Now if Jesus was in the habit of describing those who were lost in sin as being “dead,” and of bidding His disciples “raise the dead”—meaning that they were to restore sinners to spiritual life—we can easily see how such language might be misunderstood. It is probable that Jesus Himself had actually restored life to at least one person given over for dead, the daughter of Jairus, though by natural means. Of such revivification you may find an instance described in Onesimus (pp. 77-81) which is taken almost verbatim from the account of his own revivification given by the late Archbishop of Bordeaux to the late Dean Stanley, and sent me by the Dean as being taken down from the Archbishop’s lips. If that was so, how natural for some of the Disciples to attach a literal meaning to the precept, “raise the dead”! They would argue thus, “Our Master healed diseases at a word, so can we; He once raised a child from the dead and bade us also raise the dead; some of the Disciples therefore ought to be able to do this.” How natural, under the circumstances, such a confusion of the material and the spiritual! Yet I have little doubt that the diseases which were cured by the Twelve were almost always “possession,” or paralysis, or nervous diseases. Compare the different accounts given by the Synoptists of the instructions of Jesus to the Twelve when He sent them forth on their first mission:
[Transcriber’s Note: The following three quotations were originally printed side-by-side.]
Mark vi. 7.
And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
Matthew x. 1.
And he called unto him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.
Luke ix. 1.
And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases.
Here you find that the first Gospel (St. Mark’s) makes mention only of the “authority over unclean spirits,” and this probably represents the fact. The third account is an amplification; and the second altogether exaggerates. Hence, when we read, in the context of the second version of these instructions, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils; freely ye received freely give” (Matthew x. 8), we cannot fail to see several arguments against the probability of the italicized words being literally intended by Jesus. First, the language of Christ habitually dealt in metaphor, and in metaphor habitually misunderstood by His disciples; secondly, there is no instance in which a single one of the Twelve carried out this precept during the life of their Master, and only one in which one of the Twelve (Peter) is said to have raised a woman from the dead (for St. Paul’s incident with Eutychus can hardly be called a case in point); thirdly the precept is recorded by only one Evangelist;[[21]] fourthly that same Evangelist records only one case in which our Lord Himself raised any one from the dead, i.e. the revivified daughter of Jairus—and it seems absurd to represent Christ as commanding all the Apostles to do that which most of them probably never did, and He Himself (according to the First Gospel) only did once.
We pass now to another cause that may have originated miraculous narratives in the Gospels. Try to extricate yourself from our Western, cold-blooded, analytical, and critical way of looking at things. Sit down in the reign of Vespasian or Domitian in the midst of a congregation of Jewish and Græco-Oriental brethren, assembled for a sacred service, “singing a hymn” (as Pliny says, describing them a few years afterwards) “to Christ as to a God.” What effect on the traditions of Christ’s life and works would be produced by these “hymns and spiritual songs” which St. Paul’s testimony (as well as Pliny’s) shows to have been a common part of the earliest Christian ritual? Would they not inevitably tend, by poetic hyperbole and metaphor, to build up fresh traditions which, when literally interpreted, would—like the songs and psalms of the Chosen People—give rise to miraculous narratives? Part of the service indeed would not consist of hymns but of the reading of the “Scriptures” i.e. the Old Testament; but this also would tend in the same direction. For there you would hear, read out to the congregation, marvellous prophecies how, in the day of the Lord the Redeemer, the eyes of the blind should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame should leap as a hart; and the sole thought possessing you and every man in the congregation would be, “How far did all these things find fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ?” You would hear from the “Scriptures” narratives of marvellous miracles, how Moses gave water from the rock to Israel in the wilderness and fed them with food from Heaven, how Elijah raised the widow’s child from death, and how Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; and the sole thought possessing you would be, “How far were like wonders wrought by Christ?” Then would arise the hymn describing, in imagery borrowed from the Old Testament, how Christ had done all these things, and more besides, for the spiritual Israel; how He had spread a table for His people in the wilderness, and given to thousands to partake of His body and His blood; how Moses had merely given water to the people, but Jesus had changed the water of the Jews (i.e. the Law) into the wine which flowed from His side; how Jesus had fulfilled the predictions of the prophets by curing the halt, the maimed, the blind, the leper, the deaf; how He had even raised the dead and bidden His disciples to raise the dead; how He, like Jonah, had spent three days in the darkness of the grave. If you look at the earliest Christian paintings you will find that they represent Christ as the Fish (the emblem of food); others depict the Mosaic miracles of the manna and the water from the rock. These shew what a hold the notion of the miraculous food had taken on the mind of the earliest believers. How easy it would be to amplify a metaphor derived from the Eucharistic feeding on the Bread of Life and perhaps on the “honey-sweet fish” (as Christ is actually called in a poem written about the middle of the second century) into a miraculous account of the feeding of many thousands upon material bread and material fish! It is greatly to be regretted that we have not one left out of the many hymns and psalms of which St. Paul and Pliny make mention. The only vestige of one that I know is found in a verse of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. It is at all events printed by Westcott and Hort as poetry, and it is thought by many commentators to be an extract from some well-known hymn (Eph. v. 14):