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THE LAST WORD ABOUT JESUS.
BY JOHN
FISKE.
THE JESUS OF HISTORY*
StW Jill the great founders of religions, Jesus is at once the best
.1 1 known and the least known to the modern scholar. From
/ the dogmatic point of view he is the best known, from the
historic point of view he is the least known. The Jesus of
dogma is in every lineament familiar to us from early childhood ; but
concerning the Jesus of history we possess but few facts resting upon
trustworthy evidence ; and in order to form a picture of him at once
consistent, probable, and distinct in its outlines, it is necessary to enter
upon a long and difficult investigation, in the course of which some of
the most delicate apparatus of modern criticism will not fail to be re
quired. This circumstance is sufficiently singular to require especial
*
explanation. The case of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, which
may perhaps be cited as parallel, is in reality wholly different. Not
only did Sakyamuni live five centuries earlier than Jesus, among a
people that have at no time possessed the art of insuring authenticity
in their records of events, and at an era which is at best but dimly dis
cerned through the mists of fable and legend, but the work which be
achieved lies wholly out of the course of European history, and it is
only in recent times that his career has presented itself to us as a
problem needing to be solved. Jesus, on the other hand, appeared in
an age which is familiarly and in many respects minutely known to us,
and among a people whose fortunes we can trace with historic certainty
for at least seven1 centuries previous to his birth ; while his life and
achievements have probably had a larger share in directing the entire
subsequent intellectual and moral development of Europe than those
of any other man who has ever lived. Nevertheless, the details of his
personal career are shrouded in an obscurity almost as dense as that
which envelops the life of the remote founder of Buddhism.
* The Jesus of History (Anonymous). 8vo, pp. 426. London : Williams &
Norgate, 1869. New York : Scribner, Welford & Co.
Vie De Jesus, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1867. (Thirteenth edition, revised and
partly rewritten.)
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THE
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OF
HISTORY.
This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and paradoxical
when we come to examine it more closely. A little reflection will dis
close to us several good reasons why the historical records of the life of
Jesus should be so scanty as they are. In the first place, the activity
of Jesus was private rather than public. Confined within exceedingly
narrow limits, both of space and of duration, it made no impression
whatever upon the politics or the literature of the time. His name
does not occur in the pages of any contemporary writer, Roman. Greek,
or Jewish. Doubtless the case would have been wholly different, had
he, like Mohammed, lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his
peculiar position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought him into
relations with the empire; though whether, in such case, the success
of his grand undertaking would have been as complete as it has
actually been, may well be doubted.
Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul, leave behind
him authentic writings which might serve to throw light upon his
mental development as well as upon the external facts of his career.
Without the Koran and the four genuine Epistles of Paul, we should
be nearly as much in the dark concerning these great men as we now
are concerning the historical Jesus. We should be compelled to rely,
in the one case, upon the untrustworthy gossip of Mussulman chron
iclers, and in the other case upon the garbled statements.of the “ Acts
of the Apostles,” a book written with a distinct dogmatic pui
p
*ose,
sixty or seventy years after the occurrence of the events which it pro
fesses to record.
It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay tradi
tion through the generation immediately succeeding his death, have
come down to us, probably with little alteration, in the pages of the
three earlier evangelists. These are priceless data, since, as we shall
see, they are almost the only materials at our command for forming
even a partial conception of the character of Jesus’ work. .Neverthe
less, even here the cautious inquirer has only too often to pause in face
of the difficulty of distinguishing the authentic utterances ’of the great
teacher from the later interpolations suggested by the dogmatic neces
sities of the narrators. Bitterly must the historian regret that Jesus
had no philosophic disciple, like Xenophon, to record his Memorabilia.
Of the various writings included in the New Testament, the Apocalypse
alone (and possibly the Epistle of Jude), is from the pen of a personal
acquaintance of Jesus; and besides this, the four epistles of Paul, to
the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, make up the sum of the
writings from which we may demand contemporary testimony. Yet
from these we obtain absolutely nothing of that for which we are
seeking. The brief writings of Paul are occupied exclusively with the
internal significance of Jesus’ work. The epistle of Jude—if it be
really written by Jesus’ brother of that name, which is doubtful—is
solely a polemic directed against the innovations of Paul. And the
�THE
JESUS
OF
HISTORY.
11
Apocalypse, the work of the fiery and imaginative disciple John, is con
fined to a prophetic description of the Messiah’s anticipated return, and
tells us nothing concerning the deeds of that Messiah while on the earth.
Here we touch upon our third consideration,—the consideration
which best enables us to see why the historic notices of Jesus are so
meagre. Rightly considered, the statement with which we opened this
article is its own explanation. The Jesus of history is so little known,
just because the Jesus of dogma is so well known. Other teachers—
Paul, Mohammed, Sakyamuni—have come merely as preachers of
righteousness, speaking in the name of general principles with which
their own personalities were not directly implicated. But Jesus, as we
shall see, before, the close of his life, proclaimed himself to be some
thing more than a preacher of righteousness. He announced himself—
and justly, from his own point of view—as the long-expected Messiah
sent by Jehovah to liberate the Jewish race. Thus the success of his
religious teachings became at once implicated with the question of his
personal nature and character. After the sudden and violent termina
tion of his career, it immediately became all-important with his fol
lowers to prove that he was really the Messiah, and to insist upon the
certainty of his speedy return to the earth. Thus the first generation
of disciples dogmatized about him, instead of narrating his life—a task
which to them would have seemed of little profit. For them the allabsorbing object of contemplation was the immediate future rather than
the immediate past. As all the earlier Christian literature informs us,
for nearly a century after the death of Jesus, his followers lived in daily
anticipation of his triumphant return to the earth. The end of all
things being so near-at hand, no attempt was made to ensure accurate
and complete memoirs for the use of a posterity which was destined, in
Christian imagination, never to arrive. The first Christians wrote but
little ; even Papias, at the end of a century, preferring second-hand or
third-hand oral tradition to the written gospels which were then be
ginning to come into circulation. Memoirs of the life and teachings
of Jesus were called forth by the necessity of having a written stan
dard of doctrine to which to appeal amid the growing differences of
opinion which disturbed the Church. Thus the earlier gospels exhibit,
though in different degrees, the indications of a modifying, sometimes
of an overruling dogmatic purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious
violation of historic truth, but from the varied mass of material sup
plied by tradition, such incidents are selected as are fit to support the
views of the writers concerning the personality of Jesus. Accordingly,
while the early gospels throw a strong light upon the state of Christian
opinion at the dates when they were successively composed, the infor
mation which they give concerning Jesus himself is, for that very
reason, often vague, uncritical, and contradictory. Still more is this
true of the fourth gospel, written late in the second century, in which
historic tradition is moulded in the interests of dogma until it becomes
�12
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
no longer recognizable, and in the place of the human Messiah of the
earlier accounts, we have a semi-divine Logos or zEon, detached from
God and incarnate for a brief season in the likeness of man.
Not only was history subordinated to dogma by the writers of the
gospel-narratives, but in the minds of the Fathers of the Church who
assisted in determining what writings should be considered canonical,
dogmatic prepossession went very much further than critical acumen.
Nor is this strange when we reflect that critical discrimination in
questions of literary authenticity is one of the latest acquisitions of the
cultivated human mind. In the early ages of the Church, the evidence
of the genuineness of any literary production was never weighed critic
ally ; writings containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of Chris
tians, were quoted as authoritative, while writings which supplied no
dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal.
A striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of the Apoca
lypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated work in the New
Testament collection, its millenarian doctrines caused it to become
unpopular as the Church gradually ceased to look for the speedy return
of the Messiah, and, accordingly, as the canon assumed a definite
shape, it was placed among the “ Antilegomena,” or doubtful books,
and continued to hold a precarious position until after the time of the
Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, the fourth gospel, which
was quite unknown and probably did not exist at the time of the
Quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 168), was accepted with little hesi
tation, and at the beginning of the third century is mentioned by
Irenapus, Clement, and Tertullian, as the work of the Apostle John.
To this uncritical spirit, leading to the neglect of such books as failed
to answer the dogmatic requirements of the Church, may probably be
attributed the loss of so many of the earlier gospels. It is doubtless
for this reason that we do not possess the Aramaean original of the
“Logia” of Matthew, or the “Memorabilia” of Mark, the companion
of Peter,—two works to which Papias (A. D. 120) alludes as containing
authentic reports of the utterances of Jesus.
These considerations will, we believe, sufficiently explain the curious
circumstance that, while we know the Jesus of dogma so intimately,
we know the Jesus of history so slightly. The literature of early
Christianity enables us to trace with tolerable completeness the
progress of opinion concerning the nature of Jesus, from the time of
Paul’s early missions to the time of the Nicene Council; but upon the
actual words and deeds of Jesus it throws a very unsteady light. The
dogmatic purpose everywhere obscures the historic basis.
This same dogmatic prepossession which has rendered the data for
a biography of Jesus so scanty and untrustworthy, has also until com
paratively recent times prevented any unbiased critical examination of
such data as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century
any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical
�TSE JESUS
OE BISTORT.
13
methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but stig
matized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those
writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition
were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in scientific
methods of criticism, that they utterly failed to comprehend the re
quirements of the problem. Their aims were in the main polemic, not
historical. They thought more of overthrowing current dogmas than
of impartially examining the earliest Christian literature with a view of
eliciting its historic contents; and, accordingly, they accomplished but
little. Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed. Spinoza,
in the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men
far in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical
criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition
and incomparable sagacity, belongs the honor of initiating that method
of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tübingen School, has
led to such striking and valuable conclusions concerning the age and
character of all the New Testament Literature. But it was long
before any one could be found fit to bend the bow which Lessing and
Spinoza had wielded. A succession of able scholars—Semler, Eich
horn, Paulus, Schleiermacher, Bretschneider, and De Wette,—were re
quired to examine, with German patience and accuracy, the details of
the subject, and to propound various untenable hypotheses, before such
a work could be performed as that of Strauss. The “ Life of Jesus,”
published by Strauss when only twenty-six years of age, is one of the
monumental works of the nineteenth century, worthy to rank, as a
historical effort, along with Niebuhr’s “ History of Rome,” Wolf’s
“ Prolegomena,” or Bentley’s “ Dissertations on Phalaris.” It instantly
superseded and rendered antiquated everything which had preceded it;
nor has any work on early Christianity been written in Germany for
the past thirty years which has not been dominated by the recollection
of that marvelous book. Nevertheless, the labors of another genera
tion of scholars have carried our knowledge of the New Testament
literature far beyond the point which it had reached when Strauss first
wrote. At that time the dates of but few of the New Testament
writings had been fixed with any approach to certainty; the age and
character of the fourth gospel, the genuineness of the Pauline epistles,
even the mutual relations of the three Synoptics, were still undeter
mined ; and, as a natural result of this uncertainty, the progress of
dogma during the first century was ill understood. At the present day
it is impossible to read the early work of Strauss without being im
pressed with the necessity of obtaining positive data as to the origin
and dogmatic character of the New Testament writings, before at
tempting to reach any conclusions as to the probable career of Jesus.
