrance of the teachings of
Jesus. A kind of splendour at once mild and terrible -- a divine strength, if
we may so speak -- emphasises these words, detaches them from the context, and
renders them easily distinguishable. The person who imposes upon himself the
task of making a continuous narrative from the gospel history possesses, in
this respect, an excellent touchstone. The real words of Jesus disclose
themselves; as soon as we touch them in this chaos of traditions of varied
authenticity, we feel them vibrate -- they betray themselves spontaneously, and
shine out of the narrative with unsqualled brilliancy.
The narrative portions grouped in the first Gospel around this primitive
nucleus have not the same authority. There are many not well-defined legends
which have proceeded from the zeal of the second Christian generation. The
Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more precise, containing fewer subsequent
additions. He is the one of the three Synoptics who has remanied the most
primitive the most original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have
been added. In Mark the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in
vain among the other evangelists. He likes to report certain words of Jesus in
Syro-Chaldean. He is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an
eve-witness. There is nothing to prevent our agreeing with Papias in regarding
this eve- witness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved him and
observed him very closely, and who had preserved a lively image of him, as the
Apostle Peter himself.
As to the work of Luke, its historical value is sensibly weaker. It is a
document which comes to us second-hand, The narrative is more mature. The words
of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more sententious. Some sentences are
distorted and exaggerated. Writing outside of Palestine, and certainly after the
siege of Jerusalem, the author indicates the places with less cxactitude than
the other two Synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he
represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions. He subdues
some details in order to make the different narratives agree; he softens the
passages which had become embarrassing on account of a more exalted idea of the
divinity of Christ; he exaggerates the marvellous; commits errors in
chronology; omits Hebraistic comments; quotes no word of Jesus in this
language, and gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to
do with a compiler -- with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but
who labours at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree. Luke had probably
under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark and the Logia of Matthew.
But he treats them with much freedom; sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two
parables in one; sometimes he divides one in order to make two. He interprets
the documents according to his own idea, he has not the absolute impassibility
of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his individual tastes
and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee; he insists that Jesus had performed
all the Jewish rites; he is a warm Ebionite and democrat -- that is to say,
much opposed to property -- and persitided that the triumph of the poor is
approaching; he likes especially all the anecdotes showing prominently the
conversion of sinners -- the exaltation of the humble he often modifies the
ancient traditions in order to give them this meaning; he admits into his first
pages the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long
amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the conventional proceedings which
form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels. Finally, he has in the
narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances full of tender feeling,
and certain words of Jesus of delightful beauty, which are not found in more
authentic accounts, and in which we detect the presence of legend. Luke
probably borrowed them from a more recent collection, in which the principal
aim was to excite sentiments of piety.
A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence of a document of this
nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to employ it without
discernment. Luke has had under his eyes originafs which we no longer possess.
He is less an evangelist than a biographer of Jesus, a "harmoniser,"
a corrector after the manner of Marcion and Tatian. But he is a biographer of
the first century, a divine artist, who, independently of the information which
he has drawn from more ancient sources, shows us the character of the founder
with a happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness
which the other two Synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his Gospel
there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of the foundation,
common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in composition which singularly
augments the effect of the portrait, without seriously injuring its
truthfulness.
On the whole, we may say that the Synoptical compilation has passed through
three stages: first, the original documentary state (7.6ytoe of Matthew,
XE:Zpgvr(x q 7p(xx Oivroc of Mark), primary compilations which no longer exist;
second, the state of simple mixture, in which the original documents are
amalgamated without any effort at composition, without there appearing any
personal bias of the authors (the existing Gosiels of Matthew and Mark); third,
the state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in which
we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different versions (Gospel of
Luke). The Gospel of John, as we have said, forms a composition of another
order, and is entirely distinct.
It will be remarked that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels. These
compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same footing as the
Canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile amplifications, having the
Canonical Gospels for their basis, and adding nothing thereto of any value. On
the other hand, I have been very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by
the Fathers of the Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed
parallel with the Canonical Gosfels, and which are now lost -- such as the
Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the
Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two are
principally important because they were written in Aramean, like the Logia of
Matthew, and appear to constitute one version of the Gospel of this Apostle,
and because they were the Gospel of the Ebionim -- that is, of those small
Christian sects of Batanea who preserved the use of Syro-Chaldean, and who
appear in some respects to have followed the course marked out by Jesus. But it
must be confessed that, in the state in which they have come to us, these
Gospels are inferior, as critical authorities, to the compilation of Matthew's
Gospel which we now possess.
