Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions Part 27

Suppose a modern English Sabbatarian fanatic, who believes, on the strength of his interpretation of the fourth commandment, that it is a deadly sin to work on the "Lord's Day," sees a fellow Puritan yielding to the temptation of getting in his harvest on a fine Sunday morning--is the former justified in setting fire to the latter's corn? Would not an English court of justice speedily teach him better? {557}

In truth, the government which permits private persons, on any pretext (especially pious and patriotic pretexts), to take the law into their own hands, fails in the performance of the primary duties of all governments; while those who set the example of such acts, or who approve them, or who fail to disapprove them, are doing their best to dissolve civil society--they are compa.s.sers of illegality and fautors of immorality.

I fully understand that Mr. Gladstone may not see the matter in this light.

He may possibly consider that the union of Gadara with the Decapolis by Augustus was a "blackguard" transaction, which deprived h.e.l.lenic Gadarene law of all moral force; and that it was quite proper for a Jewish Galilean, going back to the time when the land of the Girgas.h.i.+tes was given to his ancestors, some 1500 years before, to act as if the state of things which ought to obtain in territory which traditionally, at any rate, belonged to his forefathers, did really exist. And, that being so, I can only say I do not agree with him, but leave the matter to the appreciation of those of our countrymen, happily not yet the minority, who believe that the first condition of enduring liberty is obedience to the law of the land.

The end of the month drawing nigh, I thought it well to send away the ma.n.u.script of the foregoing pages yesterday, leaving open, in my own mind, the possibility of adding a succinct characterisation of Mr. Gladstone's controversial methods as ill.u.s.trated {558} therein. This morning, however, I had the pleasure of reading a speech which I think must satisfy the requirements of the most fastidious of controversial artists; and there occurs in it so concise, yet so complete, a delineation of Mr. Gladstone's way of dealing with disputed questions of another kind, that no poor effort of mine could better it as a description of the aspect which his treatment of scientific, historical, and critical questions presents to me.

The smallest examination would have told a man of his capacity and of his experience that he was uttering the grossest exaggerations, that he was basing arguments upon the slightest hypotheses, and that his discussions only had to be critically examined by the most careless critic in order to show their intrinsic hollowness.

Those who have followed me through this paper will hardly dispute the justice of this judgment, severe as it is. But the Chief Secretary for Ireland has science in the blood; and has the advantage of a natural, as well as a highly cultivated, apt.i.tude for the use of methods of precision in investigation, and for the exact enunciation of the results thereby obtained.

{559}

XV

ILl.u.s.tRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S CONTROVERSIAL METHODS

The series of essays in defence of the historical accuracy of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contributed by Mr. Gladstone to _Good Words_, having been revised and enlarged by their author, appeared last year as a separate volume, under the somewhat defiant t.i.tle of _The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture_.

The last of these essays, ent.i.tled "Conclusion," contains an attack, or rather several attacks, couched in language which certainly does not err upon the side of moderation or of courtesy, upon statements and opinions of mine. One of these a.s.saults is a deliberately devised attempt, not merely to rouse the theological prejudices ingrained in the majority of Mr.

Gladstone's readers, but to hold me up as a person who has endeavoured to besmirch the personal character of the object of their veneration. For Mr.

Gladstone a.s.serts that I have undertaken to try "the character of our Lord"

(p. 268); and he tells the many who are, as I think unfortunately, predisposed {560} to place implicit credit in his a.s.sertions, that it has been reserved for me to discover that Jesus "was no better than a law-breaker and an evil-doer!" (p. 269).

It was extremely easy for me to prove, as I did in the pages of this Review last December, that, under the most favourable interpretation, this amazing declaration must be ascribed to extreme confusion of thought. And, by bringing an abundance of good-will to the consideration of the subject, I have now convinced myself that it is right for me to admit that a person of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual acuteness really did mistake the reprobation of the course of conduct ascribed to Jesus, in a story of which I expressly say I do not believe a word, for an attack on his character and a declaration that he was "no better than a law-breaker and evil-doer." At any rate, so far as I can see, this is what Mr. Gladstone wished to be believed when he wrote the following pa.s.sage:--

I must, however, in pa.s.sing, make the confession that I did not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the precise form of the accusation. I treated it as an imputation on the action of our Lord; he replies that it is only an imputation on the narrative of three evangelists respecting Him. The difference, from his point of view, is probably material, and I therefore regret that I overlooked it.[160]

Considering the gravity of the error which is here admitted, the fas.h.i.+on of the withdrawal appears more singular than admirable. From my "point of view"--not from Mr. Gladstone's apparently--the little discrepancy between the facts and Mr. Gladstone's {561} carefully offensive travesty of them is "probably" (only "probably") material. However, as Mr. Gladstone concludes with an official expression of regret for his error, it is my business to return an equally official expression of grat.i.tude for the attenuated reparation with which I am favoured.

