For my part, I reject the idea that the fourth Gospel could have been written by the pen of a quondam Galilean fisherman. But that, taken

all in all, this Gospel may have proceeded, about the end of the first century or the beginning

of the second, from one of the schools of Asia Minor which was attached to John, that it

presents to us a version of the life of the Master worthy of high consideration and often of

being preferred, is indeed rendered probable, both by external evidence and by examining

the document under consideration. 31-32

Many anecdotes were concocted in order to prove that the prophecies regarded as Messianic had been fulfilled in him. But this procedure,

the importance of which is undeniable, would not suffice to explain everything. No

Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies declaring formally what the Messiah

was to accomplish. Many of the Messianic allusions referred to by the evangelists are so

subtle, so indirect, that it is impossible to believe they all had relation to a generally admitted

doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned thus: “The Messiah was to do such a thing; now Jesus

is the Messiah; therefore Jesus has done such a thing.” P.41

Jesus was at an early age penetrated by hese high hopes. Perhaps, moreover, he had read the books of Enoch, then regarded with

equal reverence as the holy books, and the other writings of the same class, which kept up

so much excitement in the popular imagination. The advent of the Messiah, with its glories

and terrors, the nations falling to pieces one after another, the cataclysm of heaven and

earth, were the familiar food of his imagination; and, as these revolutions were believed to

be so close at hand that numbers of people sought to calculate their exact dates, the supernatural

state into which men are led by such visions appeared to Jesus from the first quite

simple and perfectly natural.p.60

Not separating the fate of humanity from that of their little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought to discover

a general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined within itself,

and only concerned with its petty provincial quarrels, has had admirable historians. Stoicism

had enounced the highest maxims upon the duties of man considered as a citizen of the

world and as a member of a great brotherhood; but previous to the Roman period it would

be a vain attempt to discover in classic literature a general system of the philosophy of history,

embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a sort of prophetic sense, has

made history enter into religion. Possibly he owes a little of this spirit to Persia, which, from

an ancient date, conceived the history of the world as a series of evolutions, over which a

prophet presided.

Each prophet had his reign of a thousand years, and out of those successive ages, analogous to the millions

of ages devolved to each Buddha of India, was composed the train of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd.

At the end of the time when the circle of the revolutions shall be completed, the perfect Paradise will appear.

Men will then live happily: the earth will be like a great plain; there will be only one language, one law, and

one government for all men. But this advent is to be preceded by terrible calamities. Dahak (the Satan of Persia)

will break his chains and fall upon the world. Two prophets will then come to comfort mankind, and to prepare

for the great advent.p.64

In spite of all their defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow, subtle, sophistical, the Jews are nevertheless the authors of the finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm of which history speaks. Ibid.

Besides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality

of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of

the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements. In any case, combining with

the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, the dogma

of the resurrection formed those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith

(the orthodox Sanhedrin of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all

imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to

the other.

p.66

Jesus, it may be, saw this Judas, who had conceived a Jewish revolution of a kind

so different from his own ideal; at all events, he knew the opinions of his school, and it was

probably by a reaction against his mistake that he pronounced the axiom upon the “penny”

of Cæsar. Wisely standing aloof from all sedition, Jesus profited by the fault of his predecessor,

and dreamed of another kingdom and of another deliverance.p.69

Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this delightful theology of love.

The God of Jesus is not the tyrannical master who kills, damns, or saves us, just as it pleases

Him. The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him while listening to the gentle inspiration

which cries within us—“Father.” The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen

Israel for His people, and protects them against all the world. He is the God of humanity.

Jesus would not be a patriot like the Maccabees, or a theocrat like Judas the Gaulonite. Boldly

elevating himself above the prejudices of his nation, he would establish the universal Fatherhood

of God. The Gaulonite maintained that it was better for one to die than to give the

title of “Master” to any other than God; Jesus would allow any man to take this name, but

reserves for God a title dearer still. Yielding to the powerful of the earth, who were to him

the representatives of force, a respect full of irony, he establishes the supreme consolation—

the recourse to the Father whom each one has in heaven, and the true kingdom of

God which every man carries in his heart. P.75

This lofty idea of the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even

after him, have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he compiled from some pious

phrases already current amongst the Jews, and which he taught his disciples: —

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will

be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the

evil one.” Jesus insisted particularly upon the idea that the heavenly Father knows better

than we do what we need, and that we almost sin against Him in asking Him for this or that

particular thing. P.78

Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, in their antipathy to the priesthood, had

discovered a little of the true nature of the worship which man owes to God. “To what

purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams,

and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of hegoats.