These positive data we owe to the genius and diligence of the Tübingen
School, and, above all, to its founder, Ferdinand Christian Baur. Be
ginning with the epistles of Paul, of which he distinguished four as
�14
THE JESUS
OE HISTORY.
genuine, Baur gradually worked his way through the entire New
Testament collection, detecting—with that inspired insight which only
unflinching diligence can impart to original genius—the age at which
each book was written, and the circumstances which called it forth.
To give any account of Baur’s detailed conclusions, or of the method
by which he reached them, would require a volume. They are very
scantily presented in Mr. Mackay’s work on the “ Tübingen School and
its Antecedents,” to which we may refer the reader desirous of further
information. We can here merely say that twenty years of energetic
controversy have only served to establish nearly all Baur’s leading
conclusions more firmly than ever. The priority of the so-called
gospel of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of “ Luke,” the second in date
of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand character of “ Mark,”
and the unapostolic origin of the fourth gospel, are points which may
for the future be regarded as completely established by circumstantial
evidence. So with respect to the pseudo-Pauline epistles, Baur’s work
was done so thoroughly that the only question still left open for much
discussion is that concerning the date and authorship of the first
and second “ Thessalonians,”—a point of quite inferior importance, so
far as our present subject is concerned. Seldom have such vast results
been achieved by the labor of a single scholar. Seldom has any
historical critic possessed such a combination of analytic and of co
ordinating powers as Baur. His keen criticism and his wonderful
flashes of insight, exercise upon the reader a truly poetic effect like
that which is felt in contemplating the marvels of physical discovery.
The comprehensive labors of Baur were followed up by Zeller’s able
work on the “ Acts of the Apostles,” in which that book was shown
to have been partly founded upon documents written by Luke, or
some other companion of Paul, and expanded and modified by a
much later writer with the purpose of covering up the traces of the
early schism between the Pauline and the Petrine sections of the
Church. Along with this, Schwegler’s work on the “ Post-Apostolic
Times ” deserves mention as clearing up many obscure points relating
to the early development of dogma. Finally,- the “New Life of Jesus,”
by Strauss, adopting and utilizing the principal discoveries of Baur
and his followers, and combining all into one grand historical pic
ture, worthily completes the task which the earlier work of the same
author had inaugurated.
The reader will have noticed that, with the exception of Spinoza,
every one of the names- above cited in connection with the literary
analysis and criticism of the New Testament is the name of a German.
Until xvithin the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost an
absolute monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism ; other countries
having remained not only unfamiliar with its methods, but even grossly
ignorant of its conspicuous results, save when some German treatise of
more than ordinary popularity has now and then been translated.
�THE
JESTS
<iE HISTORY.
15
But during the past ten years France has entered the lists ; and the
writings of Reville, Reuss, Nicolas, D’Eichthal, Scherer, and Colarie
testify to the rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon
her soil.
None of these books, however, have achieved such wide-spread
celebrity, or done so much toward interesting the general public in this
class of historical inquiries, as the “ Life of Jesus,” by Renan. This
pre-eminence of fame is partly, but not wholly, deserved. From a
•purely literary point of view, Renan’s work doubtless merits all the
celebrity it has gained. Its author writes a style such as is perhaps
equaled by that of no other living Frenchman. It is by far the most
readable book which has ever been written concerning the life of Jesus.
And no doubt some of its popularity is due to its very faults, which,
from a critical point of view, are neither few nor small. • For Renan is
certainly very faulty, as a historical critic, when he practically ignores
the extreme meagreness of our positive knowledge of the career of
Jesus, and describes scene after scene in his life as minutely and with
as much confidence as if he had himself been present to witness it all.
Again and again the critical reader feels prompted to ask, How do you
know all this ? or why, out of two or three conflicting accounts, do you
quietly adopt some particular one, as if its superior authority were
self-evident ? But in the eye of the uncritical reader, these defects are
excellences ; for it is unpleasant to be kept in ignorance when we are
seeking after definite knowledge, and it is disheartening to read page
after page of an elaborate discussion which ends in convincing us that
.definite knowledge cannot be gained.
In the thirteenth edition of the “Vie de Jesus,” Renan has cor
rected some of the most striking errors of the original work, and in
particular has, with praiseworthy candor, abandoned, his untenable
position with regard to the age and character of the fourth gospel. As
is well known, Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to this gospel a
historical value superior to that of the synoptics, believing it to have
been written by an eye-witness of the events which it relates; and
from this source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his mate
rials. Now, if there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testa
ment literature which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established
by the labors of a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the
fourth gospel was utterly unknown until about A. D. 170, that it was
written by some one who possessed very little direct knowledge of
Palestine, that its purpose was rather to expound a dogma than to give
an accurate record of events, and that as a guide to the comprehension
of the career of Jesus it is of far less value than the three synoptic
gospels. It is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to epito
mize the evidence upon which this conclusion rests, which may more
profitably be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayleris work on “ The Fourth
Gospel,” or in Davidson s “ Introduction to the New Testament.” It
�16
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
must suffice to mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that
Justin, Marcion, and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since
it furnishes so much that is germane to their views, they would gladly
have appealed to it, had it been in existence, when those view's were as
yet questionable ; and that, finally, in the great quartodeciman contro
versy, A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority
of John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view after
wards taken by this evangelist. Still more, the assumption of Renan
led at once into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apoca
lypse. The fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably announce itself
as the work of John, at least professes to be Johannine; and it cannot
for a moment be supposed that such a book, making such claims, could
have gained currency during John’s lifetime without calling forth his
indignant protest. For, in reality, no book in the New Testament col
lection would so completely have shocked the prejudices of the Johan
nine party. John’s own views are well known to us from the Apoca
lypse. John was the most enthusiastic of millenarians and the most
narrow and rigid of Judaizers. In his antagonism to the Pauline
innovations he went farther than Peter himself. Intense hatred of
Paul and his followers appears in several passages of the Apocalypse,
where they are stigmatized as “ Nicolai tans,” “ deceivers of the people,”
“ those who say they are apostles and and are not,” “ eaters of meat
offered to idols,” “ fornicators,” “pretended Jews,” “ liars,” “ synagogue
of Satan,” etc. (Chap. II.) On the other hand, the fourth gospel con
tains nothing millenarian or Judaical; it carries Pauline universalism
to a far greater extent than Paul himself ventured to carry it, even
condemning the Jews as children of darkness, and by implication con
trasting them unfavorably with the Gentiles ; and it contains a theory
of the nature of Jesus which the Ebionitish Christians, to whom John
belonged, rejected to the last.
In his present edition Renan admits the insuperable force of these
objections, and abandons his theory of the apostolic origin of the fourth
gospel. And as this has necessitated the omission or alteration of all
such passages as rested upon the authority of that gospel, the book is
to a considerable extent rewritten, and the changes are such as greatly
to increase its value as a history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the author
has so long been in the habit of shaping his conceptions of the career
of Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it has become very diffi
cult for him to pass freely to another point of view. He still clings to
the hypothesis that there is an element of historic tradition contained
in the book, drawn from memorial writings which had perhaps been
handed down from John, and which were inaccessible to the synoptists.
In a very interesting appendix, he collects the evidence in favor of this
hypothesis, which indeed is not without plausibility, since there is
*
every reason for supposing that the gospel was written at Ephesus,
which a century before had been John’s place of residence. But even
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
17
granting most of Renan’s assumptions, it must still follow that the
authority of this gospel is far inferior to that of the synoptics, and can
in no case be very confidently appealed to.“ The question is one of the
first importance to the historian of early Christianity. In inquiring
into the life of Jesus, the very first thing to do is to establish firmly in
the mind the true relations of the fourth gospel to the first three.
Until this has been done, no one is competent to write on the subject ;
and it is because he has done this so imperfectly that Renan’s work is,
from a critical point of view, so imperfectly successful.
The anonymous work entitled “ The Jesus of History,” which we
have placed at the head of this article, is in every respect noteworthy
as the first systematic attempt made in England to follow in the foot
steps of German criticism in writing a life of Jesus. We know of no
good reason why the book should be published anonymously ; for as a
historical essay it possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit
not only to its author, but to English scholarship and acumen. It is
not, indeed, a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the read
ing public. Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style,
it possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan ;
and it will probably never find half-a-dozen readers where the “ Vie de
Jésus ” has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort
is not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation
to the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but
rather by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon
the elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject
of which it treats. Measured by this standard, the “ Jesus of History”
must rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon
the career of Jesus than any work which has ever before been written
in English would be very inadequate praise, since the English language
has been singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature.We shall convey a more just idea of its merits if we say that it will
bear comparison with anything which even Germany has produced,
save only the works of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.
