The life and teachings of Jesus; a critical analysis of the sources of the Gospels, together with a study of the sayings of Jesus

Part I.— The Sources. Chapter

I. — The Synoptic Gospels .

II. — The Fourth Gospel III. — The Credibility of the Gospels

PAGE

I

6 7

PART II. — THE LIFE AND TEA CHINGS OF JESUS. I. — The Preparation

II. — The Kingdom of Heaven III. — The Messiahship of Jesus .

IV. — Jesus' Attitude towards the Law

V. — Jesus' Doctrine of God and Man VI. — The Future of the Kingdom

187 210 229 242

VI

Contents.

CHAPTER

VII. — Thk Gaulean Ministry .

VIII.— The Last Days of Jksus .

IX. — Thk Resurrection of Jesus

Index to Passages in the Gospels

PAGE 297

THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS.

Introduction

THE discussions about religion which we have been familiar with in recent years have had one thing about them which, if it is not new, is at any rate sufficiently striking to deserve that a particular emphasis should be put upon it, and that is the way in which the discussion has been taken out of the hands of a small circle of professed champions, and has become a topic of public interest, familiar even to readers of magazines and newspapers. This perhaps has not been without its disadvantages, for the controversies have not always been marked by soberness or by very great wisdom ; and yet one hardly can regret a fact which shows what a hold religion has over the minds of men, and in how real a manner they are concerned about it. But whatever we may think about the fact, it has shown in a very unmistakable way, what religious teachers are still sometimes disposed to ignore, that there are a very great number of persons who are no longer content to take their religious creeds upon authority, but who are demanding a reason for what they have been taught, and who want a faith which shall harmonize with what in other ways they are beginning to learn about the universe.

And also, to one who is willing to recognize the facts, popular Christianity, the forms of Christianity which our churches and our religious newspapers predominatingly represent, has so far failed to satisfy this demand, and it does not seem likely that it will be able to satisfy it. The Church has insisted upon it that it had a religion which was perfect, a religion where no changes could be allowed ; and it therefore cannot be surprised if other things have been changing and have left it behind. For that it has been left behind, that no longer it is in sympathy with what is most characteristic in modern ways of thinking, is the plainest of facts, whether or not we may regret that this is so. The break between science and religion we long ago were told of, aggressively enough on both sides ; and every day it seems to be growing harder for men to read and think, and still to hold to beliefs which a hundred years ago men found little difficulty in holding to. Popular religion, it is true, in its more outspoken representatives, has its own explanation for this, an explanation not nattering to science and culture ; but explainable or not, for all eyes the fact is there, and it is not well for any one to pass too lightly by it. For while truth of course may be doubted, and for all that may be none the less true, yet we must not forget that the proper business of truth is to approve itself to us, to satisfy us ; and whatever steadily and inevitably gives rise to doubt, to doubt which is the greater as knowledge becomes greater, and which often men cannot get rid of unless they refuse to think

Introduction.

at all, we may hesitate fairly to receive as truth. Christianity has claimed it as a chief excellence, that through its means religion is no longer esoteric, the possession of philosophers, but is brought home to all men, that one who does not have the training of the schools still may enjoy the benefits which it confers ; and it has done quite right to insist upon this. But when religion becomes, not something where the wise man and the ignorant stand upon terms which are fairly equal, but where the wise man is at a disadvantage, something which is less easily to be accepted by the thinker than by the one who cannot or who will not think at all, then the mistake is just as fatal as the old mistake of making salvation depend upon philosophy, and such a religion cannot long continue.

