The claim of autocratic official authority to forgive and punish, to deny before God those who should deny him before men, to denounce whole cities for want of faith in him, to come in God’s name to judge all mankind, to proclaim everlasting punishment and declare that some should never be forgiven, mars the beauty of Jesus’ character. A real deficiency in his teaching was the absence of any explicit declaration of human brotherhood. It is a remarkable feet that no clear statement of this idea is recorded of Jesus. But the lack was supplied in a certain form by Paul, whose broader ethnic experience and more liberal culture made him recognize the demand more fully, and who was therefore bound to have it satisfied in his religious ideal. This was easy, since he had never seen Jesus, and could construct his personality as his own reverence and sense of human need might prompt.
The clearest statement of human brotherhood in the New Testament is that ascribed to Paul: “God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth.” Yet even in Paul's mind it seems to have been conditioned on faith in his Master. All were “members of one another, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free;” but it was only in so far as they were, or were fit to be, “in the body of Christ.” Cicero and Seneca rest human brotherhood on broader and deeper foundations. “All are members of one great body,” says Seneca also; but in what sense? “By the constitution of nature, which makes us kindred, and more miserable in doing than in receiving an injury; and by whose sway our hands are prepared for mutual help.” Paul says, “In Christ is neither bond nor free.” But Seneca says more broad-ly, “Virtue invites all, free-born, slaves, kings, exiles. It asks no questions about rank or wealth. It is content with the bare man.” Again, exhorting Nero, he says: “Do not ask how much of manumission is endurable, but how much the nature of justice and good will allows you which bids you spare even captives and persons bought with a price. Let slaves find refuge before the statute; if all things are permitted you (by custom and power) against a slave, there is that which the common law of life forbids to be done to a man; for the slave is of the same nature as yourself.” So Cicero says: “No other things are so alike as we are to each other;” “There is no one of any nation who cannot reach virtue by following the light of nature;” “The foundation of law is that nature has made us for the love of mankind.”
Other testimonies to like effect might easily be adduced from “heathen” writers of that age. And the later Stoics do but echo the thought of their predecessors from the days of Zeno and Cleanthes when they reiterate in the broadest terms the belief that men are created for the very purpose of mutual good. And Philo says: “We all are brothers by the highest kind of kindredship, as children of reason;” “Slavery is impious, as destroying the ordinances of nature, which generated all equally and brought them up as if brethren, not in name only, but in reality and truth.” But with the apostles of Christianity, as probably with Jesus himself, brotherhood was inseparable from belief in “the Christ.”
But let us not overlook the facts that the Gospels attribute to Jesus certain beliefs which our present knowledge positively contradicts, and even sentiments and claims which the highest morality cannot approve. For example, take his belief in diabolic possession; his claim of power to forgive sins and to judge mankind with his disciples on twelve thrones; his denunciation of cities that should not receive his messengers; his official retaliation (Matt. 10: 33); the unpardonable sin; his giving Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and to his apostles the same powers; the second coming of the Son of man, with destruction of the world and the coming judgment day within that generation; condemning to endless punishment those who have not succored believers; no salvation to those found unrepentant at his coming; the sinning brother who will not hear the Church to be treated as a heathen; his sweeping denunciation of Pharisees and Scribes; a personal devil and an everlasting hell; power over deadly serpents and the taking of poisons without injury; the working of miracles by faith, even to the removing of mountains and tearing up trees, raising the dead, etc. etc. etc.
