The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (The Translations (Complete Works of George Eliot, by George Eliot)), by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss; by David Friedrich Strauss, George Eliot (Translator).

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Complete Works of George Eliot,

by George Eliot.

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The Translations

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The Life of Jesus Critically Examined

by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss

by David Friedrich Strauss, George Eliot (Translator).

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It's one of those instances when a very negative review reassures one that the book might not be so bad after all, and one begins to read; within a paragraph one begins to suspect it was worth the effort, and notices that the comment by a critic, quoted in a life of George Eliot, about the translation being excellent quality in every way, must be true - although when one read that, one feared coming across the infamous, over two page long, German sentences that change the whole meaning completely as one turns the page, due to a split verb.

It's not that everything is perfect - far from it. For example, he begins with what seems like an intelligent, erudite discourse on religion - he specifically uses that word, not the one that would identity his own - but as one reads, it's obvious that he's thinking of one he's familiar with, namely, his own, and those close to it, all within the perimeter of abrahmic faiths.

If and when he does refer specifically to one outside this, which he does often enough though not at the very outset, there are words used that in Western culture considered pejorative, such as heathen, pagan, pantheistic, although they are not literally so (- similarly the word grotesque, literally referring to grottoes where Europe worship of mother Goddesses were conducted, isn't pejorative literally, but has been reduced to that via church attitude and domination).

It becomes obvious, immediately at the beginning, that the author knows little about religions other than his own. For example, the author says, in the introduction -

" ... Otherwise, we might very likely find the miracles in the life of Moses, Elias, or Jesus, the Theophany and Angelophany of the Old and New Testament, just as incredible as the fables of Jupiter, Hercules, or Bacchus: presuppose the divinity or divine descent of these individuals, and their actions and fate become as credible as those of the biblical personages with the like presupposition. Yet not quite so, it may be returned. Vishnu appearing in his three first avatars as a fish, a tortoise, and a boar; Saturn devouring his children; Jupiter turning himself into a bull, a swan, etc.—these are incredibilities of quite another kind from Jehovah appearing to Abraham in a human form under the terebinth tree, or to Moses in the burning bush. ... "

On the contrary, the burning bush is not impressive as indication of a God, although not incredible enough to declare it impossible; and the peculiar insistence on virgin birth by Rome - one can quite ordinarily hear a nun declaring that "she was special , not like other women" with great scorn at all other women, not realising how fisgusting she sounds for this disdain against all women contained in the implication that one woman hapoened to be a virgin mother unlike others, and implying that all others are thereby low; this disdain isnt extended to males, one notices!

But, above all, hasn't science - specifically, evolution - proved India right, even though those that see its superiority over biblical story dont necessarily have to "have faith" in any God of India (nobody asked anyone to have such a faith!), but, after all, if there is life and existence and evolution, while one is quite free to think there's only material as dead as mud coming suddenly alive, if one chooses to wonder what is behind - as one looks behind atoms and finds quarks - it's not important that the name given in India is Vishnu, but it's impressive that India knew of evolution.

And wouldn't you think that someone so aware of science as this author, and the translator George Eliot, would realise, being aware of evolution - and not dead set against it all as the bibke belt is - that India's treasure of knowledge, despite the racist label of mythology by West, has far more a vast core of truth that the history of West Asia worshipped by abrahmic faiths?

" ... This extravagant love of the marvellous is the character of the heathen mythology. A similar accusation might indeed be brought against many parts of the Bible, such as the tales of Balaam, Joshua, and Samson; but still it is here less glaring, and does not form as in the Indian religion and in certain parts of the Grecian, the prevailing character. What however does this prove? Only that the biblical history might be true, sooner than the Indian or Grecian fables; not in the least that on this account it must be true, and can contain nothing fictitious."

Was he kidding? Or did his instinct of self preservation make him forget, temporarily, the insistence by church on virgin conception, without a human male parent, of his object of worship?

And if this was to be explained by science, it can't be assumed a never before or after occurrence, destroying the very basis of worship - since, surely, it can't be without such imposition of belief at pain of a burning at stake, that one could rationally conclude a unique supreme divinity due to a few miracles?

Why, the so called rope trick of India, so disdained by west - chiefly England - and used to brand India as something low, sounds far more miraculous than turning water into wine, even if one believes that latter - while the reports of having seen the rope trick are by the earlier English in India who reported having eye witnessed the events, and not uniquely either.

And yet, there was no report of those performing having been worshipped by anyone in India. Who's the more gullible here?

"“But the subjects of the heathen mythology are for the most part such, as to convince us beforehand that they are mere inventions: those of the Bible such as at once to establish their own reality. A Brahma, an Ormusd, a Jupiter, without doubt never existed; but there still is a God, a Christ, and there have been an Adam, a Noah, an Abraham, a Moses.” ... "

Again, a combination of racism, hubris, and ignorance. That it matches, in proportion today, the same qualities in flatearthers, or bible belt deniers of evolution, shouldn't be surprising - after all, bible belt may be related more to confederate South than to the states of German migration, but the two aren't isolated, nor were in eighteenth century or any other time ssuch qualities restricted to Germany.

Incidentally there are other mistakes in the book, but it's difficult to correct Ormusd - is it as simple as Ormud? Autocorrect allows the latter, but it's not a foolproof guide.

" ... Whether an Adam or a Noah, however, were such as they are represented, has already been doubted, and may still be doubted. Just so, on the other side, there may have been something historical about Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, and other heroes of Grecian story. Here, again, we come to the decision that the biblical history might be true sooner than the heathen mythology, but is not necessarily so. ... "

Good thinking. But then retraction -

" ... This decision however, together with the two distinctions already made, brings us to an important observation. How do the Grecian divinities approve themselves immediately to us as non-existing beings, if not because things are ascribed to them which we cannot reconcile with our idea of the divine? whilst the God of the Bible is a reality to us just in so far as he corresponds with the idea we have formed of him in our own minds. Besides the contradiction to our notion of the divine involved in the plurality of heathen gods, and the intimate description of their motives and actions, we are at once revolted to find that the gods themselves have a history; that they are born, grow up, marry, have children, work out their purposes, suffer difficulties and weariness, conquer and are conquered. It is irreconcileable with our idea of the Absolute to suppose it subjected to time and change, to [77]opposition and suffering; and therefore where we meet with a narrative in which these are attributed to a divine being, by this test we recognize it as unhistorical or mythical."

How, he asks repeatedly, and presumes reasonability is the answer; nothing of the sort, which is obvious to anyone not brought up quivering in fright before church authority. Not reasonability of one set of stories against another, its quite contrary, in fact. It's all due to a very limited theory and a fable covering up a real story, not only fed for millennia by church, but imposed fiercely, at pain of being burnt at stake of those not cowering under it, that's how.

" ... It is obvious to every one, that there is something quite different in the Old Testament declarations, that God made an alliance with Noah, and Abraham, led his people out of Egypt, gave them laws, brought them into the promised land, raised up for them judges, kings, and prophets, and punished them at last for their disobedience by exile;—from the tales concerning Jupiter, that he was born of Rhea in Crete, and hidden from his father Saturn in a cave; that afterwards he made war upon his father, freed the Uranides, and with their help and that of the lightning with which they furnished him, overcame the rebellious Titans, and at last divided the world amongst his brothers and children. ... "

That latter part sounds very like stories fashioned after astronomical observations, even though telescopes hadn't been yet invented and so satellites of planets (other than earth, but then it was the Moon, not earth, considered a planet then) were unknown, so the children part sounds invented too; yet, when when occupation of a celestial body occurs, so does that of its satellites, or most of them, at least; so it'd be interesting if they really did know about the satellites.

" ... The essential difference between the two representations is, that in the latter, the Deity himself is the subject of progression, becomes another being at the end of the process from what he was at the beginning, something being effected in himself and for his own sake: whilst in the former, change takes place only on the side of the world; God remains fixed in his own identity as the I AM, and the temporal is only a superficial reflection cast back upon his acting energy by that course of mundane events which he both originated and guides. ... "

That difference, Strauss forgets, goes with another - an assumption of the said Deity being, not only supreme, but unique, and moreover, there being nothing else; a parallel would be, for example, the whole of earth a tropical garden with the exception of a single point, say the North pole, as per the former view; while the latter has at least a few gradations along with those of earth latitudes, if not all, and other differences of topography.

And yet, that assumption of exclusion and uniqueness is just that - an assumption, not even from conception thereof but in fact from choice. Those that so proclaimed this exclusive unique one to be the only one did in fact know of other Gods, and their names as well, of not only greek, Roman and Egyptian pantheons but more - there were not only Jupiter and Ra, Apollo and Diana, but Bacchus and Moloch and many more; of which, suddenly, one was picked out - Jehovah - and proclimed not merely supreme, not merely unique, but wiping out all others as non existent, and this was imposed so strongly that inquisition is merely a reasonably seeming logical result, pretty much like holocaust was the logical result of the antisemitism taught by church for centuries.

" ... In the heathen mythology the gods have a history: in the Old Testament, God himself has none, but only his people: and if the proper meaning of mythology be the history of gods, then the Hebrew religion has no mythology."

Or perhaps there was history, but it was suppressed, after Jehovah was selected to be all-in-all, and others not only discarded but prohibited?

Here's an amusing fact - the word Jehovah isn't that far a sound from Ava, and the difference being vowels, which aren't written in Hebrew or scripts of its derivative languages, perhaps it was the primeval Mother, Eve, who was elevated to the ultimate status?

After all, fear of God (unknown in India of Indian origin) is a concept that belongs to West including West Asia (and hence only known to those of India that carry on the cultures of invaders, via heritage of ancestry or conversion), and the very word "hauwwa" in North India signifies something feared unrealistically; but "awwaa" in South India literally means mother, and neither word is of origin in any Indian language, but are obviously both from the same source and are in fact related to Eve; the different connotations signifying the differences of how the foreign faith entered the region. In North it was brutality of invasions, massacres and conversions at point of swords; in South it was traders and migrants, refugees even, including the grandsons of the prophet (whom refuge was given by king in Gujarat, who defended them at cost of his own life, before the mercenary bin kasim succeeded in his purpose; Gujarat isn't technically counted as South, but s closer in many ways to South culturally).

It would be amusing if the word Jehovah were in fact a transformation or derivative of Eve, amusing because abrahmic cultures and faiths are so highly misogynistic.

" ... Thus according to the above accepted notion of the mythus, the New Testament has more of a mythical character than the Old. ... "

There is more to the mouth character thereof - it wasn't just that such a messiah has been and is still expected in Judaism, with some characteristics clearly predicted, but also that the story of Jesus as told by church is very akin in various parts to several different, much older, stories from various parts, near or further. (When pointed out, church is quoted to have said that devil in past borrows from god of future and plants the story!)

"It is certainly difficult to conceive, how narratives which thus speak of imagination as reality can have been formed without intentional deceit, and believed without unexampled credulity; ... "

An atheist labelling it as imagination - not a particular religion and it's story, nor all others except one, but all of them, and very concept of anything not subject to physical senses or reason - reminds one of the story -(wish one could recall or source the title and authir) of the man who stumbled into a self sufficient valley in course of his travels where not only everyone else except him were blind, but had no concept of sight; and after honouring him initially, were seriously alarmed at his "delusion" as they thought it, until a decision was taken to operate on him; the story ends in a fortunate escape he managed.

But really, is there a difference of more than one step, or two different sides of the same coin, between atheism and monotheism? No. For both merely holds not only one's own assertion true and supreme, but all other possibilities beneath contempt. And yet neither can prove their assertion in any possible scientific or logical manner.

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"If, in addition to this, we accept the statement of Luke (i. 26 and iii. 23), that Jesus, being only half a year younger than John, was about in his thirtieth year at his appearance, we must suppose that John was in his twentieth year when he began his ministry. ... "

"The result then of our critique on the chronological data Luke iii. 1, 2, comp. 23 and i. 26, is this: if Jesus, as Luke seems to understand, appeared in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, the appearance of John occurred, not in the same year, but earlier; and if Jesus was in his thirtieth year when he began his ministry, the Baptist, so much his predecessor, could hardly be but six months his senior."

But the age gap confirmed as a consequence of the visit by Mary to Elizabeth scene, amounts to the years of disciplehood of Jesus to John, doesn't It?

The factor here is the gap of years between his disciplehood to John and his own beginning of rabbinic position, and those are the years that he travelled to India, it has been conjectured - apart from returning there after his resurrection - where he learned yoga, whereby the resurrection; whether this whole conjecture arose during twentieth century due to West beginning to know about yoga, or whether it was also because of the village in Kashmir that claims he lived his life out there and they have his grave, is anybody's guess; but it's also that his name and epithet are clearly deformations, respectively, of Isha and Krishna; and if he did learn yoga in India for years, that explains most of the rest, especially the resurrection.

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"The connection and intercourse of the two families, as described by Luke, would render it impossible for John not to be early informed how solemnly Jesus had been announced as the Messiah, before and at his birth; he could not therefore say at a later period that, prior to the sign from heaven, he had not known, but only that he had not believed, the story of former wonders, one of which relates to himself.30 It being thus unavoidable to acknowledge that by the above declaration in the fourth Gospel, the Baptist is excluded, not only from a knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, but also from a personal acquaintance with him; it has been attempted to reconcile the first chapter of Luke with this ignorance, by appealing to the distance of residence between the two families, as a preventive to the continuance of their intercourse.31 But if the journey from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea was not too formidable for the betrothed Mary, how could it be so for the two sons when ripening to maturity?"

Not only at the outset, but increasingly, a factor that comes to fore is the paucity in church variety of monotheism.

"Let it be granted that the fourth Gospel excludes an acquaintance with the [218]Messiahship only of Jesus, and that the third presupposes an acquaintance with his person only, on the part of John; still the contradiction is not removed. For in Matthew, John, when required to baptize Jesus, addresses him as if he knew him, not generally and personally alone, but specially, in his character of Messiah. It is true that the words: I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? (iii. 14), have been interpreted, in the true spirit of harmonizing, as referring to the general superior excellence of Jesus, and not to his Messiahship.33 But the right to undertake the baptism which was to prepare the way for the Messiah’s kingdom, was not to be obtained by moral superiority in general, but was conferred by a special call, such as John himself had received, and such as could belong only to a prophet, or to the Messiah and his Forerunner (John i. 19 ff.). If then John attributed to Jesus authority to baptize, he must have regarded him not merely as an excellent man, but as indubitably a prophet, nay, since he held him worthy to baptize himself, as his own superior: that is, since John conceived himself to be the Messiah’s Forerunner, no other than the Messiah himself. Add to this, that Matthew had just cited a discourse of the Baptist, in which he ascribes to the coming Messiah a baptism more powerful than his own; how then can we understand his subsequent language towards Jesus otherwise than thus: “Of what use is my water baptism to thee, O Messiah? Far more do I need thy baptism of the Spirit!”"

Paucity of great souls, obviously. Not only all women are barred as possibly Divine, but even amongst males, there is only one at an elevated position unique above all, unlike many other religions. Judaism admits more than one great man, so does the abrahmic religion that followed that of Rome after a few centuries. It's true that Buddhism has only one, but then, as per culture of its birth, has a richer pantheon. And India, of course, has so rich a treasure, not only far from lacking in numerous male descents of Divine, but women too, and frequently, even simultaneous ones, who have been known to have possibly met.

It's not that such complexity of Divine descent is unknown to West, or unique to India; it's just that the blindness of church in firmly clouding its eyes and mind has impoverished all those under its power, whether they follow the church in faith consciously or otherwise; for the residue, of subconscious memories of inquisition, that is psychologically terrorising, leaves only a two way path, either follow church in complete obedience, or deny even existence of all but material, and attempt to fit even mind and life as chemical phenomenon, as the circle of intellectuals, surrounding George Eliot, did.

Over and over, Strauss misses the opportunity to suspect who might be responsible for the discrepancies, to the extent of major outright fabrication and lies.

"The contradiction cannot be cleared away; we must therefore, if we would not lay the burthen of intentional deception on the agents, let the narrators bear the blame; and there will be the less hindrance to our doing so, the more obvious it is how one or both of them might be led into an erroneous statement. ... "

There he missed a possibility.

" ... There is in the present case no obstacle to the reconciliation of Matthew with the fourth evangelist, farther than the words by which the Baptist seeks to deter Jesus from receiving baptism; words which, if uttered before the occurrence of anything supernatural, presuppose a knowledge of Jesus in his character of Messiah. Now the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius, places the entreaty of John that Jesus would baptize him, as a sequel to the sign from heaven;35 and this account has been recently regarded as the original one, abridged by the writer of our first Gospel, who, for the sake of effect, made the refusal and confession of the Baptist coincident with the first approach of Jesus. ... "

And now again, due chiefly to attitude towards Jewish sources, imposed painstakingly by church through centuries culminating in inquisition.

" ... But that we have not in the Gospel of the Hebrews the original form of the narrative, is sufficiently proved by its very tedious repetition of the heavenly voice and the diffuse style of the whole. ... "

Are those "tedious repetition" really different from the material approved and imposed by church, except for the successful transformation of Rome into church, and inquisition burning all free thinkers and questers of any knowledge, at stake, for centuries, after the crucifixion of one they now claim to worship, and seek to impose their power in the name of, over the world?

" ... It is rather a very traditional record, and the insertion of John’s refusal after the sign and voice from heaven, was not made with the view of avoiding a contradiction of the fourth Gospel, which cannot be supposed to have been recognized in the circle of the Ebionite Christians, but from the very motive erroneously attributed to Matthew in his alleged transposition, [219]namely, to give greater effect to the scene. ... "

There Strauss misses another opportunity, of seeing that perhaps the early Ebionite Christians - who quite likely those that accompanied Jesus on jis way bavk from, if not to and from India - were more correct than what he calls orthodox view; they are likely to have known him, just by sharing his timeline even if they did not share his journey, and gor thst reason precisely were opposed by church, after crucifixion, as method to be rid of opposition to Rome, was behind.

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"But chiefly the character and entire demeanour of the Baptist render it impossible to believe that he placed himself on that footing with Jesus, described by the fourth evangelist. How could the man of the wilderness, the stern ascetic, who fed on locusts and wild honey, and prescribed severe fasts to his disciples, the gloomy, threatening preacher of repentance, animated with the spirit of Elias—how could he form a friendship with Jesus, in every thing his opposite? He must assuredly, with his disciples, have stumbled at the liberal manners of Jesus, and have been hindered by them from recognizing him as the Messiah. Nothing is more unbending than ascetic prejudice; he who, like the Baptist, esteems it piety to fast and mortify the body, will never assign a high grade in things divine to him who disregards such asceticism. A mind with narrow views can never comprehend one whose vision takes a wider range, although the latter may know how to do justice to its inferior; hence Jesus could value and sanction John in his proper place, but the Baptist could never give the precedence to Jesus, as he is reported to have done in the fourth gospel. ... "

And this is a small indication about why the West, the abrahmic, fails to see treasure of knowledge of culture and tradition of ancient India, where much seems to exist without mutual contradiction side by side. This argument by Strauss is akin to theorizing that mars is hot and Venus is cool, and wondering how on earth both can coexist; reality of mars and Venus being quite opposite!

Why assume that ascetic is lesser, and incapable of comprehending the non ascetic?

And yet, those that hold with the orthodox church of Rome views are precisely the ones horrified at the thought that Jesus might have, after all, had the normal life of a traditional Jewish rabbi, who was not merely expected but obliged to marry and have children.

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Still, what with inquisition squashing all thought and freedom of thought, with burning of dissenting or even knowledge seeking perms at stake, it's quite impressive that so much thought and discussion did take place in that time.

This book was written, and translated into English by George Eliot, well over a century ago. Since then much more has come to light on the subject, and even more, the world has changed much more, chiefly due to advances in various sciences - from medicine to aviation to nuclear science to artificial intelligence - but also, not a small amount, due to other factors, for example collapses of European monarchies during and post WWI, dissolution of most colonial empires post WWII, and more along the line.

So reading this is chiefly academic, unless either one is young, or brought up in an environment kept out of all advances of past two centuries with a religion demanding faith.

One might read it for an interest in the subject, or in the views and understanding thereof as it changed during the era when it was written- or, as in my case, because one had been reading through a complete collection of works of George Eliot.

In latter case, unless it was a professional review to be written and one had read the original and was able to appreciate the quality of her translation, or one was interested in what the authir said here on the subject, there is little reason to go through the whole tome. The extensive introduction gives a good idea of the level of the discourse.

And having had a surgery post a massive heart attack, one may wish to go on to other reading to be finished.

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CONTENTS.

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INTRODUCTION.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW IN RELATION TO THE GOSPEL HISTORIES.

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§ 1. Inevitable rise of different modes of explaining sacred histories

2. Different explanations of sacred legends among the Greeks

3. Allegorical interpretations among the Hebrews. Philo

4. Allegorical interpretations among the Christians. Origen

5. Transition to more modern times. Deists and Naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist

6. Natural mode of explanation adopted by the Rationalists. Eichhorn. Paulus

7. Moral interpretation of Kant

8. Rise of the mythical mode of interpreting the sacred history, in reference first to the Old Testament

9. The mythical mode of interpretation in reference to the New Testament

10. The notion of the mythus in its application to sacred histories not clearly apprehended by theologians

11. The application of the notion of the mythus too circumscribed

12. Opposition to the mythical view of the Gospel history

13. The possibility of the existence of mythi in the New Testament considered in reference to external evidences

14. The possibility of mythi in the New Testament considered on internal grounds

15. Definition of the evangelical mythus, and its distinctive characteristics

16. Criteria by which to distinguish the unhistorical in the Gospel narrative

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FIRST PART.

HISTORY OF THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS.

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CHAPTER I.

ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

§ 17. Account given by Luke. Immediate supernatural character of the representation

18. Natural explanation of the narrative

19. Mythical view of the narrative in its different stages

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CHAPTER II.

DAVIDICAL DESCENT OF JESUS, ACCORDING TO THE GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE.

§ 20. The two genealogies of Jesus considered separately and irrespectively of one another

21. Comparison of the two genealogies. Attempt to reconcile their contradictions

22. The genealogies unhistorical

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CHAPTER III.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS.—ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.—VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH.

§ 23. Sketch of the different canonical and apocryphal accounts

24. Disagreements of the canonical gospels in relation to the form of the annunciation

25. Import of the angel’s message. Fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah

26. Jesus begotten of the Holy Ghost. Criticism of the orthodox opinion

27. Retrospect of the genealogies

28. Natural explanation of the history of the conception

29. History of the conception of Jesus viewed as a mythus

30. Relation of Joseph to Mary. Brothers of Jesus

31. Visit of Mary to Elizabeth

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CHAPTER IV.

BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 32. The census

33. Particular circumstances of the birth of Jesus. The circumcision

34. The Magi and their star. The flight into Egypt, and the murder of the children in Bethlehem. Criticism of the supranaturalistic view

35. Attempts at a natural explanation of the history of the Magi. Transition to the mythical explanation

36. The purely mythical explanation of the narrative concerning the Magi, and of the events with which it is connected

37. Chronological relation between the visit of the Magi, together with the flight into Egypt, and the presentation in the temple recorded by Luke

38. The presentation of Jesus in the temple

39. Retrospect. Difference between Matthew and Luke as to the original residence of the parents of Jesus

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CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS.

§ 40. Jesus, when twelve years old, in the temple

41. This narrative also mythical

42. On the external life of Jesus up to the time of his public appearance

43. The intellectual development of Jesus

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SECOND PART.

HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

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CHAPTER I.

RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

§ 44. Chronological relations between John and Jesus

45. Appearance and design of the Baptist. His personal relations with Jesus

46. Was Jesus acknowledged by John as the Messiah? and in what sense?

47. Opinion of the evangelists and of Jesus concerning the Baptist, with his own judgment of himself. Result of the inquiry into the relationship between these two individuals

48. The execution of John the Baptist

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CHAPTER II.

BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

§ 49. Why did Jesus receive baptism from John?

50. The scene at the baptism of Jesus considered as supernatural, and as natural

51. An attempt at a criticism and mythical interpretation of the narratives

52. Relation of the supernatural at the baptism of Jesus to the supernatural in his conception

53. Place and time of the temptation of Jesus. Divergencies of the evangelists on this subject

54. The history of the temptation conceived in the sense of the evangelists

55. The temptation considered as a natural occurrence either internal or external; and also as a parable

56. The history of the temptation as a mythus

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CHAPTER III.

LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 57. Difference between the synoptical writers and John, as to the customary scene of the ministry of Jesus

58. The residence of Jesus at Capernaum

59. Divergencies of the Evangelists as to the chronology of the life of Jesus. Duration of his public ministry

60. The attempts at a chronological arrangement of the particular events in the public life of Jesus

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CHAPTER IV.

JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.

§ 61. Jesus, the Son of Man

62. How soon did Jesus conceive himself to be the Messiah, and find recognition as such from others?

63. Jesus, the Son of God

64. The divine mission and authority of Jesus. His pre-existence

65. The messianic plan of Jesus. Indications of a political element

66. Data for the pure spirituality of the messianic plan of Jesus. Balance

67. The relation of Jesus to the Mosaic law

68. Scope of the messianic plan of Jesus. Relation to the Gentiles

69. Relation of the messianic plan of Jesus to the Samaritans. His interview with the woman of Samaria

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CHAPTER V.

THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

§ 70. Calling of the first companions of Jesus. Difference between the first two Evangelists and the fourth

71. Peter’s draught of fishes

72. Calling of Matthew. Connexion of Jesus with the publicans

73. The twelve apostles

74. The twelve considered individually. The three or four most confidential disciples of Jesus

75. The rest of the twelve, and the seventy disciples

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CHAPTER VI.

THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.

§ 76. The Sermon on the Mount

77. Instructions to the twelve. Lamentations over the Galilean cities. Joy over the calling of the simple

78. The parables

79. Miscellaneous instructions and controversies of Jesus

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CHAPTER VII.

DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

§ 80. Conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus

81. The discourses of Jesus, John v.–xii.

82. Isolated maxims of Jesus, common to the fourth gospel and the synoptical ones

83. The modern discussions on the authenticity of the discourses in the Gospel of John. Result

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CHAPTER VIII.

EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUSIVE OF THE MIRACLES.

§ 84. General comparison of the manner of narration that distinguishes the several Evangelists

85. Isolated groups of anecdotes. Imputation of a league with Beelzebub, and demand of a sign

86. Visit of the mother and brethren of Jesus. The woman who pronounces the mother of Jesus blessed

87. Contentions for pre-eminence among the disciples. The love of Jesus for children

88. The purification of the temple

89. Narratives of the anointing of Jesus by a woman

90. The narratives of the woman taken in adultery, and of Mary and Martha

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CHAPTER IX.

MIRACLES OF JESUS.

§ 91. Jesus considered as a worker of miracles

92. The demoniacs, considered generally

93. Cases of the expulsion of demons by Jesus, considered singly

94. Cures of lepers

95. Cures of the blind

96. Cures of paralytics. Did Jesus regard diseases as punishments?

§ 97. Involuntary cures

98. Cures at a distance

99. Cures on the sabbath

100. Resuscitations of the dead

101. Anecdotes having relation to the sea

102. The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes

103. Jesus turns water into wine

104. Jesus curses a barren fig-tree

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CHAPTER X.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

§ 105. The transfiguration of Jesus considered as a miraculous external event

106. The natural explanation of the narrative in various forms

107. The history of the transfiguration considered as a mythus

108. Diverging accounts concerning the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem

109. Divergencies of the gospels, in relation to the point from which Jesus made his entrance into Jerusalem

110. More particular circumstances of the entrance. Its object and historical reality

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THIRD PART.

HISTORY OF THE PASSION, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

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CHAPTER I.

RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

§ 111. Did Jesus in precise terms predict his passion and death?

112. The predictions of Jesus concerning his death in general; their relation to the Jewish idea of the Messiah; declarations of Jesus concerning the object and effects of his death

113. Precise declarations of Jesus concerning his future resurrection

114. Figurative discourses, in which Jesus is supposed to have announced his resurrection

115. The discourses of Jesus on his second advent. Criticism of the different interpretations

116. Origin of the discourses on the second advent

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...............................................................................................

CHAPTER II. MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES.

§ 117. Development of the relation of Jesus to his enemies

118. Jesus and his betrayer

119. Different opinions concerning the character of Judas, and the motives of his treachery

120. Preparation for the passover

121. Divergent statements respecting the time of the last supper

122. Divergencies in relation to the occurrences at the last meal of Jesus

123. Announcement of the betrayal and the denial

124. The institution of the Lord’s supper

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CHAPTER III.

RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION, AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

§ 125. Agony of Jesus in the garden

126. Relation of the fourth gospel to the events in Gethsemane. The farewell discourses in John, and the scene following the announcement of the Greeks

127. Arrest of Jesus

128. Examination of Jesus before the high priest

129. The denial by Peter

130. The death of the betrayer

131. Jesus before Pilate and Herod

132. The crucifixion

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CHAPTER IV.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

§ 133. Prodigies attendant on the death of Jesus

134. The wound by a spear in the side of Jesus

135. Burial of Jesus

136. The watch at the grave of Jesus

137. First tidings of the resurrection

138. Appearances of the risen Jesus in Galilee and in Judea, including those mentioned by Paul and by apocryphal writings

139. Quality of the body and life of Jesus after the resurrection

140. Debates concerning the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus

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CHAPTER V.

THE ASCENSION.

§ 141. The last commands and promises of Jesus

142. The so-called ascension considered as a supernatural and as a natural event

143. Insufficiency of the narratives of the ascension. Mythical conception of those narratives

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CONCLUDING DISSERTATION.

THE DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 144. Necessary transition from criticism to dogma

145. The Christology of the orthodox system

146. Objections to the Christology of the church

147. The Christology of rationalism

148. The eclectic Christology of Schleiermacher

149. Christology interpreted symbolically. Kant. De Wette

150. The speculative Christology

151. Last dilemma

152. Relation of the critical and speculative theology to the church

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Review

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INTRODUCTION.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW IN RELATION TO THE GOSPEL HISTORIES.

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1. INEVITABLE RISE OF DIFFERENT MODES OF EXPLAINING SACRED HISTORIES

"Wherever a religion, resting upon written records, prolongs and extends the sphere of its dominion, accompanying its votaries through the varied and progressive stages of mental cultivation, a discrepancy between the representations of those ancient records, referred to as sacred, and the notions of more advanced periods of mental development, will inevitably sooner or later arise. In the first instance this disagreement is felt in reference only to the unessential—the external form: the expressions and delineations are seen to be inappropriate; but by degrees it manifests itself also in regard to that which is essential: the fundamental ideas and opinions in these early writings fail to be commensurate with a more advanced civilisation. As long as this discrepancy is either not in itself so considerable, or else is not so universally discerned and acknowledged, as to lead to a complete renunciation of these Scriptures as of sacred authority, so long will a system of reconciliation by means of interpretation be adopted and pursued by those who have a more or less distinct consciousness of the existing incongruity."

And one realises that Strauss, like most of West, equates religion with that of his own bringing up, church, and at most extends the notion to other churches, or at the extreme, to abrahmic ones; he hasn't given a thought to existence of any other, and has assumed it doesn't matter, no other could be worth it - teachings of church have imprinted that much, carefully.

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2. DIFFERENT EXPLANATIONS OF SACRED LEGENDS AMONG THE GREEKS

" ... At an early period the rigid philosophy of the Greeks, and under its influence even some of the Greek poets, recognized the impossibility of ascribing to Deity manifestations so grossly human, so immediate, and so barbarous, as those exhibited and represented as divine in the wild conflicts of Hesiod’s Theogony, and in the domestic occupations and trivial pursuits of the Homeric deities. Hence arose the quarrel of Plato, and prior to him of Pindar, with Homer;2 hence the cause which induced Anaxagoras, to whom the invention of the allegorical mode of interpretation is ascribed, to apply the Homeric delineations to virtue and to justice;3 hence it was that the Stoics understood the Theogony of Hesiod as relating to the action of the elements, which, according to their notions, constituted, in their highest union, the divine nature. ... "

"On the other hand, the more popular and sophistical culture of another class of thinkers led them to opposite conclusions. Though, in their estimation, every semblance of the divine had evaporated from these histories; though they were convinced that the proceedings ascribed to the gods were not godlike, still they did not abandon the historical sense of these narratives. [41]With Evemerus5 they transformed the subjects of these histories from gods to men, to heroes and sages of antiquity, kings and tyrants, who, through deeds of might and valour, had acquired divine honours. Some indeed went still further, and, with Polybius,6 considered the whole system of heathen theology as a fable, invented by the founders of states to awe the people into subjection."

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3. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS AMONG THE HEBREWS.—PHILO

" ... many ingenious attempts were made to interpret the Old Testament so as to remove offensive literalities, supply deficiencies, and introduce the notions of a later age. Examples of this system of interpretation occur in the writings of the Rabbins, and even in the New Testament;7 but it was at that place where the Jewish mind came into contact with Greek civilization, and under its influence was carried beyond the limits of its own national culture—namely at Alexandria—that the allegorical mode of interpretation was first consistently applied to the whole body of historical narrative in the Old Testament. Many had prepared the way, but it was Philo who first fully developed the doctrine of both a common and a deeper sense of the Holy Scriptures. He was by no means inclined to cast away the former, but generally placed the two together, side by side, and even declared himself opposed to those who, everywhere and without necessity, sacrificed the literal to the higher signification. ... "

"The fact that the Jews, whilst they adopted this mode of explaining the Old Testament, (which, in order to save the purity of the intrinsic signification, often sacrificed the historical form), were never led into the opposite system of Evemerus (which preserved the historical form by divesting the history of the divine, and reducing it to a record of mere human events), is to be ascribed to the tenacity with which that people ever adhered to the supernatural point of view. The latter mode of interpretation was first brought to bear upon the Old Testament by the Christians."

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4. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS.—ORIGEN

Author tells about Origen of Alexandria interpretation of much that seemed mythical or unbelievable, as designed to fix attention on spirit rather than literal meaning, giving example of Trojan records.

"But if his own prepossessions in favour of the supernatural, and his fear of giving offence to the orthodox church, combined to hinder him from making a wider application of the allegorical mode of interpretation to the Old Testament, the same causes operated still more powerfully in relation to the New Testament; so that when we further inquire of which of the gospel histories in particular did Origen reject the historical meaning, in order to hold fast a truth worthy of God? the instances will prove to be meagre in the extreme. For when he says, in illustration of the above-mentioned passage, that amongst other things, it is not to be understood literally that Satan showed to Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth from a mountain, because this is impossible to the bodily eye; he here gives not a strictly allegorical interpretation, but merely a different turn to the literal sense, which, according to him, relates not to an external fact, but to the internal fact of a vision. Again, even where the text offers a tempting opportunity of sacrificing the literal to the spiritual meaning, as, for example, the cursing of the fig-tree,20 Origen does not speak out freely. He is most explicit when speaking of the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the temple; he characterizes the conduct of Jesus, according to the literal interpretation, as assuming and seditious.21 He moreover expressly remarks that the Scriptures contain many more historical than merely scriptural truths."

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5. TRANSITION TO MORE MODERN TIMES.—DEISTS AND NATURALISTS OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES.—THE WOLFENBÜTTEL FRAGMENTIST.

"Thus was developed one of those forms of interpretation to which the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, in common with all other religious records, in relation to their historical contents, became necessarily subjected; that, namely, which recognizes in them the divine, but denies it to have actually manifested itself in so immediate a manner. The other principal mode of interpretation, which, to a certain extent, acknowledges the course of events to have been historically true, but assigns it to a human and not a divine origin, was developed amongst the enemies of Christianity by a Celsus, a Porphyry, and a Julian. They indeed rejected much of the history as altogether fabulous; but they admitted many of the incidents related of Moses, Jesus, and others, to be historical facts: these facts were however considered by them as originating from common motives; and they attributed their apparently supernatural character either to gross fraud or impious sorcery."

" ... As however with the christianizing of the Roman empire, and the overthrow of the chief heresies, ..."

That was a fraud perpetrated by the church; Constantine had no intention of converting, and intended the one God to be the deity of Rome, Sun. Church did fraud of sprinkling water at his death and calling it conversion. Wiping out dissent and giving it a bad name was the reality of "overthrow of the chief heresies", but the discovery mid twentieth century of some of the lost gospels has brought much of the fraud by church of Rome to light.

" ... —the world, during the tedious centuries of the middle ages, was satisfied with Christianity, both in form and in substance. Almost all traces of these modes of interpretation which presuppose a discrepancy between the culture of a nation, or of the world, and religion, in consequence disappeared. The reformation effected the first breach in the solid structure of the faith of the church. It was the first vital expression of a culture, which had now in the heart of Christendom itself, as formerly in relation to Paganism and Judaism, acquired strength and independence sufficient to create a reaction against the [45]soil of its birth, the prevailing religion. ... "

Satisfied? Why were people burnt at stake by hundreds, or was it all earlier version of "final solution"? No, church imposed consent and silence by power play, and pretended satisfaction.

"Similar deistical objections against the Bible, and the divine character of its history, were propagated in Germany chiefly by an anonymous author (Reimarus) whose manuscripts were discovered by Lessing in the Wolfenbüttel library. Some portions of these manuscripts, called the “Wolfenbüttel Fragments,” were published by Lessing in 1774. They consist of Essays, one of which treats of the many arguments which may be urged against revealed religion in general; the others relate partly to the Old and partly to the New Testament. ... The Fragmentist is as little disposed to admit the divinity of the New Testament histories. He considers the aim of Jesus to have been political; and his connexion with John the Baptist a preconcerted arrangement, by which the one party should recommend the other to the people. He views the death of Jesus as an event by no means foreseen by himself, but which frustrated all his plans; a catastrophe which his disciples knew not how else to repair than by the fraudulent pretence that Jesus was risen from the dead, and by an artful alteration of his doctrines32."

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6. NATURAL MODE OF EXPLANATION ADOPTED BY THE RATIONALISTS.—EICHHORN.—PAULUS

" ... The sages of antiquity lived in continual communion with superior intelligences. Whilst these representations (such is Eichhorn’s statement of the matter) are always, in reference to the Hebrew records, understood verbally and literally, it has hitherto been customary to explain similar representations in the pagan histories, by presupposing either deception and gross falsehood, or the misinterpretation and corruption of tradition. But Eichhorn thinks justice evidently requires that Hebrew and pagan history should be treated in the same way; so that intercourse with celestial beings during a state of infancy, must either be accorded to all nations, pagan and Hebrew, or equally denied to all. ... "

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7. MORAL INTERPRETATION OF KANT.

" ... He moreover attributed these ideas wrought into the biblical text, not to the Divine Spirit, but to its philosophical interpreters, or in a deeper sense, to the moral condition of the authors of the book themselves. This opinion Kant37 bases upon the fact, that in all religions old and new which are partly comprised in sacred books, intelligent and well-meaning teachers of the people have continued to explain them, until they have brought their actual contents into agreement with the universal principles of morality. Thus did the moral philosophers amongst the Greeks and Romans with their fabulous legends; till at last they explained the grossest polytheism as mere symbolical representations of the attributes of the one divine Being, and gave a mystical sense to the many vicious actions of their gods, and to the wildest dreams of their poets, in order to bring the popular faith, which it was not expedient to destroy, into agreement with the doctrines of morality. ... "

So far so good. But then,

" ... Thus the Mahometans gave a spiritual meaning to the sensual descriptions of their paradise, and thus the Hindoos, or at least the more enlightened part of them, interpreted their Vedas. ... "

First part, perhaps; latter part, neither Kant nor most of his fellow Westerners have a clue, other than their prejudice when looking at India, Indians, or civilisation of India, and falling to realise their own profound ignorance, both of India and compared to Indian treasure of knowledge from antiquity.

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8. RISE OF THE MYTHICAL MODE OF INTERPRETING THE SACRED HISTORY, IN REFERENCE FIRST TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.

" ... The earliest records of all nations are, in the opinion of Bauer, mythical: why should the writings of the Hebrews form a solitary exception?—whereas in point of fact a cursory glance at their sacred books proves that they also contain mythical elements. A narrative he explains, after Gabler and Schelling, to be recognizable as mythus, first, when it proceeds from an age in which no written records existed, but in which facts were transmitted through the medium of oral tradition alone; secondly, when it presents an historical account of events which are either absolutely or relatively beyond the reach of experience, such as occurrences connected with the spiritual world, and incidents to which, from the nature of the circumstances, no one could have been witness; or thirdly, when it deals in the marvellous and is couched in symbolical language. ... "

"To classify the biblical mythi according to these several distinctions is a difficult task, since the mythus which is purely symbolical wears the semblance of history equally with the mythus which represents an actual occurrence. ... "

They ascribe difficulties other than the real, the true one, to separate myth from fact in their own faith and roots thereof - truth is, they cannot be free of the grip of terror, laid early in bringing up, by an institution that burnt dissenters at stake for centuries, promising this to be the eternal future for even silent dissent, or questioning.

