Silanus the Christian

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

I could not deny the force of this. But, though it derogated from Mark as a witness, it did not seem to me to derogate from Christ as a prophet. I felt that no wise teacher could have desired, thus by a side-blow, to sweep away the whole of the national code of purifications. So I was ready to accept Scaurus’s view, at all events provisionally.

“I pass over,” said Scaurus, “the precept, ‘Beware of leaven,’ which was certainly metaphorical; and two narratives of feeding multitudes with ‘loaves,’ which in my opinion are metaphorical; and a mention of ‘crumbs,’ which my reason leads me to interpret in one way, while my desire suggests another. About this I shall say something later on, as also about predictions of being killed and rising again. Now I reach these words, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, let him disown himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever desires to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for the sake of me and the gospel shall save it.’ Note that these words are preceded by a prediction that the Son of man must be ‘killed.’ Also remember that the ‘cross’ is a punishment sanctioned by Roman but not by Jewish law. Bearing these facts in mind, imagine yourself in the crowd, and tell me what you would think Christ meant, if he turned round to you and said, ‘You must take up your cross.’ Do not read on to see what I think; for I doubt whether Christ used these words. But, if he did use them, tell me what you think he meant by them.”

I was taken aback by this. For I perceived that the sense required a metaphorical rendering, and, at the same time, that such a metaphor was almost impossible among any Jews, before Christ’s crucifixion. At first I tried to justify it from Paul’s epistles, which declared that, in Christ’s death, “all died”—meaning that all, by sympathy, died to sin and rose again to righteousness. Paul said also “I have been crucified with Christ,” and “our old man”—meaning “our old human nature”—“has been crucified with Him,” and “the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” But these expressions were all based on the Christian belief that the “cross” was the way to “resurrection.” They were quite intelligible after the resurrection, but not before it.

Then I tried to imagine myself in the circle of disciples surrounding Socrates in prison, and the Master, with the bowl of poison in his hands, preparing to drink it, and looking up to us and saying, “If you intend to be disciples worthy of me, you too must be prepared to take up the hemlock bowl.” What, I asked, should I have understood by this? It seemed to me that the words could only mean “You, too, must be prepared to be put to death by your countrymen.”

Now as the hemlock bowl was the regular penalty among the Athenians, so the cross (as Scaurus had said) was the regular penalty among the Romans but not among the Jews. So, when I tried honestly to respond to Scaurus’s appeal, and to imagine myself in the crowd following Jesus, and the Master turning round to us, and saying, “Take up your cross,” I was obliged to admit, “I should have taken the Master to mean, ‘If you are to be worthy followers of mine, you must be prepared to be put to death as rebels by the Romans’.”

Scaurus took the same view. “Well,” he continued, “I will anticipate your answer, for it seems to me you can only come to one conclusion. You, in the crowd, would take the words to mean that you must follow your Master to the death against the Romans. But all intelligent readers of the Christian books ought to know that he could not have said that. He was a visionary, and utterly averse to violence, so averse that he was on one occasion reproached for his inaction by John the Baptist—who once said to him, in effect, ‘Why do you leave me in prison? Why do you not stir a hand to release me?’ Moreover, if Jesus had said this, what would the chief priests have needed more than this, to get Pilate to put him to death: ‘This man said to the rabble, If you are intending to follow me, you must go with the cross on your shoulders’? ‘Can you prove this?’ would have been Pilate’s reply. They would have proved it. Then sentence would have followed at once as a matter of course. And who can deny that it would have been just?”

I certainly could not deny it. Then Scaurus pointed out to me how Luke avoided this dangerous interpretation, by inserting “daily,” so as to give the words a metaphorical twist, “Let him take up his cross daily.” But this, he said, was manifestly an addition of Luke’s. If Jesus had inserted “daily” why should Mark and Matthew have omitted it? “Daily” would make no sense till a generation had passed away, so that “to be crucified with Christ” had become a metaphorical expression for mortifying the flesh. On this point, at all events, Scaurus seemed to me to be right.

He continued as follows, “I am disposed to think that Mark has misunderstood a Jewish phrase as referring to the cross when it really referred to something else. You know that, in Rome, a rascally slave, regarded as being on the way to crucifixion, is called ‘yoke-bearer,’ which means practically ‘cross-bearer.’ Mark, who has a good many Latinisms, might regard ‘take the yoke’ as meaning ‘take the cross’—if the former expression could be proved to have been used by Jesus. Still more easily might ‘take the yoke’ be regarded as equivalent to ‘take the cross’ if it could be proved that the Jews themselves connected ‘taking the yoke’ with martyrdom.

“Both these facts can be proved. In the first place, Christ actually said to the disciples, ‘Take my yoke upon you.’ It is true that this saying is preserved by Matthew alone; but its omission by others is easily explained, as I will presently shew. In my judgment, it is certain that Christ did give this precept, and that it had nothing to do with crucifixion. The context in Matthew declares that the kingdom of heaven is revealed only to ‘babes’—whom Christ elsewhere calls ‘little ones’ or those who make themselves ‘least’ in the kingdom of God—and soon afterwards come the words, ‘Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.’ This is the fundamental truth of Christ’s teaching, that those who make themselves the humblest of servants to one another are greatest in his ‘kingdom.’ In order to reign, one must serve, or ‘take the yoke.’

“The next fact is that Jews of the present day—so I am credibly informed—would say of a Jewish martyr that he ‘took the yoke upon himself,’ when he made a formal profession of obedience to the Law just before death. This I must ask you to take for granted. It would be too long to prove and explain.” I suppose Scaurus heard this from the teacher he called “his rabbi.” It was confirmed, to my own knowledge, by something that happened nearly thirty years ago when one of the most famous Jewish teachers, Akiba by name, was put to death under Hadrian. I heard it said by a credible eyewitness that “they combed his flesh with combs of iron,” and another added “Yes, and Akiba, all the while, kept taking upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven,” by which he meant repeating the profession of faith.