This explanation of “remembering” seemed exactly to meet my difficulty. I accepted it at once. Subsequently I found that the fourth gospel twice represents the disciples as “remembering,” after Christ’s resurrection, things that He had said or done before the resurrection, which things, at the time, they had not fully understood. Moreover that gospel declared that, up to the evening before Christ’s crucifixion, His words had been “dark sayings” to them, but that the Spirit would “call them back to their minds,” or “remind them” of their meaning. This confirmed me in the conclusion that the Withering of the Fig-Tree was a parable, not a history, and that the disciples “remembered” it, and were reminded of its meaning by the Holy Spirit, after the Lord had risen from the dead.
Scaurus added a reference to a lecture of Epictetus, which, he said, I must have heard, and which bore on the story of the fig-tree. I had heard it and remembered it well. The subject was, in effect, “The Precocious Philosopher.” Epictetus likened him to a precocious fruit-tree. “You have flowered too soon,” he said; “The winter will scorch you up, or rather you are already frostbitten. Let me alone! Why do you wish me, before my season”—he meant, blooming before the seasonable preparation—“to be withered away as you are withered yourself?” This, Scaurus said, was perhaps borrowed from Mark. I examined the text of the lecture, and it seemed to me that his conjecture was by no means improbable.
Scaurus proceeded, “I could go through Mark’s other miracles in the same way—those I mean that are not acts of healing—and shew you that they are all metaphors misunderstood. But I have given too much space to these unimportant matters. At least I consider them unimportant except so far as they shew Mark to be historically untrustworthy. Now I must pass to more important things, merely adding—as an instance of this man’s curious want of all sense of proportion—that while giving—how often must I repeat this!—a whole column to Herod Antipas’s birthday and its consequences, he does not give one line, or one word, to Christ’s resurrection—except in predictions made by Christ himself or in statements made by angels. I am not a Christian, nor a half-way Christian. But I have an immense admiration for Christ and an immense curiosity to know the exact facts about his life, death, and subsequent influence on his disciples. To me therefore, simply as a historian—or as a mere man interested in the affairs of men—this absolute silence about that which should have been most fully stated and supported by the evidence of eyewitnesses, is nothing short of provoking. Will you not agree with me, after this, that Mark is the most inadequate of biographers?”
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read this. “Scaurus,” I said, “must for once have made a mistake, or his copy of Mark must have been defective.” But my copy confirmed his. It ended with the words, “For they were afraid.” This was too much for me. Perhaps I was overwrought with long and close study and with the strain of attempting to grapple with Scaurus’s criticisms. I remember to this day—and not with entire self-condemnation, for it was Mark, not Mark’s subject, that disappointed me—that in a sudden storm of passion I threw the gospel down and vowed I would never look at it again.
CHAPTER XXIV
SCAURUS ON CHRIST’S BIRTH
On the following morning my indignation against Mark began to seem certainly hasty and possibly unjust. True, his book was apparently without beginning or end, disfigured by superfluities and omissions, and extraordinarily disproportioned. But what if he had no time to revise it? What if it was a collection of notes about Christ’s mighty works and short sayings, which he was intending to combine with a collection of Christ’s doctrine when he died—died perhaps suddenly, perhaps was put to death? I tried to find excuses for his work. Still, I could not deny that, if Scaurus was right as to the story of the fig-tree, the earliest of the evangelists shewed a deplorable inability to distinguish the things that preceded Christ’s resurrection from the things that followed it. I resolved, however, that this should not deter me from continuing my study of the other gospels. My disappointment with Mark increased my admiration—it was not then more than admiration—for Christ, whom he seemed to me to have failed to represent. “Perhaps,” said I, “Matthew and Luke will do more justice to the subject.” So I took up their gospels. The resurrection was what I most wanted to read about. But I decided to begin at the beginning.
“In style, proportion, arrangement, and subject-matter,” said Scaurus, “Matthew and Luke are much more satisfactory than Mark, although Mark often preserves the earliest and purest form of Christ’s short sayings. When I say ‘Matthew,’ you must understand that I do not know who he is. I am convinced that Matthew the publican, one of Christ’s twelve apostles, is not responsible for the work called by his name. Flaccus—whom I more than suspect of Christian proclivities—knows a good deal about these matters. Well, according to Flaccus, ‘Matthew’ wrote in Hebrew. ‘Everyone agrees about it,’ he says. An early Hebrew gospel would naturally be attributed to Matthew. He, being a ‘publican,’ or tax-collector, would necessarily be able to write. Peter and John are said to have been ignorant of letters. There are more styles than one in Matthew—a fact that suggests compilation. Luke, an educated man, and perhaps identical with a ‘beloved physician’ mentioned in one of Paul’s epistles, certainly compiled his books from various sources; ‘Matthew’ almost certainly did the same. Later on, I will speak of their versions of Christ’s discourses. Now I must confine myself to their accounts of a very important subject—Christ’s supernatural birth.”
Up to this point I had been reading with little interest, doubting whether it would not be better to pass on to the accounts of the resurrection. As I have explained above, my study of Paul’s epistles had not led me to believe that there would be anything miraculous about the birth of Christ. The phrase “supernatural birth,” therefore, came on me quite unexpectedly. What followed, riveted my attention: “Mark, as you know, says nothing about Christ’s parentage. First he gives, as title, ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’—where, by the way, old Hermas has written, in my margin, ‘some add, Son of God.’ Then there is a Voice from heaven, at the moment of Christ’s baptism, heard (apparently) only by John the Baptist and Jesus, ‘Thou art my beloved Son.’ A similar Voice occurs later on. Mark represents a blind man as calling Jesus ‘son of David,’ and his fellow-townsmen say, ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?’ This might indicate merely that Joseph the carpenter was dead. But ‘Son of Mary’ might be used in two other ways. The enemies of Jesus might use it to suggest that he was a bastard. The worshippers of Jesus might use it (later on) to shew that he was a Son of God, not born of any human father. Matthew has, ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?’ This, however, Matthew might write not as his own belief, but as that of Christ’s fellow-townsmen. Luke, who has ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’, gives the whole of the narrative quite differently. I should add that the first Voice from heaven is differently given in some copies of Luke.” I examined this at once. My copy had a marginal note, “Some have, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”