Incense is an abomination unto me: for your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil,

learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come.” Ibid.

The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era, present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts

of them which have come down to us. We may believe, at all events, that many of the external

practices of John, of the Essenes, and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this time, were derived

from influences then but recently received from the far East. The fundamental practice

which gave to the sect of John its character, and which has given him his name, has always

had its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is practised there to this

day.p.82

His disciples led a very austere life, fasted frequently, and affected a sad and anxious demeanour. We appear sometimes to

discover the dawn of the theory of communism in goods—the tenet that the rich man is

obliged to share what he possesses with the poor. The poor already appeared as the class

who would benefit in the first instance by the kingdom of God p.84

This kingdom was at hand; and it was he, Jesus, who was that “Son of Man,” whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the final and supreme revelation.

We must remember that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art and mythology,

the simple form of man had a superiority over that of Cherubim, and of the fantastic animals

which the imagination of the people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria,

had ranged around the Divine Majesty. Already in Ezekiel, the Being seated on the supreme

throne, far above the monsters of the mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic

visions, had the figure of a man. In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of the

empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great judgment commences, and

when the books are opened, a Being, “like unto a Son of Man,” advances towards the Ancient

of days, who confers on him the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity. Son

of Man, in the Semitic languages, especially in the Aramean dialects, is a simple synonym

of man. But this chief passage of Daniel struck the mind; the words, Son of Man, became,

at least in certain schools, one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the world,

and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated.

The success of the teaching of the new prophet was this time decisive. A group of men

and women, all characterised by the same spirit of juvenile frankness and of simple innocence,

adhered to him and said: “Thou art the Messiah!” As the Messiah was to be the Son of

David, he was naturally conceded this appellation, which was synonymous with the former.

Jesus accepted it with pleasure, although it might cause him some embarrassment, his origin

being so well known. For himself, he preferred the title of “Son of Man,” an apparently

humble title, but it was connected directly with the Messianic hopes. That was the appellation

by which he designated himself, although, in his mouth, the “Son of Man” was a synonym

93

Chapter VIII. Jesus at Capernaum.

of the pronoun I, which he avoided using. But no one ever thus addressed him, doubtless

because the name in question did not quite suit him, until the day of his coming advent.

This check was far from discouraging him. He returned to Capernaum, where he found

the people much more favourably disposed to him, and from there he organised a series of

missions into the small surrounding towns. The people of this beautiful and fertile country

rarely assembled together except on the Sabbath. This was the day he selected for his

teaching. Each town had then a synagogue or place of meeting

Certainly, Jesus learned little or nothing in these journeys. He always came back to his

beloved shores of Gennesareth. His thoughts were centred there, and there he found faith

and love. P.98

Chapter XI. The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor

maintained itself in the domain of pure thought) had agitated for a long time the Jewish

race. The idea that God is the avenger of the poor and of the weak against the rich and

powerful is found in every page of the books of the Old Testament. The history of Israel is,

of all histories, that in which the popular notions have most certainly predominated. The

prophets, the truest, and in a sense the boldest tribunes, had thundered incessantly against

the great, and had established a close relation between the terms “rich, impious, violent,

wicked,” on the one hand, and between “poor, gentle, humble, pious,” on the other.p.110

One idea, at least, which Jesus carried away from Jerusalem, and which henceforth appeared

to be rooted in his mind, was that there was no union possible between him and the

ancient Jewish religion. The abolition of the sacrifices, which had caused him so much disgust,

the suppression of an impious and haughty priesthood, and, in a general sense, the abrogation

of the Law, appeared to him an absolute necessity! From this moment he is no longer a

Jewish reformer, but it is as a destroyer of Judaism that he poses. Some advocates of the