To religion itself, fortunately, there seems to be but little danger. Religion, of some sort or other, there appears no likelihood that men will be content to do without, if it be nothing more than M. Renan' splaying at religion . But whether this is likely to be the Christian religion, the religion of the Bible, there is more reason perhaps to be in doubt. Certainly, those who tell us that the Christian religion must now be set aside are fairly numerous, and they are not lacking at all in positiveness ; if they only might agree better as to what is to take its place, we should listen to them, perhaps, more hopefully. For myself, I confess I do not believe that the religion of the Bible is yet to be put aside ; rather does it seem to me that more and more men are likely to come back to it, and to rest upon it. For, for one thing, however skilfully our new religions have been framed and adapted to meet the needs of a universal religion, a religion of mankind, mankind in general has steadily refused to see their superiority, and has found them exceedingly comfortless and unsatisfying. This the author of the religion no doubt finds explicable enough. To know truth, he will say, requires a certain amount of preparation, of culture, and most of all it requires a clear vision and a freedom from prejudice ; and these qualifications the mass of men do not possess, notoriously they are under the control of priest-craft and of superstition. But after all the matter is not to be so easily explained. That Christianity for some eighteen hundred years now has had the power to arouse a boundless love in multitudes of men, shows very plainly that a real truth, and a very essential truth, does indeed lie wrapped up in it. Superstition, mistaken enthusiasm, does not act in this way, it does not hold men as Christianity holds them, it does not work upon them as Christianity has done to make them in a surprising way purer and better men, a test which is, after all, not the worst one that could be applied. That the Christian religion, too, has succeeded best in bringing joy to men, in bringing them peace and satisfaction, this also is not to be lightly thought of. Now just in this lies the one evidence for the Christian religion which cannot be shaken, the evidence that rests upon experience. That men have been made better, and the needs which they feel to be their deepest needs have been satisfied, that somehow or other this has come to them through the Bible, however we may explain this we cannot explain it away. But upon this fact men have not been content to rest ; they have made the explanation of it more important than the fact itself, and they have even made the fact depend upon the explanation. The Christian, on his side, has his creed, his elaborate theory of the Bible, and upon the certainty of this theory he hotly maintains that the cer-

Introduction.

tainty of his experience must depend. The unbeliever is quite ready to meet him half way, and he demonstrates eagerly that the theory is all wrong, and so the experience ought not to exist at all. But then the experience does exist, it stands as a fact ; and to show that any number of explanations may be questionable explanations does not change the fact in the slightest. This then is the important thing about the Bible, the benefit which actually it may be the means of bringing to us. To criticise the Bible, to find out when and how it was written, and what is the truth about the matters of history which it deals with, however important this may be, is still a matter of secondary importance ; and when criticism stops at this, and thinks that by explaining this it has explained everything, it is of very little importance indeed. So far as religion is concerned, one might even prefer to have nothing to do with criticism at all, to let questions of date and authorship look after themselves ; but to many people this is no longer possible, and that it is no longer possible the Church has itself largely to blame. The Church has not been content to insist upon the many things in the Bible which are undeniably true and beautiful, but it must needs surround the Bible with a rigid theory about it, it must warn people to accept the whole Bible without demur, as the Church accepted it, or else to let the Bible quite alone. To show that these theories cannot be true, to show that this or that belief about the Bible can no longer be accepted, is not the highest work or the most important, but this is the first thing that has to be done. Such work is destructive, and one could wish it did not need doing at all ; done at its best it dissatisfies us somewhat. Such a work was that of

Strauss in his famous Life of Jesus, a book almost to be regretted, in spite of all its great merits. But, nevertheless, it is one of the objects of this work to show that, after all that an unsparing criticism can say, the religious value of the Bible still remains, and that it speaks to the present generation with a power which, under the old conceptions, it could never hope to have. As for the results in Bible criticism which so far have been established by scholars, especially by the German scholars, I am not disposed to make too sweeping claims. But one thing at any rate criticism has established, for which, with all its failures, we should be very grateful to it, and that is the claim of the writings which make up the Bible to be treated as literature, as historical documents. Very much of our English and American criticism has failed to have any influence, and must of necessity fail, because it is not willing to recognize this fact ; it is a criticism which is still busying itself about theories of verbal inspiration, and which still hopes that it may be able to remove all inconsistencies from the Bible. No one who understands the spirit of these endeavors will have any desire to ridicule them ; but we must insist that they are hopeless, and, besides being hopeless, that they are doing a great deal to destroy the credit of the Bible itself. Such conceptions as these it will not be possible for me to argue against in detail ; to this end Mr. Ingersoll has been raised up, and Mr. Ingersoll we may safely leave with those who are interested in his writings, to settle matters among themselves. Nor is argument, however clear and logical it may be, likely to have very much influence in convincing any one, for of argument there never has been any lack. So long as men look at the Bible as a book direct from heaven, no

