LONDON:
WATTS & Co.,
5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E-C-4
**** ****
To
THE PURE SOUL
of
MY SISTER HENRIETTE,
Who died at Byblus, on September 24th, 1861.
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 land of Adonis, near the holy
Byblus and the sacred stream where the women of the ancient mysteries came
to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, to me whom thou
lovedst, those truths which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make
it almost beloved.
Preface
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
Paris. Thence he passed to the Seminary of Issy, and afterwards to St.
Sulpice and St. Stavistas (the lay college of the Oratorians). It was
during his stay in the last of these establishments that Renan reluctantly
came to the conviction that he could never enter the Catholic priesthood.
According to his own account, the critical study of the Bible was the main
factor of his change. His bias was strongly pietistic, and he loved and
admired his clerical teachers. Bad priests never seem to have come his
way.
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 Italy. On his return to Paris he received a small
post in the Bibliotheque Nationals, which, together with the savings of
Henriette, who had now come to live with him, kept the two alive. In 1852
was published Renan's work on the most renowned Islamic philosopher of the
Middle Ages, Averroes. This brought him his doctor's degree and
established his reputation as a thinker. He married two years later, and
in 1859 he published new translations, with commentaries, of the Book of
Job and the Song of Songs.
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 France and his wife, the Empress Eugenie, supported the
Catholic reactionaries. The Emperor was bound to conciliate so powerful a
body of his subjects, without whose support he could not hope to retain
his precarious authority. But he did not lack admiration for Renan and
wished to do something for him. So he sent him on an archaeological
mission to Syria.
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 France in the following summer. Henriette remained behind and shared,
as far as she could, her brother's investigations of Phoenician
antiquities.
In July, 1861, Renan had finished his work, and the two
paid a visit to the Upper Lebanon. Renan was now engaged in making his
first draft of the 'Vie de Jesus,' his sister copying it out for him page
by pane.
The brother and sister went back to Beyrout, in order
to prepare for a journey to Cyprus, where the mission was to reach its
end. Time, however, was found for excavations at Gebeil (the ancient
Byblus), in the fabled land of Adonis. Here Renan and Henriette were
struck down with a severe attack of fever. Henriette's case proved fatal.
They buried her in the land of Adonis, as Renan tells us in his beautiful
dedication to her soul, which prefaces the book by which all the world
knows him. Renan returned to France. The mission bore fruit in the
important 'Corpus Inscriptiontem Semiticarum,' of which he was the editor.
A richly illustrated report of the mission's achievements was published in
1864. The previous year had seen the appearance of the 'Vie de Jesus.
Shortly before the issue of his most popular work Renan
had obtained the chair of Hebrew and Semitic languages in the University
of Paris, which had been left vacant through the death of Quatremere,
under whom he had studied. The Catholics were furious. Even among the
Liberals there was suspicion of the new professor, and it was feared that
Renan was sympathetic to the Imperial regime.
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,' 'Saint Paul, The Antichrist,' 'The Christian
Church, and Marcus Aurelius.' The last brought the story down to the last
quarter of the second century. It is perhaps the most remarkable of the
series. Few have depicted so vividly, and with such a wealth of erudition,
the social and intellectual life of Pagans and Christians in the days of
the last of the great Stoic Emperors as did Ernest Renan.
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 London the
Hibbert course of lectures for the year 1880. His subject was the
influence of Roman institutions on the development of Catholicism, The
liberal-minded Dean Stanley was among those who showed their cordiality to
the famous heretic.
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 Second Empire was ultimately restored to him under the Third
Republic. He had become one of the most celebrated men of letters in
France, and his sympathetic courtesy and geniality of temper had gained
for him the respect, if not the affection, of many to whom his religious
opinions were repugnant. When he died in the autumn of 1892, at the age of
nearly sixty-nine, he was still busy with his classes at the Collage de
France, whither he had returned after a very short holiday in his native
Brittany, which he loved so well.
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 Nazareth, who was at first one of
the disciples of the fiery revivalist, John the Baptizer, and took up his
slogan, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Later he broke away from the
group and formed his own body of disciples. "The Kingdom of Heaven" meant
nothing less than the restoration of the ancient theocracy in all its
glory, as Jewish piety imagined it to have once existed, involving the
overthrow of Roman rule and, in the opinion of many Jews, the
reestablishment of the dynasty of David in Jerusalem. To the future king
the name of Messiah (Heb. Moshiah = "Anointed") was given. Jesus did not
at first claim to be the Messiah. He preached an ethic of love and
justice, of pity and self-renunciation, of humility and purity of heart,
which should prepare his fellow-countrymen -- foreigners were outside the
scope of his propaganda -- for the wonderful era that was shortly coming.
Jesus enforced his teaching with simple parables, stories drawn from
natural happenings, observable by all, and from the everyday life of the
people -- the sower scattering his seed on different soils, the
mustard-seed that grew into a stately tree, the net breaking under the
weight of the fish it enclosed, the shepherd hunting for the lost sheep,
the merchant selling all his goods to buy the precious pearl. The Rabbis
often used parables in their expositions. Parables with similar themes to
those of the Gospels appear in the Talmud.
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 Judea, who reluctantly sentenced him to crucifixion
as a rebel against Roman rule. Jesus was buried by a wealthy Jewish
sympathizer in his own family tomb. The story of his resurrection a day or
two later was started by the hallucinations of a frenzied devotee, Mary of
Magdala. A woman's love and folly had given to the world a risen God!
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.
Introduction
In Which The Sources Of This Histor Are Principally Treated
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: --
- Etudes Critiques sur l'Evangile de saint Matthieu, par M. Albert
Reville, pasteur de l'eglise Wallonne de Rotterdam.
- Histoire de la Theologie Chretienne au Siecle Apostolique, par M.
Reuss, professeur a la Faculte de Theologie et au Seminaire Protestant
de Strasbourg.
- Des Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs pendant les Deux Siecles
Anterieurs a l'Ere Chretienne, par M. Michel Nicolas, professeur a la
Faculte de Theologie Protestante de Montauban.
- Vie de Jesus, par le Dr. Strauss; traduite par M. Littre, Membre de
l'Institut.
- Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie Chretienne, publiee sous la
direction de M. Colani, de 1850 a 1857. -- Nouvelle Revue de Theologie,
faisant suite a la precedente depuis 1858.
- While this work was in the press, a book has appeared which I do not
hesitate to add to this list, although I have not read it with the
attention it deserves -- Les Evangiles, par M. Gustave d'Eichthal.
Premiere Partie: Examen Critique et Comparatif des Trois Premiers
Evangiles. Paris, Hachette, 1863.
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.
Chapter 01
Place Of Jesus In The History Of The World
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 s
