The story antedates but a little while the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and his Roman legions; when Jesus was born Augustus was emperor; when Jesus entered upon his ministry Tiberius Cæsar was in the fifteenth year of his reign; his lieutenant, Pontius Pilate, governed Judea as a subject province, and his soldiers kept the peace in the holy city.
Consider how impossible it is for myths to originate after written history, in the sun-glare of life in a full-grown nation. Even the pretty stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table belong to that far-away period in England when there was no written history worth the name, when letters were almost unknown, when all was young and fresh and ignorant, and the fairies still ruled in the forests.
Think of a myth starting up to-day in London under the shadow of St. Paul’s and Parliament House. Think of the world in our time talking of “Chinese Gordon” if there had lived no “Chinese Gordon.” If the people who have letters, and write histories, and “turn the world upside-down” with the gospel story, should leave the poor savages of the Congo Valley to themselves, thousands of years from our times Livingstone and Stanley will live in African traditions as godlike men; and so new myths will be born, will grow and fix themselves in the legends of these lands where they have done many wonderful works—but London and New York will breed no myths concerning Livingstone and Stanley.
[CHAPTER VI.]
JESUS AND HEBREW HUMAN NATURE.
There are writers who see clearly that the four evangelists could not have invented the character of Jesus, and who know that the story of his manifestation violates every known law that governs the birth and growth of myths; but they tell us Jesus was nevertheless only a man. They say he did really live in Palestine in the days of Augustus, Tiberius, Herod, and Pilate, and that he was only a man after all—a man of very great gifts and virtues, the best man and the greatest teacher that ever lived. This means that human nature was capable of producing Jesus; it means that Hebrew human nature in that country and in that age was capable of producing Jesus, his doctrines and his life. In other words, he was a most extraordinary but still a natural product of his race, country, and time; the normal product, though the consummate flower, of Jewish life.
In considering that the evangelists, granting them ability of all sorts for the invention of so perfect a character and such a character, must have given us a different character, some of the difficulties of the natural development theory were incidentally brought into view. But there are other matters to be fairly considered in connection with this method of accounting for Jesus.
Jesus, in one of the simplest—yet it is one of the profoundest and most comprehensive of philosophical principles—gave us the germ of our inductive philosophy and our modern scientific method. When he said, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” he taught us that we are to make our theories conform to ascertained facts rather than explain our facts by our preconceived theories. It is by the fruit we are to know what the quality of the tree is.
What manner of fruit grew on this long-lived Hebrew tree? You can seek the answer for yourself; all Hebrew history will tell you.