CHAPTER XXVIII: ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS

ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS
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APPENDIX (First Time in English)
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PREFACE
TO THE
THIRTEENTH EDITION.

THE twelve first editions of this work differ only from one another in respect of a few trifling changes. The present edition, on the contrary, has been revised and corrected with the greatest care. During the four years which have elapsed since the book appeared, I have laboured incessantly to improve it. The numerous criticisms to which it has given rise have rendered the task in certain respects an easy one. I have read all those which contain anything important. I believe I can conscientiously affirm that not once have the outrage and the calumny, which have been imported into them, hindered me from deriving profit from the just observations which those criticisms might contain. I have weighed everything, tested everything. If, in certain cases, people should wonder why I have not answered fully the censures which have been made with such extreme assurance, and as if the errors alleged have been proved, it is not that I did not know of these censures, but that it was impossible for me to accept them. In the majority of such cases I have added in a note the texts or the considerations which have deterred me from changing my opinion, or better, by making some slight change of expression, I have endeavoured to show wherein lay the contempt of my critics. These notes, though very brief and containing little more than an indication of the sources at first hand, are sufficient in every case to point out to the intelligent reader the reasonings which have guided me in the composition of my texts.

To attempt to answer in detail all the accusations which have been brought against me, it would have been necessary for me to triple or quadruple this volume: I should have had to repeat things which have already been well said, even in French; it would have been necessary to enter into a religious discussion, a thing that I have absolutely interdicted myself from doing; I should have had to speak of myself, a thing I shall never do. I write for the purpose of promulgating my ideas to those who seek the truth. As for those persons who would have, in the interests of their belief, that I am an ignoramus, an evil genius, or a man of bad faith, I do not pretend to be able to modify their opinions. If such opinions are necessary for the peace of mind of certain pious people, I would make it a veritable scruple to disabuse them of them.

The controversy, moreover, if I had entered upon it, would have led me most frequently to points foreign to historical criticism. The objections which have been directed against me have proceeded from two opposing parties. One set has been addressed to me by freethinkers, who do not believe in the supernatural, nor, consequently, in the inspiration of the sacred books; another set by theologians of the liberal Protestant school, who hold such broad doctrinal views that the rationalists and they can readily understand one another. These, adversaries and I find ourselves on common ground; we start with the same principles; we can discuss according to the rules followed in all questions relating to matters of history, philology, and archæology. As to the refutations of my book (and these are much the most numerous) which have been made by orthodox theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, who believe in the supernatural and in the sacred character of the books of the Old and New Testament, they all involve a fundamental misapprehension. If the miracle has any reality, this book is but a tissue of errors. If the Gospels are inspired books, and true, consequently, to the letter, from beginning to end, I have been guilty of a great wrong in not contenting myself with piecing together the broken fragments of the four texts, like as the Harmonists have done, only to construct thus an ensemble at once most redundant and most contradictory. If, on the contrary, the miracle is an inadmissible thing, then I am right in regarding the books which contain miraculous recitals as histories mixed with fiction, as legends full of inaccuracies, errors, and of systematic expedients. If the Gospels are like other books I am right in treating them in the same manner as the Hellenist, the Arabian, the Hindoo treated the legendary documents which they studied. Criticism does not recognise infallible texts; its first principle is to admit that in the text which is examined there is the possibility of error. Far from being accused of scepticism, I ought to be classed with the moderate critics, since, instead of rejecting en bloc weak documents as so much trash, I essay to extract something historical out of them by means of delicate approximation.

And as no one asserts that to put the question in such a manner implies a petitio principii, seeing we take for granted à priori that which is proved in detail, to wit, that the miracles related by the Gospels have had no reality, that the Gospels are not books written under the inspiration of Divinity. Those two negations are not with us the result of exegesis; they are anterior to exegesis. They are the outcome of an experience which has not been denied. Miracles are things which never happen; only credulous people believe they have seen them; you cannot cite a single one which has taken place in presence of witnesses capable of testing it; no special intervention of the Divinity, whether in the composition of a book, or in any event whatever, has been proved. For this reason alone, when a person admits the supernatural, such a one is without the province of science; he accepts an explanation which is non-scientific, an explanation which is set aside by the astronomer, the physician, the chemist, the geologist, the physiologist, one which ought also to be passed over by the historian. We reject the supernatural for the same reason that we reject the existence of centaurs and hippogriffes; and this reason is, that nobody has ever seen them. It is not because it has been previously demonstrated to me that the evangelists do not merit absolute credence that I reject the miracles which they recount. It is because they do recount miracles that I say, "The Gospels are legends; they may contain history, but, certainly, all that they set forth is not historical."

It is hence impossible that the orthodox person and the rationalist who denies the supernatural can be of much assistance in such questions. In the eyes of theologians, the Gospels and the books of the Bible in general are books like no others, books more historic than the best histories, inasmuch as they contain no errors. To the rationalist, on the contrary, the Gospels are texts to which the ordinary rules of criticism ought to be applied; we are, in this respect, like the Arabs in presence of the Koran and the hadith, like the Hindoos in presence of the Vedas and the Buddhist books. Is it because the Arabs regard the Koran as infallible? Is it because we accuse them of falsifying history that they relate the origins of Islamism differently from the Mussulman theologians? Is it because the Hindoos hold the Lalitavistara to be a biography?

How are such opinions, in setting out from opposed principles, to be mutually reconciled? All rules of criticism assume that a document subjected to examination has but a relative value, that it may be in error, and that it may be improved by comparing it with a better document. The profane savant, persuaded that all books which have come down to us as legacies are the work of man, did not hesitate to do an injury to texts when the texts contradicted one another, when they set forth absurd or formal statements which had been refuted by witnesses of greater authority. Orthodoxy, on the contrary, positive in advancing that the sacred books do not contain an error or a contradiction, tolerates the most violent tactics, expedients the most desperate, in order to get out of difficulties. Orthodox exegesis is, in this way, a tissue of subtleties. An isolated subtlety may be true; but a thousand subtleties cannot at once be true. If there were in Tacitus or Polybius errors so pronounced as those committed by Luke àpropos of Quirinius and of Theudas, we should say that Tacitus and Polybius have been deceived. Reasonings which we would not admit if the question were one of Greek or Latin literature, hypotheses which a Boissonade, or even a Rollin, would never think of, are held to be plausible when the question is one of exculpating a sacred author.

Hence it is orthodoxy which is guilty of a petitio principii, when it reproaches rationalism with changing history, because the latter does not accept word for word the documents which orthodoxy holds to be sacred. Because a fact is written down, it does not thence follow that it is true. The miracles of Mahomet have been put into writing as well as those of Jesus; and certainly the Arab biographies of Mahomet, that of Ibn-Haschim, for example, has a much more historical character than the Gospels. Do we on this account admit the miracles of Mahomet? We follow Ibn-Haschim with more or less confidence when we have no reasons for doubting him. But when he relates to us things that are perfectly incredible we make no difficulty about abandoning him. Certainly, if we had four lives of Buddha, which were partly fabulous, and as irreconcilable amongst themselves as the four Gospels are to one another, and if a savant essayed to purge the four Buddhist narratives of their contradictions, we should not accuse that savant of falsifying the texts. It might well be that he attempted to unite discordant passages, that he sought a compromise, a sort of middle course, a narrative which should embrace nothing that was impossible, in which opposing testimony was balanced and misrepresented as little as possible. If, after that, the Buddhists believed in a lie, in the falsification of history, we would have a right to say to them: "The question here is not one of history, and if we must at times discard your texts it is the fault of those texts which contain things impossible of belief, and, moreover, which are contradictory."

At the bottom of all discussion on such matters is the question of the supernatural. If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are actual facts, our method is detestable. If the miracle and the inspiration of some books are beliefs without any reality, our method is the proper one. Now, the question of the supernatural is determined to us with absolute certainty, by this simple reason, that there is no room for belief in a thing of which the world can offer no experimental trace. We do not believe in a miracle, just as we do not believe in dreams, in the devil, in sorcery, or in astrology. Have we any need to refute step by step the long reasonings of astrology in order to deny that the stars influence human events? No. It is sufficient for this wholly negative, as well as demonstrable experience, that we give the best direct proof--such an influence has never been proved.

God forbid that we should be unmindful of the services that the theologians have rendered to science! The research and the constitution of the texts which serve as the basis of this history have been the work in many cases of orthodox theologians. The labour of criticism has been the work of liberal theologians. But there is one thing that a theologian can never be--I mean a historian. History is essentially disinterested. The historian has but one care, art and truth (two inseparable things; art guards the secret of the laws which are the most closely related to truth). The theologian has an interest -- his dogma. Minimise that dogma as much as you will, it is still to the artist and the critic an insupportable burden. The orthodox theologian may be compared to a caged bird; every movement natural to it is intercepted. The liberal theologian is a bird, some of the feathers of whose wings have been clipped. He believes he is master of himself, and he in fact is until the moment he seeks to take his flight. Then it is seen that he is not completely the creature of the air. We proclaim it boldly; critical inquiries relative to the origin of Christianity will not have said their last word until they shall have cultivated, in a purely secular and profane spirit, the method of the Hellenists, the Arabs, the Hindoos, people strangers to all theology, who think neither of edifying, nor of scandalising, nor of defending, nor of overthrowing dogmas.

Day and night, if I might so speak, I have reflected on these questions, questions which ought to be agitated without any other prejudices than those which constitute the essence of reason itself. The most serious of all unquestionably is that of the historic value of the fourth Gospel. Those who have not disagreed on such problems give room for the belief that they have not comprehended the whole difficulty. We may range the opinions on this Gospel into four classes, of which the following is the abridged expression. First opinion: "The fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. The statements contained in that Gospel are all true; the discourses which the author puts into the mouth of Jesus were actually held by Jesus." This is the orthodox opinion. From the point of view of rational criticism, this is wholly untenable.

Second opinion: "The fourth Gospel is, in fact, by the Apostle John, although it may have been revised and retouched by his disciples. The facts recounted in that Gospel are direct traditions in regard to Jesus. The discourses are often from compositions expressing only the manner in which the author had conceived the mind of Jesus." This is the opinion of Ewald, and in some respects that of Lücke, Weisse, and Reuss. This is the opinion that I adopted in the first edition of this work.

Third opinion: "The fourth Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John. It was attributed to him by some of his disciples about the year 100. The discourses are almost entirely fictitious; but the narrative parts contain valuable traditions, ascending in part to the Apostle John." This is the opinion of Weizsaecker and of Michael Nicolas. It is the opinion which I now hold.

Fourth opinion: "The fourth Gospel is in no sense the work of the Apostle John. And whether, as regards the facts or the discourses which are reported in it, it is not a historic book; it is a work of the imagination and in part allegorical, concocted about the year 150, in which the author has proposed to himself, not to recount actually the life of Jesus, but to make believe in the idea that he himself had formed of Jesus." Such is, with some variations, the opinion of Baur, Schwegler, Strauss, Zeller, Volkmar, Helgenfeld, Schenkel, Scholten, and Rénille.

