The Truth about Jesus : Is He a Myth? Part 13

Apparently it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at all. Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was a precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this supposed "precedent conviction?" "That a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pa.s.s away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We are simply astonished, and grieved as well, to see the use which so enlightened a man as Prof. Adler makes of his gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the G.o.d of Christendom kindly tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively excellent, or incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others? Was there a weakness found in men like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That Jesus created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist who denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and to be despised. And how could a man whose public life did not cover more than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and a monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives, taking no active part in the business life--supporting no family or parents, a.s.suming no civil or social duties--how can such a man, we ask, be held up as a model for the men and women of today? Jesus, according to his biographers, believed he could raise the dead, and announced himself the equal of G.o.d. "I and my father are one," he is reported to have said; and one of his apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no robbery to be equal to G.o.d." Either this report is true, or it is not.

If it is, what shall we think of a man who thought he was a G.o.d and could raise the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we place in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the greatest confidence are to be rejected?

Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and conventional enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others," that his followers could not believe he was a mere mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond to this rhetorical language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There we find only a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it were, by various contributors--a character made up of the most contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that description in the four gospels.

That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not careful, and that sounding phrases and honest historical criticism are not the same thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's lavish praise of John Calvin. He speaks of him in terms almost as glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls Calvin "that mighty and n.o.ble man."

That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he was "mighty"

in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded because he had "danced," and also because he had committed the grave offense of saying that "Moses was only a man and no one knows what G.o.d said to him," and in which Michael Servetus was burned alive for holding opinions contrary to those which the Genevan pope was interested in,--is readily conceded. But was Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent sense? Did his power save people from the Protestant inquisition?

Was not the Geneva of his day called _the Protestant Rome?_ And if he did not use his powerful influence to further religious tolerance and intellectual honesty; if he did not use his position to save men from the grip of superst.i.tion and the fear of h.e.l.l, how can Prof. Adler refer to him as "that mighty and n.o.ble man--John Calvin?"

It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which Felix Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he should, indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his readers a man who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the Geneva of the sixteenth century, would be regarded by every morally and intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not Felix Adler examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and proves him beyond doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I shall see that he does not escape alive," wrote John Calvin to Theodore Beza. And he carried out his fearful menace; Servetus was put to death by the most horrible punishment ever invented--he was burned alive in a smoking fire. What did this mighty and n.o.ble man do to save a stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his eulogist, Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those were different times. A thousand voices were raised against the wanton and cruel murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among them. In fact, when Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer, he had written in favor of religious tolerance, but no sooner did he become the Protestant pope of Geneva, than he developed into an exterminator of heresy by fire. Such is the "mighty and n.o.ble man" held up for our admiration.

"Mighty" he was, but we ask again, was he mighty in a n.o.ble sense?

Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and n.o.ble man" by the reformers who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no Ethical Culture societies in America today. Prof. Adler is indebted for the liberties which he enjoys in New York to the Voltaires and the Condorcets, who regarded Calvin and his "isms" as pernicious to the intellectual life of Europe, and did all they could to lead the people away from them.

Think of the leader of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to say nothing of his abominable theology, or of his five _aliases,_ as "that mighty and n.o.ble man;--John Calvin!" We feel grateful to Prof. Adler for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we would be pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's small sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "n.o.ble and mighty." [Footnote: See "The Kingdom of G.o.d in Geneva Under Calvin."--M.

M. Mangasarian.]

It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the Ethical Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of his fathers.

However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate of Jesus and John Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from rationalism, of which in his younger days he was so able a champion. In his criticism of the Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Inst.i.tute in Paris, Prof. Adler, endorsing the popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the popular att.i.tude toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of special creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have believed this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before us. We speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated praise of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modern science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in both instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, _The Nature of Man,_ Prof. Adler writes:

And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark that has been set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to point to an ape as our ancestor. If we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny.

If the above had been written fifty years ago, when the doctrine of evolution was a heresy, or by an orthodox clergyman of today, we would have taken no note of it. But coming as it does from the worthy founder of the Ethical Movement in America, it deserves attention.

"If," says Dr. Adler, "we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side." He is not sure, evidently, that even physically man is the successor of the anthropoid ape, but he is sure that "we are not descended from him...on our rational side." Is Dr.

