§ 1
The Christian gospels, broadly considered, stand for a certain measure of freethinking reaction against the Jewish religion, and are accordingly to be reckoned with in the present inquiry; albeit their practical outcome was only an addition to the world’s supernaturalism and traditional dogma. To estimate aright their share of freethought, we have but to consider the kind and degree of demand they made on the reason of the ancient listener, as apart, that is, from the demand made on their basis for the recognition of a new Deity. When this is done it will be found that they express in parts a process of reflection which outwent even critical common sense in a kind of ecstatic Stoicism, an oriental repudiation of the tyranny of passions and appetites; in other parts a mysticism that proceeds as far beyond the credulity of ordinary faith. Socially considered, they embody a similar opposition between an anarchistic and a partly orthodox or regulative ideal. The plain inference is that they stand for many independent movements of thought in the Græco-Roman world. It is actually on record that the reduction of the whole law to love of one’s neighbour[1] was taught before the Christian era by the famous Rabbi Hillel;[2] and the gospel itself[3] shows that this view was current. In another passage[4] the reduction of the ten commandments to five again indicates a not uncommon disregard for the ecclesiastical side of the law. But the difference between the two passages points of itself to various forces of relative freethought.
Any attentive study of the gospels discloses not merely much glossing and piecing and interpolating of documents, but a plain medley of doctrines, of ideals, of principles; and to accept the mass of disconnected utterances ascribed to “the Lord,” many of them associated with miracles, as the oral teaching of any one man, is a proceeding so uncritical that in no other study could it now be followed. The simple fact that the Pauline Epistles (by whomsoever written) show no knowledge of any Jesuine miracles or teachings whatever, except as regards the Last Supper ([1 Cor. xi, 24–25]—a passage obviously interpolated), admits of only three possible interpretations: (1) the Jesus then believed in had not figured as a teacher at all; or (2) the writer or writers gave no credit or attached no importance to reports of his teachings. Either of these views (of which the first is plainly the more plausible) admits of (3) the further conclusion that the Pauline Jesus was not the Gospel Jesus, but an earlier one—a fair enough hypothesis; but on that view the mass of Dominical utterances in the gospels is only so much the less certificated. When, then, it is admitted by all open-minded students that the events in the narrative are in many cases fictitious, even when they are not miraculous, it is wholly inadmissible that the sayings should be trustworthy, as one man’s teachings.
Analysing them in collation, we find even in the Synoptics, and without taking into account the Fourth Gospel, such wide discrepancies as the following:—
1. The doctrine: “the Kingdom of God is among you” ([Lk. xvii, 21]), side by side with promises of the speedy arrival of the Son of Man, whose coming = the Kingdom of God (cp. [Mt. iii, 2, 3]; [iv, 17]; [Mk. i, 15]).
2. The frequent profession to supersede the Law ([Mt. v, 21], [33], [38], [43], etc.); and the express declaration that not one jot or tittle thereof is to be superseded ([Mt. v, 17–20]).
3. Proclamation of a gospel for the poor and the enslaved ([Lk. iv, 18]); with the tacit acceptance of slavery ([Lk. xvii, 7, 9, 10]; where the word translated “servant” in the A.V., and let pass by McClellan, Blackader, and other reforming English critics, certainly means “slave”).
4. Stipulation for the simple fulfilment of the Law as a passport to eternal life, with or without further self-denial ([Mt. xix, 16–21]; [Lk. x, 28]; [xviii, 22]); on the other hand a stipulation for simple benevolence, as in the Egyptian ritual ([Mt. xxv]; cp. [Lk. ix, 48]); and yet again stipulations for blind faith ([Mt. x, 15]) and for blood redemption ([Mt. xxvi, 28]).
5. Alternate promise ([Mt. vi, 33]; [xix, 29]) and denial ([Mt. x, 34–39]) of temporal blessings.
6. Alternate commands to secrecy ([Mt. xii, 16]; [viii, 4]; [ix, 30]; [Mk. iii, 12]; [v, 43]; [vii, 36]) and to publicity ([Mt. vii, 7–8]; [Mk. v, 19]) concerning miracles, with a frequent record of their public performance.
7. Specific restriction of salvation to Israelites ([Mt. x, 5, 6]; [xv, 24]; [xix, 28]); equally specific declaration that the Kingdom of God shall be to another nation ([Mt. xxii, 43]); no less specific assurance that the Son of Man (not the Twelve as in [Mt. xix, 28]) shall judge all nations, not merely Israel ([Mt. xxv, 32]; cp. [viii, 11]).