The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken is
shown at the outset by his choice of materials. In basing his con
clusions almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the first
gospel, he is upheld by every sound principle of criticism. The times
and places at which our three synoptic gospels were written have been,
through the labors of the Tiibingen critics, determined almost to a
certainty. Of the three, “ Mark ” is unquestionably the latest ; with
the exception of about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from
“ Matthew ” and “ Luke,” the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies
of which it strives to neutralize in conformity to the conciliatory dis
position of the Church at Rome, at the epoch at which this gospel
was written, about A. D. 130. Thé third gospel was âlsp written at
Rome, some fifteen years earlier. In the preface, its author describes
�18
THE
JEEUE
OE HIE To RY.
it as a compilation from previously existing written materials. Among
these materials was certainly the first gospel, several passages of which
are adopted word for word by the author of “ Luke.” Yet the narra
tive varies materially from that of the first gospel in many essential
points. The arrangement of events is less natural, and, as in the
“ Acts of the Apostles ” by the same author, there is apparent through
out the design of suppressing the old discord between Paul and the
Judaizing disciples, and of representing Christianity as essentially
Pauline from the outset. How far Paul was correct in his interpreta
tion of the teachings of Jesus, it is difficult to decide. It is, no doubt,
possible that the first gospel may have lent to the words of Jesus an
Ebionite coloring in some instances,' and that now and then the third
gospel may present us with a truer account. To this supremely im
portant point we shall by and by return. For the present it must
suffice to observe that the evidences of an overruling dogmatic pur
pose are generally much more conspicuous in the third synoptist than
in the first; and that the very loose manner in which this writer has
handled his materials in the “Acts” is not calculated to inspire us
with confidence in the historical accuracy of his gospel. The writer
who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself, could represent
the apostle to the Gentiles as acting under the direction of the dis
ciples at Jerusalem, and who puts Pauline sentiments into the mouth
of Peter, would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably giving
a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself. We are therefore,
as a last resort, brought back to the first gospel, which we find to
possess, as a historical narrative, far stronger claims upon our attention
than the second and third. In all probability it had assumed nearly
its present shape before A. I). 100; its origin is unmistakably Pales
tinian ; it betrays comparatively few indications of dogmatic purpose;
and there are strong reasons for believing that the speeches of Jesus
recorded in it are in substance taken from the genuine “ Logia ” of
Matthew mentioned by Papias, which must have been written as early
as A. D. 60-70, before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, we are
inclined to agree with our author that the gospel, even in its present
shape (save only a few interpolated passages), may have existed as
early as A. D. 80, since it places the time of Jesus’ second coming
immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem; whereas the third
evangelist, who wrote forty-five years after that event, is careful to tell
us, “ The end is not immediately.” Moreover, it must have been
written while the Paulo-Petrine controversy was still raging, as is
shown by the parable of the “ enemy who sowed the tares,” which
manifestly refers to Paul, and also by the allusions to “ false prophets,”
(vii. 15,) to those who say, “ Lord, Lord,” and who “ cast out demons
in the name of the Lord,” (vii. 21-23,) teaching men to break the
commandinents, (v. 17-20.) There is, therefore, good reason for be
lieving that we have here a narrative written not much more than fifty
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
19
years after the death of Jesus, based partly upon the written memorials
of an apostle, and in the main trustworthy, save where it relates oc
currences of a marvelous and legendary character. Such is our
author’s conclusion, and in describing the career of the Jesus of his
tory, he relies almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the
first gospel. Let us now, after this long but inadequate introduction,
give a brief sketch of the life of Jesus, as it is to be found in our
author.
II.
Concerning the time and place of the birth of Jesus, we know next
to nothing. According to uniform tradition, based upon a statement
of the third gospel, he was about thirty years of age at the time when
he began teaching. The same gospel states, with elaborate precision,
that the public career of John the Baptist began in the fifteenth year
of Tiberius, or A. D. 28. In the winter of A. D. 35-36, Pontius Pilate
was recalled from Judaea, so that the crucifixion could not have taken
place later than in the spring of 35. Thus we have a period of about
six years during which the ministry of Jesus must have begun and
ended; and if the tradition with respect to his age be trustworthy, we
shall not be far out of the way in supposing him to have been born
somewhere between B. C. 5 and A. D. 5. He is everywhere alluded to
in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, where lived also his
father, mother, brothers and sisters, and where very likely he was born.
His parents’ names are said to have been Joseph and Mary. His own
name is a Hellenized form of Joshua, a name very common among the
Jews. According to the first gospel (xiii. 55), he had four brothers,—
Joseph and Simon; James, who was afterward^
one
**
of the heads of
the church at Jerusalem, and the most formidable enemy of Paul; and
Judas or Jude, who is perhaps the author of the anti-Pauline epistle
commonly ascribed to him.
Of the early youth of Jesus, and of the circumstances which guided
his intellectual development, we know absolutely nothing, nor have we
the data requisite for forming any plausible hypothesis. He first
appears in history about A. D. 29 or 30, in connection with a very
remarkable person whom the third evangelist describes as his cousin,
and who seems, from his mode of life, to have been in some way con
nected with or influenced by the Hellenizing sect of Essenes. Here
we obtain our first clue to guide us in forming a consecutive theory of
the development of Jesus’ opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise
in the times of the Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the funda
mental doctrines of Judaism it had engrafted many Pythagorean
notions, and was doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in
spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, whei^ Judaism
was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem. The Essenes
�20
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
•attached but little importance to the Messianic expectations of the
Pharisees, and mingled scarcely at all in national politics. They lived
for the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the legitimate pre
decessors of the early Christian hermits and monks. But while pre
eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule upon the entire
sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as hypocrites,
and insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old. Jewish
exclusiveness.
It was once a favorite theory that both John the Baptist and Jesus
were members of the Essenian brotherhood; but that theory is now
generally abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with John,
who is said to have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there seems to
have been but little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uni
formly represented as cheerful and social in demeanor, and against
whom it was expressly urged that he came eating and drinking, making
no pretence of puritanical holiness. He was neither a puritan, like the
Essence, nor a ritualist, like the Pharisees. Besides-which, both John
and Jesus seem to have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene
doctrine of the speedy advent of the “ kingdom of heaven,” by which is
meant the reign of the Messiah upon the earth. Nevertheless, though
we cannot regard Jesus as actually a member of the Essenian commu
nity or sect, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that he, as well as
John the Baptist, had been at some time strongly influenced by Es
senian doctrines. The spiritualized conception of the “kingdom of
heaven” proclaimed by him was just what would naturally and logi
cally arise from a remodeling of the Messianic theories of the Phar
isees in conformity to advanced Essenian notions. It seems highly
probable that some such refined conception of the functions of the
Messiah was reached by John, who, stigmatizing the Pharisees and
Sadducees as a “generation of vipers,” called aloud to the people to re
pent of their sins, in view of the speedy advent of the Messiah, and to
testify to their repentance by submitting to the Essenian rite of bap
tism. There is no positive evidence that Jesus was ever a disciple of
John; yet the account of the baptism, in spite of the legendary char
acter of its details, seems to rest upon a historical basis; and perhaps
the most plausible hypothesis which can be framed is, that Jesus re
ceived baptism at John’s hands, became for awhile his disciple, and
acquired from him a knowledge of Essenian doctrines.
The career of John seems to have been very brief. His stern puritanism brought him soon into disgrace with the government of Galilee.
He was seized by Herod, thrown into prison, and beheaded. After the
brief hints given as to the intercourse between Jesus and John, we next
hear of Jesus alone in the desert, where, like Sakyamuni and Moham
med, he may have brooded in solitude over his great project. Yet we
do not find that he had as yet formed any distinct conception of his
own Messiahship. The total neglect of chronology by our authorities
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
21
renders it impossible to trace the development of his thoughts step by
step; but for some time after John’s catastrophe we find him calling
upon the people to repent, in view of the speedy approach of the Mes
siah, speaking with great and commanding personal authority, but
using no language which would indicate that he was striving to do
more than worthily fill the place and add to the good work of his late
master. The Sermon on the Mount, which the first gospel inserts in
this place, was probably never spoken as a continuous discourse; but it
no doubt for the most part contains the very words of Jesus, and repre
sents the general spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion of
his career. In this is contained nearly all that has made Christianity
so powerful in the domain of ethics. If all the rest of the gospel were
taken away, or destroyed in the night of some future barbarian inva
sion, we should still here possess the secret of the wonderful impression
which Jesus made upon those who heard him speak. Added to the
Essenian scorn of Pharisaic formalism, and the spiritualized conception
of the Messianic kingdom, which Jesus may probably have shared with
John the Baptist, we have here for the first time the distinctively
Christian conception of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
men, which ultimately insured the success of the new religion. The
special point of originality in Jesus was his conception of Deity. As
Strauss well says, “ he conceived of God, in a moral point of view, as
being identical in character with himself in the most exalted moments
of his religious life, and strengthened in turn his own religious life by
this ideal. But the most exalted religious tendency in his own con
sciousness was exactly that comprehensive love, overpowering the evil
only by the good, and which he therefore transferred to God as the
fundamental tendency of His nature.” From this conception of God,
observes Zeller, flowed naturally all the moral teaching of Jesus; the
insistance upon spiritual righteousness instead of the mere mechanical
observance of Mosaic precepts; the call to be perfect even as the Father
is perfect; the principle of the spiritual equality of men before God and
the equal duties of all men toward each other.
How far, in addition to these vitally important lessons, Jesus may
have taught doctrines of an ephemeral or visionary character, it is very
difficult to decide. We are inclined to regard the third gospel as of
some importance in settling this point. The author of that gospel rep
resents Jesus as decidedly hostile to the rich. Where Matthew has
“ Blessed are the. poor in spirit,” Luke has “ Blessed are ye poor.” In
the first gospel we read, “ Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they will be filled; ” but in the third gospel we find,
“ Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye will be filled; ” and this assur
ance is immediately followed by the denunciation, “ Woe to you that
are rich, for ye have received your consolation! Woe to you that are
full now, for ye will hunger.” The parable of Dives and Lazarus illus
trates concretely this view of the case, which is still further corroborated
�22
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
by the account, given in both the first and the third gospels, of the
young man who came to seek everlasting life. Jesus here maintains
that righteousness is insufficient unless voluntary poverty be super
added. Though the young man has strictly fulfilled the greatest of the
commandments—»to love his neighbor as himself—he is required, as a
needful proof of his sincerity, to distribute all his vast possessions
among the poor. And when he naturally manifests a reluctance to
perform so superfluous a sacrifice, Jesus observes that it will be easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
share in the glories of the anticipated Messianic kingdom. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that we have here a very primitive and
probably authentic, tradition; and when we remember the importance
which, according to the “ Acts,” the earliest disciples attached to the
principle of communism, as illustrated in the legend of Ananias and
Sapphira,.we must admit strong reasons for believing that Jesus him
self held views which tended toward the abolition of private property.
