“The identification of Christ with Joshua,” remarks the orthodox translator cited, “is a mixture of Jewish and Christian legend (sic) which is unique. It is no question of symbolism here, as Joshua in Christian writings is treated as a type of Christ, but rather the confusion is such as might be made by an ignorant person reading, [Heb. iv, 8], ‘if Jesus had given them rest,’ and concluding that Jesus Christ led the Jews into Canaan. The author, indeed, identifies himself with the Jews, as where he prays (vers. 327 ff.): ‘Spare Judea, Almighty Father, that we may see thy judgments’; and were it credible that the whole book was the work of one author, we should regard his religion as syncretic, and in full accord neither with law nor gospel. But the book ... is of composite character. One writer may have been a Christian; another filches occasionally from Christian sources, but has no lively faith in Christ: like many of his countrymen at this time, he suspends his judgment, and instead of making a decision expends his energies in denunciation of the hated power of Rome, and in speculations concerning the future.”
It matters not whether the writer was or was not a confident Christian: Judaic by upbringing or tuition he certainly was; and his identification of Jesus the Christ with Joshua is one more of the proofs that for many Jews Joshua had a quasi-divine status, as was fitting for a personage who “made the sun stand still.” Taken collectively, the proofs cannot be overridden or explained away. Joshua was for the Jews of the Hellenistic period the actual founder of the rite of circumcision:[59] that is to say, mythologically, he was the God of the rite. But still more weighty is the evidence that his name lived on as that of the God-victim of a kindred rite; and it is on that basis that there was founded the rite which is for Christianity what circumcision had been for Judaism. Circumcision is a rite of redemption, the giving of a symbolic part of the body to “redeem” the whole—a surrogate for the Passover sacrifice of the first-born, developed into a racial theocratic rite. It is significant that the Saviour-God of this rite becomes the Saviour-God of the rite offered in place of that of the Passover, whereby the primordial human sacrifice is re-typified in that of the deity who once for all dies for all. It is upon such roots of pre-historic religion that the world-religions grow.
§ 3. The Mystery-Drama
That there was an actual mystery-drama behind the gospel tragedy is revealed by the document itself, which is demonstrably not primarily a narrative at all, but a drama transcribed, with a minimum of necessary elucidation. Only the habit of reading with uncritical reverence can conceal from a student the dramatic bareness and brevity of the record in the synoptics—a record which in the fourth gospel is grafted, without any real development, on a protracted discourse that only artificially suggests circumstantial reality. Chapter xiii is as it were inserted in the middle of that discourse; and chapter xiv proceeds as from the end of chapter xii. The original document cannot have had the story of the tragedy in this form. At the close of chapter xiv the “Arise, let us go hence,” is a slight artifice to suggest action where there is none. Only at chapter xviii is the action resumed; and it is as bare and formal as in the synoptics. Broadly speaking, the action is something superadded. A long discourse has been wrapped round the first section, but without altering its compressed character. The synoptics know nothing of the Johannine discourses: the Johannine document knows no more of a historic episode than do the synoptics: it can only invent monologues.
Reading the synoptic account, we find a series of separate scenes, with the barest possible explanatory connection and introduction. The treason of Judas, in itself a myth,[60] is announced beforehand in three sentences, with no sign of reflection on the meaninglessness of the situation posited. A mystico-mythical episode of a message from the Master to one who is to prepare the passover meal comes next. In Matthew the message is to “such a man”—undescribed: in Mark, a man carrying a pitcher of water is to be seen and followed, and “wheresoever he shall enter in” the message is to be delivered to “the goodman of the house,” and the room will be shown ready. To read biography in this, or to ascribe a “primitive” trustworthiness to the Marcan story, is to cast out criticism.
But the Supper itself is presented with the same ceremonial effect; the whole content being the mention of the betrayal and the dogmatic meaning of the ritual. In Mark, the whole episode of the Supper occupies eight sentences: in Matthew, where Judas puts his question and gets his answer, ten. After the singing of a hymn, the scene changes instantly to the Mount of Olives. No reason is assigned for the going out into the night: it is taken for granted that the Divine One is going to his death, of his own will and prevision. Either we believe this, making him a God, or we recognize a myth. Biography it cannot be. And drama it clearly is.
On the Mount, there is another brief dialogue, committing Peter and the other disciples—a wholly hostile presentment. Again the scene changes to Gethsemane, where the three selected disciples with whom Jesus withdraws actually sleep while he utters the prayer set down. There was thus no one to hear it. Any biographical theory which is concerned to respect verisimilitude must here recognize something else than narrative, and will presumably posit invention. But why should invention take this peculiar form? If the object was to impeach the disciples—and they certainly are impeached—is it not an impossibly crude device to tell of their sleeping throughout the prayer and its repetition, leaving open the retort: “You report the words of the prayer: from whom did you get them if not from those disciples, who must have heard them?” But if we suppose the scene first presented dramatically, no perplexity or counter-sense is involved. The impeachment is effectual; the episode is seen; and no one is concerned, in presence of a drama, to ask how certain words came to be known to have been spoken by any personage. It is the reduction to narrative form that betrays the dramatic source. And when we find in both Matthew and Mark, which clearly embody the same original document, this sequence:
And again he came, and found them sleeping ... and they wist not what to answer him [nothing has been said]. And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough; the hour is come: behold, the son of man is betrayed.... Arise now ...,
the documentary crux, which the biographical school makes vainly violent attempts to solve, is at once solved when we realize that in the transcription two speeches have accidentally been combined. The drama must have gone thus:—