Adler, then, a dualist? Does he believe that there are two eternal sources, from one of which we get our bodies, and from the other our "rational side?" And why cannot Dr. Adler be a monist? He answers, "for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny." Not so, good doctor! There is no life without reason. Do we mean to say that the jelly-fish, the creeping worm, or the bud on the tree has reason? Yes; not as much reason as a horse or a dog, and certainly not as much as a Metchnikoff or an Adler, but these lower forms of life could not have survived but for the element of rationality in them. We may call this instinct, sensation, promptings of nature, but what's in a name? The difference between a pump and a watch is only a difference of mechanism. The stone and the soul represent different stages of progression, not different substances. If a charcoal can be transformed into a diamond, why may not nature, with the resources of infinity at her command, refine a stone into a soul? Let us not marvel at this; it is not less thinkable than the proposition of two independent sources of life, the one physical, the other rational. If "life is born of life," where did the first life come from? Let us have an answer to that question. And if, as the professor says, "reason is born of reason," how did the first reason come? Is it not very much simpler to think in monistic terms, than to separate life from reason, and mind from matter, as Prof. Adler does in the words quoted above? Why cannot mind be a state of matter? What objection is there to thinking that matter, refined, elevated, ripened, cultured, becomes both sentient and rational? If matter can feel, can see, can hear, can it not also think? Does not the horse see, hear and think?

There is no lowering of the dignity of man to say that he tastes with his palate, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and thinks with the gray matter in his brain. Remove his optic nerve and he becomes blind, destroy the ganglia in his brain, and he becomes mindless. Gold is as much matter as the dust, but it is very much more precious; so is mind infinitely more precious than the matter which can only feel, see, taste or hear. "If the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny," says Dr. Adler: But, suppose we were to say that if our remote African or Australian savage ancestors did not possess reason as we possess it, "it cannot be said that on our rational side we are their progeny," The child in the cradle does not possess reason "as we do," any more than does the anthropoid ape, but the beginnings of reason are in both. Let the worm climb and he will overtake man. This is a most hopeful, a most beautiful gospel. Its spirit is not one of isolation and exclusiveness from the rest of nature, but one of fellows.h.i.+p and sympathy. We are all--plants, trees, birds, bugs, animals--all members of one family, children at various ages and stages of growth of the same great mother,--Nature. We quote again:

"When I ask him (Metchnikoff) whence do I come, he points to the simian stage which we have left behind; but I would look beyond that stage to some ultimate fount of being, to which all that is highest in me and in the world around me can be traced, a source of things equal to the best that I can conceive."

But if there is "some ultimate fount of being," to which our "highest"

nature "can be traced," whence did our lower nature come? Is Prof.

Adler trying to say G.o.d? We do not object to the word, we only ask that he give the word a more intelligible meaning than has yet been given. If G.o.d is the "ultimate fount of being to which all that is highest in us can be traced," who or what is the ultimate fount to which all that is lowest in us can be traced? Let us have the names of the two ultimate founts of being, and also to what still more ultimate founts _these_ founts may be traced.

In our opinion Dr. Adler has failed to do justice to Prof.

Metchnikoff. It is no answer to the Darwinian Theory, which the Russian scientist accepts in earnest, and in all its fullness,--not fractionally, as Adler seems to do--to say that it does not explain everything. No one claims that it does. Not all the mystery of life has been cleared. Evolution has offered us only a new key, so to speak, with which to attempt the doors which have not yielded to metaphysics. And if the key has not opened all the doors, it has opened many. Prof. Adler seems to think that the doctrine of evolution explains only the physical descent of man; for the genesis of the spiritual man, he looks for some supernatural "fount" in the skies.

Well, that is not science; that is theology, and Adler's estimate of Jesus is just as theological as his criticism of evolution.

APPENDIX

The argument in this volume will be better understood if we give to our readers the comments and criticisms which our little pamphlet, _Jesus a Myth,_ and _The Mangasarian-c.r.a.psey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus, _[Footnote: Price, 25c. Independent Religious Society, Orchestra Hall, Chicago.] called forth from orthodox and liberal clergymen. We shall present these together with our reply as they appeared on the Sunday Programs of the Independent Religious Society.

Criticism is welcome. If the criticism is just, it prevents us from making the same mistake twice; if it is unjust, it gives us an opportunity to correct the error our critic has fallen into. No one's knowledge is perfect. But the question is, does a teacher suppress the facts? Does he insist on remaining ignorant of the facts?

FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS

I

Now that the debate on one of the most vital questions of modern religious thought--The Historicity of Jesus--is in print, a few further reflections on some minor points in Dr. c.r.a.psey's argument may add to the value of the published copy.

REV. DR. c.r.a.pSEY: "Now, I say this is the great law of religious variation, that in almost every instance, indeed, I think, in every single instance in history, all such movements begin with a _single_ personality." (P. 5, _Mangasarian-c.r.a.psey Debate._)

ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by appealing to history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at one time spread over the Roman Empire and came near outcla.s.sing Christianity. Yet, Mithra, represented as a young man, and wors.h.i.+ped as a G.o.d, is a myth.