It will now be seen, I think, what kind of historical value I attribute to
the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius, nor
fictitious legends in the style of Philostratus; they are legendary
biographics. I should willingly compare them with the Legends of the Saints,
the Lives of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind,
in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are
combined in various degrees. Inexactitude, which is one of the features of all
popular compositions, is there particularly felt. Let us suppose that, ten or
twelve years ago, three or four old soldiers of the Empire had each undertaken
to write the life of napoleon from memory. It is clear that their narratives
would contain numerous errors and great discordances. One of them would place
Wagram before Marengo: another would write without hesitation that Napoleon
drove the Government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit
expeditions of the highest importance. But one thing would certainly result
with a great degree of truthfulness from these simple recitals, and that is the
character of the hero, the impression which he made around him. In this sense
such popular narratives would be worth more than a formal and official history.
We may say as much of the Gospels. Solely attentive to bring out strongly the
excellency of the Master, his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists display
entire indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus. The
contradictions respecting time, place, and persons were regarded as
insignificant; for the higher the degree of inspiration attributed to the words
of Jesus, the less was granted to the compilers themselves. The latter regarded
themselves as simple scribes, and cared but for one thing -- to omit nothing
they knew.
Unquestionably certain preconceived ideas associated themselves with such
recollections. Several narratives, especially in Luke, are invented in order to
bring out more vividly certain traits of the character of Jesus. This character
itself constantly underwent alteration. Jesus would be a phenomenon
unparalleled in history if, with the part which he played, he had not early
become idealised. The legends respecting Alexander were invented before the
generation of his companions in arms became extinct; those respecting St.
Francis d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid metamorphosis operated in the
same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus,
and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of all ideal legend. Death
adds perfection to the most perfect man; it frees him from all defect in the
eyes of those who have loved him. With the wish to paint the Master, there was
also the desire to explain him. Many anecdotes were conceived to prove that in
him the prophecies regarded as Messianic had had their accomplishment. But this
procedure, of which we must not deny the importance, would not suffice to
explain everything. No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies
exactly declaring what the Messiah should accomplish. Many Messianic allusions
quoted by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that one cannot believe
they all responded to a generally admitted doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned
thus; "The Messiah ought to do such a thing; now, Jesus is the Messiah;
therefore Jesus has done such a thing." At other times, by an inverse
process, it was said: "Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now, Jesus is
the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah." Too
simple explanations are always false when analysing those profound creations of
popular sentiment which baffle all systems by their fullness and infinite
variety. It is scarcely necessary to say that, with such documents, in order to
present only what is indisputable, we must limit ourselves to general features.
In almost all ancient histories, even in those which are much less legendary
than these, details open up innumerable doubts. When we have two accounts of
the same fact, it is extremely rare that the two accounts agree. Is not this a
reason for anticipating many difficulties when we have but one? We may say that
among the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings which have been
given us by the historians, there is not one strictly authentic. Were there stenographers
to fix these fleeting words? Was there an annalist always present to note the
gestures, the manners, the sentiments, of the actors? Let anyone endeavor to
get at the truth as to the way in which such or such contemporary fact has
happened; he will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by
different eye-witnesses differ essentially. Must we, therefore, reject all the
colouring of the narratives, and limit ourselves to the bare facts only? That
would be to suppress history. Certainly, I think that, if we except certain
short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the discourses reported by Matthew
are textual; even our stenographic reports are scarcely so. I freely admit that
the admirable account of the Passion contains many trifling inaccuracies. Would
it, however, be writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which give
to us in such a vivid manner the character of his discourses, and to limit
ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, "that he was put to death
by the order of Pilate at the instigation of the priests"? That would be,
in my opinion, a kind of inexactittide worse than that to which we are exposed
in admitting the details supplied by the texts. These details are not true to
the letter, but they are true with a superior truth, they are more true than
the naked truth, in the sense that they are truth rendered expressive and
articulate -- truth idealised.
I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in
narratives in great part legendary to take note of the observation I have just
made. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were confined to
that which is materially certain? Even partly erroneous traditions contain a
portion of truth which history cannot neglect. No one has blamed M. Spranger
for having, in writing the life of Mohammed, made much of the hadith or oral
traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having attributed to his hero
words which are only known through this source. Yet the traditions respecting
Mohammed are not superior in historical value to the discourses and narratives
which compose the Gospels. They were written between the year 50 and the year
140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which
immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written,
no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel, the
maxims ascribed to them by the Mishnah and the Gemara, although these great
compilations were written many hundreds of years after the time of the doctors
in question.
As to those who believe, on the contrary, that history should consist of a
simple reproduction of the documents which have come down to us, I beg to
observe that such a course is not allowable. The four principal documents are
in flagrant contradiction one with another. Josephus rectifies them sometimes.