I cannot quite ally myself to this radical party. I am convinced that the fourth Gospel has an actual connection with the Apostle John, and that it was written about the end of the first century. I avow, however, that in certain passages of my first edition I inclined too much in the direction of authenticity. The probative force of some arguments upon which I insisted appear to me now of less importance. I no longer believe that Saint Justin may have put the fourth Gospel on the same footing as the synoptics amongst the "Memoires of the Apostles." The existence of Presbyteros Joannes, a personage distinct from the Apostle John, appears to me now as very problematical. The opinion according to which John, the son of Zebedee, could have written the work, an hypothesis which I have never altogether admitted, but for which, at moments, I might have shown a certain weakness, is here discarded as improbable. Finally, I acknowledge that I was wrong in repudiating the hypothesis of a false writing, attributed to an apostle who lived in the apostolic age. The second epistle of Peter, the authenticity of which no person can reasonably sustain, is an example of a work, much less important no doubt than the fourth Gospel, counterfeited under such conditions. Moreover, this is not for the moment the capital question. The essential question is to know what use it is proper to make of the fourth Gospel when one essays to write the life of Jesus. I persist in believing that that Gospel possesses a fund of valuable information, equal to that of the synoptics, and even sometimes superior. The development of this point possesses so much importance that I have made it the basis of an appendix at the end of this volume. The portion of the introduction relating to the criticism of the fourth Gospel has been revised and completed.

In the body of the narrative several passages have also been modified in consequence of what has been just stated. All passages in a sentence which implied more or less that the fourth Gospel was by the Apostle John, or by an ocular witness of the evangelical facts, have been cut out. In order to trace the personal character of John, the son of Zebedee, I have thought of the rude Boanerge of Mark, of the terrible visionary of the Apocalypse, and not of the mystic, so full of tenderness, who has written the Gospel of love. I insist, with less confidence, on certain little details which are furnished us by the fourth Gospel. The limited quotations I have made from the discourses of that Gospel have been still further restricted. I had allowed myself to follow too far the opinions of the alleged apostle in what concerned the promise of the Paraclete. In like manner I am not now so sure that the fourth Gospel is right in respect of its disagreement with the synoptics as to the day on which Jesus died. As to the time of the Lord's Supper, on the contrary, I persist in my opinion. The synoptic account which places the eucharistic institution on the last evening of Jesus appears to me to contain an improbability, equivalent to a quasi-miracle. It is hence, in my opinion, an adapted version, and founded upon a certain confusion of recollections.

The critical examination of the synoptics has not been modified throughout. It has been completed and determined on some points, notably in that which concerns Luke. As regards Lysanias, a study of the inscription of Zenodorus at Baalbeck, which I did for the Phoenician Mission, has led me to believe that the evangelist could not have made so grievous a mistake as the ingenious critics think. As regards Quirinius, on the contrary, the last memoir of M. Mommsen has settled the question against the third Gospel. Mark seems to me more and more the primitive type of the synoptic narrative and the most authoritative text.

The paragraph relative to the Apocrypha has been explained. The important texts published by M. Ceriani have been employed to advantage. I have great doubts in regard to the book of Enoch. I reject the opinion of Weisse, Volkmar, and Graetz, who believe that the whole book is posterior to Jesus. As to the most important portion of the book, which extends from chapter xxvii. to chapter lxxi., I dare not decide between the arguments of Helgenfeld and Colani, who regard this portion as posterior to Jesus; and the opinion of Hoffmann, Dillmann, Koestlin, Ewald, Lücke, and Weizsaecker, who hold it to be anterior. How much is it to be desired that the Greek text of that important writing could be found! I do not know why I persist in believing that this is not a vain hope. I have, in any case, stamped with doubt the inductions drawn from the aforenamed chapters. I have shown, on the contrary, the singular correspondences between the discourses of Jesus contained in the last chapters of the synoptic Gospels and the Apocalypses attributed to Enoch, relations in regard to which the discovery of the complete Greek text of the epistle attributed to Barnabas has cast much light, and which has been much enhanced by M. Weizsaecker. The certain results obtained by M. Volkmar in regard to the fourth book of Esdras, and which agree, in almost every particular, with those of M. Ewald, have been equally taken into consideration. Several new Talmudist citations have been introduced The portion accorded to Essenism has been enlarged.

The position I have taken in discarding the bibliography has frequently been wrongly interpreted. I believe I have loudly enough proclaimed that which I owe to the masters of German science in general, and to each of them in particular, so that such a silence might not be taxed with ingratitude. Bibliography is only useful when it is complete. Now the German genius has displayed such activity in the field of evangelical criticism that if I had cited all the works relative to the questions treated in this book I would have tripled the extent of the notes and changed the character of my narrative. One cannot accomplish everything at once. I have restricted myself, therefore, to the rule of only admitting citations at first hand. Their number has been greatly multiplied. Besides, for the convenience of French readers who are not conversant with these studies, I have continued the revision of the summary list of the writings, composed in our language, wherever I could find details which I may have omitted. Many of these works are far removed from my ideas; but all are of a nature to make the enlightened man reflect and to make him understand our discussions.

The thread of the narrative has been much changed. Certain expressions, too strong for communistic minds, which were of the essence of nascent Christianity, have been softened down. Among those holding personal relations with Jesus I have admitted some whose names do not figure in the Gospels, but who are known to us through evidence worthy of credence. That which relates to the name of Peter has been modified. I have also adopted another hypothesis in regard to Levi, son of Alpheus, and his relations with the Apostle Matthew. As to Lazarus, I unhesitatingly adopt now the ingenious hypothesis of Strauss, Baur, Zeller, and Scholten, according to which the pious pauper of the parable of Luke and the person restored to life by Jesus are one and the same individual. It will nevertheless be seen how I retain some reality in associating him with Simon the Leper. I adopt likewise the hypothesis of M. Strauss in respect of divers discourses attributed to Jesus during his last days, which appear to be quotations from writings spread over the first century. The discussion of the texts as to the duration of the life of Jesus has been reduced to greater precision. The topography of Bethphage and Dalmanutha has been altered. The account of Golgotha has been reproduced from the works of M. Vogüé. A person well-versed in the history of botany has taught me to distinguish, in the orchards of Galilee, between trees which have grown there for eighteen hundred years and those which have only been transplanted there since then. Some facts have also been communicated to me in regard to the potion administered to the crucified, to which I have given a place. In general, in the account of the last hours of Jesus, I have toned down some phraseology which might have too historical an appearance. It is in such cases where the favourite explanations of M. Strauss find their best application, where symbolic and dogmatic designs let themselves be seen at each step.

I have said, and I repeat it, that if in writing the life of Jesus one confines oneself to advancing only details which are certain, it would be necessary to limit oneself to a few lines. He existed. He was from Nazareth in Galilee. There was a charm in his preaching, and he implanted in the minds of his disciples aphorisms which left a deep impression there. His two principal disciples were Peter and John, sons of Zebedee. He excited the hatred of the orthodox Jews, who brought him before Pontius Pilate, then procurator of Judæa, to have him put to death. He was crucified without the gates of the city. It was believed that a short time after he was restored to life. This is what is known to us for certain, even though the Gospels had not existed or were falsehoods, through authentic texts and incontestable data, such as the evidently authentic epistles of St. Paul, the epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, and other texts believed in by all. Beyond that, it is permissible to doubt. What was his family? What in particular was his affinity to that James, "brother of the Lord," who after his death plays an important part? Was he actually related to John the Baptist? and did the most celebrated of his disciples belong to the school of baptism before they belonged to his? What were his Messianic ideas? Did he regard himself as the Messiah? What were his apocalyptic ideas? Did he believe that he would appear as the Son of Man in the clouds? Did he imagine he could work miracles? Were the latter attributed to him during his life? Did his legend grow up round himself, and had he cognisance of it? What was his moral character? What were his ideas in regard to the admission of Gentiles into the Kingdom of God? Was he a pure Jew like James, or did he break with Judaism, as did the most enthusiastic party of the Church subsequently? What was the order of his mental development? Those who seek only the indubitable in history must keep silent upon these points. The Gospels, in respect of these questions, are not much to be relied on, seeing that they frequently furnish arguments for two opposing theses, and seeing that the character of Jesus is therein modified to suit the views of the authors. For my part I think that on such occasions it is allowable to make conjectures, provided that they are presented as such. The texts, not being historic, give no certitude, but they give something. It is not necessary to follow them with a blind confidence, it is not necessary to reject their testimony with unjust disdain. We must strive to divine what they conceal, without being absolutely certain of having found it.

It is singular that, in regard to almost all these points, it is the liberal school of theology which proposes the most sceptical solutions. The more sensible defenders of Christianity have come to consider it as advantageous to leave a gap in the historical circumstances bearing upon the birth of Christianity. Miracles, Messianic prophecies, formerly the bases of the Christian apology, have become an embarrassment to it; people seek to discard them. If we would believe the partisans of this theology, amongst whom I could cite so many eminent critics and noble thinkers, Jesus never pretended to perform a miracle; he did not believe himself to be the Messiah; he had no idea of the apocalyptic discourses which have been imputed to him as touching the final catastrophe. That Papias, so excellent a traditionist, and so zealous a collector of the words of Jesus, was an enthusiastic millenarian; that Mark, the oldest and the most authoritative of the evangelical narrators, was almost exclusively preoccupied with miracles, matters little. The career of Jesus is in this way so belittled that we are many times at a loss to tell what he was. His being condemned to death has no more right to be embraced in such a hypothesis than the accident which has made of him the chief of an apocalyptic and a Messianic movement. Was it on account of his moral precepts or his discourses on the Mount that Jesus was crucified? Certainly not. These maxims had for a long time been the current coin of the synagogue. No one has ever been put to death for repeating them. When Jesus was put to death, it was for saying something more than that. A learned man, who has taken an active part in these discussions, wrote me lately: "As in former times it was necessary to prove at all hazards that Jesus was God, so in our own times the question that the Protestant theological school has to prove is that he was not only a mere man, but also that he always regarded himself as such. People persist in representing him as a man of good sense, as a practical man par excellance, and transform him into the image and according to the spirit of modem theology. I believe with you that this is not doing justice to historical truth, but is neglecting an essential side of it."

This tendency has already been more than once logically produced in the bosom of Christianity. What did Marcion aim at? What did the Gnostics of the second century try to do? Simply to discard the material circumstances of a biography, the human details of which shocked them. Baur and Strauss yielded to analogous philosophical necessities. The divine Æon which was developed by humanity has nothing to do with anecdotic incidents, with the particular life of an individual. Scholten and Schenkel held certainly to a historic and actual Jesus, but their historic Jesus is neither a Messiah, nor a prophet, nor a Jew. People do not know what he aimed at, nor comprehend either his life or his death. Their Jesus is an æon after his own manner, a being impalpable, intangible. Genuine history is not acquainted with any such beings. Genuine history must construct its edifice out of two kinds of materials, and, if I may so speak, out of two factors: the first, the general state of the human soul in a given age and in a given country; the second, the particular incidents which, uniting with general causes, determined the course of events. To explain history by accidental facts is as false as to explain it by principles which are purely philosophic. The two explanations ought mutually to sustain and complete each other. The history of Jesus and of the apostles must, above all histories, be constructed out of a vast mixture of ideas and sentiments; nor would that even be sufficient. A thousand conjectures, a thousand whims, a thousand trifles, are mixed up with ideas and sentiments. To trace at this time of day the exact details of these conjectures, whims, and trifles is impossible; what legend has taught us in regard to this may be true, but it may also not be true. In my opinion, the best course to hold is to follow as closely as possible the original narratives, to discard impossibilities, to sow everywhere the seeds of doubt, and to put forth as conjectural the diverse manners in which the event might have taken place. I am not quite sure that the conversion of St. Paul came about as we have it related in the Acts; but it took place in a manner not widely different from that, for St. Paul himself has informed us that he had a vision of the resurrected Jesus, which gave an entirely new direction to his life. I am not sure whether the narrative of the Acts as to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is quite historic; but the ideas which were spread abroad as to the baptism of fire leads me to believe that a scene took place in the apostolic circle in which thunder played a part, as at Sinai. The visions of the resurrected Jesus were likewise occasionally the cause of the fortuitous circumstances interpreted by vivid and already preoccupied imaginations.