Introduction.

evidence that can be brought forward on the other side will ever be strong enough to outweigh its testimony. But we are coming to see that it is not possible to look upon the Bible as a book direct from heaven, we are finding out that the Bible is only one sacred book among many, and that it is not the Christian only who has his doctrine of infallibility. And if those to whom the narratives of the Bible are so sacred that they are not to be handled freely as other narratives are handled, could for just one moment stand aside from their own point of view, and could realize that criticism, if it is honest criticism, must begin by looking upon the Bible just as they themselves look upon other sacred books, as something to be tested just as other books are tested, at least some of the bitterness of controversy would be done away.

There is the more need to speak plainly and sharply in this matter, because many of our religious leaders are disposed to admit the principle, while they are not willing to apply it. The Bible, they say, may contain errors. But that any particular statement is an error, they will not admit so long as there is any way, probable or improbable, in which it may be explained. Now this is not consistent, and it is not quite honest ; it is pretending to treat the Bible in an impartial way, without treating it in a way that is actually impartial. When we are dealing with any other book we do not assume that its statements are true so long as there is any conceivable way in which they might be true ; we balance the evidence, and then we decide for the more probable view. And we must insist that the statements of the Bible are to be accepted or rejected on just the same degree of probability or improbability which would govern us anywhere else.

We have had no lack of discussion in recent years as to just what inspiration is, and how much ground it covers. Such discussions, one cannot help thinking, are to no very great profit. One who holds that the Bible is wholly without error is at the least consistent ; but if we admit but one error, however slight that error may be, we really have no right to stop half way. For if error is possible* then any particular statement may be in error, and there is nothing left for it but to test each statement upon its own merits. No more have we the right, while we hand over the history to criticism, to retain our claim of infallibility for the religious teaching. For, apart from the fact that we very often cannot separate the two, it is just in the religious teaching that we meet with some of the greatest difficulties. L,et us take such a story as that which is given in the twenty-first chapter of Second Samuel : Jehovah sends a famine upon the land because, some years before, Saul had slain the Gibeonites ; the seven sons of Saul are put to death, and Jehovah is appeased. Let us apply our test to it ; what should we have said if we had met with this story in any other book ? Without hesitation we should have said that it was barbarous and superstitious, a wholly unworthy notion of God. Then with no less hesitation let us say the same thing when it is in the Bible that we find it. So, too, in the New Testament we find the whole Church believing in a second coming of Christ, which should take place within a few years. This is a belief which is distinctly a religious belief, and yet for all that it was a mistaken belief, and we have to admit that it was mistaken.

If then we will make up our minds that God has not seen fit to give men a book which will save them the

Introduction.

trouble of doing their religious thinking for themselves, we shall find that we have left a theory of inspiration, which may not settle all our questions in so short and easy a fashion, but which at least has the advantage that it is something which can be verified. None of us, if we had lived in the days of Isaiah or of Paul, would, it is likely, have been willing to submit to Isaiah or to Paul, as to infallible guides, who could make no mistake in their teaching, any more than, in our own day, we should have been willing to submit to Mr. Arnold or Mr. Spurgeon. And the mere use of pen and ink surely gives no stamp of infallibility to any man's beliefs. But any one of us might have been glad to recognize in Isaiah or in Paul a man to whom had been granted a new insight into religious truth, truth which we accepted, not because it came from Isaiah or from Paul, but because it bore in itself the testimony to its own truthfulness. And in the Bible this is just what we have, we have the words, coming to us directly or through other men, of those who have been the world's greatest religious teachers ; only here we do not have them by word of mouth, but in the form of literature, of many different books. These books were called forth just as sermons and essays and histories are called forth now. In the same way they represent the convictions of the authors. But for just the reason that we do not believe there have lived in the world some thirty-five or forty men whose opinions on history and science and religion have been infallibly true, for just this reason we do not believe the books they have written are infallibly true. Just what is true and what is not true we have to determine exactly as we should determine it in the books of Mr. Arnold and Mr. Spurgeon. The statements of history and of

IO The Life and Teachings of Jesus.

science we have to judge by the rules which govern historical and scientific criticism ; the religious truths we must judge by their own inherent reasonableness.

