We have four brief sketches claiming to be biographies of Jesus, which the Church claims as authentic, from which we must draw all our information regarding Jesus.

It is not necessary here to assign the reasons of learned critics for their conclusion that the Gospel “according to” Mark is the older of the four. But it is worthy of note that there is not in it one word of the miraculous conception story, and not a hint of the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as the critics have a way of proving that the last chapter of Mark was added by a later hand.

Then we are embarrassed by the testimony of Irenæus, Origen, Jerome, and other Christian Fathers that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, while there are indubitable internal evidences that this Gospel, as we have it, was written in Greek and by a Greek, and not a Jew, and that it is really a theological treatise written by some partisan for ecclesiastical reasons, and that if Matthew ever wrote a Gospel, it has been unfortunately lost or purposely destroyed. An early Christian sect, called in derision Ebionites, are supposed to have had the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and they were persecuted and stamped out for denying the miraculous conception and divinity of Christ, and with them, some critics suppose, perished the only genuine Gospel of Matthew. There is little if any doubt that the first and second chapters of our Matthew, giving an account of the miraculous birth and genealogy of Jesus, were added when this fiction was incorporated into Christianity as necessary to a divine Church establishment which should almost deify a hierarchy and bring the common people into subjection. In reading Matthew’s Gospel we should undoubtedly begin at chapter 3, and especially as the first two chapters are absurd, contradictory, and inconsistent. If Jesus was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it was not consistent or necessary to notice the genealogy of Joseph, and there is nothing more bungling than the genealogies of Mary and Joseph as given in Matthew and Luke. Indeed, the name Matthew is not Jewish, and there are those who doubt if there ever was such a man. It is a suggestive fact that the Egyptians had a Matthu, and that he was the registrar, or keeper of their records.

The Gospel ascribed to Luke he himself admits to be a résumé or compilation of what had been written by others and was the prevalent belief (Luke, chapter 1). In making a close analysis of this little tract a learned German critic Schleiermacher, shows that it was probably compiled from thirty-three different manuscripts. But since Luke himself claims nothing more than the office of a collector, his work is a mere digest of what others had written and a summary of what was then believed by some persons.

The Gospel according to John deserves a more careful and extended notice, from the fact that it differs in so many particulars from the other three Gospels. There is no evidence of the existence of this writing until A. D. 175, when it was mentioned in the Clementine Homilies,(1) and in 176, Theophilus of Antioch ascribed its authorship to John. But nothing is more certain than that John the Evangelist did not write this little book, as it contains internal evidence of its Grecian origin, and that it could not have been written by one familiar with Judaism and the geography of Palestine. Many of the best biblical scholars, orthodox and rationalistic, admit this fact, and our Methodist friends may amuse themselves at their leisure in reading a learned note from the pen of their great commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, at the close of his exposition of the first chapter of John, in which he points out thirty-five parallels between the writings of Philo the learned Platonist and the Gospel of John, unwittingly showing that it must have been written by an Alexandrian Greek.

  1. These were spurious.

And right here it is proper to expose an ancient fraud perpetuated in the Church to the present day—to wit, that Papius and Polycarp, early Christian writers, were personally acquainted with and instructed by John, and that therefore a succession was established with the teachings of Jesus himself, whose personal disciple John was. This story was originated by Irenæus, and the fraud consists in confounding John the son of Zebedee and Salome with one John who was said to be a presbyter in Asia Minor. This ingenious device is clearly exposed by Reber in his work—The Enigmas of Christianity. Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, may be called one of the founders of the papal hierarchy, as he in the second century attempted, but miserably failed, to furnish a catalogue of bishops in orderly succession from the apostles; and soon after he was followed in the same vain attempt by Tertullian, who first claimed supremacy for the bishop of Rome, calling him “epis-copus episcoporum,” a bishop of bishops. The fact is, it is not known who wrote the fourth Gospel, but it is certain that it was not written by the humble, amiable Galilean fisherman, but by a learned neo-Platonist, who was familiar with the dialectics of the learned Gnostic philosophers, and who desired most earnestly their complete suppression as essential to the success of the fixed purpose of priests to establish a Church, under an alleged divine commission, in which they were to be the kings and princes. Priests have always been the corrupters and perverters of truth for their own aggrandizement, and the Grecian treatise palmed upon the Church as the Gospel of St. John is one of the most illustrious examples. But for this so-called “Gospel” the existence of the papal hierarchy, and the consequent priestly pretensions in Protestant churches, would have been impossible. Enough has been presented to show that we have no alternative but to depend upon the synoptical Gospels, credited to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in our inquiry as to Jesus.

Now let us see just where we stand as to the sources of information to which we are to look in learning whom Jesus was.

  1. We are restricted to four, if not three, short biographies, accredited to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only two of whom, Matthew and John, were mentioned among the disciples of Jesus.
  2. That these sketches were written by those whose names they bear is not supported by a particle of proof, but, on the other hand, there is strong evidence that they were not written by the persons to whom they are credited; and this is especially true in regard to Matthew and John. Strictly speaking, our Gospels are anonymous.
  3. These documents are without date, both as to the time in which they are written and the place of writing, and there is no proof of their existence until more than one hundred and fifty years after the alleged occurrence of the things recorded.
  4. That these four Gospels were selected from many other writings most of which have been lost or destroyed.
  5. That the men who made our four Gospels canonical, and rejected all the rest, were for the most part narrow, bigoted partisans, and had good reasons of a selfish nature to reject whatever did not favor their ambitious designs.
  6. We have no proof that the four Gospels made canonical by the early ecclesiastical councils were the original writings of the evangelists, even if we were sure that they wrote anything, nor have we any proof that the copies adopted were genuine and authentic and the best then extant.
  7. We have no proof that the copies we have are accurate copies of the ones adopted by the councils, but we have proof positive, admitted by the New Version-ists of 1881, that they contain many interpolations and additions and many evidences of forgeries and alterations by the ignorant, designing, and selfish ecclesiastics of the mediaeval centuries known as the Dark Ages.
  8. That the Authorized Version read in the churches and in our families is based upon MSS. dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and that only fragmentary MSS. and unauthenticated copies are now in existence, dating from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.
  9. That the copies we have bound up in our New Testament contradict themselves and one another in a great many particulars, and contain many statements which are geographically, historically, and philosophically absurd and incredible.
  10. That, therefore, our Gospels are of uncertain authority and of undoubted human origin, and are to be so regarded without a doubt.

Now, it will be said that this is an infidel attack upon the New Testament, and that it tends to the overthrow of the only religion that can do the world any good. And yet, strange as it may appear, these facts are presented in the best interests of true religion—presented because they are true, and therefore best adapted, nay absolutely essential, to the successful defense and propagation of virtue and morality.