If liberal theologians repudiate explanations of this kind, it is because they do not wish to subject Christianity to the laws common to other religious movements; because also, perhaps, they are not sufficiently acquainted with the theory of spiritual life. There are no religious movements in which such deceptions do not play a great part. It may even be affirmed that they hold a permanent position in certain communities, such as the pietist Protestants, the Mormons, and the convent Catholics. In those little excited worlds it is not rare that conversions are the result of some accident, in which the anxious soul sees the finger of God. These accidents, which always contain something puerile, are concealed by the believers; it is a secret between heaven and them. A fortuitous event is nothing to a cold or indifferent soul; it is a divine symbol to a susceptible soul. To say that it was an accident which changed St. Paul and St. Ignatius Loyola through and through, or rather which gave a new turn to their activity, is certainly inexact. It was the interior movement of those strong natures which had prepared the clap of thunder; yet the thunderclap had been determined by an exterior cause. All these phenomena, moreover, had reference to a moral state which no longer belongs to us. In the majority of their actions they were governed by dreams which they had seen the preceding night, by inductions drawn from a fortuitous object which struck their first waking view, or by sounds which they believed they heard. It has happened that the wings of a bird, currents of air, or headaches, have determined the fate of the world. In order to be sincere and exhaustive it is necessary to say this; and when certain commonplace documents tell us of incidents of this kind we must take care to pass them over in silence. In history there are but few details which are certain; details, nevertheless, possess always some significance. The historian's talent consists in making a true narrative out of details which are of themselves but half true.

We can hence accord a place in history to particular incidents, without being on that account a rationalist of the old school or a disciple of Paulus. Paulus was a theologian who, wishing to have as little as possible to do with miracles, and not daring at the same time to treat the Bible narratives as legends, twisted them about so as to explain them in a wholly natural fashion. In this way Paulus desired to retain for the Bible all its authority and to enter into the real thoughts of the sacred authors. But I am a profane critic; I believe that no supernatural writing is true to the letter; I think that out of a hundred narratives of the supernatural there are eighty which have been pieced together by popular imagination. I admit, nevertheless, that in certain very rare cases legend has been derived from an actual fact and trans-formed in the imagination. As to the mass of supernatural data recounted by the Gospels and by the Acts, I shall attempt to show in five or six instances how the illusion may have been created. The theologian who is invariably methodical would have that a single explanation should hold good from one end of the Bible to the other. Criticism believes that every explanation should be attempted, or rather, that the possibility of each explanation should be successively demonstrated. That an explanation is repugnant to one's ideas is no reason for rejecting it. The world is at once an infernal and a divine comedy, a strange "round," led by a choragus of genius, now good, now evil, now stupid; the good defile into the ranks which have been assigned to them, in view of the accomplishment of a mysterious end. History is not history if in reading it one is not by turns charmed and disgusted, grieved and consoled.

The first task of the historian is to make a careful sketch of the manner in which the events he recounts took place. Now, the history of religious beginnings transports us into a world of women and children, of brains ardent or foolish. These facts, placed before minds of a positive order, are absurd and unintelligible, and this is why countries such as England, of ponderous intellects, find it impossible to comprehend anything about it. That which is a drawback to the arguments, formerly so celebrated, of Sherlock or of Gilbert West upon the resurrection, of Lyttelton upon the conversion of Saint Paul, is not the reasoning; that is a triumph of solidity; it is the just appreciation of the diversity of means. Every tentative religion with which we are acquainted exhibits unmistakably an enormous mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. Read these narratives of primitive Saint Simonism, written with admirable candour by the surviving adepts. By the side of repulsive rôles, insipid declamations, what charm! what sincerity, when the man or the woman of the people enters upon the scene, hearing the artless confession of a soul which is open to the first gentle ray which has struck it! There is more than one example of beautiful durable things which have been founded upon singular puerilities. It were useless to seek for any proportion between the conflagration and the spark which lighted it. The devotion of Salette is one of the grandest religious events of our age. These basilicas, so respectable, of Chartres and of Laon, were reared upon illusions of the same sort. The Fête-Dieu originated in the visions of a female religionist of Liège who believed that in her prayers she always saw the full moon through a small hole. We could instance movements, absolutely sincere, which have been brought about by impostors. The discovery of the holy lance at Athens, in which the fraud was so patent, decided the fortune of the Crusades. Mormonism, the beginnings of which are so shameful, has inspired courage and devotion. The religion of the Druzes rests upon a tissue of absurdities which stagger the imagination, but it has its devotees. Islamism, which is the second great event in the history of the world, would not have existed if the son of Amina had not been an epileptic. The gentle and immaculate Francis d'Assisi would not have succeeded without Brother Elia. Humanity is so feeble of mind that the purest thing has need of the co-operation of some impure agent.

Let us guard against applying our conscientious distinctions, our reasonings of cool and clear heads, to the appreciation of these extraordinary events, which are at once so much beyond and beneath us. There are those who would make Jesus a sage, a philosopher, a patriot, a good man, a moralist, or a saint. He was neither or any of these. He was a charmer. Let us not make the past our idol. Let us not believe that Asia is Europe. With us, for example, the fool is a creature outside the rules of society; we torture him so as to make him re-enter it; the horrible treatment of fools by ancient houses was the result of scholastic and Cartesian logic. In the East, the fool is a privileged being; he enters the highest councils without any one daring to stop him; people listen to him, he is consulted. He is a being believed to be in close proximity to God, inasmuch as, his individual reason being extinguished, he is believed to be a partaker in the divine reason. The wit which, through delicate raillery, rises above all defects of reason, exists only in Asia. A person educated in Islamism told me that, repairs having become necessary at the tomb of Mahomet, people at Medina for several years made an appeal to the masons, and announced that he who should descend into that dreadful place should have his head cut off on reascending. "It was necessary," said my interlocutor to me, "to picture those places to oneself in a certain manner, and it was not for any person to say that they were otherwise."

Troubled consciences cannot have the clearness of good sense. Now, it is only troubled consciences which can lay powerful foundations. I have tried to draw a picture in which the colours should be disposed as they are in nature, that is to say, at once grand and puerile, in which one sees the divine instinct threading its way with safety through a thousand peculiarities. If the picture had been without shade, this would have been the proof that it was false. The condition of the written proofs does not permit of us telling in what instances the illusion was consistent with itself. All that we can say is, that sometimes it has happened thus. One cannot lead for years the life of a thaumaturgist without being often cornered--without having one's hand forced by the public. The man who has a legend attaching to his life is led tyrannically by his legend. One begins by artlessness, credulity, absolute innocence; one ends in all sorts of embarrassments, and, in order to sustain the divine power which is at fault, one gets out of these embarrassments through the most desperate expedients. When one is put to the wall must one leave the work of God to perish, because God is slow of coming to the relief? Did not Joan of Arc more than once make her voice heard in response to the necessities of the moment? If the account of the secret revelation which she made to King Charles VII. has any reality, a supposition which it is difficult to deny, it must have been that that innocent girl had represented that she had received through supernatural intuition that which she had heard in confidence. An exposé of religious history which does not some day disclose indirectly suppositions of this sort is for the same reason argued to be incomplete.

Every true, or probable, or possible circumstance most then have its proper place in my narration, together with its shade of probability. In such a history it will be necessary to speak not only of that which has taken place, but also of that which had a likelihood of taking place. The impartiality with which I have treated my subject has interdicted me from not accepting a conjecture, even one that shocks; for undoubtedly there were many shocking ones in the fashion of the things which are past and gone. I have applied from beginning to end the same process in an inflexible manner. I have given the good impressions which the texts have suggested to me; I could not, therefore, be silent as to the bad. I intend that my book shall retain its value even in the day when people shall have reached the point of regarding a certain amount of fraud as an element inseparable from religious history. It will be necessary to make my hero beautiful and charming (for undoubtedly he was so), and that, too, in spite of actions which, in our days, might be characterised in an unfavourable manner. People have praised me for having tried to construct a narrative lovely, human, and possible. Would my work have received these eulogiums if it had represented the origin of Christianity as absolutely immaculate? That would have been to admit the greatest of miracles. The result thence would have been a picture lifeless to the last degree. I do not say that this is for want of faults I may have made in the composition. Nevertheless, I must leave each text to produce its melodious or discordant note. If Goethe had been alive he would, with this reserve, have commended me. That great man would not have forgiven me for producing a portrait wholly celestial: he would have desired to find repellent details; for, assuredly, in actual life things happen which would wound us, if only it were given to us to see them.

The same difficulty presents itself, moreover, in the history of the apostles. This history is admirable in its way. But what can be more shocking than the glossolaly, which is attested by the unexceptionable texts of St. Paul? Liberal theologians admit that the disappearance of the body of Jesus was one of the grounds for the belief in the resurrection. What does that signify, unless the Christian conscience at that moment was two-sided, that a moiety of that conscience gave birth to the illusion of the other moiety? If the disciples themselves had taken away the body and spread themselves over the city crying, "He is risen!" the imposture would have been discovered. But there can be no doubt that it was not they themselves who did the two things. For belief in a miracle to be accepted it is indeed necessary that someone be responsible for the first rumour which is spread abroad; but, ordinarily, this is not the principal author. The rôle of the latter is limited to not exclaiming against the reputation which people have given him. Moreover, even if he did exclaim, it would be useless; popular opinion would prove stronger than he. In the miracle of Salette, people possessed a clear idea of the artifice; but the conviction that it would do good to religion carried all before it. The fraud was divided between several unconscionable persons, or rather it had ceased to be a fraud and became a misapprehension. Nobody, in that case, deceives deliberately; everybody deceives innocently. Formerly it was taken for granted that every legend implied deceivers and deceived; in our opinion, all the collaborators of a legend are at once deceived and deceivers. A miracle, in other words, presupposes three conditions: first, general credulity; second, a little complaisance on the part of some; third, tacit acquiescence in the principal author. Through a reaction against the brutal explanations of the eighteenth century, we did not fall into the trap of hypotheses which implied effects without causes. Legend does not wholly create itself: people assist in giving it birth. These points d'appui in a legend are often of a rare elasticity. It is the popular imagination which makes the ball of snow; there, nevertheless, must have been an original nucleus. The two persons who composed the two genealogies of Jesus knew quite well that the lists were not of any great authenticity. The apocryphal books, the alleged apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, and Esdras, proceeded from persons of strong convictions; but the authors of these works knew well they were neither Daniel, Enoch, nor Esdras. The priest of Asia who composed the romance of Thekla declared that he had done it out of love for Paul. It is incumbent that we should say a great deal about the author of the fourth Gospel, who was assuredly a personage of the first order. If you chase the illusion of religious history out of one door, it will re-enter by another. In fine, it would be difficult to cite a great event of the past, whatever it might be, in an entirely defensible manner. Shall we cease to be Frenchmen because France has been founded by centuries of perfidy? Shall we refuse to profit by the benefits of the Revolution because the Revolution committed crimes without number? If the house of Capet had succeeded in creating for us a good constitutional assize, similar to that of England, would we have wrangled over the cure of the king's evil?