" ... The first essential is, they say, to determine whether the narrative have a distinct object, and what that object is. Where no object, for the sake of which the legend might have been invented, is discoverable, every one would pronounce the mythus to be historical. But if all the principal circumstances of the narrative concur to symbolize a particular truth, this undoubtedly was the object of the narrative, and the mythus is philosophical. The blending of the historical and philosophical mythus is particularly to be recognised when we can detect in the narrative an attempt to derive events from their causes. ... "

This definitely fits most of teachings of later abrahmic traditions, but does not even come close to any of what is labelled mythical by West of India's traditional knowledge, such as Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean.

" ... When the narrative is so wonderful on the one hand as to exclude the possibility of its being a detail of facts, and when on the other it discovers no attempt to symbolize a particular thought, it may be suspected that the entire narrative owes its birth to the imagination of the poet. ... "

Being wonderful does not necessarily amount to excluding facts, nor does "no attempt to symbolize a particular thought" amount to poetic imagination.

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9. THE MYTHICAL MODE OF INTERPRETATION IN REFERENCE TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.

"The chief difficulty which opposed the transference of the mythical point of view from the Old Testament to the New, was this:—it was customary to look for mythi in the fabulous primitive ages only, in which no written records of events as yet existed; whereas, in the time of Jesus, the mythical age had long since passed away, and writing had become common among the Jews. ..."

Never occurred to them that church of Rome lied? Which in fact is what did happen, from Nicea onwards if not always, and facts were suppressed - hence inquisition? - while lies were propagated for power.

" ... That at that time written documents on other subjects existed, proves nothing, [58]whilst it can be shown that for a long period there was no written account of the life of Jesus, and particularly of his infancy. ... "

Gospels were in fact "cleansed" during Nicea - inconvenient ones suppressed and destroyed, suitable accounts written and propagated. Likelihood of the officials being true where they contradict those found preserved in desert circa mid twentieth century is not high.

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10. THE NOTION OF THE MYTHUS IN ITS APPLICATION TO SACRED HISTORIES NOT CLEARLY APPREHENDED BY THEOLOGIANS.

" ... With respect to other miracles Kaiser is of opinion that the mythical interpretation is to be preferred; he, however, grants a much larger space to historical, than to philosophical mythi. He considers most of the miracles in the Old and New Testament real occurrences mythically embellished: such as the narrative of the piece of money in the fish’s mouth; and of the changing of water into wine: which latter history he supposes to have originated from a friendly jest on the part of Jesus. Few only of the miracles are recognised by this critic as pure poetry embodying Jewish ideas; as the miraculous birth of Jesus, and the murder of the innocents."

If the gospels were written, ordered, cleansed or trimmed, with large proportion destroyed or intended to be destroyed and believed by church to be successfully destroyed - it's neither poetry nor Jewish, but purely church of Rome and its propaganda in quest of power play.

" ... Ullmann is moreover of opinion, and Bretschneider and others agree with him, that independently of the repulsion [62]and confusion which must inevitably be caused by the application of the term mythus to that which is Christian—a term originally conceived in relation to a religion of a totally different character—it were more suitable, in connexion with the primitive Christian records, to speak only of Gospel legend, (Sage) and the legendary element."

There comes racism, differentiating labels- theirs class, other's caste; theirs faith, other's superstition; theirs legends, other's myth!

"George on the contrary has recently attempted not only more accurately to define the notions of the mythus and of the legend, but likewise to demonstrate that the gospel narratives are mythical rather than legendary. Speaking generally, we should say, that he restricts the term mythus to what had previously been distinguished as philosophical mythi; and that he applies the name legend to what had hitherto been denominated historical mythi. He handles the two notions as the antipodes of each other; and grasps them with a precision by which the notion of the mythus has unquestionably gained. According to George, mythus is the creation of a fact out of an idea: legend the seeing of an idea in a fact, or arising out of it. ... "

Now, if the history of the life of Jesus be of mythical formation, inasmuch as it embodies the vivid impression of the original idea which the first christian community had of their founder, this history, though unhistorical in its form, is nevertheless a faithful representation of the idea of the Christ. If instead of this, the history be legendary—if the actual external facts are given in a distorted and often magnified form—are represented in a false light and embody a false idea,—then, on the contrary, the real tenour of the life of Jesus is lost to us. So that, according to George, the recognition of the mythical element in the Gospels is far less [63]prejudicial to the true interests of the Christian faith than the recognition of the legendary element.65

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11. THE APPLICATION OF THE NOTION OF THE MYTHUS TOO CIRCUMSCRIBED.

"As Eichhorn recognized a genuine mythus only on the very threshold of the Old Testament history, and thought himself obliged to explain all that followed in a natural manner; as, some time later, other portions of the Old Testament were allowed to be mythical, whilst nothing of the kind might be suspected in the New; so, when the mythus was once admitted into the New Testament, it was here again long detained at the threshold, namely, the history of the infancy of Jesus, every farther advance being contested. ... "

" ... Much also that is narrated had no historical foundation, but originated entirely from the notions of the age, and from the Old Testament predictions—that a virgin should conceive—for example. ... "

The original account says "young woman", translated incorrectlyin the final Latin as "virgin". It was made dogma due to its improbability, at the very least, so as to emphasise the miracle angle.

"This confused point of view from which the gospel narrative is regarded as partly historical and partly mythical owes its origin, according to him, to those theologians who neither give up the history, nor are able to satisfy themselves with its clear results, but who think to unite both parties by this middle course—a vain endeavour which the rigid supranaturalist pronounces heretical, and the rationalist derides. The attempt of these reconcilers, remarks our author, to explain as intelligible everything which is not impossible, lays them open to all the charges so justly brought against the natural interpretation; whilst the admission of the existence of mythi in the New Testament subjects them to the direct reproach of being inconsequent: the severest censure which can be passed upon a scholar. Besides, the proceeding of these Eclectics is most arbitrary, since they decide respecting what belongs to the history and what to the mythus almost entirely upon subjective grounds. Such distinctions [65]are equally foreign to the evangelists, to logical reasoning, and to historical criticism. In consistency with these opinions, this writer applies the notion of the mythus to the entire history of the life of Jesus; recognizes mythi or mythical embellishments in every portion, and ranges under the category of mythus not merely the miraculous occurrences during the infancy of Jesus, but those also of his public life; not merely miracles operated on Jesus, but those wrought by him.

"The most extended application of the notion of the philosophical or dogmatical mythus to the Gospel histories which has yet been made, was published in 1799 in an anonymous work concerning Revelation and Mythology. The writer contends that the whole life of Jesus, all that he should and would do, had an ideal existence in the Jewish mind long prior to his birth. Jesus as an individual was not actually such as according to Jewish anticipations he should have been. Not even that, in which all the records which recount his actions agree, is absolutely matter of fact. A popular idea of the life of Jesus grew out of various popular contributions, and from this source our written Gospels were first derived. A reviewer objects that this author appears to suppose a still smaller portion of the historical element in the gospels than actually exists. It would, he remarks, have been wiser to have been guided by a sober criticism of details, than by a sweeping scepticism."

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12. OPPOSITION TO THE MYTHICAL VIEW OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY.

" ... Hess was by no means the last orthodox theologian who pretended to combat the mythical view with such weapons. He contends, 1st, that mythi are to be understood figuratively; now the sacred historians intended their writings to be understood literally: consequently they do not relate mythi. 2ndly, Mythology is something heathenish; the Bible is a christian book; consequently it contains no mythology. ... Certainly nothing could be worse than Eichhorn’s natural explanation of the fall. In considering the tree of knowledge as a poisonous plant, he at once destroyed the intrinsic value and inherent meaning of the history; of this he afterwards became fully sensible, and in his subsequent mythical interpretation, he recognized in the narrative the incorporation of a worthy and elevated conception. Hess however declared himself more content with Eichhorn’s original explanation, and defended it against his later mythical interpretation. So true is it that supranaturalism clings with childlike fondness to the empty husk of historical semblance, though void of divine significance, and estimates it higher than the most valuable kernel divested of its variegated covering."

"Heydenreich has lately written a work expressly on the inadmissibility of the mythical interpretation of the historical portions of the New Testament. ... "

Written records can be ordered to suit, as indeed were in this case; and their multiplicity is no guarantee either, since it can be ordered too.

" ... He also examines the character of the gospel representations, and decides, in reference to their form, that narratives at once so natural and simple, so complete and exact, could be expected only from eye-witnesses, or those connected with them; and, with respect to their contents, that those representations which are in their nature miraculous are so worthy of God, that nothing short of an abhorrence of miracles could occasion a doubt as to their historical truth. ... "

Tautological. One who is imposed with a view of what is God would say that an account is true because it fits the notion, fails to recognise that the agency that had the account written to order is the agency that imposed the view.

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13. THE POSSIBILITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF MYTHI IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES.

"The assertion that the Bible contains mythi is, it is true, directly opposed to the convictions of the believing christian. For if his religious view be circumscribed within the limits of his own community, he knows no reason why the things recorded in the sacred books should not literally have taken place; no doubt occurs to him, no reflection disturbs him. But, let his horizon be so far widened as to allow him to contemplate his own religion in relation to other religions, and to draw a comparison between them, the conclusion to which he then comes is that the histories related by the heathens of their deities, and by the Mussulman of his prophet, are so many fictions, whilst the accounts of God’s actions, of Christ and other Godlike men contained in the Bible are, on the contrary, true. Such is the general notion expressed in the theological position: that which distinguishes Christianity from the heathen religions is this, they are mythical, it is historical.

"But this position, thus stated without further definition and proof, is merely the product of the limitation of the individual to that form of belief in which he has been educated, which renders the mind incapable of embracing any but the affirmative view in relation to its own creed, any but the negative in reference to every other—a prejudice devoid of real worth, and which cannot exist in conjunction with an extensive knowledge of history. ... "

"But this alleged ocular testimony, or proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the events recorded, is mere assumption, an assumption originating from the titles which the biblical books bear in our Canon. ... "

"We learn from the works of Irenæus, of Clemens Alexandrinus, and of Tertullian, that at the end of the second century after Christ our four Gospels were recognized by the orthodox church as the writings of the Apostles and the disciples of the Apostles; and were separated from many other similar productions as authentic records of the life of Jesus. ... "

" ... the manuscript, of which he speaks, cannot be absolutely identical with our Gospel; for, according to the statement given by Papias, Matthew wrote in the Hebrew language; and it is a mere assumption of the christian fathers that our Greek Matthew is a translation of the original Hebrew Gospel80. ... "

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14. THE POSSIBILITY OF MYTHI IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CONSIDERED ON INTERNAL GROUNDS.

"Seeing from what has already been said that the external testimony respecting the composition of our Gospels, far from forcing upon us the conclusion that they proceeded from eye-witnesses or well-informed contemporaries, leaves the decision to be determined wholly by internal grounds of evidence, that is, by the nature of the Gospel narratives themselves ... "

That question is now far wider open, and scarcely interesting - those whose faith holds despite revelations regarding the then suppressed and destroyed other gospels, of which some were discovered circa mid twentieth century, and of facts about council of Nicea and how that turns matters around for convenience, are merely outraged by any other attitude than that of a blind faith towards their own particular branch of their own specific - of course, abrahmic - religion; and rest, mostly, are likely to hold this question of little importance, in view of various advances in science, from geology to astrophysics to evolution and more.

"Israelites on their departure out of Egypt to purloin vessels of gold, are scarcely less revolting to an enlightened moral feeling, than the thefts of the Grecian Hermes. ... "

Typical of those that respect only the victor, dominator, invader, looters, slaveowner, male - and regard any action by anyone looted, enslaved, raped, as outrageous, labelling the outrage moral!

" ... for though every story relating to God which is immoral is necessarily fictitious, even the most moral is not necessarily true."

The latter part is a good realisation, halfway - for a logical next step would be to realise that the whole story might be fictional, or at the very least, a fraudulent twist or two given to the real history - of a born king of Jews protesting against Roman occupation and subjection of his people by Rome - by Rome, after appropriating the legend, for keeping power of Rome. Hence, of course, the insistence on faith, exclusion of all other, and burning at stake of not only dissenters but all seekers of knowledge of any field, in effect cornering all knowledge.

" ... for though every story relating to God which is immoral is necessarily fictitious, even the most moral is not necessarily true."

So the latter part is a good realisation, halfway - but the first is sheer hubris, a mere mortal or an agency thereof such as an institution, assuming they can decide and declare what Divine can or cannot be or do. And the hubris, the arrogance continues next in -

"“But that which is incredible and inconceivable forms the staple of the heathen fables; whilst in the biblical history, if we only presuppose the immediate intervention of the Deity, there is nothing of the kind.” ... "

If anything, shouldn't it be obvious that the incredible, the inconceivable is precisely what indicates an agency not of material origin?

" ... Exactly, if this be presupposed. Otherwise, we might very likely find the miracles in the life of Moses, Elias, or Jesus, the Theophany and Angelophany of the Old and New Testament, just as incredible as the fables of Jupiter, Hercules, or Bacchus: presuppose the divinity or divine descent of these individuals, and their actions and fate become as credible as those of the biblical personages with the like presupposition. Yet not quite so, it may be returned. Vishnu appearing in his three first avatars as a fish, a tortoise, and a boar; Saturn devouring his children; Jupiter turning himself into a bull, a swan, etc.—these are incredibilities of quite another kind from Jehovah appearing to Abraham in a human form under the terebinth tree, or to Moses in the burning bush. ... "

On the contrary, the burning bush is not impressive as indication of a God, although not incredible enough to declare it impossible; and the peculiar insistence on virgin birth by Rome - one can quite ordinarily hear a nun declaring that "she was special, not like other women" with great scorn at all other women, not realising how fisgusting she sounds for this disdain against all women contained in the implication that one woman hapoened to be a virgin mother unlike others, and implying that all others are thereby low; this disdain isnt extended to males, one notices!

Was he kidding? Or did his instinct of self preservation make him forget, temporarily, the insistence by church on virgin conception, without a human male parent, of his object of worship?

And yet, there was no report of those performing having been worshipped by anyone in India. Who's the more gullible here?

Incidentally there are other mistakes in the book, but it's difficult to correct Ormusd - is it as simple as Ormud? Autocorrect allows the latter, but it's not a foolproof guide.

Good thinking. But then retraction -

Or perhaps there was history, but it was suppressed, after Jehovah was selected to be all-in-all, and others not only discarded but prohibited?

It would be amusing if the word Jehovah were in fact a transformation or derivative of Eve, amusing because abrahmic cultures and faiths are so highly misogynistic.

" ... Thus according to the above accepted notion of the mythus, the New Testament has more of a mythical character than the Old. ... "

"It is certainly difficult to conceive, how narratives which thus speak of imagination as reality can have been formed without intentional deceit, and believed without unexampled credulity; ... "

Strauss quotes an argument (regarding Greek mythology) by Miller , that is so obviously flawed in multiple ways, it would be tiresome to put it all down; one is surprised Strauss didn't see it, but then, he was probably labouring to save himself from seeing bible -especially that part propagated by church - as a story dressed up with fraud, to save himself from not only excommunication but also from serious psychological dangers.

" ... Müller then refers to the Grecian mythus of Apollo and Marsyas ..."

Strauss quotes the whole story, and Müller's reasoning -

" ... “It was customary to celebrate the festivals of Apollo with playing on the lyre, and it was necessary to piety, that the god himself should be regarded as its author. In Phrygia, on the contrary, the national music was the flute, which was similarly derived from a demon of their own, named Marsyas. The ancient Grecians perceived that the tones of these two instruments were essentially opposed: the harsh shrill piping of the flute must be hateful to Apollo, and therefore Marsyas his enemy. ... "

Strauss quotes the whole story, and Müller's reasoning; the latter pivots on Grecians finding tones of flute harsh; it's unclear why they would, even if they used lyre, and use of more than one instrument in music is surely not impossible in a culture? Unless, of course, it was Müller himself who was so prejudiced against the flute, and reasoned it out thus.

"The popular traditions, being orally transmitted and not restricted by any written document, were open to receive every new addition, and thus grew in the course of long centuries to the form in which we now find them. (How far this applies to a great part of the New Testament mythi, will be shown hereafter.) ... "

As to the former, there's no reason copies of written documents could not be further extensions, or those who copied ancient documents could not be original thinkers and poets themselves who were inspired to further the precious work; and, too, whole new mythology could be made up about historic events and persona, as we saw evolving during Nazi regime in Germany around the leader thereof; but as to the latter, Oh, goody!

"It is not however easy to draw a line of distinction between intentional and unintentional fiction. ... "

Until one gets to church revamping history, circa third century, to invent the mythology about its figure on cross to be worshipped, having some gospels cleansed or rewritten to suit, while others were suppressed, ordered and presumes destroyed, all in quest of survival of the institution at expense of truth, and incidentally of Jews, who until then church was allied with, against the Roman empire that suppressed both; thenceforth they were blamed fraudulently for things happening under Roman occupation of Judea and Israel, and during subjection of Jewsby Rome. This turnabout was intentional fraud, forever branding a whole race and culture, leading to genocides, all in quest of power.

" ... Most of the mythical narratives which have come down to us from antiquity, such as the Trojan, and the Mosaic series of legends, are presented to us in this elaborated form. ... "

Funny how long the assumption of Trojan war being a myth persisted! Until another German - with U.S. citizenship - proved otherwise.

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15. DEFINITION OF THE EVANGELICAL MYTHUS AND ITS DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS.

"It is to the various forms of the unhistorical in the Gospels that this enumeration exclusively refers: it does not involve the renunciation of the historical which they may likewise contain."

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16. CRITERIA BY WHICH TO DISTINGUISH THE UNHISTORICAL IN THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE.

Strauss discusses various criteria to determine historical vs mythical.

" ... If therefore we are told of a celebrated individual that he attracted already at his birth and during his childhood that attention which he excited in his manhood; that his followers at a single glance recognized him as being all that he actually was; if the transition from the deepest despondency to the most ardent enthusiasm after his death is represented as the work of a single hour; we must feel more than doubtful whether it is a real history which lies before us. ... "

By this criterion, books of his own upbringing faith fail; while those of India hold well, and better. Of various Gods and Goddesses, those whose childhood is depicted were seen and loved as children, even if extraordinary. Their personalities grew, and the recognition did accordingly, recognition of Divinity being later in the course rather than at birth or before.

"An account which shall be regarded as historically valid, must neither be inconsistent with itself, nor in contradiction with other accounts. The most decided case falling under this rule, amounting to a positive contradiction, is when one account affirms what another denies.

"Thus, one gospel represents the first appearance of Jesus in Galilee as subsequent to the imprisonment of John the Baptist, whilst another Gospel remarks, long after Jesus had preached both in Galilee and in Judea, that “John was not yet cast into prison.”"

This criteria completely destroys authenticity of the officially approved gospels, after, of those suppressed and presumably destroyed, some were discovered hidden in desert and thereby well preserved; and of their authenticity, there were no doubts possible on any criteria except that of their being not only not in accord with, but in fact quite contrary to, the official version.

"It may here be asked: is it to be regarded as a contradiction if one account is wholly silent respecting a circumstance mentioned by another? In itself, apart from all other considerations, the argumentum ex silentio is of no weight; but it is certainly to be accounted of moment when, at the same time, it may be shown that had the author known the circumstance he could not have failed to mention it, and also that he must have known it had it actually occurred."

"If the form be poetical, if the actors converse in hymns, and in a more diffuse and elevated strain than might be expected from their training and situations, such discourses, at all events, are not to be regarded as historical. The absence of these marks of the unhistorical do not however prove the historical validity of the narration, since the mythus often wears the most simple and apparently historical form: in which case the proof lies in the substance."

This presumes poetical speech being unnatural, which may be true of Europe and West asia; assuming that it's a universal law, is going too far. Conversing in verse sounds most natural in some languages.

"If the contents of a narrative strikingly accords with certain ideas existing and prevailing within the circle from which the narrative proceeded, which ideas themselves seem to be the product of preconceived opinions rather than of practical experience, it is more or less probable, according to circumstances, that such a narrative is of mythical origin. The knowledge of the fact, that the Jews were fond of representing their great men as the children of parents who had long been childless, cannot but make us doubtful of the historical truth of the statement that this was the case with John the Baptist; knowing also that the Jews saw predictions everywhere in the writings of their prophets and poets, and discovered types of the Messiah in all the lives of holy men recorded in their Scriptures; when we find details in the life of Jesus evidently sketched after the pattern of these prophecies and prototypes, we cannot but suspect that they are rather mythical than historical."

Predictions or prophesies aren't false by definitions, but fitting those existing, especially detailed ones, to a person and his life, is a step further; however, in this Strauss is seeing the myth character of gospels as responsibility of the Jewish, companions and disciples, rather than suspecting the reality, that of church of Rome having falsified, gotten tailored accounts written to order three centuries later, and suppressed others.

"Yet each of these tests, on the one hand, and each narrative on the other, considered apart, will rarely prove more than the possible or probable unhistorical character of the record. The concurrence of several such indications, is necessary to bring about a more definite result. The accounts of the visit of the Magi, and of the murder of the innocents at Bethlehem, harmonize remarkably with the Jewish Messianic notion, built upon the prophecy of Balaam, respecting the star which should come out of Jacob; and with the history of the sanguinary command of Pharaoh. Still this would not alone suffice to stamp the narratives as mythical. But we have also the corroborative facts that the described appearance of the star is contrary to the physical, [90]the alleged conduct of Herod to the psychological laws; that Josephus, who gives in other respects so circumstantial an account of Herod, agrees with all other historical authorities in being silent concerning the Bethlehem massacre; and that the visit of the Magi together with the flight into Egypt related in the one Gospel, and the presentation in the temple related in another Gospel, mutually exclude one another. ... "

Herod ordering all babies born at the time killed may or may not be true; but it follows far older legends, beginning with a similarity with the story of Krishna, and other stories of origin of regions between India and West Asia.

Strauss discusses Angel visiting Mary to inform her regarding birth of messiah; the research and arguments, in the discussion regarding this expectation, from a much later work of research - Holy Blood, Holy Grail - is far more convincing.

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October 13, 2021 - October 16, 2021.

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FIRST PART.

HISTORY OF THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS.

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CHAPTER I.

ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

§ 17. Account given by Luke. Immediate supernatural character of the representation

18. Natural explanation of the narrative

19. Mythical view of the narrative in its different stages

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§ 17. ACCOUNT GIVEN BY LUKE.1 IMMEDIATE, SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER OF THE REPRESENTATION.

Strauss discusses Gabriel informing Zachariah and the latter being struck dumb in response to questioning, seemingly not in accord with conduct appropriate to a celestial being; he discusses also the name and more.

Regarding the first part, if the exact age of the couple is not mentioned, it might be as little as thirty; even as late as circa turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Jane Austen considered a man old at only thirty five, in Sense and Sensibility. This was appropriate in the era when nature aged people fast, and marriage and reproduction began in early teens. Juliet was only thirteen when secretly married in church, just after one meeting, before consummation of her marriage immediately, and her groom only fourteen.

Regarding the inappropriate nature of an angel getting angry and striking Zachariah dumb, one may correct it with two points to recall. One, Judaic thought seems far too fond of God being angry, so an angel doing so isn't contradictory; and it might have been a man stricken dumb at the shock of the news, or the very idea, interpreted it as the angel doing it to him. This seems even mire naturally in accord when Strauss discusses the very different consequences of similar announcement and doubt in case of Abraham.

Second, church has imposed a view of celestial beings far too one sided, and other views such as Judaic, Greek, Egyptian et al, might not necessarily be wrong or false or incorrect, just by being not in accord with those of Rome post third century.

This is even more so when the author points out that Jehovah was not angry with Abraham who was equally incredulous about being informed similarly about a son -

" ... we must agree with Paulus that such inconsistency certainly cannot belong to the conduct of God or of a celestical being, but merely to the Jewish representation of them."

It's almost as if German mind expects celestial beings to function like clockwork gadgets! But not even mechanical objects work so perfectly always, if they are more than concepts; such perfection is only within mathematics.

And for that matter, if one must object to anything on basis of arbitrary behaviour and resulting injustice, that occurs more than once at the outset - not being told why the apple must not be touched (without being told "no matter what anybody else tells you"), and then thrown out of eden, is bad enough; but rejecting the offerings of a farmer in favour of a hunted animal, thats gross!

Or did Abel offer a pet for Jehovah, instead of food? In which case, it wasn't his to offer - all life, after all, belongs to nature, it's parents, and to Divine!

Coming back to Zachariah, perhaps he was struck dumb not literally but in a disbelieving shock of surprise psychologically, and found it safer to say nothing until the prediction came true! And put it on an angel.

" ... Bauer insists that wherever angels appear, both in the New Testament and in the Old, the narrative is mythical. † Even admitting the existence of angels, we cannot suppose them capable of manifesting themselves to human beings, since they belong to the invisible worldd, and spiritual existences are not cognizable by the organs of sense; so that it is always advisable to refer their pretended apparitions to the imagination. ... "

First part, fair enough. But if second part were true, what about Bernadette of Lourdes? Assuming she imagined, why couldn't everyone else? Whether imagination or lie, her sainthood being sanctioned by Vatican then condemns that institution to a status of one lying for profit, making all conferred sainthood fraud.

" ... It is also remarkable that in the old world these celestial beings show themselves active upon the smallest occasions, whilst in modern times they remain idle even during the most important occurrences. ... "

That argument reminds one of some women commenting, when hearing of a woman having been harassed or assaulted, to the effect that they themselves had never had such an experience - implying either doubt at veracity of the victim, or an implication about the victim in reality having been a provocateur who deserved the resulting harrassment. One may never have seen a rainbow in a desert, or an iceberg or aurora in tropical lands, or seen Himaalayan landscapes, but they exist. The flatearthers have declared Australia to be a non-existent object, at a flatearther conference in U.K., and refuse to believe that if one travels South along Atlantic, and another stays put, the two end up upside down with respect to one another; that's the kind of finite logic that is used when one claims reason and five senses to be base of all possible knowledge perceived and inferred.

Ghosts, incidentally, are reported at several places in U.K., chiefly but not exclusively in old castles. Perhaps reporting and admitting of such things takes courage, especially when result might be persecution by church and ridicule by society.

"If it were indeed true, that John was from the first distinctly and miraculously announced as the forerunner of the Messiah, it is inconceivable that he should have had no acquaintance with Jesus prior to his baptism; and that, even subsequent to that event, he should have felt perplexed concerning his Messiahship. (John i., 30 ; Matth. xi., 2.*)

"Consequently the negative conclusion of the rationalistic criticism and controversy must, we think, be admitted, namely, that tho birth of the Baptist could not have been preceded and attended by these supernatural occurrences."

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18. NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE NARRATIVE.

Author discusses various possibilities and explanations offered by Paulus and others, including psychological, lightening, incense, etc., all refuted and deemed unsatisfactory or impossible.

" ... Is biblical history to be judged by one set of laws, and profane history by another? ... "

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19. MYTHICAL VIEW OF THE NARRATIVE IN ITS DIFFERENT STAGES.

"The above exposition of the necessity, and lastly, of the possibility of doubting the historical fidelity of the gospel narrative, has led many theologians to explain the account of the birth of the Baptist as a poetical composition; suggested by the importance attributed by the Christians to the forerunner of Jesus, and by the recollection of some of the Old Testament histories, in which the births of Ishmael, Isaac, Samuel, and especially of Samson, are related to have been similarly announced. Still the matter was not allowed to be altogether invented. It may have been historically true that Zacharias and Elizabeth lived long without offspring; that, on one occasion whilst in the temple, the old man’s tongue was suddenly paralyzed; but that soon afterwards his aged wife bore him a son, and he, in his joy at the event, recovered the power of speech. At that time, but still more when John became a remarkable man, the history excited attention, and out of it the existing legend grew."

Simple.

" ... But by taking away the angelic apparition, the sudden infliction and as sudden removal of the dumbness loses its only adequate supernatural cause, so that all difficulties which beset the natural interpretation remain in full force: a dilemma into which these theologians are, most unnecessarily, brought by their own inconsequence; for the moment we enter upon mythical ground, all obligation to hold fast the assumed historical fidelity of the account ceases to exist. Besides, that which they propose to retain as historical fact, namely, the long barrenness of the parents of the Baptist, is so strictly in harmony with the spirit and character of Hebrew legendary poetry, that of this incident the mythical origin is least to be mistaken. How confused has this misapprehension made, for example, the reasoning of Bauer! It was a prevailing opinion, says he, consonant with Jewish ideas, that all children born of aged parents, who had previously been childless, became distinguished personages. John was the child of aged parents, and became a notable preacher of repentance; consequently it was thought justifiable to infer that his birth was predicted by an angel. What an illogical conclusion! for which he has no other ground than the assumption that John was the son of aged parents. Let this be made a settled point, and the conclusion follows without difficulty. It was readily believed, he proceeds, of remarkable men that they were born of aged parents, and that their birth, no longer in the ordinary course of nature to be expected, was announced [105]by a heavenly messenger43; John was a great man and a prophet; consequently, the legend represented him to have been born of an aged couple, and his birth to have been proclaimed by an angel."

" ... Gabler has treated it as a pure philosophical, or dogmatical mythus.44 Horst likewise considers it, and indeed the entire two first chapters of Luke, of which it forms a part, as an ingenious fiction, in which the birth of the Messiah, together with that of his precursor, and the predictions concerning the character and ministry of the latter, framed after the event, are set forth; it being precisely the loquacious circumstantiality of the narration which betrays the poet. ... "

" ... the origin of this incident also will be found in the legend, and not in historical fact."

"So that we stand here upon purely mythical-poetical ground; the only historical reality which we can hold fast as positive matter of fact being this:—the impression made by John the Baptist, by virtue of his ministry and his relation to Jesus, was so powerful as to lead to the subsequent glorification of his birth in connection with the birth of the Messiah in the Christian legend."

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October 16, 2021 - October 16, 2021.

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CHAPTER II.

DAVIDICAL DESCENT OF JESUS, ACCORDING TO THE GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE.

§ 20. The two genealogies of Jesus considered separately and irrespectively of one another

21. Comparison of the two genealogies. Attempt to reconcile their contradictions

22. The genealogies unhistorical

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20. THE TWO GENEALOGIES OF JESUS CONSIDERED SEPARATELY AND IRRESPECTIVELY OF ONE ANOTHER.

"IN the history of the birth of the Baptist, we had the single account of Luke; but regarding the genealogical descent of Jesus we have also that of Matthew; so that in this case the mutual control of two narrators in some respects multiplies, whilst in others it lightens, our critical labour. It is indeed true that the authenticity of the two first chapters of Matthew, which contain the history of the birth and childhood of Jesus, as well as that of the parallel section of Luke, has been questioned: but as in both cases the question has originated merely in a prejudiced view of the subject, the doubt has been silenced by a decisive refutation.

"Each of these two gospels contains a genealogical table designed to exhibit the Davidical descent of Jesus, the Messiah. ... "

Rest of this section deals mostly with discrepancies of numbers of names in the genealogy.

"From Abraham to David, where the first division presented itself, having found fourteen members, he seems to have wished that those of the following divisions should correspond in number. In the whole remaining series the Babylonish exile offered itself as the natural point of separation. But as the second division from David to the exile gave him four supernumerary members, therefore he omitted four of the names. For what reason these particular four were chosen would be difficult to determine, at least for the three last mentioned.

"The cause of the compiler’s laying so much stress on the threefold equal numbers, may have been simply, that by this adoption of the Oriental custom of division into equal sections, the genealogy might be more easily committed to memory:10 but with this motive a mystical idea was probably combined. The question arises whether this is to be sought in the number which is thrice repeated, or whether it consists in the threefold repetition? Fourteen is the double of the sacred number seven; but it is improbable that it was selected for this reason, because otherwise the seven would scarcely have been so completely lost sight of in the fourteen. Still more improbable is the conjecture of Olshausen, that the number fourteen was specially chosen as being the numeric value of the name of David; for puerilities of this kind, appropriate to the rabbinical gematria, are to be found in no other part of the Gospels. It is more likely that the object of the genealogists consisted merely in the repetition of an equal number by retaining the fourteen which had first accidentally presented itself: since it was a notion of the Jews that signal divine visitations, whether of prosperity or adversity, recurred at regular periodical intervals. Thus, as fourteen generations had intervened between Abraham, the founder of the holy people, and David the king after God’s own heart, so fourteen generations must intervene between the re-establishment of the kingdom and the coming of the son of David, the Messiah. The most ancient genealogies in Genesis exhibit the very same uniformity. As according to the βὶβλος γενέσεως ἀνθρώπων, cap. v., from Adam the first, to Noah the second, father of men, were ten generations: so from Noah, or rather from his son, the tenth is Abraham the father of the faithful."

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21. COMPARISON OF THE TWO GENEALOGIES—ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE THEIR CONTRADICTIONS.

"If we compare the genealogies of Matthew and Luke together, we become aware of still more striking discrepancies. Some of these differences indeed are unimportant, as the opposite direction of the two tables, the line of Matthew descending from Abraham to Jesus, that of Luke ascending from Jesus to his ancestors. Also the greater extent of the line of Luke; Matthew deriving it no further than from Abraham, while Luke (perhaps lengthening some existing document in order to make it more consonant with the universalism of the doctrines of Paul)15 carries it back to Adam and to God himself. More important is the considerable difference in the number of generations for equal periods, Luke having 41 between David and Jesus, whilst Matthew has only 26. The main difficulty, however, lies in this: that in some parts of the genealogy, in Luke totally different individuals are made the ancestors of Jesus from those of Matthew. It is true, both writers agree in deriving the lineage of Jesus through Joseph from David and Abraham, and that the names of the individual members of the series correspond from Abraham to David, as well as two of the names in the subsequent portion; those of Salathiel and Zorobabel. But the difficulty becomes desperate when we find that, with these two exceptions about midway, the whole of the names from David to the foster-father of Jesus are totally different in Matthew and [113]in Luke. ... "

Here the seeming impartial discourse suddenly slips in a chief article of faith amounting to attempted conversion of the unsuspecting reader in the very obvious "foster-father" instead of father!

You can't have it both ways, whether Strauss or gospels - if you believe no human father for the guy, drop the genealogical discourse, and if you believe in the virgin birth theory for imposing the supposed purity of the young woman, try explaining why she had to have other children.

" ... But, besides the fact, which we shall show hereafter, that the genealogy of Luke can with difficulty be proved to be the work of the author of that Gospel:—in which case the little acquaintance of Luke with [114]Jewish customs ceases to afford any clue to the meaning of this genealogy;—it is also to be objected, that the genealogist of the first Gospel could not have written his ἐγέννησε thus without any addition, if he was thinking of a mere legal paternity. Wherefore these two views of the genealogical relationship are equally difficult."

Now Strauss considers another point also coming close to one mentioned by author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

"It has been thought by later critics that the knot may be loosed in a much easier way, by supposing that in one Gospel we have the genealogy of Joseph, in the other that of Mary, in which case there would be no contradiction in the disagreement:22 to which they are pleased to add the assumption that Mary was an heiress.23 The opinion that Mary was of the race of David as well as Joseph has been long held. Following indeed the idea, that the Messiah, as a second Melchizedec, ought to unite in his person the priestly with the kingly dignity,24 and guided by the relationship of Mary with Elizabeth, who was a daughter of Aaron (Luke i. 36); already in early times it was not only held by many that the races of Judah and Levi were blended in the family of Joseph;25 but also the opinion was not rare that Jesus, deriving his royal lineage from Joseph, descended also from the priestly race through Mary.26 The opinion of Mary’s descent from David, soon however became the more prevailing. Many apocryphal writers clearly state this opinion,27 as well as Justin Martyr, whose expression, that the virgin was of the race of David, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, may be considered an indication that he applied to Mary one of our genealogies, which are both traced back to Abraham through David."

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22. THE GENEALOGIES UNHISTORICAL.

"Besides the genealogy of Luke is less liable than that of Matthew to the suspicion of having been written with a design to glorify Jesus, since it contents itself with ascribing to Jesus a descent from David, without tracing that descent through the royal line. On the other hand, however, it is more improbable that the genealogy of the comparatively insignificant family of Nathan should have been preserved, than that of the royal branch. Added to which, the frequent recurrence of the same names is, as justly remarked by Hoffmann, an indication that the genealogy of Luke is fictitious.

"In fact then neither table has any advantage over the other. If the one is unhistorical, so also is the other, since it is very improbable that the genealogy of an obscure family like that of Joseph, extending through so long a series of generations, should have been preserved during all the confusion of the exile, and the disturbed period that followed. Yet, it may be said, although we recognise in both, so far as they are not copied from the Old Testament, and unrestrained play of the imagination, or arbitrary applications of other genealogies to Jesus,—we may still retain as an historical basis that Jesus descended from David, and that only the intermediate members of the line of descent were variously filled up by different writers. But the one event on which this historical basis is mainly supported, namely, the journey of the parents of Jesus to Bethlehem in order to be taxed, so far from sufficing to prove them to be of the house and lineage of David, is itself, as we shall presently show, by no means established as matter of history. Of more weight is the other ground, namely, that Jesus is universally represented in the New Testament, without any contradiction from his adversaries, as the descendant of David. Yet even the phrase ὑιὸς Δαβὶδ is a predicate that may naturally have been applied to Jesus, not on historical, but on dogmatical grounds. According to the prophecies, the Messiah could only spring from David. When therefore a Galilean, whose lineage was utterly unknown, and of whom consequently no one could prove that he was not descended from David, had acquired the [118]reputation of being the Messiah; what more natural than that tradition should under different forms have early ascribed to him a Davidical descent, and that genealogical tables, corresponding with this tradition, should have been formed? which, however, as they were constructed upon no certain data, would necessarily exhibit such differences and contradictions as we find actually existing between the genealogies in Matthew and in Luke.

"If, in conclusion, it be asked, what historical result is to be deduced from these genealogies? we reply: a conviction (arrived at also from other sources), that Jesus, either in his own person or through his disciples, acting upon minds strongly imbued with Jewish notions and expectations, left among his followers so firm a conviction of his Messiahship, that they did not hesitate to attribute to him the prophetical characteristic of Davidical descent, and more than one pen was put in action, in order, by means of a genealogy which should authenticate that descent, to justify his recognition as the Messiah.

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October 17, 2021 - October 17, 2021.

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CHAPTER III.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS.—ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.—VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH.

§ 23. Sketch of the different canonical and apocryphal accounts

24. Disagreements of the canonical gospels in relation to the form of the annunciation

25. Import of the angel’s message. Fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah

26. Jesus begotten of the Holy Ghost. Criticism of the orthodox opinion

27. Retrospect of the genealogies

28. Natural explanation of the history of the conception

29. History of the conception of Jesus viewed as a mythus

30. Relation of Joseph to Mary. Brothers of Jesus

31. Visit of Mary to Elizabeth

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23. SKETCH OF THE DIFFERENT CANONICAL AND APOCRYPHAL ACCOUNTS.

"There is a striking gradation in the different representations of the conception and birth of Jesus given in the canonical and in the apocryphal Gospels. They exhibit the various steps, from a simple statement of a natural occurrence, to a minute and miraculously embellished history, in which the event is traced back to its very earliest date. Mark and John presuppose the fact of the birth of Jesus, and content themselves with the incidental mention of Mary as the mother (Mark vi. 3), and of Joseph as the father of Jesus (John i. 46). Matthew and Luke go further back, since they state the particular circumstances attending the conception as well as the birth of the Messiah. But of these two evangelists Luke mounts a step higher than Matthew. According to the latter Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, being found with child, Joseph is offended, and determines to put her away; but the angel of the Lord visits him in a dream, and assures him of the divine origin and exalted destiny of Mary’s offspring; the result of which is that Joseph takes unto him his wife: but knows her not till she has brought forth her first-born son. (Matt. i. 18–25.) Here the pregnancy is discovered in the first place, and then afterwards justified by the angel; but in Luke the pregnancy is prefaced and announced by a celestial apparition. The same Gabriel, who had predicted the birth of John to Zacharias, appears to Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, and tells her that she shall conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost; whereupon the destined mother of the Messiah pays a visit full of holy import to the already pregnant mother of his forerunner; upon which occasion both Mary and Elizabeth pour forth their emotions to one another in the form of a hymn (Luke i. 26–56). Matthew and Luke are content to presuppose the connexion between Mary and Joseph; but the apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium Jacobi, and the Evangelium de Nativitate Mariae,1 (books with the contents of which the Fathers partially agree,) seek to represent the origin of this connexion; indeed they go back to the birth of Mary, and describe it to have been preceded, equally with that of the Messiah and the Baptist, by a divine annunciation. As the description of the birth of John in Luke is principally borrowed from the Old Testament accounts of Samuel and of Samson, so this history of the birth of Mary is an imitation of the history in Luke, and of the Old Testament histories."

