“Now I put it to you, Silanus, as a reasonable man, whether it is worth while investigating a superstition as to which the earliest documents disagree concerning such a fundamental fact (or rather allegation). These Christians—for I am informed they mostly take Paul’s view—assert that their Founder made a ‘new covenant’ between them and God on a special night. Three of them give accounts—detailed accounts—of all manner of things that happened on that night. A fourth, Paul, professes to give the very words of the Founder of the Covenant, as he received them from the Founder himself, not alive of course but dead! And he, Paul, alone of the four, mentions the phrase ‘new covenant.’ What do you think of this?”
Indeed I did not know what to think of it. And Scaurus’s next words almost decided me to take his view of the whole matter, to put away all my Jewish and Christian books and to have done with every kind of philosophy. “Spare me,” so the postscript proceeded, “for the sake of the immortal Gods, my dearest Quintus, spare me the pain—during the few years or months of life that may still remain for me—of seeing the son of my dearest friend ensnared in the net of a beguiling superstition that must lead you away from your duty to your country. Be kind to me and to your father.”
Not having read the preceding part of his letter, I was amazed at this outburst of alarm in my behalf. But I perceived that, with his usual sympathetic insight, he had read some of my thoughts almost before I was conscious of them myself, and I was grateful to him. If he had stopped there, I sometimes think things might have happened differently. But he continued, “Truth, as Sophocles says, is always right. Be true to the truth. Be true to yourself. Amid all the shifting fancies and falsehoods around you, esteem the knowledge of yourself the only knowledge that is certain and unchangeable. In that respect the old philosophers were right. ‘Know thyself’ is the only divine precept. On self-knowledge alone is based the only covenant—if indeed it is fit to imagine any covenant—between God and man.”
From these last words I found myself in absolute revolt. During the past few days I had come to think that perhaps the only certain and unchangeable truth was that self-knowledge without other knowledge is impossible, or, if possible, most harmful. Dissenting from these last words I went back to dissent further, or rather to draw a different inference. “Truth is always right.” Then could it be right for me to give up the search for truth, lest I should pain myself or Scaurus? From my father, one of the most just and honourable of men, how often had I heard the maxim, Audi alteram partem! Why should I not “hear the other side” since that very day had placed at my disposal (thanks to Flaccus) the means of doing this? Scaurus had indirectly challenged me to do it. My father had, in a sense, commanded it. Before I retired to rest that night, I resolved to devote the whole of the next day, and as much time as I could spare afterwards, to the examination of the Christian gospels.
CHAPTER XIX
HOW SCAURUS STUDIED THE THREE GOSPELS
Beginning with the passages that described the Lord’s Supper, I soon found that Scaurus was correct in saying that the words of the Lord quoted by Paul were not in any of the gospels. But my copy of Luke—an old one, having been transcribed in the reign of the emperor Nerva as the scribe stated—contained a note in the margin, not in the scribe’s handwriting, “After ‘my body,’ some later copies have these words, ‘which is being given in your behalf. Do this to my remembering; and the cup likewise, after supping, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood which is being shed for you’.” Now these words were very similar to Paul’s quotation, and Flaccus had told me that Luke was a companion of Paul. So I reflected that Luke must often have partaken of the Christian Supper with Paul, and must have heard these words from Paul. Why therefore were the words omitted in Luke, except in “some later copies”? Mark, Matthew, and Paul agreed in inserting some mention of “covenant.” Why did Luke, Paul’s companion, alone omit it?
Looking into the matter more closely, I found that Luke, though he omitted the phrase about “covenant,” inserted in his context some mention of “covenanting,” or “making covenant,” as follows: “I covenant unto you as my Father covenanted unto me.” The “covenant” was “a kingdom, that ye may eat and drink at my table.” Also, in the same context, Jesus said, “The kings of the nations lord it over them, and those who play the despot over them are called”—I think he meant, “called” by their flatterers—“benefactors. But you, not so.” And Jesus went on to say, “He that ruleth must be as he that serveth,” and, “I am among you as he that serveth.” The words “my Father covenanted unto me” appeared to mean a covenant of sacrifice, namely, that the Son was to sacrifice Himself for the sins of the world, and to pass, through that sacrifice, into the Kingdom at the right hand of the Father. And the other words meant that Jesus “covenanted” with the disciples that they should sacrifice themselves in like manner, taking Him as it were into themselves, by drinking the blood of the sacrifice (that is, His blood) and eating its flesh or body (that is, His body). And thus they, too, being made one with Him, were to pass into the Kingdom.
Such a “covenant” as this, would, I perceived, be so “new” that it might be described as turning the world upside down—all the kings serving their subjects, all the masters waiting on their servants. This was indeed strange. But it was not peculiar to Luke. Mark and Matthew (I found) had a similar doctrine, though not in this passage; only, instead of “I am among you as he that serveth,” they had, “to give his soul as a ransom for many.” This accorded with what was said above, namely, that the “covenant,” or condition, on which the Son came into the world, was, that He should be the “servant,” or “sacrifice,” or “ransom,” for mankind. All three names expressed aspects of one and the same thing. David had said, “The sacrifice of the Lord is a contrite spirit.” That meant, contrite for one’s own sins. Jesus seemed to go outside a man’s self, and to say, “The sacrifice of the Lord is a spirit of service to others.” Romans, I reflected, would call this doctrine either an impracticable dream, or—if practicable, and if attempted—a pestilent revolution. But once more the thought recurred that the Jew would say to us, as the Egyptian said to Solon, “You Romans are but children,” and that, although Rome had the power (as Virgil said) of “subjecting the proud oppressors in war,” it might not have what Epictetus described as the power of the true Ruler (which this Jewish Ruler seemed to claim), namely, to draw the subjects towards the ruler with the chain of “passionate affection.”