Scaurus said, “This tradition about ‘eating what is served up’ occurs nowhere in the gospels except in Luke’s account of the sending of the Seventy, beginning, ‘After these things the Lord appointed other seventy.’ Now this word ‘appoint’ does not in the least necessitate the conclusion that Christ appointed the Seventy before the resurrection. Look at the ‘appointment’ of the thirteenth apostle in the place of Judas. The Acts says ‘Lord, appoint him whom thou hast chosen.’ Then Matthias is ‘appointed.’ The Lord is supposed to ‘appoint’ him in answer to the prayer. Concerning this, Luke might say, ‘After these things the Lord appointed Matthias.’ If these words had been inserted in the gospel, they would have given the false impression that Jesus, while living, had appointed Matthias. Well, that is just the impression—a false one—that Luke gives as to the ‘appointment’ of the Seventy. The fact is that the Seventy (a number often used by the Jews to denote all the nations or languages of the world) represent the missionaries ‘appointed’ after the Lord’s death to go to the cities of the Gentiles to prepare them for the Coming of the Lord from heaven. These were to go into the houses of Gentiles. Though Jews, they were to eat of Gentile food—‘everything that is served up.’ Without this explanation, the tradition has no meaning—or, if any, an unworthy one, ‘Do not be fastidious. If you cannot have pleasant food, eat unpleasant food.’ This seems to me absurd. But with this explanation, the precept becomes intelligible and necessary.”
This convinced me. Moreover Luke’s use of “the Lord,” for “Jesus”—since “the Lord” would be more likely to be used than “Jesus” after the resurrection—seemed slightly to favour Scaurus’s conclusion. He passed next to a tradition of Matthew’s about abstinence from marriage “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” On this he said, “Looking at Paul’s advice to the Corinthians about celibacy and marriage, and at the distinction he draws between ‘advice,’ and ‘allowance’ and ‘command,’ and ‘not I but the Lord,’ I am convinced that Paul spoke on his own responsibility, except as to Christ’s insistence on the old tradition in Genesis, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ I mean that Christ upheld monogamy against polygamy and against that modified form of polygamy which arose from the husband’s unrestricted, or scarcely restricted, right of divorce. Soon after the resurrection, in the midst of persecutions, when the Christians expected that Christ might speedily return and carry them up to heaven, it was natural that the Corinthians should apply for advice to Paul, and other churches to other apostles.
“My belief is that Christ’s words extended to only the first half of Matthew’s tradition. The disciples complain, in effect, ‘If a man cannot divorce his wife when he dislikes her, it is best not to marry.’ To this Christ replies, as I interpret him, ‘Not all grasp the mystery of the true marriage contemplated from the beginning (namely, “the two shall become one”) but only those to whom it is given.’ This seems to me to have been explained in a wrong sense in the words that follow about ‘eunuchs.’ At all events, Paul twice quotes the words quoted by Christ (about the ‘two’ becoming ‘one’) as though they were the basis of his doctrine about marriage and also a type of the mysterious wedlock between Christ and the church. I do not think, however, that any confident conclusion is deducible. Christ elsewhere indicates—when dealing with an imaginary case where a woman has married seven brothers consecutively—that the marriage tie does not extend to the next life. By the Jews, marriage is, and was, regarded as honourable, and almost as a duty. But a Jewish sect called the Essenes, or some of them, practised celibacy; and you know how Epictetus inculcates celibacy on his Cynics of the first class. These facts, and the pressure of hard times, and Paul’s example, may not only have favoured abstinence from marriage among Christians but also have favoured some tampering with tradition in order to enjoin celibacy. A letter to Timothy speaks of certain heretics as ‘forbidding to marry.’ Perhaps the only safe conclusion about Matthew’s tradition is that no conclusion can be deduced from it.”
Scaurus next discussed the question whether Christ inculcated poverty on his disciples. He denied it. Not that he denied Luke to be more correct verbally in saying “Blessed are the poor” than Matthew in “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” But he asserted that Christ meant “poor in spirit.” Similarly (said Scaurus) Christ meant “hungering after righteousness,” as Matthew says, though Luke was right verbally in omitting “after righteousness.” For, according to Scaurus, “Christ hardly ever used such words as ‘bread,’ ‘leaven,’ ‘water,’ ‘hunger,’ ‘thirst,’ ‘fire,’ ‘salt,’ ‘treasure,’ and so on, except metaphorically.” Then he quoted the following instance out of Mark’s version of Christ’s instructions to the twelve apostles, where, he said, Mark’s metaphors had been misunderstood literally—and consequently altered—by Matthew and Luke.
“Mark,” said he, “has, ‘that they should take nothing for the journey, save a staff only, no bread, no wallet, no money for the purse.’ Matthew and Luke have ‘no staff.’ Now turn to Genesis, where Jacob thanks God for helping him on his journey, ‘I passed over Jordan with my staff.’ He means, ‘with my staff only.’ Philo explains this ‘staff’ metaphorically, as ‘training,’ i.e. the instruction or guidance given by God. David says to God, ‘Thy rod and thy staff are my help,’ or words to that effect—manifest metaphor. My rabbi shewed me a Jewish paraphrase of Jacob’s words, ‘I had neither gold, nor silver, nor herds, but simply my staff.’ He also told me that this ‘staff’ was supposed by the Jews to have been given by God to Adam from whom it descended to the patriarchs in succession. This shews that Jews might find no difficulty in Christ’s metaphor, ‘Go forth with nothing but a staff,’ i.e. the staff of Jacob, the rod and staff of God. But Greeks and Romans would naturally take the word literally as meaning ‘walking-stick.’ Then they would find a difficulty, asking, ‘Why should Jesus say, No bread, no wallet—only a walking-stick?’ Hence many, writing largely for Gentiles, might alter it into ‘no walking-stick.’ This is what Matthew and Luke have done. Similarly they altered Mark’s metaphor ‘but shod with sandals,’ i.e. with light shoes fit for the ‘beautiful feet’ of the preachers of the gospel, into ‘no boots,’ or words to that effect. The error is the same. Jewish metaphor has been in each case taken literally by Matthew and Luke.”