It is necessary to make a selection. To assert that an event cannot take place
in two ways at once, or in an impossible manner, is not to impose an a'pyiori
philosophy upon history. The historian ought not to conclude that a fact is
false because he possesses several versions of it, or because credulity has
mixed with them much that is fabulous. He ought in such a case to be very
cautious, to examine the texts, and to proceed carefully by induction. There is
one class of narratives especially to which this principle must necessarily be
applied. Such are narratives of supernatural events. To seek to explain these,
or to reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory;
it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of the miracles
with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions.
Observation, which has never once been falsified, teaches us that miracles
never happen but in times and countries in which they are believed, and before
persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the presence of
men capable of testing its miraculous character. Neither common people nor men
of the world are able to do this. It requires great precautions and long habits
of scientific research. In our days have we not seen almost all respectable
people dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile illusions? Marvellous facts,
attested by the whole population of small towns, have, thanks to a severer
scrutiny, been exploded. If it is proved that no contemporary miracle will bear
inquiry, is it nut probable that the miracles of the past which have all been
performed in popular gatherings would equally present their share of illusion,
if it were possible to criticise them in detail?
It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the name of
universal experience, that we banish miracle from history. We do not say,
"Miracles are impossible." We say, "Up to this time a miracle
has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgus present himself with
credentials sufficiently important to be discussed, and announce himself as
able, say, to raise the dead, what would be done? A commission, composed of
physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed to historical
criticism, would be named. This commission would choose a corpse, would assure
itself that the death was real, would select the room in which the experiment
should be made, would arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to leave
no chance of doubt. If, under such conditions, the resurrection were effected,
a probability almost equal to certainty would be established. As, however, it
ought to be possible always to repeat an experiment -- to do over again which
has been done once; and as, in the order of miracle, there can be no question
of ease or dffficulty, the thaumaturgus would be invited to reproduce his
marvellous act under other circumstances, upon other corpses, in another place.
If the miracle succeeded each time, two things would be proved: first, that
supernatural events happen in the world; second, that the power of producing
them belongs, or is delegated to, certain persons. But who does not see that no
miracle ever took place under these conditions, but that always hitherto the
thaumaturgus has chosen the subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, chosen
the public; that, besides, the people themselves most commonly in consequence
of the invincible want to see something divine in great events and great men --
create the marvellous legends afterwards? Until a new order of things prevails,
we shall maintain, then, this principle of historical criticism -- that a
supernatural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always implies
credulity or imposture, that the duty of the historian is to explain it, and
seek to asceitain what share of truth, or of error, it may conceal.
Such are the rules which have been followed in the composition of this work.
To the perusal of documentary evidences I have been able to add an important
source of information -- the sight of the places where the events occurred. The
scientific mission, having for its object the exploration of ancient Phoenicia,
which I directed in i86o and 1861, led me to reside on the frontiers of
Galilee, and to travel there frequently. I have traversed, in all directions,
the country of the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria;
scarcely any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All
this history, which at a distance seems to float in the clouds of an unreal
world, thus took a form, a solidity which astonished me. The striking agreement
of the texts with the places, the marvellous harmony of the Gospel ideal with
the country which served it as a framework, were like a revelation to me, I had
before my eyes a fifth Gospel, torn, but still legible, and henceforward,
through the recitals of Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being, whose
existence might have been doubted, I saw living and moving an admirable human
figure. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir, in Lebanon, to take a
little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the image which had appeared to me,
and from them resulted this history. When a cruel bereavement hastened my
departure, I had but a few pages to write. In this manner the book has been
composed almost entirely near the very places where Jesus was born, and where
his character was developed. Since my return I have laboured unceasingly to
verify and check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a
Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.
Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has thus
taken. When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin of
Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of doctrines, in
which men and their actions would have hardly had a place. Jesus would scarcely
have been named; I should have endeavoured to show how the ideas which have
grown under his name took root and covered the world. But I have learned since
that history is not a simple game of abstractions; that men are more than
doctrines. It was not a certain theory on justification and redemption which
brought about the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism,
Judaism, might have been able to have combined under every form; the doctrines
of the Resurrection and of the Word might have developed themselves during ages
without producing this grand, unique, and fruitful fact, called Christianity.
This fact is the work of Jesus, of St. Paul, of St. John. To write the history
of Jesus, of St. Paul, of St. John, is to write the history of the origin of
Christianity. The anterior movements belong to our subject only in so far as
they serve to throw light upon these extraordinary men, who naturally could not
have existed without connection with that which preceded them.