8. Profession to teach all, especially the simple and the childlike ([Mt. xviii, 3]; [xi, 25, 28–30]; [Mk. x, 15]); on the contrary, a flat declaration ([Mt. xiii, 10–16]; [Mk. iv, 11]; [Lk. viii, 10]; cp. [Mk. iv, 34]) that the saving teaching is only for the special disciples; yet again ([Mt. xv, 16]; [Mk. vi, 52]; [viii, 17, 18]) imputations of lack of understanding to them.
9. Companionship of the Teacher with “publicans and sinners” ([Mt. ix, 10]); and, on the other hand, a reference to the publicans as falling far short of the needed measure of loving-kindness ([Mt. v, 46]).
10. Explicit contrarieties of phrase, not in context ([Mt. xii, 30]; [Lk. xi, 50]).
11. Flat contradictions of narrative as to the Teacher’s local success ([Mt. xiii, 54–58]; [Lk. iv, 23]).
12. Insistence that the Messiah is of the Davidic line ([Mt. i]; [xxi, 15]; [Lk. i, 27]; [ii, 4]), and that he is not ([Mt. xxii, 43–45]; [Mk. xii, 35–37]; [Lk. xx]).
13. Contradictory precepts as to limitation and non-limitation of forgiveness ([Mt. xviii, 17], [22]).
Such variously serious discrepancies count for more than even the chronological and other divergences of the records concerning the Birth, the Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, as proofs of diversity of source; and they may be multiplied indefinitely. The only course for criticism is to admit that they stand for the ideas of a variety of sects or movements, or else for an unlimited manipulation of the documents by individual hands. Many of them may very well have come from various so-called “Lords” and “Messiahs”; but they cannot be from a single teacher.
There remains open the fascinating problem as to whether some if not all of the more notable teachings may not be the utterances of one teacher of commanding originality, whose sectaries were either unable to appreciate or unable to keep separate his doctrine.[5] Undoubtedly some of the better teachings came first from men of superior capacity and relatively deep ethical experience. The veto on revenge, and the inculcation of love to enemies, could not come from commonplace minds; and the saying preserved from the Gospel According to the Hebrews, “Unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease from you,” has a remarkable ring.[6] But when we compare the precept of forgiveness with similar teachings in the Hebrew books and the Talmud,[7] we realize that the capacity for such thought had been shown by a number of Jewish teachers, and that it was a specific result of the long sequence of wrong and oppression undergone by the Jewish people at the hands of their conquerors. The unbearable, consuming pain of an impotent hate, and the spectacle of it in others—this experience among thoughtful men, and not an unconditioned genius for ethic in one, is the source of a teaching which, categorically put as it is in the gospels, misses its meaning with most who profess to admire it; the proof being the entire failure of most Christians in all ages to act on it. To say nothing of similar teaching in Old Testament books and in the Talmud, we have it in the most emphatic form in the pre-Christian “Slavonic Enoch.”[8]
A superior ethic, then, stands not for one man’s supernormal insight, but for the acquired wisdom of a number of wise men. And it is now utterly impossible to name the individual framers of the gospel teachings, good or bad. The central biography dissolves at every point before critical tests; it is a mythical construction.[9] Of the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount, many are ancient; of the parabolic and other teachings, some of the most striking occur only in the third gospel, and are unquestionably late. And when we are asked to recognize a unique personality behind any one doctrine, such as the condemnation of sacrifice in the uncanonical Hebrew Gospel, we can but answer (1) that on the face of the case this doctrine appears to come from a separate circle; (2) that the renunciation of sacrifice was made by many Greek and Roman writers,[10] and by earlier teachers among the Hebrews;[11] and (3) that in the Talmud, and in such a pre-Christian document as the “Slavonic Enoch,” there are teachings which, had they occurred in the gospels, would have been confidently cited as unparalleled in ancient literature. The Talmudic teachings, so vitally necessary in Jewry, that “it is better to be persecuted than persecutor,” and that, “were the persecutor a just man and the persecuted an impious, God would still be on the side of the persecuted,”[12] are not equalled for practical purposes by any in the Christian sacred books; and the Enochic beatitude, “Blessed is he who looks to raise his own hand for labour,”[13] is no less remarkable. But it is impossible to associate these teachings with any outstanding personality, or any specific movements; and to posit a movement-making personality in the sole case of certain scattered sayings in the gospels is critically inadmissible.
