Scaurus next asserted that some disagreements here between the evangelists arose from translating Hebrew into Greek. Where Mark has “and they drank,” Matthew has “drink ye.” Scaurus said that the same Hebrew might produce these two Greek translations. “Also,” said he, “supposing Jesus to have said in his native tongue, This is my body for you, some might take ‘for you’ to mean ‘given to you as a gift,’ but others ‘given for you as a sacrifice’.” Hence he inferred that it was hardly possible to discover what Jesus actually said, because, besides differences of memory in the witnesses, there might be differences of translation in those who remembered the same words. But on the other side, if Scaurus was right, the facts shewed the independence of the witnesses, as well as their honesty and accuracy. If Jesus used one Jewish phrase that might imply two meanings, it seemed natural that his disciples should try to express both meanings in Greek. The nearness of the Passover (at the time when the words were uttered), and the connexion in scripture between “covenant” and “sacrifice,” and many things that I had read in Paul’s epistles, made me believe that “sacrifice” was implied. Why should not the disciples suppose that their Saviour bequeathed a legacy to them that was also a sacrifice for them? This seemed to me a beautiful and intelligible belief.
The result was that I resolved not to give up the study of these books. Repeating my father’s maxim, Audi alteram partem, “Scaurus,” I said, “shall be on one side, and the three gospels”—which I spread out on the table—“shall be on the other.” I soon found, however, that my task was not so simple. There was not merely “the other side,” there were often three “sides”—so strangely did the gospels vary. Scaurus made a fourth, or, rather, a commentary on the three. From my youth up (thanks largely to Scaurus) I had some skill in comparing histories. It was necessary first (I perceived) to have the three gospels side by side. For this purpose, the penknife and the pen—the former for transposing, the latter for transcribing—had to be freely used. Mark’s gospel I preserved intact. Extracts from Matthew and Luke—copying or cutting them out—I placed parallel to the corresponding passages in Mark. I also made use of marginal notes in my MS. referring me to parallel passages in the other gospels or in the scriptures. Some days were spent in this labour. After that, I determined to attend lectures regularly, but to devote all my leisure to a close examination of the gospels with the help of Scaurus’s comments. Now I must speak of his letter.
It began, as his postscript had ended, with a personal appeal, warning me against a tendency to dreaming, “which,” said he, “I think you must have inherited from my Etrurian grandmother, whose blood runs in your veins—through your dear mother—as well as in mine. I myself, at times, have to fight against it.” Then he cautioned me against the Jews. “They are all of them,” he said, “dangerous people, though in different ways. There are two sorts, plotters and dreamers; the plotters, all for themselves; the dreamers, all for someone else, or something else (the Gods know what!) outside themselves. Now a dreamer in the west, mostly a Greek (for a Roman dreamer is a rare bird) is a harmless creature—dreaming passively. But the Jewish dreamer dreams actively. He is, to use the Greek adjective, hypnotic. If I might invent a Greek verb, I would say that he ‘hypnotizes’ people. He makes others dream what he dreams. And his dreams are not the dreams of Morpheus, ‘golden slumbers’ on ‘heaped Elysian flowers.’ No, they are often dreams like those of Hercules Furens—destroying himself and his friends while he thinks he is destroying ‘powers of evil’! I have known several Jews, some very good, more very bad; only one, perhaps, half-and-half. That was Flavius Josephus, whose histories you have read. He could be all things to all men in a very clever way, mostly for his people, sometimes for himself.
“Paul was all things to all men in a very different way, and always the same way. Paul, as you know, frankly warns his readers, ‘I am become all things to all men that I may by all means save some,’ and ‘I became to the Jews a Jew that I might gain the Jews’—not for himself, of course, but for his Master, the King of the Jews. I have never told you, before, something that I will tell you now—to warn you against these Jews, especially the Christian Jews. I once saw this Paul, only once. I was but a boy. He was standing, chained, in a corridor in the palace, waiting to be heard. One of the Prætorian guard was talking to him and Paul was replying, while my father and I were passing by; and my father, having something to say to the guardsman, made some courteous remark to Paul about interrupting their talk. Paul stood up. He was rather short, and bent down besides with the weight of his chains; and the guardsman (quite against regulations) had put a stool for him to rest on. He reached up his face to my father’s as though he could not see very distinctly: but it was not exactly the eyes, but the look in them, the unearthly look, that I shall never forget. No doubt, he was thankful for the few syllables of kindness. It seemed to me as if he wished to return the kindness in kind. He said something. What it was I don’t know. Probably bad Greek or worse Latin. Thanks of some sort, no doubt. But it was the look—the look and the tone, that struck me. Struck! No, rather, bewitched. For days and nights afterwards I saw that man’s face, and heard his voice in my dreams. I did not like the dreams. But he made me dream. He was a retiarius. If he had had me alone for a day or two, I feel even now that he would have caught me in his Christian net. I don’t want you to be caught.”
