target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_2c7d970a-98da-52d3-86c5-ad6804e9aaf3">1 See the collection of illustrations in Mr. Joseph McCabe’s Sources of the Morality of the Gospels (R. P. A., 1914), and his excellent chapter on “The Parables of the Gospel and the Talmud.” ↑
2 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ed. by R. H. Charles, 1908, pp. lxxx, 97, 122, 213, 214. ↑
5 Id. Test. Iss. v, 2; Dan. v, 3; Iss. vii, 6. ↑
9 Letter to W. S. Lilly, cited in his Claims of Christianity, 1894, pp. 30–31. ↑
10 Das Christenthum … der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1853, pp. 35–36. (Eng. trans, i, 38.) ↑
11 Prof. Flint in “St. Giles Lectures” on “The Faiths of the World,” 1882, p. 419. ↑
Chapter III
ILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC
Strictly speaking, the whole problem of the moral value and the historical effects of Christianity lies outside the present issue; but we are forced to face it when the question of the truth of its historic basis is dismissed by a professed logician with a rhetorical thesis to the effect that “religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on” the personality of which he is challenged to prove the historicity. Mill answers the challenge by begging the question; and where he was capable of such a course multitudes, lay and clerical, will long continue to be so. For Mill the problem was something extraneous to his whole way of thought. Broadly speaking, he never handled a historical problem, properly so called. Other defenders of the historicity of Jesus, in turn, charge a want of historic sense upon all who venture to put the hypothesis that the Gospel Jesus is a mythical creation. The charge has been repeatedly made by men who can make no pretence of having ever independently elucidated any historical problem; and in one notable case, that of Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, it is made by a scholar who has committed himself to the assertion of the historicity of Krishna. Such resorts to blank asseveration in such matters are on all fours with the blank asseveration that the Gospel Jesus, in virtue of the teachings ascribed to him, is a figure too sublime for human invention.
The slightest reflection might obtrude the thought that it is precisely the invented figure that can most easily be made quasi-sublime. Is it pretended that Yahweh is not sublime? Is the Book of Job pretended to be historical? The Gospel Jesus is never shown to us save in a series of statuesque presentments, healing, preaching, prophesying, blessing, denouncing, suffering; he is expressly detached from domestic relationships; of his life apart from his Messianic career there is not a vestige of trace that is not nakedly mythical; of his mental processes there is not an attempt at explanation save in glosses often palpably incompetent; and of his plan or purpose, his hopes or expectations, no exegete has ever framed a non-theological theory that will stand an hour’s examination. Those who claim as an evidence of uniqueness the fact that he is never accused by the evangelists of any wrong act do but prove their unpreparedness to debate any of the problems involved. A figure presented as divine, in a document that aims at establishing a cult, is ipso facto denuded of errancy so far as the judgment of the framers of the picture can carry them. But all that the framers and redactors of the Gospels could achieve was to outline a figure answering to their standards of perfection, free of what they regarded as sin or error. Going to work in an age and an environment in which ascetic principles were commonly posited as against normal practice, they guard the God from every suggestion of carnal appetite; and the dialecticians of faith childishly ask us to contrast him with ancient Pagan deities whose legends are the unsifted survivals of savage folklore. As if any new Sacred Book in the same age would not have proceeded on the same standards; and as if the religious Jewish literature of the age of Christian beginnings were not as ascetic as the other. But inasmuch as the compilers of the Gospels could not transcend the moral standard of their time, they constantly obtrude its limitations and its blemishes. Had Mill attempted anything beyond his dithyramb, he would have been hard put to it to apply his ecstatic epithets to such teachings as these:—
Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law [of Moses].
Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire. [Compare Matt. xxiii, 17: “Ye fools and blind”; and Luke xii, 20: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”]
Whosoever shall marry her [the woman divorced without good cause] shall commit adultery.
Give to him that asketh thee.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth. Seek ye first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness; and all these things [that were to be disregarded] shall be added unto you.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. [Compare the warning against saying, Thou fool.]
Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans.
Whosoever shall not receive you, … as ye go forth out of that house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.
I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.
Think