On this point, the testimony of the third evangelist singly is of consid
erable weight; since at the time when he wrote, the communistic the
ories of the first generation of Christians had been generally abandoned,
and in the absence of any dogmatic motives, he could only have inserted
these particular traditions because he believed them to possess histori
cal value. But we- are not dependent on the third gospel alone. The
story just cited is attested by both our authorities, and is in perfect
keeping with the general views of Jesus as reported by the first evan
gelist. Thus his disciples are enjoined to leave all, and follow him; to
take no thought for the morrow; to think no more of laying up treas
ures on the earth, for in the Messianic kingdom they shall have treas
ures in abundance, which can neither be wasted nor stolen. On
making their journeys, they are to provide neither money, nor clothes,
nor food, but are to live at the expense of those whom they visit; and
if any town refuse to harbor them, the Messiah, on his arrival, will deal
with that town more severely than Jehovah dealt with the cities of the
plain. Indeed, since the end of the world was to come before the end
of the generation then living (Matt. xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 51-56; vii, 29),
there could be no need for acquiring property or making arrangements
for the future; even marriage became unnecessary. These teachings
of Jesus have a marked Essenian character, as well as his declaration
that in the Messianic kingdom there was to be no more marriage, per
haps no distinction of sex (Matt. xxii. 30). The sect of Ebionites, who
represented the earliest doctrine and practice of Christianity before it
had been modified by Paul, differed from the Essenes in no essential
respect save in the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, and the
expectation of his speedy return to the earth.
How long, or with what success, Jesus continued to preach the
coming of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible to conjecture. His
fellow-townsmen of Nazareth appear to have ridiculed him in his pro
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
23
phetical capacity; or, if we may trust the third evangelist, to have
arisen against him with indignation, and made an attempt upon his
life. To them he was but a carpenter, the son of a carpenter (Matt,
xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3), who told them disagreeable truths. Our author
represents his teaching in Galilee to have produced but little result,
but the gospel narratives afford no definite data for deciding this point.
We believe the most probable conclusion to be that Jesus did attract
many followers, and became famous throughout Galilee ; for Herod is
said to have regarded him as John the Baptist risen from the grave.
To escape the malice of Herod, Jesus then retired to Syro-Phoenicia,
and during this eventful journey, the consciousness of his own Messiahship seems for the first time to have distinctly dawned upon him
(Matt. xiv. 1, 13 ; xv. 21; xvi. 13-20). Already, it appears, specula
tions were rife as to the character of this wonderful preacher. Some
thought he was John the Baptist, or perhaps one of the prophets of the
Assyrian period returned to the earth. Some, in accordance with a
generally-received tradition, supposed him to be Elijah, who had never
seen death, and had now at last returned from the regions above the
firmament to announce the coming of the Messiah in the clouds. It
was generally admitted, among enthusiastic hearers, that he who spake
as never man spake before must have some divine commission to exe
cute. These speculations, coming to the ears of Jesus during his
preaching in Galilee, could not fail to excite in him a train of self-con
scious reflections. To him also must have been presented the query as
to his own proper character and functions ; and, as our author acutely
demonstrates, his only choice lay between a profitless life of exile in
Syro-Phoenicia, and a bold return to Jewish territory in some pro
nounced character. The problem being thus propounded, there could
hardly be a doubt as to what that character should be. Jesus knew
well that he was not John the Baptist; nor, however completely he
may have been dominated by his sublime enthusiasm, was it likely that
he could mistake himself for an ancient prophet arisen from the lower
world of shades, or for Elijah descended from the sky. But the Mes
siah himself he might well be. Such indeed was the almost inevitable
corollary from his own conception of Messiahship. We have seen that
he had, probably from the very outset, discarded the traditional notion
Qf a political Messiah, and recognized the truth that the happiness of a
people lies not so much in political autonomy as in the love of God and
the sincere practice of righteousness. The people were to be freed
from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of consecrated
hypocrisy,—a bondage more degrading than the payment of tribute to
the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to deliver
his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah, in
his own good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding these
views, it was hardly possible that it should not sooner or later occur to
Jesus that he himself was the person destined to discharge this glorious
�34
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
function, to liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of Pharisaic
ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom of spiritual
righteousness. Had he not already preached the advent of this spiritual
kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier conceptions
of duty, and to a higher and purer life ? And might he not now, by a
grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold, destroy its
prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to adopt a nobler
religious and ethical doctrine ? The temerity of such a purpose
detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should be
accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work
of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thor
oughly consistent and rational in announcing himself as the expected
Deliverer; and in the eyes of the impartial historian his course is fully
justified.
From that time,” says the first evangelist, “ Jesus began to show
to his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things
from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and
rise again on the third day.” Here we have, obviously, the knowledge
of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus.
It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such
definiteness his approaching death ; nor is it very likely that he enter
tained any hope of being raised from the grave “ on the third day.”
To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the
lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well
be that Jesus’ sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently great
to inspire him with the confidence that, even in case of temporary fail
ure, Jehovah would rescue him from the grave and send him back with
larger powers to carry out the purpose of his mission. But the diffi
culty of distinguishing between his own words and the interpretation
put upon them by his disciples becomes here insuperable; and there
will always be room for the hypothesis that Jesus had in view no
posthumous career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken confi
dence in the success of his enterprise, even after and in spite of his
death.
At all events, the possibility of his death must now have been often
in his mind. He was undertaking a well-nigh desperate task,—to
overthrow the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was
left him.' And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at
fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a “fool
hardy ” attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any busi
ness to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will
do so. But such “ glittering generalizations ” will here help us but
little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the
risk of death, was absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus’ Mes
sianic project. Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag
out an inglorious and baffled existence in Syro-Phoenicia. If the
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
25
Messianic kingdom was to be fairly inaugurated, there was work to be
done in Jerusalem, and Jesus must go there as one in authority,, cost
what it might- We believe him to have gone there in a spirit of grand
and careless braverv. vet seriously and soberly and under the influence
of no fanatical delusion. He knew the risks, but deliberately chose to
incur them, that the will of Jehovah might be accomplished.
We next hear of Jesus traveling down to Jerusalem by way of
Jericho,, and entering the sacred city in his character of Messiah, at
tended by a great multitude. It was near the time of the Passover,
when people from all parts of Galilee and Judaea were sure to be at
x
Jerusalem, and the nature of his reception seems to indicate that he
had already secured a considerable number of followers upon whose
assistance hc^might hope to rely, though it nowhere appears that he
intended to use other than purely moral weapons to insure a favorable
reception. We must remember that for half a century many of the
Jewish people had been constantly looking for the arrival of the Mes
siah, and there can be little doubt that the entry of Jesus riding upon
an ass in literal fulfilment of prophecy must have wrought powerfully
upon the imagination of the multitude. That the believers in him
were verv numerous must be inferred from the cautious, not to say
timid, behavior of the rulers at Jerusalem, who are represented as
Hearing to arrest him, but as deterred from taking active steps
through fear of the people. We are led to the same conclusion by his
driving the monev-changers out of the temple; an act upon which he
could hardly have ventured, had not the popular enthusiasm in his
favor been for the moment overwhelming. But the enthusiasm of a
mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the excitement of brilliant
and dramatically arranged events. The calm preacher of righteousness,
or even the fierv denouncer of the scribes and Pharisees, could not
_ hope to retain nndiminished authority save by the display of extraor
dinary powers to which, so far as we know, Jesus (like Mohammed)
made no pretence. (Matt. xvi. 1—L) The ignorant and materialistic
populace could not understand the exalted conception of Messiahship
which had been formed by Jesus, and as day after day elapsed without
the appearance of any marvelous sign from Jehovah, their enthusiasm
must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear cau
tiously endeavoring to entrap him into admissions which might render
him obnoxious to the Boman governor. He saw through their design,
however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, “ Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesars, and unto God the things that are
God’s.” Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely non
political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are
told that, failing in this attempt, the chief priests suborned false wit
nesses to testify against him: this sabbath-breaker, this derider of
Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic pretensions excited the
people against their hereditary teachers, must at all events be put out
�26
THE JESUS
OF HIS T O R U.
of the way. Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often had
in store for the reformer; the fate which Socrates and Savonarola,
Vanini and Bruno have suffered for being wiser than their own genera
tion. Messianic adventurers had already given much trouble to the
Roman authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically the
peculiar claims of Jesus. And when the chief priests accused him.
before Pilate of professing to be “ King of the Jews,” this claim could
in Roman apprehension bear but one interpretation. The offence was
treason, punishable, save in the case of Roman citizens, by crucifixion.
Such in its main outlines is the historic career of Jesus, as con
structed by our author from data furnished chiefly by the first gospel.
Connected .with the narrative there are many interesting topics of dis
cussion, of which our rapidly diminishing space will allow us to select
only one for comment. That one is perhaps the most important of all,
namely, the question as to how far Jesus anticipated the views of Paul
in admitting Gentiles to share in the privileges of the Messianic king
dom. Our author argues, writh much force, that the designs of Jesus
were entirely confined to the Jewish people, and that it was Paul
who first, by admitting Gentiles to the Christian fold without requiring
them to live like Jews, gave to Christianity the character of a universal
religion. Our author reminds us that the third gospel is not to be
depended upon in determining this point, since it manifestly puts
Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Jesus, and in particular attrib
utes to Jesus an acquaintance with heretical Samaria which the first
gospel disclaims. He argues that the apostles were in every respect
Jews, save in their belief that Jesus was the Messiah ; and he perti
nently asks, if James, who was the brother of Jesus, and Peter and
John, who were his nearest friends, unanimously opposed Paul and
stigmatized him as a liar and heretic, is it at all likely that Jesus had
ever distinctly sanctioned such views as Paul maintained ?
In the course of many years’ reflection upon this point, we have
several times been inclined to accept the narrow interpretation of
Jesus’ teaching here indicated; yet, on the whole, we do not believe it
can ever be conclusively established. In the first place it must be re
membered that if the third gospel throws a Pauline coloring .over the
events which it describes, the first gospel also shows a decidedly anti
Pauline bias, and the one party was as likely as the other to attribute
its own views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this tendency
has been pointed out by Strauss, who has shown that the verses Matt,
v. 17-20, are an interpolation. The person who teaches men to break
the commandments is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish a text
against Paul’s followers, the “ Nicolaitans,” Jesus is made to declare
that he came not to destroy one tittle of the law, but to fulfil the
whole in every particular. Such an utterance is in manifest contradic
tion to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, as shown in the very same chapter,
and throughout a great part of the same gospel. He who taught in
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
2Ÿ
his own name and not as the scribes, who proclaimed himself Lord
over the Sabbath, and who manifested from first to last a more than
Essenian contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil the
law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can any inference ad
verse to this conclusion be drawn from the injunction to the disciples,
(Matt. x. 5-7,) not to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only “to
the lost sheep of the house of Israelfor this remark is placed before
the beginning of Jesus’ Messianic career, and the reason assigned for
the restriction is merely that the disciples will not have time even to
preach to all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose ap
proach Jesus was announcing. (Matt. x. 23.)