Messianic notions had already admitted that the Messiah would bring a new law, which

should be common to all people. The Essenes, who were scarcely Jews, appear also to have

been indifferent to the temple and to the Mosaic observances. But these were only isolated

or unavowed instances of boldness. Jesus was the first who dared to say that from his time,

or rather from that of John, the Law was abolished.p.124

The temple excluded all except Jews from its enclosure by scornful

placards. Jesus did not approve this. That narrow, hard, and uncharitable Law was only

made for the children of Abraham. Jesus maintained that every well-disposed man, every

man who received and loved him, was a son of Abraham. The pride of blood appeared to

him the chief enemy that he had to combat. In other words, Jesus was no longer a Jew. He

was in the highest degree revolutionary; he called all men to a worship founded solely on

the fact of their being children of God. He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of

the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the deliverance of man, not the deliverance

of the Jew p.124

But we must remember that the disciples, whose narrow minds did not lend themselves to this supreme

indifference for the privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of

their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible that Jesus may have vacillated

on this point; just as Mahomet speaks of the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the

most honourable manner, sometimes with extreme harshness, according as he hoped or

not to win their favour. Tradition, in fact, ascribes to Jesus two entirely opposite rules of

proselytism, which he may have practised in turn: “He that is not against us is on our part.”

“He that is not with me is against me.” Impassioned contention involves almost necessarily

these sorts of contradictions.p.126

The title of “Son of David” was the first that he accepted, probably without his being

implicated in the innocent frauds by which it was sought to secure it to him. The family of

David had, as it appears, been long extinct; nor did the Asmoneans, who were of priestly

138

origin, nor Herod, nor the Romans dream for a moment that any representative whatever

of the ancient dynasty existed in their midst. But from the close of the Asmonean dynasty

the dream of an unknown descendant of the ancient kings, who should avenge the nation

of its enemies, worked in every brain. The universal belief was that the Messiah would be

son of David, and, like him, would be born at Bethlehem. The first thought of Jesus was not

this exactly. The remembrance of David, which was uppermost in the minds of the majority

of the Jews, had nothing in common with his heavenly reign. He believed himself the Son

of God, and not the son of David. His kingdom, and the deliverance which he meditated,

were of quite another order. But opinion on this point made him do himself a sort of violence.

The immediate consequence of the proposition, “Jesus is the Messiah,” was this other proposition,

“Jesus is the son of David.” He allowed a title to be given him without which he

could not hope for success.p,129

That Jesus never dreamt of passing himself for an incarnation of the true God, there

can be no doubt. Such an idea was quite foreign to the Jewish mind; and there is no trace

of it in the three first gospels; we only find it alluded to in portions of the fourth, which

cannot be accepted as reflecting the thoughts of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus even seems to take

precautions to repress such a doctrine. The accusation that he made himself God, or the

equal of God, is presented, even in the fourth Gospel, as a calumny of the Jews. In the latter

Gospel he declares himself less than his Father. Elsewhere he avows that the Father has not

revealed everything to him. He believes himself to be more than an ordinary man, but separated

from God by an infinite distance. He is Son of God, but all men are or may become

so, in divers degrees. Every one each day ought to call God his father; all who are raised

again will be sons of God. The divine son-ship was attributed in the Old Testament to beings

who, it was by no means pretended, were equal with God. The word “son” has in the

Semitic tongues and in the New Testament the widest meaning.

With this exception, in the greater number of instances in which he comes

in contact with Pagans, he shows towards them great indulgence; sometimes he professes

to conceive more hope of them than of the Jews. The kingdom of God is to be transferred

to them. “When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these

husbandmen? He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vine-yard

unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.” Jesus adhered

so much the more to this idea, as the conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish

notions, one of the surest signs of the advent of the Messiah.p.136

Moreover, there is no trace, in the teaching of Jesus, of an applied morality or of a canonical

law, ever so slightly defined. Once only, respecting marriage, he spoke with decision,

and forbade divorce. Neither was there any theology or creed. There were hardly any opinions

respecting the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, from which, afterwards, were drawn the

