The Life of Jesus Part 23

[Footnote 3: Philo, _De migr. Abraham_, -- 1; _Quod Deus immut._, -- 6; _De confus. ling._, -- 9, 14 and 28; De profugis, -- 20; _De Somniis_, i. -- 37; _De Agric. Noe_, -- 12; _Quis rerum divin. haeres_, -- 25, and following, 48, and following, &c.]

[Footnote 4: [Greek: Metathronos], that is, sharing the throne of G.o.d; a kind of divine secretary, keeping the register of merits and demerits; _Beres.h.i.+th Rabba_, v. 6 _c_; Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedr._, 38 _b_; _Chagigah_, 15 _a_; Targum of Jonathan, _Gen._, v. 24.]

[Footnote 5: This theory of the [Greek: Logos] contains no Greek elements. The comparisons which have been made between it and the _Honover_ of the Pa.r.s.ees are also without foundation. The _Minokhired_ or "Divine Intelligence," has much a.n.a.logy with the Jewish [Greek: Logos]. (See the fragments of the book ent.i.tled _Minokhired_ in Spiegel, _Parsi-Grammatik_, pp. 161, 162.) But the development which the doctrine of the _Minokhired_ has taken among the Pa.r.s.ees is modern, and may imply a foreign influence. The "Divine Intelligence"

(_Maiyu-Khratu_) appears in the Zend books; but it does not there serve as basis to a theory; it only enters into some invocations. The comparisons which have been attempted between the Alexandrian theory of the Word and certain points of Egyptian theology may not be entirely without value. But nothing indicates that, in the centuries which preceded the Christian era, Palestinian Judaism had borrowed anything from Egypt.]

[Footnote 6: _Acts_ viii. 10.]

Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these refinements of theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book of "Wisdom,"[1] is neither seen in the _Logia_ of Matthew, nor in general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common with Messianism. The "Word" of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no sense the Messiah. It was John the Evangelist, or his school, who afterward endeavored to prove that Jesus was the Word, and who created, in this sense, quite a new theology, very different from that of the "kingdom of G.o.d."[2] The essential character of the Word was that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to renovate it. The position of president at the final judgment of humanity was the essential attribute which Jesus attached to himself, and the character which all the first Christians attributed to him.[3] Until the great day, he will sit at the right hand of G.o.d, as his Metathronos, his first minister, and his future avenger.[4] The superhuman Christ of the Byzantine apsides, seated as judge of the world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and superior to the angels who only a.s.sist and serve, is the exact representation of that conception of the "Son of man," of which we find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel.

[Footnote 1: ix. 1, 2, xvi. 12. Comp. vii. 12, viii. 5, and following, ix., and in general ix.-xi. These prosopopoeia of Wisdom personified are found in much older books. Prov. viii., ix.; Job xxviii.; _Rev._ xix. 13.]

[Footnote 2: John, Gospel, i. 1-14; 1 Epistle v. 7; moreover, it will be remarked, that, in the Gospel of John, the expression of "the Word"

does not occur except in the prologue, and that the narrator never puts it into the mouth of Jesus.]

[Footnote 3: _Acts_ x. 42.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xvi. 19; Luke xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii.

55; Rom. viii. 34; Ephes. i. 20; Coloss. iii. 1; Heb. i. 3, 13, viii.

1, x. 12, xii. 2; 1 Peter iii. 22. See the pa.s.sages previously cited on the character of the Jewish Metathronos.]

At all events, the strictness of a studied theology by no means existed in such a state of society. All the ideas we have just stated formed in the mind of the disciples a theological system so little settled, that the Son of G.o.d, this species of divine duplicate, is made to act purely as man. He is tempted--he is ignorant of many things--he corrects himself[1]--he is cast down, discouraged--he asks his Father to spare him trials--he is submissive to G.o.d as a son.[2]

He who is to judge the world does not know the day of judgment.[3] He takes precautions for his safety.[4] Soon after his birth, he is obliged to be concealed to avoid powerful men who wish to kill him.[5]

In exorcisms, the devil cheats him, and does not come out at the first command.[6] In his miracles we are sensible of painful effort--an exhaustion, as if something went out of him.[7] All these are simply the acts of a messenger of G.o.d, of a man protected and favored by G.o.d.[8] We must not look here for either logic or sequence. The need Jesus had of obtaining credence, and the enthusiasm of his disciples, heaped up contradictory notions. To the Messianic believers of the millenarian school, and to the enthusiastic readers of the books of Daniel and of Enoch, he was the Son of man--to the Jews holding the ordinary faith, and to the readers of Isaiah and Micah, he was the Son of David--to the disciples he was the Son of G.o.d, or simply the Son.

Others, without being blamed by the disciples, took him for John the Baptist risen from the dead, for Elias, for Jeremiah, conformable to the popular belief that the ancient prophets were about to reappear, in order to prepare the time of the Messiah.[9]

[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 5, compared with xxviii. 19.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 39; John xii. 27.]