Then Scaurus went on to speak of himself at some length. I will set down his exact words for two reasons. First, they shew what pains he had taken to prepare himself for the work of a critic. Secondly, his letter seemed to me to explain in part why he was so set against what he called the soporific or hypnotic art of Paul. He and I approached the apostle in different circumstances. I came to Paul before coming to the gospels. He read the gospels first, and found it impossible to believe them. Then, with a mind settled and fixed against belief, approaching Paul, he found—this I believe to be the fact—that Paul was drawing him towards Christ. He resisted the constraint, thinking that he was resisting a sort of witchcraft. Yes, and even to the end of his life, he fought against the truth, seeing it masked as falsehood. Yet assuredly he loved the truth and spared no pains to reach it. Let my old friend speak for himself in what I will call—
SCAURUS’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“While I am in the mood for telling secrets I may say that, for me, too, this Christian superstition has not been without attractions; and, had there been anything solid in it, I think I should have ascertained it. You must know that in the last year or two of Domitian this sect was brought into notice in Rome among the highest circles by rather painful circumstances—painful, I mean, to me. I had retired from the army. As soon as I had recovered from my wounds, enough to be able to limp about, I looked round me for something to do. I was not in favour with the Emperor. He had lost reputation in the Dacian war; and he was supposed to dislike those officers—there were only a few—who had done creditably in that most discreditable business. I was supposed to be one of the few. At all events, in the ‘regrettable incident’ of Fuscus, I brought off most of my men safe, and we did not run away. Well, I thought I had better lead a retired life. So under the plea of disablement—which was unfortunately only too true, as I was lamed for life—I kept at home in Tusculum all through the reign of Domitian, giving myself up to literature.
“Even as a boy, I was very fond of Greek, and I liked learning it in my own way and not according to the ways of my masters. My way was to commit to memory—and to keep in memory by constant repetition, a very different thing from mere ‘committing’—great masses of such literature as I liked best. Many and many a time have I met and passed a friend or schoolfellow in the Via Sacra, and heard his voice behind me, ‘Are you going to cut me, Scaurus?’ But I had not been ‘Scaurus’ when I passed him. I had been Medea frantic, or Demosthenes haranguing the Athenians, or Plato describing Thales on the well’s brink, or—for I was an eclectic—Thucydides recording his personal experiences of the plague. I kept this up, even in the army. Many a long night in Dacia has been shortened in the company of my friends, the great Greek authors. The result of all this was, that when I reached consular age, and, instead of going in for consulships, went in for lameness and literature, I was well provided, so far as concerned the Greek raw material, for critical studies.
“Well, as time went on, extending the course of my reading, I happened to pick up in Flaccus’s shop a Greek translation of the Hebrew book of Job. It was a chaos, with occasional lucidities—some of them magnificent. On my shewing it to a learned Jew (whom Josephus had recommended to me) he explained to me that the Greek translators had often been misled by similarities of Hebrew words. Hebrew is a queer language. It has vowels but does not write them. I saw at once what an abundant source of error this might be. Even in Latin, where vowels are written, I have known Greeks go wrong by rendering amnis as though it were omnis. How much more, if there were no vowels! My rabbi—that is their name for ‘teacher’—informed me that even the Greek-speaking Jews were now beginning to be dissatisfied with the Seventy (that is the name they give to their authorised version). Several new translations of some of the books were floating about, he said, and a good and faithful translation of the whole would probably be produced before long. This interested me. Under his guidance I studied the parallelisms in the two books of Esdras and other books of theirs. I learned just enough Hebrew to understand how it would be possible for an expert to go back to a lost Hebrew original from two extant parallel Greek translations. You see what I mean. A very little knowledge of Latin might enable anyone to see, that, in two Greek documents, ‘oaks’ and ‘flintstones,’ being parallel, point to a Latin ‘ilices’ or ‘silices’—the reading being doubtful—from which two Greeks have been translating.