Science alone is pure; for science possesses nothing practical; it does not touch men; the Propaganda takes no notice of it; its duty is to prove, not to persuade or to convert. He who has discovered a theorem publishes its demonstration for those who are capable of comprehending it. He does not mount a chariot; he does not gesticulate; he does not have recourse to oratorical artifices in order to induce people to adopt it who do not perceive its truth. Enthusiasm, certainly, has its good faith, but it is an ingenuous good faith; it is not the deep reflective good faith of the savant. Only the ignorant yield to bad reasonings. If Laplace had been able to gain the multitude over to his system of the world, he would not have limited himself to mathematical demonstrations. M. Littré, in writing the life of a man whom he regarded as his master, pressed sincerity to the point of leaving nothing unsaid that would render that man more amiable. That is without example in religious history. Science alone seeks after pure truth. She alone offers good reasons for truth, and brings a severe criticism into the employment of the methods of conviction. This is no doubt the reason why, up till now, she has had no influence on the people. It may be that in the future, when people are better instructed, even as we have been led to hope, they will yield only to good and carefully deduced proofs. But it would not be equitable to judge the great men of the past according to these principles. There are natures who resign themselves to impotence, who accept humanity, with all its weaknesses, such as it is. Many great things have not been accomplished without lies and without violence. If to-morrow the incarnate ideal were to come and offer itself to men in order to govern them, it would find itself confronted by the foolish, who wish to be deceived; by the wicked, who wish to be subdued. The sole irreproachable person is the contemplative man, who only aims at finding the truth, without either caring about making it a triumph or of applying it.

Morality is not history. To paint and to record is not to approve. The naturalist who describes the transformations of the chrysalis neither blames nor praises it. He does not tax it with ingratitude because it abandons its shroud; he does not describe it as bold because it has found its wings: he does not accuse it of folly because it aspires to plunge into space. One may be the passionate friend of the true and the beautiful, and show oneself indulgent at the same time to the simple ignorance of the people. Our happiness has cost our fathers torrents of tears and deluges of blood. In order that pious souls may taste at the foot of the altar the inward consolation which gives them life, it has taken centuries of severe constraint, the mysteries of a sacerdotal polity, a rod of iron, funereal piles. The success which one owes to a wholly great institution does not demand the sacrifice of the sincerity of history. Formerly, to be a good Frenchman, it was necessary to believe in the dove of Clovis, in the national antiquities of the Treasure of Saint Denis, in the virtues of the oriflamme, in the supernatural vision of Joan of Arc; it was necessary to believe that France was the first of nations, that French royalty was superior to all other royalties, that God had for that crown a predilection altogether peculiar and was constantly engaged in protecting it. To-day we know that God protects equally all kingdoms, all empires, all republics; we own that many of the kings of France have been contemptible men; we recognise that the French character has its faults; we greatly admire a multitude of things which come from abroad. Are we on that account worse Frenchmen? We can say, on the contrary, that we are better patriots, since, in place of being blind to our faults, we seek to correct them; that, in place of depreciating the foreigner, we seek to imitate that which he has in him of good. In like manner we are Christians. He who speaks with irreverence of the royalty of the Middle Ages, of Louis XIV., of the Revolution, of the Empire, commits an act of bad taste. He who does not speak kindly of Christianity and of the Church of which he forms a part renders himself guilty of ingratitude. But filial recognition ought not to be carried to the length of closing our eyes to the truth. One is not wanting in respect to the government in making the remark that it is not able to satisfy the conflicting needs that are in man, nor to a religion in saying that she is not free from the formidable objections which science has raised against all supernatural belief. Responding to certain social exigencies and not to some others, governments fall by reason of the same causes which have founded them and which have been their strength. Responding to the aspirations of the heart at the expense of the protestations of reason, religions crumble away in turn, because no force here below can succeed in stifling reason.

That day will be unfortunate for reason when she would stifle religion. Our planet, believe me, labours at some profound work. Do not pronounce rashly upon the inutility of such and such of its parts; do not say that it is necessary to suppress this wheel-work, which to appearance makes but the contrary play of the others. Nature, which has endowed the animal with an infallible instinct, has not put into humanity anything deceptive. From his organs you may boldly conclude his destiny. Est Deus in nobis. Religions are false when they attempt to prove the infinite, to determine it, to incarnate it, if I may so speak, but they are true when they affirm it. The greatest errors that they import into that affirmation are nothing compared to the price of the truth which they proclaim. The greatest simpleton, provided he practises the worship of the heart, is more enlightened as to the reality of things than the materialist who thinks he explains everything by accident, and leaves it there. __________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION.

WHICH TREATS PRINCIPALLY OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS OF THIS HISTORY.

A HISTORY of the "Origins of Christianity" ought to embrace the whole obscure and, so to speak, subterranean period which extends from the first beginnings of this religion to the time when its existence became a public fact, notorious and apparent to everybody. Such a history ought to consist of four parts. The first, which is now presented to the public, treats of the particular fact which was the starting point of the new religion, and is wholly concerned with the sublime personality of the Founder. The second should treat of the Apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the revolutions which took place in religious thought in the first two generations of Christianity. This should end about the year 100, when the last friends of Jesus were just dead, and when the whole of the books of the New Testament had almost assumed the form in which they are now read. The third book should set forth the state of Christianity under the Antonines. We should then observe its slow development and its waging of an almost permanent war against the empire, which latter, having at that moment attained to the highest degree of administrative perfection and being governed by philosophers, combated in the nascent sect a secret and theocratic society, which the latter obstinately disowned, but which was a continual source of weakness. This book would embrace the whole of the second century. The fourth and last part should show the decided progress which Christianity had made from the time of Syrian emperors. In it we should see the learned constitution of the Antonines crumble away, the decadence of ancient civilisation set in irrevocably and Christianity profit by its ruin, Syria conquer the entire West, and Jesus, in combination with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society which philosophy and a purely civil government were unable longer to cope with. It was then that the religious ideas of the races established upon the coasts of the Mediterranean underwent a great change; that the Eastern religions everywhere took the lead; that Christianity, having become a large Church, totally forgot its millennium dreams, broke its last connections with Judaism, and passed entirely into the Greek and Roman world. The strifes and the literary labours of the third century, which had already taken place openly, have to be described only in their general features. Again, the persecutions of the commencement of the fourth century, the last effort of the empire to return to its old principles, which denied to religious associations a place in the State, should be recounted more briefly. Finally, the change of policy which, under Constantine, inverted the position, and made of the most free and most spontaneous religious movement an official worship subject to State control, and in its turn persecutor, would need only to be foreshadowed.

I do not know whether I shall have life and strength to execute no vast a plan. I should be satisfied if, after writing the life of Jesus, it is given to me to relate, as I understand it, the history of the Apostles; the condition of the Christian conscience during the weeks which immediately succeeded the death of Jesus; the formation of the cycle of legends touching the resurrection; the first acts of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of St. Paul, the crisis at the time of Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the ruin of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor. Everything pales by the side of that marvellous first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we can judge better of what passed in the Christian world from the year 50 to 75 than from the year 80 to 150.

The plan upon which this history proceeds prevents the introduction into the text of long critical dissertations upon controversial points. A continuous succession of notes places likewise the reader in a position to verify the sources of all the propositions in the text. These notes are strictly limited to quotations at first hand--I mean, to the indication of the original passages upon which each assertion or hypothesis rests. I am aware that, to persons who have had little experience in these studies, many other explanations might be necessary; but it is not my habit to do over again what has once been done and done well. To cite only books written in French, the following can be recommended: [1]

The above works are for the most part excellent, and in them will be found explained a multitude of details upon which I have had to be very succinct. In particular, the criticism of the details of evangelical texts has been done by M. Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired. Although M. Strauss may at first have been deceived in his theory in regard to the authorship of the Gospels, and although his book, in my opinion, has the fault of occupying too much theological and too little historical ground, it is indispensable, so as to understand the motives which have guided me in a multitude of details, to follow the argument (always judicious, though sometimes a little subtle) of the book which has been so well translated by my learned co-worker M. Littré.

I am not aware that, in respect of ancient testimony, I have overlooked any source of information. Not to mention a multitude of scattered data respecting Jesus and the times in which he lived, we still have five great collections of writings. These are: first, the Gospels and the New Testament writings in general; second, the compositions called the "Apocrypha of the Old Testament;" third, the works of Philo; fourth, those of Josephus; fifth, the Talmud. The writings of Philo have the inestimable advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the time of Jesus, stirred souls occupied with great religious questions. Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different sphere of Judaism from Jesus; yet, like him, he was quite free from the pharisaic spirit which reigned at Jerusalem; Philo is in truth the elder brother of Jesus. He was sixty-two years of age when the prophet of Nazareth had reached the highest point of his activity, and he survived him at least ten years. What a pity it is that the accidents of life did not direct his steps into Galilee! What would he not have taught us!

Josephus, who wrote chiefly for the Pagans, did not exhibit the some sincerity. His meagre accounts of Jesus, John the Baptist, and of Judas the Gaulonite are colourless and lifeless. We feel that he sought to represent these movements, so profoundly Jewish in character and spirit, in a form which would be intelligible to the Greeks and Romans. Taken as a whole I believe the passage in regard to Jesus to be authentic. It is perfectly in the style of Josephus, and, if that historian mentioned Jesus at all, it is indeed in this manner that he would have spoken of him. We feel, however, that the hand of a Christian has retouched the fragment, and has added to it passages without which it would have been well nigh blasphemous, as well as abridged and modified some expressions. It is necessary to remember that Josephus owed his literary fortune to the Christians, who adopted his writings as essential documents of their sacred history. It is probable that in the second century they circulated an edition of them, corrected according to Christian ideas. At all events that which constitutes the immense interest of the books of Josephus in respect of our present subject is the vivid picture he gives of the times. Thanks to this Jewish historian, Herod, Herodias, Antipas, Philip, Annas, Kaïaphas, and Pilate are personages whom, so to speak, we can touch, and whom we can actually see living before us.

The Apocrypha of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part of the Sibylline verses, the book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the fourth book of Esdras, the Apocalypse of Baruch, together with the book of Daniel, which is also itself a real Apocrypha, possess a primary importance in the history of the development of the Messianic theories, and in the understanding of the conceptions of Jesus in regard to the kingdom of God. The book of Enoch, in particular, and the Assumption of Moses, were much read in the circle of Jesus. Some expressions imputed to Jesus by the synoptics are presented in the epistle attributed to Saint Barnabas as belonging to Enoch: Os Enoch legei. It is very difficult to determine the date of the different sections of which the book attributed to that patriarch in composed. None of them are certainly anterior to the year 150 B.C.: some of them may even have been written by a Christian pen. The section containing the discourses entitled "Similitudes," and extending from chapter xxvii. to chapter lxxi., is suspected of being a Christian work. But this has not been proved. Perhaps this part is only a proof of alterations. Other additions or Christian revisions are recognisable here and there.