[Footnote 3: Mark xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 14-16, xiv. 13; Mark iii. 6, 7, ix. 29, 30; John vii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. ii. 20.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 25.]

[Footnote 7: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33, 38.]

[Footnote 8: _Acts_ ii. 22.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. xiv. 2, xvi. 14, xvii. 3, and following; Mark vi.

14, 15, viii. 28; Luke ix. 8, and following, 19.]

An absolute conviction, or rather the enthusiasm, which freed him from even the possibility of doubt, shrouded all these boldnesses. We little understand, with our cold and scrupulous natures, how any one can be so entirely possessed by the idea of which he has made himself the apostle. To the deeply earnest races of the West, conviction means sincerity to one's self. But sincerity to one's self has not much meaning to Oriental peoples, little accustomed to the subtleties of a critical spirit. Honesty and imposture are words which, in our rigid consciences, are opposed as two irreconcilable terms. In the East, they are connected by numberless subtle links and windings. The authors of the Apocryphal books (of "Daniel" and of "Enoch," for instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause, committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a fraud. The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees everything through the medium of his ideas, his interests, and his pa.s.sions.

History is impossible, if we do not fully admit that there are many standards of sincerity. All great things are done through the people; now we can only lead the people by adapting ourselves to its ideas.

The philosopher who, knowing this, isolates and fortifies himself in his integrity, is highly praiseworthy. But he who takes humanity with its illusions, and seeks to act with it and upon it, cannot be blamed.

Caesar knew well that he was not the son of Venus; France would not be what it is, if it had not for a thousand years believed in the Holy Ampulla of Rheims. It is easy for us, who are so powerless, to call this falsehood, and, proud of our timid honesty, to treat with contempt the heroes who have accepted the battle of life under other conditions. When we have effected by our scruples what they accomplished by their falsehoods, we shall have the right to be severe upon them. At least, we must make a marked distinction between societies like our own, where everything takes place in the full light of reflection, and simple and credulous communities, in which the beliefs that have governed ages have been born. Nothing great has been established which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such cases is the humanity which is willing to be deceived.

CHAPTER XVI.

MIRACLES.

Two means of proof--miracles and the accomplishment of prophecies--could alone, in the opinion of the contemporaries of Jesus, establish a supernatural mission. Jesus, and especially his disciples, employed these two processes of demonstration in perfect good faith. For a long time, Jesus had been convinced that the prophets had written only in reference to him. He recognized himself in their sacred oracles; he regarded himself as the mirror in which all the prophetic spirit of Israel had read the future. The Christian school, perhaps even in the lifetime of its founder, endeavored to prove that Jesus responded perfectly to all that the prophets had predicted of the Messiah.[1] In many cases, these comparisons were quite superficial, and are scarcely appreciable by us. They were most frequently fortuitous or insignificant circ.u.mstances in the life of the master which recalled to the disciples certain pa.s.sages of the Psalms and the Prophets, in which, in consequence of their constant preoccupation, they saw images of him.[2] The exegesis of the time consisted thus almost entirely in a play upon words, and in quotations made in an artificial and arbitrary manner. The synagogue had no officially settled list of the pa.s.sages which related to the future reign. The Messianic references were very liberally created, and const.i.tuted artifices of style rather than serious reasoning.

[Footnote 1: For example, Matt. i. 22, ii. 5, 6, 15, 18, iv. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 23, iv. 6, 14, xxvi. 31, 54, 56, xxvii. 9, 35; Mark xiv. 27, xv. 28; John xii. 14. 15, xviii. 9, xix. 19, 24, 28, 36.]

As to miracles, they were regarded at this period as the indispensable mark of the divine, and as the sign of the prophetic vocation. The legends of Elijah and Elisha were full of them. It was commonly believed that the Messiah would perform many.[1] In Samaria, a few leagues from where Jesus was, a magician, named Simon, acquired an almost divine character by his illusions.[2] Afterward, when it was sought to establish the reputation of Apollonius of Tyana, and to prove that his life had been the sojourn of a G.o.d upon the earth, it was not thought possible to succeed therein except by inventing a vast cycle of miracles.[3] The Alexandrian philosophers themselves, Plotinus and others, are reported to have performed several.[4] Jesus was, therefore, obliged to choose between these two alternatives--either to renounce his mission, or to become a thaumaturgus. It must be remembered that all antiquity, with the exception of the great scientific schools of Greece and their Roman disciples, accepted miracles; and that Jesus not only believed therein, but had not the least idea of an order of Nature regulated by fixed laws. His knowledge on this point was in no way superior to that of his contemporaries. Nay, more, one of his most deeply rooted opinions was, that by faith and prayer man has entire power over Nature.[5] The faculty of performing miracles was regarded as a privilege frequently conferred by G.o.d upon men,[6] and it had nothing surprising in it.

