The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour

by F. Max Müller

This would, of course, make the matter very easy, and this is no doubt the reason why the theory has found so many adherents. It is only strange that no founder of any religion ever appears to have felt the necessity of leaving anything in his own writing either to his contemporaries or to posterity. No one has ever attempted to prove that Moses wrote books, nor has it ever been said of Christ that he composed a book (John vii. 15). The same is true of Buddha, in spite of the legend of the alphabets; and of Mohammed we know from himself that he could neither read nor write. What we possess, therefore, in the [pg 169] way of holy Scriptures is always the product of a later generation, and subject to all the hazards involved in oral tradition. This was not to be avoided, and ought not to surprise us. If we attempt ourselves to write down without the aid of books or memoranda, occurrences or conversations of which we were witnesses fifty years ago, we shall see how difficult it is, and how untrustworthy is our memory. We may be entirely veracious, but it by no means follows that we are also true and trustworthy. Let any one try to describe the incidents of the Austro-Prussian War without referring to books, and he will see how, with the best intentions, names and dates will waver and reel. When did the German National Assembly elect the German Emperor? Who were the members of the regency? Who was Henry Simon, and were there one or more Simons, like the nine Simons in the New Testament? Who can answer these questions now without newspapers, and yet these are matters only fifty years old, and at the time were well known to all of us. Was it different with the Christians in the year 50 A.D.? It was therefore very natural that a certain inspiration or preëminent endowment should be demanded for the authors of the Gospels; if some do so still, it is on their own responsibility, just as if we demanded for the mother of Mary the same immaculate birth as for Mary herself, et sic ad infinitum. These are for the most part merely excuses for human unbelief. Nothing proves the veracity of the authors of the Gospels [pg 170] so clearly as the natural, often derogatory words which they use of themselves, or even more of the apostles. These did not understand, as they say, the simplest parables or teachings; they were jealous of one another; Peter even denied the Lord; in short, the authors of the Gospels cannot be credited with sinlessness and infallibility, supposing that they were really the apostles.

If they were not, then all these difficulties of our own making disappear. We then find in the Gospels just what we might expect: no ingeniously prepared statements without inconsistencies and without contradictions, but simple, natural accounts, such as were current from the first to the third generations in certain circles or localities, and even according to the attachment of certain families to the personal narrations of one or another of the apostles. We must not forget that in the first generation the necessity for a record was not even felt. Children were still brought up as Jews, for Christianity did not seek to destroy, only to fulfil; and as all the Scriptures, that is the Old Testament, were derived from God and were good for instruction, they continued in use for teaching without further question. But in the second and third generations the breach between Jews and Christians became wider and wider, and the number of those who had known Christ and the apostles, less and less; the need of books especially for the instruction of children consequently became more urgent, and the four Gospels thus arose by a [pg 171] natural process in answer to a natural and even irresistible want. The difficulties involved even in the smallest contradiction between the Gospels on a theory of inspiration thus disappear of themselves; nay, their discrepancies become welcome, because they entirely exclude every idea of intentional deviation, and simply exhibit what the historical conditions would lead us to expect. Of what harm is it, for instance, that Matthew (viii. 28), in relating the expulsion of the devils in the land of the Gergesenes, speaks of two possessed men, while Mark (v. 2) knows only of one among the Gadarenes? Mark also speaks only of unclean spirits, while Matthew speaks of devils. Mark and Luke know the name of the sufferer, Legion; Matthew does not mention the Roman name. These are matters of small import in human traditions and records; in divine revelations they would be difficult to explain.

But it becomes still more difficult when we come to expressions which are really significant and essential for Christianity, for even in these we find inconsistencies. What can be more important than the passage in which Christ asks his disciples, “But whom say ye that I am,” and Peter answers, “Thou art the Messiah” (Mark viii. 29). That was a purely Jewish-Christian answer, and Jesus accepts it as the perfect truth, which, however, should still remain secret. In (Matthew xvi. 16) Peter says not only, “Thou art the Messiah,” but adds, “Son of the living God.” This makes a great difference, and the remarkable thing [pg 172] is, that later on Jesus only commands his disciples to keep secret that he, Jesus, was the Messiah, and says nothing of himself as the Son of God. So much has been written about other discrepancies in this passage, particularly of the promise of the building of the church upon this rock (Peter), which is only found in (Matthew xvi. 18), that we have nothing further to say about it, unless it be that in Mark in this very passage Jesus rebukes Peter because he thinks more of the world than of God, like so many of his later successors.

Let us bear in mind further that neither revelation nor divine inspiration was really necessary for recording most of the things related in the Gospels. The less, the better; for either the witnesses knew that Pilate was at the time governor in Palestine, that Caiaphas was high priest, and that Jairus was ruler of a synagogue, or they did not know it, and in that case we cannot assume that these things were revealed to them by God without irreverence. If, however, it is impossible that God should have inspired or sanctioned the historical part of the Gospels, why then the other part, which contains the teachings of Christ? Is it not much better, much more honest and trustworthy for the writers to have communicated them to us, as they knew and understood them (and that they occasionally misunderstood them they themselves quite honestly admit), than to have been supernaturally inspired for the purpose, and even to have received a revelation in the form of a theophany? [pg 173] Through such weak human ideas we merely drag the Real, the truly Divine, into the dust, and from whom do these ideas of a divine inspiration or revelation come, if not from men as they were everywhere, whether in India or Judea? Everywhere the natural is divine, the supernatural or miraculous is human.