In such an effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some share
of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is an organic
whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration of small facts. It
requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all, moulding them into perfect
unity. The method of art in a similar subject is a good guide; the exquisite
tact of a Goethe would know how to apply it. The essential condition of the
creations of art is, that they shall form a living system of which all the
parts are mutually dependent and related.
In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth is to
have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that they shall
constitute a logical, probable narrative, harmonious throughout. The secret
laws of life, of the progression of organic products, of the melting of minute
distinctions, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be
reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify,
but the very soul of history; what must be sought is not the petty certainty
about trifles, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the truthfulness
of the colouring. Each trait which departs from the rules of classic narration
ought to warn us to be careful; for the fact which has to be related has been
living, natural, and harmonious. If we do not succeed in rendering it such by
the recital, it is surely because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright.
Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we
produced a dry, jarring, artificial whole, what must we conclude? Simply that
the texts want an appreciative interpretation; that we must study them quietly
until they dovetail and furnish a whole in which all the parts are happily
blended. Should we then be sure of having a perfect reproduction of the Greek
statue? No; but at least we should not have the caricature of it; we should
have the general spirit of the work -- one of the forms in which it could have
existed.
This idea of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our guide in
the general arrangement of the narrative. The perusal of the Gospels would
suffice to prove that the compilers, although having a very true plan of the
Life of Jesus in their minds, have not been guided by very exact chronological
data; Papias, besides, expressly teaches this. The expressions, "At this
time ... after that ... then ... and it came to pass ..." etc., are the
simple transitions intended to connect different narratives with each other. To
leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which
tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as the
history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell the letters
and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which
presents to us, in the loosest manner, fragments of the different epochs in the
life of Mohammed, has yielded its secret to an ingenious criticism; the
chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been discovered so
as to leave little room for doubt. Such a rearrangement is much more difficult
in the case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and
less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Meanwhile, the attempt
to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to be taxed with
gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in supposing that a
founder of a new religion commences by attaching himself to the moral aphorisms
aleady in circulation in his time, and to the practices which are in vogue;
that, when riper, and in full posession of his idea, he delights in a kind of
calm and in full poetical eloquence, remote from all controversy, sweet and
free as pure feeling; that he warms by degrees, becomes animated by opposition,
and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are the periods which may
plainly be distinguished in the Koran. The order adopted with an extremely fine
tact by the Synoptics supposes an analogous progress, If Matthew be attentively
read, we shall find in the distribution of the discourses a gradation perfectly
analogous to that which we have just indicated. The reserved turns of
expression of which we make use in unfoldin the progress of the ideas of Jesus
will also be observed. The reader may, if he likes, see in the divisions
adopted in doing this only the indispensable breaks for the methodical
expsition of a profound and complicated thought.
If the love of a subject can help one to understand it, it will also, I
hope, be recognised that I have not been wanting in this condition. To write
the history of a religion, it is necessary, firstly, to have believed it
(otherwise we should not be able to understand how it has charmed and satisfied
the human conscience); in the second place, to believe it no longer in an
absolute manner, for absolute faith is incompatible with sincere history. But
love is possible without faith. To abstain from attaching one's self to any of
the forms which captivate the adoration of men is not to deprive ourselves of
the enjoyment of that which is good and beautiful in them. No transitory
appearance exhausts the Divinity; God was revealed before Jesus -- God will
reveal himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the more Divine, as
they are grander and more spontaneous, the manifestations of God hidden in the
depths of the human conscience are all of the same order. Jesus cannot belong
solely to those who call themselves his disciples. He is the common honour of
all who share a common humanity. His glory does not consist in being relegated
out of history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is
incomprehensible without him.
THE great event of the history of the world is the
revolution by which the noblest portions of humanity have passed from the
ancient religions, comprised under the vague name of Paganism, to a religion
founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Son of
God. It has taken nearly a thousand years to accomplish this conversion. The
new religion had itself taken at least three hundred years in its formation.
But the origin of the revolution in question is a fact which took place under
the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a superior
personage, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was able to
inspire, became the object and fixed the starting-point of the future faith of
humanity.
As soon as man became distinguished from the animal, he became religious --
that is to say, he saw in nature something beyond the phenomena, and for
himself something beyond death. This sentiment, during some thousands of years,
became corrupted in the strangest manner. In many races it did not pass beyond
the belief in sorcerers, under the gross form in which we still find it in
certain parts of Oceania. Among some, the religious sentiment degenered into
the shameful scenes of butchery which form the character of the ancient
religion of Mexico. Among others, especially in Africa, it became pure
Fetichism -- that is, the adoration of a material object, to which were
attributed supernatural powers. Like the instinct of love, which at times
elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes becomes perverted and
ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion during a long period seems only
to be a cancer which must be extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors
and crimes which the wise ought to endeavour to suppress.
