Im Gilgamesch Epos wird erzählt, wie zu Eabani in der Wüste der Jäger mit der Hierodule hinauszieht, wie Eabani ihrer habe geniesst, und dann mit ihr nach Erech kommt, wo grade oder ihm zu Ehre ein Fest gefeiert wird, wie er sich dort an Gilgamesch anschliesst und ihn durch Diesen königliche Ehren zuteil werden. Welche Metamorphosen diese Geschehnisse in den Sagen des alten Testaments erlebt haben, darf jetzt in der Hauptsache als bekannt vorausgesetzt werden. In zahlreichen Gilgamesch-Sagen fanden wir nun die Begegnung mit der Hierodule wieder. Aber vergeblich suchen wir sie dort in den drei ersten Evangelien, wo ihr Platz wäre, falls diese etwa eine Gilgamesch-Sage enthalten sollten, nämlich unmittelbar hinter Johannis Auftreten in der Wüste. Ebenso wenig finden wir an dieser Stelle etwa einen Reflex von Eabani’s Einzug in das festlich erregte Erech. Wohl dagegen treffen wir an ursprünglicher Stelle ein Wiederhall von Gilgamesch’s Begegnung mit Eabani. [↑]
[4] P. 820. Jesu Taufe durch Johannes wäre sonst auch daraus geworden, dass Eabani, nach dem er an Gilgamesch’s Hof gelangt ist, durch Diesen Königlicher Ehren teilhaft wird. [↑]
[5] Nach Lukas ([i, 15] and [ vii, 33]) trinkt Johannes keinen Wein, ist also ein Nasiräer, der keinen Wein trinkt und dessen Haar nicht kekürzt wird, ebenso wie Joseph-Eabani, wie Simson als ein Eabani, wie Samuel-Eabani, wie Absolom als Eabani wenigstens einen üppigen Haarwuchs besitzt, und wie der Eabani des Epos, mit dem langen Haupthaar eines Weibes, in der Wüste mit den Tieren zusammen Wasser trinkt, und wie Eabani mit diesen Tieren zusammen nur Gras und Krauter frisst, so isst Johannes, nach Lukas wenigstens, kein Brot. [↑]
[6] P. 838: Wie für Xisuthros, liegt für Jesus ein Schiff bereit, und, wie Xisuthros und Jonas, “flieht” Jesus in ein Schiff. [↑]
EPILOGUE
Of the books passed in review in the preceding pages, as of several others couched in the same vein and recently published in England and Germany, perhaps the best that can be said is this, that, at any rate, they are untrammelled by orthodox prejudice, and fearlessly written. That they belong, so to speak, to the extreme left, explains the favour with which they are received by that section of the middle-class reading public which has conceived a desire to learn something of the origins of Christianity. Unschooled in the criticism of documents, such readers have learned in the school Bible-lesson and in the long hours of instruction in what is called Divinity, to regard the Bible as they regard no other collection of ancient writings. It is, as a rule, the only ancient book they ever opened. They have discovered that orthodoxy depends for its life on treating it as a book apart, not to be submitted to ordinary tests, not to be sifted and examined, as we have learned from Hume and Niebuhr, Gibbon and Grote, to sift ancient documents in general, rejecting ab initio the supernatural myths that are never absent from them. The acuter minds among the clergy themselves begin nowadays to realize that the battle of Freethought and Rationalism is won as far as the miracles of the Old Testament are concerned; but as regards those of the New they are for ever trying to close up their ranks and rally their hosts afresh. Nevertheless, the man in the street has a shrewd suspicion that apologetics are so much special pleading, and that miracles cannot be eliminated from the Old and yet remain in the New Testament. He has never received any training in methods of historical research himself, and it is no easy thing to obtain; but he is clever enough to detect the evasions of apologists, and, with instinctive revulsion, turns away to writers who “go the whole hog” and argue for the most extreme positions, even to the length of asserting that the story of Jesus is a myth from beginning to end. Any narratives, he thinks, that have the germs of truth in them would not need the apologetic prefaces and commentaries, the humming and hawing, the specious arguments and wire-drawn distinctions of divines, any more than do Froissart or Clarendon or Herodotus. If the New Testament needs them, then it must be a mass of fable from end to end. Such is the impression which our modern apologists leave on the mind of the ordinary man.