It gets highly entertaining in this part, partly because it's such a mixture of normal and then sudden strange insertions of considered poetic or more.

"Joachim, so says the apocryphal narrative, and Anna (the name of Samuel’s [120]mother2) are unhappy on account of their long childless marriage (as were the parents of the Baptist); when an angel appears to them both (so in the history of Samson) at different places, and promises them a child, who shall be the mother of God, and commands that this child shall live the life of a Nazarite (like the Baptist). In early childhood Mary is brought by her parents to the temple (like Samuel); where she continues till her twelfth year, visited and fed by angels and honoured by divine visions. Arrived at womanhood she is to quit the temple, her future provision and destiny being revealed by the oracle to the high priest. In conformity with the prophecy of Isaiah xi. 1 f.: egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice ejus ascendet, et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini; this oracle commanded, according to one Gospel,3 that all the unmarried men of the house of David,—according to the other,4 that all the widowers among the people,—should bring their rods, and that he on whose rod a sign should appear (like the rod of Aaron, Numb. xvii.), namely the sign predicted in the prophecy, should take Mary unto himself. This sign was manifested upon Joseph’s rod; for, in exact accordance with the oracle, it put forth a blossom and a dove lighted upon it.5 The apocryphal Gospels and the Fathers agree in representing Joseph as an old man;6 but the narrative is somewhat differently told in the two apocryphal Gospels. According to the Evang. de nativ. Mariae, notwithstanding Mary’s alleged vow of chastity, and the refusal of Joseph on account of his great age, betrothment took place at the command of the priest, and subsequently a marriage—(which marriage, however, the author evidently means to represents also as chaste). According to the Protevang. Jacobi, on the contrary, neither betrothment nor marriage are mentioned, but Joseph is regarded merely as the chosen protector of the young virgin,7 and Joseph on the journey to Bethlehem doubts whether he shall describe his charge as his wife or as his daughter; fearing to bring ridicule upon himself, on account of his age, if he called her his wife. Again, where in Matthew Mary is called ἡ γυνὴ of Joseph, the apocryphal Gospel carefully designates her merely as ἡ παῖς, and even avoids using the term παραλαβεῖν or substitutes διαφυλάξαι with which many of the Fathers concur.8 In the Protevangelium it is further related that Mary, having been received into Joseph’s house, was charged, together with other young women, with the fabrication of the veil for the temple, and that it fell to her lot to spin the true purple.—But whilst Joseph was absent on business Mary was visited by an angel, and Joseph on his return found her with child and called her to account, not as a husband, but as the guardian of her honour. Mary, however, had forgotten the words of the angel and protested her ignorance of the cause of her pregnancy. Joseph was perplexed and determined to remove her secretly from under his protection; but an angel appeared to him in a dream and reassured him by his explanation. The matter was then brought before the priest, and both [121]Joseph and Mary being charged with incontinence were condemned to drink the “bitter water,”9 ὕδωρ τῆς ἐλένξεως, but as they remained uninjured by it, they were declared innocent. Then follows the account of the taxing and of the birth of Jesus."

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24. DISAGREEMENTS OF THE CANONICAL GOSPELS IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF THE ANNUNCIATION.

"After the foregoing general sketch, we now proceed to examine the external circumstances which, according to our Gospels, attended the first communication of the future birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. Leaving out of sight, for the present, the special import of the annunciation, namely, that Jesus should be supernaturally begotten of the Holy Ghost, we shall, in the first place, consider merely the form of the announcement; by whom, when, and in what manner it was made."

The author next counts out the various differences between accounts of Luke and Matthew. He then describes how most authorities blend the two accounts as parts of the same, since they take it as history.

"But this arrangement of the incidents is, as Schleiermacher has already remarked, full of difficulty14; and it seems that what is related by one Evangelist is not only not presupposed, but excluded, by the other. For, in the first place, the conduct of the angel who appears to Joseph is not easily explained, if the same or another angel had previously appeared to Mary. The angel (in Matthew) speaks altogether as if his communication were the first in this affair: he neither refers to the message previously received by Mary, nor reproaches Joseph because he had not believed it; but more than all, the informing Joseph of the name of the expected child, and the giving him a full detail of the reasons why he should be so called, (Matt. i. 21) would have been wholly superfluous had the angel (according to Luke i. 34) already indicated this name to Mary."

As realised now by west, the name Yeshu or Isa or Yeshus are all deformations of the Sanskrit epithet Ishas (or equivalently in Sanskrit Ishah), for Lord or Deity; thought has been for several decades that he had travelled to India during the years missing from his official story, acquired knowledge from India, including of yoga (hence resurrection), and returned to India thereafter, living his life out; in Kashmir a village claims to have been where he lived, and claims to have his tomb. While there is divided opinion regarding the travel post resurrection, there is no outright refusal of that prior by authorities, and obviously the name IS a deformation of the Sanskrit word.

Author discusses the unusual behaviour of the young woman in not informing her betrothed of the Angela's visit announcing the coming event, and discusses the various defences offered by various authorities.

" ... Olshausen concurs, and adds his favourite general remark, that in relation to events so extraordinary the measure of the ordinary occurrences of the world is not applicable: a category under which, in this instance, the highly essential considerations of delicacy and propriety are included."

Shouldn't that be the tautological statement that renders unnecessary any discussion or thinking about the whole matter in toto, wiping out all thinking and leaving only an obedient acceptance of church proclamations? Or are there matters allowed to be ordinary enough regarding any part of the story?

"Since then, to suppose that the two accounts are parallel, and complete one another, leads unavoidably to results inconsistent with the sense of the Gospels, in so far as they evidently meant to represent the characters of Joseph and Mary as free from blemish; the supposition cannot be admitted, but the accounts mutually exclude each other. An angel did not appear, first to Mary, and also afterwards to Joseph; he can only have appeared either to the one or to the other. Consequently, it is only the one or the other relation which can be regarded as historical. And here different considerations would conduct to opposite decisions. The history in Matthew might appear the more probable from the rationalistic point of view, because it is more easy to interpret naturally an apparition in a dream; whilst that in [125]Luke might be preferred by the supranaturalist, because the manner in which the suspicion cast upon the holy virgin is refuted is more worthy of God. But in fact, a nearer examination proves, that neither has any essential claim to be advanced before the other. ... every criterion which might determine the adoption of the one, and the rejection of the other, disappears; and we find ourselves, in reference to both accounts, driven back by necessity to the mythical view."

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25. IMPORT OF THE ANGEL’S MESSAGE--FULFILLMENT OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH.

Author discusses the matter and phraseology of the announcement to Mary.

" ... This Jewish language reflects in addition a new light upon the question of the historic validity of the angelic apparition; for we must agree with Schleiermacher that the real angel Gabriel would hardly have proclaimed the advent of the Messiah in a phraseology so strictly Jewish:24 for which reason we are inclined to coincide with this theologian, and to ascribe this particular portion of the history, as also that which precedes and relates to the Baptist, to one and the same Jewish-christian author. ... "

It IS part of Jewish history, after all, birth of a king of Jews who was later accorded quite another mission, and suitable character, by church when separating from Jewish contacts in order to unite with Rome, for survival.

" ... As a confirmatory sign that a matter of this kind is nowise impossible to God, Mary is [127]referred to that which had occurred to her relative Elizabeth; whereupon she resigns herself in faith to the divine determination respecting her."

Would that reassurance include a similarity of a virgin birth, that is, John too having an earthly male parent only in name?

" ... Next is subjoined by the angel, or more probably by the narrator, an oracle from the Old Testament, introduced by the often recurring phrase, all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet [v. 22]. It is the prophecy from Isaiah (chap. vii. 14) which the conception of Jesus after this manner should accomplish: namely, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel—God-with-us."

"Many theologians of the present day are sufficiently impartial to admit, with regard to the Old Testament, in opposition to the ancient orthodox interpretation, that many of the prophecies originally referred to near events; but they are not sufficiently rash, with regard to the New Testament, to side with the rationalistic commentators, and to deny the decidedly Messianic application which the New Testament writers make of these prophecies; they are still too prejudiced to allow, that here and there the New Testament has falsely interpreted the Old. Consequently, they have recourse to the expedient of distinguishing a double sense in the prophecy; the one relating to a near and minor occurrence, the other to a future and more important event; and thus they neither offend against the plain grammatical and historical sense of the Old Testament passage on the one hand, nor distort or deny the signification of the New Testament passage on the other.30 Thus, in the prophecy of Isaiah under consideration, the spirit of prophecy, they contend, had a double intention: to announce a near occurrence, the delivery of the affianced bride of the prophet, and also a distinct event in the far distant future, namely the birth of the Messiah of a virgin. But a double sense so monstrous owes its origin to dogmatic perplexity alone. It has been adopted, as Olshausen himself remarks, in order to avoid the offensive admission that the New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, did not interpret the Old Testament rightly, or, more properly speaking, according to modern principles of exegesis, but explained it after the manner of their own age, which was not the most correct. ... Consequently, with regard to the prophecies brought forward in the New Testament, we may admit, according to circumstances, without further argument, that they are frequently interpreted and applied by the evangelists, in a sense which is totally different from that they originally bore."

"Whether the actual birth of Jesus of a virgin gave rise to this application of the prophecy, or whether this prophecy, interpreted beforehand as referring to the Messiah, originated the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin, remains to be determined."

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26. JESUS BEGOTTEN OF THE HOLY GHOST--CRISTICISM OF THE ORTHODOX OPINION.

"The statement of Matthew and of Luke concerning the mode of Jesus’s conception has, in every age, received the following interpretation by the church; that Jesus was conceived in Mary not by a human father, but by the Holy Ghost. And truly the gospel expressions seem, at first sight, to justify this interpretation; since the words πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς (Matt. i. 18) and ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω (Luke i. 34) preclude the participation of Joseph or any other man in the conception of the child in question. Nevertheless the terms πνεῦμα ἅγιον and δύναμις ὑψίστου do not represent the Holy Ghost in the sense of the church, as the third person in the Godhead, but rather the ‏רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים‎, Spiritus Dei as used in the Old Testament: God in his agency upon the world, and especially upon man. In short the words ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου in Matthew, and πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐπελεύσεται ἐπὶ σὲ κ.τ.λ. in Luke, express with sufficient clearness that the absence of human agency was supplied—not physically after the manner of heathen representations—but by the divine creative energy."

What "heathen representations", exactly? As in Leda and the swan? Nobody imagines that, in this case; but claim of total absence of a biological and genetic human male parent, and of virginity of the mother, is scientifically untenable; there have been cases of abnormality involving male gene provided within the mother due to her own conception involving an abnormality (an ingested twin brother?), but otherwise, why would it be necessary for divine to require, not only a young woman of purity of spirit, but a virgin never touched by human male until her first childbirth, to have a divine child born? In this case the god of church seems to act like more of a landlord availing first right to a bride of a tenant, a common enough custom in Europe - droit de seigneur!

" ... Nowhere in the New Testament is such an origin ascribed to Jesus, or even distinctly alluded to, except in these two accounts of his infancy in Matthew and in Luke.39 The history of the conception is omitted not only by Mark, but also by John, the supposed author of the fourth Gospel and an alleged inmate with the mother of Jesus subsequent to his death, who therefore would have been the most accurately informed concerning these occurrences. ... The most important consideration therefore is, that no retrospective allusion to this mode of conception occurs throughout the four Gospels; not only neither in John nor in Mark, but also neither in Matthew nor in Luke. Not only does Mary herself designate Joseph simply as the father of Jesus (Luke ii. 48), and the Evangelist speak of both as his parents, γονεῖς (Luke ii. 41),—an appellation which could only have been used in an ulterior sense by one who had just related the miraculous conception,—but all his contemporaries in general, according to our Evangelists, regarded him as a son of Joseph, a fact which was not unfrequently alluded to contemptuously and by way of reproach in his presence (Matt. xiii. 55; Luke iv. 22; John vi. 42), thus affording him an opportunity of making a decisive appeal to his miraculous conception, of which, however, he says not a single word. Should it be answered, that he did not desire to convince respecting the divinity of his person by this external evidence, and that he could have no hope of making an impression by such means on those who were in heart his opponents,—it must also be remembered, that, according to the testimony of the fourth Gospel, his own disciples, though they admitted him to be the son of God, still regarded him as the actual son of Joseph. ... "

"Just as little as in the Gospels, is anything in confirmation of the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus, to be found in the remaining New Testament writings. For when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as made of a woman, γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικὸς (Gal. iv. 4), this expression is not to be understood as an exclusion of paternal participation; since the addition made under the law, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, clearly shows that he would here indicate (in the form which is frequent in the Old and New Testament, for example Job xiv. 1; Matt. xi. 11) human nature with all its conditions. When Paul (Rom. i. 3, 4 compared with ix. 5) makes Christ according to the flesh, κατὰ σάρκα, descend from David, but declares him to be the son of God according to the Spirit of Holiness, κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης; no one will here identify the antithesis flesh and spirit with the maternal human participation, and the divine energy superseding the paternal participation in the conception of Jesus."

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27. RETROSPECT OF THE GENEALOGIES.

" ... Even the Manichæan Faustus asserted that it is impossible without contradiction to trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, as is done by our two genealogists, and yet assume that Joseph was not the father of Jesus; and Augustine had nothing convincing to answer when he remarked that it was necessary, on account of the superior dignity of the masculine gender, to carry the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was Mary’s husband if not by a natural by a spiritual alliance.41 In modern times also the construction of the genealogical tables in Matthew and in Luke has led many theologians to observe, that these authors considered Jesus as the actual son of Joseph.42 The very design of these tables is to prove Jesus to be of the lineage of David through Joseph; but what do they prove, if indeed Joseph was not the father of Jesus? The assertion that Jesus was the son of David, ὑὸς Δαβὶδ, which in Matthew (i. 1) prefaces the genealogy and announces its object, is altogether annulled by the subsequent denial of his conception by means of the Davidical Joseph. It is impossible, therefore, to think it probable that the genealogy and the history of the birth of Jesus emanate from the same author43; and we must concur with the theologians previously cited, that the genealogies are taken from a different source. Scarcely could it satisfy to oppose the remark, that as Joseph doubtlessly adopted Jesus, the genealogical table of the former became fully valid for the latter. For adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion of certain external family rights and inheritances; but such a relationship could in no wise lend a claim to the Messianic dignity, which was attached to the true blood and lineage of David. He, therefore, who had regarded Joseph as nothing more than the adopted father of Jesus, would hardly have given himself the trouble to seek out the Davidical descent of Joseph; but if indeed, besides the established belief that Jesus was the son of God, it still remained important to represent him as the son of David, the pedigree of Mary would have been preferred for this purpose; for, however contrary to custom, the maternal genealogy must have been admitted in a case where a human father did not exist. Least of all is it to be believed, that several authors would have engaged in the compilation of a genealogical table for Jesus which traced his descent through Joseph, so that two different genealogies of this kind are still preserved to us, if a closer relationship between Jesus and Joseph had not been admitted at the time of their composition. ... "

Exactly! And that being the key hurdle where church won't change its position, why not assume it's all a concoction superimposed over the real history of a king of Jews appropriated by Rome for keeping power?

But the author, going against logic, takes great pains to twist to the position that the genealogy has been inserted despite there being no relationship between Joseph and the son of Mary, just to justify the Jewish requirements for messianic position fulfilling the prophesies; this way, they keep their psychological balance by getting out of contradicting the church and coming to realisation that Rome lied for centuries; and, at the same time, they keep the racist, antisemitic disdain for Jewish part of the heritage of the church and it's figure of worship.

"Since, in this way, we discover both the genealogies to be memorials belonging to the time and circle of the primitive church, in which Jesus was still regarded as a naturally begotten man, the sect of the Ebionites cannot fail to occur to us; as we are told concerning them, that they held this view of the person of Christ at this early period. We should therefore have expected, more especially, to have found these genealogies in the old Ebionitish Gospels, of which we have still knowledge, and are not a little surprised to learn that precisely in these Gospels the genealogies were wanting. ... "

"How is the strange phenomenon, that these genealogies are not found among that very sect of Christians who retained the particular opinion upon which they were constructed, to be explained? A modern investigator has advanced the supposition, that the Jewish-christians omitted the genealogical tables from prudential motives, in order not to facilitate or augment the persecution which, under Domitian, and perhaps even earlier, threatened the family of David. But explanations, having no inherent connexion with the subject, derived from circumstances in themselves of doubtful historical validity, are admissible only as a last refuge, when no possible solution of the questionable phenomenon is to be found in the thing itself, as here in the principles of the Ebionitish system."

Is Strauss saying, or implying, that Rome did not persecute Jews while ruling them? That would certainly keep him on the right side of Rome, and the colonial occupation by Rome!

" ... It is well known that they distinguished in the Old Testament a twofold prophecy, male and female, pure and impure, of which the former only promised things heavenly and true, the latter things earthly and delusive; that proceeding from Adam and Abel, this from Eve and Cain; and both constituted an under current through the whole history of the revelation. It was only the pious men from Adam to Joshua whom they acknowledged as true prophets: the later prophets and men of God, among whom David and Solomon are named, were not only not recognized, but abhorred. We even find positive indications that David was an object of their particular aversion. There were many things which created in them a detestation of David (and Solomon). David was a bloody warrior; but to shed blood was, according to the doctrines of these Ebionites, one of the greatest of sins; David was known to have committed adultery, (Solomon to have been a voluptuary); and adultery was even more detested by this sect than murder. David was a performer on stringed instruments; this art, the invention of the Canaanites (Gen. iv. 21), was held by these Ebionites to be a sign of false prophecy; finally, the prophecies announced by David and those connected with him, (and Solomon,) had reference to the kingdoms of this world, of which the Gnosticising Ebionites desired to know nothing. Now the Ebionites who had sprung from common Judaism could not have shared this ground of aversion to the genealogies; since to the orthodox Jew David was an object of the highest veneration."

"Concerning a second point the notices are not so lucid and accordant as they should be; namely, whether it was a further development of the general Ebionitish doctrine concerning the person of the Christ, which led these Ebionites to reject the genealogies. According to Epiphanius, they fully recognized the Gnostic distinction between Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, and the Christ who descended upon him; and consequently might have been withheld from referring the genealogy to Jesus only perhaps by their abhorrence of David. On the other hand, from the whole tenor of the Clementines, and from one passage in particular, it has recently been inferred, and not without apparent reason, that the author of these writings had himself abandoned the view of a natural conception, and even birth of Jesus; whereby it is yet more manifest that the ground of the rejection of the genealogies by this sect was peculiar to it, and not common to the other Ebionites.

"Moreover positive indications, that the Ebionites who proceeded from Judaism possessed the genealogies, do not entirely fail. Whilst the Ebionites of Epiphanius and of the Clementines called Jesus only Son of God, but rejected the appellation Son of David, as belonging to the common opinion of the Jews60; other Ebionites were censured by the Fathers for recognizing Jesus only as the Son of David, to whom he is traced in the genealogies, and not likewise as the Son of God. ... "

Strauss ends with a remark to the effect that the church authorities did keep the genealogies despite the doctrine. He fails to conclude that it was due their being a fact.

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28. NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION.

"In the first place, the account in Matthew seemed susceptible of such an interpretation. Numerous rabbinical passages were cited to demonstrate, that it was consonant with Jewish notions to consider a son of pious parents to be conceived by the divine co-operation, and that he should be called the son of the Holy Spirit, without its being ever imagined that paternal participation was thereby excluded. It was consequently contended, that the section in [138]Matthew represented merely the intention of the angel to inform Joseph, not indeed that Mary had become pregnant in the absence of all human intercourse, but that notwithstanding her pregnancy she was to be regarded as pure, not as one fallen from virtue. ... The first expedient is to interpret Mary’s inquiry of the angel i. 34, thus: Can I who am already betrothed and married give birth to the Messiah, for as the mother of the Messiah I must have no husband? whereupon the angel replies, that God, through his power, could make something distinguished even of the child conceived of her and Joseph."

"If consequently, the difficulty of the natural explanation of the two accounts be equally great, still, with respect to both it must be alike attempted or rejected; and for the consistent Rationalist, a Paulus for example, the latter is the only course. ... Consequently, according to Paulus, the meaning of the angelic announcement is simply this: prior to her union with Joseph, Mary, under the influence of a pure enthusiasm in sacred things on the one hand, and by an human co-operation pleasing to God on the other, became the mother of a child who on account of this holy origin was to be called a son of God."

" ... He begins with Elizabeth, the patriotic and wise daughter of Aaron, as he styles her. She, having conceived the hope that she might give birth to one of God’s prophets, naturally desired moreover that he might be the first of prophets, the forerunner of the Messiah; and that the latter also might speedily be born. Now there was among her own kinsfolk a person suited in every respect for the mother of the Messiah, Mary, a young virgin, a descendant of David; nothing more was needful than to inspire her likewise with such a special hope. Whilst these intimations prepare us to anticipate a cleverly concerted plan on the part of Elizabeth in reference to her young relative, in the which we hope to become initiated; Paulus here suddenly lets [139]fall the curtain, and remarks, that the exact manner in which Mary was convinced that she should become the mother of the Messiah must be left historically undetermined ... It is probable, he thinks, that the angelic messenger visited Mary in the evening or even at night; indeed according to the correct reading of Luke i. 28, which has not the word angel, καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἰπε, without ὁ ἄγγελος, the evangelist here speaks only of some one who had come in. (As if in this case, the participle εἰσελθὼν must not necessarily be accompanied by τὶς; or, in the absence of the pronoun be referred to the subject, the angel Gabriel—ὁ ἄγγελος Γαβριὴλ, v. 26!) Paulus adds: that this visitant was the angel Gabriel was the subsequent suggestion of Mary’s own mind, after she had heard of the vision of Zacharias."

"Gabler, in a review of Paulus’s Commentary67 has fully exposed, with commensurate plainness of speech, the transaction which lies concealed under this explanation. ... "

"The author of the Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth is, in this instance, to be considered as the most worthy interpreter of Paulus; for though the former could not, in this part of his work, have made use of Paulus’s Commentary, yet, in exactly the same spirit, he unreservedly avows what the latter carefully veils. He brings into comparison a story in Josephus, according to which, in the very time of Jesus, a Roman knight won the chaste wife of a Roman noble to his wishes, by causing her to be invited by a priest of Isis into the temple of the goddess, under the pretext that the god Anubis desired to embrace her. In innocence and faith, the woman resigned herself, and would perhaps afterwards have believed she had given birth to the child of a god, had not the intriguer, with bitter scorn, soon after discovered to her the true state of the case. It is the opinion of the author that Mary, the betrothed bride of the aged Joseph, was in like manner deceived by some amorous and fanatic young man (in the sequel to the history he represents him to be Joseph of Arimathea), and that she on her part, in perfect innocence, continued to deceive others. It is evident that this interpretation does not differ from the ancient Jewish blasphemy, which we find in Celsus and in the Talmud; that Jesus falsely represented himself as born of a pure virgin, whereas, in fact, he was the offspring of the adultery of Mary with a certain Panthera]"

That, interestingly, is seen as negative, rather than more than common sense and information, on part of Jews - after all, who knew better about Romans and their conduct in Judea and Israel?

"This whole view, of which the culminating point is in the calumny of the Jews, cannot be better judged than in the words of Origen. If, says this author, they wished to substitute something else in the place of the history of the supernatural conception of Jesus, they should at any rate have made it happen in a more probable manner; they ought not, as it were against their will, to admit that Mary knew not Joseph, but they might have denied this feature, and yet have allowed Jesus to have been born of an ordinary human marriage; whereas the forced and extravagant character of their hypothesis betrays its falsehood.71 Is not this as much as to say, that if once some particular features of a marvellous narrative are doubted, it is inconsequent to allow others to remain unquestioned? each part of such an account ought to be subjected to critical examination. The correct view of the narrative before us is to be found, that is indirectly, in Origen. For when at one time he places together, as of the same kind, the miraculous conception of Jesus and the story of Plato’s conception by Apollo (though here, indeed, the meaning is that only ill-disposed persons could doubt such things72), and when at another time he says of the story concerning Plato, that it belongs to those mythi by which it was sought to exhibit the distinguished wisdom and power of great men (but here he does not include the narrative of Jesus’s conception), he in fact states the two premises, namely, the similarity of the two narratives and the mythical character of the one73; from which the inference of the merely mythical worth of the narrative of the conception of Jesus follows; a conclusion which can never indeed have occurred to his own mind."

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29. HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS VIEWED AS A MYTIIUS.

"If, says Gabler in his review of the Commentary of Paulus, we must relinquish the supernatural origin of Jesus, in order to escape the ridicule of our contemporaries, and if, on the other hand, the natural explanation leads to conclusions not only extravagant, but revolting; the adoption of the mythus, by which all these difficulties are obviated, is to be preferred. In the world of mythology many great men had extraordinary births, and were sons of the gods. Jesus himself spoke of his heavenly origin, and called God his father; besides, his title as Messiah was—Son of God. ... But according to historical truth, Jesus was the offspring of an ordinary marriage, between Joseph and Mary; an explanation which, it has been justly remarked, maintains at once the dignity of Jesus and the respect due to his mother.

"The proneness of the ancient world to represent the great men and benefactors of their race as the sons of the gods, has therefore been referred to, in order to explain the origin of such a mythus. Our theologians have accumulated examples from the Greco-Roman mythology and history. They have cited Hercules, and the Dioscuri; Romulus, and Alexander; but above all Pythagoras,75 and Plato. Of the latter philosopher Jerome speaks in a manner quite applicable to Jesus: sapientiæ principem non aliter arbitrantur, nisi de partu virginis editum."

" ... At all events such an inference must not be too hastily drawn from the expression “sons of God,” found likewise among the Jews, which as applied in the Old Testament to magistrates, (Ps. lxxxii. 6, or to theocratic kings, 2 Sam. vii. 14, Ps. ii. 7,) indicates only a theocratic, and not a physical or metaphysical relation. ... "

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30. RELATION OF JOSEPH TO MARY-BROTHERS OF JESUS.

" ... The opinion that Mary after the birth of Jesus became the wife of Joseph, was early ranked among the heresies,89 and the orthodox Fathers sought every means to escape from it and to combat it. They contended that according to the exegetical interpretation of ἕως οὗ, it sometimes affirmed or denied a thing, not merely up to a certain limit, but beyond that limitation and for ever; and that the words of Matthew οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὗ ἔτεκε κ.τ.λ. excluded a matrimonial connexion between Joseph and Mary for all time. In like manner it was asserted of the term πρωτότοκος, that it did not necessarily include the subsequent birth of other children, but that it merely excluded any previous birth. But in order to banish the thought of a matrimonial connexion between Mary and Joseph, not only grammatically but physiologically, they represented Joseph as a very old man, under whom Mary was placed for control and protection only; and the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament they regarded as the children of Joseph by a former marriage. But this was not all; soon it was insisted not only that Mary never became the wife of Joseph, but that in giving birth to Jesus she did not lose her virginity. But even the conservation of Mary’s virginity did not long continue to satisfy: perpetual virginity was likewise required on the part of Joseph. It was not enough that he had no connexion with Mary; it was also necessary that his entire life should be one of celibacy. Accordingly, though Epiphanius allows that Joseph had sons by a former marriage, Jerome rejects the supposition as an impious and audacious invention; and from that time the brothers of Jesus were degraded to the rank of cousins."

" ... Had we merely the following passages—Matt. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3, where the people of Nazareth, astonished at the wisdom of their countryman, in order to mark his well known origin, immediately after having spoken of τέκτων (the carpenter) his father, and his mother Mary, mention by name his ἀδελφοὺς (brothers) James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, together with his sisters whose names are not given100; again Matt. xii. 46, Luke viii. 19, when his mother and his brethren come to Jesus; John ii. 12, where Jesus journeys with his mother and his brethren to Capernaum; Acts i. 14, where they are mentioned in immediate connexion with his mother—if we had these passages only, we could not for a moment hesitate to recognize here real brothers of Jesus at least on the mother’s side, children of Joseph and Mary; not only on account of the proper signification of the word ἀδελφὸς, but also in consequence of its continual conjunction with Mary and Joseph. ... "

Author discusses various names of brothers, apostles, and various repeated names.

"Thus the web of this identification gives way at all points, and we are forced back to the position whence we set out; so that we have again real brothers of Jesus, also two cousins distinct from these brothers, though bearing the same names with two of them, besides some apostles of the same names with both brothers and cousins. ... "

"We have consequently no ground for denying that the mother of Jesus bore her husband several other children besides Jesus, younger, and perhaps also older; the latter, because the representation in the New Testament that Jesus was the first-born may belong no less to the mythus than the representation of the Fathers that he was an only son.

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31. VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH.

" ... There is no trace in the narrative either of any communication preceding Elizabeth’s address, or of interruptions occasioned by farther explanations on the part of Mary. On the contrary, as it is a supernatural revelation which acquaints Mary with the pregnancy of Elizabeth, so also it is to a revelation that Elizabeth’s immediate recognition of Mary, as the chosen mother of the Messiah, is attributed. ... But the record does not represent the thing as if the excitement of the mother were the determining cause of the movement of the child; on the contrary (v. 41), the emotion of the mother follows the movement of the child, and Elizabeth’s own account states, that it was the salutation of Mary (v. 44), not indeed from its particular signification, but merely as the voice of the mother of the Messiah, which produced the movement of the unborn babe: undeniably assuming something supernatural. ... "

" ... But if, indeed, Mary’s hymn is to be understood as the work of the Holy Spirit, it is surprising that a speech emanating immediately from the divine source of inspiration should not be more striking for its originality, but should be so interlarded with reminiscences from the Old Testament, borrowed from the song of praise spoken by the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. ii.) under analogous circumstances.108 Accordingly we must admit that the compilation of this hymn, consisting of recollections from the Old Testament, was put together in a natural way; but allowing its composition to have been perfectly natural, it cannot be ascribed to the artless Mary, but to him who poetically wrought out the tradition in circulation respecting the scene in question."

" ... The view of this narrative given by the anonymous E. F. in Henke’s Magazine109 is, that it does not pourtray events as they actually did occur, but as they might have occurred; that much which the sequel taught of the destiny of their sons was carried back into the speeches of these women, which were also enriched by other features gleaned from tradition; that a true fact however lies at the bottom, namely an actual visit of Mary to Elizabeth, a joyous conversation, and the expression of gratitude to God; all which might have happened solely in virtue of the high importance attached by Orientals to the joys of maternity, even though the two mothers had been at that time ignorant of the destination of their children. This author is of opinion that Mary, when pondering over at a later period the remarkable life of her son, may often have related the happy meeting with her cousin and [151]their mutual expressions of thankfulness to God, and that thus the history gained currency. ... "

Strauss argues that since this visit seems arranged to support the myth, it must be discarded as in historical. Which makes very little sense, since he hasn't discarded virgin birth in clear terms, and that really is the biggest hurdle to the story being completely believable. There is nothing strange or unbelievable in two cousins meeting, or a baby in womb moving at approach, touch or voice of a kin.

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October 17, 2021 - October 18, 2021.

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CHAPTER IV.

BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 32. The census

33. Particular circumstances of the birth of Jesus. The circumcision

34. The Magi and their star. The flight into Egypt, and the murder of the children in Bethlehem. Criticism of the supranaturalistic view

35. Attempts at a natural explanation of the history of the Magi. Transition to the mythical explanation

36. The purely mythical explanation of the narrative concerning the Magi, and of the events with which it is connected

37. Chronological relation between the visit of the Magi, together with the flight into Egypt, and the presentation in the temple recorded by Luke

38. The presentation of Jesus in the temple

39. Retrospect. Difference between Matthew and Luke as to the original residence of the parents of Jesus

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32. THE CENSUS

"With respect to the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke agree in representing it as taking place at Bethlehem; but whilst the latter enters into a minute detail of all the attendant circumstances, the former merely mentions the event as it were incidentally, referring to it once in an appended sentence as the sequel to what had gone before (i. 25), and again as a presupposed occurrence (ii. 1). The one Evangelist seems to assume that Bethlehem was the habitual residence of the parents; but according to the other they are led thither by very particular circumstances. ... census, decreed by Augustus at the time when Cyrenius (Quirinus) was governor of Syria, was the occasion of the journey of the parents of Jesus, who usually resided at Nazareth, to Bethlehem where Jesus was born"

But historical research, since, is to the effect that this presumption about their residence in Nazareth is not merely incorrect but not possible; the town came to exist later, and there is another explanation about the assumption.

"Matthew places the birth of Jesus shortly before the death of Herod the Great, whom he represents (ii. 19) as dying during the abode of Jesus in Egypt. Luke says the same indirectly, for when speaking of the announcement of the birth of the Baptist, he refers it to the days of Herod the Great, and he places the birth of Jesus precisely six months later; so that according to Luke, also, Jesus was born, if not, like John, previous to the death of Herod I., shortly after that event. Now, after the death of Herod the country of Judea fell to his son Archelaus (Matt. ii. 22), who, after a reign of something less than ten years, was deposed and banished by Augustus,7 at which time Judea was first constituted a Roman province, and began to be ruled by Roman functionaries.8 Thus the Roman census in question must have been made either under Herod the Great, or at the commencement of the reign of Archelaus. ... Reference has been made ... to the oath of allegiance to Augustus which, according to Josephus, the Jews were forced to take even during the lifetime of Herod.12 From which it is inferred that Augustus, since he had it in contemplation after the death of Herod to restrict the power of his sons, was very likely to have commanded a census in the last years of that prince.13 But it seems more probable that it took place shortly after the death of Herod, from the circumstance that Archelaus went to Rome concerning the matter of succession, and that during his absence the Roman procurator Sabinus occupied Jerusalem, and oppressed the Jews by every possible means."

" ... we can no longer perceive what inducement could have instigated Mary, in her particular situation, to make so long a journey, since, unless we adopt the airy hypothesis of Olshausen and others, that Mary was the heiress of property in Bethlehem, she had nothing to do there.

"The Evangelist, however, knew perfectly well what she had to do there; namely, to fulfil the prophecy of Micah (v. 1), by giving birth, in the city of David, to the Messiah. Now as he set out with the supposition that the habitual abode of the parents of Jesus was Nazareth, so he sought after a lever which should set them in motion towards Bethlehem, at the time of the birth of Jesus. Far and wide nothing presented itself but the celebrated census; he seized it the more unhesitatingly because the obscurity of his own view of the historical relations of that time, veiled from him the many difficulties connected with such a combination. If this be the true history of the statement in Luke, we must agree with K. Ch. L. Schmidt when he says, that to attempt to reconcile the statement of Luke concerning the ἀπογραφὴ with chronology, would be to do the narrator too much honour; he wished to place Mary in Bethlehem, and therefore times and circumstances were to accommodate themselves to his pleasure.

"Thus we have here neither a fixed point for the date of the birth of Jesus, nor an explanation of the occasion which led to his being born precisely at Bethlehem. If then—it may justly be said—no other reason why Jesus should have been born at Bethlehem can be adduced than that given by Luke, we have absolutely no guarantee that Bethlehem was his birth-place."

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33. PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS--THE CIRCUMCISION.

" ... Soon, however, whilst still without the city—as appears from the context and the reading of several MSS.—Mary is seized with the pains of child-bearing, and Joseph brings her into a cave situated by the road side, where, veiled by a cloud of light, all nature pausing in celebration of the event, she brings her child into the world, and after her delivery is found, by women called to her assistance, still a virgin.28 The legend of the birth of Jesus in a cave was known to Justin29 and to Origen,30 who, in order to reconcile it with the account in Luke that he was laid in a manger, suppose a manger situated within the cave. Many modern commentators agree with them31; whilst others prefer to consider the cave itself as φάτνη, in the sense of foddering-stall.32 For the birth of Jesus in a cave, Justin appeals to the prophecy in Isaiah xxviii. 16: οὗτος (the righteous) οἰκήσει ἐν ὑψηλῷ σπηλαίῳ πέτρας ἱσχυρᾶς. In like manner, for the statement that on the third day the child Jesus, when brought from the cave into the stable, was worshipped by the oxen and the asses, the Historia de Nativitate Mariae,33 etc. refers to Isaiah i. 3: cognovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe domini sui. In several apocryphas, between the Magi and the women who assist at the birth, the shepherds are forgotten; but they are mentioned in the Evangelium infantiae arabicum,34 where it says, that when they arrived at the cave, and had kindled a fire of rejoicing, the heavenly host appeared to them."

This being found virgin after childbirth is taking the virgin bit too far!

" ... These shepherds therefore on perceiving, whilst in the fields by night, a luminous appearance in the air—a phenomenon which travellers say is not uncommon in those regions—they interpret it as a divine intimation that the stranger in their foddering-stall is delivered of the Messiah; and as the meteoric light extends and moves to and fro, they take it for a choir of angels chaunting hymns of praise. Returning home they find their anticipations confirmed by the event, and that which at first they merely conjectured to be the sense and interpretation of the phenomenon, they now, after the manner of the East, represent as words actually spoken."

" ... For had not the parents of Jesus been strangers, and had they not come to Bethlehem in company with so large a concourse of strangers as the census might have occasioned, the cause which obliged Mary to accept a stable for her place of [160]delivery would no longer have existed. But, on the other hand, the incident, that Jesus was born in a stable and saluted in the first instance by shepherds, is so completely in accordance with the spirit of the ancient legend, that it is evident the narrative may have been derived purely from this source. Theophylact, in his time, pointed out its true character, when he says: the angels did not appear to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem who were full of all malice, but to the shepherds, in the fields, on account of their simplicity and innocence, and because they by their mode of life were the successors of the patriarchs.40 It was in the field by the flocks that Moses was visited by a heavenly apparition (Exod. iii. 1 ff.); and God took David, the forefather of the Messiah, from his sheepfolds (at Bethlehem), to be the shepherd of his people. Psalm lxxviii. 70 (comp. 1 Sam. xvi. 11). The mythi of the ancient world more generally ascribed divine apparitions to countrymen41 and shepherds42; the sons of the gods, and of great men were frequently brought up among shepherds.43 In the same spirit of the ancient legend is the apocryphal invention that Jesus was born in a cave, and we are at once reminded of the cave of Jupiter and of the other gods; even though the misunderstood passage of Isaiah xxxiii. 16 may have been the immediate occasion of this incident.44 Moreover the night, in which the scene is laid,—(unless one refers here to the rabbinical representations, according to which, the deliverance by means of the Messiah, like the deliverance from Egypt, should take place by night45)—forms the obscure background against which the manifested glory of the Lord shone so much the more brilliantly, which, as it is said to have glorified the birth of Moses,46 could not have been absent from that of the Messiah, his exalted antitype."

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34. THE MAGI AND THEIR STAR--THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND THE MURDER OF THE CHILDREN IN BETHLEHEM--CRITICISM OF THE SUPRANATURALISTIC VIEW.

" ... The object of both narratives is to describe the solemn introduction of the Messianic infant, the heralding of his birth undertaken by heaven itself, and his first reception among men.53 In both, attention is called to the new-born Messiah by a celestial phenomenon; according to Luke, it is an angel clothed in brightness, according to Matthew, it is a star. As the apparitions are different, so accordingly are the recipients; the angel addresses simple shepherds; the star is discovered by eastern magi, who are able to interpret for themselves the voiceless sign. Both parties are directed to Bethlehem; the shepherds by the words of the angel, the magi by the instructions they obtain in Jerusalem; and both do homage to the infant; the poor shepherds by singing hymns of praise, the magi by costly presents from their native country. But from this point the two narratives begin to diverge widely. In Luke all proceeds happily; the shepherds return with gladness in their hearts, the child experiences no molestation, he is presented in the temple on the appointed day, thrives and grows up in tranquillity. In Matthew, on the contrary, affairs take a tragical turn. The inquiry of the wise [163]men in Jerusalem concerning the new-born King of the Jews, is the occasion of a murderous decree on the part of Herod against the children of Bethlehem, a danger from which the infant Jesus is rescued only by a sudden flight into Egypt, whence he and his parents do not return to the Holy Land till after the death of Herod."

" ... But as we have recognized many indications of the unhistorical character of the announcement by the shepherds given in Luke, the ground is left clear for that of Matthew, which must be judged of according to its inherent credibility."

It has been since noticed, that Chinese records speak of a sudden bright star seen in the direction; knowledge of science, and particularly universe, has grown, and has made people conjecture that it was perhaps a supernova seen at the time.