The collection of the Sibylline verses needs to be regarded in the same light; but the latter is more easily established. The oldest part in the poem contained in Book III., v. 97-817; it appeared about the year 140 B.C. Respecting the date of the fourth book of Esdras everybody now is nearly agreed in assigning this Apocalypse to the year 97 A.D. It has been altered by the Christians. The Apocalypse of Baruch has a great resemblance to that of Esdras; we find there, as in the book of Enoch, several utterances imputed to Jesus. As to the book of Daniel, the character of the two languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated announcements of events which go back as far as the times of Antiochus Epiphanes; the false descriptions which are there drawn of ancient Babylon; the general tone of the book, which has nothing suggestive of the writings of the captivity, but, on the contrary, corresponds, by numerous analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of the epoch of Seleucidæ; the Apocalyptic form of the visions; the position of the book in the Hebrew canon which is outside the series of the prophets; the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of chapter xlix. of Ecclesiasticus, in which his position is all but indicated; and a thousand other proofs, which have been deduced a hundred times, do not permit of a doubt that this book was but the product of the general exaltation produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It is not in the old prophetic literature that it most be classed; its place is at the head of Apocalyptic literature, the first model of a kind of composition, after which were to come the various Sibylline poems, the book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of John, the Ascension of Isaiah, the fourth book of Esdras.

Hitherto, in the history of the origins of Christianity, the Talmud has been too much neglected. I think with M. Geiger that the true notion of the circumstances which produced Jesus must be sought in this peculiar compilation, in which so much knowledge is mixed with the most insignificant scholasticism. The Christian theology and the Jewish theology having followed uniformly two parallel paths, the history of the one cannot be understood without the history of the other. Innumerable material details in the Gospels find, moreover, their commentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin collections of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained already on this point a mass of information. I have taken upon myself to verify in the original all the quotations which I have made use of, without an exception. The assistance which has been given in this part of my task by a learned Israelite, M. Newbauer, well-versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled me to go further and to elucidate certain parts of my subject by some new researches. The distinction here between epochs is very important, the compilation of the Talmud extending from the year 200 to the year 500, or thereabout. In the actual condition of these studies, we have brought to it as much discernment as it was possible in the actual state of these studies. Dates no recent will excite fears among persons accustomed to attach value to a document only for the epoch in which it was written. But such scruples would here be out of place. Jewish teaching from the Asmonean epoch up to the end of the second century was chiefly oral. These sorts of intellectual states must not be judged by the customs of an age in which much writing takes place. The Vedas, the Homeric poems, the ancient Arabic poems, were for centuries preserved only in memory, and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form. In the Talmud, on the other hand, the form possesses no value. Let us add that before the Mischnah of Juda the saint, which obliterated the recollection of all others, there had been several essays at compilation, the commencement of which goes further back perhaps than is commonly supposed. The style of the Talmud is that of careless notes; the editors probably did no more than range under certain titles the enormous medley of writings which, for generations, had accumulated in the different schools.

It remains for us to speak of the documents which, pretending to be biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must naturally take the place of honour in a life of Jesus. A complete treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent work which, for the last thirty years, has been devoted to this question, a problem which was formerly held to be insoluble has been resolved, and, though there is room still left for much uncertainty, it is quite sufficient for the requirements of history. We shall have occasion later on to revert to this in our second book, seeing that the composition of the Gospels was one of the most important facts in the future of Christianity in the second half of the first century. We shall only touch in this place a single aspect of the subject, but one which is indispensable to the solidarity of our narrative. Putting to one side all that belongs to a picture of the apostolic times, we will inquire only to what extent the data furnished by the Gospels can be employed in a history arranged according to rational principles.

That the Gospels are in part legendary is quite evident, inasmuch as they are full of miracles and of the supernatural; but there are legends and legends. Nobody disputes the principal traits in the life of Francis d'Assisi, although at every step the supernatural is encountered in it. Contrariwise, no one gives credence to the "Life of Apollonius of Tyana," for the reason that it was written long after the hero, and avowedly as a pure romance. When, by whom, and under what conditions were the Gospels compiled? This is the chief question upon which the opinion, it is necessary to form of their credibility, depends.

We know that each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name of a personage known either in Apostolic history or in evangelical history itself. If these titles are correct it is clear that the Gospels, without ceasing to be in part legendary, possess a high value, since they take us back to the half century which followed the death of Jesus, and even in two cases to eyewitnesses of his acts.

As for Luke, doubt is hardly possible. The Gospel of Luke is a studied composition, founded upon anterior documents. It is the work of a man who selects, adapts, and combines. The author of this Gospel is undoubtedly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles. Now, the author of the Acts appears to be a companion of Paul, an appellation which exactly fits Luke. I am aware that more than one objection can be raised against this opinion; but one thing is beyond question, to wit, the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts is a man belonging to the second Apostolic generation, and that is sufficient for our purpose. The date of that Gospel may, however, be determined with quite enough precision by considerations drawn from the book itself. The 21st

certainly written subsequently to the siege of Jerusalem, but not very long afterwards. We are here, then, upon solid ground; for the work in question has been written by the same person, and its unity is perfect.

The Gospels of Matthew and Mark do not nearly possess the same stamp of individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author wholly disappears. A proper name inscribed at the head of such works does not count for much.

We cannot, moreover, reason here as in the case of Luke. The date which belongs to a particular chapter (to Matthew xiv. and Mark xiii. for example) cannot he rigorously applied to the works as a whole, for the latter are made up of fragments of epochs and of productions which are quite distinct. In general, the third Gospel appears to be posterior to the two first, and exhibits the character of a much more advanced composition. We cannot, nevertheless, conclude hence that the two Gospels of Mark and Matthew were in the some condition as we have them when Luke wrote his. These two works, entitled Mark and Matthew, in fact, remained for a long time in a loose state, if I may so speak, and were susceptible of additions. On this point we have an excellent witness, who lived in the first half of the second century. This was Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a traditionist, who was busy all his life in collecting what was known by any one of Jesus. After declaring that in such cases he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two accounts of the acts and words of Christ. First a writing of Mark, the interpreter of the Apostle Peter, a short incomplete composition, without chronological order, including narratives and discourses (lechtheuta e prachtheuta), composed from the information and recollections of the Apostle Peter; second, a collection of sayings (logia) written in Hebrew by Matthew, which everybody has translated as he listed. Certain it is that these two descriptions accord pretty well with the general tenor of the two books now called the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark--the former characterised by its long discourses; the second, above all, by anecdote, and being much more exact than the other on minor details--brief even to dryness, the discourses few in number and indifferently composed. Nevertheless, that these two works as read by us are absolutely identical with those which were read by Papias is not sustainable, because, first, the writings of Matthew which were perused by Papias were composed solely of discourses in Hebrew, different translations of which were in circulation, and, secondly, because the writings of Mark and those of Matthew were to him perfectly distinct, written without any collusion, and it would seem m different languages. Now in the actual state of the texts, the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark present parallelisms so long, and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed that the final compiler of the first had the second before him, or vice versâ, or that both copied from the same source. That which appears the most probable is that we have not the original compilation of either Matthew or Mark, that the two first Gospels as we have them are adaptations in which each sought to fill up the lacunes of one text from the other. In fact, each was desirous of possessing a complete copy. He whose copy contained discourses only filled it out with narratives, and contrariwise. It is in this way that "The Gospel according to Matthew" is found to have appropriated all the anecdotes of Mark, and that "The Gospel according to Mark" contains to-day many of the details which have come from the Logia of Matthew. Each, moreover, imbibed largely of the oral tradition which floated around him. This tradition is so far from having been exhausted by the Gospels that the Acts of the Apostles, and of the most ancient Fathers, cite many sayings of Jesus which appear authentic and are not found in the Gospels that we possess.

It matters little for our present purpose that we should press this analysis further, or attempt, on the one hand, to reconstruct in a kind of way the original Logia of Matthew, or, on the other, to restore the primitive narrative to what it was when it left the pen of Mark. The Logia are doubtless presented to us in the great discourses of Jesus, which make up a considerable portion of the first Gospel. These discourses, in fact, form, when detached from the rest, a complete enough narrative. As for the original narratives of Mark, the text of them seems to make its appearance now in the first, now in the second Gospel, but most often in the second. In other words, the plan of the life of Jesus in the synoptics is founded upon two original documents: first, the discourses of Jesus collected by the Apostle Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and of personal information which Mark committed to writing from the recollections of Peter. It may be said that we still possess these two documents, mixed up with the facts of another production, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without reason, the titles of "The Gospel according to Matthew" and "The Gospel according to Mark" respectively.

In any case, that which is indubitable is that very early the discourses of Jesus were reduced to writing in the Aramean tongue; also, that very early his remarkable actions were taken down. These were not texts to be settled and fixed dogmatically. Besides the Gospels which have come down to us, there might be others which professed equally to set forth the tradition of eyewitnesses. We attach little importance to these writings, while their preservers, such as Papius, who lived in the first half of the second century, preferred always to them oral tradition. Seeing that the world was believed to be near an end, people had not much inclination to write books for the future; they were solely concerned about preserving in their heart the living image of him whom they hoped to see soon again in the clouds. Hence, the small authority which, for nearly a hundred years, evangelical texts enjoyed. People made no scruple about inserting paragraphs in them, of combining various narratives, and in perfecting the one by the other. The poor man who had only one book was anxious that it should contain all that was dear to his heart. These little books were lent by one to another; each transcribed into the margin of his copy the phrases and parables he found in others which affected him. The most beautiful thing in the world has thus proceeded from an obscure and wholly popular elaboration. No edition possessed an absolute value. The two editions attributed to Clement Romanus quote the sayings of Jesus with two notable variances. Justin, who often appeals to that which he calls "The Memoirs of the Apostles," had before him a set of evangelical documents a little different from that which we have; at all events, he does not take the trouble to give them textually. The evangelical quotations in the pseudo-Clementine homilies of Ebionite origin present the some character. The spirit was everything; the letter nothing. It was when tradition, in the latter half of the second century, lost its power, that the text bearing the names of apostles or of apostolic men assumed a decisive authority and obtained the force of law. Even then free compositions were not absolutely interdicted; following the example of Luke people continued to write special Gospels by changing the ensemble of older texts.

Who does not recognise the value of documents constructed thus out of the tender recollections and simple narratives of the first two Christian generations, still full of the strong impressions produced by the illustrious Founder, and which seems to have survived him for a long time? Let us add that those Gospels seemed to proceed from those branches of the Christian family which were most closely related to Jesus. The final labour of compilation of the text which bears the name of Matthew appears to have been done in one of the countries situated to the north-east of Palestine, such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, and Batanea, where many Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were still to be found at the end of the second century relatives of Jesus, and where the first Galilean tendency was longer felt than elsewhere.