I can imagine some of my readers objecting here that, whereas I have so rudely assailed the method of interpretation of New Testament documents adopted by the Nihilistic school—I only use this name as a convenient label for those who deny the historical reality of Jesus Christ—I nevertheless propound no rival method of my own. The truth is there is no abstract method of using documents relating to the past, and you cannot in advance lay down rules for doing so. You can only learn how to deal with them by practice, and it is one of the chief functions of any university or place of higher education to imbue students with historical method by setting before them the original documents, and inspiring them to extract from them whatever solid results they can. A hundred years ago the better men in the college of Christchurch at Oxford were so trained by the dean, Cyril Jackson, who would set them the task of “preparing for examination the whole of Livy and Polybius, thoroughly read and studied in all their comparative bearings.”[1] No better curriculum, indeed, could be devised for strengthening and developing the faculty of historical judgment; and the schools of Literae Humaniores and Modern History, which were subsequently established at Oxford, carried on the tradition of this enlightened educationalist. In them the student is brought face to face in the original dialects with the records of the past, and stimulated to “read and study them in their comparative bearings.” One single branch of learning, however, has been treated apart in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and pursued along the lines of tradition and authority—I mean the study of Christian antiquities. The result has been deplorable. Intellectually-minded Englishmen have turned away from this field of history as from something tainted, and barely one of our great historians in a century deems it worthy of his notice. It has been left to parsons, to men who have never learned to swim, because they have never had enough courage to venture into deep water. As we sow, so we reap. The English Church is probably the most enlightened of the many sects that make up Christendom. Yet what is the treatment which it accords to any member of itself who has the courage to dissociate himself from the “orthodoxy” of the fourth century, of those Greek Fathers (so-called) in whom the human intelligence sank to the nadir of fanaticism and futility? An example was recently seen in the case of the Rev. Mr. W. H. Thompson, a young theological tutor of Magdalen College in Oxford, who, animated by nothing but loyalty for the Church, recently liberated his soul about the miracles of the Gospels in a thoroughly scholarly book entitled Miracles in the New Testament. The attitude of the clergy in general towards a work of genuine research, which sets truth above traditional orthodoxy, was revealed in a conference of the clergy of the southern province, held soon after its publication on May 19, 1911. The following account of that meeting is taken from the Guardian of May 26, 1911:—
The Rev. R. F. Bevan, in the Canterbury Diocesan Conference on May 19, 1911, proposed “that this Conference is of opinion that the clergy should make use of the light thrown on the Bible by modern criticism for the purposes of religious teaching.” The Bishop of Croydon moved the following rider: “But desires to record its distrust of critics who, while holding office in the Church of Christ, propound views inconsistent with the doctrines laid down in the creeds of the Church.”
He said it was needful to define what was meant by modern criticism. He referred to a book which had been published quite lately by the Dean of Divinity of Magdalen College, Oxford, a review of which would be found in the Guardian of May 12. He must honestly confess he had not read the book for himself …. He then premised from the review that the work in question rejects the evidence both for the Virgin Birth of Christ and for his bodily Resurrection from the tomb …, and added that the toleration by Churchmen of such doctrines and such views being taught within the bosom of the Church was to him most sad and inexplicable. If such was the instruction which young Divinity students were receiving at the universities, no wonder that the supply of candidates for ordination was falling off.
The Rev. J. O. Bevan said it was not in the power of any man or any body of men to ignore the Higher Criticism or to suppress it. It had “come to stay,” and its influence for good or evil must be recognized.
The President (Archbishop of Canterbury) said that “Bible teaching ought to be given with a background of knowledge on the part of the teacher. He should deprecate as strongly as anybody that men who felt that they could not honestly continue to hold the Christian creeds should hold office in the Church of England. But he saw no connection between the sort of teaching which the Conference had now been considering and the giving up of the Christian creed. The Old Testament was a literature which had come down to them from ancient days. Modern investigation enabled them now to set the earlier stages of that literature in somewhat different surroundings from those in which they were set by their fathers and grandfathers.” With regard to the book which had been referred to, the Archbishop said that, if the rider proposed was intended to imply a censure upon a particular writer, nothing would induce him to vote for it, inasmuch as he had not read the book, and knew nothing, at first hand, about it. He thought members ought to pause before they lightly gave votes which could be so interpreted.
The motion, on being put to the meeting, was carried with one dissentient. The rider was also carried by a majority.
It amounts, then, to this, that a rule of limited liability is to be observed in the investigation of early Christianity. You may be critical, but not up to the point of calling in question the Virgin Birth or physical resurrection of Christ. The Bishop of Croydon opines that the free discussion of such questions in University circles intimidates young men from taking orders. If he lived in Oxford, he would know that it is the other way about.[2] If Mr. Thompson had been allowed to say what he thought, unmolested; if the Bishops of Winchester and of Oxford had not at once taken steps to silence and drive him out of the Church, students would have been better encouraged to enter the Anglican ministry, and the more intellectual of our young men would not avoid it as a profession hard to reconcile with truth and honesty and self-respect.