An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

So far Mark; and as to the charge against Jesus, and the procurator's treatment of it, the other Evangelists are all at one with him. But each has adorned the trial with additional incidents after his own fashion. Matthew has a ridiculous story of an interference with the course of justice by Pilate's wife, who on the strength of a dream entreated him to have nothing to do with "that just man." Matthew, as we have seen before, was a great believer in dreams. Then he is so desirous of clearing the character of the Roman, that he describes him as washing his hands in token of his innocence before the multitude, who cry out that the blood of Jesus is to be on them and their children. In Luke, there is a new variation. Learning that Jesus was a Galilean, Pilate sent him to Herod, who had long been anxious to see him, but who could not now induce him to answer any of his questions. Herod, like Pilate, found no fault in him, and sent him back after treating him with ridicule. Pilate's reluctance to convict Jesus is much magnified in this Gospel. He insists on Herod's inability, as well as his own, to discover any capital offense committed by him, and three several times proposes to the prosecution to chastise him and then dismiss him. In John, the conversation of Pilate with Jesus is wholly different. In the first place, it takes place alone, or at any rate in the absence of the accusers, for these had refused to be defiled by entering the court; and Pilate is represented as going out to them to inquire into the charge. This is to suit the blunder about dates committed in this Gospel, according to which the last supper was before, and the trial at the very time of, the passover. The Jews, therefore, stand without, and the prisoner is within. The prisoner does not refuse, as in all the other versions, to answer Pilate's questions, but enters at some length into his doctrine, explaining the unworldly nature of his kingdom. Pilate places the purple robe and the crown of thorns upon him before his condemnation, instead of after it, and then tells the Jews that he finds no fault in him. Yet after this he desires them to crucify him, although he was guiltless. Hereupon the Jews tell him that he had made himself the Son of God. At this, Pilate is frightened, and enters into further conversation with Jesus. After hearing him expound another theory, he is still very anxious to release him, but is forced to yield by an intimation that no friend of Cæsar's would protect a rival to the throne (Mk. xv. 1-14; Mt. xxvii. 1, 2, and 11-25; Lu. xxiii. 1-23; Jo. xviii. 28-40). Anything more utterly improbable than this scene it is difficult to imagine. The picture of the Roman governor of Judea going backwards and forwards between accusers and accused; listening to the theological fancies of the accused; helpless against the pressure of the accusers; alarmed at the pretensions to divinity of a young Galilean artisan; are sufficient in themselves to stamp this Gospel with the mark of unveracity.

Sentenced to death, Jesus was now scourged; a purple robe was put upon him, and a crown of thorns about his head (not upon it as was afterwards said): he was saluted in mockery as king of the Jews, and smitten with a reed upon the head. After this cruel ceremony he was led out to Golgotha to be crucified, a man named Simon being compelled to bear his cross (Mk. xv. 15-21; Mt. xxvii. 26-32; Lu. xxiii. 24-26; Jo. xix. 1-16). Luke is singular in the introduction of a large company of women who follow Jesus to the crucifixion and draw from him a prophecy of terrible evils to come upon them and their children; for themselves, and not for him, they were to weep (Lu. xxiii. 27-31). The other versions say nothing of any friends or followers, male or female, as being present at this period, though they do mention many women as looking on from a distance during the crucifixion. These, however, were not daughters of Jerusalem (like the women in Luke), but Galilean admirers who had followed him to the capital. His mother was certainly not among them, or she could not fail to have been mentioned in the synoptical Gospels; whereas the only names we meet with are those of Mary Magdalene; Mary, mother of James and Joses; and Salome, apparently the same person as the mother of Zebedee's children (Mk. xv. 40, 41; Mt. xxvii. 55, 56).

These were among the spectators of the melancholy end of him who had been their teacher and their friend. He was crucified between two criminals, with an inscription on his cross which is differently reported in every Gospel, but of which the substance was that he was the king of the Jews. A stupifying drink which Matthew (in accordance with a supposed prophecy) (Ps. lxix. 21) calls vinegar and gall, was offered him by the executioners; not as Luke supposes, in mockery, but with the humane intention of allaying the pain. His clothes were divided among the party of soldiers; a circumstance in which the Evangelists as usual endeavor to see the fulfillment of prophecy. In Psalm xxii. 18, we read: "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture." The Synoptics content themselves here with stating that the soldiers drew lots for his clothing, but John anxious to fulfill this prophecy in the most literal manner possible, pretends that they divided the articles of his apparel into four parts, but finding the coat without seam, agreed not to tear it, but to apportion it by lot. Luke is the sole reporter of a saying of Jesus uttered in his last moments: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Mk. xv. 23-28; Mt. xxvii. 34-38; Lu. xxiii. 32-34, 36; Jo. xix. 17-24).

The pangs of death must have been greatly embittered to Jesus if it be true that not only the priests and passers by, but the very criminals who were crucified with him, ridiculed his claim to be king of Israel, and suggested that he should prove it to demonstration by saving himself from the cross. All the synoptical Gospels agree in this account, with the single exception that Luke includes only one of the malefactors among the scorners. According to this Gospel, the other rebuked his fellow-convict for his misbehavior, and addressed to him a few moral remarks; which, however, were perhaps not quite disinterested, for at its close he requested Jesus to remember him in his kingdom, and received an ample reward in the shape of a promise from the latter that he should be with him that day in Paradise. But where was the impenitent criminal to be? About his fate there is an ominous obscurity, and it evidently did not occur to the writer that the forgiveness which Jesus had just been praying his Father to grant his enemies, he might himself have extended to this miserable man (Mk. xv. 29-32; Mt. xxvii. 39-44; Lu. xxiii. 35-43).