How, then, did Mithraism arise?

Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new branches do upon an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the product of the soil and climate as the parent tree. Like Brahmanism, Judaism, s.h.i.+nto and the Babylonian and Egyptian Cults, which had no _single_ founders, Christianity is a _deposit_ to which h.e.l.lenic, Judaic and Latin tendencies have each contributed its quota.

But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe, a founder for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great chief as the starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a divine, or semi- divine being as the author of its _credo._

Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that Moses is also historical. That argument would prove too much.

REV. DR. c.r.a.pSEY: "We would be in the same position that the astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Ura.n.u.s--from their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were convinced that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing less than a great planet lying outside of the then view of mankind."(P. 6, _Ibid._)

ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they converted the _probability_ of a near-by planet into _demonstration._ Jesus is still a probability.

REV. DR. c.r.a.pSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly outlined history. There is nothing vague about him." (P. 12, _Ibid_.)

ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this back by adding: "There are a great many things in his history that are not historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very distinctly outlined history," but at best a mixture of fact and fiction.

REV. DR. c.r.a.pSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the time that he entered upon his public career until the time that career closed, just as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (P. 12, _Ibid_.)

ANSWER: How long was "the time from the opening of Jesus' public career until the time that it closed?"--One year!--according to the three gospels. It sounds quite a period to speak of "following his public career" from beginning to end, especially when compared with Caesar's, until it is remembered that the entire public career of Jesus covers the s.p.a.ce of only one year. This is a most decisive argument against the historicity of Jesus. With the exception of one year, his whole life is hid in impenetrable darkness. We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of his old age, if he lived to be old, and of his youth, we know just enough to fill up a year. Under the circ.u.mstances, there is no comparison between the public career of a Caesar or a Socrates covering from fifty to seventy years of time, and that of a Jesus of whose life only one brief year is thrown upon the canvas.

An historical Jesus who lived only a year!

REV. DR. c.r.a.pSEY: The Christ I admit to be purely mythological....the word Christ, you know, means the anointed one....they (the Hebrews) expected the coming of that Christ....But that is purely a mythical t.i.tle. (_The Debate_--P. 35.)

ANSWER: Did the Hebrews then expect the coming of a _t.i.tle?_ Were they looking forward to seeing the ancient throne of David restored by a _t.i.tle?_ By Messiah or Christ the Jews did not mean a _name,_ but a man--a real flesh and bone savior, anointed or appointed by heaven.

But if the 'Christ' which the Hebrews expected was "purely mythical,"

what makes the same 'Christ' in the supposed Tacitus pa.s.sage historical? The New Testament Jesus is Jesus Christ, and the apostle John speaks of those "who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh"--mark his words--not Christ, but _Jesus Christ._ The apostle does not separate the two names. There were those, then, in the early church who denied the historicity, not of a _t.i.tle_,--for what meaning would there be in denying that a _t.i.tle_ "is come in the flesh,"--but of a person, known as _Jesus Christ._

And what could the doctor mean when he speaks of a _t.i.tle_ being "mythological?" There are no mythological t.i.tles. t.i.tles are words, and we do not speak of the historicity or the non-historicity of words. We cannot say of words as we do of men, that some are historical and others are mythical. William Tell is a myth--not the name, but the man the name stands for. _William_ is the name of many real people, and so is _Tell._ There were many anointed kings, who are historical, and the question is, Is Jesus Christ--or Jesus the Anointed--also historical? To answer that Jesus is historical, but The Anointed is not, is to evade the question.

When Mosheim declares that "The prevalent opinion among early Christians was that Christ existed in appearance only," he could not have meant by 'Christ' only a t.i.tle. There is no meaning in saying that a man's t.i.tle "existed in appearance only?"

We do not speak of a t.i.tle being born, or crucified; and when some early Christians denied that Jesus Christ was ever born or ever crucified, they had in mind not a _t.i.tle_ but a _person._

In conclusion: If the 'Christ' by whom the Hebrews meant, not a mere name, but a man, was "purely mythological," as the reverend debater plainly admits (see pages 35, 36 of _The Debate_)--that is, if when the Hebrews said: "Christ _is_ coming," they were under the influence of an illusion,--why may not the Christians when they say that 'Christ' _has_ come, be also under the influence of an illusion? The Hebrew illusion said, Christ was coming; the Christian illusion says, Christ has come. The Hebrews had no evidence that 'Christ' was coming, although that expectation was a great factor in their religion; and the Christians have no more evidence for saying 'Christ' has come, although that belief is a great factor in _their_ religion.