[Footnote 1: John vii. 34; _IV. Esdras_, xiii. 50.]

[Footnote 2: _Acts_ viii. 9, and following.]

[Footnote 3: See his biography by Philostratus.]

[Footnote 4: See the Lives of the Sophists, by Eunapius; the Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry; that of Proclus, by Marinus; and that of Isidorus, attributed to Damascius.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xvii. 19, xxi. 21, 22; Mark xi. 23, 24.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. ix. 8.]

The lapse of time has changed that which const.i.tuted the power of the great founder of Christianity into something offensive to our ideas, and if ever the wors.h.i.+p of Jesus loses its hold upon mankind, it will be precisely on account of those acts which originally inspired belief in him. Criticism experiences no embarra.s.sment in presence of this kind of historical phenomenon. A thaumaturgus of our days, unless of an extreme simplicity, like that manifested by certain stigmatists of Germany, is odious; for he performs miracles without believing in them; and is a mere charlatan. But, if we take a Francis d'a.s.sisi, the question becomes altogether different; the series of miracles attending the origin of the order of St. Francis, far from offending us, affords us real pleasure. The founder of Christianity lived in as complete a state of poetic ignorance as did St. Clair and the _tres socii_. The disciples deemed it quite natural that their master should have interviews with Moses and Elias, that he should command the elements, and that he should heal the sick. We must remember, besides, that every idea loses something of its purity, as soon as it aspires to realize itself. Success is never attained without some injury being done to the sensibility of the soul. Such is the feebleness of the human mind that the best causes are ofttimes gained only by bad arguments. The demonstrations of the primitive apologists of Christianity are supported by very poor reasonings. Moses, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, have only triumphed over obstacles by constantly making allowance for the weakness of men, and by not always giving the true reasons for the truth. It is probable that the hearers of Jesus were more struck by his miracles than by his eminently divine discourses. Let us add, that doubtless popular rumor, both before and after the death of Jesus, exaggerated enormously the number of occurrences of this kind. The types of the gospel miracles, in fact, do not present much variety; they are repet.i.tions of each other and seem fas.h.i.+oned from a very small number of models, accommodated to the taste of the country.

It is impossible, amongst the miraculous narratives so tediously enumerated in the Gospels, to distinguish the miracles attributed to Jesus by public opinion from those in which he consented to play an active part. It is especially impossible to ascertain whether the offensive circ.u.mstances attending them, the groanings, the strugglings, and other features savoring of jugglery,[1] are really historical, or whether they are the fruit of the belief of the compilers, strongly imbued with theurgy, and living, in this respect, in a world a.n.a.logous to that of the "spiritualists" of our times.[2]

Almost all the miracles which Jesus thought he performed, appear to have been miracles of healing. Medicine was at this period in Judea, what it still is in the East, that is to say, in no respect scientific, but absolutely surrendered to individual inspiration.

Scientific medicine, founded by Greece five centuries before, was at the time of Jesus unknown to the Jews of Palestine. In such a state of knowledge, the presence of a superior man, treating the diseased with gentleness, and giving him by some sensible signs the a.s.surance of his recovery, is often a decisive remedy. Who would dare to say that in many cases, always excepting certain peculiar injuries, the touch of a superior being is not equal to all the resources of pharmacy? The mere pleasure of seeing him cures. He gives only a smile, or a hope, but these are not in vain.

[Footnote 1: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33 and 38.]

[Footnote 2: _Acts_ ii. 2, and following, iv. 31, viii. 15, and following, x. 44 and following. For nearly a century, the apostles and their disciples dreamed only of miracles. See the _Acts_, the writings of St. Paul, the extracts from Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39, &c. Comp. Mark iii. 15, xvi. 17, 18, 20.]

Jesus had no more idea than his countrymen of a rational medical science; he believed, like every one else, that healing was to be effected by religious practices, and such a belief was perfectly consistent. From the moment that disease was regarded as the punishment of sin,[1] or as the act of a demon,[2] and by no means as the result of physical causes, the best physician was the holy man who had power in the supernatural world. Healing was considered a moral act; Jesus, who felt his moral power, would believe himself specially gifted to heal. Convinced that the touching of his robe,[3] the imposition of his hands,[4] did good to the sick, he would have been unfeeling, if he had refused to those who suffered, a solace which it was in his power to bestow. The healing of the sick was considered as one of the signs of the kingdom of G.o.d, and was always a.s.sociated with the emanc.i.p.ation of the poor.[5] Both were the signs of the great revolution which was to end in the redress of all infirmities.

[Footnote 1: John v. 14, ix. 1, and following, 34.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 32, 33, xii. 22; Luke xiii. 11, 16.]

[Footnote 3: Luke viii. 45, 46.]

[Footnote 4: Luke iv. 40.]