So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels called the synoptic. It now remains to speak of the fourth, the one which bears the name of John. Here the question is much more difficult. Polycarp, the most intimate disciple of John, who often quotes the synoptics in his epistle to the Philippians, makes no allusion to the fourth Gospel. Papias, who was equally attached to the school of John, and who, if he had not been his disciple, as Irenæus believes he was, had associated a great deal with his immediate disciples--Papias, who had eagerly collected all the oral accounts relative to Jesus, does not say a word of a "Life of Jesus" written by the Apostle John. If such a mention could have been found in his work, Eusebius, who notices everything in it which bears on the literary history of the apostolic age, would undoubtedly have mentioned it. Justin, perhaps, knew the fourth Gospel; but he certainly did not regard it as the work of the Apostle John, since he expressly designates that apostle as the author of the Apocalypse, and takes not the least account of the fourth Gospel in the numerous facts which he extracts from the "Memoirs of the Apostles." More than this, upon all the points where the synoptics and the fourth Gospel differ he adopts opinions at complete variance with the latter. This is all the more surprising, seeing that the dogmatic tendencies of the fourth Gospel are marvellously adapted to Justin.

The same remarks apply to the pseudo-Clementine homilies. The words of Jesus quoted by that book are of the synoptic type. In two or three places there are, it would seem, facts borrowed from the fourth Gospel. But the author of the Homilies certainly does not accord to that Gospel an apostolic authority, since on many points be puts himself in direct contradiction with him. It appears that Marcion (about 140) could not have known the said Gospel, or attributed to it no importance as an inspired book. This Gospel accorded so well with his ideas that, if he had known it, he would have adopted it eagerly, and would not have been obliged, so as to have an ideal Gospel, to make a corrected edition of the Gospel of Luke. Finally, the apocryphal Gospels which may be referred to the second century, like the Protevangel of James, the Gospel of Thomas the Israelite, embellished the synoptic canvas, but they took no account of the Gospel of John.

The intrinsic difficulties which result from the reading of the fourth Gospel itself are not less forcible. How is it that, by the side of information so precise, and in places felt to be that of eyewitnesses, we find discourses totally different from those of Matthew? How is it that the Gospel in question does not contain a parable or an exorcism? How is it to be explained that side by side with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which plan in some respects seems more satisfactory and more exact than that of the synoptics, appear those singular passages in which one perceives a dogmatic interest peculiar to the author, ideas most foreign to Jesus, and sometimes indications which put us on our guard to the good faith of the narrator? How is it, finally, that by the side of views the most pure, the most just, the most truly evangelical, we find those blemishes which we would rather look upon as the interpolation of an ardent sectary? Is this indeed John, son of Zebedee, the brother of James (who is not mentioned once in the fourth Gospel), who has written in Greek those abstract lessons on metaphysics, to which the synoptics offer no analogy? Is this the essentially Judaising author of the Apocalypse, who, in so few years, should have been stripped to this extent of his style and of his ideas? Is it an "Apostle of Circumcision," who is likely to have composed a narrative more hostile to Judaism than the whole of St. Paul's, a narrative in which the word "Jew" is almost equivalent to That of "enemy of Jesus"? Is it indeed he whose example was invoked by the partisans of the celebration of the Jewish passover in favour of their opinion, who could speak with a sort of disdain of the "Feasts of the Jews" and of the "Passover of the Jews"? All of this is important. 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.

And, in the first place, no one doubts that about the year 170 the fourth Gospel did exist. At that date there broke out at Laodicea on the Lycus a controversy relative to the Passover, in which our Gospel played an important part. Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Polycrates, the author of the epistle to the Churches of Vienne and of Lyons, professed already in regard to the alleged narrative of John the opinion that it would soon become orthodox. Theophilus of Antioch (about 180) said positively that the Apostle John was the author of it. Irenæus and the Canon of Muratori attest the complete triumph of our Gospel, a triumph in respect of which there could no longer be any doubt.

But, if about the year 170 the fourth Gospel appeared as a writing of the Apostle John and invested with full authority, is it not evident that at this date it was not of ancient creation? Tatian, the author of the epistle to Diogenatus, seems indeed to have made use of it. The part played by our Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of Valentinus, in Montanism and in the controversy of the Aloges, is not less remarkable, and shows that from the last half of the second century this Gospel was included in every controversy, and served as a corner stone for the development of the dogma. The school of John is the one whose progress is the most apparent during the second century; Irenæus proceeded from the school of John, and between him and the Apostle there was only Polycarp. Now, Irenæus has not a doubt as to the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. Let as add that the first epistle attributed to Saint John is, according to all appearances, by the same author as the fourth Gospel; now the epistle seems to have been known to Polycarp; it was, it is said, cited by Papias; Irenæus recognised it as John's.

But, as some light is now required to be cast upon the reading of the work itself, we shall remark, first, that the author therein always speaks as an eyewitness. He wishes to pass for the Apostle John, and it is clearly seen that he writes in the interest of that apostle. In each he betrays the design of fortifying the authority of the son of Zebedee, of showing that he was the favourite of Jesus, and the most far-seeing of his disciples; that on all the most solemn occasions (at the Supper, at Calvary, at the Tomb), he occupied the chief place. The relations of John with Peter, which were on the whole fraternal, although not excluding a certain rivalry; the hatred, on the other hand, of Judas, a hatred probably anterior to the betrayal, seem to break through here and there. At times one is constrained to believe that John, in his old age, having perused the evangelical narratives which were in circulation, on the one hand, remarked various inaccuracies; on the other, was chagrined at seeing that in the history of Christ he was not accorded an important enough place; that then he commenced to recount a multitude of things which were better known to him than to the others, with the intention of showing that, in many instances where Peter only was mentioned, he had figured with and before him. Even during the life of Jesus these petty sentiments of jealousy had been betrayed between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. Since the death of James, his brother, John remained the sole inheritor of the intimate remembrances of which the two apostles, by common consent, were the depositaries. Those clear remembrances were preserved in the circle of John, and as the ideas of the times in the matter of literary good faith differed much from ours, a disciple, or rather one of those numerous sectaries, already semi-Gnostics, who from the end of the first century, in Asia Minor, commenced to modify greatly the idea of Christ, might have been tempted to take the pen for the apostle and to make on his own account a free revision of his Gospel. It would cost him no more to speak in the name of John than it cost the pious author of the second Epistle of Peter to write a letter in the name of the latter. To identify himself with the beloved Apostle of Jesus, he espoused all his sentiments, even his littlenesses. Hence this perpetual design of the alleged author to recall that he is the last surviving eyewitness, and the pleasure he takes in relating circumstances which could only be known to him. Hence, so many petty minute details which he would like passed off as the commentaries of an annotator: "It was the sixth hour;" "it was night;" "that man was called Malchus;" "they had lighted a fire, for it was cold;" "the coat was without seam." Hence, finally, the bad arrangement of the compilation, the irregularity of the narrative, the disjointedness of the first chapters--so many inexplicable features, if we go on the supposition that our Gospel is a mere theological thesis without any historic value, yet perfectly comprehensible if we regard it as the recollections of an old man arranged without the assistance of those from whom they proceeded--recollections, sometimes possessing uncommon freshness, at others having been subjected to singular modifications.

An important distinction, in fact, is to he remarked in the Gospel of John. This Gospel, on the one hand, presents a sketch of the life of Jesus which differs considerably from that of the synoptics. On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses whose tone, style, character and doctrines have nothing in common with the Logia contained in the synoptics. In respect of the latter, the difference is such that one must make an unqualified choice. If Jesus spoke as Matthew would have us believe, he could not have spoken in the manner represented by John. Between these two authorities no one has hesitated, or will ever hesitate. Removed by a thousand leagues from the simple, disinterested and impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John shows at every step the prepossession of the apologist, the arrière pensée of the sectary, the desire to establish a thesis and to overcome his adversaries. It was not by pretentious tirades, clumsy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. Even though Papias had not informed us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural, the ineffable truth, the incomparable charm contained in the synoptic Gospels, the profoundly Hebraic turn of these discourses, the analogies which they present to the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their perfect harmony with the Galilean nature--all these characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism and the distorted metaphysics which fill the discourses of John, speak loudly enough. We do not mean to say that there are not to be found in the discourses of John some brilliant flashes, some traits which really proceeded from Jesus. But the mystical tone of these discourses corresponds in nothing to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as it is pictured to us in the synoptics. A new spirit breathes through them; Gnoticism has previously found a footing; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is at an end, the hope of the near advent of Jesus is further off; we enter the arid realm of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogmatism. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and if the son of Zebedee has indeed traced those pages, it is to be supposed that in writing them he had forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth and the charming conversations he had heard upon its banks.

One circumstance, moreover, which proves indeed that the discourses reported by the fourth Gospel are historical fragments, but that they ought to be regarded as compositions, intended to cover, with the authority of Jesus, certain doctrines dear to the author, is their complete harmony with the intellectual condition of Asia Minor at the time they were written. Asia Minor was then the theatre of a strange movement of syncretic philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism existed there already. Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, said that æon named Christos was united by baptism to the man named Jesus, and had separated from him on the cross. Some of the disciples of John would appear to have drunk deeply from these strange springs. Can we affirm that the Apostle himself had not been subject to the same influences, that he did not experience something anolagous to the change which was wrought in St. Paul, and of which the epistle to the Colossians is the principal witness? No, certainly not. It may be that after the crisis of 68 (the date of the Apocalypse), and of the year 70 (the ruin of Jerusalem), the old Apostle, with an ardent and plastic soul, disabused of the belief of the near appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, inclined towards the ideas that he found around him, many of which amalgamated quite well with certain Christian doctrines. In imputing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a very natural leaning. Our recollections are, like everything else, transformable; the ideal of a person we have known changes as we change. Regarding Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John has succeeded in attributing to him that which he had come to accept as the truth.

It is nevertheless much more probable that John himself had no part in them, that the change was made around him rather than by him, and doubtless after his death. The long age of the apostle may have terminated in such a state of feebleness that he was in a measure at the mercy of those around him. A secretary might take advantage of this state to speak in his name that which the world called par excellence, "the old man," Ho Presbuteros. Certain parts of the fourth Gospel have been added subsequently; such is the whole xxi. chapter, in which the author seems to have resolved to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to answer the objections which might be drawn or were already drawn from the death of John himself (v. 21-23). Several other places bear the traces of erasures and of corrections. Not being accounted as wholly the work of John, the book could well remain fifty years in obscurity. Little by little people got accustomed to it, and finished by accepting it. Even before it had become canonical many simply made use of it as a book of mediocre authority, yet very edifying. On the other hand, the contradictions that it offered to the synoptic Gospels, which were much more widely circulated, prevented its being taken into account when setting forth the contexture of the life of Jesus, such as it was imagined to be.

In this mode some explain away the whimsical contradictions presented in the writings of Justin and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, in which are to be found traces of our Gospel, but which certainly are not to be placed upon the same footing as the synoptics. Hence also those species of allusions, which are not faithful quotations, but were made from it about the year 180. Hence, finally, this singularity, that the fourth Gospel appeared to emerge slowly from the Church of Asia in the second century, was first adopted by the Gnostics, but only obtained in the orthodox Church very limited credence, as can be seen from the controversy on the Passover, then it was universally recognised. I am sometimes led to believe that it was the fourth Gospel of which Papias was thinking when he opposed to the exact information in regard to the life of Jesus the long discourses and the singular precepts which others have attributed to him. Papias and the old Jadæo-Christian party came to esteem such novelties as very reprehensible. This could not have been the only instance that a book which was at first heretical would have forced the gates of the orthodox Church and become one of its rules of faith.