These examples show that we must use caution in weighing the
testimony even of the first gospel, and must not too hastily cite it as
proof that Jesus supposed his mission to be restricted to the Jews.
When we come to consider what happened a few years after the death
of Jesus, we shall be still less ready to insist upon the view defended
by our anonymous author. Paul, according to his own confession, per
secuted the Christians unto death. Now what, in the theories or in
the practice of the Jewish disciples of Jesus, could have moved Paul
to such fanatic behavior ? Certainly not their spiritual interpretation
of Mosaism, for Paul himself belonged to the liberal school of Gama
liel, to the views of which the teachings and practices of Peter, James
and John might easily be accommodated. Probably not their belief in
Jesus as the Messiah, for at the riot in which Stephen was murdered
and all the Hellenist disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disci
ples were allowed to remain in the city unmolested. (See Acts viii.
1, 14.) This marked difference of treatment indicates that Paul re
garded Stephen and his friends as decidedly more heretical and obnox
ious than Peter, James and John, whom, indeed, Paul’s own master
Gamaliel had recently (Acts v. 34) defended before the council. And
this influence is fully confirmed by the account of Stephen’s death,
where his murderers charge him with maintaining that Jesus had
founded a new religion which was destined entirely to supersede and
replace Judaism. (Acts vi. 14.) The Petrine disciples never held
this view of the mission of Jesus; and to this difference it is undoubt
edly owing that Paul and his companions forbore to disturb them. It
would thus appear that even previous to Paul's conversion, within five
or six years after the death of Jesus, there was a prominent party
among the disciples which held that the new religion was not a modi
fication but an abrogation of Judaism ; and their name “ Hellenists ”
sufficiently shows either that there were Gentiles among them or that
they held fellowship with Gentiles. It was this which aroused Paul to
persecution, and upon his sudden conversion it was with these Hellen
istic doctrines that he fraternized, taking little heed of the Petrine
disciples (Galatians i. 15), who were hardly more than a Jewish
sect.
�Now the existence of these Hellenists at Jerusalem so soon after
the death of Jesus is clear proof that he had never distinctly and irrev
ocably pronounced against the admission of Gentiles to the Messianic
kingdom, and it makes it very probable that the downfall of Mosaism
as a result of his preaching was by no means unpremeditated. While,
on the other hand, the obstinacy of the Petrine party in adhering to
Jewish customs shows equally that Jesus could not have unequivocally
committed himself in favor of a new gospel for the Gentiles. Probably
Jesus was seldom brought into direct contact with others than Jews,
so that the questions concerning the admission of Gentile converts did
not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was left open for
the controversy which soon broke out between the Petrine party and
Paul. Nevertheless, though Jesus may never have definitely pro
nounced. upon this point, it will hardly be denied that his teaching,
even as reported in the first gospel, is in its utter condemnation of for
malism far more closely allied to the Pauline than to the Petrine doc
trines. In his hands Mosaism became spiritualized until it really lost
its identity, and was transformed into a code fit for the whole Roman
world. And we do not doubt that if any one had asked Jesus whether
circumcision were an essential prerequisite for admission to the Mes
sianic kingdom, he would have given the same answer which Paul after
wards gave. We agree with Zeller and Strauss that, “as Luther was a
more liberal spirit than the Lutheran divines of the succeeding genera
tion, and Socrates a more profound thinker than Xenophon or Antisthenes, so also Jesus must be credited with having raised himself far
higher above the narrow prejudices of his nation than those of his dis
ciples who could scarcely understand the spread of Christianity among
the heathen when it had become an accomplished fact.”
THE JESUS OF DOGMA
*
HE meagerness of our information concerning the historic
career of Jesus stands in striking contrast to the mass of
information which lies within our reach concerning the
primitive character of Christologie speculation. First we
have the epistles of Paul, written from twenty to thirty years after
the crucifixion, which, although they tell us next to nothing about
T
* Saint-Paul. par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1869. (English translation. New
York : Carleton, 1869.)
Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jesus-Christ, par Albert Réville.
Paris, 1869.
The End of the.World and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses by
the Rev. W. R. Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
29
what Jesus did. nevertheless give us very plain information as to
the impression which he made. Then we have the Apocalypse,
written by John, AD. 68, which exhibits the Messianic theory en
tertained by the earliest disciples. Next we have the epistles to the
Hebrews, Philippians. Colossians, and Ephesians, besides the four gos
pels, constituting altogether a connected chain of testimony to the
progress of Christian doctrine from the destruction of Jerusalem to the
time of the quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 70-170). Finallv, there
is the vast collection of apocryphal, heretical, and patristic literature,
from the writings of Justin Martin, the pseudo-Clement, and the
pseudo-Ignatius, down to the time of the Council of Nikaia. when the
official theories of Christ's person assumed very nearly the shape which
they have retained, within the orthodox churches of Christendom,
down to the present day. As we pointed out in “ The Jesus of His
tory,” while all this voluminous literature throws but an uncertain
light upon the life and teachings of the founder of Christianity, it
nevertheless furnishes nearly all the data which we could desire for
knowing what the early Christians thought of the master of their
faith. Having given a brief account of the historic career of Jesus, so
far as it can now be determined, we propose here to sketch the rise and
progress of Christologic doctrine, in its most striking features, during
the first three centuries. Beginning with the apostolic view of the
human Messiah sent to deliver Judaism from its spiritual torpor, and
prepare it for the millennial kingdom, we shall briefly trace the pro
gressive metamorphosis of this conception until it completely loses its
identity in the Athanasian theory, according to which Jesus was God
himself, the creator of the universe, incarnate in human flesh.
The earliest dogma held by the apostles concerning Jesus was that
of his resurrection from the grave after death. It was not only the
earliest, but the most essential to the success of the new religion.
Christianity might have overspread the Roman Empire, and main
tained its hold upon men’s faith until to-day, without the dogmas of
the incarnation and the Trinity; but without the dogma of the resur
rection it would probably have failed at the very outset. Its lofty
morality would not alone have sufficed to insure its success. For what
men needed then, as indeed they still need, and will always need, was
not merely a rule of life and a mirror to the heart, but also a compre
hensive and satisfactory theory of things, a philosophy or theosophy.
The times demanded intellectual as well as moral consolation; and the
disintegration of ancient theologies needed to be repaired, that the new
ethical impulse imparted by Christianity might rest upon a plausible
speculative basis. The doctrine of the resurrection was but the begin
ning of a series of speculative innovations which prepared the way for
the new religion to emancipate itself from Judaism, and achieve the
conquest of the Empire. Even the faith of the apostles in the speedy
return of their master the Messiah must have somewhat lost ground,
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had it not been supported by their belief in his resurrection from the
grave and his consequent transfer from Sheol, the gloomy land of
shadows, to the regions above the sky.
The origin of the dogma of the resurrection cannot be determined
with certainty. The question has, during the past century, been the
subject of much discussion, upon which it is not necessary for us
here to comment. Such apparent evidence as there is in favor of the
old theory of Jesus’ natural recovery from the effects of the cruci
fixion, may be found in Salvador’s “ Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine
but, as Zeller has shown, the theory is utterly unsatisfactory. The
natural return of Jesus to his disciples never could have given rise to
the notion of his resurrection, since the natural explanation would
have been the more obvious one; besides which, if we were to adopt
this hypothesis, we should be obliged to account for the fact that the
historic career of Jesus ends with the crucifixion. The most probable
explanation, on the whole, is the one suggested by the accounts in the
gospels, that the dogma of the resurrection is due originally to the
excited imagination of Mary of Magdala. The testimony of Paul may
also be cited in favor of this view, since he always alludes to earlier
Christophanies in just the same language which he uses in describing
his own vision on the road to Damascus.
But the question as to how the belief in the resurrection of Jesus
originated is of less importance than the question as to how it should
have produced the effect that it did. The dogma of the resurrection
has, until recent times, been so rarely treated from the historical point
of view, that the student of history at firsts finds some difficulty in
thoroughly realizing its import to the minds of those who first pro
claimed it. We cannot hope to understand it without bearing in mind
the theories of the Jews and early Christians concerning the structure
of the world and the cosmic location of departed souls. Since the time
of Copernicus modern Christians no longer attempt to locate heaven
and hell; they are conceived merely as mysterious places remote from
the earth. The theological universe no longer corresponds to that
which physical science presents for our contemplation. It was quite
different with the Jew. His conception of the abode of Jehovah
and the angels, and of departed souls, was exceedingly simple and
definite. In the Jewish theory the universe is like a sort of threestory house. The flat earth rests upon the waters, and under the
earth’s surface is the land of graves, called Sheol, where after death the
souls of all men go, the righteous as well as the wicked, for the Jew
had not arrived at the doctrine of heaven and hell. The Hebrew Sheol
corresponds strictly to the Greek Hades, before the notions of Elysium
and Tartarus were added to it,—a land peopled with flitting shadows,
suffering no torment, but experiencing no pleasure, like those whom
Dante met in one of the upper circles of his Inferno. Sheol is the first
story of the cosmic house ; the earth is the second. Above the earth is
�TH R
JESUS
Of
DOGMA.
31
the firmament or sky, which, according to the book of Genesis (chap. i.
v. 6, Hebrew text), is a vast plate hammered out by the gods, and sup
ports a great ocean like that upon which the earth rests. Rain is
caused by the opening of little windows or trap-doors in the firmament,
through which pours the water of this upper ocean. Upon this water
rests the land of heaven, where Jehovah reigns, surrounded by hosts
of angels. To this blessed land two only of the human race had ever
been admitted,—Enoch and Elijah, the latter of whom had ascended in
a chariot of fire, and was destined to return .to earth as the herald and
forerunner of the Messiah. Heaven forms the third story of the cosmic
house. Between the firmament and the earth is the air, which is the
habitation of evil demons ruled by Satan, the “prince of the powers of
the air.”
Such was the cosmology of the ancient Jew ; and his theology was
equally simple. Sheol was the destined abode of all men after death,
and no theory of moral retribution was attached to the conception.