The brilliant civilisations which were developed from a very remote
antiquity in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, caused a certain progress to be
made in religion. China arrived very early at a sort of mediocre good sense,
which prevented great extravagances. She neither knew the advantages nor the
abuses of the religious spirit. At all events, she had not in this way any
influence in directing the great current of humanity. The religions of
Babylonia and Syria were never freed from a substratum of strange sensuality;
these religions remained, until their extinction in the fourth and fifth
centuries of our era, schools of immorality, in which at intervals glimpses of
the divine world were obtained by a sort of poetic intuition. Egypt,
notwithstanding an apparent kind of fetichism, had very early metaphysical
dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But doubtless these interpretations of a refined
theology were not primitive. Man has never, in the possession of a clear idea,
amused himself by clothing it in symbols; it is oftener after long reflections,
and from the impossibility felt by the human mind of resigning itself to the
absurd, that we seek ideas under the ancient mystic images whose meaning is
lost. Moreover, it is not from Egypt that the faith of humanity has come. The
elements which, in the religion of a Christian, passing through a thousand
transformations, came from Egypt and Syria, are exterior forms of little
consequence, or dross of Which the most purified worships always retain some
portion. The grand defect of the religions of which we speak was their
essentially superstitious character. They only threw into the world millions of
amulets and charms. No great moral thought could proceed from races oppressed
by a secular despotism, and accustomed to institutions which precluded the
exercise of individual liberty.
The poetry of the soul, faith, liberty, virtue, devotion, made their
appearance in the world with the two great races which, in one sense have made
humanity -- viz. the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The first religious
intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially naturalistic. But it was
a profound and moral naturalism, a loving embrace of nature by man, a delicious
poetry, full of the sentiment of the Infinite -- the principle, in fine, of all
that which the Germanic and Celtic genius, of that which a Shakespeare and a
Goethe, should express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral
philosophy -- it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was
imagination; it was, more than all, earnestness, the essential condition of
morals and religion. The faith of humanity, however, could not come from
thence, because these ancient forms of worships had great difficulty in
detaching themselves from Polytheism, and could not attain to a very clear
symbol. Brahminism has only survived to the present day by virtue of the
astonishing faculty of conservation which India seems to posses. Buddhism
failed in all its approaches towards the West. Druidism remained a form
exclusively national, and without universal capacity. The Greek attempts at
reform, Orpheism, the Mysteries, did not suffice to give "solid aliment to
the soul. Persia alone succeeded in making a dogmatic religion, almost
Monotheistic, and skillfully organized; but it is very possible that this
organization itself was but an imitation, or borrowed. At all events, Persia has
not converted the world; she herself, on the contrary, was converted when she
saw the flag of the Divine unity as proclaimed by Mohamedanism appear on her
frontiers.
It is the Semitic race which has the glory of having made the religion of
humanity. Far beyond the confines of history, resting under his tent free from
the taint of a corrupted world, the Bedouin patriarch prepared the faith of
mankind. A strong antipathy against the voluptuous worships of Syria, a grand
simplicity of ritual, the complete absence of temples, and the idol reduced to
insignificant theraphim constituted his superiority. Among all the tribes of
the nomadic Semites, that of the Beni-Israel was already chosen for immense
destinies. Ancient relations with Egypt, whence perhaps resulted some purely
material ingredients, did but augment their repulsion to idolatry. A
"Law," or Thora, very anciently written on tables of stone, and which
they attributed for their great liberator Moses, had become the code of
Monotheism, and contained, as compared with the institutions of Egypt and
Chaldea, powerful germs of social equality and morality. A chest or portable
ark, having staples on each side to admit of bearing poles, constituted all
their religious material; there were collected the sacred objects of the
nation, its relics, its souvenirs, and lastly the "book," the,
journal of the tribe, always open, but which was written in with great
discretion. The family charged with bearing the ark and watching over the
portable archives, being near the book and having the control of it very soon
became important. From hence, however, the institution which was to control the
future did not come. The Hebrew priest did not differ much from the other
priests of antiquity. The character which essentially distinguishes Israel
among theocratic peoples is that its priesthood has always been subordinated to
individual inspiration. Besides its priests, each wandering tribe had its nabi
or prophet, a sort of living oracle who was consulted for the solution of obscure
questions supposed to require a high degree of clairvoyance. The nabis of
Israel, organized in groups or schools, had great influence. Defenders of the
ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all political
organization, and to whatsoever might draw Israel into the paths of other
nations, they were the true authors of the religious preeminence of the Jewish
people. Very early they announced unlimited hopes, and when the people, in part
the victims of their impolitic counsels, had been crushed by the Assyrian
power, they proclaimed that a kingdom without bounds was reserved for them,
that one day Jerusalem would be the capital of the whole world, and the human
race become Jews. Jerusalem and its temple appeared to them as a city placed on
the summit of a mountain, towards which all people should turn, as an oracle
whence the universal law should proceed, as the center of an ideal kingdom, in
which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should find again the joys of
Eden.