" ... That eastern magi should have knowledge of a King of the Jews to whom they owed religious homage might indeed excite our surprise; but contenting ourselves here with remarking, that seventy years later an expectation did prevail in the east that a ruler of the world would arise from among the Jewish people, we pass on to a yet more weighty difficulty. ... "

The first part is easily dealt with - the astronomical event was noticed, and perhaps there might have been some thought that it had corresponding earthly event of significance; or perhaps there were people who interpreted the event. The second part is questionable.

" ... According to this narrative it appears, that astrology is right when it asserts that the birth of great men and important revolutions in human affairs are indicated by astral phenomena; an opinion long since consigned to the region of superstition. ... "

That last part is an arrogance based on ignorance, as usual.

" ... If therefore it be unadvisable to admit an extraordinary divine intervention,55 and if the position that in the ordinary course of nature, important occurrences on this earth are attended by changes in the heavenly bodies, be abandoned, the only remaining explanation lies in [164]the supposition of an accidental coincidence. But to appeal to chance is in fact either to say nothing, or to renounce the supranaturalistic point of view. ... "

It is rather amusing that precisely those that oppose astrology, homeopathy, and any non abrahmic faiths, are so weighed down by centuries of imposition of later abrahmic faiths that they are unable to contradict the obvious flaws such as virgin birth and more, without declaring atheism at cost of reason, and yet they cannot see that opposing the particular institutions, their imposition and the flaws in their teachings, do not amount to reputations of either other religions, astrology or homeopathy. And yet, recently, a German scientist fed up with claims of homeopathy, when set out to disprove it scientifically once for all, discovered to great surprise that it held - and had progress of scientific thought as a reward.

Strauss misses the obvious here - it's not whether the star made things happen that matters first, it's whether such an event, which was so noticeable that men arrived from lands far away, did occur; that it was so, is now known, due to Chinese historical records. And thereafter, whether one takes it as signoficator of the birth of someone special, or merely coincidence, is as unimportant in context of universal scheme, as what different medicines comfort you when you have flu. Astrologically, it isn't that a celestial event produces a birth of a particular person predicted - that belongs to prophesies rather in another sphere - but that it relates to events, including childbirth at the time, in general. But if every child born at such a time ended up crucified, it's unknown, at the very least; and so Strauss relating this correlating to astrology rather than Jewish predictions is only due to his writing off all older knowledge because he questions church, even though he's unable to come to obvious conclusions about the latter, and consequently comprehending little.

" ... But if it be once admitted, that God interposed supernaturally to blind the mind of Herod and to suggest to the magi that they should not return to Jerusalem, we are constrained to ask, why did not God in the first instance inspire the magi to shun Jerusalem and proceed directly to Bethlehem, whither Herod’s attention would not then have been so immediately attracted, and thus the disastrous sequel perhaps have been altogether avoided?61 The supranaturalist has no answer to this question but the old-fashioned argument that it was good for the infants to die, because they were thus freed by transient suffering from much misery, and more especially from the danger of sinning against Jesus with the unbelieving Jews; whereas now they had the honour of losing their lives for the sake of Jesus, and thus of ranking as martyrs, and so forth."

Did it ever occur to Strauss that this insistence on acceptance of a faith was peculiar to Rome, and sign of a worldly power?

Strauss discusses the description about magi and the star.

"The magi leave Jerusalem by night, the favourite time for travelling in the east. The star, which they seem to have lost sight of since their departure from home, again appears and goes before them on the road to Bethlehem, until at length it remains stationary over the house that contains the wondrous child and its parents. The way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem lies southward; now the true path of erratic stars is either from west to east, as that of the planets and of some comets, or from east to west, as that of other comets; the orbits of many comets do indeed tend from north to south, but the true motion of all these bodies is so greatly surpassed by their apparent motion [166]from east to west produced by the rotation of the earth on its axis, that it is imperceptible except at considerable intervals. Even the diurnal movement of the heavenly bodies, however, is less obvious on a short journey than the merely optical one, arising from the observer’s own change of place, in consequence of which a star that he sees before him seems, as long as he moves forward, to pass on in the same direction through infinite space; it cannot therefore stand still over a particular house and thus induce a traveller to halt there also; on the contrary, the traveller himself must halt before the star will appear stationary. ... "

It's obvious that the reappearance South immediately suggests a comet, or another body, not within the Kuiper Belt; many smaller planets, or bodies not yet designated planets, have been found in last two to three decades, with orbits not confirming with the main planets and generally with the main disk of the solar system, leading to an expectation of yet another major planet, with an outside orbit - Sedna has an orbit well over 11,000 years, and a few have longer ones - and its orbit is unknown; but the description "bright star may not fit a planet with an outside orbit, unless it's huge, and then it wouldn't come close like a comet does to sun, without causing havoc to all life on earth, and disturbing orbits of every planet known. A nova or supernova on the other hand may appear any place in sky, but be distant in fact, and certainly not travel except with other stars, nor appear stationary above one house.

But occult phenomenon are another story.

Then again, that hovering over a house might be the lie that adds to fablisation of history. In shirt, maybe there were men travelling to see where the star - say comet, or supernova - led them, and inquired, and heard of a child born in David's line; and church had the star standing over the house written in to embellish facts. Strauss doesn't think of this, the obvious, but must junk the star! He has far too much faith in church, even when seemingly questioning every detail of the story - for he invariably keeps swerving away from conclusion about obvious lies by church, and makes blunders such as concluding there was no star.

"In this passage the prophet, speaking in the name of Jehovah, says: When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. We may venture to attribute, even to the most orthodox expositor, enough clear-sightedness to perceive that the subject of the first half of the sentence is also the object of the second, namely the people of Israel, who here, as elsewhere, (e.g. Exod. iv. 22, Sirach xxxvi. 14), are collectively called the Son of God, and whose past deliverance under Moses out of their Egyptian bondage is the fact referred to: that consequently, the prophet was not contemplating either the Messiah or his sojourn in Egypt. ... "

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35. ATTEMPTS AT A NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE MAGI-TRANSITION TO THE MYTHICAL EXPLANATION.

"The most remarkable supposition adopted by those who regard ἀστὴρ as a conjunction of planets, is that they hereby obtain a fixed point in accredited history, to which the narrative of Matthew may be attached. According to Kepler’s calculation, corrected by Ideler, there occurred, three years before the death of Herod, in the year of Rome 747, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign Pisces. The conjunction of these planets is repeated in the above sign, to which astrologers attribute a special relation to Palestine, about every 800 years, ... "

Unless conjunction here is in the sense of almost occupation, not the usual meaning as in their being seen close together, 800 is too long; almost every configuration of the two repeats every sixty years, and their being close happens every fourteen years roughly.

"The difficulties connected with the erroneous interpretations of passages from the Old Testament are, from the natural point of view, eluded by denying that the writers of the New Testament are responsible for the falsity of these interpretations. It is said that the prophecy of Micah is applied to the Messiah and his birth in Bethlehem by the Sanhedrim alone, and that Matthew has not committed himself to their interpretation by one word of approval. But when the evangelist proceeds to narrate how the issue corresponded with the interpretation, he sanctions it by the authoritative seal of fact."

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36. THE PURELY MYTHICAL EXPLANATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONCERNING THE MAGI, AND OF THE EVENTS WITH WHICH IT IS CONNECTED.

" ... The prophecy of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 17), A star shall come out of Jacob, was the cause—not indeed, as the Fathers supposed, that magi actually recognized a newly-kindled star as that of the Messiah, and hence journeyed to Jerusalem—but that legend represented a star to have appeared at the birth of Jesus, and to have been recognized by astrologers as the star of the Messiah. ... "

" ... The future greatness of Mithridates was thought to be prognosticated by the appearance of a comet in the year of his birth, and in that of his accession to the throne93; [174]and a comet observed shortly after the death of Julius Cæsar, was supposed to have a close relation to that event.94 These ideas were not without influence on the Jews; at least we find traces of them in Jewish writings of a later period, in which it is said that a remarkable star appeared at the birth of Abraham.95 When such ideas were afloat, it was easy to imagine that the birth of the Messiah must be announced by a star, especially as, according to the common interpretation of Balaam’s prophecy, a star was there made the symbol of the Messiah. It is certain that the Jewish mind effected this combination; for it is a rabbinical idea that at the time of the Messiah’s birth, a star will appear in the east and remain for a long time visible. ... "

" ... In the time of Jesus it was the general belief that stars were always the forerunners of great events; hence the Jews of that period thought that the birth of the Messiah would necessarily be announced by a star, and this supposition had a specific sanction in Num. xxiv. 17. The early converted Jewish Christians could confirm their faith in Jesus, and justify it in the eyes of others, only by labouring to prove that in him were realized all the attributes lent to the Messiah by the Jewish notions of their age—a proposition that might be urged the more inoffensively and with the less chance of refutation, the more remote lay the age of Jesus, and the more completely the history of his childhood was shrouded in darkness. Hence it soon ceased to be matter of doubt that the anticipated appearance of a star was really coincident with the birth of Jesus.99 This being once presupposed, it followed as a matter of course that the observers of this appearance were eastern magi; first, because none could better interpret the sign than astrologers, and the east was supposed to be the native region of their science; and secondly, because it must have seemed fitting that the Messianic star which had been seen by the spiritual eye of the ancient magus Balaam, should, on its actual appearance be first recognized by the bodily eyes of later magi."

"To represent a murderous decree as having been directed by Herod against Jesus, was the interest of the primitive christian legend. In all times legend has glorified the infancy of great men by persecutions and attempts on their life; the greater the danger that hovered over them, the higher seems their value; the more unexpectedly their deliverance is wrought, the more evident is the esteem in which they are held by heaven. Hence in the history of the childhood of Cyrus in Herodotus, of Romulus in Livy,104 and even later of Augustus in Suetonius,105 we find this trait; neither has the Hebrew legend neglected to assign such a distinction to Moses. ... "

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37. CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION BETWEEN THE VISIT OF THE MAGI, TOGETHER WITH THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, AND THE PRESENTATION. IN THE TEMPLE RECORDED BY LUKE.

"Thus in any case, they who place the presentation in the temple after the visit of the magi, must also determine to postpone it until after the return from Egypt. But even this arrangement clashes with the evangelical statement; for it requires us to insert, between the birth of Jesus and his presentation in the temple, the following events: the arrival of the magi, the flight into Egypt, the Bethlehem massacre, the death of Herod, and the return of the parents of Jesus out of Egypt—obviously too much to be included in the space of forty days. It must therefore be supposed that the presentation of the child, and the first appearance of the mother in the temple, were procrastinated beyond the time appointed by the law. This expedient, however, runs counter to the narrative of Luke, who expressly says, that the visit to the temple took place at the legal time. But in either case the difficulty is the same; the parents of Jesus could, according to Matthew’s account, as little think of a journey to Jerusalem after their return from Egypt, as immediately previous to their departure thither. For if Joseph, on his return from Egypt, was warned not to enter Judea, because Archelaus was Herod’s successor in that province, he would least of all venture to Jerusalem, the very seat of the redoubted government."

" ... For we are told that Herod’s decree included all the children in Bethlehem up to the age of two years; we must therefore necessarily infer, that even if Herod, to make sure of his object, exceeded the term fixed by the magi, the star had been visible to these astrologers for more than a year. Now the narrator seems to suppose the appearance of the star to have been cotemporary with the birth of Jesus. Viewing the narratives in this order, the parents of Jesus first journeyed from Bethlehem, where the child was born, to Jerusalem, there to present the legal offerings; they next returned to Bethlehem, where (according to Matt. ii. 1 and 5) they were found by the magi; then followed the flight into Egypt, and after the return from thence, the settlement at Nazareth. The first and most urgent question that here suggests itself is this: What had the parents of Jesus to do a second time in Bethlehem, which was not their home, and where their original business connected with the census must surely have been despatched in the space of forty days? ... "

"If, then, the presentation of Jesus in the temple can have taken place neither earlier nor later than the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt; and if the flight into Egypt can have taken place neither earlier nor later than the presentation in the temple; it is impossible that both these occurrences really happened, and, at the very utmost, only one can be historical."

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38. THE PRESENTATION OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE.

"The narrative of the presentation of Jesus in the temple (Luke ii. 22) seems, at the first glance, to bear a thoroughly historical stamp. A double law, on the one hand, prescribing to the mother an offering of purification, on the other, requiring the redemption of the first-born son, leads the parents of Jesus to Jerusalem and to the temple. ... "

Strauss discusses contradictions.

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39. RETROSPECT. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MATTHEW AND LUKE AS TO THE ORIGINAL RESIDENCE OF THE PARENTS OP JESUS.

"In the foregoing examinations we have called in question the historical credibility of the Gospel narratives concerning the genealogy, birth, and childhood of Jesus, on two grounds: first, because the narratives taken separately contain much that will not bear an historical interpretation; and secondly, because the parallel narratives of Matthew and Luke exclude each other, so that it is impossible for both to be true, and one must necessarily be false; this imputation however may attach to either, and consequently to both. ... We refer to the divergency that exists between Matthew and Luke, in relation to the original dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus."

Author discusses the different dwelling places of Joseph and Mary, given or assumed in, or inferred from, different sources, and various scholars' interpretations.

" ... Hitherto, however, we have only obtained the negative result, that the evangelical statements, according to which the parents of Jesus lived at first in another place than that in which they subsequently settled, and Jesus was born elsewhere than in the home of his parents, are destitute of any guarantee; we have yet to seek for a positive conclusion by inquiring what was really the place of his birth."

" ... In general, if Jesus were really born in Bethlehem, though but fortuitously (according to Luke’s representation), it is incomprehensible, considering the importance of this fact to the article of his messiahship, that even his own adherents should always call him the Nazarene, instead of opposing to this epithet, pronounced by his opponents with polemical emphasis, the honourable title of the Bethlehemite."

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October 18, 2021 - October 19, 2021.

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CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS.

§ 40. Jesus, when twelve years old, in the temple

41. This narrative also mythical

42. On the external life of Jesus up to the time of his public appearance

43. The intellectual development of Jesus

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40. JESUS, WHEN TWELVE YEARS OLD, IN THE TEMPLE.

"The Gospel of Matthew passes in silence over the entire period from the return of the parents of Jesus out of Egypt, to the baptism of Jesus by John: and even Luke has nothing to tell us of the long interval between the early childhood of Jesus and his maturity, beyond a single incident—his demeanour on a visit to the temple in his twelfth year. ... "

"In his twelfth year, the period at which, according to Jewish usage, the boy became capable of an independent participation in the sacred rites, the parents of Jesus, as this narrative informs us, took him for the first time to the Passover. At the expiration of the feast, the parents bent their way homewards; that their son was missing gave them no immediate anxiety, because they supposed him to be among their travelling companions, and it was not until after they had accomplished a day’s journey, and in vain sought their son among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, that they turned back to Jerusalem to look for him there. ... "

"Returned to Jerusalem, they find their son on the third day in the temple, doubtless in one of the outer halls, in the midst of an assembly of doctors, engaged in a conversation with them, and exciting universal astonishment. ... "

"The narrative proceeds to tell us how the mother of Jesus reproached her son when she had found him thus, asking him why he had not spared his parents the anguish of their sorrowful search? To this Jesus returns an answer which forms the point of the entire narrative; he asks whether they might not have known that he was to be sought nowhere else than in the house of his Father, in the temple? ... "

" ... The parents of Jesus, or at least Mary, of whom it is repeatedly noticed that she carefully kept in her heart the extraordinary communications concerning her son, ought not to have been in the dark a single moment as [195]to the meaning of his language on this occasion. But even at the presentation in the temple, we are told that the parents of Jesus marvelled at the discourse of Simeon (v. 33), which is merely saying in other words that they did not understand him. And their wonder is not referred to the declaration of Simeon that their boy would be a cause, not only of the rising again, but of the fall of many in Israel, and that a sword would pierce through the heart of his mother (an aspect of his vocation and destiny on which nothing had previously been communicated to the parents of Jesus, and at which therefore they might naturally wonder); for these disclosures are not made by Simeon until after the wonder of the parents, which is caused only by Simeon’s expressions of joy at the sight of the Saviour, who would be the glory of Israel, and a light even to the Gentiles. ... We must therefore draw this conclusion: if the parents of Jesus did not understand these expressions of their son when twelve years old, those earlier communications cannot have happened; or, if the earlier communications really occurred, the subsequent expressions of Jesus cannot have remained incomprehensible to them. ... "

"The twofold form of conclusion, that the mother of Jesus kept all these sayings in her heart (v. 51), and that the boy grew in wisdom and stature, and so forth, we have already recognised as a favourite form of conclusion and transition in the heroic legend of the Hebrews; in particular, that which relates to the growth of the boy is almost verbally parallel with a passage relating to Samuel, as in two former instances similar expressions appeared to have been borrowed from the history of Samson."

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41. THIS NARRATIVE ALSO MYTHICAL.

"According to Jewish custom and opinion, the twelfth year formed an epoch in development to which especial proofs of awakening genius were the rather attached, because in the twelfth year, as with us in the fourteenth, the boy was regarded as having outgrown the period of childhood.25 Accordingly it [197]was believed of Moses that in his twelfth year he left the house of his father, to become an independent organ of the divine revelations. ... "

Wasn't Moses brought up by the daughter of the pharaoh, in the palace of pharaoh, and grew up with Ramses, seen as the next pharaoh until he realised he was a Jew, and chose his people?

Strauss speaks of the Jewish tradition of depicting other great men as having shown their capabilities beginning twelfth year, a Luke's habit of glorifying every stage of Jesus's life. He also discusses other authors who opine that this incident is not as mythified as others.

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42. ON THE EXTERNAL LIFE OF JESUS UP TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC APPEARANCE.

"First, as to his place of residence, all that we learn explicitly is this: that both at the beginning and at the end of this obscure period he dwelt at Nazareth. According to Luke ii. 51, Jesus when twelve years old returned thither with his parents, and according to Matthew iii. 13, Mark i. 9, he, when thirty years old (comp. Luke iii. 23), came from thence to be baptized by John. Thus our evangelists appear to suppose, that Jesus had in the interim resided in Galilee, and, more particularly, in Nazareth. This supposition, however, does not exclude journeys, such as those to the feasts in Jerusalem.

"The employment of Jesus during the years of his boyhood and youth seems, from an intimation in our gospels, to have been determined by the trade of his father, who is there called a τέκτων (Matt. xiii. 55). This Greek word, used to designate the trade of Joseph, is generally understood in the sense of faber [199]lignarius (carpenter); a few only, on mystical grounds, discover in it a faber ferrarius (blacksmith), aurarius (goldsmith), or cæmentarius (mason). ... "

Strauss discusses whether Jesus is considered a carpenter, and what is known about the financial circumstances of the family.

" ... There is only one other particular bearing on the point in question, namely, that Mary presented, as an offering of purification, doves (Luke ii. 24),—according to Lev. xii. 8, the offering of the poor: which certainly proves that the author of this information conceived the parents of Jesus to have been in by no means brilliant circumstances; but what shall assure us that he also was not induced to make this representation by unhistorical motives? ... "

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43. THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.

"Whether or in what degree Jesus received the learned education of a rabbin, is also left untold in our canonical Gospels. From such passages as Matt. vii. 29, where it is said that Jesus taught not as the scribes, οὐχ ὡς οἱ γραμματεῖς, we can only infer that he did not adopt the method of the doctors of the law, and it does not follow that he had never enjoyed the education of a scribe (γραμματεὺς). On the other hand, not only was Jesus called ῥαββὶ and ῥαββουνὶ by his disciples (Matt. xxvi. 25, 49; Mark ix. 5, xi. 21, xiv. 45; John iv. 31, ix. 2, xi. 8, xx. 16: comp. i. 38, 40, 50), and by supplicating sufferers (Mark x. 5), but even the pharisaic ἄρχων Nicodemus (John iii. 2) did not refuse him this title. We cannot, however, conclude from hence that Jesus had received the scholastic instruction of a rabbin;49 for the salutation Rabbi, as also the privilege of reading in the synagogue (Luke iv. 16 ff.), a particular which has likewise been appealed to, belonged not only to graduated rabbins, but to every teacher who had given actual proof of his qualifications.50 The enemies of Jesus explicitly assert, and he does not contradict them, that he had never learned letters: πῶς οὗτος γράμματα οἶδε μὴ μεμαθηκὼς (John vii. 15); and the Nazarenes are astonished to find so much wisdom in him, whence we infer that he had not to their knowledge been a student. ... Thus the data on our present subject to be found in the Gospels, collectively yield the result that Jesus did not pass formally through a rabbinical school; on the other hand, the consideration that it must have been the interest of the Christian legend to represent Jesus as independent of human teachers, may induce a doubt with respect to these statements in the New Testament, and a conjecture that Jesus may not have been so entirely a stranger to the learned culture of his nation. But from the absence of authentic information we can arrive at no decision on this point."

" ... The Evangelium Thomæ opens with the fifth year of Jesus the story of his miracles,55 and the Arabian Evangelium Infantiæ fills the journey into Egypt with miracles which the mother of Jesus performed by means of the swaddling bands of her infant, and the water in which he was washed.56 Some of the miracles which according to these apocryphal gospels were wrought by Jesus when in his infancy and boyhood, are analogous to those in the New Testament—cures and resuscitations of the dead; others are totally diverse from the ruling type in the canonical Gospels—extremely revolting retributive miracles, by which every one who opposes the boy Jesus in any matter whatever is smitten with lameness, or even with death, or else mere extravagancies, such as the giving of life to sparrows formed out of mud."

So some of the accounts suppressed by church, presumed destroyed, that had in fact survived, were in fact found before twentieth century, and Strauss knew of them, and are those he calls apocryphal?

" ... It is true that in the first centuries of the Christian era, the whole region of spirituality being a supernatural one for heathens as well as Jews, the reproach that Jesus owed his wisdom and seemingly miraculous powers, not to himself or to God, but to a communication from without, could not usually take the form of an assertion that he had acquired natural skill and wisdom in the ordinary way of instruction from others.58 Instead of the natural and the human, the unnatural and the demoniacal were opposed to the divine and the supernatural (comp. Matt xii. 24), and Jesus was accused of working his miracles by the aid of magic acquired in his youth. This charge was the most easily attached to the journey of his parents with him into Egypt, that native land of magic and secret wisdom, and thus we find it both in Celsus and in the Talmud. The former makes a Jew allege against Jesus, amongst other things, that he had entered into service for wages in Egypt, that he had there possessed himself of some magic arts, and on the strength of these had on his return vaunted himself for a God.59 The Talmud gives him a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim as a teacher, makes him journey to Egypt with this companion, and bring magic charms from thence into Palestine. ... "

"In any case, the basis of the intellectual development of Jesus was furnished by the sacred writings of his people, of which the discourses preserved to us in the Gospels attest his zealous and profound study. His Messianic ideas seem to have been formed chiefly on Isaiah and Daniel: spiritual religiousness and elevation above the prejudices of Jewish nationality were impressively shadowed forth in the prophetic writings generally, together with the Psalms."

" ... The concealment of an Essene lodge appeared especially adapted to explain the sudden disappearance of Jesus after the brilliant scenes of his infancy and boyhood, and again after his restoration to life. Besides the forerunner John, the two men on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the angels clothed in white at the grave, and on the Mount of Ascension, were regarded as members of the Essene brotherhood, and many cures of Jesus and the Apostles were referred to the medical traditions of the Essenes. Apart, however, from these fancies of a bygone age, there are really some essential characteristics which seem to speak in favour of an intimate relation between Essenism and Christianity. The most conspicuous as such are the prohibition of oaths, and the community of goods: with the former was connected fidelity, peaceableness, obedience to every constituted authority; with the latter, contempt of riches, and the custom of travelling without provisions. These and other features, such as the sacred meal partaken in common, the rejection of sanguinary sacrifices and of slavery, constitute so strong a resemblance between Essenism and Christianity, that even so early a writer as Eusebius mistook the Therapeutæ, a sect allied to the Essenes, for Christians.65 But there are very essential dissimilarities which must not be overlooked. Leaving out of consideration the contempt of marriage, ὑπεροψία γάμου, since Josephus ascribes it to a part only of the Essenes; the asceticism, the punctilious observance of the Sabbath, the purifications, and other superstitious usages of this sect, their retention of the names of the angels, the mystery which they affected, and their contracted, exclusive devotion [205]to their order, are so foreign, nay so directly opposed to the spirit of Jesus, that, especially as the Essenes are nowhere mentioned in the New Testament, the aid which this sect also contributed to the development of Jesus, must be limited to the uncertain influence which might be exercised over him by occasional intercourse with Essenes."

That latter part that Strauss claims is foreign, is not really - notice the celibacy imposed on priesthood of church of Rome, which no other branch does.

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October 20, 2021 - October 20, 2021.

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SECOND PART.

HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

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CHAPTER I.

RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

§ 44. Chronological relations between John and Jesus

45. Appearance and design of the Baptist. His personal relations with Jesus

46. Was Jesus acknowledged by John as the Messiah? and in what sense?

47. Opinion of the evangelists and of Jesus concerning the Baptist, with his own judgment of himself. Result of the inquiry into the relationship between these two individuals

48. The execution of John the Baptist

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44. CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN JOHN AND JESUS.

"For the ministry of John the Baptist, mentioned in all the Gospels, the second and fourth evangelists fix no epoch; the first gives us an inexact one; the third, one apparently precise. According to Matt. iii. 1, John appeared as a preacher of repentance, in those days, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις, that is, if we interpret strictly this reference to the previous narrative, about the time when the parents of Jesus settled at Nazareth, and when Jesus was yet a child. We are told, however, in the context, that Jesus came to John for baptism; hence between the first appearance of the Baptist, which was cotemporary with the childhood of Jesus, and the period at which the latter was baptized, we must intercalate a number of years, during which Jesus might have become sufficiently matured to partake of John’s baptism. But Matthew’s description of the person and work of the Baptist is so concise, the office attributed to him is so little independent, so entirely subservient to that of Jesus, that it was certainly not the intention of the evangelist to assign a long series of years to his single ministry. His meaning incontestably is, that John’s short career early attained its goal in the baptism of Jesus.

"It being thus inadmissible to suppose between the appearance of John and the baptism of Jesus, that is, between verses 12 and 13 of the 3rd chapter of Matthew, the long interval which is in every case indispensable, nothing remains but to insert it between the close of the second and the beginning of the third chapter, namely, between the settlement of the parents of Jesus at Nazareth and the appearance of the Baptist. ... In neither case do we learn from Matthew concerning the time of John’s appearance more than the very vague information, that it took place in the interval between the infancy and manhood of Jesus."

"Luke determines the date of John’s appearance by various synchronisms, placing it in the time of Pilate’s government in Judea; in the sovereignty of Herod (Antipas), of Philip and of Lysanias over the other divisions of Palestine; in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas; and, moreover, precisely in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, which, reckoning from the death of Augustus, corresponds with the year 28–29 of our era ... "

"It is not easy, however, to imagine, in accordance with this statement, that John was by so little the predecessor of Jesus, nor is it without reason that the improbability of his having had so short an agency is maintained. For he had a considerable number of disciples, whom he not only baptized, but taught (Luke xi. 1), and he left behind a party of his peculiar followers (Acts xviii. 25, xix. 3), all which could hardly be the work of a few months. There needed time, it has been observed, for the Baptist to become so well known, that people would undertake a journey to him in the wilderness; there needed time for his doctrine to be comprehended, time for it to gain a footing and establish itself, especially as it clashed with the current Jewish ideas; in a word, the deep and lasting veneration in which John was held by his nation, according to Josephus14 as well as the evangelists, could not have been so hastily won."

"Thus the gospel narrative is an obstacle to the adoption of the two most plausible expedients for the prolongation of John’s ministry, viz., that Jesus presented himself for baptism later, or that his public appearance was retarded longer after his baptism, than has been generally inferred. We are not, however, compelled to renounce either of these suppositions, if we can show that the New Testament writers might have been led to their point of view even without historical grounds. A sufficient motive lies close at hand, and is implied in the foregoing observations. Let the Baptist once be considered, as was the case in the Christian Church (Acts xix. 4), not a person of independent significance, but simply a Forerunner of the Christ; and the imagination would not linger with the mere Precursor, but would hasten forward to the object at which he pointed. Yet more obvious is the interest which primitive Christian tradition must have had in excluding, whatever might have been the fact, any interval between the baptism of Jesus and the beginning of his public course. For to allow that Jesus, by his submission to John’s baptism, declared himself his disciple, and remained in that relation for any length of time, was offensive to the religious sentiment of the new church, which desired a Founder instructed by God, and not by man: another turn, therefore, would soon be given to the facts, and the baptism of Jesus would be held to signify, not his initiation into the school of John, but a consecration to his independent office. Thus the diverging testimony of the evangelists does not preclude our adopting the conclusion to which the nature of the case leads us; viz., that the Baptist had been long labouring, anterior to the appearance of Jesus.

But the age gap confirmed as a consequence of the visit by Mary to Elizabeth scene, amounts to the years of disciplehood of Jesus to John, doesn't It?

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45. APPEARANCE AND DESIGN OF THE BAPTIST-HIS PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH JESUS.

"John, a Nazarite, according to our authorities (Matt. iii. 4, ix. 14, xi. 18; Luke i. 15), and in the opinion of several theologians,17 an Essene, is said by Luke (iii. 2) to have been summoned to his public work by the word of God ῥῆμα Θεοῦ, which came to him in the wilderness. Not possessing the Baptist’s own declaration, we cannot accept as complete the dilemma stated by Paulus,18 when he says, that we know not whether John himself interpreted some external or internal fact as a divine call, or whether he received a summons from another individual; and we must add as a third possibility, that his followers sought to dignify the vocation of their Teacher by an expression which recalls to mind the ancient Prophets."

At some point one has to ask why different responses are accorded to various events and acts, depending on who was inbolved; is it due to subconscious bowing to authority of church, aided by memories of centuries of inquisition that followed subjugation of Jews by Rome ending some time after the supposed crucifixion? Supposed, because research since then doubts the official tale told by Rome.

"While from the account of Luke it appears that the divine call came to John in the wilderness, ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, but that for the purpose of teaching and baptizing he resorted to the country about Jordan, περίχωρος τοῦ Ἰορδάνου (ver. 3); Matthew (iii. ff.) makes the wilderness of Judea the scene of his labours, as if the Jordan in which he baptized flowed through that wilderness. It is true that, according to Josephus, the Jordan before emptying itself into the Dead Sea traverses a great wilderness, πολλὴν ἐρημίαν,19 but this was not the wilderness of Judea, which lay farther south.20 Hence it has been supposed that Matthew, misled by his application of the prophecy, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, to John, who issued from the wilderness of Judea, ἔρημος τῆς Ἰουδαίας, placed there his labours as a preacher of repentance and a baptizer, although their true scene was the blooming valley of the Jordan.21 In the course of Luke’s narrative, however, this evangelist ceases to intimate that John forsook the wilderness after receiving his call, for on the occasion of John’s message to Jesus, he makes the latter ask, Whom went ye out into the wilderness to see? Τί ἐξεληλύθατε εἰς τὴν ἔρημον θεάσασθαι (vii. 24). Now as the valley of the Jordan in the vicinity of the Dead Sea was in fact a barren plain, the narrow margin of the river excepted, no greater mistake may belong to Matthew than that of specifying the wilderness as the ἔρημος τῆς Ἰουδαίας; and even that may be explained away by the supposition, either that John, as he alternately preached and baptized, passed from the wilderness of Judea to the borders [215]of the Jordan,22 or that the waste tract through which that river flowed, being a continuation of the wilderness of Judea, retained the same name.

"The baptism of John could scarcely have been derived from the baptism of proselytes,24 for this rite was unquestionably posterior to the rise of Christianity. It was more analogous to the religious lustrations in practice amongst the Jews, especially the Essenes, and was apparently founded chiefly on certain expressions used by several of the prophets in a figurative sense, but afterwards understood literally. According to these expressions, God requires from the Israelitish people, as a condition of their restoration to his favour, a washing and purification from their iniquity, and he promises that he will himself cleanse them with water (Isaiah i. 16, Ez. xxxvi. 25, comp. Jer. ii. 22). Add to this the Jewish notion that the Messiah would not appear with his kingdom until the Israelites repented, and we have the combination necessary for the belief that an ablution, symbolical of conversion and forgiveness of sins, must precede the advent of the Messiah."

"Matthew has not the same addition; but he, with Mark, describes the baptized as confessing their sins, ἐξομολογοὺμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν (iii. 6). Josephus, on the other hand, appears in direct contradiction to them, when he gives it as the opinion of the Baptist, that baptism is pleasing to God, not when we ask pardon for some transgressions, but when we purify the body, after having first purified the mind by righteousness ... Moreover, it is possible to reconcile Josephus and the Evangelists, by understanding the words of the former to mean that the baptism of John was intended to effect a purification, not from particular or merely Levitical transgressions, but of the entire man, not immediately and mysteriously through the agency of water, but by means of the moral acts of reformation."

" ... moreover, the appearance of Jesus is made more comprehensible by the supposition, that John had introduced the idea of the proximity of the Messiah’s kingdom. That Josephus should keep back the Messianic aspect of the fact, is in accordance with his general practice, which is explained by the position of his people with respect to the Romans. Besides, in the expression, to assemble for baptism, βαπτισμῷ συνιέναι, in his mention of popular assemblages, συστρέφεσθαι, and in the fear of Antipas lest John should excite a revolt, ἀπόστασις there lies an intimation of precisely such a religious and political movement as the hope of the Messiah was calculated to produce. ... In those times of commotion, John might easily believe that he discerned signs, which certified to him the proximity of the Messiah’s kingdom; the exact degree of its proximity he left undecided.

"According to the Evangelists, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, was associated by John with a Messianic individual to whom he ascribed, in distinction from his own baptism with water, a baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire, βαπτίζειν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ πυρὶ (Matt. iii. 11 parall.), the outpouring of the Holy Spirit being regarded as a leading feature of the Messianic times (Joel ii. 28; Acts ii. 16 ff.). ... By Luke, the previous acquaintance of the two is stated objectively, as an external matter of fact; by Matthew, it is betrayed in the involuntary confession of the astonished Baptist; in the fourth Gospel, on the contrary, their previous unacquaintance is attested subjectively, by his premeditated assertion. It was not, therefore, a very far-fetched idea of the Wolfenbüttel fragmentist, to put down the contradiction to the account of John and Jesus, and to presume that they had in fact long known and consulted each other, but that in public (in order better to play into one another’s hands) they demeaned themselves as if they had hitherto been mutual strangers, and each delivered an unbiassed testimony to the other’s excellence."

Not only at the outset, but increasingly, a factor that comes to fore is the paucity in church variety of monotheism.

Over and over, Strauss misses the opportunity to suspect who might be responsible for the discrepancies, to the extent of major outright fabrication and lies.

There he missed a possibility.

And now again, due chiefly to attitude towards Jewish sources, imposed painstakingly by church through centuries culminating in inquisition.

"All is naturally explained by the consideration, that the important relation between John and Jesus must have been regarded as existing at all times, by reason of that ascription of pre-existence to the essential which is a characteristic of the popular mind. Just as the soul, when considered as an essence, is conceived more or less clearly as pre-existent; so in the popular mind, every relation pregnant with consequences is endowed with pre-existence. Hence the Baptist, who eventually held so significant a relation to Jesus, must have known him from the first, as is indistinctly intimated by Matthew, and more minutely detailed by Luke; according to whom, their mothers knew each other, and the sons themselves were brought together while yet unborn. All this is wanting in the fourth Gospel, the writer of which attributes an opposite assertion to John, simply because in his mind an opposite interest preponderated; for the less Jesus was known to John by whom he was afterwards so extolled, the more weight was thrown on the miraculous scene which arrested the regards of the Baptist—the more clearly was his whole position with respect to Jesus demonstrated to be the effect, not of the natural order of events, but of the immediate agency of God."

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46. WAS JESUS ACKNOWLEDGED BY JOHN AS THE MESSIAH? AND IN WHAT SENSE ?

"To the foregoing question whether Jesus was known to John before the baptism, is attached another, namely, What did John think of Jesus and his Messiahship? The evangelical narratives are unanimous in stating, that before Jesus had presented himself for baptism, John had announced the immediate coming of One to whom he stood in a subordinate relation; and the scene at the baptism of Jesus marked him, beyond mistake, as the personage of whom John was the forerunner. According to Mark and Luke, we must presume that the Baptist gave credence to this sign; according to the fourth Gospel, he expressly attested his belief (i. 34), and moreover uttered words which evince the deepest insight into the higher nature and office of Jesus (i. 29 ff. 36; iii. 27 ff.); according to the first Gospel, he was already convinced of these before the baptism of Jesus. On the other hand, Matthew (xi. 2 ff.) and Luke (vii. 18 ff.) tell us that at a later period, the Baptist, on hearing of the ministry of Jesus, despatched some of his disciples to him with the inquiry, whether he (Jesus) was the promised Messiah, or whether another must be expected.

"The first impression from this is, that the question denoted an uncertainty on the part of the Baptist whether Jesus were really the Messiah; and so it was early understood.37 But such a doubt is in direct contradiction with all the other circumstances reported by the Evangelists. It is justly regarded as [220]psychologically impossible that he whose belief was originated or confirmed by the baptismal sign, which he held to be a divine revelation, and who afterwards pronounced so decidedly on the Messianic call and the superior nature of Jesus, should all at once have become unsteady in his conviction; ... "

It doesn't occur to Strauss that knowledge of soul might not convey photographic image of body or face, and other details of earthly identity, any more than a correspondence between two people who never met can automatically inform each how the other smells, snores, or walks.

" ... Lastly, how could Jesus subsequently (John v. 33 ff.) so confidently appeal to the testimony of the Baptist concerning him, when it was known that John himself was at last perplexed about his Messiahship?"

If, by that time the two had met, then the mutual knowledge of souls must have added to itself the worldly level acquaintance of name, face, personal identities and more; Strauss is thinking in direction opposite, and missing it.

" ... the time which Jesus allowed to escape without publicly manifesting himself as the Messiah, seemed too tedious to John in his imprisonment; he sent therefore to inquire how long Jesus would allow himself to be waited for, how long he would delay winning to himself the better part of the people by a declaration of his Messiahship, and striking a decisive blow against the enemies of his cause—a blow that might even liberate the Baptist from his prison. But if the Baptist, on the strength of his belief that Jesus was the Messiah, hoped and sued for a deliverance, perhaps miraculous, by him from prison, he would not clothe in the language of doubt an entreaty which sprang out of his faith. ... "

It's perplexing why, on one hand Strauss neither refutes the stature of the two nor dares to call church authorities liars, and on the other hand presumes to criticise, not persona authorised by church, but the very fountainhead of the supposed faith, the two supposed great men, the messiah and his forerunner and cousin.

How and why each had doubts when in peril us a function of the mortal body and the human persona, even if the divinity of either is true and not a complete lie; else why would Divine in human body suffer, not only pains and bleeding, but the whole crucifixion, or even being caught by the cohort?

Was, is, divine power short of ability to fly over heads of romans, and selectively paralyse them and force them to hear the divine?

No, it's that church, if it understood anything at all, ever, preferred to mete out only the very least, mixed with huge lies and much ignorance, so as to be able to impose it's power the better, through comparatively ignorant priests who were needed to only know mininal and merey impress and control the populace as agents.

" ... If he still, as formerly, conceived Jesus to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ Τεοῦ, ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμοῦ, no thought could occur to him of a blow to be struck by Jesus against his enemies, or in general, of a violent procedure to be crowned by external conquest; rather, the quiet path which Jesus trod must appear to him the right one—the path befitting the destination of the Lamb of God. ... "

This whole concept belongs to primitive cultures that believed in "sacrifice", the idea that one can offer life of an animal or human to please a god, and here was used to cover up guilt of Rome by claiming that divine offered oneself or a son for the purpose, and then extending this sacrifice concept to whole of humanity for ever.

If there were any truth in it, why were animals not covered by the mercy of Divine, why did it remain permissible to slaughter and consume, or throw away if not consumed when slaughter was in huge quantities not required, various fowl and fauna, not to mention sea creatures, so much so very life on earth is in peril? Why not offer another way, sustainable, and prohibit slaughter of life in most cases, including human?

Why allow genocide and with blessings of the supposedly sole agency of god too, as in Vatican helping nazis escape post WWII, including war criminals of a degree one can only be horrified and disgusted with? Or was the genocide, of relatives of a son of god, also sacrifice of lambs, to forgive those perpetrators who were responsible, of that very guilt?