Having cleared this specimen of Mr. Gladstone's controversial method out of the way, I may proceed to the next a.s.sault, that on a pa.s.sage in an article on Agnosticism (_Nineteenth Century_, February 1889), published two years ago. I there said, in referring to the Gadarene story, "Everything I know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example." On this, Mr.

Gladstone, continuing his candid and urbane observations, remarks (_Impregnable Rock_, p. 273) that, "Exercising his rapid judgment on the text," and "not inquiring what anybody else had known or said about it," I had missed a point in support of that "accusation against our Lord" which he has now been constrained to admit I never made.

The "point" in question is that "Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews, from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was innocent and lawful." I conceive that I have abundantly proved that Gadara answered exactly to the description here given of it; and I shall show, by-and-by, that Mr. Gladstone has used language which, to my mind, involves the admission that the authorities of the city were not Jews. But I have also taken a {562} good deal of pains to show that the question thus raised is of no importance in relation to the main issue.[161] If Gadara was, as I maintain it was, a city of the Decapolis, h.e.l.lenistic in const.i.tution and containing a predominantly Gentile population, my case is superabundantly fortified. On the other hand, if the hypothesis that Gadara was under Jewish government, which Mr. Gladstone seems sometimes to defend and sometimes to give up, were accepted, my case would be nowise weakened. At any rate, Gadara was not included within the jurisdiction of the tetrarch of Galilee; if it had been, the Galileans who crossed over the lake to Gadara had no official status; and they had no more civil right to punish law-breakers than any other strangers.

In my turn, however, I may remark that there is a "point" which appears to have escaped Mr. Gladstone's notice. And that is somewhat unfortunate, because his whole argument turns upon it. Mr. Gladstone a.s.sumes, as a matter of course, that pig-keeping was an offence against the "Law of Moses"; and, therefore, that Jews who kept pigs were as much liable to legal pains and penalties {563} as Englishmen who smuggle brandy (_Impregnable Rock_, p. 274).

There can be no doubt that, according to the Law, as it is defined in the Pentateuch, the pig was an "unclean" animal, and that pork was a forbidden article of diet. Moreover, since pigs are hardly likely to be kept for the mere love of those unsavoury animals, pig-owning, or swine-herding, must have been, and evidently was, regarded as a suspicious and degrading occupation by strict Jews, in the first century A.D. But I should like to know on what provision of the Mosaic Law, as it is laid down in the Pentateuch, Mr. Gladstone bases the a.s.sumption, which is essential to his case, that the possession of pigs and the calling of a swineherd were actually illegal. The inquiry was put to me the other day; and, as I could not answer it, I turned up the article "Schwein " in Riehm's standard _Handworterbuch_, for help out of my difficulty; but unfortunately without success. After speaking of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer proceeds:--

It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs may have found its way into Palestine in the Graeco-Roman time, in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish population; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament; the great herd of swine, 2000 in number, mentioned in the narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis; and the prodigal son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into which he had wandered; in neither of these cases is there {564} reason for thinking that the possessors of these herds were Jews.[162]

Having failed in my search, so far, I took up the next work of reference at hand, Kitto's _Cyclopaedia_ (vol. iii. 1876). There, under "Swine," the writer, Colonel Hamilton Smith, seemed at first to give me what I wanted, as he says that swine "appear to have been repeatedly introduced and reared by the Hebrew people,[163] notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the Law of Moses (Is. lxv. 4)." But, in the first place, Isaiah's writings form no part of the "Law of Moses"; and, in the second place, the people denounced by the prophet in this pa.s.sage are neither the possessors of pigs, nor swineherds, but those "which eat swine's flesh and broth of abominable things is in their vessels." And when, in despair, I turned to the provisions of the Law itself, my difficulty was not cleared up.

Leviticus xi. 8 (Revised Version) says, in reference to the pig and other unclean animals: "Of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcases ye shall not touch." In the revised version of Deuteronomy xiv. 8 the words of the prohibition are identical, and a skilful refiner might possibly satisfy himself, even if he satisfied n.o.body else, that "carcase" means the body of a live {565} animal as well as of a dead one; and that, since swineherds could hardly avoid contact with their charges, their calling was implicitly forbidden.[164] Unfortunately, the authorised version expressly says "dead carcase"; and thus the most rabbinically minded of reconcilers might find his casuistry foiled by that great source of surprises, the "original Hebrew." That such check is at any rate possible, is clear from the fact that the legal uncleanness of some animals, as food, did not interfere with their being lawfully possessed, cared for, and sold by Jews. The provisions for the ransoming of unclean beasts (Lev. xxvii. 27) and for the redemption of their sucklings (Numbers xviii. 15) sufficiently prove this. As the late Dr. Kalisch has observed in his _Commentary on Leviticus_, part ii. p. 129, note:--

Though a.s.ses and horses, camels and dogs, were kept by the Israelites, they were, to a certain extent, a.s.sociated with the notion of impurity; they might be turned to profitable account by their labour or otherwise, but in respect to food they were an abomination.