But not only are the teachings of Jesus subject to criticism, but his acts are equally so. Take for an example the manner in which he addressed his mother when found disputing with the doctors in the temple, but more particularly hear his words to his mother at the wedding in Cana. She told him that the wine had run out, and he answered in the most uncouth manner, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” That is to say, of what concern was his mother to him, and what had he to do with her trouble about the wine being out? Then the making of the wine, upon which the people got drunk, was by no means worthy of imitation. The quantity, according to some divines, was not less than two or three hogsheads of intoxicating drink, enough to last the balance of the week. The guests were already drunk, and, though the wine was made out of water, it was nevertheless highly intoxicating. We might also mention his rude answer when his mother desired to speak to him (Mark 3: 21-35). At the time of his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem he took an “ass and colt,” the private property of some person, without permission, and the bystanders so understood it. He went immediately to the temple and beat out with a whip all the merchants (whom he calls thieves), all legitimate dealers in animals and doves for religious sacrifice, and violently overthrew the tables of the money-changers, whose business seems also to have been legitimate. This act was a “breach of the peace,” and in any civilized country would have been followed by arrest and imprisonment. It was not right that he should assert his authority by such disorderly conduct, and that too upon the eve of the celebration of a religious ceremony. When waited on by a most respectable deputation of public men who served officially (Matt. 23: 21) and inquired of him “by what authority he did such things,” instead of answering them frankly and making known to them his mission, he raised an irrelevant question, and because they could not tell whether “John’s baptism was from earth or heaven,” he refused to give any apology or explanation of his most treasonable and violent actions. He addressed the Scribes and Pharisees in the most extreme language, calling them “vipers,” “blind guides,” “hypocrites,” “serpents,” etc., and used fulminations that were calculated to excite the worst passions and the most atrocious acts. He told them that they were “whited sepulchres” and “fools.” When he was accepting the hospitalities of a Pharisee (Luke 11:37-54) he abused and denounced both the host and his guests. He is said to have looked on the Pharisees “with anger,” thus violating what he taught. His unjustifiable conduct toward the “barren fig tree” will not be overlooked. It was not the season for figs; he had no right to expect to find fruit on that tree, yet he “cursed” it, and here again destroyed private property without rendering an equivalent. So with the swine of the Gadarenes. This story is childish and wicked, and his action resulted in the destruction of animals which must have been valued at about four thousand pounds sterling. He was also chargeable with dissimulation greatly at variance with moral rectitude. When his brothers would have him go to Jerusalem to attend the feast of tabernacles he declined, and advised them to go without him. But when they had gone, “then went up also to the feast, as it were in secret” (John 7: 2-10).
He certainly here practised deceit. When walking with the two disciples to Emmaus he pretended to be another person, and when they arrived there he “made as though he would go farther that is, he pretended what he did not intend...” (Luke 24:13). He practised the utmost dissimulation in several particulars in the affair of Judas, and carried it even farther than the traitor. (Read and study Matt. 26: 46-50 and context.)
We might pursue this subject indefinitely. It is enough for our present purpose to affirm that many of the errors in natural philosophy, physiology, astronomy, and other sciences that prevailed in that day are implied or incorporated in the Gospels, with many prevailing superstitions, and that there are more mistakes and a greater number of contradictions in the four Gospels than in any other writings of the same length now extant in any language.
There is no one subject upon which so many books have been written as what are called “harmonies of the Gospels.” There are now more than one hundred such books extant, besides thousands that have gone out of print. Long ago as the seventeenth century Thomas Munn of London published such a book, on the title-page of which he states that he has reconciled three thousand contradictions. What does all this imply? Has it ever been found necessary to so reconcile the writings of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Newton, or Bacon? Could not God make himself understood? It is an acknowledged fact among juriste that the discrepancies in the four Gospels would destroy the credibility of any four witnesses in any intelligent court of law.
We must here express our conviction that the Gospels, which profess to give the life of Jesus, are not original, genuine productions, and it is time to show how they came into existence and were palmed off by ecclesiastics as the productions of those whose names they bear.
About the time of the birth of Christianity almost every system of philosophy and religion centred at Alexandria in Egypt. The Essenes, though scattered throughout all the provinces of the Roman empire, had their head-quarters at Alexandria, where existed a flourishing university. To this centre of learning seekers after truth from all countries of the globe found their way, and, comparing their various systems, the result was the evolution of the Eclectic philosophy, made up of what was regarded as the best of every known faith.