“Now I must pass to the last year or last but one of Domitian. You have heard your father speak of Flavius Clemens (not exactly a strong man, but a good one) who was put to death by his uncle, the Emperor, for ‘Judaism’ (so it was called) and his poor wife exiled. ‘Judaism,’ with our people, was only a more respectable name for ‘Christianism,’ though the two superstitions are poles asunder. Poor Domitilla was a downright Christian. Her husband Clemens was at all events Christian enough for Domitian’s purposes. He was put to death and his effects confiscated. I bought a few of his books as memorials of my old friend, and among these were certain Christian publications called ‘gospels.’
“Every Christian missionary is supposed to ‘preach the gospel’; so, of course, there might be, theoretically, as many gospels as missionaries, and ‘a gospel according to’ each missionary, if each chose to write down what he preached. Accordingly I gather from Flaccus that there have been a great number of these ‘gospels’; but only three are now in large demand among Christians in Rome—the three he sent you. The earliest of these is ‘The Gospel according to Mark.’ That it is the earliest you can see thus. Put them (that is, of course, the parallel parts of them) in three columns, Mark in the middle. Then imagine three schoolboys seated together—Sinister, Medius, and Dexter—writing a translation of Homer. Suppose Sinister and Dexter to be cribbing from Medius, who sits between them. The experienced schoolmaster will speedily discover that, whenever Sinister and Dexter closely agree, it is because they cribbed from Medius. Similarly Matthew and Luke largely copied—not ‘cribbed,’ for they did it honestly enough, no doubt—from Mark. Consequently (subject to certain exceptions, which I will state later on) Matthew and Luke never agree together—in those parts of the gospel where there are three parallel narratives—without also agreeing with Mark. Don’t trust me for this. Try it yourself.”
I did try it. And I found that—subject to the exceptions defined by Scaurus in another letter—his statement was correct. His letter continued, “So I began with Mark. Do not suppose that I began with any prejudice against him. On the contrary, your old friend, whom you are so fond of calling Misomythus, must plead guilty, I fear, to a latent desire of the philomythian kind—that Mark might contain truth and not myth. But hereby hangs another tale, and I must begin another confession.
“Among Domitilla’s slaves was one especially dear to her, her librarian, whom she would (no doubt) have manumitted if she had anticipated the blow that was soon to fall on her husband and his household. He was an old man, of Alexandrian extraction, and of some education, simpleminded as a child, perfectly honest, giving an impression of firmness, gentleness, and dignity, quite unusual in a slave. I liked old Hermas—that was his name, you must have seen him, I think, in your childhood—for his own sake, as well as for his love of literature. When I bought the books I bought him at the same time. He was nearly seventy and ailing. The calamities of his mistress helped him to his grave, and he died a few days after he had come to my household. We had very little talk together, and least of all at our last meeting; but what we had then, I never forgot. It happened thus. One afternoon, when he came into the library a little later than usual—slowly, and painfully, and leaning on his staff—I happened to have Domitilla’s three gospels rolled out on the table before me. There were some notes in the margin of Matthew. These were in his neat small handwriting and I was looking at them. ‘Not Domitilla’s hand, I think,’ said I, with a smile. He shook his head, opened his lips as if to speak, looked long and wistfully at me, as if he would greatly have liked to talk about something more than mere librarian’s business. But all he said was, ‘Will my lord give his instructions for the day’s work?’ I gave them. They were that he should go to bed and keep there till he was fit for business. He bowed, moved slowly toward the door, turned and looked at me a second time with that same expression, only more intense; then left the room without a word. I felt strangely drawn towards the old man, and had almost called him back. But I did not. ‘To-morrow,’ I said, ‘to-morrow.’
“Unexpected business took me from Tusculum late in that afternoon and kept me away for three days. On my return I was told that Hermas was no more. He had earnestly desired to see me, they said; and when he found that I had left Tusculum, and that my return might be delayed, and that his voice was failing, and death perhaps imminent, he had spent his last strength in writing a letter, which, by his request, was to be left by his side until he was carried to the funeral pyre—in case I might come to take it. I went at once to his bedside and read it there. I keep it still. But I will not transcribe it for anyone, not even for you, Silanus. It is a confidence between me and old Hermas, a private confession of a dream of his. A dream fulfilled and to be fulfilled, he says. All a dream, I say. Who shall decide? Though I will not give you the words, you shall have the substance of his letter.
“Well, then, if I might believe this letter, he, old Hermas, lying dead on the couch before my eyes, was not really dead, but only on the way to a beautiful city of justice and truth, to which all the just, honourable, and truthful might attain, Roman, Greek, Jew, Scythian, rich and poor, bond and free, high-born and low-born. No franchise was needed except a patient and laborious pursuit of virtue. In this city no one citizen was greater than another. If anyone could be called greatest, it was the one that made of least account his own pleasures, his own wealth, fame, and reputation, serving the state and his fellow-citizens in all things. Yet it was not a republic, for it had a king. But this king was not a despot like the kings of the east, abhorred by Greeks and Romans. The kingdom was a family at unity with itself, the citizens being closely bound by affection to their king as father and to their fellow-citizens as brethren. ‘And if,’ said Hermas, ‘you desire to be drawn towards that king and to become one with all the fellow-citizens of the City of Truth, I beseech you, my dear lord and benefactor—being, as you are, a lover of truth—to study with all patience those books of my dearest mistress Domitilla, which I saw before you on that day on which you spoke to me your words—your last words to me, so God wills it—words of kindness following deeds of kindness, for which may the Father in heaven be kind to you for ever and ever.’
“A postscript added a further request, that I would search for other papyri, which contained the epistles of Paul, and which, he said, belonged to Domitilla’s library, though he had been unable to find them. ‘These,’ he said, ‘give a clue to the meaning of many things that are obscure in the gospels; for in the gospels traditions derived from different documents or witnesses, are sometimes set down without uniform arrangement, and without proportion; so that, in Mark, a whole column of forty lines might be given, for example, to the exorcism of some evil spirit, and only three or four lines to some principal and fundamental saying of Christ. But Paul, though he was neither an eye-witness nor an ear-witness, understood spiritual things, according to his saying, We have the mind of Christ.’
“This was written on the day before his death. Another postscript, added on the following day, contained nothing but a hope or prayer that he might meet me in the City of Truth. I should add that I searched at the time in vain for Domitilla’s copy of Paul’s letters. It was not till three years afterwards that I read them, having procured a copy from another source. Sometimes I regret this and ask myself whether Hermas might have been right in thinking that Paul would have led me to understand the gospels better. But I cannot think that the Gods have decreed that those alone shall find the way to the City of Truth who may happen to have studied four Christian papyri in a particular order. Now I must pass from all this prattle about regrets, hopes, prayers, and preconceptions, to describe my exploration of the gospels and my search for historical fact.”