" ... This writer seeks to account for the transient apostacy of the Baptist from the strong faith in which he gave his earlier testimony, by the supposition that a dark hour of doubt had overtaken the man of God in his dismal prison; and he cites instances of men who, persecuted for their Christian faith or other convictions, after having long borne witness to the truth in the face of death, at length yielded to human weakness and recanted. ... "

This is idiotic!

Doesn't Strauss understand that such recantation under duress might be a lie, and might have no value? No, apparently not!

" ... But on a closer examination, he has given a false analogy. Persecuted Christians of the first centuries, and, later, a Berengarius or a Galileo, were false to the convictions for which they were imprisoned, and by abjuring which they hoped to save themselves: the Baptist, to be compared with them, should have retracted his censure of Herod, and not have shaken his testimony in favour of Christ, which had no relation to his imprisonment. ... "

On the contrary, the latter is being honest to his opinion, and wouldn't lie against what he is convinced of, but questions if divine grace and a saviour are really at hand, if his faith in a man being the messiah is correct, if there is a messiah yet; this is but natural of an honest man under the circumstances. And he was executed, too; so it was his doubt that was justified, if one goes by the simplistic logic, and understanding of faith, that is apparent in church teachings and critique by Strauss.

" ... It might then be conceived, that John had indeed been convinced, at a former period, of the Messiahship o£ Jesus; now, however, in his imprisonment, the works of Jesus came no longer to his ears, and imagining him inactive, he was assailed with doubt. But had John been previously satisfied of the Messiahship of Jesus, the mere want of acquaintance with his miracles could not have unhinged his faith. The actual cause of John’s doubt, however, was the report of these miracles;—a state of the case which is irreconcilable with any previous confidence."

No, it was his own travails he questioned, since he believed he did not deserve them. And again, it's most natural.

" ... The Baptist, he thinks, held the popular Jewish notion of the pre-existence of the Messiah, as the subject of the Old Testament theophanies.51 There are traces of this Jewish notion in the writings of Paul (e.g. 1 Cor. x. 4. Col. i. 15 f.) and the rabbins52; and allowing that it was of Alexandrian origin, as Bretschneider argues,53 we may yet ask whether even before the time of Christ, the Alexandrian-judaic theology may not have modified the opinions of the mother country? ... "

Strauss also should have kept in mind that while most of the accounts available to him were sanctioned by church, none, including that of John the Baptist, were likely to have been surviving and independent, especially after inquisition.

"Now if we do not choose to defy the clear rules of grammar, and the sure data of history, for the sake of the visionary dogma of inspiration, we shall rather conclude from the given premises, with the author of the Probabilia, that the Evangelist falsely ascribes the language in question to the Baptist, putting into his mouth a Christology of his own, of which the latter could know nothing. This is no more than Lücke60 confesses, though not quite so frankly, when he says that the reflections of the Evangelist are here more than equally mixed with the discourse of the Baptist, in such a way as to be undistinguishable. In point of fact, however, the reflections of the Evangelist are easily to be recognized; but of the fundamental ideas of the Baptist there is no trace, unless they are sought for with a good will which amounts to prejudice, and to which therefore we make no pretension. If then we have a proof in the passages just considered, that the fourth Evangelist did not hesitate to lend to the Baptist messianic and other ideas which were never his; we may hence conclude retrospectively [226]concerning the passages on which we formerly suspended our decision, that the ideas expressed in them of a suffering and pre-existent Messiah belonged, not to the Baptist, but to the Evangelist."

Strauss questions why John continued baptizing if he believed Jesus was the messiah.

" ... we find the party of John’s disciples still existing in the time of the Apostle Paul (Acts xviii. 24 f., xix. 1 ff.); and, if the Sabæans are to be credited concerning their own history, the sect remains to this day."

This is monotheism carried to such extremes as to make one question why there are any other churches within ten Mike's of the Vatican now, and why the pope wouldn't visit every church once in a year - limiting numbers to one church per large city - and wipe out need of another church priest!

Why assume that ascetic is lesser, and incapable of comprehending the non ascetic?

" ... The instance would be a solitary one, if a man whose life had its influence on the world’s history, had so readily yielded the ascendant, in his own æra, to one who came to eclipse him and render him superfluous. ... "

And this ignorance, that such instances are not unique, again is the effect of racism and other attitudes of West that fail to see truth due to blinkers, quite on par with flatearthers of today who hold conferences in U.K. and declare Australia a conspiracy and non existent in fact!

" ... Such a step is not less difficult for individuals than for nations, and that not from any vice, as egotism or ambition, so that an exception might be presumed (though not without prejudice) in the case of a man like the Baptist; it is a consequence of that blameless limitation which, as we have already remarked, is proper to a low point of view in relation to a higher, and which is all the more obstinately maintained if the inferior individual is, like John, of a coarse, rugged nature. Only from the divine point of view, or from that of an historian, bent on establishing religious doctrines, could such things be spoken, and the fourth Evangelist has in fact put into the mouth of the Baptist the very same thoughts concerning the relation between him and Jesus, that the compiler of the 2nd book of Samuel has communicated, as his own observation, on the corresponding relation between Saul and David. Competent judges have recently acknowledged that there exists a discrepancy between the synoptical gospels and the fourth, the blame of which must be imputed to the latter: and this opinion is confirmed and strengthened by the fact that the fourth Evangelist transforms the Baptist into a totally different character from that in which he appears in the Synoptical gospels and in Josephus; out of a practical preacher he makes a speculative christologist; out of a hard and unbending, a yielding and self-renunciating nature."

Strauss, perhaps West, seems to think of the two as akin to iron and rubber! Human beings are more complex, and grest ones far wider in consciousness, even as normal human sees earth flat and a vista of one's vision limited to a few miles, but truth is far vaster.

Normal humans might, do, show the tendency Strauss speaks of - a farmer, for example, or an ironmonger, most likely couldn't comprehend work done by Strauss, and would think all writers are merely playing with paper because they can afford it (and in West, they'd be right too!), but a Galileo and a Kepler, an Einstein and a Bohr could certainly see one another's worth, and appreciate one another.

When one transcends from realm of mind to higher, this must be more so.

" ... Jesus had approved himself to a great number of his cotemporaries, as the Messiah announced by John. There was but a step to the notion that the Baptist himself had, under the ἐρχόμενος, understood the individual Jesus,—had himself the τουτέστιν, κ.τ.λ. in his mind; a view which, however unhistorical, would be inviting to the early Christians, in proportion to their wish to sustain the dignity of Jesus by the authority of the Baptist, then very influential in the Jewish world. There was yet another reason, gathered from the Old Testament. The ancestor of the Messiah, David, had likewise in the old Hebrew legend a kind of forerunner in the person of Samuel, who by order from Jehovah anointed him to be king over Israel (1 Sam. xvi.), and afterwards stood in the relation of a witness to his claims. If then it behoved the Messiah to have a forerunner, who, besides, was more closely characterized in the prophecy of Malachi as a second Elias, and if, historically, Jesus was [229]preceded by John, whose baptism as a consecration corresponded to an anointing; the idea was not remote of conforming the relation between John and Jesus to that between Samuel and David."

So, to sum up, John who was senior, had announced a messiah, but not identified him as Jesus, who was among his disciples; Jesus announced himself as the one; and then, when Paul was in prison, expecting perhaps execution, he questioned if Jesus really was the one, and if so, why was he, John, suffering? Most natural, and in fact, a precursor of the supposed "why hast thou forsaken me" cry from Jesus on cross!

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47. OPINION OF THE EVANGELISTS AND JESUS CONCERNING THE BAPTIST, WITH HIS OWN JUDGMENT ON HIMSELF--RESULT OF THE INQUIKY INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THESE TWO

"The abode of the preacher of repentance in the wilderness, his activity in preparing the way for the Messiah, necessarily recalled the passage of Isaiah (xl. 3ff. LXX.): φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν ἐρήμῳ· ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν Κυρίῳ κ.τ.λ. This passage, which in its original connection related not to the Messiah and his forerunner, but to Jehovah, for whom a way was to be prepared through [231]the wilderness toward Judea, that he might return with his people from exile, is quoted by the first three Evangelists as a prophecy fulfilled by the appearance of the Baptist (Matt. iii. 3; Mark i. 3; Luke iii. 4 ff.). This might be thought a later and Christian application, but there is nothing to controvert the statement of the fourth Evangelist, that the Baptist had himself characterized his destination by those prophetic words."

This implies, before all else, that Jehovah isn't the ultimate Divine but a god amongst many; else talk about his entrance into Judea makes even less sense than that about his people, his anger, and his being a jealous god.

" ... In Luke, and still more decidedly in John, this whole scene is introduced [232]with a design to establish the Messiahship of Jesus, by showing that the Baptist had renounced that dignity, and attributed it to one who should come after him. ... But that the Sanhedrim should send from Jerusalem to John on the banks of the Jordan, for the sake of asking him whether he were the Messiah, seems less natural. Their object could only be what, on a later occasion, it was with respect to Jesus (Matt. xxi. 23 ff.), namely, to challenge the authority of John to baptize, as appears from v. 25. Moreover, from the hostile position which John had taken towards the sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. iii. 7), to whom the members of the Sanhedrim belonged, they must have prejudged that he was not the Messiah, nor a prophet, and consequently, that he had no right to undertake a βάπτισμα. But in that case, they could not possibly have so put their questions as they are reported to have done in the fourth gospel. In the passage from Mathew above cited, they asked Jesus, quite consistently with their impression that he had no prophetic authority: ἐν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ ταῦτα ποιεῖς; By what authority doest thou these things? but in John, they question the Baptist precisely as if they pre-supposed him to be the Messiah, and when he, apparently to their consternation, has denied this, they tender him successively the dignities of Elias, and of another prophetic forerunner, as if they earnestly wished him to accept one of these titles. Searching opponents will not thus thrust the highest honours on the man to whom they are inimical;—this is the representation of a narrator who wishes to exhibit the modesty of the man, and his subordination to Jesus, by his rejection of those brilliant titles."

"The judgment of Jesus on the character of John is delivered on two occasions in the synoptical gospels; first after the departure of John’s messengers (Matt xi. 7 ff.); secondly, after the appearance of Elias at the transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 12 ff.), in reply to the question of a disciple. In the fourth gospel, after an appeal to the Baptist’s testimony, Jesus pronounces an eulogium on him in the presence of the Jews (v. 35), after referring, as above remarked, to their sending to John. In this passage he calls the Baptist a burning and a shining light, in whose beams the fickle people were for a season willing to rejoice. In one synoptical passage, he declares John to be the promised Elias; in the other, there are three points to be distinguished. First, with respect to the character and agency of John,—the severity and firmness of his mind, and the pre-eminence which as the messianic forerunner, who with forcible hand had opened the kingdom of heaven, he maintained even over the prophets, are extolled (v. 7–14); secondly, in relation to Jesus and the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, the Baptist, though exalted above all the members of the Old Testament economy, is declared to be in the rear of every one on whom, through Jesus, the new light had arisen (v. 11). We see how Jesus understood this from what follows (v. 18), when we compare it with Matt. ix. 16 f. In the former passage Jesus describes John as μήτε ἐσθίων μήτε πίνων, neither eating nor drinking; and in the latter it is this very asceticism which is said to liken him to the ἱματίοις and ἀσκοῖς παλαιοῖς, the old garments and old bottles, with which the new, introduced by Jesus, will not agree. What else then could it be, in which the Baptist was beneath the children of the kingdom of Jesus, but (in connexion with his non-recognition or only qualified acknowledgment of Jesus as Messiah) the spirit of external observance, which still clung to fasting and similar works, and his gloomy asceticism? And, in truth, freedom from these is the test of transition from a religion of bondage, to one of liberty and spirituality. ... "

And yet, church of Rome has had followers observe Friday's without red meat (which is why Germans invented maulteacher, to hide their consumption of it); and Lent is supposed to be observed, a matter of forty days of ascetic penance; then there are sects in Italy, in close relationship with church of Rome, who indulge in flagallating and more! What with a priesthood supposed to observe celibacy, which they really are unable to and so they victimise children, how much more do they have do to be termed ascetic? Surely wine consumption does not make up for all this, but only makes it worse!

" ... This much seems to be historical: that Jesus, attracted by the fame of the Baptist, put himself under the tuition of that preacher, and that having remained some time among his followers, and been initiated into his ideas of the approaching messianic kingdom, he, after the imprisonment of John, carried on, under certain modifications, the same work, never ceasing, even when he had far surpassed his predecessor, to render him due homage.

"The first addition to this in the Christian legend, was, that John had taken approving notice of Jesus. During his public ministry, it was known that he had only indefinitely referred to one coming after him; but it behoved him, [234]at least in a conjectural way, to point out Jesus personally, as that successor. To this it was thought he might have been moved by the fame of the works of Jesus, which, loud as it was, might even penetrate the walls of his prison. Then was formed Matthew’s narrative of the message from prison; the first modest attempt to make the Baptist a witness for Jesus, and hence clothed in an interrogation, because a categorical testimony was too unprecedented.

"But this late and qualified testimony was not enough. It was a late one, for prior to it there was the baptism which Jesus received from John, and by which he, in a certain degree, placed himself in subordination to the Baptist; hence those scenes in Luke, by which the Baptist was placed, even before his birth, in a subservient relation to Jesus."

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48. THE EXECUTION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

" ... According to the unanimous testimony of the synoptical Evangelists and Josephus,80 he was executed, after a protracted imprisonment, by order of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee; and in the New Testament accounts he is said to have been beheaded."

Did Rome ever stop being barbarian, despite claiming being a civilisation superior to rest of the world? Judging by inquisition, and the beating to death that Matteotti received when he spoke in opposition to the then emerging fascism, not until recently, if that. Questionable, going by the sheltering of bishops known to have raped nuns, with throwing the victims out, and protecting the hundreds of paedophile clergymen that is practised by Vatican, with so little hue and cry in media, one would be natural inferring that the world expected no better.

"But Josephus and the Evangelists are at variance as to the cause of his imprisonment and execution. According to the latter, the censure which John had pronounced on the marriage of Herod with his (half) brother’s81 wife, was the cause of his imprisonment, and the revengeful cunning of Herodias, at a court festival, of his death: Josephus gives the fear of disturbances, which was awakened in Herod by the formidable train of the Baptist’s followers, as the cause at once of the imprisonment and the execution. ... "

Strange, that those who disapprove of marriage between a couple related previously by marriage of one to sibling of other, despite the said sibling being no longer alive, nevertheless take it as routine when first cousins marry one another! Isn't a cousin more of a blood relative than someone previouslymarried to a sibling now no longer alive?

" ... Mark’s representation of the relation between Herod and the Baptist differs essentially from that of Matthew. While according to the latter, Herod wished to kill John, but was withheld by his dread of the people, who looked on the Baptist as a prophet (v. 5); according to Mark, it was Herodias who conspired against his life, but could not attain her object, because her husband was in awe of John as a holy man, sometimes heard him gladly, and not seldom followed his counsel (v. 19).86 Here, again, the individualizing characteristic of Mark’s narrative has induced commentators to prefer it to that of Matthew. ... "

Convenient, blaming it on a woman, coming from abrahmic cultures! Or should one blame Rome, not yet so abrahmic?

" ... How near lay the temptation to exalt the Baptist, by representing the prince against whom he had spoken, and by whom he was imprisoned, as feeling bound to venerate him, and only, to his remorse, seduced into giving his death-warrant, by his vindictive wife! It may be added, that the account of Matthew is not inconsistent with the character of Antipas, as gathered from other sources."

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October 20, 2021 - October 21, 2021.

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CHAPTER II.

BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

§ 49. Why did Jesus receive baptism from John?

50. The scene at the baptism of Jesus considered as supernatural, and as natural

51. An attempt at a criticism and mythical interpretation of the narratives

52. Relation of the supernatural at the baptism of Jesus to the supernatural in his conception

53. Place and time of the temptation of Jesus. Divergencies of the evangelists on this subject

54. The history of the temptation conceived in the sense of the evangelists

55. The temptation considered as a natural occurrence either internal or external; and also as a parable

56. The history of the temptation as a mythus

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49. WHY DID JESUS RECEIVE BAPTISM FEOM JOHN?

Strauss begins by discussing this in earnest, as if it were about a school teacher sitting in class while a ten year old taught; but even in that context, most geniuses did learn in school, even though often astounded their teachers. One may as well ask why the messiah had to be born the human way, especially since all abrahmic faiths abhor it; but short of an appearance as a fully grown human that nobody saw anywhere before, there is hardly another option for divine to appear in human form.

Strauss is taking forever to conclude, even realise, that Rome wove a story around a real man who was king of Jews and protested yoke of Rome, for which he was executed like his predecessor John, and hundreds of others were, by Rome.

" ... In the Gospel of the Hebrews, adopted by the Nazarenes, Jesus asks his mother and brother, when invited by them to receive John’s baptism, wherein he had sinned, that this baptism was needful for him? and an heretical apocryphal work appears to have attributed to Jesus a confession of his own sins at his baptism."

"The sum of what modern theologians have contributed towards the removal of this difficulty, consists in the application to Jesus of the distinction between what a man is as an individual, and what he is as a member of the community. He needed, say they, no repentance on his own behalf, but, aware of its necessity for all other men, the children of Abraham not [239]excepted, he wished to demonstrate his approval of an institute which confirmed this truth, and hence he submitted to it. But let the reader only take a nearer view of the facts. According to Matt. iii. 6, John appears to have required a confession of sins previous to baptism; such a confession Jesus, presupposing his impeccability, could not deliver without falsehood; if he refused, John would hardly baptize him, for he did not yet believe him to be the Messiah, and from every other Israelite he must have considered a confession of sins indispensable. The non-compliance of Jesus might very probably originate the dispute to which Matthew gives a wholly different character; but certainly, if the refusal of John had such a cause, the matter could scarcely have been adjusted by a mere suffer it to be so now, for no confession being given, the Baptist would not have perceived that all righteousness was fulfilled. Even supposing that a confession was not required of every baptized person, John would not conclude the ceremony of baptism without addressing the neophyte on the subject of repentance. Could Jesus tacitly sanction such an address to himself, when conscious that he needed no regeneration? and would he not, in so doing, perplex the minds which were afterwards to believe in him as the sinless one? ... "

It's almost caste system of West! No one else can get away with it, even new born babies are considered not free of sin by church, and yet here supposed intellectual are debating how the one person could truthfully say he had never sinned!

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50. THE SCENE AT THE BAPTISM OF JESUS CONSIDERED AS SUPERNATURAL AND AS NATURAL.

"At the moment that John had completed his baptism of Jesus, the synoptical gospels tell us that the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven designated him the Son of God, in whom the Father was well pleased. The fourth Evangelist (i. 32 ff.) makes the Baptist narrate that he saw the Holy Spirit descend like a dove, and remain on Jesus; but as in the immediate context John says of his baptism, that it was destined for the manifestation of the Messiah, and as the description of the descending dove corresponds almost verbally with the synoptical accounts, it is not to be doubted that the same event is intended. The old and lost Gospels of Justin and the Ebionites give, as concomitants, a heavenly light, and a flame bursting out of the Jordan;6 in the dove and heavenly voice also, they have alterations, hereafter to be [240]noticed. ... "

" ... First, that for the appearance of a divine being on earth, the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his descent from his accustomed seat, is an idea that can have no objective reality, but must be the entirely subjective creation of a time when the dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven. Further, how is it reconcilable with the true idea of the Holy Spirit as the divine, all-pervading Power, that he should move from one place to another, like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove? Finally, that God should utter articulate tones in a national idiom, has been justly held extravagant."

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51. AN ATTEMPT AT A CRITICISM AND MYTHICAL IXTEEPKETATION OF THE NAREATIVES.

" ... From the narrative of John, as the pure source, it is sought to derive the synoptical accounts, as turbid streams. In the former, it is said, there is no opening heaven, no heavenly voice; only the descent of the Spirit is, as had been promised, a divine witness to John that Jesus is the Messiah; but in what manner the Baptist perceived that the Spirit rested on Jesus, he does not tell us, and possibly the only sign may have been the discourse of Jesus."

" ... Usteri, indeed, thinks [243]that the Baptist mentioned the dove, merely as a figure, to denote the gentle, mild spirit which he had observed in Jesus. But had this been all, he would rather have compared Jesus himself to a dove, as on another occasion he did to a lamb, than have suggested the idea of a sensible appearance by the picturesque description, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove. It is therefore not true in relation to the dove, that first in the more remote tradition given by the synoptical writers, what was originally figurative, was received in a literal sense; for in this sense it is understood by John, and if he have the correct account, the Baptist himself must have spoken of a visible dove-like appearance, as Bleek, Neander, and others, acknowledge."

" ... In the Old Testament, and even in the New (Acts ii. 3), fire is the principal symbol of the Holy Spirit; but it by no means follows that other sensible objects were not similarly used. In an important passage of the Old Testament (Gen. i. 2), the Spirit of God is described as hovering (‏מְרַחֶפֶת‎), a word which suggests, as its sensible representation, the movement [245]of a bird, rather than of fire. Thus the expression ‏רָחַף‎, Deut. xxxii. 11, is used of the hovering of a bird over its young. But the imagination could not be satisfied with the general figure of a bird; it must have a specific image, and everything led to the choice of the dove.

"In the East, and especially in Syria, the dove is a sacred bird,22 and it is so for a reason which almost necessitated its association with the Spirit moving on the face of the primitive waters (Gen. i. 2). The brooding dove was a symbol of the quickening warmth of nature;23 it thus perfectly represented the function which, in the Mosaic cosmogony, is ascribed to the Spirit of God,—the calling forth of the world of life from the chaos of the first creation. Moreover, when the earth was a second time covered with water, it is a dove, sent by Noah, which hovers over its waves, and which, by plucking an olive leaf, and at length finally disappearing, announces the renewed possibility of living on the earth. Who then can wonder that in Jewish writings, the Spirit hovering over the primeval waters is expressly compared to a dove,24 and that, apart from the narrative under examination, the dove is taken as a symbol of the Holy Spirit?25 How near to this lay the association of the hovering dove with the Messiah, on whom the dove-like spirit was to descend, is evident, without our having recourse to the Jewish writings, which designate the Spirit hovering over the waters, Gen. i. 2, as the Spirit of the Messiah,26 and also connect with him its emblem, the Noachian dove. ... "

" ... Fritzsche seems not disinclined to the affirmative, for he leaves it undecided whether the first Christians knew historically, or only supposed, in conformity with their messianic expectations, that Jesus was consecrated to his messianic office by John, as his forerunner. This view may be supported by the observation, that in the Jewish expectation, which originated in the history of David, combined with the prophecy of Malachi, there was adequate inducement to assume such a consecration of Jesus by the Baptist, even without historical warrant; and the mention of John’s baptism in relation to Jesus (Acts i. 22), in a narrative, itself traditional, proves nothing to the contrary. Yet, on the other hand, it is to be considered that the baptism of Jesus by John furnishes the most natural basis for an explanation of the messianic project of Jesus. When we have two cotemporaries, of whom one announces the proximity of the Messiah’s kingdom, and the other subsequently assumes the character of Messiah; the conjecture arises, even, without positive information, that they stood in a relation to each other—that the latter owed his idea to the former. If Jesus had the messianic idea excited in him by John, yet, as is natural, only so far that he also looked forward to the advent of the messianic individual, whom he did not, in the first instance, identify with himself; he would most likely submit himself to the baptism of John. This would probably take place without any striking occurrences; and Jesus, in no way announced by it as the Baptist’s superior, might, as above remarked, continue for some time to demean himself as his disciple."

Demean himself????

How does Strauss hop from rational and critical, to suddenly so very virulently, militantly, fanatically, adhering to church insistence about this, as to think a young man demeans himself when he is submitting to a religious ritual he'd no reason not to?

" ... This difference originated partly in the importance which the fourth Evangelist attached to the relation between the Baptist and Jesus, and which required that the criteria of the messianic individual, as well as the proximity of his kingdom, should have been revealed to John at his call to baptize; and it might be partly suggested by the narrative in 1 Sam. xvi., according to which Samuel, being sent by Jehovah to anoint a king selected from the sons of Jesse, is thus admonished by Jehovah on the entrance of David: Arise and anoint him, for this is he (v. 12). The descent of the Spirit, which in David’s case follows his consecration, is, by the fourth Evangelist, made an antecedent sign of the Messiahship of Jesus. [247]"

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52. RELATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL AT THE BAPTISM OF JESUS TO THE SUPERNATURAL IN HIS CONCEPTION.

" ... A consecration to an office, effected by divine co-operation, was ever considered by antiquity as a delegation of divine powers for its fulfilment; hence, in the Old Testament, the kings, as soon as they are anointed, are filled with the spirit of God (1 Sam. x. 6, 10, xvi. 13); and in the New Testament also, the apostles, before entering on their vocation, are furnished with supernatural gifts (Acts ii.). It may, therefore, be beforehand conjectured, that according to the original sense of the Gospels, the consecration of Jesus at his baptism was attended with a supply of higher powers; and this is confirmed by an examination of our narratives. For the synoptical writers all state, that after the baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness ... "

"The development of these ideas seems to have been the following. When the messianic dignity of Jesus began to be acknowledged among the Jews, it was thought appropriate to connect his coming into possession of the requisite gifts, with the epoch from which he was in some degree known, and which, from the ceremony that marked it, was also best adapted to represent that anointing with the Holy Spirit, expected by the Jews for their Messiah: and from this point of view was formed the legend of the occurrences at the baptism. But as reverence for Jesus was heightened, and men appeared in the Christian church who were acquainted with more exalted messianic ideas, [249]this tardy manifestation of messiahship was no longer sufficient; his relation with the Holy Spirit was referred to his conception: and from this point of view was formed the tradition of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Here too, perhaps, the words of the heavenly voice, which might originally be those of Ps. ii. 7, were altered after Isaiah xlii. 1. For the words, σήμερον γεγέννηκα σε, This day have I begotten thee, were consistent with the notion that Jesus was constituted the Son of God at his baptism; but they were no longer suitable to that occasion, when the opinion had arisen that the origin of his life was an immediate divine act. By this later representation, however, the earlier one was by no means supplanted, but, on the contrary, tradition and her recorders being large-hearted, both narratives—that of the miracles at the baptism, and that of the supernatural conception, or the indwelling of the λόγος in Jesus from the commencement of his life, although, strictly, they exclude each other, went forth peaceably side by side, and so were depicted by our Evangelists, not excepting even the fourth. Just as in the case of the genealogies: the narrative of the imparting of the Spirit at the baptism could not arise after the formation of the idea that Jesus was engendered by the Spirit; but it might be retained as a supplement, because tradition is ever unwilling to renounce any of its acquired treasures."

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53. PLACE AND TIME OF THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS-DIVERGENCIES OF THE EVANGELISTS ON THIS SUBJECT.

"The transition from the baptism to the temptation of Jesus, as it is made by the synoptical writers, is attended with difficulty in relation both to place and time.

"With respect to the former, it strikes us at once, that according to all the synoptical gospels, Jesus after his baptism was led into the wilderness to be tempted, implying that he was not previously in the wilderness, although, according to Matt. iii. 1, John, by whom he was baptized, exercised his ministry there. This apparent contradiction has been exposed by the most recent critic of Matthew’s gospel, for the sake of proving the statement that John baptized in the wilderness to be erroneous.37 But they who cannot resolve to reject this statement on grounds previously laid down, may here avail themselves of the supposition, that John delivered his preliminary discourses in the wilderness of Judea, but resorted to the Jordan for the purpose of baptizing; or, if the banks of the Jordan be reckoned part of that wilderness, of the presumption that the Evangelists can only have intended that the Spirit led Jesus farther into the recesses of the wilderness, but have neglected to state this with precision, because their description of the scene at the baptism had obliterated from their imagination their former designation of the locality of John’s agency."

"But there is, besides, a chronological difficulty: namely, that while, according to the synoptical writers, Jesus, in the plenitude of the Spirit, just communicated to him at the Jordan, betakes himself, in consequence of that communication, for forty days to the wilderness, where the temptation occurs, and then returns into Galilee; John, on the contrary, is silent concerning the temptation, and appears to suppose an interval of a few days only, between the baptism of Jesus and his journey into Galilee; thus allowing no space [250]for a six weeks’ residence in the wilderness. The fourth Evangelist commences his narrative with the testimony which the Baptist delivers to the emissaries of the Sanhedrim (i. 19); the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον) he makes the Baptist recite the incident which in the synoptical gospels is followed by the baptism (v. 29): again, the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον) he causes two of his disciples to follow Jesus (v. 35); farther, the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον, v. 44), as Jesus is on the point of journeying into Galilee, Philip and Nathanael join him; and lastly, on the third day, τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ (ii. 1), Jesus is at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. ... "

"The period of forty days is assigned by all three of the synoptical writers [251]for the residence of Jesus in the wilderness; but to this agreement is annexed the not inconsiderable discrepancy, that, according to Matthew, the temptation by the devil commences after the lapse of the forty days, while, according to the others, it appears to have been going forward during this time; for the words of Mark (i. 13), he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan, ἦν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἡμέρας τεσσαράκοντα πειραζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ, and the similar ones of Luke i. 2, can have no other meaning. Added to this, there is a difference between the two latter evangelists; Mark only placing the temptation generally within the duration of forty days, without naming the particular acts of the tempter, which according to Matthew, were subsequent to the forty days; while Luke mentions both the prolonged temptation (πειράζεσθαι) of the forty days, and the three special temptations (πειρασμοὶ) which followed. ... "

"With respect to the difference between Matthew and Luke in the arrangement of the several temptations, we must equally abide by Schleiermacher’s criticism and verdict, namely, that Matthew’s order seems to be the original, because it is founded on the relative importance of the temptations, which is the main consideration,—the invitation to worship Satan, which is the strongest temptation, being made the final one; whereas the arrangement of Luke looks like a later and not very happy transposition, proceeding from the consideration—alien to the original spirit of the narrative—that Jesus could more readily go with the devil from the wilderness to the adjacent mountain and from thence to Jerusalem, than out of the wilderness to the city and from thence back again to the mountain.49 While the first two Evangelists close their narrative of the temptation with the ministering of angels to Jesus, Luke has a conclusion peculiar to himself, namely, that the devil left Jesus for a season, ἄχρι καιροῦ (v. 13), apparently intimating that the sufferings of Jesus were a farther assault of the devil; an idea not resumed by Luke, but alluded to in John xiv. 30."

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54. THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION CONCEIVED IN THE SENSE OF THE EVANGELISTS.

"The first interpretation that suggests itself on an unprejudiced consideration of the text is this; that Jesus was led by the Divine Spirit received at his baptism into the wilderness, there to undergo a temptation by the devil, who accordingly appeared to him visibly and personally, and in various ways, and at various places to which he was the conductor, prosecuted his purpose of temptation; but meeting with a victorious resistance, he withdrew from Jesus, and angels appeared to minister to him. Such is the simple exegesis of the narrative, but viewed as a history it is encumbered with difficulties."

"The forty days’ fast, too, is singular. One does not understand how Jesus could hunger after six weeks of abstinence from all food without having hungered long before; since in ordinary cases the human frame cannot sustain a week’s deprivation of nourishment. It is true, expositors53 console themselves by calling the forty days a round number, and by supposing that the expression of Matthew, νηστεύσας, and even that of Luke, οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν, are not to be taken strictly, and do not denote abstinence from all food, but only from that which is customary, so that the use of roots and herbs is not excluded. On no supposition, however, can so much be subtracted from the forty days as to leave only the duration of a conceivable fast; and that nothing short of entire abstinence from all nourishment was intended by the Evangelists Fritzsche has clearly shown, by pointing out the parallel between the fast of Jesus and that of Moses and Elias, the former of whom is said to have eaten no bread and drunk no water for forty days (Exod. xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9, 18), and the latter to have gone for the same period in the strength of a meal taken before his journey (1 Kings xix. 8). ... "

" ... But it was early found irreconcilable with the dignity of Jesus that the devil should thus exercise a magical power over him, and carry him about in the air;62 an idea which seemed extravagant even to those who tolerated the personal appearance of the devil. ... The well-known question suggested by the last temptation, as to the situation of the mountain, from whose summit may be seen all the kingdoms of the world, has been met by the information that κόσμος here means no more than Palestine, and βασιλείας, its several kingdoms and tetrarchies;64 but this is a scarcely less ludicrous explanation than the one that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world on a map! No answer remains but that such a mountain existed only in the ancient idea of the earth as a plain, and in the popular imagination, which can easily stretch a mountain up to heaven, and sharpen an eye to penetrate infinity."

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55. THE TEMPTATION CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL OCCURRENCE EITHER INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL; AND ALSO AS A PARABLE.

"The impossibility of conceiving the sudden removals of Jesus to the temple and the mountain, led some even of the ancient commentators to the opinion, that at least the locality of the second and third temptations was not present to Jesus corporeally and externally, but merely in a vision;65 while some [256]modern ones, to whom the personal appearance of the devil was especially offensive, have supposed that the whole transaction with him passed from beginning to end within the recesses of the soul of Jesus. Herewith they have regarded the forty days’ fast either as a mere internal representation66 (which, however, is a most inadmissible perversion of the plainly historic text: νηστεύσας ἡμέρας τεσσαράκοντα ὕστερον ἐπείνασε, Matt. iv. 2), or as a real fact, in which case the formidable difficulties mentioned in the preceding section remain valid. ... "

"The least invidious expedient is to suppose that the source of our histories of the temptation was some real event in the life of Jesus, so narrated by him to his disciples as to convey no accurate impression of the fact. Tempting thoughts, which intruded themselves into his soul during his residence in the wilderness, or at various seasons, and under various circumstances, but which were immediately quelled by the unimpaired force of his will, were, according to the oriental mode of thought and expression, represented by him as a temptation of the devil; and this figurative narrative was understood literally."

"Such an intention, indeed, is attributed to Jesus by those who hold that the history of the temptation was narrated by him as a parable, but understood literally by his disciples. This opinion is not encumbered with the difficulty of making some real inward experience of Jesus the basis of the history;76 it does not suppose that Jesus himself underwent such temptations, but only that he sought to secure his disciples from them, by impressing on them, as a compendium of messianic and apostolic wisdom, the three following maxims: first to perform no miracle for their own advantage even in the greatest exigency; secondly, never to venture on a chimerical undertaking in the hope of extraordinary divine aid; thirdly, never to enter into fellowship with the wicked, however strong the enticement. ... "

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56. THE IIISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION AS A MYTHUS.

"Satan, the evil being and enemy of mankind, borrowed from the Persian religion, was by the Jews, whose exclusiveness limited all that was good and truly human to the Israelitish people, viewed as the special adversary of their nation, and hence as the lord of the heathen states with whom they were in hostility. The interests of the Jewish people being centred in the Messiah, it followed that Satan was emphatically his adversary; and thus throughout the New Testament we find the idea of Jesus as the Messiah associated with that of Satan as the enemy of his person and cause. Christ having appeared to destroy the works of the devil (1 John iii. 8), the latter seizes every opportunity of sowing tares among the good seed (Matt. xiii. 39), and not only aims, though unsuccessfully, at obtaining the mastery over Jesus himself (John xiv. 30), but continually assails the faithful (Eph. vi. 11; 1 Pet. v. 8). As these attacks of the devil on the pious are nothing else than attempts to get them into his power, that is, to entice them to sin; and as this can only be done by the indirect suggestion or immediate insinuation of evil, seductive thoughts, Satan had the appellation of ὁ πειράζων, the tempter. In the prologue to the book of Job, he seeks to seduce the pious man from God, by the instrumentality of a succession of plagues and misfortunes: while the ensnaring counsel which the serpent gave to the woman was early considered an immediate diabolical suggestion.

"In the more ancient Hebrew theology, the idea was current that temptation (‏נִסָּה‎, LXX. πειράζειν) was an act of God himself, who thus put his favourites, as Abraham (Gen. xxii. 1), and the people of Israel (Exod. xvi. 4, and elsewhere), to the test, or in just anger even instigated men to pernicious deeds. But as soon as the idea of Satan was formed, the office of temptation was transferred to him, and withdrawn from God, with whose absolute goodness it began to be viewed as incompatible (James i. 13). Hence it is Satan, who by his importunity obtains the divine permission to put Job to the severest trial through suffering; hence David’s culpable project of numbering the people, which in the second book of Samuel was traced to the anger of God, is in the later chronicles (1 Chron. xxii. 1) put directly to the account of the [260]devil; and even the well-meant temptation with which, according to Genesis, God visited Abraham, in requiring from him the sacrifice of his son, was in the opinion of the later Jews, undertaken by God at the instigation of Satan.83 Nor was this enough—scenes were imagined in which the devil personally encountered Abraham on his way to the place of sacrifice, and in which he tempted the people of Israel during the absence of Moses."

"If a place were demanded where Satan might probably undertake such a temptation of the Messiah, the wilderness would present itself from more than one quarter. Not only had it been from Azazel (Lev. xvi. 8–10), and Asmodeus (Tobit viii. 3), to the demons ejected by Jesus (Matt. xii. 43), the fearful dwelling-place of the infernal powers: it was also the scene of temptation for the people of Israel, that filius Dei collectivus.87 Added to this, it was the habit of Jesus to retire to solitary places for still meditation and prayer (Matt. xiv. 13; Mark i. 35; Luke vi. 12; John vi. 15); to which after his consecration to the messianic office he would feel more than usually disposed. It is hence possible that, as some theologians88 have supposed, a residence of Jesus in the wilderness after his baptism (though not one of precisely forty days’ duration) served as the historical foundation of our narrative; but even without this connecting thread, both the already noticed choice of place and that of time are to be explained by the consideration, that it seemed consonant with the destiny of the Messiah that, like a second Hercules, he should undergo such a trial on his entrance into mature age and the messianic office.

"But what had the Messiah to do in the wilderness? That the Messiah, the second Saviour, should like his typical predecessor, Moses, on Mount Sinai, submit himself to the holy discipline of fasting, was an idea the more [261]inviting, because it furnished a suitable introduction to the first temptation which presupposed extreme hunger. The type of Moses and that of Elias (1 Kings xix. 8), determined also the duration of this fast in the wilderness, for they too had fasted forty days; moreover, the number forty was held sacred in Hebrew antiquity.89 Above all, the forty days of the temptation of Jesus seem, as Olshausen justly observes, a miniature image of the forty years’ trial in the wilderness, endured by the Israelitish people as a penal emblem of the forty days spent by the spies in the land of Canaan (Num. xiv. 34). For, that in the temptations of Jesus there was a special reference to the temptation of Israel in the wilderness, is shown by the circumstance that all the passages cited by Jesus in opposition to Satan are drawn from the recapitulatory description of the journeyings of the Israelites in Deut. vi. and viii. ... "

"The third temptation which Jesus underwent—to worship the devil—is not apparent among the temptations of God’s ancient people. But one of the [263]most fatal seductions by which the Israelites were led astray in the wilderness was that of idolatry; and the apostle Paul adduces it as admonitory to Christians. Not only is this sin derived immediately from the devil in a passage above quoted;93 but in the later Jewish idea, idolatry was identical with the worship of the devil (Baruch iv. 7; 1 Cor. x. 20). ... "

And yet, they do not recognise that idol worship isn't merely about worship of an image, it's about all objects including what are called holy books - after all they are merely reconstructed wood pulp with squiggles, if images of Gods and Goddesses are to be called idols! Yet mist people comprehend the mindless fury that some fanatics of a faith- and there is more than one faith involved in the latter - get into, when their holy book is considered insulted; such insult can be as drastic as a burning, as little as a word, or as quaint as transport.

Funny, it's India that does not burst into flames when her Gods and Goddesses are insulted by those of abrahmic cultures, whether verbally or far worse; for real faith, it's necessary one knows, absolutely knows, that Gods and Goddesses are way above, and anyone spitting at a midday sun can only soil oneself.

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October 21, 2021 - October 21, 2021.

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CHAPTER III.

LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 57. Difference between the synoptical writers and John, as to the customary scene of the ministry of Jesus

58. The residence of Jesus at Capernaum

59. Divergencies of the Evangelists as to the chronology of the life of Jesus. Duration of his public ministry

60. The attempts at a chronological arrangement of the particular events in the public life of Jesus

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57. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SYNOPTICAL WRITERS AND JOHN, AS TO THE CUSTOMARY SCENE OF THE MINISTRY OF JESUS.