The rewards and punishments known to the authors of the Pentateuch
and the early Psalms are all earthly rewards and punishments. But in
course of time the prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the
good man furnished a troublesome problem for the Jewish thinker;
and after the Babylonish Captivity, we find the doctrine of a resurrec
tion from Sheol devised in order to meet this case. According to this
doctrine—which was borrowed from the Zarathustrian theology of
Persia—the Messiah on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the souls
of the righteous, causing them to ascend reinvested in their bodies to a
renewed and beautiful earth, while on the other hand the wicked were
to be punished with, tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom, or
were to be immersed in liquid brimstone, like that which had rained
upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Here we get the first announcement of
a future state of retribution. The doctrine was peculiarly Pharisaic,
and the Sadducees, who were strict adherents to the letter of Mosaism,
rejected it to the last. By degrees this doctrine became coupled with
the Messianic theories of the Pharisees. The loss of Jewish independ
ence under the dominion of Persians, Macedonians and Romans, caused
the people to look over more earnestly toward the expected time when
the Messiah should appear in Jerusalem to deliver them from their
oppressors. The moral doctrines of the Psalms and earlier prophets
assumed an increasingly political aspect. The Jews were the righteous
“ under a cloud,” whose sufferings were symbolically depicted by the
younger Isaiah as the afflictions of the “ servant of Jehovah;” while on
the other hand, the “ wicked ” were the Gentile oppressors of the holy
people. Accordingly the Messiah, on his arrival, was to sit in judg
ment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, rectifying the. wrongs of his chosen
ones, condemning the Gentile tyrants to the torments of Gehenna, and
raising from Sheol all those Jews who had lived and died during the
evil times before his coming. These were to find in the Messianic
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THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
kingdom the compensation for the ills which they had suffered in their
first earthly existence. Such are the main outlines of the theory found
in the Book of Enoch, written about B. C. 100, and it is adopted in the
Johannine Apocalypse, with little variation, save in the recognition of
Jesus as the Messiah, and in the transference to his second coming of
all these wonderful proceedings. The manner of the Messiah's coming
had been variously imagined. According to an earlier view, he was to
enter Jerusalem as a King of the house of David, and therefore of
human lineage. According to a later view, presented in the Book of
Daniel, he was to descend from the sky, and appear among the clouds.
Both these views were adopted by the disciples of Jesus, who harmo
nized them by referring the one to his first and the other to his second
appearance.
Now to the imaginations of these earliest disciples the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus presented itself as a needful guarantee of his
Messiahship. Their faith, which must have been shaken by his execu
tion and descent into Sheol, received welcome confirmation by the
springing up of the belief that he had been again seen upon the face
of the earth. Applying the imagery of Daniel, it became a logical
conclusion that he must have ascended into the sky, whence he might
shortly be expected to make his appearance, to enact the scenes foretold
in prophecy. That such was the actual process of inference is shown
by the legend of the Ascension in the first chapter of the “Acts,” and
especially by the words, “This Jesus who hath been taken up from you
into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye beheld him
going into heaven.” In the Apocalvpse, written A. T). G8, just after
the death of Nero, this second coming is described as something im
mediately to happen, and the colors in which it is depicted show how
closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees.
The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while
for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved a fearful retribution.
They are to be trodden under-foot by the Messiah, like grapes in a
wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the height of the
horse’s bridle.
In the writings of Paul, the dogma of the resurrection assumes a
very different aspect. Though Paul, like the older apostles, held that
Jesus, as the Messiah, was to return to the earth within a few years, yet
to his catholic mind this anticipated event had become divested of its
narrow Jewish significance. In the eyes of Paul, the religion preached
by Jesus was an abrogation of Mosaism, and the truths contained in it
were a free gift to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish world. Accord
ing to Paul, death came into the world as a punishment for the sin of
Adam. By this he meant that, had it not been for the original trans
gression, all men escaping death would either have remained upon
earth or have been conveyed to heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, in in
corruptible bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience, all
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JESUS
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33
men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled
to the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to
free men from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a
good purpose in keeping men’s minds directed toward holiness, pre
paring them, as a schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the
vitalizing truths of Christ. Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had
come as a second Adam, and being without sin had been raised by Je
hovah out of Sheol and taken up into heaven, as testimony to men
that the power of sin and death was at last defeated. The wav hence
forth to avoid death and escape the exile to Sheol was to live spiritually
like Jesus, and with him to be dead to sensual requirements. Faith,
in Paul’s apprehension, was not an intellectual assent to definitely pre
scribed dogmas, but, as Matthew Arnold has well pointed out, it was
an emotional striving after righteousness, a developing consciousness
of God in the soul, such as Jesus had possessed, or in Paul’s phrase
ology, a subjugation of the flesh by the spirit. All those who should
thus seek spiritual perfection should escape the original curse. The
Messiah was destined to return to the earth to establish the reign of
spiritual holiness, probably during Paul’s own lifetime. (1 Cor. xv.
51.) Then the true followers of Jesus should be clothed in ethereal
bodies, free from the imperfections of “ the flesh,” and should ascend
to heaven without suffering death, while the righteous dead should at
the same time be released from Sheol, even as Jesus himself had been
released.
To the doctrine of the resurrection, in which ethical and speculative
elements are thus happily blended by Paul, the new religion doubtless
owed in great part its rapid success. Into an account of the causes
which favored the spreading of Christianity, it is not our purpose to
enter at present. * ut we may note that the local religions of the ancient
B
pagan world had partly destroyed each other by mutual intermingling,
and had lost their hold upon people from the circumstance that their
ethical teaching no longer corresponded to the advanced ethical feeling,
of the age. Polytheism, in short, was outgrown. It was outgrown
both intellectually and morally. People were ceasing to believe in its
doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The learned were
taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant in mystical superstitions im
ported Trom Asia. The commanding ethical motive of ancient repub
lican times had been patriotism—devotion to the interests of the com
munity. But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding
principle of life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in
a sceptical, unsatisfied state,—craving after a new theory of life, and
craving after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the only
theology which could now be satisfactory to philosophy or to common
sense was some form of monotheism;—some system of doctrines which
should represent all men as spiritually subjected to the will of a single
God, just as they were subjected to the temporal authority of the Em
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THE JESUS
Of DOGMA.
peror. And similarly the only system of ethics which could have a
chance of prevailing must be some system which should clearly pre
scribe the mutual duties of all men without distinction of race or
locality. Thus the spiritual morality of Jesus, and his conception of
God as a father and of all men as brothers, appeared at once to meet
the ethical and speculative demands of the time.
Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced, if un
aided by further doctrinal elaboration, was enhanced myriadfold by the
elaboration which they received at the hands of Paul. Philosophic
Stoics and Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood
of men, and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had exhibited a deep spirit
ual sense of the fatherhood of God. The originality of Christianity lay
not so much in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact
that it furnished a new ethical sanction—a commanding incentive to
holiness of living. That it might accomplish this result, it was abso
lutely necessary that it should begin by discarding both the ritualism
and the narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a mono
theistic creed had led many pagans, in Paul’s time, to embrace Juda
ism, in spite of its requirements, which to Romans and Greeks were
meaningless, and often, disgusting; but such conversions could never
have been numerous. Judaism could never have conquered the Roman
world; nor is it likely that the Judaical Christianity of Peter, James,
and John would have been any more successful. The doctrine of the
resurrection, in particular, was not likely to prove attractive wheu ac
companied by the picture of the Messiah treading the Gentiles in the
wine-press of his righteous indignation. But here Paul showed his
profound originality. The condemnation of Jewish formalism which
*
Jesus had pronounced, Paul turned against the older apostles, who in
sisted upon circumcision. With marvelous flexibility of mind, Paul
placed circumcision and the Mosaic injunctions about meats upon a
level with the ritual observances of pagan nations, allowing each feeble
brother to perform such works as might tickle his fancy, but bidding
all take heed that salvation was not to be obtained after any such me
chanical method, but only by devoting the whole soul to righteousness,
after the example of Jesus.
This was the negative part of Paul’s work. This was the knocking
down of the barriers which had kept men, and would always have kept
them, from entering into the kingdom of heaven. But the positive
part of Paul’s work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men
from death through the second Adam, whom Jehovah rescued from
Sheol for his sinlessness. The resurrection of Jesus was the visible
token of the escape from death which might be achieved by all men
who, with God’s aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from thè
burden of sin which had encumbered all the children of Adam. The
end of the world was at hand, and they who would live with Christ
must figuratively die with Christ—must become dead to sin. Thus to
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OF DOGMA.
35
the pure and spiritual ethics contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul
added an incalculably’powerful incentive to right action, and a theory
of life calculated to satisfy the speculative necessities of the pagan or
v Gentile world. To the educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the criti
cal scholar of modern times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the
grave, and his ascent through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem
foolishness or naïveté. But to the average. Greek or Roman the con
ception presented no serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon
. which the conception was founded were essentially the same among
Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little modified until the estab
lishment of the Copernican astronomy. The doctrine of the Messiah’s
second coming was also received without opposition, and for about a
century men lived in continual anticipation of that event, until hope
long deferred produced its usual results ; the writings in which that
event was predicted were gradually explained away, ignored, or stigma
tized as uncanonical ; and the Church ended by condemning as a
heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing apostles, who
agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of their spéculative
teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical interpretation, the
belief has maintained an obscure existence even down to the present
time ; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of the Apoc
alypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor of
the French.
But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually died out
during the second century, the essential principles involved in it lost
none of their hold on men’s minds. As the generation contemporary
with Paul died away and was gathered into Sheol, it became apparent
that the original theory must be somewhat modified, and to this ques
tion the author of the second epistle to the Thessalonians addresses
himself. Instead of literal preservation from death, the doctrine of a
resurrection from the grave was gradually extended to the case of the
new believers, who were to share in the same glorious revival with the
righteous of ancient times. And thus by slow degrees the victory over
death, of which the resurrection of Jesus was a symbol and a witness,
became metamorphosed into the comparatively modern doctrine of the
rest of the saints in heaven, while the banishment of the unrighteous
to Sheol was -made still more dreadful by coupling with the vague con
ception of a gloomy subterranean cavern the horrible imagery of the
lake of tire and brimstone borrowed from the apocalyptic descriptions
of Gehenna. But in this modification of the original theory, the fun
damental idea of a future state of retribution was only the more dis
tinctly emphasized; although, in course of time, the original incentive
to righteousness supplied by Paul was more and more subordinated to
the comparatively degrading incentive involved in the fear of damna
tion. There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness
• of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed very largely to the
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THE JESUS
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rapid spread of the Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to
the desire to be holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with
Jesus, is due the elevating ethical influence which, even in the worst
times of ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity has never failed to exert.
