It is no part of my aim to prove miracles impossible, nor to consider whether one or another alleged wonder might not be really within the powers of an exceptional man. In the absence of any apostolic allusion to any extraordinary incident in the life of Jesus, and his own declaration (for the evangelists could not have invented a rebuke to their own narratives) that miracles were the vain expectation of a people in distress and degradation, such records have lost their historic character. As Gibbon said in the last century, it requires a miracle of grace to make a believer in miracles, and even among the uncritical that miracle is not frequent. In the New Testament belief in miracle has its natural corollary in a miraculous morality,—a dissolution of earthly ties, a severance from worldly affairs, a non-resistance and passiveness under wrongs, which are in perfect accord with persons moving in an apocalyptic dream, but not with a world awakened from that dream.
But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle—the heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a sleep, a realm of dreams,—visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf” into a hymn (Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption, with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king’s slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath (with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an old Oriental fable,[1] to which a Jewish connotation was given by giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar, who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread); the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham’s bosom, his poverty omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history by creating a St. Lazarus (“one helped by God”), yet appointing him the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity through long labyrinths of legend.
To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it, is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the study of nature.
The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity of birth was a sign of authentication for “the God-anointed,” finds some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His double nature is suggested: “Our Lord sprung out of Judah” (vii. 14), yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen “not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life.” The writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is “hard of interpretation,” and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt, i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only five mothers are named,—all associated either with sexual immorality or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar, through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth’s name with this particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. “The Lord gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son”—grandfather of David. It is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew’s list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean “hostess” or “tavern-keeper.” But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor of Jesus mentioned is “her of Uriah.” The name of the woman is not given,—the important fact being apparently that she was somebody’s wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah’s wife when Solomon was born.
The next ancestress named after the mother of Solomon is the mother of Jesus, Mary, in whom Bathsheba finds transfiguration. The exaltation of the adulterous mother of Solomon has already been referred to (ante II.), and the traditional ascription to her of the authorship of the last chapter of Proverbs. She was also supposed to be the original or model of “the Virtuous Woman” therein portrayed! Now, in that same chapter she is pronounced “blessed,” and excelling all the daughters who have done virtuously (Cf. Luke i. 28, 42). In the “Wisdom of Solomon” (ix. 5) a phrase is used by Solomon which is also used by his mother (Bathsheba) when she conjured from David the decree for his succession,—“thine handmaiden” (1 Kings i.). Solomon says, “For I, thy servant, and son of thy handmaiden,” etc. This was written in a popular work about the time of the birth of Jesus. We find the “blessed” of Proverbs xxxi. 28, and the “handmaiden” of the “Wisdom of Solomon” both in Mary’s magnificat: “For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”
In Ecclesiasticus (xv. 2) we find the enigmatic clause concerning Solomonic “Sophia,” personified Wisdom: καί ὑπαντήσεται αὐτῷ ὡς μήτηρ, καὶ ὡς γυνὴ παρθενίας προσδέξεται αὐοτόν.
The Vulgate translates: “Et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificata, et quasi mulier a virginitate suscipiet illum.”
Wycliffe translates the Vulgate: “And it as a modir onourid schal meete hym, and as a womman fro virgynyte schal take him.”
The Authorised Version has: “And as a mother shall she meet him, and receive him as a wife married of a virgin.”
In the Variorum Teacher’s Bible the reading “maiden wife” is suggested, and reference is made to Leviticus xxi. 13, “And he shall take a wife in her virginity.” But the Septuagint, which Jesus Ben Sira would follow were he quoting, uses simple words there: αὗτος γυναῖκα παρθένον [ἐκ τοῦ γένους αὐτοῦ] λήπσεται.