"According to the synoptical writers, Jesus, born indeed at Bethlehem in Judea, but brought up at Nazareth in Galilee, only absented himself from Galilee during the short interval between his baptism and the imprisonment of the Baptist; immediately after which, he returned thither and began his ministry, teaching, healing, calling disciples, so as to traverse all Galilee; using as the centre of his agency, his previous dwelling-place, Nazareth, alternately with Capernaum, on the north-west border of the lake of Tiberias (Matt iv. 12–25 parall.). Mark and Luke have many particulars concerning this ministry in Galilee which are not found in Matthew, and those which they have in common with him are arranged in a different order; but as they all agree in the geographical circuit which they assign to Jesus, the account of the first Evangelist may serve as the basis of our criticism. According to him the incidents narrated took place in Galilee, and partly in Capernaum down to viii. 18, where Jesus crosses the Galilean sea, but is scarcely landed on the east side when he returns to Capernaum. ... The message of the Baptist (chap. xi.) is also received by Jesus in Galilee, at least such appears to be the opinion of the narrator, from his placing in immediate connexion the complaints of Jesus against the Galilean cities. When delivering the parable in chap. xiii. Jesus is by the sea, doubtless that of Galilee, and, as there is mention of his house, οἰκία (v. 1), probably in the vicinity of Capernaum. Next, after having visited his native city Nazareth (xiii. 53) he passes over the sea (xiv. 13), according to Luke (ix. 10), into the country of Bethsaida (Julias); whence, however, after the miracle of the loaves, he speedily returns to the western border (xiv. 34). Jesus then proceeds to the northern extremity of Palestine, on the frontiers of Phœnicia (xv. 21); soon, however, returned to the sea of Galilee (v. 29), he takes ship to the eastern side, in the [265]coast of Magdala (v. 39), but again departs northward into the country of Cæsarea Philippi (xvi. 13), in the vicinity of Lebanon, among the lower ridges of which is to be sought the mount of the transfiguration (xvii. 1). After journeying in Galilee for some time longer with his disciples (xvii. 22), and once more visiting Capernaum (v. 24), he leaves Galilee (xix. 1) to travel (as it is most probably explained)1 through Perea into Judea (a journey which, according to Luke ix. 52, he seems to have made through Samaria); xx. 17, he is on his way to Jerusalem; v. 29, he comes through Jericho; and xxi. 1, is in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which, v. 10, he enters."

"Thus, according to the synoptical writers, Jesus, from his return after being baptized by John, to his final journey to Jerusalem, never goes beyond the limits of North Palestine, but traverses the countries west and east of the Galilean sea and the upper Jordan, in the dominions of Herod Antipas and Philip, without touching on Samaria to the south, still less Judea, or the country under the immediate administration of the Romans. And within those limits, to be still more precise, it is the land west of the Jordan, and the sea of Tiberias, and therefore Galilee, the province of Antipas, in which Jesus is especially active; only three short excursions on the eastern border of the sea, and two scarcely longer on the northern frontiers of the country, being recorded."

Strauss discusses the itinerary given in the fourth, different from the rest.

"Thus, according to John, Jesus was present at four feasts in Jerusalem, before the final one: was besides once in Bethany, and had been active for a considerable time in Judea and on his journey through Samaria."

One has to wonder, did Rome order the four gospels written with differences, just so that a uniform tale wouldn't raise suspicions, about the ordered writing, and consequent collusion?

"Why, it must be asked, have the synoptical writers been silent on this frequent presence of Jesus in Judea and Jerusalem? Why have they represented the matter, as if Jesus, before his last fatal journey to Jerusalem, had not overstepped the limits of Galilee and Perea? This discrepancy between the synoptical writers and John was long overlooked in the church, and of late it has been thought feasible to deny its existence. ... "

"Expositors must therefore accommodate themselves to the admission of a difference between the synoptical writers and John,4 and those who think it incumbent on them to harmonize the Gospels must take care lest this difference be found a contradiction; which can only be prevented by deducing the discrepancy, not from a disparity between the ideas of the Evangelists as to the sphere of the ministry of Jesus, but from the difference of mental bias under which they severally wrote. ... Such provincial exclusiveness would surely be quite unexampled. Hence others have preferred the supposition that Matthew, writing at Jerusalem, purposely selected from the mass of discourses and actions of Jesus with which he was acquainted, those of which Galilee was the theatre, because they were the least known at Jerusalem, and required narrating more than what had happened within the hearing, and was fresh in the memories of its inhabitants.6 In opposition to this it has been already remarked,7 that there is no proof of Matthew’s gospel being especially intended for the Christians of Judea and Jerusalem: that even assuming this, a reference to the events which had happened in the reader’s own country could not be superfluous: and that, lastly, the like limitation of the ministry of Jesus to Galilee by Mark and Luke cannot be thus accounted for, since these Evangelists obviously did not write for Judea (neither were they Galileans, so that this objection is equally [267]valid against the first explanation); and were not in so servile a relation to Matthew as to have no access to independent information that might give them a more extended horizon. It is curious enough that these two attempts to solve the contradiction between the synoptical writers and John, are themselves in the same predicament of mutual contradiction. For if Matthew has been silent on the incidents in Judea, according to one, on account of his proximity, according to the other, on account of his remoteness, it follows that, two contrary hypotheses being made with equal ease to explain the same fact, both are alike inadequate."

" ... But the Galileans could scarcely have misunderstood Jesus more lamentably than did the Jews from first to last, according to John’s representation, and as in Galilee he had the most undisturbed communion with his disciples, we should rather have conjectured that here would be the scene of his more profound instruction. ... "

Notice how the word Jew or Jewish is always there when it's a difference, or lack of understanding, involved? But if there were others in the audience, it's not known, and if he had perfect disciples of non Jewish sort, that definitely would have been publicicised by churvh; meanwhile they are obfuscating the fact thst his golloeers and disciples, and mourners, too, were Jewish, of course! While his executioners were definitely Roman, from lowest soldiers to highest authority that ordered crucifixions - his own crucifixion being far from unique, and all political opponents being put to death routinely.

"Thus it is impossible to explain why the synoptical writers, if they knew of the earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, should not have mentioned them, and it must be concluded that if John be right, the first three Evangelists knew nothing of an essential part of the earlier ministry of Jesus; if, on the other hand, the latter be right, the author of the fourth gospel, or of the tradition by which he was guided, fabricated a large portion of what he has narrated concerning the ministry of Jesus, or at least assigned to it a false locality."

" .. For example, the synoptical writers, Matthew especially, as often as Jesus leaves Galilee, from the time that he takes up his abode there after the Baptist’s imprisonment, seldom neglect to give a particular reason; such as that he wished to escape from the crowd by a passage across the sea (Matt. viii. 18), or that he withdrew into the wilderness of Perea to avoid the snares of Herod (xiv. 13), or that he retired into the region of Tyre and Sidon on account of the offence taken by the scribes at his preaching (xv. 21): John, on the contrary, generally alleges a special reason why Jesus leaves Judea, and retires into Galilee. Not to contend that his very first journey thither appears to be occasioned solely by the invitation to Cana, his departure again into Galilee after the first passover attended by him in his public character, is expressly accounted for by the ominous attention which the increasing number of his disciples had excited among the Pharisees (iv. 1 ff.). His retirement after the second feast, also, into the country east of the Sea of Tiberias (vi. 1), must be viewed in relation to the ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀποκτεῖναι (v. 18), since immediately after, the Evangelist assigns as a reason for the continuance of Jesus in Galilee, the malignant designs of his enemies, which rendered his abode in Judea perilous to his life (vii. 1). The interval between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of the Dedication seems to have been spent by Jesus in the capital,9 no unpropitious circumstances compelling him to absent himself (x. 22); on the other hand, his journey into Perea (x. 40) and that into Ephraim (xi. 54) are presented as effects of his persecution by the Jews."

There it is, again - the "persecution by the Jews" motif, so branded on minds of Europe by church, not only it resulted in genocides, but Europe never realised it was false information fed for centuries! And yet it should have been obvious.

Also, Strauss speaks of gospels mentioning his having to leave one region for another due to danger to his life. Which, he fails to realise, for a kind, beatific orator, advocating love and mercy, is extremely strange, if not outright unlikely. Such a person would at most be left alone, if not ridiculed - but not attacked.

Unless, of course, he was in fact a political active king of the Jews, and danger was not from Jewish mobs but from Roman spies and generally authority of Rome.

Which has been wiped out and overwritten by Rome after church colluded with Rome for survival, council of Nicea, throwing blame falsely on Jews for everything - which, under the circumstances sounds like a man blaming his mother in law for him having had fourteen children!

"Thus precisely the same relation as that which exists between Matthew and Luke, with respect to the original dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus is found between the first three Evangelists and the fourth, with respect to the principal theatre of his ministry. As, in the former instance, Matthew pre-supposes Bethlehem to be the original place of abode, and Nazareth the one subsequently adopted through fortuitous circumstances, while Luke gives the contrary representation; so in the latter, the entire statement of the synoptical writers turns on the idea that, until his last journey, Galilee was the chosen field of the labours of Jesus, and that he only left it occasionally, from particular motives and for a short time; while that of John, on the contrary, turns on the supposition, that Jesus would have taught solely in Judea and Jerusalem had not prudence sometimes counselled him to retire into the more remote provinces."

Now antisemitism increases perceptible in Strauss's writing.

" ... It has been held inconceivable that Jesus, so long after his assumption of the messianic character, should confine himself to Galilee, instead of taking his stand in Judea and Jerusalem, which, from the higher culture and more extensive foreign intercourse of their population, were a much more suitable field for his labours; but it has been long remarked, on the other hand, that Jesus could find easier access to the simple and energetic minds of Galilee, less fettered by priestcraft and Pharisaism, and therefore acted judiciously in obtaining a firm footing there by a protracted ministry, before he ventured to Jerusalem, where, in the centre of priestly and Pharisaic domination, he must expect stronger opposition."

It isn't just that he holds on to church line of Jewish opposition firmly, never bringing in any thought about who ruled and executed him; it's also that he identifies higher culture with regions of non Jewish residents in lands of Jews, a typical bias by cultures that invade, colonise and loot others - typically, European. They do fail to realise, don't they, that such logic makes Attila the Hun, and Chengiz Khan, and their Mongolian hordes, automatically superior cultures, having invaded all the way into Europe, burning whole cities on their way?

But the even more strange part is that Strauss fails to see he has taken a position contradictory to his prior stance, of Jewish vs heathen, Jewish vs pagan, Jehovah vs Satan worship, where Jewish and Jehovah were always held superior and right, even if only to justify church that took most of the Jewish heritage, so as to erect its own monument of religion, with a triple fraud - falsified story of the Jewish king crucified by Rome, falsified story of conversion of Constantine, and falsification of his wish in the matter. And here hes holding those other cultures, which he calls heathen and pagan unyil now, suddenly superior to that of Jews!

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58. THE RESIDENCE OF JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.

" ... In the fourth gospel, which only mentions very transient visits of Jesus to Galilee, Capernaum is not given as his dwelling-place, and Cana is the place with which he is supposed to have the most connexion. ... "

Authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail shows successfully that the wedding feast where he, after he was asked by his mother about difficulty due to wine running short for guests, turned water into wine, could only be his own; and they've successfully argued that Mary Magdalena was the wife he married and had children with; Cana might have been their home?

" ... Luke thinks he has found the reason in a fact, which is more worthy of notice. According to him, Jesus after his return from baptism does not immediately take up his residence in Capernaum, but makes an essay to teach in Nazareth, and after its failure first turns to Capernaum. This Evangelist tells us in the most graphic style how Jesus presented himself at the synagogue on the sabbath-day, and expounded a prophetic passage, so as to excite general admiration, but at the same time to provoke malicious reflections on the narrow circumstances of his family. Jesus, in reply, is made to refer the discontent of the Nazarenes, that he performed no miracles before them as at Capernaum, to the contempt which every prophet meets with in his own country, and to threaten them in Old Testament allusions, that the divine benefits would be withdrawn from them and conferred on strangers. Exasperated by this, they lead him to the brow of the hill, intending to cast him down; he, however, passes unhurt through the midst of them (iv. 16–30)."

Strauss is dealing with parts that seem to have increasingly antisemitic tone, and he does not notice it, taking it as matter of fact; but they do not harmonise with the earlier ones, prior yo execution of John the Baptist, which wasted Jews and Jewish culture and religion for most part, writing of all others as heathen, pagan, at al, when not outright labelling them as Satan worship.

Besides, the passage above really does not seem a portrayal of a man who preaches love and mercy, since in the last bit he is as threatening as Jehovah about promising anyone not following him an exile from heaven; moreover, if people liked him and were impressed, why would they ridicule him for poverty of his family, if he was preaching love and kindness?

No, it makes sense only if he claimed his stature, king of Jews, and advocated overthrow of Rome; and Roman spies and soldiers being everywhere, then needed to escape, and did, because Jews helped.

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59. DIVERGENCIES OF THE EVANGELISTS AS TO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF JESUS--DURATION OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.

"In striking contrast with this lowest computation of time, is the tradition, also very ancient, that Jesus was baptized in his thirtieth year, but at the time of his crucifixion was not far from his fiftieth.44 But this opinion is equally founded on a misunderstanding. The elders who had conversations with John the disciple of the Lord, in Asia, πρεσβύτεροι οἱ κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἰωάννῃ τῷ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθητῇ συμβεβληκότες,—on whose testimony Irenæus relies when he says, such is the tradition of John, παραδεδωκέναι ταῦτα τὸν Ἰωάννην,—had given no information further than that Christ taught, ætatem seniorem habens. That this ætas senior was the age of from forty to fifty years is merely the inference of Irenæus, founded on what the Jews allege as an objection to the discourse of Jesus, John viii. 57: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? language which according to Irenæus could only be addressed to one, qui jam quadraginta annos excessit, quinquagesimum autem annum nondum attigit. But the Jews might very well say to a man a little more than thirty, that he was much too young to have seen Abraham, since he had not reached his fiftieth year, which, in the Jewish idea, completed the term of manhood.

"Thus we can obtain no precise information from our gospels as to how long the public labours of Jesus lasted; all we can gather is, that if we follow the fourth gospel we must not reckon less than two years and something over. But the repeated journeys to the feasts on which this calculation is founded are themselves not established beyond doubt.

"Opposed to this minimum, we gain a maximum, if we understand, from Luke iii. 1 ff. and 23, that the baptism of Jesus took place in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and add to this that his crucifixion occurred under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. For as Pilate was recalled from his post in the year of Tiberius’s death,46 and as Tiberius reigned rather more than seven years after the fifteenth year of his reign,47 it follows that seven years are the maximum of the possible duration of the ministry of Jesus after his baptism. But while one of these data, namely, that Jesus was crucified under Pilate, is well attested, the other is rendered suspicious by its association with a chronological error, so that in fact we cannot achieve here even a proximate, still less an accurate solution of our question"

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60. THE ATTEMPTS AT A CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE PARTICULAR EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

" ... John says (iii. 24) that when Jesus began his ministry, John was not yet cast into prison; Matthew makes the return of Jesus into Galilee subsequent to the imprisonment of the Baptist (iv. 12), hence it has been inferred that that return was from the first passover, and not from the baptism;48 but it is undeniable that Matthew places the commencement of the public ministry of Jesus in Galilee, and presupposes no earlier ministry at the feast in Jerusalem, so that the two statements, instead of dovetailing, as has been imagined, are altogether incompatible. ... "

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October 22, 2021 - October 22, 2021.

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CHAPTER IV.

JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.

61. Jesus, the Son of Man

62. How soon did Jesus conceive himself to be the Messiah, and find recognition as such from others?

63. Jesus, the Son of God

64. The divine mission and authority of Jesus. His pre-existence

65. The messianic plan of Jesus. Indications of a political element

66. Data for the pure spirituality of the messianic plan of Jesus. Balance

67. The relation of Jesus to the Mosaic law

68. Scope of the messianic plan of Jesus. Relation to the Gentiles

69. Relation of the messianic plan of Jesus to the Samaritans. His interview with the woman of Samaria

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61. JESUS, THE SON OF MAN.

"How so apparently vague an appellation came to be appropriated to the Messiah, we gather from Matt. xxvi. 64 parall., where the Son of man is depicted as coming in the clouds of heaven. This is evidently an allusion to Dan. vii. 13 f. where after having treated of the fall of the four beasts, the writer says: I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man (‏כְּבַר אֱנָשׁ‎ ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, LXX.) came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion. The four beasts (v. 17 ff.) were symbolical of the four great empires, the last of which was the Macedonian, with its offshoot, Syria. After their fall, the kingdom was to be given in perpetuity to the People of God, the saints of the Most High: hence, he who was to come with clouds of heaven could only be, either a personification of the holy people, or a leader of heavenly origin under whom they were to achieve their destined triumph—in a word, the Messiah; and this was the customary interpretation among the Jews. ... "

Four beasts are four great empires? And worse, someone supposedly godly in the sense of not Jupiter but kind and loving, has dominion? But that's nothing new it's still the old domination, rule, that Jehovah had!

" ... When, Matt. x. 23, on the first mission of the twelve apostles to announce the kingdom of heaven, he comforts them under the prospect of their future persecutions by the assurance that they would not have gone over all the cities of Israel before the coming of the Son of Man, we should rather, taking this declaration alone, think of a third person, whose speedy messianic appearance Jesus was promising, than of the speaker himself, seeing that he was already come, and it would not be antecedently clear how he could represent his own coming as one still in anticipation. So also when Jesus (Matt. xiii. 37 ff.) interprets the Sower of the parable to be the Son of Man, who at the end of the world will have a harvest and a tribunal, he might be supposed to refer to the Messiah as a third person distinct from himself. This is equally the case, xvi. 27 f., where, to prove the proposition that the loss of the soul is not to be compensated by the gain of the whole world, he urges the speedy coming of the Son of Man, to administer retribution. Lastly, in the connected discourses, Matt. xxiv., xxv. parall., many particulars would be more easily conceived, if the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου whose παρουσία Jesus describes, were understood to mean another than himself.

"But this explanation is far from being applicable to the majority of instances in which Jesus uses this expression. When he represents the Son of Man, not as one still to be expected, but as one already come and actually present, for example, in Matt xviii. 11, where he says: The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost; when he justifies his own acts by the authority with which the Son of Man was invested, as in Matt. ix. 6; when, Mark viii. 31 ff. comp. Matt. xvi. 22, he speaks of the approaching sufferings and death of the Son of Man, so as to elicit from Peter the exclamation, οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο, this shall not be unto thee; in these and similar cases he can only, by the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, have intended himself. ... "

Next part is a tad unclear.

" ... And even those passages, which, taken singly, we might have found capable of application to a messianic person, distinct from Jesus, lose this capability when considered in their entire connexion. It is possible, however, either that the writer may have misplaced certain expressions, or that the ultimately prevalent conviction that Jesus was the Son of Man caused what was originally said merely of the latter, to be viewed in immediate relation to the former."

"Thus besides the fact that Jesus on many occasions called himself the Son of Man, there remains the possibility that on many others, he may have designed another person; and if so, the latter would in the order of time naturally precede the former. Whether this possibi

lity can be heightened ta a reality, must depend on the answer to the following question: Is there, in the period of the life of Jesus, from which all his recorded declarations are taken, any fragment which indicates that he had not yet conceived himself to be the Messiah?"

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62. HOW SOON DID JESUS CONCEIVE HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH, AND FIND RECOGNITION AS SUCH FROM OTHERS ?

"Jesus held and expressed the conviction that he was the Messiah; this is an indisputable fact. Not only did he, according to the Evangelists, receive with satisfaction the confession of the disciples that he was the Χριστὸς (Matt. xvi. 16 f.) and the salutation of the people, Hosanna to the Son of David (xxi. 15 f.); not only did he before a public tribunal (Matt. xxvi. 64, comp. John xviii. 37) as well as to private individuals (John iv. 26, ix. 37, x. 25) repeatedly declare himself to be the Messiah; but the fact that his disciples after his death believed and proclaimed that he was the Messiah, is not to be comprehended, unless, when living, he had implanted the conviction in their minds.

"To the more searching question, how soon Jesus began to declare himself the Messiah and to be regarded as such by others, the Evangelists almost unanimously reply, that he assumed that character from the time of his baptism. All of them attach to his baptism circumstances which must have convinced himself, if yet uncertain, and all others who witnessed or credited them, that he was no less than the Messiah; John makes his earliest disciples recognise his right to that dignity on their first interview (i. 42 ff.), and Matthew attributes to him at the very beginning of his ministry, in the sermon on the mount, a representation of himself as the Judge of the world (vii. 21 ff.) and therefore the Messiah.

"Nevertheless, on a closer examination, there appears a remarkable divergency on this subject between the synoptical statement and that of John. While, namely, in John, Jesus remains throughout true to his assertion, and the disciples and his followers among the populace to their conviction, that he is the Messiah; in the synoptical gospels there is a vacillation discernible—the previously expressed persuasion on the part of the disciples and people that Jesus was the Messiah, sometimes vanishes and gives place to a much lower view of him, and even Jesus himself becomes more reserved in his declarations. This is particularly striking when the synoptical statement is compared with that of John; but even when they are separately considered, the result is the same."

"According to John (vi. 15), after the miracle of the loaves the people were inclined to constitute Jesus their (messianic) King; on the contrary, according to the other three Evangelists, either about the same time (Luke ix. 18 f.) or still later (Matt. xvi. 13 f.; Mark viii. 27 f.) the disciples could only report, on the opinions of the people respecting their master, that some said he was the resuscitated Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah or one of the old prophets: in reference to that passage of John, however, as also to the synoptical one, Matt. xiv. 33, according to which, some time before Jesus elicited the above report of the popular opinion, the people who were with him in the ship10 when he had allayed the storm, fell at his feet and worshipped him as the Son of God, it may be observed that when Jesus had spoken or acted with peculiar impressiveness, individuals, in the exaltation of the moment, might be penetrated with a conviction that he was the Messiah, while the general and calm voice of the people yet pronounced him to be merely a prophet."

" ... According to John he sanctions the homage which Nathanael renders to him as the Son of God and King of Israel, in the very commencement of his public career, and immediately proceeds to speak of himself under the messianic title, Son of Man (i. 51 f.): to the Samaritans also after his first visit to the passover (iv. 26, 39 ff.), and to the Jews on the second (v. 46), he makes himself known as the Messiah predicted by Moses. According to the synoptical writers, on the contrary, he prohibits, in the instance above cited and in many others, the dissemination of the doctrine of his Messiahship, beyond the circle of his adherents. Farther, when he asks his disciples, Whom do men say that I am? (Matt. xvi. 15) he seems to wish11 that they should derive their conviction of his Messiahship from his discourses and actions, and when he ascribes the avowed faith of Peter to a revelation from his heavenly Father, he excludes the possibility of his having himself previously made this disclosure to his disciples, either in the manner described by John, or in the more indirect one attributed to him by Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount; unless we suppose that the disciples had not hitherto believed his assurance, and that hence Jesus referred the new-born faith of Peter to divine influence."

" ... as there is an essential similarity in the conditions under which he lays this injunction on the people, if we discern a probable motive for it on any occasion, we are warranted in applying the same motive to the remaining cases. This motive is scarcely any other than the desire that the belief that he was the Messiah should not be too widely spread. When (Mark i. 34) Jesus would not allow the ejected demons to speak because they knew him, when he charged the multitudes that they should not make him known (Matt. xii. 16), he evidently intended that the former should not proclaim him in the character in which their more penetrative, demoniacal glance had viewed him, nor the latter in that revealed by the miraculous cure he had wrought on them—in short, they were not to betray their knowledge that he was the Messiah. As a reason for this wish on the part of Jesus, it has been alleged, on the strength of John vi. 15, that he sought to avoid awakening the political idea of the Messiah’s kingdom in the popular mind, with the disturbance which would be its inevitable result.16 This would be a valid reason; but the synoptical writers represent the wish, partly as the effect of humility;17 Matthew, in connexion with a prohibition of the kind alluded to, applying to Jesus a passage in Isaiah (xlii. 1 f.) where the servant of God is said to be distinguished by his stillness and unobtrusiveness: partly, and in a greater degree, as the effect of an apprehension that the Messiah, at least such an one as Jesus, would be at once proscribed by the Jewish hierarchy."

Do they leave no stone unturned in their attempts to make Jews hunted, by everyone throughout the world, for all time? Wasn't it rather the fear of his being known to rome as king of Jews that was the more dangerous, as it did prove, eventually?

"From all this it might appear that Jesus was restrained merely by external motives, from the open declaration of his Messiahship, and that his own conviction of it existed from the first in equal strength; but this conclusion cannot be maintained in the face of the consideration above mentioned, that Jesus began his career with the same announcement as the Baptist, an announcement which can scarcely have more than one import—an exhortation to prepare for a coming Messiah. The most natural supposition is that Jesus, first the disciple of the Baptist, and afterwards his successor, in preaching repentance and the approach of the kingdom of heaven, took originally the same position as his former master in relation to the messianic kingdom, notwithstanding the greater reach and liberality of his mind, and only gradually attained the elevation of thinking himself the Messiah. This supposition explains in the simplest manner the prohibition we have been considering, especially that annexed to the confession of Peter. ... "

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63. JESUS, THE SON OF GOD.

"In Hos. xi. 1; Exod. iv. 22, the people of Israel, and in 2 Sam, vii. 14; Ps. ii. 7 (comp. lxxxix. 28), the king of that people, are called the son and the first-born of God. The kings (as also the people) of Israel had this appellation, in virtue of the love which Jehovah bore them, and the tutelary care which he exercised over them (2 Sam. vii. 14); and from the second psalm we gather the farther reason, that as earthly kings choose their sons to reign with or under them, so the Israelitish kings were invested by Jehovah, the supreme ruler, with the government of his favourite province. Thus the designation was originally applicable to every Israelitish king who adhered to the principle of the theocracy; but when the messianic idea was developed, it was pre-eminently assigned to the Messiah, as the best-beloved Son, and the most powerful vicegerent of God on earth."

" ... It is true that the abundant expressions having this tendency in the Gospel of John, appear to contradict those of Jesus on an occasion recorded by the synoptical writers (Mark x. 17 f.; Luke xviii. 18 f.), when to a disciple who accosts him as Good Master, he replies: Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God. Here Jesus so tenaciously maintains the distinction between himself and God, that he renounces the predicate of (perfect) goodness, and insists on its appropriation to God alone. ... "

This is bordering jihadi sort of sentiment!

" ... It is true that, even in the synoptical gospels, when Jesus answers affirmatively the question whether he be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xxvi. 65, parall.), the high priest taxes him with blasphemy; but he refers merely to what he considers the unwarranted arrogation of the theocratic dignity of the Messiah, whereas in the fourth gospel, when Jesus represents himself as the Son of God (v. 17 f., x. 30 ff.), the Jews seek to kill him for the express reason that he thereby makes himself ἴσον τῷ θεῷ, nay even ἑαυτὸν θεὸν. According to the synoptical writers, the high priest so unhesitatingly considers the idea of the Son of God to pertain to that of the Messiah, that he associates the two titles as if they were interchangeable, in the question he addresses to Jesus: on the contrary the Jews in the Gospel of John regard the one idea as so far transcending the other, that they listen patiently to the declaration of Jesus that he is the Messiah (x. 25), but as soon as he begins to claim to be the Son of God, they take up stones to stone him. In the synoptical gospels the reproach cast on Jesus is, that being a common man, he gives himself out for the Messiah; in the fourth gospel, that being a mere man, he gives himself out for a divine being. ... "

Even if these were not lies ordered by the church, which part of this is different from church burning st stake anyone who dared to utter an opinion on almost any matter that wasn't an expressly permitted one, as later as era of Thomas More? What were Salem witch trials but people forced to recant at pain of execution, for crimes far smaller?

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64. THE DIVINE MISSION AND AUTHORITY OF JESUS-HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.

" ... To him, as the Messiah, all power is given (Matt. xi. 27); first, over the kingdom which he is appointed to found and to rule with all its members (John x. 29, xvii. 6); next, over mankind in general (John xvii. 2), and even external nature (Matt, xxviii. 18); consequently, should the interests of the messianic kingdom demand it, power to effect a thorough revolution in the whole world. At the future commencement of his reign, Jesus, as Messiah, is authorized to awake the dead (John v. 28), and to sit as a judge, separating those worthy to partake of the heavenly kingdom from the unworthy (Matt. xxv. 31 ff.; John v. 22, 29); offices which Jewish opinion attributed to the Messiah,24 and which Jesus, once convinced of his Messiahship, would necessarily transfer to himself."

In short, free rein to invade, loot and massacre throughout the world, calling it mission; destroy all other cultures, calling them opposition to god; and establish your rule, calling it that of god!

And Rome, using this weapon in form of church that Rome transformed itself into, did just that - invading, massacring, colonising, looting, and calling it just in name of the hod whise son they claimed to worship after killing him, and perpetrating the hypocrisy by forcing him as a weapon to destroy all other cultures.

How, exactly, is this different from the Mongol hordes sweeping through the then known world, burning all in their path if they didnt surrender? Only in the use of hypocrisy to sanctimonious justification of it all?

No wonder Germany felt justified in doing to Europe, beginning mid-thirties in twentieth century, in exactly what Europe had done for centuries to other continents!

"The Evangelists are not equally unanimous on another point. According to the synoptical writers, Jesus claims, it is true, the highest human dignity, and the most exalted relation with God, for the present and future, but he never refers to an existence anterior to his earthly career: in the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we find several discourses of Jesus which contain the repeated assertion of such a pre-existence. We grant that when Jesus describes himself as coming down from heaven (John iii. 13, xvi. 28), the expression, taken alone, may be understood as a merely figurative intimation of his superhuman origin. It is more difficult, but perhaps admissible, to interpret, with the Socinian Crell, the declaration of Jesus, Before Abraham was, I am, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγω εἰμι (John viii. 58), as referring to a purely ideal existence in the pre-determination of God; but scarcely possible to consider the prayer to the Father (John xvii. 5) to confirm the δόξα (glory) which Jesus had with Him before the world was, πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι, as an entreaty for the communication of a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity. But the language of Jesus, John vi. 62, where he speaks of the Son of man reascending αναβαίνειν where he was before ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον, is in its intrinsic meaning, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other passages, unequivocally significative of actual, not merely ideal, pre-existence."

This seems like a hash of what he learned from India with ideas of his Jewish heritage, of course.

"It has been already conjectured25 that these expressions, or at least the adaptation of them to a real pre-existence, are derived, not from Jesus, but from the author of the fourth gospel, with whose opinions, as propounded in his introduction, they specifically agree; for if the Word was in the beginning with God (ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θέον), Jesus, in whom it was made flesh, might attribute to himself an existence before Abraham, and a participation of glory with the Father before the foundation of the world. Nevertheless, we are not warranted in adopting this view, unless it can be shown that neither was the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah extant among the Jews of Palestine before the time of Jesus, nor is it probable that Jesus attained such a notion, independently of the ideas peculiar to his age and nation."

He might have indeed learned from India, and Luke embellished it further - but thus, of course, assuming innocence of Rome, which there is no reason whatsoever to do; and by the time Rome ordered and arranged the writing of the official gospels after council of Nicea, Rome had had contact enough with India, after crucifixion; there had been not only Thomas who came to India but Roman migration too, to coastal Southeast India, traces of colonies of which have been found.

"The latter supposition, that Jesus spoke from his own memory of his pre-human [292]and pre-mundane existence, is liable to comparison with dangerous parallels in the history of Pythagoras, Ennius, and Apollonius of Tyana, whose alleged reminiscences of individual states which they had experienced prior to their birth, are now generally regarded either as subsequent fables, or as enthusiastic self-delusions of those celebrated men. ... "

Racist hubris, plain and simple; for, by the time Strauss wrote this, European intellectuals were familiar with India, her philosophy and thought, even if at a most rudimentary level.

" ... For the other alternative, that the idea in question was common to the Jewish nation, a presumption may be found in the description, already quoted from Daniel, of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, since the author, possibly, and, at all events, many readers, imagined that personage to be a superhuman being, dwelling beforehand with God, like the angels. But that every one who referred this passage to the Messiah, or that Jesus in particular, associated with it the notion of a pre-existence, is not to be proved; for, if we exclude the representation of John, Jesus depicts his coming in the clouds of heaven, not as if he had come as a visitant to earth from his home in heaven, but, according to Matt. xxvi. 65 (comp. xxiv. 25), as if he, the earth-born, after the completion of his earthly course, would be received into heaven, and from thence would return to establish his kingdom: thus making the coming from heaven not necessarily include the idea of pre-existence. ... "

If Strauss is not being racist but merely rational and scientific, isn't it splitting hair, approving miracles of dead returning from heaven to establish a kingdom on earth? And why doesn't he realise that this language was merely a cloak for establishment of Roman colonial empires around the world, if he wasn't a racist imperialist?

"As it is thus evident that, immediately after the time of Jesus, the idea of a pre-existence of the Messiah was incorporated in the higher Jewish theology, it is no far-fetched conjecture, that the same idea was afloat when the mind of Jesus was maturing, and that in his conception of himself as the Messiah, this attribute was included. But whether Jesus were as deeply initiated in the speculations of the Jewish schools as Paul, is yet a question, and as the author of the fourth gospel, versed in the Alexandrian doctrine of the λόγος, stands alone in ascribing to Jesus the assertion of a pre-existence, we are unable to decide whether we are to put the dogma to the account of Jesus, or of his biographer."

Wasn't Paul a soldier of Rome?

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65. THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. INDICATIONS OF A POLITICAL ELEMENT.

"The idea of the Messiah grew up amongst the Jews in soil half religious, half political: it was nurtured by national adversity, and in the time of Jesus, according to the testimony of the gospels, it was embodied in the expectation that the Messiah would ascend the throne of his ancestor David, free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke, and found a kingdom which would last for ever (Luke i. 32 f., 68 ff.; Acts i. 6). Hence our first question must be this. Did Jesus include this political element in his messianic plan?"

The question Strauss should be asking, is whether Rome made up a mythology to cover up reality, of a man who'd grown up knowing he was king of Jews, and expected to free them, beginning a struggle against the Roman subjugation of Jews, being executed, and his followers not giving up, by joining church and cutting off Jews from it, and giving the man a makeover, from a warrior into a kind man talking of love.

"That Jesus aspired to be a temporal ruler, has at all times been an allegation of the adversaries of Christianity, but has been maintained by none with so much exegetical acumen as by the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments,34 who, be it observed, by no means denies to Jesus the praise of aiming at the moral reformation of his nation. ... "

Did his nation need moral reformation more than Rome? After all, the discussion of the story of his conception as given here by Strauss doesn't exactly portray Rome as moral, or anything but a bunch of liars attempting to copy the worst of a story of Jupiter!

" ... According to this writer, the first indication of a political plan on the part of Jesus is, that he unambiguously announced the approaching messianic kingdom, and laid down the conditions on which it was to be entered, without explaining what this kingdom was, and wherein it consisted,35 as if he supposed the current idea of its nature to be correct. Now the fact is, that the prevalent conception of the messianic reign had a strong political bias; hence, when Jesus spoke of the Messiah’s kingdom without a definition, the Jews could only think of an earthly dominion, and as Jesus could not have presupposed any other interpretation of his words, he must have wished to be so understood. But in opposition to this it may be remarked, that in the Parables by which Jesus shadowed forth the kingdom of heaven; in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he illustrates the duties of its citizens; and lastly, in his whole demeanour and course of action, we have sufficient evidence, that his idea of the messianic kingdom was peculiar to himself. There is not so ready a counterpoise for the difficulty, that Jesus sent the apostles, with whose conceptions he could not be unacquainted, to announce the Messiah’s kingdom throughout the land (Matt. x.). These, who disputed which of them should be greatest in the kingdom of their master (Matt, xviii. 1; Luke xxii. 24); of whom two petitioned for the seats at the right and left of the messianic king (Mark x. 35 ff.); who, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, expected a restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts i. 6);—these had clearly from the beginning to the end of their intercourse [294]with Jesus, no other than the popular notion of the Messiah; when, therefore, Jesus despatched them as heralds of his kingdom, it seems necessarily a part of his design, that they should disseminate in all places their political messianic idea."

Just one little step, and Strauss could have torn the blinkers imposed by the church lie - that this was only a saintly, ascetic, celibate and a peace loving reformer, rather than a freedom fighter for his people who wasn't a debauch like Romans.

"Among the discourses of Jesus there is one especially worthy of note in Matt. xix. 28 (comp. Luke xxii. 30). In reply to the question of Peter, We have left all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? Jesus promises to his disciples that in the παλιγγενεσία, when the Son of man shall sit on his throne, they also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. That the literal import of this promise formed part of the tissue of the messianic hopes cherished by the Jews of that period, is not to be controverted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assurance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in their future life by a participation in his glory.36 But the disciples must have understood the promise literally, when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness; and as Jesus had had many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such language, had he not intended to nourish their temporal hopes. The supposition that he did so merely to animate the courage of his disciples, without himself sharing their views, imputes duplicity to Jesus;—a duplicity in this case quite gratuitous, since, as Olshausen justly observes, Peter’s question would have been satisfactorily answered by any other laudatory acknowledgment of the devotion of the disciples. Hence it appears a fair inference, that Jesus himself shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions: but expositors have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclusion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading; others to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services,38 others to different expedients, but all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish ideas, here promises his disciples the dignity of being his assessors in his visible messianic judgment, and that he thus indicates the existence of a national element in his notion of the Messiah’s kingdom. It is observable, too, that in the Acts (i. 7), Jesus, even after his resurrection, does not deny that he will restore the kingdom to Israel, but merely discourages curiosity as to the times and seasons of its restoration.

"Among the actions of Jesus, his last entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 1 ff.) is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was partly political. According to the Fragmentist, all the circumstances point to a political design: the time which Jesus chose,—after a sufficiently long preparation of the people in the provinces; the Passover, which they visited in great numbers; the animal on which he rode, and by which, from a popular interpretation of a passage in Zechariah, he announced himself as the destined King of Jerusalem; the approval which he pronounces when the people receive him with a royal greeting; the violent procedure which he hazards in the temple; and finally, his severe philippic on the higher class of the Jews (Matt. xxiii.), at the close of which he seeks to awe them into a reception of him as their messianic king, by the threat that he will show himself to them no more in any other guise."

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66. DATA FOR THE PURE SPIRITUALITY OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS--BALANCE.

"Nowhere in our evangelical narratives is there a trace of Jesus having sought to form a political party. On the contrary, he withdraws from the eagerness of the people to make him a king (John vi. 15); he declares that the messianic kingdom comes not with observation, but is to be sought for in the recesses of the soul (Luke xvii. 20 f.); it is his principle to unite obedience to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt. xxii. 21); on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their excitement for the purposes of his ambition; lastly, he maintains before his judge, that his kingdom is not from hence οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν, is not of this world οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου (John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to question either his or the Evangelist’s veracity."

How did Strauss expect to see anything of facts, if he not only stuck to the narratives sanctioned by church, but never thought for a moment, even of the fact that there really was no objective proof the narratives by apostles really were what it was said they were?

"Thus we have a series of indications to counterbalance those detailed in the preceding section. The adversaries of Christianity have held exclusively to the arguments for a political, or rather a revolutionary, project, on the part of Jesus, while the orthodox theologians adhere to those only which tell for the pure spirituality of his plan:39 and each party has laboured to invalidate by hermeneutical skill the passages unfavourable to its theory. It has of late been acknowledged that both are equally partial, and that there is need of arbitration between them."

If opposition to church dogma existed after centuries if persecution leading to subconscious terror of dissent, and more, Strauss woukd have done well to realise there was more to it than equal fault on both sides.

"This has been attempted chiefly by supposing an earlier and a later form of the plan of Jesus.40 Although, it has been said, the moral improvement and religious elevation of his people were from the first the primary object of Jesus, he nevertheless, in the beginning of his public life, cherished the hope of reviving, by means of this internal regeneration, the external glories of the theocracy, when he should be acknowledged by his nation as the Messiah, and thereby be constituted the supreme authority in the state. But in the disappointment of this hope, he recognised the divine rejection of every political element in his plan, and thenceforth refined it into pure spirituality. It is held to be a presumption in favour of such a change in the plan of Jesus, that there is a gladness diffused over his first appearance, which gives place to melancholy in the latter period of his ministry; that instead of the acceptable year of the Lord, announced in his initiative address at Nazareth, sorrow is the burthen of his later discourses, and he explicitly says of Jerusalem, that he had attempted to save it, but that now its fall, both religious and political, was inevitable. ... "

That latter part being whitewash by Rome to cover up murders by Rome and more.

" ... As, however, the evangelists do not keep the events and discourses proper to these distinct periods within their respective limits, but happen to give the two most important data for the imputation of a political design to Jesus (namely the promise of the twelve thrones and the public entrance into the capital), near the close of his life; we must attribute to these writers a chronological confusion, as in the case of the relation which the views of Jesus bore to the messianic idea in general: unless as an alternative it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period the [296]declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political design."

