“He also dislikes arithmetical ‘greatness’ and discussions about ‘who is the greatest?’ He prefers to lay stress on unity. Christians, he thinks, are ‘one with the Son,’ or they are ‘in’ the Son, or the Son is ‘in’ them. They are also to be ‘one,’ as the Father and the Son are ‘one.’ When men are regarded in this way, arithmetical standards of greatness—based on one’s income, or on the amount of one’s alms, or the amount of one’s prayers, or one’s sufferings, or one’s converts—become ridiculous. He is quite right.
“He makes no mention of ‘repentance.’ That, I think, is because he prefers such expressions as ‘coming to God’ or ‘coming to the light,’ rather than mere ‘change of mind.’ He never uses the noun ‘faith’ or ‘belief.’ Probably he found it in use as a technical term among some foolish Christians—speaking of ‘faith that moves mountains’—who forgot to ask ‘faith in what?’ For the same reason, no doubt, he preferred the word ‘signs’ to ‘mighty works,’ because the former—at all events while it was a novel term—might make men ask ‘signs of what?’ The phrase ‘mighty work’ makes us ask nothing. Nor does a ‘mighty’ work prove anything, except that the doer is ‘mighty’—perhaps a giant, perhaps a magician, perhaps a God. Who is to decide? Epictetus says that Ceres and Pluto are proved to be Gods because they produce ‘bread.’ So this John represents Christ as producing bread and wine and healing disease and raising the dead; and these are ‘signs’ that he is a Giver of divine gifts and a Healer, like Apollo.
“In the case of one miracle, omitted by Luke, John intervenes and gives the sign a different aspect—I mean the one in which Mark and Matthew represent Christ as walking over the water to the disciples in a storm and as coming into their boat. John represents Christ as standing on the edge of the sea and as drawing the disciples safely to himself as soon as they cry out to him. I have no doubt that the story is an allegory. But John seems to me to give it in the nobler, and perhaps the earlier, form.
“There were probably multitudes of exorcisms performed by Jesus, as I have said to you before. But John does not mention a single instance. Perhaps he thought that more than enough had been said about these things by the earlier evangelists. On the other hand, he describes the healing of a man born blind, and the raising of a man named Lazarus from the dead, after he had lain in the tomb three days.
“The nearest approach to this is a story in Luke about raising from the coffin a young man, the son of a widow. I was long ago inclined to think Luke’s story allegorical, and a curious book, which recently came into my hands, confirms this view. It is assigned to Ezra, but was really written, at least in its present form, about five and twenty years ago. I think it mixes Jewish and Christian thought. Ezra sees a vision of a woman sorrowing for her only child. She has had no son till after ‘thirty years’ of wedlock. The son grew up and was to be married. When he ‘entered into his wedding chamber, he fell down and died.’ Presently it is explained, ‘The woman is Sion.’ For ‘thirty years’ there was ‘no offering.’ After ‘thirty years,’ Solomon ‘builded the city and offered offerings.’ Then Jerusalem was destroyed. But Ezra sees a new city builded, ‘a large place.’ It is a strange mixture. David, says the scripture, was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he began to reign, and he may be supposed to have died about the time when the Temple began to be built. On the other hand Christ also was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he began to preach the gospel, and Christ might be said to have died at the time when he entered the Temple to purify it (that is, as Jews might say, ‘entered the wedding chamber’).
“I don’t profess to explain all this Ezra-allegory. The only point worth noting is that it describes events that befell the City and the Temple of the Jews as though they befell persons—a ‘woman’ and a deceased ‘son.’ Luke omits the charge brought against Christ that he threatened to destroy ‘the temple’ and build another. But there can be no doubt that there was some basis of fact for the charge. John gives that basis, by saying that Christ had in view a ‘body,’ meaning himself. This indicates that Luke was misled through not understanding Jewish metaphor. So here Luke may have been misled again. He found a tradition describing the ‘raising up’ of the ‘widow’s son,’ and he took it literally.” The explanation thus suggested by Scaurus seemed to me probable. It explained why Luke omitted “the raising up of the temple.” It also explained why Mark and Matthew omitted “the raising up of the widow’s son.”
Scaurus proceeded to the account of the raising of Lazarus. “This narrative,” he said, “is extremely beautiful and may perhaps have had some basis of historical fact. Luke speaks of a Lazarus, who dies, and is carried after death into Abraham’s bosom. Some Christians might take this Lazarus for a historical character. But I do not think any confusion arising from that story can have had very much to do with the story in John. The latter seems to me to have been thrown into allegorical form, so that Lazarus may represent humanity, first, corrupt, mere ‘flesh and blood’; secondly, raised up by ‘the help of God.’ ‘My God helps’ is the meaning of Eliezer or Lazarus. Philo sees in the name these two associations. Also a Christian writer named Barnabas has some curious traditions that may bear on this name; and so have the Jews. Possibly John may mean—over and above the man Lazarus—the human race, raised up to life by the Messiah at the intercession of two sisters, representing the Jewish and the Gentile Churches of the Christians. Similarly I am told that Christians describe the two sisters Leah and Rachel as representing the Synagogue and the Church.
“For my part, having spoken to many physicians, and having investigated some instances of revivification, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus possessed a remarkable power of healing the sick and even perhaps of restoring life to those from whom (to all appearance) life had recently departed. Nay, I am dreamer enough to go beyond anything that physicians would allow, and to suppose that Christ may have had a certain power of what I called above teliatreia, ‘healing at a distance,’ producing a corresponding telepatheia, or ‘being healed at a distance.’ But there is against this particular narrative the objection—not to be overcome except by very strong evidence indeed—that the other evangelists say nothing about this stupendous miracle. Having in view Christ’s precept to the disciples, ‘Raise the dead,’ I see how easily honest Christians might be led to take metaphor for fact. It is much more easy to explain how the narratives of the widow’s son and of Lazarus may have arisen from misunderstanding in the two latest gospels, than to explain how, though true, they were omitted in the two earliest.”
Upon this, I read the story of the raising of Lazarus two or three times over. It appeared to me certain that the writer of the gospel must have taken the story as literally true. But I saw how easy it was to mistake metaphor for literal meaning in stories of this kind. I was also impressed by what Scaurus said concerning the precept, “Raise the dead,” which is recorded by Matthew. No other writer mentions this; and I had assumed, at the time of which I am now speaking, that it was meant spiritually, and that Luke omitted it because he thought that it might be misunderstood as having a literal meaning. And here I may say, writing forty-five years afterwards, that I have lately spoken to several of the brethren about this precept. Some leave it out of their text of Matthew. Some refuse to say anything about it. But I have not as yet found a single brother ready to admit that Jesus must have used it, or even probably used it, metaphorically.
All this I did not know at the time when I was reading Scaurus’s letter; but I recognised the force of his arguments and was constrained to sympathize with his disappointment when he proceeded as follows: “O, my dearest Quintus, what earthen vessels, what mere potsherds, these gospel writers are, even the best of them, in comparison with the man whom they fail to set before us! Yes, even this John, whom I regard as by far the greatest of them all, even he is a failure—but in his case, perhaps, from want of knowledge, not from want of insight. As for the others, why do they not trust to the greatness of their subject, the man Jesus Christ? Why can they not believe that the Logos might become incarnate as a man, that is to say, a real man—what Jesus himself calls ‘son of man’? Why do they lay so much stress on mere ‘mighty works,’ some of which, even if they could be proved to have happened, would give us little insight into the real greatness of their Master, whom they wish us to worship?