Another incident of the closing hours of Jesus is known to the fourth Evangelist alone. According to the others, the women who watched him expire were standing far off. But according to John, his mother Mary, her sister, and Magdalene were all at the foot of the cross. There also was the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who in the three other Gospels had run away. Before he died, Jesus committed his mother to the care of this disciple as to a son, and he afterwards took her home. The dogmatic purpose of this story is evident. Mary had not been converted by her son during his life-time, and it was important to bring her to the foot of the cross at his death, and to place her in this close connection with one of his principal disciples (Jo. xix. 25-27).

As to the last words of Jesus, there is an amount of divergence which shows that no account can be regarded as trustworthy. Mark and Matthew both relate that he called out, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" an exclamation which he may really have uttered, or which, as coming from a prophetic Psalm, may have seemed to them appropriate. Hereupon a sponge of vinegar was offered him under the impression that he was calling Elias, and with a loud cry he gave up the ghost. In Luke he cries loudly, and then says, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." With these words (also from one of the Psalms) upon his lips, he dies. In John he says, "I am thirsty:" and after receiving some vinegar, adds, "It is finished;" and bowing his head, gives up the ghost (Mk. xv. 34-37; Mt. xxvii. 46-50; Lu. xxiii. 46; Jo. xix. 28-30).

With the death of Christ, and indeed immediately before it, we pass from the region of mixed history and mythology into that of pure mythology. With the exception of his burial, all that follows has been deliberately invented. The wonders attendant upon his closing hours belong in part to the typical order of myths, and in part to an order peculiar to himself. The darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, the rending of the temple veil, the earthquake, the rending of the rocks, are altogether like the prodigies attending the decease of other great men. The centurion's exclamation, "Truly this man was just," or "Truly this man was the son of God" (it is differently reported), is a myth belonging peculiarly to Christ, and designed to exhibit the enforced confession of his greatness by an incredulous Roman. In Matthew, where the more modest narratives of Mark and Luke are greatly improved upon by additional details, it is further added that many bodies of saints arose, and after the resurrection appeared to many in Jerusalem (Mk. xv. 33-39; Mt. xxvii. 45, and 51-54; Lu. xxiii. 44-47).

John, who knows nothing whatever of the darkness, the accident to the temple veil, the revival of the saints, or the centurion's exclamation, has a myth of his own constructed for the especial purpose of fulfilling certain prophecies. The next day being a festival, the Jews, he says, were anxious that the bodies should not remain on the crosses. They therefore requested Pilate to break their legs and remove them. He ordered this to be done, and the legs of the two criminals were broken, but not those of Jesus, who was already dead; one of the soldiers, however, pierced his side, from which blood and water gushed out. The writer adds a strong asseveration of his veracity, but immediately betrays himself by letting out that in relating the omission to break the legs of Jesus he was comparing him to the Paschal lamb, of whom not a bone was to be broken; while in telling of the soldier who pierced his side, he was thinking of a phrase in Zechariah: "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced" (Zech. xii. 10; Jo. xix. 31-37).

The burial of the body took place quietly. Joseph of Arimathæa, a secret admirer of Jesus, placed it in a new sepulchre of his own. With him John associates a character who exists only in his Gospel, Nicodemus, and whom he introduces here as taking some part in the interment. To the circumstance of the burial in the rock sepulchre, Matthew adds an audacious fiction of his own; namely, that the chief priests, remembering Christ's prediction that he should rise on the third day, obtained leave to seal the stone of the tomb and keep it watched, lest the disciples should take the body by night and pretend that he was risen (Mk. xv. 42-47; Mt. xxvii. 57-66; Lu. xxiii. 50-56; Jo. xix. 38-42).

Certainly if the Evangelist had meant to convey the impression that no human means could prevent the resurrection of Christ, he would have been perfectly right. An actual body was not necessary for the purpose. For the legends appertaining to the resurrection belong to a region in which imagination, unhampered by the controlling influence of historical fact, has been permitted the freest play. Of the appearances of Jesus after his death we have accounts by no less than seven different hands, each story being distinct from, though not always inconsistent with, the other six. Let us begin with what is probably the oldest of all, containing but a germ of the rest; the first eight verses of the last chapter of Mark. There we are told that on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary James's mother, and Salome went to the sepulchre at sunrise. They found it empty, the stone having been rolled away. A young man in white clothes was sitting in it. He told them that Jesus was risen, and desired them to tell the disciples that he was going to Galilee, where they would see him. All that follows in this Gospel is added by a later hand, and the very first verse of the addition is plainly written in total disregard of what has just preceded it. Observe then that the simplest form of the story of the resurrection contains no mention of any actual appearance of Jesus whatever, but merely an assertion that the body was not in the tomb, and that a man, sitting inside it, made certain statements to three women. To this the forger has added that Jesus appeared first to Magdalene, whose account, given to the disciples, was disbelieved by them; secondly, to two disciples while walking, whose evidence was also disbelieved; thirdly, to the eleven at dinner, to whom he addressed a discourse (Mk. xvi.).