Mystical utterances already make themselves heard, tending to exalt the
martyrdom and celebrate the power of the "Man of Sorrows." Respecting
one of those sublime sufferers, who, like Teremiah, stained the streets of
Jerusalem with their blood, one of the inspired wrote a song upon the
sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which all the
prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed concentrated. "For he shall
grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he
hath no form nor comeliness. He is despised and rejected of men: and we hid, as
it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely
he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our
peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have
gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he
opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. And he made his grave
with the wicked. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall
see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in his hand."
Important modifications were made at the same time in the Thora. New texts,
pretending to represent the true law of Moses, such as Deuteronomy, were
produced, and inaugurated in reality a very different spirit from that of the
old nomads. A marked fanaticism was the dominant feature of this spirit.
Furious believers unceasingly instigated violence against all who wandered from
the worship of Jehovah -- they succeeded in establishing a code of blood,
making death the penalty for religious faults. Piety brings, almost always,
singular contradictions of vehemence and mildness. This zeal, unknown to the
coarser simplicity of the time of the judges, inspired tones of moving prophecy
and tender unction, which the world had never heard till then. A strong
tendency towards social questions already made itself felt; Utopias, dreams of
a perfect society, took a place in the code. The Pentateuch, a mixture of
patriarchal morality and ardent devotion, primitive intuitions and pious
subtleties, like those which filled the souls of Hezekiah, of Josiah, and of
Jeremiah, was thus fixed in the form in which we now see it, and became for
ages the absolute rule of the national mind.
This great book once created, the history of the Jewish people unfolded
itself with an irresistible force. The great empires which followed each other
in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a terrestrial kingdom, threw it into
religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of somber passion. Caring
little for the national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all
governments which permitted it to practice freely its worship and follow ifs usages.
Israel will henceforward have no other guidance than that of its religious
enthusiasts, no other enemies than those of the Divine unity, no other country
than its Law.
And this Law, it must be remarked, was entirely social and moral. It was the
work of men penetrated with a high ideal of the present life, and believing
that they had found the best means of realizing it. The conviction of all was
that the Thora, well observed, could not fail to give perfect felicity. This
Thora has nothing in common with the Greek or Roman "Laws," which,
occupying themselves with scarcely anything but abstract right, entered little
into questions of private happiness and morality. We feel beforehand that the
results which will proceed from it will be of a social and not a political
order, that the work at which this people labors is a kingdom of God, not a
civil republic; a universal institution, not a nationality or a country.
Notwithstanding numerous failures, Israel admirably sustained this vocation.
A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees, consumed with zeal
for the Law, succeeded each other in the defence of the ancient institutions.
The idea that Israel was a holy people, a tribe chosen by God and bound to him
by covenant, took deeper and firmer root. An immense expectation filled their
souls. All Indo-European antiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; all
its poets had wept a vanished golden age. Israel placed the age of gold in the
future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms, blossomed from this
exalted piety, with their divine and melancholy harmony. Israel became truly
and specially the people of God, while around it the pagan religions were more
and more reduced, in Persia and Babylonia, to an official charlatanism, in Egypt
and Syria to a gross idolatry, and in the Greek and Roman world to mere parade.
That which the Christian martyrs did in the first centuries of our era, that
which the victims of persecuting orthodoxy have done, even in the bosom of
Christianity, up to our time, the Jews did during the two centuries which
preceded the Christian era. They were a living protest against superstition and
religious materialism. An extraordinary movement of ideas, ending in the most
opposite results, made of them, at this epoch, the most striking and original
people in the world. Their dispersion along all the coast of the Mediterranean,
and the use of the Greek language, which they adopted when out of Palestine,
prepared the way for a propagandist of which ancient societies, divided into
small nationalities, had never offered a single example.