Strauss makes it seem guilty, even with a faint stink, if it was about freedom of Jews from Roman yoke, by labelling it political; and yet, which nation in Europe was free of politics?

" ... Jesus certainly expected to restore the throne of David, and with his disciples to govern a liberated people; in no degree, however, did he rest his hopes on the sword of human adherents (Luke xxii. 38; Matt. xxvi. 52), but on the legions of angels, which his heavenly Father could send him (Matt. xxvi. 53). Wherever he speaks of coming in his messianic glory, he depicts himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 f., xxv. 31; John i. 52); before the majesty of the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven, all nations are to bow without the coercion of the sword, and at the sound of the angel’s trumpet, are to present themselves, with the awakened dead, before the judgment-seat of the Messiah and his twelve apostles. All this Jesus would not bring to pass of his own will, but he waited for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew the appropriate time for this catastrophe (Mark xiii. 32), and he apparently was not disconcerted when his end approached without his having received the expected intimation. ... "

On one hand, he had little recourse for even the earthly kingdom than hope of God making it happen; on the other, Rome wasn't going to let traces of his activities show in accounts of his life, if they included more than speeches - but if he were only a spiritual man speaking of peace, why send a cohort to get him?

" ... They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive that it makes Jesus an enthusiast,42 will do well to reflect how closely such hopes corresponded with the long cherished messianic idea of the Jews,43 and how easily, in that day of supernaturalism, and in a nation segregated by the peculiarities of its faith, an idea, in itself extravagant, if only it were consistent, and had, in some of its aspects, truth and dignity, might allure even a reasonable man beneath its influence."

"With respect to that which awaits the righteous after judgment,—everlasting life in the kingdom of the Father,—it is true that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish notions,44 compares it to a feast (Matt. viii. 11, xxii. 2 ff.), at which he hopes himself to taste the fruit of the vine (Matt. xxvi. 29), and to celebrate the Passover (Luke xxii. 16); but his declaration that in the αἰὼν μέλλων the organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be like the angels (ἰσάγγελοι, Luke xx. 35 ff.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses to a merely symbolical significance.

"Thus we conclude that the messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth): as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views."

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67. THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE MOSAIC LAW.

"The Mosaic institutions were actually extinguished in the church of which Jesus was the founder; hence it is natural to suppose that their abolition formed a part of his design:—a reach of vision, beyond the horizon of the ceremonial worship of his age and country, of which apologists have been ever anxious to prove that he was possessed.45 Neither are there wanting speeches and actions of Jesus which seem to favour their effort. Whenever he details the conditions of participation in the kingdom of heaven, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he insists, not on the observance of the Mosaic ritual, but on the spirit of religion and morality; he attaches no value to fasting, praying, and almsgiving, unless accompanied by a corresponding bent of mind (Matt. vi. 1–18); the two main elements of the Mosaic worship, sacrifice and the keeping of sabbaths and feasts, he not only nowhere enjoins, but puts a marked slight on the former, by commending the scribe who declared that the love of God and one’s neighbour was more than whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.),46 and he ran counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 1–13; Mark ii. 23–28, iii. 1–5; Luke vi. 1–10, xiii. 10 ff., xiv. 1 ff.; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. 1 ff.), of which in his character of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah. ... "

It's funny isn't it, then, that the church - especially church of Rome - went right back and imposed, all of that which hed rejected or put aside, on its followers, and in his name too?!!! Was it to somehow pretend subconsciously to themselves that this made up for killing him and his people, and persecuting them for evermore?

"The above, however, presents only one aspect of the position assumed by Jesus towards the Mosaic law; there are also data for the belief that he did not meditate the overthrow of the ancient constitution of his country. This side of the question has been, at a former period, and from easily-conceived reasons, the one which the enemies of Christianity in its ecclesiastical form, have chosen to exhibit;48 but it is only in recent times that, the theological [298]horizon being extended, the unprejudiced expositors of the church49 have acknowledged its existence. In the first place, during his life Jesus remains faithful to the paternal law; he attends the synagogue on the sabbath, journeys to Jerusalem at the time of the feast, and eats of the paschal lamb with his disciples. It is true that he heals on the sabbath, allows his disciples to pluck ears of corn (Matt. xii. 1 ff.), and requires no fasting or washing before meat in his society (Matt. iv. 14, xv. 2). But the Mosaic law concerning the sabbath simply prescribed cessation from common labour, ‏מְלָאכָה‎ (Exod. xx. 8 ff., xxxi. 12 ff., Deut. v. 12 ff.), including ploughing, reaping (Exod. xxxiv. 21), gathering of sticks (Num. xv. 32 ff.), and similar work, and it was only the spirit of petty observance, the growth of a later age, that made it an offence to perform cures, or pluck a few ears of corn.50 The washing of hands before eating was but a rabbinical custom;51 in the law one general yearly fast was alone prescribed (Lev. xvi. 29 ff., xxiii. 27 ff.) and no private fasting required; hence Jesus cannot be convicted of infringing the precepts of Moses. ... "

And yet, German lands still impose closure of all work after half a day on Saturday- so much so, neither pharmacies nor milk supplies for babies are available, except if one knows which particular emergency pharmacy is open that particular weekend, by looking at the newspaper - if one knew about it, which a stranger on a visit wouldn't; and it's only recent that petrol stations keep some groceries for sale, so babies need not starve.

"In that very Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus exalts spiritual religion so far above all ritual, he clearly presupposes the continuation of sacrifices (Matt. v. 23 f.), and declares that he is not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil (Matt. v. 17). Even if πληρῶσαι, in all probability, refers chiefly to the accomplishment of the Old Testament prophecies, οὐκ ἦλθον καταλῦσαι must at the same time be understood of the conservation of the Mosaic law, since in the context, perpetuity is promised to its smallest letter, and he who represents its lightest precept as not obligatory, is threatened with the lowest rank in the kingdom of heaven.53 In accordance with this, the apostles adhered strictly to the Mosaic law, even after the feast of Pentecost; they went at the hour of prayer into the temple (Acts iii. 1), clung to the synagogues and to the Mosaic injunctions respecting food (x. 14), and were unable to appeal to any express declaration of Jesus as a sanction for the procedure of Barnabas and Paul, when the judaizing party complained of their baptizing Gentiles without laying on them the burthen of the Mosaic law."

Wasn't that Barabbas?

" ... The majority of the Pharisaical precepts referred to externals, and had the effect of burying the noble morality of the Mosaic law under a heap of ceremonial observances; a gift to the temple sufficed to absolve the giver from his filial duties (xv. 5), and the payment of tithe of anise and cummin superseded justice, mercy, and faith (xxiii. 23). ... "

Wasn't it exactly similar corruption in church of Rome that made Luther rebel, for reform, before he was forced to separate his path from Rome?

"Jesus, supposing that he had discerned morality and the spiritual worship of God to be the sole essentials in religion, must have rejected all which, being merely ritual and formal, had usurped the importance of a religious obligation, and under this description must fall a large proportion of the Mosaic precepts; but it is well known how slowly such consequences are deduced, when they come into collision with usages consecrated by antiquity. Even Samuel, apparently, was aware that obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more acceptable to God than one of slain animals (Ps. 1.); yet how long after were sacrifices retained together with true obedience, or in its stead! Jesus was more thoroughly penetrated with this conviction than those ancients; with him, the true commandments of God in the Mosaic law were simply, Honour thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, etc., and above all, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. But [300]his deep-rooted respect for the sacred book of the law, caused him, for the sake of these essential contents, to honour the unessential; which was the more natural, as in comparison with the absurdly exaggerated pedantry of the traditional observances, the ritual of the Pentateuch must have appeared highly simple. To honour this latter part of the law as of Divine origin, but to declare it abrogated on the principle, that in the education of the human race, God finds necessary for an earlier period an arrangement which is superfluous for a later one, implies that idea of the law as a schoolmaster, νόμος παιδαγωγὸς (Gal. iii. 24), which seems first to have been developed by the Apostle Paul; nevertheless, its germ lies in the declaration of Jesus, that God had permitted to the early Hebrews, on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matt. xix. 8 f.), many things which, in a more advanced state of culture, were inadmissible."

The church labelled it donation, or tithe, instead of sacrifice demanded, but demanded it under other guises; and as to the last part, it seems unlikely that it was he calling his own people abusive names such as hard hearted - it must have been Rome that put that in, among other lies! After all, his family, neighbours, friends and relatives were Jews, and he wasn't exactly brought up by other people! Or is this a clue that he did indeed travel to India? Even if so, it's unlikely he'd call Jews hard hearted, without including himself - that bit clearly shows a Roman hand in writing it, whether it was Paul or the council of Nicea.

"A similar limitation of the duration of the law is involved in the predictions of Jesus (if indeed they were uttered by Jesus, a point which we have to discuss), that the temple would be destroyed at his approaching advent (Matt. xxiv. parall.), and that devotion would be freed from all local restrictions (John iv.); for with these must fall the entire Mosaic system of external worship. This is not contradicted by the declaration that the law would endure until heaven and earth should pass away (Matt. v. 18), for the Hebrew associated the fall of his state and sanctuary with the end of the old world or dispensation, so that the expressions, so long as the temple stands, and so long as the world stands, were equivalent. ... "

Clear hand of Rome in that first part.

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68. SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS-RELATIONS TO THE GENTILES.

"Although the church founded by Jesus did, in fact, early extend itself beyond the limits of the Jewish people, there are yet indications which might induce a belief that he did not contemplate such an extension.61 When he sends the twelve on their first mission, his command is, Go not into the way [301]of the Gentiles—Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 5 f.). That Matthew alone has this injunction, and not the two other synoptists, is less probably explained by the supposition that the Hebrew author of the first gospel interpolated it, than by the opposite one, namely, that it was wilfully omitted by the Hellenistic authors of the second and third gospels. For, as the judaizing tendency of Matthew is not so marked that he assigns to Jesus the intention of limiting the messianic kingdom to the Jews; as, on the contrary, he makes Jesus unequivocally foretell the calling of the Gentiles (viii. 11 f., xxi. 33 ff., xxii. 1 ff., xxviii. 19 f.): he had no motive for fabricating this particularizing addition; but the two other Evangelists had a strong one for its omission, in the offence which it would cause to the Gentiles already within the fold. ... This necessity on his part might account for his answer to the Canaanitish woman, whose daughter he refuses to heal, because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24), were it not that the boon which he here denies is not a reception into the messianic kingdom, but a temporal benefit, such as even Elijah and Elisha had conferred on those who were not Israelites (1 Kings xvii. 9 ff.; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.)—examples to which Jesus elsewhere appeals (Luke iv. 25 ff.). ... That an aversion to the Gentiles may not appear to be his motive, it has been conjectured63 that Jesus, wishing to preserve an incognito in that country, avoided the performance of any messianic work. But such a design of concealment is only mentioned by Mark (vii. 25), who represents it as being defeated by the entreaties of the woman, contrary to the inclinations of Jesus; and as this Evangelist omits the declaration of Jesus, that he was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, we must suspect that he was guided by the wish to supply a less offensive motive for the conduct of Jesus, rather than by historical accuracy. ... Thus it must be allowed that Jesus in this case seems to share the antipathy of his countrymen towards the Gentiles, ... "

"This narrative, however, is neutralized by another, in which Jesus is said to act in a directly opposite manner. The centurion of Capernaum, also a Gentile (as we gather from the remarks of Jesus), has scarcely complained of a distress similar to that of the Canaanitish woman, when Jesus himself volunteers to go and heal his servant (Matt. viii. 5). If, then, Jesus has no hesitation, in this instance, to exercise his power of healing in favour of a heathen, how comes it that he refuses to do so in another quite analogous case? Truly if the relative position of the two narratives in the gospels have any weight, he must have shown himself more harsh and narrow at the later period than at the earlier one. Meanwhile, this single act of benevolence to a Gentile, standing as it does in inexplicable contradiction to the narrative above examined, cannot prove, in opposition to the command expressly given to the disciples, not to go to the Gentiles, that Jesus contemplated their admission as such into the messianic kingdom."

"Even the prediction of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, does not prove this. In the above interview with the centurion of Capernaum, Jesus declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom (obviously the Jews), for whom it was originally designed, will be cast out (Matt. viii. 11 f.). ... "

That part seems more in accord with Rome writing it!

" ... Yet more decidedly, when applying the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, he warns his countrymen that the kingdom of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. xxi. 43). All this may be understood in the sense intended by the prophets, in their promises that the messianic kingdom would extend to all nations; namely, that the Gentiles would turn to the worship of Jehovah, embrace the Mosaic religion in its entire form, and afterwards be received into the Messiah’s kingdom. It would accord very well with this expectation, that, prior to such a conversion, Jesus should forbid his disciples to direct their announcement of his kingdom to the Gentiles."

And Rome might have thought it best to cover sins of Rome in persecution of Jews, crucifixion of hundreds, and the final exodus enforced, by saying he prophesied all this, and him being worshipped by Rome, Rome had to do it it was ordained by his father!

"But in the discourses concerning his re-appearance, Jesus regards the publication of the gospel to all nations as one of the circumstances that must precede that event (Matt. xxiv. 14; Mark xiii. 10); and after his resurrection, according to the synoptists, he gave his disciples the command, Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47); i.e. go to them with the offer of the Messiah’s kingdom, even though they may not beforehand have become Jews. Not only, however, do the disciples, after the first Pentecost, neglect to execute this command, but when a case is thrust on them which offers them an opportunity for compliance with it, they act as if they were altogether ignorant that such a direction had been given by Jesus (Acts x., xi.). The heathen centurion Cornelius, worthy, from his devout life, of a reception into the messianic community, is pointed out by an angel to the Apostle Peter. But because it was not hidden from God, with what difficulty the apostle would be induced to receive a heathen, without further preliminary, into the Messiah’s kingdom, he saw it needful to prepare him for such a step by a symbolical vision. In consequence of such an admonition Peter goes to Cornelius; but to impel him to baptize him and his family, he needs a second sign, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost on these uncircumcised. When, subsequently, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem call him to account for this reception of Gentiles, Peter appeals in his justification solely to the recent vision, and to the Holy Ghost given to the centurion’s family. Whatever judgment we may form [303]of the credibility of this history, it is a memorial of the many deliberations and contentions which it cost the apostles after the departure of Jesus, to convince themselves of the eligibility of Gentiles for a participation in the kingdom of their Christ, and the reasons which at last brought them to a decision. Now if Jesus had given so explicit a command as that above quoted, what need was there of a vision to encourage Peter to its fulfilment? or, supposing the vision to be a legendary investiture of the natural deliberations of the disciples, why did they go about in search of the reflection, that all men ought to be baptized, because before God all men and all animals, as his creatures, are clean, if they could have appealed to an express injunction of Jesus? Here, then, is the alternative: if Jesus himself gave this command, the disciples cannot have been led to the admission of the Gentiles by the means narrated in Acts x., xi.; if, on the other hand, that narrative is authentic, the alleged command of Jesus cannot be historical. Our canon decides for the latter proposition. For that the subsequent practice and pre-eminent distinction of the Christian Church, its accessibility to all nations, and its indifference to circumcision or uncircumcision, should have lain in the mind of its founder, is the view best adapted to exalt and adorn Jesus; while that, after his death, and through the gradual development of relations, the church, which its Founder had designed for the Gentiles only in so far as they became Jews, should break through these limits, is in the simple, natural, and therefore the probable course of things."

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69. RELATION OP THE MESSIANIC PLAN OP JESUS TO THE SAMARITANS--HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

"There is the same apparent contradiction in the position which Jesus took, and prescribed to his disciples, towards the inhabitants of Samaria. While in his instructions to his disciples (Matt. x. 5), he forbids them to visit any city of the Samaritans, we read in John (iv.) that Jesus himself in his journey through Samaria laboured as the Messiah with great effect, and ultimately stayed two days in a Samaritan town; and in the Acts (i. 8), that before his ascension he charged the disciples to be his witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and in all Judea, but also in Samaria. That Jesus did not entirely shun Samaria, as that prohibition might appear to intimate, is evident from Luke ix. 52 (comp. xvii. 11), where his disciples bespeak lodgings for him in a Samaritan village, when he has determined to go to Jerusalem; a circumstance which accords with the information of Josephus, that those Galileans who journeyed to the feasts usually went through Samaria.66 That Jesus was not unfavourable to the Samaritans, nay, that in many respects he acknowledged their superiority to the Jews, is evident from his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 30 ff.); he also bestows a marked notice on the case of a Samaritan, who, among ten cleansed, was the only one that testified his gratitude (Luke xvii. 16); and, if we may venture on such a conclusion from John iv. 25, and subsequent records, the inhabitants of Samaria themselves had some tincture of the messianic idea."

" ... Are all these various accounts well founded? If so, how could Jesus at one time prohibit his disciples from including the Samaritans in the messianic plan, and at another time, himself receive them without hesitation? Moreover, if the chronological order of the Evangelists deserve regard, the ministry of Jesus in Samaria must have preceded the prohibition contained in his instructions to his disciples on their first mission. For the scene of that mission being Galilee, and there being no space for its occurrence during the short stay which, according to the fourth Evangelist, Jesus made in that province before the first Passover (ii. 1–13), it must be placed after that Passover; and, as the visit to Samaria was made on his journey, after that visit also. How, then, could Jesus, after having with the most desirable issue, personally taught in Samaria, and presented himself as the Messiah, forbid his disciples to carry thither their messianic tidings? On the other hand, if the scenes narrated by John occurred after the command recorded by Matthew, the disciples, instead of wondering that Jesus talked so earnestly with a woman (John iv. 27), ought rather to have wondered that he held any converse with a Samaritan."

" ... The woman had entreated Jesus to give her of the water which was for ever to extinguish thirst, and Jesus immediately says, Go, call thy husband. Why so? It has been said that Jesus, well knowing that the woman had no lawful husband, sought to shame her, and bring her to repentance.71 Lücke, disapproving the imputation of dissimulation to Jesus, conjectures that, perceiving the woman’s dulness, he hoped by summoning her husband, possibly her superior in intelligence, to create an opportunity for a more beneficial conversation. But if Jesus, as it presently appears, knew that the woman had not at the time any proper husband, he could not in earnest desire her to summon him; and if, as Lücke allows, he had that knowledge in a supernatural manner, it could not be hidden from him, who knew what was in man, that she would be little inclined to comply with his injunction. If, however, he had a prescience that what he required would not be done, the injunction was a feint, and had some latent object. But that this object was the penitence of the woman there is no indication in the text, for the ultimate effect on her is not shame and penitence, but faith in the prophetic insight of Jesus (v. 19). And this was doubtless what Jesus wished, for the narrative proceeds as if he had attained his purpose with the woman, and the issue corresponded to the design. The difficulty here lies, not so much in what Lücke terms dissimulation,—since this comes under the category of blameless temptation (πειράζειν), elsewhere occurring,—as in the violence with which Jesus wrests an opportunity for the display of his prophetic gifts."

She asked for water, and he told her to get her husband? And she was supposed to be shamed? Alternatively he thought her husband might have more intelligence?

How far did misogyny permeate the West, until they never saw It? Answer is obvious, of course. The whole discourse is about fathers and sons, even though in thus case there only supposedly a mother; and then she's supposed to be virgin after childbirth, so women in general stay degraded in minds of west, particularly those affected in any way by later abrahmic faiths, for ever.

"By a transition equally abrupt, the woman urges the conversation to a point at which the Messiahship of Jesus may become fully evident. As soon as she has recognised Jesus to be a prophet, she hastens to consult him on the controversy pending between the Jews and Samaritans, as to the place appropriated to the true worship of God (v. 20). That so vivid an interest in this national and religious question is not consistent with the limited mental and circumstantial condition of the woman, the majority of modern commentators virtually confess, by their adoption of the opinion, that her drift in this remark was to turn away the conversation from her own affairs.72 If then the implied query concerning the place for the true worship of God, had no serious interest for the woman, but was prompted by a false shame calculated to hinder confession and repentance, those expositors should remember what they elsewhere repeat to satiety,73 that in the Gospel of John the answers of Jesus refer not so much to the ostensible meaning of questions, as to the under current of feeling of which they are the indications. In accordance with this method, Jesus should not have answered the artificial question of the woman as if it had been one of deep seriousness; he ought rather to have evaded it, and recurred to the already detected stain on her conscience, which she was now seeking to hide, in order if possible to bring her to a full conviction and open avowal of her guilt. But the fact is that the object of the Evangelist was to show that Jesus had been recognised, [306]not merely as a prophet, but as the Messiah, and he believed that to turn the conversation to the question of the legitimate place for the worship of God, the solution of which was expected from the Messiah,74 would best conduce to that end."

Again - her shame is that she hasn't a husband? And that's her guilt? What were women supposed to do, hunt them with snares? And most of this hasn't changed, in west either, despite all the struggle and strife and striving, by women, and by men who know it's wrong. It's not likely to, as long as the abrahmic cultures font see their horrible guilt in holding womanhood lesser, and heaping all garbage of male guilt on womanhood.

"Jesus evinces (v. 17) an acquaintance with the past history and present position of the woman. The rationalists have endeavoured to explain this by the supposition, that while Jesus sat at the well, and the woman was advancing from the city, some passer-by hinted to him that he had better not engage in conversation with her, as she was on the watch to obtain a sixth husband.75 But not to insist on the improbability that a passer-by should hold a colloquy with Jesus on the character of an obscure woman, the friends as well as the enemies of the fourth gospel now agree, that every natural explanation of that knowledge on the part of Jesus, directly counteracts the design of the Evangelist.76 For, according to him, the disclosure which Jesus makes of his privity to the woman’s intimate concerns, is the immediate cause, not only of her own faith in him, but of that of many inhabitants of the city (v. 39), and he obviously intends to imply that they were not too precipitate in receiving him as a prophet, on that ground alone. Thus in the view of the Evangelist, the knowledge in question was an effluence of the higher nature of Jesus, and modern supranaturalists adhere to this explanation, adducing in its support the power which John attributes to him (ii. 24 f.), of discerning what is in man without the aid of external testimony.77 But this does not meet the case; for Jesus here not only knows what is in the woman,—her present equivocal state of mind towards him who is not her husband,—he has cognizance also of the extrinsic fact that she has had five husbands, of whom we cannot suppose that each had left a distinct image in her mind traceable by the observation of Jesus. ... Such empirical knowingness (not omniscience) would moreover annihilate the human consciousness which the orthodox view supposes to co-exist in Jesus.78 But the possession of this knowledge, however it may clash with our conception of dignity and wisdom, closely corresponds to the Jewish notion of a prophet, more especially of the Messiah; in the Old Testament, Daniel recites a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which that monarch himself had forgotten (Dan. ii.); in the Clementine Homilies, the true prophet is ὁ πάντοτε πάντα εἰδώς· τὰ μὲν γεγονότα ὡς ἐγένετο, τὰ δὲ γινόμενα ὡς γίνεται, τὰ δέ ἐσόμενα ὡς ἔσται;79 and the rabbins number such a knowledge of personal secrets among the signs of the Messiah, and observe that from the want of it, Bar-Cocheba was detected to be a pseudo-Messiah.

"Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the sublimest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists [307]in a life of piety; tells her that all ceremonial worship is about to be abolished; and that he is the personage who will effect this momentous change, that is, the Messiah. We have already shown it to be improbable that Jesus, who did not give his disciples to understand that he was the Messiah until a comparatively late period, should make an early and distinct disclosure on the subject to a Samaritan woman. ... "

"The result, then, of our examination of John’s Samaritan narrative is, that we cannot receive it as a real history: and the impression which it leaves as a whole tends to the same conclusion. Since Heracleon and Origen,84 the more ancient commentators have seldom refrained from giving the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria an allegorical interpretation, on the ground that the entire scene has a legendary and poetic colouring. Jesus is seated at a well,—that idyllic locality with which the old Hebrew legend associates so many critical incidents; at the identical well, moreover, which a tradition, founded on Gen. xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32, reported to have been given by Jacob to his son Joseph; hence the spot, in addition to its idyllic interest, has the more decided consecration of national and patriarchal recollections, and is all the more worthy of being trodden by the Messiah. At the well Jesus meets with a woman who has come out to draw water, just as, in the Old Testament, the expectant Eliezer encounters Rebekah with her pitcher, and as Jacob meets with Rachel, the destined ancestress of Israel, or Moses with his future wife. Jesus begs of the woman to let him drink; so does Eliezer of Rebekah; after Jesus has made himself known to the woman as the Messiah, she runs back to the city, and fetches her neighbours: so Rebekah, after Eliezer has announced himself as Abraham’s steward, and Rachel, after she has discovered that Jacob is her kinsman, hasten homeward to call their friends to welcome the honoured guest. It is, certainly, not one blameless as those early mothers in Israel, whom Jesus here encounters; for this woman came forth as the representative of an impure people, who had been faithless to their marriage bond with Jehovah, and were then living in the practice of a false worship; while her good-will, her deficient moral strength, and her obtuseness in spiritual things, perfectly typify the actual state of the Samaritans. Thus, the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria is only a poetical representation of his ministry among the Samaritans narrated in the sequel; and this is itself a legendary prelude to the propagation of the gospel in Samaria after the death of Jesus."

" ... Are we then to suppose on the part of the apostolic history, a cancelling of hesitations and deliberations that really occurred; or on the part of Matthew, an unwarranted ascription of national bigotry to Jesus; or, finally, on the part of Jesus, a progressive enlargement of view?"

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October 22, 2021 - October 23, 2021.

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CHAPTER V.

THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

§ 70. Calling of the first companions of Jesus. Difference between the first two Evangelists and the fourth

71. Peter’s draught of fishes

72. Calling of Matthew. Connexion of Jesus with the publicans

73. The twelve apostles

74. The twelve considered individually. The three or four most confidential disciples of Jesus

75. The rest of the twelve, and the seventy disciples

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70. CALLING OF THE FIRST COMPANIONS OF JESUS. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FIRST TWO EVANGELISTS AND THE FOURTH.

"The first two Evangelists agree in stating that Jesus, when walking by the sea of Galilee, called, first, the two brothers Andrew and Peter, and immediately after, James and John, to forsake their fishing nets, and to follow him (Matt. iv. 18–22; Mark i. 16–20). The fourth Evangelist also narrates (i. 35–51), how the first disciples came to attach themselves to Jesus, and among them we find Peter and Andrew, and, in all probability, John, for it is generally agreed that the nameless companion of Andrew was that ultimately favourite apostle. James is absent from this account, and instead of his vocation, we have that of Philip and Nathanael. But even when the persons are the same, all the particulars of their meeting with Jesus are variously detailed. In the two synoptical gospels, the scene is the coast of the Galilean sea: in the fourth, Andrew, Peter, and their anonymous friend, unite themselves to Jesus in the vicinity of the Jordan; Philip and Nathanael, on the way from thence into Galilee. In the former, again, Jesus in two instances calls a pair of brothers; in the latter, it is first Andrew and his companion, then Peter, and anon Philip and Nathanael, who meet with Jesus. But the most important difference is this: while, in Matthew and Mark, the brethren are called from their fishing immediately by Jesus; in John, nothing more is said of the respective situations of those who were summoned, than that they come, and are found, and Jesus himself calls only Philip; Andrew and his nameless companion being directed to him by the Baptist, Peter brought by Andrew, and Nathanael by Philip.

"Thus the two narratives appear to refer to separate events; and if it be asked which of those events was prior to the other, we must reply that John seems to assign the earlier date to his incidents, for he represents them as taking place before the return of Jesus from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; while the synoptists place theirs after that journey, especially if, according to a calculation often adopted, we regard the return into Galilee, which they make so important an epoch, as being that from the first Passover, not from the baptism. ... "

" ... To say that these disciples, acquired in Peræa, again dispersed themselves after the return of Jesus into Galilee,3 is to do violence to the gospels out of harmonistic zeal. But even supposing such a dispersion, they could not, in the short time which it is possible to allow for their separation from Jesus, have become so completely strangers to him, that he would have been obliged to re-open an acquaintance with them after the manner narrated by the synoptical writers. ... "

"If, then, each of these two diverse narratives professes to describe the first acquaintance of Jesus with his most distinguished disciples, it follows that one only can be correct, while the other is necessarily erroneous.4 It is our task to inquire which has the more intrinsic proofs of veracity. ... "

" ... As adequate inducements to the formation of such a legend, we may point, not only to the above cited Jewish notion of the Messiah as the searcher of hearts, but to a specific type of this vocation of the apostles, contained in the narrative (1 Kings xix. 19–21) of the mode in which the prophet Elijah summoned Elisha to become his follower. Here Jesus calls the brethren from their nets and their fishing; there the prophet calls his future disciple from the oxen and the plough; in both cases there is a transition from simple physical labour to the highest spiritual office—a contrast which, as is exemplified in the Roman history, tradition is apt either to cherish or to create. Further, the fishermen, at the call of Jesus, forsake their nets and follow him; so Elisha, when Elijah cast his mantle over him, left the oxen, and ran after Elijah. This is one apparent divergency, which is a yet more striking proof of the relation between the two narratives, than is their general similarity. The prophet’s disciple entreated that before he attached himself entirely to Elijah, he might be permitted to take leave of his father and mother; and the prophet does not hesitate to grant him this request, on the understood condition that Elisha should return to him. Similar petitions are offered to Jesus (Luke ix. 59 ff.; [312]Matt. viii. 21 f.) by some whom he had called, or who had volunteered to follow him; but Jesus does not accede to these requests: on the contrary, he enjoins the one who wished previously to bury his father, to enter on his discipleship without delay; and the other, who had begged permission to bid farewell to his friends, he at once dismisses as unfit for the kingdom of God. In strong contrast with the divided spirit manifested by these feeble proselytes, it is said of the apostles, that they, without asking any delay, immediately forsook their occupation, and, in the case of James and John, their father. Could anything betray more clearly than this one feature, that the narrative is an embellished imitation of that in the Old Testament intended to show that Jesus, in his character of Messiah, exacted a more decided adhesion, accompanied with greater sacrifices, than Elijah, in his character of Prophet merely, required or was authorized to require? The historical germ of the narrative may be this: several of the most eminent disciples of Jesus, particularly Peter, dwelling on the shores of the sea of Galilee, had been fishermen, whence Jesus during their subsequent apostolic agency may have sometimes styled them fishers of men. But without doubt, their relation with Jesus was formed gradually, like other human relations, and is only elevated into a marvel through the obliviousness of tradition."

" ... Equally unnatural is the manner in which Jesus is said to have received Simon. He accosts him with the words, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona,—a mode of salutation which seems, as Bengel has well remarked,8 to imply that Jesus had a supernatural acquaintance with the name and origin of a man previously unknown to him, analogous to his cognizance of the number of the Samaritan woman’s husbands, and of Nathanael’s presence under the fig-tree. Jesus then proceeds to bestow on Simon the significant surname of Cephas or Peter. If we are not inclined to degrade the speech of Jesus into buffoonery, by referring this appellation to the bodily organization of the disciple,9 we must suppose that Jesus at the first glance, with the eye of him who knew hearts, penetrated into the inmost nature of Simon, and discovered not only his general fitness [313]for the apostleship, but also the special, individual qualities which rendered him comparable to a rock. .... Even after a more lengthened conversation with Peter, such as Lücke supposes,10 Jesus could not pronounce so decidedly on his character, without being a searcher of hearts, or falling under the imputation of forming too precipitate a judgment. It is indeed possible that the Christian legend, attracted by the significance of the name, may have represented Jesus as its author, while, in fact, Simon had borne it from his birth. ... "

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71. PETER’S DRAUGHT OF FISHES.

"Jesus, oppressed by the throng of people on the shore of the Galilean sea, enters into a ship, that he may address them with more ease at a little distance from land. Having brought his discourse to a close, he desires Simon, the owner of the boat, to launch out into the deep, and let down his nets for a draught. Simon, although little encouraged by the poor result of the last night’s fishing, declares himself willing, and is rewarded by so extraordinary a draught, that Peter and his partners, James and John (Andrew is not here mentioned), are struck with astonishment, the former even with awe, before Jesus, as a superior being. Jesus then says to Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men, and the issue is that the three fishermen forsake all, and follow him."

"It is easy to show how, out of the expression preserved by the first Evangelist, the miraculous story of the third might be formed. If Jesus, in allusion to the former occupation of some of his apostles, had called them fishers of men; if he had compared the kingdom of heaven to a net cast into the sea, in which all kinds of fish were taken (Matt. xiii. 47); it was but a following out of these ideas to represent the apostles as those who, at the word of Jesus, cast out the net, and gathered in the miraculous multitude of fishes.22 If we add to this, that the ancient legend was fond of occupying its wonder-workers with affairs of fishing, as we see in the story related of Pythagoras by Jamblichus and Porphyry;23 it will no longer appear improbable, that Peter’s miraculous draught of fishes is but the expression about the fishers of men, transmuted into the history of a miracle, and this view will at once set us free from all the difficulties that attend the natural, as well as the supranatural interpretation of the narrative."

"Let us now compare these three fishing histories,—the two narrated of Jesus, and that narrated of Pythagoras,—and their mythical character will be obvious. That which, in Luke, is indubitably intended as a miracle of power, is, in the history of Jamblichus, a miracle of knowledge; for Pythagoras merely tells in a supernatural manner the number of fish already caught by natural means. The narrative of John holds a middle place, for in it also the number of the fish (153) plays a part; but instead of being predetermined by the worker of the miracle, it is simply stated by the narrator. One legendary feature common to all the three narratives, is the manner in which the multitude and weight of the fishes are described; especially as this sameness of manner accompanies a diversity in particulars. According to Luke, the multitude is so great that the net is broken, one ship will not hold them, and after they have been divided between the two vessels, both threaten to sink. In the view of the tradition given in the fourth gospel, it was not calculated to magnify the power of the miraculous agent, that the net which he had so marvellously filled should break; but as here also the aim is to exalt the miracle by celebrating the number and weight of the fishes, they are said to be μεγάλοι (great), and it is added that the men were not able to draw the net for the multitude of fishes: instead, however, of lapsing out of the miraculous into the common by the breaking of the net, a second miracle is ingeniously made,—that for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jamblichus presents a further wonder (the only one he has, besides the knowledge of Pythagoras as to the number of the fish): namely, that while the fish were being counted, a process that must have required a considerable time, not one of them died. If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the finger-marks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural."

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72. CALLING OF MATTHEW. CONNEXION OF JESUS WITH THE PUBLICANS.

"The first gospel (ix. 9 ff.) tells of a man named Matthew, to whom, when sitting at the receipt of custom, Jesus said, Follow me. Instead of Matthew, the second and third gospels have Levi, and Mark adds he that was the son of Alphæus (Mark ii. 14 ff.; Luke v. 27 ff.). At the call of Jesus, Luke says that he left all; Matthew merely states, that he followed Jesus and prepared a meal, of which many publicans and sinners partook, to the great scandal of the Pharisees.

"From the difference of the names it has been conjectured that the Evangelists refer to two different events;26 but this difference of the name is more than counterbalanced by the similarity of the circumstances. In all the three cases the call of the publican is preceded and followed by the same occurrences; the subject of the narrative is in the same situation; Jesus addresses him in the same words; and the issue is the same.27 Hence the opinion is pretty general, that the three synoptists have in this instance detailed only one event. But did they also understand only one person under different names, and was that person the Apostle Matthew?"

"This is commonly represented as conceivable on the supposition that Levi was the proper name of the individual, and Matthew merely a surname;28 or that after he had attached himself to Jesus, he exchanged the former for the latter.29 To substantiate such an opinion, there should be some indication that the Evangelists who name the chosen publican Levi, intend under that designation no other than the Matthew mentioned in their catalogues of the apostles (Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13). On the contrary, in these catalogues, where many surnames and double names occur, not only do they omit the name of Levi as the earlier or more proper appellation of Matthew, but they leave him undistinguished by the epithet, ὁ τελώνης (the publican), added by the first Evangelist in his catalogue (x. 3); thus proving that they do not consider the Apostle Matthew to be identical with the Levi summoned from the receipt of custom."

"The close analogy between this call and that of the two pairs of brethren, must excite attention. They were summoned from their nets; he from the custom-house; as in their case, so here, nothing further is needed than a simple Follow me; and this call of the Messiah has so irresistible a power over the mind of the called, that the publican, like the fishermen, leaves all, and follows him. ... Hence the abruptness and impetuosity of the scene return upon us, and we are compelled to pronounce that such is not the course of real life, nor the procedure of a man who, like Jesus, respects the laws and formalities of human society; it is the procedure of legend and poetry, which love contrasts, and effective scenes, which aim to give a graphic conception of a man’s exit from an old sphere of life, and his entrance into a new one, by representing him as at once discarding the implements of his former trade, leaving the scene of his daily business, and straightway commencing a new life. The historical germ of the story may be, that Jesus actually had publicans among his disciples, and possibly that Matthew was one. These men had truly left the custom-house to follow Jesus; but only in the figurative sense of this concise expression, not in the literal one depicted by the legend."

"To this feast at the publican’s, of which many of the same obnoxious class partook, the Evangelists annex the reproaches cast at the disciples by the Pharisees and Scribes, because their master ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus, being within hearing of the censure, repelled it by the well-known text on the destination of the physician for the sick, and the Son of Man for sinners (Matt. ix. 11 ff. parall.). That Jesus should be frequently taunted by his pharisaical enemies with his too great predilection for the despised class of publicans (comp. Matt. xi. 19), accords fully with the nature of his position, and is therefore historical, if anything be so: the answer, too, which is here put into the mouth of Jesus, is from its pithy and concise character well adapted for literal transmission. Further, it is not improbable that the reproach in question may have been especially called forth, by the circumstance that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, and went under their roofs. But that the cavils of his opponents should have been accompaniments of the publican’s dinner, as the evangelical account leads us to infer, especially that of Mark (v. 16), is not so easily conceivable.40 For as the feast was in the house (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ), and as the disciples also partook of it, how could the Pharisees utter their reproaches to them, while the meal was going forward, without defiling themselves by becoming the guests of a man that was a sinner,—the very act which they reprehended in Jesus? ... "

That's quite simple - those taunting him did not claim to be godly in any way, that's all.

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73. THE TWELVE APOSTLES.

"Strictly speaking, therefore, it is merely presupposed in the gospels, that Jesus himself fixed the number of the apostles. Is this presupposition correct? There certainly is little doubt that this number was fixed during the lifetime of Jesus; for not only does the author of the Acts represent the twelve as so compact a body immediately after the ascension of their master, that they think it incumbent on them to fill up the breach made by the apostasy of Judas by the election of a new member (i. 15 ff.); but the Apostle Paul also notices an appearance of the risen Jesus, specially to the twelve (1 Cor. xv. 5). Schleiermacher, however, doubts whether Jesus himself chose the twelve, and he thinks it more probable that the peculiar relation ultimately borne to him by twelve from amongst his disciples, gradually and spontaneously formed itself.46 We have, indeed, no warrant for supposing that the appointment of the twelve was a single solemn act; on the contrary, the gospels explicitly narrate, that six of them were called singly, or by pairs, and on separate occasions; but it is still a question whether the number twelve was not determined by Jesus, and whether he did not willingly abide by it as an expedient for checking the multiplication of his familiar companions. The number is the less likely to have been fortuitous, the more significant it is, and the more evident the inducements to its choice by Jesus. He himself, in promising the disciples (Matt. xix. 28) that they shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, gives their number a relation to that of the tribes of his people; and it was the opinion of the highest Christian antiquity that this relation determined his choice.47 If he and his disciples were primarily sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 6, xv. 24), it might seem appropriate that the number of the shepherds should correspond to that of the shepherdless tribes (Matt. ix. 36)."

" ... According to the synoptical Evangelists, it was not until after the resurrection, that Jesus gave his disciples authority to baptize (Matt. xxviii. 19, parall.). As, however, the rite of baptism was introduced by John, and we have reason to believe that Jesus, for a time, made that teacher his model, it is highly probable that he and his disciples also practised baptism, and hence that the positive statement of the fourth gospel is correct. But the negative statement that Jesus himself baptised not (iv. 2), has the appearance of an after-thought, intended to correct the import of the previous passages (iii. 22, iv. 1), and is most probably to be accounted for by the tendency of the fourth gospel to exalt Jesus above the Baptist, and by a corresponding dread of making Jesus exercise the function of the mere forerunner. The question whether Jesus did not baptize at least the apostles, afterwards occasioned much demur in the church."