The same learned commentator (_loc. cit._ p. 88) proves that the Talmudists forbade the rearing of pigs by Jews, unconditionally and everywhere; and even included it under the same ban as the study of Greek philosophy, "since both alike were considered to lead to the desertion of the Jewish faith." It is very possible, indeed probable, that the Pharisees of the fourth decade of our first century took as {566} strong a view of pig-keeping as did their spiritual descendants. But, for all that, it does not follow that the practice was illegal. The stricter Jews could not have despised and hated swineherds more than they did publicans; but, so far as I know, there is no provision in the Law against the practice of the calling of a tax-gatherer by a Jew. The publican was in fact very much in the position of an Irish process-server at the present day--more, rather than less, despised and hated on account of the perfect legality of his occupation. Except for certain sacrificial purposes, pigs were held in such abhorrence by the ancient Egyptians that swineherds were not permitted to enter a temple, or to intermarry with other castes; and any one who had touched a pig, even accidentally, was unclean. But these very regulations prove that pig-keeping was not illegal; it merely involved certain civil and religious disabilities. For the Jews, dogs were typically "unclean"

animals; but, when that eminently pious Hebrew, Tobit, "went forth" with the angel "the young man's dog" went "with them" (Tobit v. 16) without apparent remonstrance from the celestial guide. I really do not see how an appeal to the Law could have justified any one in drowning Tobit's dog, on the ground that his master was keeping and feeding an animal quite as "unclean" as any pig. Certainly the excellent Raguel must have failed to see the harm of dog-keeping, for we are told that, on the travellers'

return homewards, "the dog went after them" (xi. 4). {567}

Until better light than I have been able to obtain is thrown upon the subject, therefore, it is obvious that Mr. Gladstone's argumentative house has been built upon an extremely slippery quicksand; perhaps even has no foundation at all.

Yet another "point" does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Gladstone, who is so much shocked that I attach no overwhelming weight to the a.s.sertions contained in the synoptic Gospels, even when all three concur. These Gospels agree in stating, in the most express, and to some extent verbally identical, terms, that the devils entered the pigs at their own request,[165] and the third Gospel (viii. 31) tells us what the motive of the demons was in asking the singular boon: "They intreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss." From this, it would seem that the devils thought to exchange the heavy punishment of transportation to the abyss for the lighter penalty of imprisonment in swine. And some commentators, more ingenious than respectful to the supposed chief actor in this extraordinary fable, have dwelt, with satisfaction, upon the very unpleasant quarter of an hour which the evil spirits must have had, when the headlong rush of their maddened tenements convinced them how completely they were taken in. In the whole story there is not one solitary hint that the destruction of {568} the pigs was intended as a punishment of their owners, or of the swineherds. On the contrary, the concurrent testimony of the three narratives is to the effect that the catastrophe was the consequence of diabolic suggestion. And, indeed, no source could be more appropriate for an act of such manifest injustice and illegality.

I can but marvel that modern defenders of the faith should not be glad of any reasonable excuse for getting rid of a story which, if it had been invented by Voltaire, would have justly let loose floods of orthodox indignation.

Thus, the hypothesis to which Mr. Gladstone so fondly clings finds no support in the provisions of the "Law of Moses" as that law is defined in the Pentateuch; while it is wholly inconsistent with the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, to which Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight. In my judgment, it is directly contrary to everything which profane history tells us about the const.i.tution and the population of the city of Gadara; and it commits those who accept it to a story which, if it were true, would implicate the founder of Christianity in an illegal and inequitable act.

Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following Mr. Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to extricate himself from the maze of historical and exegetical difficulties in which he is entangled. I content myself with a.s.suring those who, with my paper (not Mr.

Gladstone's {569} version of my arguments) in hand, consult the original authorities, that they will find full justification for every statement I have made. But in order to dispose those who cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the following examination, which shall be as brief as I can make it, of the seven propositions in which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary of my "errors."

When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Holy See declared that certain propositions contained in the works of Bishop Jansen were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal replied that, while they were ready to defer to the Papal authority about questions of faith and morals, they must be permitted to judge about questions of fact for themselves; and that, really, the condemned propositions were not to be found in Jansen's writings. As everybody knows, His Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this, surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of Lord Peter in the _Tale of a Tub_. It is, therefore, not without some apprehension of meeting with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea against Mr.