Trinity and the Incarnation, but they still remained in a state of indeterminate imagery. The

later books of the Jewish canon recognised already in the Holy Spirit a sort of divine hypostasis,

sometimes identified with Wisdom or the Word. Jesus insisted upon this point, and

pretended to give to his disciples a baptism by fire and by the Spirit, as much preferable to

that of John. For Jesus, this Holy Spirit, was not distinct from the inspiration emanating

from God the Father in a continuous manner p.150

One day the apostles believed they had received the baptism of this spirit in the form of a

great wind and tongues of fire. In order to designate this Spirit, people made use of the word

Paraklit, which the Syro-Chaldaic had borrowed from the Greek , and which

appears to have had in this case the meaning of “advocate,” “counsellor,” and sometimes

that of “interpreter of celestial truths,” and of “teacher charged to reveal to men the hitherto

hidden mysteries.” It is very doubtful whether Jesus made use of this word. It was in this

case an application of the process which the Jewish and Christian theologies would follow

during centuries, and which was to produce a whole series of divine assessors, ibid.

John the Baptist had previously provoked enmities of the same kind. But the aristocrats of Jerusalem,

who despised him, had allowed simple men to regard him as a prophet. In this case,

however, the war was to the death. It was a new spirit that had appeared in the world, which

shattered all that had preceded it. John the Baptist was a thorough Jew: Jesus was scarcely

one at all. Jesus always addressed himself to refined moral sentiment. He was only a disputant

when he argued against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing him, as almost always happens,

to adopt their tone p.163

The Sadducees, like Jesus, rejected the “traditions” of the Pharisees. By a very strange singularity, it was these unbelievers

who, denying the resurrection, the oral Law, and the existence of angels, were the true Jews.

Or rather, as the old Law in its simplicity no longer satisfied the religious wants of the time,

those who strictly adhered to it, and rejected modern inventions, were regarded by the devotees

as impious, just as an evangelical Protestant of the present day is regarded as an unbeliever

in orthodox countries.p.167

The title of “King of the Jews,” which Jesus had never taken upon himself, but which

his enemies represented as the sum and substance of his acts and pretensions, was naturally

that by which they might be able to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority p.187

Already the Jews, in the matter of the votive escutcheons, had written to the emperor, and their action had been approved. He

feared for his office. By a condescension, which was to hold up his name to the lash of history,

he yielded, throwing, it is said, all the responsibility of what was about to happen upon the

Jews. The latter, according to the Christians, fully accepted it by exclaiming, “His blood be

on us and on our children!” Were these words really uttered? It is open to doubt. P.189

The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism. Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword. If, instead of pursuing the Jews with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished

the order of things which killed its founder, how much more consistent would it not have

been—how much better would it not have deserved of the human race p.192

§ 18. Now comes a dispute (vii. 11, and following) between Jesus and the Jews, to which

I attach little value. Scenes of this description are hence very numerous. Our author's species

of imagination imposes itself very strongly on all that he recounts; with him such pictures

must be moderately true in the colouring. The discourses put in the mouth of Jesus are

conformable with the ordinary style of our author. The intervention of Nicodemus (v. 50

and following) may alone in all this possess a historic value. Verse 52 is open to objections.

This verse, they say, contains an error which neither John nor even a Jew could have committed.

Could the author be ignorant of the fact that Jonas and Nahum were born in Galilee?

Yes, certainly, he might not know it, or, at least, he might not think of it. The historical and

exegetical knowledge of the evangelists, and in general the authors of the New Testament,

Saint Paul excepted, was very incomplete. In any case they wrote from memory, and were

not careful as to being exact p.220

The authority of St. Paul, which is here in accord with the synoptics,

possesses no preeminence, seeing that he had not been present at the repast; it proves only

that which no one can doubt, that a great part of tradition fixed the establishment of the

sacred memorial on the eve of his death. This tradition answers to the generally accepted

tradition that on the said evening Jesus substituted a new Eastern for the Jewish Passover;

it supports another opinion of the synoptics, which is contradicted by the fourth Gospel, to

wit, that Jesus made with his disciples the paschal feast, and died, consequently, on the

morrow of the day when people eat the paschal lamb. P.231

 NOT THE SON OF GOD

CHAPTER XV.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGEND OF JESUS—HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.

was applicable to Jesus. Contact with men degraded him to their level. P.158