There is one thing, at least, which I regard as very probable, and that is, that the book was written before the year 100; that is to say, at a time when the synoptics had not yet a complete canonicity. After this date it is impossible any longer to conceive that the author could force himself to go beyond the limits of the "Apostolic Memoirs." To Justin, and apparently to Papias, the synoptic cadre constitutes the true and only plan of the life of Jesus. An impostor who wrote about the year 120 to 130 a fantastic gospel contented himself with treating in his own way the received version, as had been done in the apocryphal Gospels, and did not reverse from top to bottom what was regarded as the essential lines of the life of Jesus. This is so true that, from the second half of the second century, these contradictions became a serious difficulty in the hands of the aloges, and obliged the defenders of the fourth Gospel to invent the most embarrassing solutions. There is nothing to prove that the author of the fourth Gospel had, when writing, any of the synoptic Gospels under his eyes. The striking similarities of his narrative to the other three Gospels as touching the Passion leads one to suppose that there was then for the Passion as well as for the Last Supper an almost fixed account, which people knew by heart.

It is impossible at this distance of time to comprehend all these singular problems, and we should undoubtedly encounter many surprises if it were given to us to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which appeared frequently to take pleasure in pursuing obscure paths. But the latter is a capital test. Every person who sets himself to write the life of Jesus without having a decided opinion upon the relative value of the Gospels, who allows himself to be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, would, in many instances, be induced to prefer the narrative of the fourth Gospel to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained only by John; several details of the Passion, which are unintelligible in the synoptics, assume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the other hand, I can defy anybody to compose a life of Jesus that is understandable, which takes into account the discourses that the alleged John imputes to Jesus. This fashion of his of incessantly preaching himself up and of exhibiting himself, this perpetual argumentation, this studied stage-effect, these long reasonings attached to each miracle, these lifeless and incoherent discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal, could not be endured by a man of taste alongside of the delightful phraseology which, according to the synoptics, constituted the soul of the teaching of Jesus. There are here evidently fictitious fragments, which represent to us the sermons of Jesus in the same way as the dialogues of Plato set forth the conversations of Socrates. They resemble the variations of a musician improvising on his own account upon a given theme. The theme in question may have existed previously; but in the execution the artist gives his fancy free scope. We perceive the factitious progressions, the rhetoric, the verisimilitude. Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus is nowhere to be found in the fragments of which we speak. The expression of "Kingdom of God," which was so common with the master, does not appear even once. But, contrariwise, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel offers the most complete analogy to that of parts of the narrative of the same Gospel and to that of the author of the epistles called John. We see that the author of the fourth Gospel, in writing these discourses, did not give his recollections, but the somewhat monotonous workings of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is displayed in them, language characterised by the frequent employment of the words "world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," and which resembles much less that of the synoptics than that of the book of the sages--Philo and the Valentinians. If Jesus had ever spoken in that style, which is neither Hebraic nor Jewish, how does it come that, amongst the auditors, only a single one of the latter has kept the secret?

For the rest, literary history offers one example which presents a certain analogy to the historic phenomenon we have just been describing, and which serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, did not write, is known to us through two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato; the former corresponding with the synoptics by reason of his compilation, at once consecutive, transparent and impersonal; the latter, by reason of his robust individuality, recalling the author of the fourth Gospel. In order to describe the Socratic teaching must we follow the "Dialogues" of Plato, or the "Discourses" of Xenophon? In such a case doubt is not possible; everyone sticks to the "Discourses" and not to the "Dialogues." Does Plato nevertheless teach us nothing concerning Socrates? In writing the biography of the latter, would it be good criticism to neglect the dialogues? Who would dare to maintain this?

Without pronouncing upon the question, it is material to know as to what hand indited the fourth Gospel; even if we were persuaded it was not that of the son of Zebedee, we can at least admit that this work possesses some title to be called "the Gospel according to John." The historical sketch of the fourth Gospel is, in my opinion, the life of Jesus, such as it was known to the immediate circle of John. It is also my belief that this school was better acquainted with the different exterior circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose recollections go to make up the synoptic Gospels. Notably, in regard to the sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, it was in possession of facts that the other Gospels had not. Presbyteros Joannes, who is probably not a different person from the Apostle John, regarded, it is said, the narrative of Mark as incomplete and confused; he even had a theory which explained the omissions of the latter. Certain passages in Luke, which are a kind of echo of the Johannine traditions, prove, moreover, that the traditions preserved by the fourth Gospel were not to the rest of the Christian family something which was entirely unknown.

These explanations will suffice, I think, to show the motives which in the course of my narrative have determined me to give the preference to this or that one of the four guides which we have for the life of Jesus. On the whole, I admit the four canonical Gospels to be important documents. All four ascend to the century which succeeded the death of Jesus; but their historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently merits unlimited confidence in respect of the discourses; the latter are the Logia, the very notes which have been extracted from a clear and lively memory of the teaching of Jesus. A species of éclat at once mild and terrible, a divine force, if I may so speak, underlines these words, detaches them from the context, and to the critic renders them easily distinguishable. The person who undertakes the task of carving out of evangelical history a consecutive narrative possesses, in this regard, an excellent touchstone. The actual words of Jesus, so to speak, reveal themselves; as soon as we touch them in this chaos of traditions of unequal authority, we feel them vibrate; they translate themselves spontaneously and fit into the narrative naturally, where they constitute an unsurpassable relief.

The narrative parts which are grouped in the first Gospel around this primitive nucleus do not possess the same authority. In them are to be found many silly enough legends, which proceeded from the piety of the second Christian generation. The accounts which Matthew gives in common with Mark present faults of transcription which prove a mediocre acquaintance with Palestine. Many of the episodes are repeated twice, several persons are duplicated, which shows that different sources have been utilised and largely amalgamated. The Gospel of Mark is much more firm, more precise, and less weighted with circumstances which have been added. Of the three synoptics it is the one which has remained the most primitive, the most original, the Gospel to which has been annexed the fewest posterior elements. Material details are given in Mark with a clearness which we should seek in vain for in the other evangelists. He delights to report certain sayings of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean. His observations are most minute, and come, no doubt, from an eyewitness. There is nothing to disprove that this eyewitness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and who had preserved a lively image of him, was the Apostle Peter himself, as is maintained by Papias.

As for the work of Luke, its historic value is sensibly more feeble. It is a document at second hand. Its manner of narration is more matured. The sayings of Jesus are there more reflective, more sententious. Some sentences are carried to excess and are false. Writing outside Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem, the author indicates the places with less exactness than the two other synoptics; he is too fond of representing the temple as an oratory, where people go to do their devotions; he does not speak of the Herodians; he modifies details in order to bring the different narratives into closer agreement; he softens down passages which had become embarrassing because of the more exalted idea which people around him had attained to in regard to the divinity of Jesus; he exaggerates the marvellous; he commits errors of geography and of topography; he omits the Hebraic glosses; he appears to know little of Hebrew; he does not quote a word of Jesus in that language; he calls all the localities by their Greek names; he corrects at times in a clumsy manner the sayings of Jesus. We perceive in the author a compiler, a man who has not seen directly the witnesses, who labours at the texts, and permits himself to do them great violence in order to make them agree. Luke had probably under his eyes the original narrative of Mark and the Logia of Matthew. But he treats them with great freedom; at times he runs two anecdotes or two parables together to make one; sometimes he divides one in order to make two. He interprets the documents according to his own mind; he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm this of his tastes and of his personal tendencies: he is a very exact devotee; he holds that Jesus has accomplished all the Jewish rites; he is a passionate democrat and Ebionite; that is to say, much opposed to property, and is persuaded that the poor will soon have their revenge; he is specially partial to the anecdotes which put into relief the conversion of sinners and the exaltation of the humble; he frequently modifies the ancient traditions so as to give them this acceptation. In his first pages he includes the legends touching the infancy of Jesus, related with the long amplifications, the canticles and the conventional proceedings which constitute the essential feature of the apocryphal Gospels. Finally, in the account of the last hours of Jesus, he introduces some circumstances which are full of a tender sentiment, as well as certain sayings of Jesus of rare beauty, which are not to be found in the more authentic narratives, and in which can be detected the hand of the legendary. Luke has probably borrowed them from a more recent collection, in which it is seen his chief aim was to excite sentiments of piety.

A great reserve was naturally bespoken in regard to a document of this nature. It would have been as little scientific to neglect it as to employ it without discernment. Luke had under his eyes originals which we no longer have. He is less an evangelist than a biographer of Jesus, a "harmonist," a reviser, after the manner of Marcion and Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist who, independently of the information he has extracted from more ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a happiness of treatment, a uniformity of inspiration, and a clearness that the other two synoptic do not possess. His Gospel is the one the reading of which possesses most charm: for, not to mention the incomparable beauty of its common basis, he combines a degree of art and of skill in composition which singularly enhances the effect of the picture, without seriously marring its truthfulness.

To sum up, we are warranted in saying that the synoptic compilation has passed through three stages: first, the original documentary stage (logia of Matthew, lechthenta e prachthenta of Mark), primary compilations no longer in existence; second, the simple amalgamation stage, in which the original documents were thrown together without any regard to literary form, and without any personal traits on the part of the authors becoming manifest (the present Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the combination stage, that of careful composition and reflection, in which we are conscious of an effort made to reconcile the different versions (the Gospel of Luke, the Gospels of Marcion, Tatian, &c.). The Gospel of John, as we have above said, is a composition of another order and altogether distinct.

It will be observed that I have not made any use of apocryphal Gospels. In no sense ought these compositions to be placed on the same footing as the canonical Gospels. They are tiresome and puerile amplifications, having almost entirely the canonicals for a basis, and adding almost nothing to them of any particular value. Contrariwise, I have been most careful in collecting the shreds which have been preserved by the Fathers of the Church, by the ancient Gospels which formerly existed simultaneously with the canonicals, but which are now lost, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospels attributed to Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two possess a peculiar importance, inasmuch as they were indited in Aramean like the Logia of Matthew; as they appear to have formed a version of the Gospel attributed to that apostle, and as they were the Gospel of Ebionim, that is to say, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who preserved the use of the Syro-Chaldean tongue, and appear to have continued, to some extent, in the footsteps of Jesus. But it most be owned that, in the condition they have come down to us, these Gospels are inferior, for the purposes of criticism, to the edition of the Gospel of Matthew which we possess.

It will now, I presume, be understood what sort of historic value I put upon the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius, nor fictitious legends, after the manner of Philostratus; they are legendary biographies. I place them at once alongside of the legends of the saints, the lives of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other compositions of the same sort, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in divers degrees. Inexactitude, a trait common to all popular compositions, makes itself particularly felt in them. Let us suppose that fifteen or twenty years ago three or four old soldiers of the Empire had individually set themselves to write a life of Napoleon from recollections of him. It is clear that their narratives would present numerous errors, great discordances. One of them would place Wagram before Marengo; another would boldly state that Napoleon ousted the government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit expeditions of the highest importance. But one thing, possessing a great degree of truthfulness, would certainly result from these simple narratives--that is, the character of the hero, the impression he made around him. In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more than a solemn and official history. The same can also be said of the Gospels. Bent solely on bringing out strongly the excellency of the master, his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists manifest entire indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus. The contradictions in respect of time, place, and persons were regarded as insignificant; for just as the greater the degree of inspiration that is attributed to the words of Jesus, so the less was granted to the compilers themselves. The latter looked upon themselves as simple scribes, and cared only for one thing--to omit nothing they knew. [2]

Without doubt some certain preconceived ideas must have been associated with such recollections. Several narratives, especially in Luke, are invented in order to bring out more vividly certain traits of the personality of Jesus. This personality itself underwent alteration each day. Jesus would be a unique phenomenon in history if, with the part which he played, he had not soon become imbued with it. The legend respecting Alexander was concocted before the generation of his companions in arms was extinct; that respecting St. Francis d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid work of transformation went on in the same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the absolute traits of an ideal legend. Death makes perfect the most perfect man; it renders him faultless to those who have loved him. At the same time, the wish to paint the Master created likewise the desire to explain him. 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." Sometimes they reasoned inversely: "Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah." [3] Explanations which are too simple are always false when it is a question of analysing the tissues of those profound creations of popular sentiment which baffle all science by their fulness and infinite variety.