Gladstone's Bull. The seven propositions declared to be false and condemnable, in that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly compares with the authoritative style of the Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may not be true. But they are not to be found in anything I have written. {570} And some of them diametrically contravene that which I have written. I proceed to prove my a.s.sertions.

PROP. 1. _Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomoerium, but as a rural district._

In my judgment, this statement is devoid of foundation. In my paper on "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine" I point out, at some length, that, "in accordance with the ancient h.e.l.lenic practice," each city of the Decapolis must have been "surrounded by a certain amount of territory amenable to its jurisdiction:" and, to enforce this conclusion, I quote what Josephus says about the "villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos." As I understand the term _pomerium_ or _pomoerium_,[166] it means the s.p.a.ce which, according to Roman custom, was kept free from buildings, immediately within and without the walls of a city; and which defined the range of the _auspicia urbana_. The conception of a _pomoerium_ as a "vicinage attached to" a city, appears to be something quite novel and original. But then, to be sure, I do not know how many senses Mr. Gladstone may attach to the word "vicinage."

Whether Gadara had a _pomoerium_, in the proper technical sense, or not, is a point on which I offer no opinion. But that the city had a very considerable "rural district" attached to it and, notwithstanding {571} its distinctness, amenable to the jurisdiction of the Gentile munic.i.p.al authorities, is one of the main points of my case.

PROP. 2. _He more fatally confounds the local civil government and its following, including, perhaps, the whole wealthy cla.s.s and those attached to it, with the ethnical character of the general population._

Having survived confusion No. 1, which turns out not to be on my side, I am now confronted in No. 2 with a "more fatal" error--and so it is, if there be degrees of fatality; but, again, it is Mr. Gladstone's and not mine. It would appear, from this proposition (about the grammatical interpretation of which, however, I admit there are difficulties), that Mr. Gladstone holds that the "local civil government and its following among the wealthy," were ethnically different from the "general population." On p.

348 he further admits that the "wealthy and the local governing power" were friendly to the Romans. Are we then to suppose that it was the persons of Jewish "ethnical character" who favoured the Romans, while those of Gentile "ethnical character" were opposed to them? But if that supposition is absurd, the only alternative is that the local civil government was ethnically Gentile. This is exactly my contention.

At pp. 547 and 553 of the Essay on "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine" I have fully discussed the question of the ethnical character of the general population. I have shown that, according to Josephus, who surely ought to have known, Gadara was as much a Gentile {572} city as Ptolemais; I have proved that he includes Gadara amongst the cities "that rose up against the Jews that were amongst them," which is a pretty definite expression of his belief that the "ethnical character of the general population" was Gentile.

There is no question here of Jews of the Roman party fighting with Jews of the Zealot party, as Mr. Gladstone suggests. It is the non-Jewish and anti-Jewish general population which rises up against the Jews who had settled "among them."

PROP. 3. _His one item of direct evidence as to the Gentile character of the city refers only to the former and not to the latter._

More fatal still. But, once more, not to me. I adduce not one, but a variety of "items" in proof of the non-Judaic character of the population of Gadara: the evidence of history; that of the coinage of the city; the direct testimony of Josephus, just cited--to mention no others. I repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected with them--the "cla.s.ses" and the "hangers on" of Mr. Gladstone's well-known taxonomy--were, as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles; if the "civil government" of the city was in their hands, as the coinage proves it was; what becomes of Mr. Gladstone's original proposition in _The Impregnable Rock of Scripture_ that "the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the population of the neighbourhood," were "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law"? And what is the importance of estimating the precise proportion of Hebrews who may have resided, either in the city of Gadara {573} or in its dependant territory, when, as Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful to say "seems"), the government, and consequently the law, which ruled in that territory and defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not Judaic? But perhaps Mr.

Gladstone is prepared to maintain that the Gentile "local civil government"

of a city of the Decapolis administered Jewish Law; and showed their respect for it, more particularly, by stamping their coinage with effigies of the Emperors.

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone has given away his case.

PROP. 4. _He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and a.s.sumes that those who took the side of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not be subject to the Mosaic Law._

It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of life; once more, a "fatal error." But Mr. Gladstone has forgotten an excellent rule of controversy; say what is true, of course, but mind that it is decently probable. Now it is not decently probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one who has read Josephus, or any other historian of the Jewish war, should be unaware that there were Jews (of whom Josephus himself was one) who "Romanised"

and, more or less openly, opposed the war party. But, however that may be, I a.s.sert that Mr. Gladstone neither has produced, nor can produce, a pa.s.sage of my writing which affords the slightest {574} foundation for this particular article of his indictment.