Even for the Apostles and the authors of the Gospels there was only one revelation: that was the revelation through Christ; and this has an entirely different meaning. To understand this, however, we must glance at what we know of the intellectual movements of that time. The Jewish nation cherished two great expectations. The one was ancient and purely Jewish, the expectation of the Messiah, the anointed (Christ), who should be the political and spiritual liberator of the chosen but enslaved people of Israel. The other was also Jewish, but transfused with Greek philosophy, the recognition of the word (Logos) as the Son of God, who should reconcile or unite humanity with God. The first declares itself most clearly, though not exclusively, in the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, the second in the so-called Gospel of John. But it is worthy of note how often these apparently remote ideas are found combined in the Gospels. The idea that a man can be the Son of God was blasphemy in a strict Jewish view, and it was for this reason that the last question of the high priest was, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew xxvi. 63). The Jewish Messiah could [pg 174] never be the Son of God, the Word, in the Christian sense of the term, but only in the sense in which many nations have called God the Father of men. In this sense, also, the Jews say (John viii. 4), “We have one father, even God,” while they start back affrighted at the idea of a divine sonship of man. The Messiah, according to Jewish doctrine, was to be the son of David (Matthew xxii. 42), as the people appear to have called Jesus (Mark x. 47, xv. 39), and in order to counteract this view Christ himself said, in a passage of great historical import: “How then doth David in spirit call the Messiah Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If then David called him Lord, how is he his son?” With these words the true Messiah publicly renounced his royal descent from David, whilst he immediately laid claim to a much higher one. Of what use is it, then, that the author of the Gospel takes such pains in the first chapter to trace Joseph's descent genealogically from David, in spite of the fact that he does not represent Joseph himself as the natural father of Jesus?

These contradictions are quite conceivable in an age strongly influenced by different intellectual currents, but they would be intolerable in a revealed or divinely inspired book. All becomes intelligible, clear, and free from contradiction, if we see in the Synoptic Gospels that which they profess to be—narratives of what had long been told and believed in certain circles [pg 175] about the teaching and person of Christ. I say, what they themselves profess to be; for can we believe, that if the authors had really witnessed a miraculous vision, if every word and every letter had been whispered to them, they would have made no mention of it? They relate so many wonders, why not this one, the greatest of all? But it is not enough that they do not claim any miraculous communication for themselves or their works. Luke states in plain words the character of his gospel, “For as much as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word (Logos); it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.”

What can be clearer? Theophilus had evidently received a not very systematic Christian training, such as was possible under the conditions of that time. As Luke says, there were even then several works on the matters of common belief among Christians. In order, however, that Theophilus may have a trustworthy knowledge of them, his friend (whether Luke or any one else) determines to communicate them to him in regular order, as they had been imparted to him, without asserting that he had himself been from the beginning an eye-witness of them, or [pg 176] a minister of the Word. It is apparent, therefore, that the writer rests upon a tradition derived from eye-witnesses, and that he had even investigated everything with care. Is it credible that he would not have made mention of a revelation or a theophany, had either fallen to his lot? He also lays stress upon his orderly arrangement, which probably implies that even at that time there were the same discrepancies in the sequence of events that we observe in the four Gospels, to say nothing about the numerous apocryphal Gospels. This is just what we as historians expected, in fact it could scarcely be otherwise. Christ's message had first to pass through the colloquial process, the leavening process of oral transmission; then followed the reduction to written form, and it is this that we have, apart from the corruptions of copyists. It is difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise, and still we are not content with these facts, and imagine that we could have done it much better ourselves.

When we take the Synoptic Gospels one by one, we find in Luke the most complete and probably the latest sequence of all the important events; in Mark, the shortest and probably most original narrative, which only contains that which seemed to him undisputed or of the greatest importance; while Matthew, on the contrary, clearly presents the tradition formed and established among the Jewish Christians and believers in the Messiah.

If we may speak of communities at this early time, [pg 177] the community for which the first Gospel was intended manifestly consisted of converted Jews, who had recognised in Jesus their long-expected Messiah or Christ, and were, therefore, convinced that everything which had been expected of the Messiah came true in this Jesus. They went still farther. When they were once convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, many traditions arose which ascribed to him what he, if he were the Messiah, must have done. This is the pervading feature of the first Gospel, as every one who reads it carefully may easily be convinced. This alone explains the frequent and frank expression that this and that occurred “for thus it was written, and thus it was spoken by the prophet.” Every idea of intentional invention of Messianic fulfilments, which has so often been asserted, disappears of itself in our interpretation of the origin of the Gospel. It must be so, people thought, and they soon told themselves and their children that it had been so, and all in good faith, for otherwise Jesus could not have been the expected Messiah.

If we examine the gospel of Matthew from this historical standpoint in detail, we find that it begins with an entirely unnecessary genealogy of Joseph, the ostensible father of Jesus. Then follows the birth, and this is confirmed in i. 22, “For all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet,” namely, Isaiah (vii. 14), “Behold a maiden is with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This means simply [pg 178] that it will be the first-born son, and that he will be called “God is with us,” and, therefore, certainly nothing supernatural.