And coming to the Bible in this way, treating it as we should treat any other book, it will not escape us that it is just in the matter of the miraculous that the case for the Bible is the weakest. For in other books it is precisely this supernatural element which we treat with the least hesitation ; when we meet with miracles we do not ask any one to prove to us that they are not true, we simply assume that they are not true. We may ask what foundation lies at the bottom of them, but even when there is no such foundation that we can come at, we are none the less sure that it is only with natural events that we have to do.

Now that this method men should hesitate to apply rigorously when they come to the Bible miracles, to the Gospel miracles most of all, one may not find very surprising. For the Gospel miracles there are many things to be said which one cannot say for other miracles, and upon the Gospel miracles, too, vastly more depends. But still men have been far too eager to establish their importance, and they have made much to depend upon them which really does not depend upon them at all. For the divine character of the Christian religion may stand, quite apart from the question of any miracles that are connected with it, and one may quite consistently hold to the one while he lets the other go. A miracle, we may say, defined in simple terms, is something which the working of natural and every day laws could not bring about, which is not the result of an orderly extension and development of forces with which we are acquainted, but an interruption of this development, whose value

Introduction. 1 1 lies just in the fact that it is not permanent, not something that we are used to, — putting aside philosophical refinements, this is what naturally we mean. Now so soon as one recognizes what a miracle is, he will see that to deny miracles is not at all to deny the presence of God, to deny the supernatural. Indeed one might fairly say to the arguer for miracles, When you insist upon the miraculous, you are neglecting the very thing which points most clearly to the supernatural. It is justin the fact of law, of orderly development, of the absence of what is simply disconnected and arbitrary, that men to-day are inclined to see the presence of God most clearly. The indications of a goal to which the universe is tending, and which was wrapped up in its very beginnings, the slow and steady progress from the simple to the complex along definite lines, the evidence of a purpose in the long stretch of material evolution and human history, this is where men now are looking to see God's hand at work. And it is because the Christian religion does not interrupt this development, but falls in naturally with it, because we see a religion slowly unfolding till it should be fit to become a world religion, because we see righteousness working itself out in an extraordinary nation and an extraordinary life, and then extending itself to raise the rest of the world to the same level, that we call that religion and that life divine. But you do not think that such proof is enough ; in law, it is true, you do find a revelation of God, and you insist upon it, but in his highest revelation you think that he has given up this proof and has gone over to the other side, that he revealed himself in law, and then he revealed himself by breaking his law.

And when you blame us, one might still go on to say, because in denying miracles we show a lack of faith in God, we might reply that this may be a matter of opinion. For to see a revelation of God in the Christian religion because it is reasonable, because it is worthy of God and in harmony with the other revelations that he has made, this also, we think, is faith after a sort, and perhaps as acceptable as a faith in miracles. For a miracle after all proves very little indeed, and strictly it has nothing to do at all with what is the real object of faith. A miracle only shows that the one who performs it has a certain power over physical things, and it does not prove in the least that his words are true, though naturally enough we are more ready to accept them as true. We might conceive certainly that God could not warrant his truth to us except by giving us a sample of what he can do, by showing us how powerful he is ; but it would be quite as worthy of God, we think, if the truth had in it the power to attest itself. Indeed the greatest weakness of your argument appears in what you yourselves admit. You will not treat fairly, you say to us, the evidence for miracles ; you assume to begin with that they are not true, you let your natural objection to them influence your judgment. To you this seems to be a serious fault, perhaps a moral fault, but to us what you say appears to overthrow your own position. That there is a natural objection to miracles which makes them not easily to be believed, that every day it is growing harder and harder to believe them, and that they cannot be received except on the firmest and surest evidence, you yourselves will be ready to admit. But miracles are only valuable for the proof they furnish ; in themselves they have for the most part no value at all. So that 3^ou are insisting that the Christian religion is to be proved by the very things

Introdtution. 1 3 which themselves are most in need of proof ; you tell us that the proof of God rests upon the miraculous, and then you blame us because we have not faith enough in God to believe the miracles. It does not seem to us that for God to place men in a world where, after they came to know it, a distrust of miracles would become inevitable, and then to base the proof of his revelation to them upon this very thing, would be either fair or likely ; and the fact that we find it natural to suspect the miraculous, shows, we think, that miracles do not happen.