It is scarcely necessary to say that with such documents, in order to present only what is incontestable, we must confine ourselves to general lines. In almost all ancient histories, even in those which are much less legendary than these, details give rise to infinite doubts. When we have two accounts of the some fact, it is extremely rare that the two accounts are in accord. Is not this a reason, when we are confronted with but one perplexity, for falling into many? We may say that amongst the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings reported by the historians, there is not one strictly accurate. Were there stenographers to take down these fleeting words? Was there an annalist always present to note the gestures, the conduct, the sentiments, of the actors? Let any one essay to attain to the truth as to the manner in which such or such a contemporary fact took place; he will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by two eyewitnesses differ essentially. Must we, hence, reject all the colouring of the narratives, and confine ourselves to recording the bare facts only? That would be to suppress history. Certainly I think, however, that if we except certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the discourses reported by Matthew are textual; there is hardly one of our stenographic reports which is so. I willingly admit that that admirable account of the Passion embraces a multitude of trifling inaccuracies. Would it, however, be writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which exhibit to us in such a vivid manner the nature of his discourses, and to limit ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, "that he was put to death by the order of Pilate" at the instigation of the priests"? That would be, in my opinion, a kind of inexactitude worse than that to which one exposes himself when admitting the details supplied by the texts. These details are not true to the letter, but they are rendered true by a superior truth; they are more true than the naked truth, in the sense that they are truths rendered expressive and articulate and raised to the height of an idea.

I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in narratives which are in great part legendary to take note of the observation I have just made. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were limited to that which is materially certain? Even partly erroneous traditions contain a portion of truth which history may not pass over. No one has reproached M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life of Mahomet, set much store by the hadith or oral traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having imputed to his hero words which are only known through this source. The traditions respecting Mahomet, nevertheless, do not have a superior historical character to the discourses and narratives which compose the Gospels. They were written between the year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel, the maxims imputed to them by the Mishna and the Gemara, although these great compilations were written many centuries after the time of the doctors just mentioned.

Contrariwise, those who believe that history ought to consist of a reproduction without comments of the documents which have come down to us, I beg them to take notice that such a course is not allowable. The four principal documents are in flagrant contradiction with one another; Josephus, moreover, sometimes rectifies them. It is necessary to make a choice. To allege that an event cannot take place in two ways at once, or in an absurd manner, is not to impose à priori philosophy upon history. Because he possesses several different versions of the same fact, or because credulity has mixed with all these versions fabulous circumstances, the historian most not conclude that the fact is not a fact; but he ought, in such a case, to be very cautious,--to examine the texts, and to proceed by induction. There is one class of narratives especially, apropos of which this principle must necessarily be applied--narratives of the supernatural. To seek to explain these narratives, or to transform them into legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory; it is to begin with the observation of the very facts themselves. None of the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions. Observation, which has not once been falsified, teaches us that miracles never take place save in times and countries in which they are believed, and in presence of persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever took place in presence of an assembly of men capable of testing the miraculous character of the event. Neither common people nor men of the world are equal to the latter. It requires great precautions and long habit of scientific research. In our own days, have we not seen the great majority of people become dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile illusions! Marvellous facts, attested by the populations of small towns, have, thanks to closer investigation, been condemned. [4] Since it is proved that no contemporary miracle will bear discussion, is it not probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion, if It were possible to criticise them in detail?

It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the name of unbroken experience, that we banish the miracle from history. We do not say, "The miracle is impossible." We say, "So far, a miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgist were to come forward with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed; if he were to announce that he was able, say, to raise the dead; what would be done? A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. That commission would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was indeed real, would designate the room in which the experiment should be made, would arrange a whole series of precautions, so as to leave no chance of doubt. If, under such conditions, resuscitation were effected, a probability, almost equal to certainty, would be established. As, however, it ought always to be possible to repeat an experiment--to do over again that which has been done once--and as, in the case of miracle, there can be no question of facility or difficulty, the thaumaturgist would be invited to reproduce his marvellous feat under different circumstances, upon other corpses, in another place. If the miracle was repeated each time, two things would be proved: first, that supernatural facts take place in the world; second, that the power of producing them belongs, or is delegated to, certain individuals. But who does not perceive that a miracle never took place under these conditions? that hitherto the thaumaturgist has always chosen the subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, chosen the public; that, moreover, it is the people themselves who most often, in consequence of the invincible desire to see something divine in great events and great men, create afterwards the marvellous legends? Until the order of things changes, we maintain it, then, as a principle of historical criticism, that a supernatural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always implies credulity or imposture, that it is the duty of the historian to explain it, and search out what share of truth, or of error, it may conceal.

Such are the rules which have been adhered to in the composition of this narrative. In the reading of the texts, I have been able to combine with it an important source of information--the viewing of the places where the events occurred. The scientific mission, having for its object the exploration of ancient Phoenicia, which I directed in 1860 and 1861, [5] led me to reside on the frontiers of Galilee, and to travel thither frequently. I have traversed, in every sense of the term, the country of the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely any important locality in the history of Jesus has escaped me. All this history, which seems at a distance to float in the clouds of an unreal world, took thus a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The striking agreement of the texts and the places, the marvellous harmony of the evangelical idea, and of the country which served it as a framework, were to me a revelation. Before my eyes I had a fifth Gospel, disfigured though still legible, and from that time, in the narratives of Matthew and Mark, I saw instead of an abstract being, who could be said never to have existed, an admirable human figure living and moving. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir, in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the picture as it had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history. When a cruel affliction came to hasten my departure, I had only a few pages to write. In this manner the book was almost entirely composed near the very places where Jesus was born and lived. Since my return, I have laboured unceasingly to complete and arrange in detail the rough sketch which I had hastily written in a Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.

Many will perhaps regret the biographical form which my work has thus taken. When, for the first time, I conceived the idea of writing a history of the origins of Christianity, my intention was, in fact, to produce a history of doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a place. Jesus was scarcely to be named; I was especially bent on showing how the ideas which, under cover of his name, were produced, took root and covered the world. But I have since learned that history is not a simple game of abstractions; that men are more important than doctrines. It was not a certain theory in regard to justification and redemption which caused the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism, Judaism, might have been able to combine under all forms; the doctrines of the Resurrection and of the Word might have gone on developing for ages without producing that grand, unique, and fruitful fact, which is called Christianity. That fact is the work of Jesus, of St. Paul, and of the apostles. To write the history of Jesus, of St. Paul, and of the apostles, is to write the history of the origins of Christianity. The anterior movements do not belong to our subject except as serving to explain the characters If these extraordinary men, who, naturally, could not be severed from that which preceded them.

In such an effort, to make the great souls of the past live again, some degree of divination and of conjecture must be permitted. A great life is an organic whole which cannot be exhibited by the mere agglomeration of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace the whole, and to make it a perfect unity. The artist method in such a subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would discover how to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is to form a living system of which all the parts are mutually dependent and connected. In histories of this kind, the great indication that we hold to the truth is to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a fashion that they shall constitute a logical and probable narrative, in which nothing shall be out of tune. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic products, of the action of minute particles, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify; it is the soul itself of history; what most be sought after is not the petty certainty of minutiæ, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the truthfulness of the colouring. Each detail which departs from the rules of classic narration ought to warn us to be on our guard; for the fact which requires to be related has been confined to the necessities of things, natural and harmonious. If we do not succeed in rendering it such by our narrative, it is only because we have not attained to seeing it aright. Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced an ensemble at once dry, jarring artificial; what must we conclude? Only one thing: the texts lack an appreciative interpretation; we must inquire into them calmly until they can be made to approximate and furnish a whole in which all the parts are happily blended. Should we then be sure of having feature for feature of the Greek statue? No; but we should not, at least, have the caricature of it; we should have the general spirit of the work--one of the forms in which it might have existed.

This sentiment of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our guide in the general arrangement of the narrative. The reading of the Gospels would be sufficient to prove that the authors, although conceiving a very true idea of the Life of Jesus, have not been guided by very rigorous chronological data; Papias, moreover, expressly teaches this, and bases his opinion upon evidence which seems to emanate from the Apostle John himself. The expressions, "At this time . . . after that . . . then . . . and it came to pass . . ." &c., are the simple transitions designed to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition gives it, would no more be writing the history of Jesus than it would be writing the history of a celebrated man to give pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner possible, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has discovered its secret to ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been hit upon in such a way as to leave little room for doubt Such a re-arrangement is much more difficult in the Gospel, owing to the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Nevertheless, the attempt to find a thread which shall serve as a guide through this labyrinth, ought not to be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in premising that a religious founder commences by attaching himself to the moral aphorisms which are already in circulation, and to the practices which are in vogue; nor, as he advances and gets full possession of his idea, that he delights in a kind of calm and poetical eloquence, remote from all controversy, sweet and free as pure feeling; nor, as he gradually warms, that he is animated by opposition, and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are the periods which are plainly distinguishable in the Koran. The order which, with extremely fine tact, is adopted by the synoptic, supposes an analogous progress. If we read Matthew attentively, we shall find, in the arrangement of the discourses, a gradation greatly analogous to that just indicated. We may observe also the studied turns of expression which are made use of when it is desired to show the progress of the ideas of Jesus. The reader may, if he prefers, see in the divisions adopted in this respect, only the breaks indispensable for the methodical exposition of a profound and complicated thought.

If love for a subject can assist in the understanding of it, it will also, I hope, be recognised that I have not been wanting in this condition. To construct the history of a religion, it is necessary first to have believed it (without this, we should not be able to understand why it has charmed and satisfied the human conscience); in the second place, to believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is incompatible with sincere history. But love exists apart from faith. In order not to attach one's self to any of the forms which captivate the adoration of men, one need not renounce the appreciation of that which they contain of good and of beautiful. No transitory apparition exhausts the Divinity; God was revealed before Jesus--God will reveal Himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the more Divine, because they are grander and more spontaneous, the manifestations of God which are hidden in the depths of the human conscience are all of the same order. Jesus cannot then belong solely to those who call themselves his disciples. He is the common honour of him who carries a human heart. His glory does not consist in being banished from history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is incomprehensible without him. __________________________________________________________________

[1] See Volume VIII. of this series, which contains the author's notes of the whole seven volumes of the series, together with a complete index.--Ed.

[2] See the passage from Papias, before cited.
[3] See, for example, John xix. 23, 24.

[4] See the Gazette des Tribunaux, 10th Sept, and 11th Nov., 1851; 28th May, 1857.

[5] The work which will contain the results of this mission is in the press. __________________________________________________________________

THE LIFE OF JESUS.