There is positively no ground for supposing that any selected set of teachings constituted the basis or the original propaganda of any single Christian sect, primary or secondary; and the whole known history of the cult tells against the hypothesis that it ever centred round those teachings which to-day specially appeal to the ethical rationalist. Such teachings are more likely to be adventitious than fundamental, in a cult of sacrificial salvation. When an essentially rationalistic note is struck in the gospels, as in the insistence[14] that a notable public catastrophe is not to be regarded in the old Jewish manner as a punishment for sin, it is cancelled in the next sentence by an interpolation which unintelligently reaffirms the very doctrine denied.[15] So with the teaching[16] that the coming worship is to be neither Judaic nor Samaritan: the next sentence reaffirms Jewish particularism in the crudest way. The main movement, then, was clearly superstitious.
It remains to note the so-far rationalistic character of such teachings as the protests against ceremonialism and sabbatarianism, the favouring of the poor and the outcast, the extension of the future life to non-Israelites, and the express limitation of prayer ([Mt. vi, 9]; [Lk. xi, 2]) to a simple expression of religious feeling—a prescription which has been absolutely ignored through the whole history of the Church, despite the constant use of the one prayer prescribed—itself a compilation of current Jewish phrases.
The expression in the Dominical prayer translated “Give us this day [or day by day] our daily bread” ([Mt. vi, 11]; [Lk. xi, 3]) is pointless and tautological as it stands in the English and other Protestant versions. In verse 8 is the assurance that the Father knows beforehand what is needed; the prayer is, therefore, to be a simple process of communion or advocation, free of all verbiage; then, to make it specially ask for the necessary subsistence, without which life would cease, and further to make the demand each day, when in the majority of cases there would be no need to offer such a request, is to stultify the whole. If the most obvious necessity is to be urged, why not all the less obvious? The Vulgate translation, “Give us to-day our super-substantial bread,” though it has the air of providing for the Mass, is presumptively the original sense; and is virtually supported by McClellan (N. T. 1875, ii, 645–47), who notes that the repeated use of the article, τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον, implies a special meaning, and remarks that of all the suggested translations “daily” is “the very one which is mostly manifestly and utterly condemned.” Compare the bearing of the verses [Mt. vi, 25–26], [31–34], which expressly exclude the idea of prayer for bread, and [Lk. xi, 13]. The idea of a super-substantial bread seems already established in Philo, De Legum Allegor. iii, 55–57, 59–61. Naturally the average theologian (e.g., Bishop Lightfoot, cited by McClellan) clings to the conception of a daily appeal to the God for physical sustenance; but in so doing he is utterly obscuring the original doctrine.
Properly interpreted, the prayer forms a curious parallel to the close of the tenth satire of Juvenal, above cited, where all praying for concrete boons is condemned, on the ground that the Gods know best, and that man is dearer to them than to himself; but where there is permitted (of course, illogically) an appeal for soundness of mind and spiritual serenity. The documents would be nearly contemporary, and, though independent, would represent kindred processes of ethical and rational improvement on current religious practice. On the other hand, the prayer, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”—which again rings alien to the context—would have been scouted by Juvenal as representing a bad survival of the religion of fear. Several early citations and early MSS., it should be noted, give a briefer version of the prayer, beginning, “Father, hallowed be thy name,” and dropping the “Thy will be done” clause, as well as the “deliver us from evil,” though including the “lead us not into temptation.”
It may or may not have been that this rationalization of religion was originally preached by the same sect or school as gave the exalted counsel to resist not evil and to love enemies—a line of thought found alike in India and in China, and, in the moderate form of a veto on retaliation, in Greece and Rome.[17] But it is inconceivable that the same sect originally laid down the doctrines of the blood sacrifice and the final damnation of those who did not accept the Messiah ([Mt. x]). The latter dogmas, with the myths, naturally became the practical creed of the later Church, for which the counsel of non-solicitous prayer and the love of enemies were unimaginable ideals.[18] Equally incapable of realization by a State Church was the anti-Pharisaical and “Bohemian” attitude ascribed to the founder, and the spirit of independence towards the reigning powers. For the rest, the occult doctrine that a little faith might suffice to move mountains—a development from the mysticisms of the Hebrew prophets—could count for nothing save as an incitement to prayer in general. The freethinking elements in the gospels, in short, were precisely those which historic Christianity inevitably cast aside.