For most people, doubtless, there will still be reasons which will keep them wholly from giving the miracles up, and most of all they will fear that they are detracting from the greatness of Jesus himself. The fear is a natural one, and it is not lightly to be disregarded ; but seriously we may ask ourselves whether the honor we have paid to Jesus has not been of a very doubtful sort after all, whether it has not been more a seeming honor than a real one. In our theologies, no doubt, and in our creeds, we have made much of him, but it has been the glory of a doctrine rather than the glory of a person, and of the real Jesus we have had far too little. And to the real Jesus we now must come, for the world no longer can content itself with a mockman ; full and true humanity it must have first of all. How are men who must walk by faith to be helped by one who walked by sight, men who must fight their way through doubts and perplexities, by one who remembers a former life in heaven, who is omniscient and all-powerful ? Such a view as this does not honor Jesus, but by making easy and necessary for him what for other men is hard, it makes it impossible that he should attain that which is a man's highest achievement, it takes away from him the blessedness of those who have not seen and yet have believed. The truth is, that if Jesus is to hold his old position, he must needs be rid first of the incubus of the sensuous and magical conceptions of religion with which he has been weighted. For these beliefs the foundations are rapidly crumbling away, and not even the authority of Jesus can hold them up much longer. Now, no one who has once submitted to the charm of Jesus' influence and has felt the immense power of his personality, can for a moment doubt that his position will be vindicated in the end ; nevertheless it is not so easy to give the proofs for one's faith, and to show just how the growth of legend which has gathered about the real Jesus and obscured his features is to be stripped away. It is this that I have made the attempt to do. I have not tried at all to treat questions of scholarship, except those necessary for my purpose, in an exhaustive way, nor to give a picture of the times in which Jesus lived. This already has been done much better than I could do it. Nor have I had any special desire to make a vivid narrative out of hazardous conjectures. What I have had in mind particularly to do was to bring the results of a careful criticism of the Gospels to bear upon the words attributed to Jesus, and to bring together into a consistent picture whatever the test may have left untouched. The beauty and the grandeur of this picture as it exists in my own mind I fear I have not been able to reproduce, but at least I trust I have removed some of the hindrances to each man's seeing that beauty for himself.

I know that there are many to whom this book, if they ever happen to read it, will seem to be only an attack on what they hold as sacred. I shall be sorry

Introduction, 1 5 if this is so, but I do not see how it can well be helped. I have tried to let the facts make their own impression upon me, and I can do no better than to tell frankly what that impression is. And in the end I feel sure this will prove the truest method. Enough compromise in religious matters we have had already. If the scalpel does not go deep enough, the pain has been of no avail and the operation might as well never have been performed. I cannot feel surprised, however, that men should want to keep their own beliefs, and should not like to see them treated too roughly ; and I believe that the spirit which prompts this deserves all consideration. Our liberal writers of late years have made us tolerably familiar with the idea, no doubt startling enough in its time, that belief, after all, is not of very much account in religion, and that we may be satisfied if we can acquit ourselves fairly in the matter of conduct. Why, they are accustomed to say, should we trouble ourselves about creeds and articles of faith ? I*et us stop preaching doctrines, and let us go to preaching practical duties ; it makes but little difference what a man believes so long as his life is right. Our knowledge at the best is fragmentary and uncertain ; let us recognize this, and let us not try to force it upon other men besides. And up to a certain point at least, as a protest against dogmatism, this idea is true and admirable enough. Certainly we ought not to lose sight of our own fallibility ; humility is an intellectual virtue which might with profit be cultivated more carefully, even among liberal thinkers. Still one cannot help feeling that creeds have been dismissed in somewhat too contemptuous a way ; one hardly likes to treat his beliefs in so cavalier a fashion. It is true, no doubt, that my conceptions of truth are far from being perfect ; but