Up to the time of the Maccabees, Judaism, in spite of its persistence in
announcing that it would one day be the religion of the human race, had had the
characteristic of all the other worships of antiquity -- it was a worship of
the family and the tribe. The Israelite thought, indeed, that his worship was
the best, and spoke with contempt of strange gods; but he believed also that
the religion of the true God was made for himself alone. Only when a man
entered into the Jewish family did he embrace the worship of Jehovah. No
Israelite cared to convert the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of
the sons of Abraham. The development of the pietistic spirit, after Ezra and
Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical conception. Judaism became the
true religion in a more absolute manner; to all who wished, the right of
entering it was given; soon it became a work of piety to bring into it the
greatest number possible. Doubtless the refined sentiment which elevated John
the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul above the petty ideas of race did not yet
exist; for, by a strange contradiction, these converts were little respected
and were treated with disdain. But the idea of a sovereign religion, the idea
that there was something in the world superior to country, to blood, to laws --
the idea which makes apostles and martyrs -- was founded. Profound pity for the
pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly fortune, was henceforth the
feeling of every Jew. By a cycle of legends destined to furnish models of
immovable firmness, such as the histories of Daniel and his companions, the
mother of the Maccabees and her seven sons, the romance of the racecourse of
Alexandria -- the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate the idea
that virtue consists in a fanatical attachment to fixed religious institutions.
The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made this idea a passion, almost a
frenzy. it was something very analogous to that which happened under Nero two
hundred and thirty years later. Rage and despair threw the believers into the
world of visions and dreams. The first apocalypse, "The Book of
Daniel," appeared. It was like a revival of prophecy, but under a very
different form from the ancient one, and with a much larger idea of the
destinies of the world. The Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, the last
expression to the Messianic hopes. The Messiah was no longer a king, after the
manner of David and Solomon, a theocratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a "Son
of Man" appearing in the clouds -- a supernatural being, invested with
human form, charged to rule the world, and to preside over the golden age.
Perhaps the Sosiosh of Persia, the great prophet who was to come, charged with preparing
the reign of Ormuzd, gave some features to this new ideal. The unknown author
of the Book of Daniel had, in any case, a decisive influence on the religious
event which was about to transform the world. He supplied the mise-en-scene,
and the technical terms of the now belief in the Messiah; and we might apply to
him what Jesus said of John the Baptist -- Before him, the prophets; after him,
the kingdom of God.
It must not, however, be supposed that this profoundly religious and
soul-stirring movement had particular dogmas for its primary impulse, as was
the case in all the conflicts which have disturbed the bosom of Christianity.
The Jew of this epoch was as little theological as possible. He did not
speculate upon the essence of the Divinity: the beliefs about angels, about the
destinies of man, about the Divine personality, of which the first germs might
already be perceived, were quite optional -- they were meditations, to which
each one surrendered himself according to the turn of his mind, but of which a
great number of men had never heard. They were the most orthodox even, who did
not share in these particular imaginations, and who adhered to the simplicity
of the Mosaic law. No that which orthodox Christianity has given to the Church
then existed. It was only at the beginning of the third century, when
Christianity had fallen into the hands of reasoning races, mad with dialectics
and metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the
history of the Church but the history of one immense controversy. There were
disputes also among the Jews -- excited Schools brought opposite solutions to
almost all the questions which were agitated; but in these contests, of which
the Talmud has preserved the principal details, there is not a single word of
speculative theology. To observe and maintain the law was just, and because,
when well observed, it gave happiness -- such was Judaism. No credo, no
theoretical symbol. One of the disciples of the boldest Arabian philosophy,
Moses Maimonides, was able to become the oracle of the synagogue, because he
was well versed in the canonical law.
The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the excitement grow
still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted series of religious
movements. In the degree that power became secularized, and passed into the
hands of unbelievers, the Jewish people lived less and less for the earth, and
became more and more absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating
in their midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge
of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds abreast of
their age were, however, better informed. The tender and clear-sighted Virgil
seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the second Isaiah. The birth of a
child throws him into dreams of a universal palingenesis. These dreams were of
every-day occurrence and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated
Sibylline, The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination;
the great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of melancholy
sensibility which the mind experiences after long periods of revolution, gave
birth on all sides to unlimited hopes.
In Judea expectation was at its height. Holy persons -- among whom may be
named the aged Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his arms; Anna,
daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess -- passed their life about the
temple, fasting, and praying that it might please God not to take them from the
world without having seen the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel. They felt a
powerful presentiment; they were sensible of the approach of something unknown.
This confused mixture of clear views and dreams, this alternation of
deceptions and hopes, these ceaseless aspirations, driven back by an odious
reality, found at last their interpretation in the incomparable man, to whom
the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with
justice, since he has advanced religion as no other has done, or probably ever
will be able to do.
Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town of Galilee, which
before his time had no celebrity. All his life he was designated by the name of
"the Nazarene," and it is only by a rather embarrassed and roundabout
way [NOTE: The census effected by Quirinus, to which legend attributes the
journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later than the year in which,
according to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was born. The two evangelists in effect
make Jesus to be born under the reign of Herod (Matt. ii. 1, 19, 22; Luke i.