Doubtless, as Lessing long ago observed, the notion of future reward
and punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive to
holiness may be a perfectly pure one. The highest virtue is that which
takes no thought of reward or punishment; but for a conception of
this sort the mind of antiquity was not ready, nor is the average mind
of to-day yet ready; and the sudden or premature dissolution of the
Christian theory—which is fortunately impossible—would no doubt
entail a moral retrogradation.
The above is by no means intended as a complete account of the
religious philosophy of Paul. We have aimed only at a clear definition
of the character and scope of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus,
at the time when it was first elaborated. We have now to notice the
influence of that doctrine upon the development of Christo logic specu
lation.
In neither of the four genuine epistles of Paul is Jesus described
as superhuman, or as differing in nature from other men, save in his
freedom from sin. As Baur has shown, “the proper nature of the
Pauline Christ is human. He is a man, but a spiritual man, one in
whom spirit or pneumo, was the essential principle, so that he was
spirit as well as man. The principle of an ideal humanity existed
before Christ in the bright form of a typical man, but was manifested
to mankind in the person of Christ.” Such, according to Baur, is
Paul’s interpretation of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing of
the miracles, of the supernatural conception, of the incarnation, or of
the Logos. The Christ whom he preaches is the man Jesus, the
founder of a new and spiritual order of humanity, as Adam was the
father of humanity after the flesh. The resurrection is uniformly
described by him as a manifestation of the power of Jehovah, not of
Jesus himself. The later conception of Christ bursting the barred
gates of Sheol, and arising by his own might to heaven, finds no
warrant in the expressions of Paul. Indeed it was essential to Paul’s
theory of the Messiah as a new Adam, that he should be human and
not divine ; for the escape of a divine being from Sheol could afford no
precedent and furnish no assurance of the future escape of human
beings. It was expressly because the man Jesus had been rescued from
the grave because of his spirituality, that other men might hope, by
becoming spiritual like him, to be rescued also. Accordingly Paul is
careful to state that “ since through man came death, through man
came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. xv. 21); a passage
which would look like an express denial of Christ’s superhuman
character, were it probable that any of Paul’s contemporaries had ever
conceived of Jesus as other than essentially human.
�THE JESES
OE DOGMA.
But though Paul’s Christology remained in this primitive stage, it
contained the germs of a more advanced theory. For even Paul con
ceived of Jesus as a man wholly exceptional in spiritual character ; or,
in the phraseology of the time, as consisting to a larger extent of
pneuma than any man who had lived before him. The question was
sure to arise, whence came thisyuie^ma or spiritual quality? Whether
the question ever distinctly presented itself to Paul’s mind cannot be
determined. Probably it did not. In those writings of his which
have come down to us, he shows himself careless of metaphysical con
siderations. He is mainly concerned with exhibiting the unsatisfactory
character of Jewish Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual
morality, to which the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection is made to
supply a surpassingly powerful sanction. But attempts to solve the
problem were not long in coming. According to a very early tradition,
of which the obscured traces remain in the ^noptic gospels, Jesus
received theyme/wn« at the time of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit,
or visible manifestation of the essence of Jehovah, descended upon him
and became incarnate in him. This theory, however, was exposed to
the objection that it implied a sudden and entire transformation of an
ordinary man into a person inspired or possessed by the Deity.
Though long maintained by the Ebionites or primitive Christians, it
was very soon rejected by the great body of the Church, which asserted
instead that Jesus had been inspired by the Holy Spirit from the
moment of his conception. From this it was but a step to the theory
that Jesus was actually begotten by or of the Holy Spirit; a notion
which the Hellenic mind, accustomed to the myths of Leda, Anchises,
and others, found no difficulty in entertaining. According to the
Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by Origen, the Holy Spirit was the
mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his father. But according to the
prevailing opinion, as represented in the first and third synoptists, the
relationship was just the other way. With greater apparent plausibil
ity, the divine vEon was substituted for the human father, and a myth
sprang up, of which the materialistic details furnished to the oppo
nents of the new religion an opportunity for making the most gross
and exasperating insinuations. • The dominance of this theory marks
the era at which our first and third synoptic gospels were composed,—
from sixty to ninety years after the death of Jesus. In the luxuriant
mythologic growth there exhibited, we may yet trace the various suc
cessive phases of Christologic speculation but imperfectly blended. In
“Matthew” and “Luke” we find the original Messianic theory ex
emplified in the genealogies of Jesus, in which, contrary to historic
probability, (cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46,) but in accordance with a tihiehonored tradition, his pedigree is traced back to David ; “ Matthew ”
referring him to the royal line of Judah, while “ Luke ” more cautiously
has recourse to an assumed younger branch. Superposed upon this
primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same narratives, the ac-
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I
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THE JESUS
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count of the descent of the pneumo, at the time of the baptism ; and
crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the nativity which,
though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree in representing the
divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three stages of
Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the first; and
nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the synoptists
than the fact that the assumed descent of Jesus from David through
his father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the account of
the miraculous conception which completely negatives it. Of this
difficulty “Matthew” is quite unconscious, and “Luke,” while vaguely
noticing it, (iii. 23,) proposes no solution, and appears .undisturbed by
the contradiction.
Thus far the Christology with which we have been dealing is pre
dominantly Jewish, though to some extent influenced by Hellenic
conceptions. None of the successive doctrines presented in Paul,
“ Matthew,” and “ Luke,” assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus.
At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to parti
cipation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as the
dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after
the date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose
into prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was
regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in
certain attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythol
ogy supplied no precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar
with the conception of deity incarnate in human form, as in the
avatars of Vishnu, or even suffering in the interests of humanity, as in
the noble myth of Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-ex
isting in the religious conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too
rich and numerous to be discussed here. A very full account of them
is given in Mr. R. W. Mackay’s treatise on the “ Religious Development
of the Greeks and Hebrews,”—one of the most acute and erudite theo
logical works which this century has produced.
It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first came into contact
with Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that the way was prepared for the
dogma of Christ’s pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the con
ception of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament,
gave rise to the class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism.
The signification of Gnosis is simply “rationalism,”—the endeavor to
harmonize the materialistic statements of an old mythology with the
more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics
rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic deity who had appeared
visibly and audibly to th^ patriarchs ; and they were the authors of the
doctrine, very widely spread during the second and third centuries,
that God could not in person have been the creator of the world. Ac
cording to them, God, as pure spirit, could not act directly upon vile
and gross matter. The difficulty which troubled them was curiously
�THE ,J E 8 US
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39
analogous to that which disturbed the Cartesians and followers of Leib
nitz in the seventeenth century : how was spirit to act upon matter,
without ceasing, pro tanto, to be spirit ? To meet this difficulty, the
Gnostics postulated a series of emanations from God, becoming success
ively less and less spiritual and more and more material, until at the
lowest end of the scale was reached the Demiurgus or Jehovah of the
Old Testament, who created the world and appeared, clothed in mate
rial form, to the patriarchs. According to some of the Gnostics, this
lowest mon or emanation was identical with the Jewish Satan, or Ahri
man of the Persians, who is called “ the prince of this world,” and the
creation of the world was an essentially evil act. But all did not share
in these extreme opinions. In the prevailing theory, this last of the
divine emanations was identified with the “ Sophia,” or personified
“Wisdom,” of the Book of Proverbs, (viii. 22-30,) who is described as
present with God before the foundation of the world. The totality of
these icons constituted the ptleroma, or “ fullness of God,” (Coloss. i. 20;
Ephes, i. 23,) and in a corollary which bears unmistakable marks of
Buddhist influence, it was argued that, in the final consummation of
things, matter should be eliminated and all spirit reunited with God,
from whom it had primarily flowed.
It was impossible that such .views as these should not soon be taken
up and applied to the fluctuating Christology of the time. According
to the “ Shepherd of Hermas,” an apocalyptic writing nearly contem
porary with the gospel of “ Mark,” the ¿eon or son of God who existed
previous to the creation was not the Christ, or the Sophia, but the
Pneuma or Holy Spirit, represented in the Old Testament as the
“angel of Jehovah.” Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was
admitted to a share in the privileges of this Pneuma. (Reville, p. 39.)
Here, as M. Reville observes, though a Gnostic idea is adopted, Jesus is
nevertheless viewed as ascending humanity, and not as descending
divinity. The author of the “Clementine Homilies” advances a step
farther, and clearly assumes the pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his
opinion, was the pure, primitive man, successively incarnate in Adam,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and finally in the Messiah
or Christ. The author protests, in vehement language, against those
Hellenists who, misled by their polytheistic associations, would elevate
Jesus into a god. Nevertheless his own hypothesis of pre-existence
supplied at once the requisite fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished
to reconcile a strict monotheism with the ascription of divine attri
butes to Jesus. Combining With this notion of pre-existence the pneu
matic or spiritual quality attributed to Jesus in the writings of Paul,
the gnosticising Christians maintained that Christ was an mon or em
anation from God, redeeming men from the consequences entailed by
their imprisonment in matter. At this stage of Christologic specu
lation appeared the anonymous epistle to the “Hebrews,” and the
pseudo-Pauline euistles to the “Colossians,” “Ephesians,”and “Philip-
�40
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JESUS
OF DOGMA.
pians.” (A. D. 130.) In these epistles, which originated among the
Pauline Christians, the Gnostic theosophy is skillfully applied to the
Pauline conception of the scope and purposes of Christianity. Jesus
is described as the creator of the world, (Coloss. i. 16,) the visible image
J •
of the invisible God, the chief and ruler of the “thrones, dominions,
¡principalities and powers,” into which, in Gnostic phraseology, the em
anations of God were classified. Or, according to “ Colossians ” and
t1|
“ Ph ilippians,” all the ieons are summed up in him, in whom dwells
the pleroma, or “fullness of God.” Thus Jesus is elevated quite above
ordinary humanity, and a close approach is made to ditheism, although
he is still emphatically subordinated to God by being made the creator
of the world,—an office then regarded as incompatible with absolute
divine perfection. In the celebrated passage, “ Philippians” ii. 6-11,
the aeon Jesus is described as being the form or visible manifestation
of God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or semblance
of humanity, and suffering death, in return for which he is to be exalt•
ed even above the archangels. A similar view is taken in “ Hebrews ; ”
and it is probable that to the growing favor with which these doctrines
were received, we owe the omission of the miraculous conception from
the gospel of “Mark,”—a circumstance which has misled some critics
into assigning to that gospel an earlier date than to “ Matthew” and
“ Luke.” Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus is implicitly ranked
above the angels, (Mark xiii, 32, 33,) reveals a later stage of Christologic doctrine than that reached-by the first and third synoptists; and
if is altogether probable that, in accordance with the noticeable con
ciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural conception is
omitted out of deference to the gnosticising theories of “ Colossians ”
and “Philippians,” in which this materialistic doctrine seems to have
had no assignable place. In “ Philippians ” especially, many expres
sions seem to verge upon Docefism, the extreme form of Gnosticism,
according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phan tom.
Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the
second century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any
process of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses
a translucent substance. And finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the
theory to its extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure Pneuma or Spirit, who contained nothing in common with carnal humanity.
The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this extravagant doc
trine, which erred by breaking entirely with historic tradition, and was
consequently soon condemned as heretical. Their language, though
unmistakably Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite to allow
of their combination with earlier and later expositions of dogma,
and they were therefore eventually received into the canon, where they
exhibit a stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that of
the fourth gospel.
For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still
i
t
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
41
further elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an
emanation from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the
pleroma or full scale of Gnostic a?ons, was now generally conceded.
Blit the relation of this pleroma to the Godhead of which it was the
visible manifestation, needed to be more-accurately defined. And here
recourse was had to the conception of the “Logos,”—a notion which
Philo had borrowed from Plato, lending to it a theosophic significance.
In the Platonic metaphysics, objective existence was attributed to
general terms, the signs of general notions. Besides each particular
man, horse, or tree, and besides all men, horses, and trees, in the
aggregate, there was supposed to exist an ideal Man, Horse, and Tree.
Each particular man, hors#, or tree consisted of abstract existence plus
a portion of the ideal man, horse, or tree. Socrates, for instance, con
sisted of Existence, plus Animality, plus Humanity, plus Socraticity.
The visible world of particulars thus existed only by virtue of its par
ticipation in the attributes of the ideal world of universals. God
created the world by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or
clothing of visible matter; and since matter is vile or imperfect, all
things are more or less perfect as they partake more or less fully of the
idea. The pure unencumbered idea, the “ Idea of ideas,” is the Logos,
or divine Reason, which represents the sum-total of the activities
which sustain the world, and serves as a mediator between the abso
lutely ideal God and the absolutely non-ideal matter. Here we arrive
at a Gnostic conception, which the Philonists of Alexandria were not
slow to appropriate. The Logos, or divine Reason, was identified with
the Sophia, or divine Wisdom of the Jewish Gnostics, which had dwelt
with God before the creation of the world. By a subtle play upon the
double meaning of the Greek term {logos = “ reason ” or “ word,”) a
distinction was drawn between the divine Reason and the divine Word.
The former was the archetypal idea or thought of God, existing from
all eternity; the latter was the external manifestation or realization of
that idea which occurred at the moment of creation, when, according
to Genesis, God spoke, and the world was.
In the middle of the second century, this Philonian theory was the
one thing needful to add metaphysical precision to the Gnostic and
Pauline speculations concerning the nature of Jesus. In the writings
of Justin Martyr, (A. D. 150-1G6,) Jesus is for the first time identified
with the Philonian logos or “Word of God.” According to Justin, an
impassable abyss exists between the Infinite Deity and the Finite
World; the one cannot act upon the other; pure spirit cannot con
taminate itself by contact with impure matter. To meet this difficulty,
God evolves from himself a secondary God, the Logos,—yet without
diminishing himself any more than a flame is diminished when it
gives birth to a second flame. Thus generated, like light begotten of
light, {lumen de lumine,) the Logos creates the world, inspires the
ancient prophets with their divine revelations, and finally reveals him
�42
THE
JESUS
OE DOGMA.
self to mankind in the person of Christ. Yet Justin sedulously guards
himself against ditheism, insisting frequently and emphatically upon
the immeasurable inferiority of the Logos as compared with the actual
God (7zo ontos theos.)
We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase of New Tes
tament speculation concerning Jesus. The doctrines enunciated by
Justin became eventually, with slight modification, the official doc
trines of the Church : yet before they could thus be received, some
further elaboration was needed. The pre-existing Logos-Christ of
Justin was no longer the human Messiah of the firstand third gos
pels, born of a woman, inspired by the divine Pneuma, and tempted
by the Devil. There was danger that Christologie speculation might
break quite loose from historic tradition, and pass into the metaphysical
extreme of Docetism. Had this come to pass, there might perhaps
have been a fatal schism in the Church. Tradition still remained
Ebionitish ; dogma had become decidedly Gnostic ; how were the two
to be moulded into harmony with each other ? Such was the prob
lem which presented itself to the author of the fourth gospel (A. D.
170-180). As M. Réville observes, “if the doctrine of the Logos
were really to be applied to the person of Jesus, it was necessary to re
model the evangelical history.” Tradition must be moulded so as to
fit the dogma, but the dogma must be restrained by tradition from
running into Docetic extravagance. It must 'be shown historically
how “ the Word became flesh ” and dwelt on earth, (John i. 14,) how
the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth were the deeds of the incarnate Logos,
in whom was exhibited the pleroma or fullness of the divine attri
butes. The author of the fourth gospel is, like Justin, a Philonian
Gnostic; but he differs from Justin in his bold and skilful treatment
of the traditional materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The prooess of development in the theories and purposes of Jesus, which can
be traced throughout the Messianic descriptions of the first gospel,
is entirely obliterated in the fourth. Here Jesus appears at the out
set as the creator of the world, descended from his glory, but des
tined soon to be reinstated. The title “ Son of Man ” has lost its
original significance, and become synonymous with “ Son of God.”
The temptation, the transfiguration, the scene in Gethsemane, are
omitted, and for the latter is substituted a Philonian prayer. Never
theless, the author carefully avoids the extremes of Docetism or di
theism. Not only does he represent the human life of Jesus as real,
and his death as a truly physical death, but he distinctly asserts the
inferiority of the Son to the Father (John xiv. 28.) Indeed, as M. Ré
ville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the Logos that it
should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God ; since it is only its
relative imperfection which allows it to sustain relations to the world
and to men which are incompatible with absolute perfection, from the
Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
43
finds no support in the fourth gospel, any more than in the earlier
books collected in the New Testament.
The fourth gospel completes the speculative revolution by which
the conception of a divine being lowered to humanity was substituted
for that of a human being raised to divinity. We have here traveled a
long distance from the risen Messiah of the genuine Pauline epistles,
or the preacher of righteousness in the first gospel. Yet it does not
seem probable tliat the Church of the third century was thoroughly
aware of the discrepancy. The authors of the later Christology did not
regard themselves as adding new truths to Christianity, but merely as
giving a fuller and more consistent interpretation to what must have
been known from the outset. They were so completely destitute of the
historic sense, and so strictly confined to the dogmatic point of view,
that they projected their own theories back into the past, and vituper
ated as heretics those who adhered to tradition in its earlier and sim
pler form. Examples from more recent times are not wanting, which
show that we are dealing here with an inveterate tendency of the
human mind. New facts and new theories are at first condemned as
heretical or ridiculous; but when once firmly established, it is imme
diately maintained that every one knew them before. After the Coper
nican astronomy had won the day, it was tacitly assumed that the
ancient Hebrew astronomy was Copernican, and the Biblical concep
tion of the universe as a kind of three-story house was ignored, and has
been, except by scholars, quite forgotten. When the geologic evidence
of the earth’s immense antiquity could no longer be gainsaid, it was
suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from the outset asserted that
antiquity; and in our own day we have seen an elegant popular writer
perverting the testimony of the rocks and distorting the Elohistic cos
mogony of the Pentateuch, until the twain have been made to furnish
what Bacon long ago described as “ a heretical religion and a false
philosophy.” Now just as in the popular thought of the present day
the ancient Elohist is accredited with a knowledge of modern geology
and astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist and his con
temporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly contained
in the Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning Jesus, and
needed only to be brought into prominence by a fresh interpretation.
Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a conscious violation
of historic data than Hugh Miller’s imaginative description of the
“ Mosaic Vision of Creation.” Its metaphysical discourses were readily
accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon on the Mount. Its
Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the apostles, the pseudo
Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts. The Ebionites—who
were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its original form
the doctrine of Peter, Janies, and John—were ejected from the Church
as the most pernicious of heretics ; and so completely was their historic
position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to account for
�44
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
their existence, it became necessary to invent an epoifymous heresiarch,
Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the true faith I
The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially the same as
that which was held in the next two centuries by Tertullian, Clement
of Alexandria, Origen, and Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity
was first announced by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally con
demned as heretical, the Church being not yet quite prepared to receive
it. In 269 the Council of Antioch solemnly declared that the Son was
not consubstantial with the Father—a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to contradict
The trinitarian Christology struggled long for acceptance, and did not
finally win the victory until the end of the fourth century. Yet from
the outset its ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar doc
trines of the fourth gospel could retain their
integrity
*
only so long as
Gnostic ideas were prevalent. When Gnosticism declined in importtance, and its theories faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine that God
could not act directly upon the world sank gradually into oblivion as
the Church grew more and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philoso
phy. And when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable that
the Logos, as the creator of the world, should be raised to an equality
or identity with God himself. In the view of the fourth evangelist, the
Creator was necessarily inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the
Creator could be none other than God. And so the very phrases which
had most emphatically asserted the subordination' of the Son were
afterward interpreted as asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnos
tic formula, “ lumen de lumine,” was added the Athanasian scholium,
“Deum verum de Deo vero ; ” and the trinitarian dogma of the union of
persons in a single Godhead became thus the only available logical
device for preserving the purity of monotheism.
The modern theory, however, at which we seem to be slowly arriv
ing is, that light, heat, electricity, life itself, are only forms of motion,
and that death is merely the cessation of this motion; that the deity
is, throughout the universe, the embodiment (sinee that is the only
word I can think of to express myself) of motion itself; and that all
which dies, or, in other words, ceases to move, falls back into the uni
verse, and is absorbed into the deity. This was the belief of the Bud
dhist—the framer or acceptor of a pure and beautiful religion ; and to
this belief modern science and the enlargement of knowledge slowly
tend.—Macmillan’s Magazine.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The last word about Jesus
Creator
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Fiske, John
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [9]-48 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracted from Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Includes bibliographical references. Printed on grey paper. Marks from adhesive tape on first page.
Publisher
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[American News Company]
Date
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[1870]
Identifier
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G5413
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Jesus Christ
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The last word about Jesus), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ-Historicity