Scaurus added a few remarks on Christ as a historical character, “dimly traceable,” he said, “in the combined testimony of Mark, Matthew, and Luke”—where I thought he might have added, “and in the epistles of Paul.” His main thought was that, in spite of all the defects of these three writers, it was possible to discern in Christ a successor of Moses and Isaiah. “This man,” said Scaurus, “may be regarded in two aspects. As a lawgiver, he took as the basis of his republic a re-enactment, in a stronger form, of the two ancient laws that enjoined love of the Father and love of the brethren. As a prophet, he saw a time when all mankind—recognising in one another (man in man and nation in nation) some glimpse of the divine image, and of the beauty of divine holiness—would beat their swords into ploughshares, and go up to the City of peace, righteousness, and truth, to worship the Father of the spirits of all flesh. Isaiah had foreseen this. But this prophet was also possessed with a belief, beyond Isaiah’s, in the unity of God and man. He was persuaded that the true Son of man was the Son of God, higher than the heavens. I think also that he trusted—but on what grounds I do not know, unless it was an ingrained prophetic belief, found in all the great prophets, carried to its highest point in this prophet—that, as light follows on darkness, so does joy on sorrow, righteousness on sin, and life on death. A Stoic would say that these things alternate and that all things go round. But this Jewish prophet believed that all things in the end would go up—up to heaven. That is how I read his expectation. Feeling himself to be one with God, he placed no limits, except God’s will, to the mighty works that God might do for him in his attempt to fulfil God’s purpose of exalting men from darkness to light and from death to life.
“It is in some of these mysterious aspirations,” said Scaurus, “that I cannot follow this prophet of the Jews. At times he seems to me to act and speak (certainly Paul speaks thus) as though God had caused mankind to take (if I may say so) one disease in order to get rid of another. I am speaking of moral disease. God seems to Paul to have allowed man to contract the disease of sin in order to rise to a health of righteousness, higher than would have been possible if he had not sinned. On these and other mystical notions this Jewish prophet may perhaps base views of forgiveness, and of love, and of the efficacy of his own death for his disciples, all of which perplex me. Sometimes I reject them entirely. Sometimes I am in doubt.” These last words of Scaurus seemed to me to explain many inconsistencies in his letters. But how could I be surprised? Was I consistent myself? Was not my own mind at that instant fluctuating like a very Euripus? I could understand his doubts only too well.
He concluded by contrasting Christ with John the Baptist. “The one point,” said Scaurus, “in which these two prophets or reformers agreed, was that the Lord God would intervene for the people, if only the people would return to Him. But in other respects they appear to me to have altogether differed. John the Baptist seems to have desired to bring about a remission of debts in accordance with the Law of Moses, as insisted on by previous prophets. He also desired an equalisation of property. That is what I gather from the gospels themselves, interpreted in the light of the ancient Law of the Jews. Moreover Josephus told me that Herod the tetrarch put John to death on political grounds, because he seemed likely to stir up the people to sedition, nor did he ever mention the influence of Herodias as contributing to the prophet’s execution. Of course the story about the dancing and the oath may be true, and yet the oath may have been a mere excuse for getting rid of an inconvenient person. John was not unwilling (as I gather) to resort to the sword of Gideon or the fire of Elijah if the word of the gospel did not suffice to establish the new kingdom.
“Jesus, on the other hand, was absolutely averse to violence. Jesus was penetrated with the belief in the power of ‘little ones’ and ‘babes’ and ‘sucklings.’ How far he anticipated the future in store for himself I cannot say. Sometimes I am inclined to believe that he thought God would intervene at the last moment and deliver him from the jaws of death. Sometimes he seems to have deliberately faced death with the conviction that he would be swallowed up by it for a short time, emerging from it to victory.
“The Baptist certainly expected to be delivered by Jesus from the prison in which he was being kept by Antipas, and to have been disappointed by his friend’s inaction. It must have been a very bitter moment for the latter when John sent to reproach him, as good as saying, ‘Are you, too, a false Messiah? Will you leave me to perish in prison? Are you really our Deliverer, or must we, the whole nation, turn from you as a laggard, and wait for another?’ In my opinion, this was the very greatest temptation to which Jesus was exposed. In that moment—as I judge when I try to guess the eastern metaphor corresponding to western fact—Jews would say that Satan said to Christ ‘Worship me, and I will give you the empire of the world,’ or ‘Take the risk! Throw yourself down from the pinnacle! See whether God will save you!’ In plain words, the temptation was, ‘Appeal to the God of battles! Rouse the people to arms, first against Antipas, and then against the Romans!’ For a perfectly unselfish and noble nature, believing in divine interventions, this must indeed have been a great, a very great temptation.”