“Thy throne, O God.” Fateful words! The word of God, says this Epistle, is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly unsheathed from a courtier’s compliment just such a sword. One edge has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For there was no other God to adopt him but a particularly rude one.
Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences, but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of worship as a God, and the ancient God with his sacrifices is virtually represented as transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other passages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration, where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a miracle wrought by God after the work of Jesus was “finished,” as he is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused, and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and attitudinizings, which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to hell, but Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul’s time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only due to the superstition that prevents the New Testament narratives from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not shocked by some of the representations.
When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols tell, Wise Men came to worship him, but Jahveh had already fixed his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators that the cry of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest” meant that the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human love,—grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as Wrath,—rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free him from the despot glory, “I create evil,” and reconcile the human heart to him as eternal love—love ever burdened with the griefs of humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels’ song. While half of Christendom sing “On earth peace, good will toward men,” the other half sing, “On earth peace to men of good will.” Our Revisers find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
Although the “higher criticism” appears to treat with a certain contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the vanishing Jesus “after the flesh,” the real and great man, than of the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The “shepherd of my people,” he who is to absolve them from their nightmare “sins,” make crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear, is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then promising them a “Comforter” who will never forgive the slightest offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)
The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel, the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the Bible without recognition of humanity. “I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me,” is the keynote. In this work there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement, attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought.[1] A rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4); the nobleman’s son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only after a sham question, “Wouldest thou be made whole?” and threatened afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).
But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus (xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep, but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (παρῥησιᾳ) and assures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out, accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement groans and lamentations, lashing himself (ἐτάραξεν ἐαυτὸν) into this sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, “I know that thou hearest me always, but because of the multitude around I said it, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” Thus does the fourth Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out into his prophets on occasion.
The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham’s words to the rich man,—“neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,”—were not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming the faith of humanity. “Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died!” Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied, ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job, in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise; it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding, will analyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good Jesus could have practiced such deception and assumed such theatrical attitudes?[2]
The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once supposed. Paul’s rage against the “wisdom of this world,” and his fulminations against the learned because they are not “called,” are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man whose eyes he had opened, and who was worshipping him: “For judgment came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that see may become blind.” And these ideas are represented in a legend related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our translators have manipulated it into serious history.