5). Now, the census of Quirinus did not take place until after the deposition
of Archelaus -- i.e., ten years after the death of Herod, the 37th year from
the era of Actium (Josephus Ant., XVII. XIII. 5, XVIII. i. I, ii. I). The
inscription by which it was formerly pretended to establish that Quirinus had
levied two censuses is recognized as false (see Orelli, Inscr. Lat., No. 623,
and the supplement of Henzen in this number; Borghesi, Fastes Consulaires [yet
unpublished] in the year 742). The census in any case would only be applied to
the parts of the Roman provinces, and not to the tetrarchies. The texts by
which it is sought to prove that some of the operations for statistics and
tribute commanded by Augustus ought to extend to the dominion of the Herods,
either do not mean what they have been made to say, or are from Christian
authors who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of Luke. That which
proves, besides, that the journey of the family of Jesus to Bethlehem is not
historical, is the motive attributed to it. Jesus was not of the family of
David (see Chap. XV.), and, if he had been, we should still not imagine that
his parents should have been forced, for an operation purely registrative and
financial, to come to enrol themselves in the place whence their ancestors had
proceeded a thousand years before. In imposing such an obligation, the Roman
authority would have sanctioned pretensions threatening her safety.] that, in
the legends respecting him, he is made to be born at Bethlehem. We shall see
later the motive for this supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence
of the Messianic character attributed to Jesus. The precise date of his birth
is unknown. It took place under the reign of Augustus, about the Roman year
750, probably some years before the year 1 of that era which all civilized
people date from the day on which he was born.
The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alteration from Joshua. It was
a very common name; but afterwards mysteries, and an allusion to his character
of Savior, were naturally sought for in it. Perhaps he, like all mystics,
exalted himself in this respect. It is thus that more than one great vocation
in history has been caused by a name given to a child without premeditation.
Ardent natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns
them. God has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme
will in the most insignificant circumstances.
The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the country
indicated. This province counted among its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus,
many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks). The
conversions to Judaism were not rare in these mixed countries. It is therefore
impossible to raise here any question of race, and to seek to ascertain what
blood flowed in the veins of him who has contributed most to efface the
distinctions of blood in humanity.
He proceeded from the ranks of the people. His father Joseph and his mother
Mary were people in humble circumstances, artisans living by their labor, in
the state so common in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty. The extreme
simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort,
renders the privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes everyone voluntarily
poor. On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that which
contribute to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house
of him who otherwise wants for nothing. Apart from something sordid and
repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with it, the town of Nazareth, in the
time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is today. We see the
streets where he played when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways
which separate the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled
those poor shops, lighted shop, by the door, serving at once for kitchen, and
bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two
clay pots, and a painted chest.
The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was rather
numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters, of whom he seems to have been the
eldest. All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages, who
were named as his brothers, and among whom one, at least, James, had acquired
great importance in the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german.
Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary, who married a certain Alpheus or
Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person), and was the
mother of several sons who played a considerable part among the first disciples
of Jesus. These cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own
brothers opposed him, took the title of "brothers of the Lord." The
real brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his
death. Even then they do not appear to have equalled in importance their
cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character seems
to have had more originality. Their names were so little known that when the
evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the
brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas
first presented themselves to him.
His sisters were married at Nazareth, and he spent the first years of his
youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening broadly at the
summit of the group of mountains which close the plain of Esdraelon on the
north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have
varied much. The cold there is sharp in winter, and the climate very healthy.
The town, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts
built without style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which
villages in Semitic countries now present. The houses, it seems, did not differ
much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which
still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines
and fig-trees, are still very agreeable. The environs, moreover, are charming;
and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness.
Even in our times Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place,
perhaps, in Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden
which oppresses it in this unequalled desolation. The people are amiable and
cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, at the end of the
sixth century, drew an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs,
which he compared to paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully justify
his description. The fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little
town were concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a
muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the evening -- that
beauty which was remarked even in the sixth century, and which was looked upon
as a gift of the Virgin Mary -- is still most strikingly preserved. It is the
Syrian type in all its languid grace. No doubt Mary was there almost every day,
and took her place with her jar on her shoulder in the file of her companions
who have remained unknown. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women,
generally disdainful to Christians, were here full of affability. Even now
religious animosity is weaker at Nazareth than elsewhere.
The horizon from the town is limited. But if we ascend a little the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest houses, the prospect is splendid. On the west are seen the fine outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt point, which seems to plunge into the sea. Before us are spread out the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a depression between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the valley of the Jordan and the