"As to the subsistence of Jesus and his disciples, we have sufficient sources for it in the hospitality of the East, which, among the Jews, was especially available to the rabbins; in the companionship of rich women who ministered unto him of their substance (Luke viii. 2 f.); and finally in the γλωσσόκομον, mentioned, it is true, only by the fourth Evangelist (xii. 6, xiii. 29), which was ample enough to furnish assistance to the poor, as well as to supply the wants of the society, and in which, it is probable, presents from wealthy friends of Jesus were deposited. They who do not hold these means adequate without the labour of the disciples, or who think, on more general grounds, that the total renunciation of their secular employment on the part of the twelve, is improbable, must not try to force their opinion on the Evangelists, who by the stress which they lay on the expression [326]of the apostles, we have left all (Matt. xix. 27 ff.), plainly intimate the opposite view.

"We gather, as to the rank of the twelve disciples of Jesus, that they all belonged to the lower class: four, or perhaps more (John xxi. 2), were fishermen, one a publican, and for the others, it is probable from the degree of cultivation they evince, and the preference always expressed by Jesus for the poor πτωχοὺς, and the little ones, νηπίους (Matt. v. 3, xi. 5, 25), that they were of a similar grade. ... "

Who else could he have selected, for preaching a creed, with no financial rewards - whether creed of a nation's independence from Roman subjugation, or a religious one? Especially in the former case, he needed rough and tough men, and poor because they had less to lose; but in latter case, while educated rabbinical sort seem needed, they'd be from well to do families, and wouldn't readily forsake all to join in a cause thankless at the stage, however rewarding it be after a couple of centuries.

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74. THE TWELVE CONSIDEEED INDIVIDUALLY-THE THREE OR FOUR MOST CONFIDENTIAL DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

"Next to Peter, the catalogue of the first and third gospels places his brother Andrew; that of the second gospel and the Acts, James, and after him, John. ... "

"The two sons of Zebedee are the only disciples whose distinction rivals that of Peter. Like him, they evince an ardent and somewhat rash zeal (Luke ix. 54; once John is named alone, Mark ix. 38; Luke ix. 49); and it was to this disposition, apparently, that they owed the surname Sons of Thunder, ‏בני רנש‎ υἱοὶ βροντῆς (Mark iii. 17),53 conferred on them by Jesus. So high did they stand among the twelve, that either they (Mark xi. 35 ff.), or their mother for them (Matt. xx. 20 ff.), thought they might claim the first place in the Messiah’s kingdom. It is worthy of notice that not only in the four catalogues, but elsewhere when the two brothers are named, as in Matt. iv. 21, xvii. 1; Mark i. 19, 29, v. 37, ix. 2, x. 35, xiii. 3, xiv. 33; Luke v. 10, ix. 54; with the exception of Luke viii. 51, ix. 28; James is always mentioned first, and John is appended to him as his brother (ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ). This is surprising; because, while we know nothing remarkable of James, John is memorable as the favourite disciple of Jesus. Hence it is supposed that this precedence cannot possibly denote a superiority of James to John, and an explanation has been sought in his seniority.54 Nevertheless, it remains a doubt whether so constant a precedence do not intimate a pre-eminence on the part of James; at least, if, in the apprehension of the synoptists, John had been as decidedly preferred as he is represented to have been in the fourth gospel, we are inclined to think that they would have named him before his brother James, even allowing him to be the younger. ... "

"In the synoptical gospels, as we have observed, Peter, James, and John, form the select circle of disciples whom Jesus admits to certain scenes, which the rest of the twelve were not spiritually mature enough to comprehend; as the transfiguration, the conflict in Gethsemane, and, according to Mark (v. 37), the raising of the daughter of Jairus.55 After the death of Jesus, also, a James, Peter and John appear as the pillars of the church (Gal. ii. 9); this James, however, is not the son of Zebedee, who had been early put to death (Acts xii. 2), but James, the brother of the Lord (Gal. i. 19), who even in the first apostolic council appears to have possessed a predominant authority, and whom many hold to be the second James of the apostolic catalogue given in Acts i..56 It is observable from the beginning of the Acts, that James the son of Zebedee is eclipsed by Peter and John. As, then, this James the elder was not enough distinguished or even known in the primitive church, for his early martyrdom to have drawn much lustre on his name, tradition had no inducement, from subsequent events, to reflect an unhistorical splendour on his relation to Jesus; there is therefore no reason to doubt the statement as to the prominent position held by James, in conjunction with Peter and John, among the twelve apostles."

" ... In the synoptical gospels, not one of the disciples is bold enough to venture to the cross; but in the fourth, John is placed under it, and is there established in a new relation to the mother of his dying master: a relation of which we elsewhere find no trace (xix. 26 f.). On the appearance of the risen Jesus at the Galilean sea (xxi.), Peter, as the θερμότερος, casts himself into the sea; but it is not until after John, as the διορατικώτερος (Euthymius), has recognized the Lord in the person standing on the shore. ... Peter goes into the grave before John, it is true; but it is the latter in whose honour it is recorded, that he saw and believed, almost in contradiction to the statement of Luke, that Peter went home wondering in himself at that which was come to pass. Thus in the fourth gospel, John, both literally and figuratively, outruns Peter, for the entire impression which the attentive reader must receive from the representation there given of the relative position of Peter and John, is that the writer wished a comparison to be drawn in favour of the latter."

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75. THE REST OF THE TWELVE, AND THE SEVENTY DISCIPLES.

"Luke makes us acquainted with a circle of disciples, intermediate to the twelve and the mass of the partisans of Jesus. He tells us (x. 1 ff.) that besides the twelve, Jesus chose other seventy also, and sent them two and two before him into all the districts which he intended to visit on his last journey, that they might proclaim the approach of the kingdom of heaven. ... It is said, however, that the importance of this appointment lay in its significance, rather than in its effects. As the number of the twelve apostles, by its relation to that of the tribes of Israel, shadowed forth the destination of Jesus for the Jewish people; so the seventy, or as some authorities have it, the seventy-two disciples, were representatives of the seventy or seventy-two peoples, with as many different tongues, which, according to the Jewish and early Christian view, formed the sum of the earth’s inhabitants,70 and hence they denoted the universal destination of Jesus and his kingdom.71 Moreover, seventy was a sacred number with the Jewish nation; Moses deputed seventy elders (Num. xi. 16, 25); the Sanhedrim had seventy members;72 the Old Testament, seventy translators."

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October 23, 2021 - October 24, 2021.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.

§ 76. The Sermon on the Mount

77. Instructions to the twelve. Lamentations over the Galilean cities. Joy over the calling of the simple

78. The parables

79. Miscellaneous instructions and controversies of Jesus

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76. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

"The first long discourse in Matthew is that known as the Sermon on the Mount (v.–vii.). The Evangelist, having recorded the return of Jesus after his baptism into Galilee, and the calling of the fishermen, informs us, that Jesus went through all Galilee, teaching and healing; that great multitudes followed him from all parts of Palestine; and that for their instruction he ascended a mountain, and delivered the sermon in question (iv. 23 ff.). We seek in vain for its parallel in Mark, but Luke (vi. 20–49) gives a discourse which has the same introduction and conclusion, and presents in its whole tenor the most striking similarity with that of Matthew; moreover, in both cases, Jesus, at the termination of his discourse, goes to Capernaum, and heals the centurion’s servant. It is true that Luke gives a later insertion to the discourse, for previous to it he narrates many journeyings and cures of Jesus, which Matthew places after it; and while the latter represents Jesus as ascending a mountain, and being seated there during delivery of his discourse, Luke says, almost in contradiction to him, that Jesus came down and [335]stood in the plain. Further, the sermon in Luke contains but a fourth part of that in Matthew, while it has some elements peculiarly its own."

"The identity of the discourses being established, the first effort was to conciliate or to explain the divergencies between the two accounts so as to leave their credibility unimpeached. ... And without doubt each was ignorant of what he omits, but each knew that tradition associated this discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Matthew thought the mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitude; Luke, on the contrary, imagined a descent necessary for the purpose: hence the double discrepancy, for he who teaches from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over his hearers to sit, but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand. ... "

"The assemblage to whom the Sermon on the Mount was addressed, might from Luke’s account be supposed a narrow circle, for he states that the choice of the apostles immediately preceded the discourse, and that at its commencement Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he does not, like Matthew, note the multitude, ὄχλους, as part of the audience. On the other hand, Matthew also mentions that before the sermon the disciples gathered round Jesus and were taught by him; and Luke represents the discourse as being delivered in the audience of the people (vii. 1); it is therefore evident that Jesus spoke to the crowd in general, but with a particular view to the edification of his disciples.10 We have no reason to doubt that a real harangue of Jesus, more than ordinarily solemn and public, was the foundation of the evangelical accounts before us."

" ... It is a capital principle with the Ebionites, as they are depicted in the Clementine Homilies, that he who has his portion in the present age, will be destitute in the age to come; while he who renounces earthly possessions, thereby accumulates heavenly treasures.13 The last beatitude relates to those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus. Luke in the parallel passage has, for the Son of man’s sake; hence the words for my sake in Matthew, must be understood to refer to Jesus solely in his character of Messiah."

"The beatitudes are followed in Luke by as many woes οὐαὶ, which are wanting in Matthew. In these the opposition established by the Ebionites between this world and the other, is yet more strongly marked; for woe is denounced on the rich, the full, and the joyous, simply as such, and they are threatened with the evils corresponding to their present advantages, under the new order of things to be introduced by the Messiah; a view that reminds us of the Epistle of James, v. 1 ff. The last woe is somewhat stiffly formed after the model of the last beatitude, for it is evidently for the sake of the contrast to the true prophets, so much calumniated, that the false prophets are said, without any historical foundation, to have been spoken well of by all men. We may therefore conjecture, with Schleiermacher,15 that we are indebted for these maledictions to the inventive fertility of the author of the third gospel. He added this supplement to the beatitudes, less because, as Schleiermacher supposes, he perceived a chasm, which he knew not how to fill, than because he judged it consistent with the character of the Messiah, that, like Moses of old, he should couple curses with blessings. The Sermon on the Mount is regarded as the counterpart of the law, delivered on Mount Sinai; but the introduction, especially in Luke, reminds us more of a passage in Deuteronomy, in which Moses commands that on the entrance of the Israelitish people into the promised land, one half of them shall take their stand on Mount Gerizim, and pronounce a manifold blessing on the observers of the law, the other half on Mount Ebal, whence they were to fulminate as manifold a curse on its transgressors. We read in Josh. viii. 33 ff. that this injunction was fulfilled."

On one hand, no wonder force to the level of terror, inquisition, burning at stake et al was needed to impose this religion! Promising eternal misery if one is joyous now??!!!

On the other hand, church always followed hypocrisy and fraud, using these promises of inheritance of world for meek, etc., while catering to rich, selling favours and forgiveness for money, and telling everyone they have sinned!

No wonder West needed to rebel.

"At v. 17 ff. follows the transition to the main subject of the sermon; the assurance of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil, etc. Now as Jesus herein plainly presupposes that he is himself the Messiah, to whom was ascribed authority to abolish a part of the law, this declaration cannot properly belong to a period in which, if Matt. xvi. 13 ff. be rightly placed, he had not yet declared himself to be the Messiah. Luke [339](xvi. 17) inserts this declaration together with the apparently contradictory one, that the law and the prophets were in force until the coming of John."

"So little, it appears from v. 20, is it the design of Jesus to inculcate a disregard of the Mosaic law, that he requires a far stricter observance of its precepts than the Scribes and Pharisees, and he makes the latter appear in contrast to himself as the underminers of the law. Then follows a series of Mosaic commandments, on which Jesus comments so as to show that he penetrates into the spirit of the law, instead of cleaving to the mere letter, and especially discerns the worthlessness of the rabbinical glosses (48). This section, in the order and completeness in which we find it in Matthew, is wanting in Luke’s Sermon on the Mount; a decisive proof that the latter has deficiencies. ... Probably tradition had apprized the Evangelist that Jesus, after the foregoing declaration as to the perpetuity of the Mosaic law, had enunciated his severe principle on the subject of divorce, and hence he gave it this position, not knowing more of its original connexion. ... "

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77. INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TWELVE. LAMENTATIONS OVER THE GALILEAN CITIES. JOY OVEE THE CALLING OF THE SIMPLE.

"All that the synoptists have strictly in common in the instructions to the twelve, are the rules for their external conduct; how they were to journey, and how to behave under a variety of circumstances (Matt. v. 9–11, 14; Mark vi. 8–11; Luke ix. 3–5). Here, however, we find a discrepancy; according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus forbids the disciples to take with them, not only gold, a scrip, and the like, but even shoes, ὑποδήματα, and a staff, ῥάβδον; according to Mark, on the contrary, he merely forbids their taking more than a staff and sandals, εἰ μὴ ῥάβδον μόνον and σανδάλια. This discrepancy is most easily accounted for by the admission, that tradition only preserved a reminiscence of Jesus having signified the simplicity of the apostolic equipment by the mention of the staff and shoes, and that hence one of the Evangelists understood that Jesus had interdicted all travelling requisites except these; the other, that these also were included in his prohibition. It was consistent with Mark’s love of the picturesque to imagine a wandering apostle furnished with a staff, and therefore to give the preference to the former view."

" ... The sequence of these propositions is about equally natural in both cases. Their completeness is alternately greater in the one than in the other; but Matthew’s additions generally turn on essentials, as in v. 16; those of Luke on externals, as in v. 7, 8, and in v. 4, where there is the singular injunction to salute no man by the way, which might appear an unhistorical exaggeration of the urgency of the apostolic errand, did we not know that the Jewish greetings of that period were not a little ceremonious. ... We have already discussed this point, and have found that a comparison is rather to the advantage of Matthew. The blessing pronounced on him who should give even a cup of cold water to the disciples of Jesus (v. 42), is at least more judiciously inserted by Matthew as the conclusion of the discourse of instructions, than in the endless confusion of the latter part of Mark ix. (v. 41), where ἐὰν (if), and ὃς ἂν (whosoever), seem to form the only tie between the successive propositions."

" ... Such are the directions to the apostles as to their conduct before tribunals (Matt. x. 19 f.; Luke xii. 11); the exhortation not to fear those who can only kill the body ... "

" ... In Matthew, the description of the ungracious reception which Jesus and John had alike met with, leads very naturally to the accusations against those places which had been the chief theatres of the ministry of the former; but it is difficult to suppose, according to Luke, that Jesus would speak of his past sad experience to the seventy, whose minds must have been entirely directed to the future, unless we conceive that he chose a subject so little adapted to the exigencies of those whom he was addressing, in order to unite the threatened judgment on the Galilean cities, with that which he had just denounced against the cities that should reject his messengers. ... "

" ... Matthew connects with this rejoicing of Jesus his invitation to the weary and heavy laden (v. 28–30). This is wanting in Luke, who, instead, makes Jesus turn to his disciples privately, and pronounce them blessed in being privileged to see and hear things which many prophets and kings yearned after in vain (23 f.): an observation which does not so specifically agree with the preceding train of thought, as the context assigned to it by Matthew, and which is moreover inserted by the latter Evangelist in a connexion (xiii. 16 f.) that may be advantageously confronted with that of Luke."

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78. THE PARABLES

"According to Matthew (chap. xiii.), Jesus delivered seven parables, all relating to the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Modern criticism, however, has doubted whether Jesus really uttered so many of these symbolical discourses on one occasion.47 The parable, it has been observed, is a kind of problem, to be solved by the reflection of the hearer; hence after every parable a pause is requisite, if it be the object of the teacher to convey real instruction, and not to distract by a multiplicity of ill-understood images.48 It will, at least, be admitted, with Neander, that parables on the same or closely-related subjects can only be spoken consecutively, when, under manifold forms, and from [346]various points of view, they lead to the same result.49 Among the seven parables in question, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven have a common fundamental idea, differently shadowed forth—the gradual growth and ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God: those of the net and the tares represent the mingling of the good with the bad in the kingdom of God; those of the treasure and the pearl inculcate the inestimable and all-indemnifying value of the kingdom of God; and the parable of the sower depicts the unequal susceptibility of men to the preaching of the kingdom of God. Thus there are no less than four separate fundamental ideas involved in this collection of parables—ideas which are indeed connected by their general relation to the kingdom of God, but which present this object under aspects so widely different, that for their thorough comprehension a pause after each was indispensable. Hence, it has been concluded, Jesus would not merit the praise of being a judicious teacher, if, as Matthew represents, he had spoken all the above parables in rapid succession.50 If we suppose in this instance, again, an assemblage of discourses similar in kind, but delivered on different occasions, we are anew led to the discussion as to whether Matthew was aware of the latter circumstance, or whether he believed that he was recording a continuous harangue. ... If it were his intention to communicate a series of parables, with [347]the explanations that Jesus privately gave to his disciples of the two which were most important, and were therefore to be placed at the head of the series, there were only three methods on which he could proceed. First, he might make Jesus, immediately after the enunciation of a parable, give its interpretation to his disciples in the presence of the multitude, as he actually does in the case of the first parable (10–23). But the representation is beset with the difficulty of conceiving how Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, whose expectation was on the stretch, could find leisure for a conversation aside with his disciples.52 This inconvenience Mark perceived, and therefore chose the second resource that was open to him—that of making Jesus with his disciples withdraw after the first parable into the house, and there deliver its interpretation. But such a proceeding would be too great a hindrance to one who proposed publicly to deliver several parables one after the other; for if Jesus returned to the house immediately after the first parable, he had left the scene in which the succeeding ones could be conveniently imparted to the people. Consequently, the narrator in the first gospel cannot, with respect to the interpretation of the second parable, either repeat his first plan, or resort to the second; he therefore adopts a third, and proceeding uninterruptedly through two further parables, it is only at their close that he conducts Jesus to the house, and there makes him impart the arrear of interpretation. ... "

"Luke, also, has only three of the seven parables given in Matt. xiii.; namely, those of the sower, the mustard-seed, and the leaven; so that the parables of the buried treasure, the pearl, and the net, as also that of the tares in the field, are peculiar to Matthew. ... "

" ... But the addition in question is not only out of harmony with the imagery, but with the tendency of this parable. For while hitherto its aim had been to exhibit the national contrast between the perversity of the Jews, and the willingness of the Gentiles: it all at once passes to the moral one, to distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. That after the Jews had contemned the invitation to partake of the kingdom of God, the heathens would be called into it, is one complete idea, with which Luke very properly concludes his parable; [355]that he who does not prove himself worthy of the vocation by a corresponding disposition, will be again cast out of the kingdom, is another idea, which appears to demand a separate parable for its exhibition. ... "

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79. MISCELLANEOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES OF JESUS.

"The next discourse that presents itself (Matt. xix. 3–12, Mark x. 2–12), though belonging, according to the Evangelists, to the last journey of Jesus, is of the same stamp with the disputations which they, for the most part, assign to the last residence of Jesus in Jerusalem. Some Pharisees propose to Jesus the question, at that time much discussed in the Jewish schools, whether it be lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. To avoid a contradiction between modern practice and the dictum of Jesus, it has been alleged that he here censures the species of divorce which was the only one known at that period, namely, the arbitrary dismissal of a wife; but not the judicial separation resorted to in the present day. But this very argument involves the admission, that Jesus denounced all the forms of divorce known to him; hence the question still remains whether, if he could have had cognizance of the modern procedure in dissolving matrimony, he would have held it right to limit his general censure. Of the succeeding declaration, [358]prompted by a question of the disciples, namely, that celibacy may be practised for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, Jesus himself says, that it cannot be understood by all, but only by those to whom it is given (v. 11). That the doctrine of Jesus may not run counter to modern opinion, it has been eagerly suggested, that his panegyric on celibacy had relation solely to the circumstances of the coming time, or to the nature of the apostolic mission, which would be impeded by family ties. But there is even less intimation of this special bearing in the text, than in the analogous passage 1 Cor. vii. 25 ff., and, adhering to a simple interpretation, it must be granted that we have here one of the instances in which ascetic principles, such as were then prevalent, especially among the Essenes, manifest themselves in the teaching of Jesus, as represented in the synoptical gospels."

"Jesus not only speaks of the ravening, ἁρπαγή, and wickedness, πονηρία, with which the Pharisees fill the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, ἄφρονες, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe, οὐαὶ, against them and the scribes and doctors of the law, threatening them with retribution for all the blood that had been shed by their fathers, whose deeds they approved. We grant that Attic urbanity is not to be expected in a Jewish teacher, but even according to the oriental standard, such invectives uttered at table against the host and his guests, would be the grossest dereliction of what is due to hospitality. This was obvious to Schleiermacher’s acute perception; and he therefore supposes that the meal passed off amicably, and that it was not until its close, when Jesus was again out of the house, that the host expressed his surprise at the neglect of the usual ablutions by Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus answered with so much asperity.104 But to assume that the writer has not described the meal itself and the incidents that accompanied it, and that he has noticed it merely for the sake of its connexion with the subsequent discourse, is an arbitrary mode of overcoming the difficulty. For the text runs thus: And he went in and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, εἰσελθὼν δὲ ἀνέπεσεν· ὁ δὲ Φαρισαῖος ἰδὼν ἐθαύμασεν, ὁτι οὐ πρῶτον ἐβαπτίσθη—· εἶπε δὲ ὁ Κύριος πρὸς αὐτὸν. It is manifestly impossible to thrust in between these sentences the duration of the meal, and it must have been the intention of the writer to attach he marvelled ἐθαύμασεν to he sat down to meat ἀνέπεσεν, and he said εἶπεν to he marvelled ἐθαύμασεν. But if this could not really have been the case, unless Jesus violated in the grossest manner the simplest dictates of civility, there is an end to the vaunted accuracy of Luke in his allocation of this discourse: and we have only to inquire how he could be led to give it so false a position. This is to be discovered by comparing the manner in which the two other synoptists mention the offence of the Pharisees, at the omission of the ablutions before meals by Jesus and his disciples: a circumstance to which they annex discourses different from those given by Luke. In Matthew (xv. 1 ff), scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem ask Jesus why his disciples do not observe the custom of washing before meat? It is thus implied that they knew of this omission, as may easily be supposed, by report. In Mark (vii. 1 ff.), they look on (ἰδόντες,) while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashen hands, and call them to account for this irregularity. Lastly, in Luke, Jesus himself [363]dines with a Pharisee, and on this occasion it is observed that he neglects the usual washings. This is an evident climax: hearing, witnessing, taking food together. Was it formed, in the descending gradation, from Luke to Matthew, or, in the ascending one, from Matthew to Luke?"

"Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his cotemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zacharias of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff. was a son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war.106 Moreover, it appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event; and the latter notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior compilation. ... "

Obviously that was one of those specifically ordered in by Rome after church had united with Rome, to find excuses for persecution of Jews by Rome, and blame them for it.

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October 24, 2021 - October 24, 2021.

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CHAPTER VII.

DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

§ 80. Conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus

81. The discourses of Jesus, John v.–xii.

82. Isolated maxims of Jesus, common to the fourth gospel and the synoptical ones

83. The modern discussions on the authenticity of the discourses in the Gospel of John. Result

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80. CONVERSATION OF JESUS WITH NICODEMUS.

"The first considerable specimen which the fourth gospel gives of the teaching of Jesus, is his conversation with Nicodemus (iii. 1–21). In the previous chapter (23–25) it is narrated, that during the first passover attended by Jesus after his entrance on his public ministry, he had won many to faith in him by the miracles, σημεῖα, which he performed, but that he did not commit himself to them because he saw through them: he was aware, that is, of the uncertainty and impurity of their faith. Then follows in our present chapter, as an example, not only of the adherents whom Jesus had found even thus early, but also of the wariness with which he tested and received them, a more detailed account how Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews and a Pharisee, applied to him, and how he was treated by Jesus.

"It is through the Gospel of John alone that we learn anything of this Nicodemus, who in vii. 50 f. appears as the advocate of Jesus, so far as to protest against his being condemned without a hearing, and in xix. 39 as the partaker with Joseph of Arimathea of the care of interring Jesus. Modern criticism, with reason, considers it surprising that Matthew (with the other synoptists) does not even mention the name of this remarkable adherent of Jesus, and that we have to gather all our knowledge of him from the fourth gospel; since the peculiar relation in which Nicodemus stood to Jesus, and his participation in the care of his interment, must have been as well known to Matthew as to John. This difficulty has been numbered among the arguments which are thought to prove that the first gospel was not written by the Apostle Matthew, but was the product of a tradition considerably more remote from the time and locality of Jesus.1 But the fact is that the common fund of tradition on which all the synoptists drew had preserved no notice of this Nicodemus. With touching piety the Christian legend has recorded in the tablets of her memory, the names of all the others who helped to render the last honours to their murdered master—of Joseph of Arimathea and the two Marys (Matt. xxvii. 57–61 parall.); why then was Nicodemus the only neglected one—he who was especially distinguished among those who tended the remains of Jesus, by his nocturnal interview with the teacher sent from God, and by his advocacy of him among the chief priests and Pharisees? It is so difficult to conceive that the name of this man, if he had really assumed such a position, would have vanished from the popular evangelical tradition [366]without leaving a single trace, that one is induced to inquire whether the contrary supposition be not more capable of explanation: namely, that such a relation between Nicodemus and Jesus might have been fabricated by tradition, and adopted by the author of the fourth gospel without having really subsisted."

"John xii. 42, it is expressly said that many among the chief rulers believed on Jesus, but concealed their faith from dread of excommunication by the Pharisees, because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. ... "

Such an inference is only valid if people knew God, and in abrahmic religion it is explicitly forbidden to entertain such a notion if one is not, say, equivalent of pope; nay, one would be burnt at stake for much less, as were many. So if a bunch of guys surrounding an impressive one, say, go about calling him messiah, one woukd play safer by not taking it seriously, even if Jews did not do inquisition. After all, supposedly he forbade his apostles to admit, much less advertise, his being a messiah, much less connected to god, and it wasn't as if he was helped for all to see or hovering in skies, which, if so, would be the first things advertised by church through millennia since! No, one has to take everything said by church against Jews with, not a pinch but a bucket, of salt.

" ... That towards the end of his career many people of rank believed in Jesus, even in secret only, is not very probable, since no indication of it appears in the Acts of the Apostles; for that the advice of Gamaliel (Acts v. 34 ff.) did not originate in a positively favourable disposition towards the cause of Jesus, seems to be sufficiently demonstrated by the spirit of his disciple Saul. Moreover the synoptists make Jesus declare in plain terms that the secret of his Messiahship had been revealed only to babes, and hidden from the wise and prudent (Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21), and Joseph of Arimathea is the only individual of the ruling class whom they mention as an adherent of Jesus. How, then, if Jesus did not really attach to himself any from the upper ranks, came the case to be represented differently at a later period? In John vii. 48 f. we read that the Pharisees sought to disparage Jesus by the remark that none of the rulers or of the Pharisees, but only the ignorant populace, believed on him; and even later adversaries of Christianity, for example, Celsus, laid great stress on the circumstance that Jesus had had as his disciples ἐπιῤῥήτους ἀνθρώπους, τελώνας καὶ ναύτας τοὺς πονηροτάτους.3 This reproach was a thorn in the side of the early church, and though as long as her members were drawn only from the people, she might reflect with satisfaction on the declarations of Jesus, in which he had pronounced the poor, πτωχοὺς, and simple, νηπίους, blessed: yet so soon as she was joined by men of rank and education, these would lean to the idea that converts like themselves had not been wanting to Jesus during his life. But, it would be objected, nothing had been hitherto known of such converts. Naturally enough, it might be answered; since fear of their equals would induce them to conceal their relations with Jesus. Thus a door was opened for the admission of any number of secret adherents among the higher class (John xii. 42 f.). But, it would be further urged, how could they have intercourse with Jesus unobserved? Under the veil of the night, would be the answer; and thus the scene was laid for the interviews of such men with Jesus (xix. 39). This, however, would not suffice; a representative of this class must actually appear on the scene: Joseph of Arimathea might have been chosen, his name being still extant in the synoptical tradition; but the idea of him was too definite, and it was the interest of the legend to name more than one eminent friend of Jesus. Hence a new personage was devised, whose Greek name Νικόδημος seems to point him out significantly as the representative of the dominant class.4 That this development of the legend is confined to the fourth gospel, is to be explained, partly by the generally admitted lateness of its origin, and partly on the ground that in the evidently more cultivated circle in which it arose, the limitation of the adherents of Jesus to the [367]common people would be more offensive, than in the circle in which the synoptical tradition was formed. Thus the reproach which modern criticism has cast on the first gospel, on the score of its silence respecting Nicodemus, is turned upon the fourth, on the score of its information on the same subject."

" ... This may still be in the main genuine; Jesus may have held such a conversation with one of his adherents, and our Evangelist may have embellished it no further than by making this interlocutor a man of rank. Neither will we, with the author of the Probabilia, take umbrage at the opening address of Nicodemus, nor complain, with him, that there is a want of connexion between that address and the answer of Jesus. The requisition of a new birth (γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν), as a condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven, does not differ essentially from the summons with which Jesus opens his ministry in the synoptical gospels, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. New birth, or new creation, was a current image among the Jews, especially as denoting the conversion of an idolater into a worshipper of Jehovah. ... "

So, in short, he wasn't starting a new religion, at all, but cleansing and polishing his own that he was born and brought up into, Judaism, and perhaps then for extending it beyond its original adherents!

" ... It was customary to say of Abraham, that when, according to the Jewish supposition, he renounced idolatry for the worship of the true God, he became a new creature (‏בריה חדשה‎).6 The proselyte, too, in allusion to his relinquishing all his previous associations, was compared to a new-born child.7 That such phraseology was common among the Jews at that period, is shown by the confidence with which Paul applies, as if it required no explanation, the term new creation, καινὴ κτίσις, to those truly converted to Christ. Now, if Jesus required, even from the Jews, as a condition of entrance into the messianic kingdom, the new birth which they ascribed to their heathen proselytes, Nicodemus might naturally wonder at the requisition, since the Israelite thought himself, as such, unconditionally entitled to that kingdom: and this is the construction which has been put upon his question v. 4.8 But Nicodemus does not ask, How canst thou say that a Jew, or a child of Abraham, must be born again? His ground of wonder is that Jesus appears to suppose it possible for a man to be born again, and that when he is old. It does not, therefore, astonish him that spiritual new birth should be expected in a Jew, but corporeal new birth in a man. ... "

Definitely Roman double twist there!

" ... Our wonder at the ignorance of the Jewish doctor, therefore, returns upon us; and it is heightened when, after the copious explanation of Jesus (v. 5–8), that the new birth which he required was a spiritual birth, γεννηθῆναι ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος, Nicodemus has made no advance in comprehension, but asks with the same obtuseness as before (v. 9), How can these things be? ... "

The Jewish doctor was the sincere one, honest, and right, too. Most others, when they convert, are at best being convinced; few have anything more than a mental change, and most have been converted by force, terror, and imposition. This is just as true of those born and brought up into any abrahmic religion that, offers not tradition, but a demand of faith.

" ... First, then, it must occur to us, that in all descriptions and recitals, contrasts are eagerly exhibited; hence in the representation of a colloquy in which one party is the teacher, the other the taught, there is a strong temptation to create a contrast to the wisdom of the former by exaggerating the simplicity of the latter. Further, we must remember the satisfaction it must give to a Christian mind of that age, to place a master of Israel in the position of an unintelligent person, by the side of the Master of the Christians. Lastly, it is, as we shall presently see more clearly, the constant method of the fourth Evangelist in detailing the conversations of Jesus, to form the knot and the progress of the discussion, by making the interlocutors understand literally what Jesus intended figuratively.

"V. 14 and 15 Jesus proceeds from the more simple things of the earth, ἐπιγείοις, the communications concerning the new birth, to the more difficult [369]things of heaven, ἐπουρανίοις, the announcement of the destination of the Messiah to a vicarious death. The Son of Man, he says, must be lifted up (ὑψωθῆναι, which, in John’s phraseology, signifies crucifixion, with an allusion to a glorifying exaltation), in the same way, and with the same effect, as the brazen serpent Num. xxi. 8, 9. ... "

Being lifted up is crucifixion?

How many more indications are needed before they see that this was all Roman writing?

" ... Is it credible, that Jesus already, at the very commencement of his public ministry, foresaw his death, and in the specific form of crucifixion? and that long before he instructed his disciples on this point, he made a communication on the subject to a Pharisee? Can it be held consistent with the wisdom of Jesus as a teacher, that he should impart such knowledge to Nicodemus? ... "

Good question, if there was any likelihood that the accounts weren't tampered with by Rome. As it is they weren't merely tampered with, but practically rewritten to suit the creed to be forced on people, to suit Rome.

" ... Even Lücke puts the question why, when Nicodemus had not understood the more obvious doctrine, Jesus tormented him with the more recondite, and especially with the secret of the Messiah’s death, which was then so remote? He answers: it accords perfectly with the wisdom of Jesus as a teacher, that he should reveal the sufferings appointed for him by God as early as possible, because no instruction was better adapted to cast down false worldly hopes. ... "

How many more indications are needed before they see that this was all Roman writing?

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81. THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS, JOHN V-XII.

" ... But the chief point in the argument is, that in this gospel John the Baptist speaks, as we have seen, in precisely the same strain as the author of the gospels, and his Jesus. It cannot be supposed, that not only the Evangelist, but the Baptist, whose public career was prior to that of Jesus, and whose character was strongly marked, modelled his expressions with verbal minuteness on those of Jesus. Hence only two cases are possible: either the Baptist determined the style of Jesus and the Evangelist (who indeed appears to have been the Baptist’s disciple); or the Evangelist determined the style of the Baptist and Jesus. ... "

Or the writer designated by Rome, post council of Nicea, did It?

" ... Jesus proceeds to represent his flesh as the bread from heaven, which he will give for the life of the world, and to eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and to drink his blood, he pronounces to be the only means of attaining eternal life. ... "

Rome really went to the limits and beyond, just so the shocked populace would think, no, it can't be that revolting, it's too much, there must be a mystical meaning, ... - and thus swallow this!

" ... Having once said, apparently in accordance with Alexandrian ideas, that Jesus had described himself as the bread of life, how could he fail to be reminded of the bread, which in the Christian community was partaken of as the body of Christ, together with a beverage, as his blood? ... "

" ... It is indeed said, that Jesus wished to sift his disciples, to remove from his society the superficial [375]believers, the earthly-minded, whom he could not trust; but the measure which he here adopted was one calculated to alienate from him even his best and most intelligent followers. ... "

Or Rome did it, to stupify people!

More basis for antisemitism here -

" ... All that is new in these chapters, is quickly repeated, as the mention of the departure of Jesus whither the Jews cannot follow him (vii. 33 f., viii. 21, comp. xiii. 33, xiv. 2 ff., xvi. 16 ff.); a declaration, to which are attached, in the first two instances, very improbable misapprehensions or perversions on the part of the Jews, who, although Jesus had said, I go unto him that sent me, are represented as imagining, at one time, that he purposed journeying to the dispersed among the Gentiles, at another, that he meditated suicide. How often, again, in this chapter are repeated the asseverations, that he seeks not his own honour, but the honour of the Father (vii. 17 f., viii. 50, 54); that the Jews neither know whence he came, nor the father who sent him (vii. 28, viii. 14, 19, 54); that whosoever believeth in him shall have eternal life, shall not see death, while whosoever believeth not must die in his sins, having no share in eternal life ... "

"The discourses of Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles extend to x. 18. From v. 25, the Evangelist professes to record sayings which were uttered by Jesus three months later, at the Feast of Dedication. When, on this occasion, the Jews desire from him a distinct declaration whether he be the Messiah, his immediate reply is, that he has already told them this sufficiently, and he repeats his appeal to the testimony of the Father, as given in the works, ἔργα, done by Jesus in his name (as in v. 36). Hereupon he observes that his unbelieving interrogators are not of his sheep, whence he reverts to the allegory of the shepherd, which he had abandoned, and repeats part of it word for word. ... "

And they keep on with antisemitism provoking language -

" ... This commentators will not admit, and they can appeal, not without a show of reason, to the statement of the Evangelist, v. 36, that Jesus withdrew himself from the public eye, and to his ensuing observations on the obstinate unbelief of the Jews, in which he seems to put a period to the public career of Jesus; whence it would be contrary to his plan to make Jesus again step forward to deliver a valedictory discourse. I will not, with the older expositors, oppose to these arguments the supposition that Jesus, after his withdrawal, returned to pronounce these words in the ears of the Jews; but I hold fast to the proposition that by the introduction above quoted, the Evangelist can only have intended to announce an actual harangue. It is said, indeed, that the aorist in ἔκραξε and εἶπε has the signification of the pluperfect, and that we have here a recapitulation of the previous discourses of Jesus, notwithstanding which the Jews had not given him credence. ... "

When they say, Jews did not believe, they forget that those who did were Jews too; and inquisition did burn at stake those who were not Jews, too.

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82. ISOLATED MAXIMS OF JESUS, COMMON TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE SYNOPTIC ONES.

" ... So long, therefore, as Galilee and Nazareth are admitted to be the πατρίς of Jesus, the passage in question cannot be vindicated from the absurdity of representing, that Jesus was instigated to return thither by the contempt which he knew to await him. Consequently, it becomes the interest of the expositor to recollect, that Matthew and Luke pronounce Bethlehem to be the birthplace of Jesus, whence it follows that Judea was his native country, which he now forsook on account of the contempt he had there experienced.37 But according to iv. 1, comp. ii. 23, iii. 26 ff., Jesus had won a considerable number of adherents in Judea, and could not therefore complain of a lack of honour, τιμή; moreover the enmity of the Pharisees, hinted at in iv. 1, was excited by the growing consequence of Jesus in Judea, and was not at all referable to such a cause as that indicated in the maxim: ὅτι προφήτης κ.τ.λ. Further, the entrance into Galilee is not connected in our passage with a departure from Judea, but from Samaria; and as, according to the import of the text, Jesus departed from Samaria and went into Galilee, because he had found that a prophet has no honour in his own country, Samaria might rather seem to be pointed out as his native country, in conformity with the reproach cast on him by the Jews, viii. 48; though even this supposition would not give consistency to the passage, for in Samaria also Jesus is said, iv. 39, to have had a favourable reception. ... "

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83. THE MODEEN DISCUSSIONS ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE DISCOURSES IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. RESULT.

"It is alleged by the friends of the fourth gospel that its discourses are distinguished by a peculiar stamp of truth and credibility; that the conversations which it represents Jesus as holding with men of the most diverse disposition and capacity, are faithful delineations of character, satisfying the strictest demands of psychological criticism. In opposition to this, it is maintained to be in the highest degree improbable, that Jesus should have adopted precisely the same style of teaching to persons differing widely in their degrees of cultivation; that he should have spoken to the Galileans in the synagogue at Capernaum not more intelligibly than to a master of Israel; that the matter of his discourses should have turned almost entirely on one doctrine—the dignity of his person; and that their form should have been such as to seem selected with a view to perplex and repel his hearers. Neither, it is further urged, do the interlocutors express themselves in conformity with their position and character. The most educated Pharisee has no advantage in intelligence over a Samaritan woman of the lowest grade; the one, as well as the other, can only put a carnal interpretation on the discourse which Jesus intends spiritually; their misconstructions, too, are frequently so glaring, as to transcend all belief, and so uniform that they seem to belong to a standing set of features with which the author of the fourth gospel has chosen, for the sake of contrast, to depict those whom he brings into conversation with Jesus. Hence, I confess, I understand not what is the meaning of verisimilitude in the mind of those who ascribe it to the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John."

" ... But neither the above relation, if admitted, nor the remark that John apparently attached himself to Jesus in early youth, when impressions sink deepest, and from the time of his master’s death lived in a circle where the memory of his words and deeds was cherished, suffices to render it probable that John could retain in his mind long series of ideas, and complicated dialogues, until the period in which the composition of his gospel must be placed. For critics are agreed that the tendency of the fourth gospel, its evident aim to spiritualize the common faith of Christians into the Gnosis, and thus to crush many errors which had sprung up, is a decisive attestation that it was composed at a period when the church had attained a degree of maturity, and consequently in the extreme old age of the apostle."

" ... But if Jesus taught first in one style, then in another, how was it that the synoptists selected almost exclusively the practical and popular, John, nearly without exception, the dogmatic and speculative portions of his discourse? ... "

"We therefore hold it to be established, that the discourses of Jesus in John’s gospel are mainly free compositions of the Evangelist; but we have admitted that he has culled several sayings of Jesus from an authentic tradition, and hence we do not extend this proposition to those passages which are countenanced by parallels in the synoptical gospels. ... Severed from their original connexion, and broken up into smaller and smaller fragments, they present when reassembled the appearance of a mosaic, in which the connexion of the parts is a purely external one, and every transition an artificial juncture. The discourses of Jesus in John present just the opposite appearance. Their gradual transitions, only rendered occasionally obscure by the mystical depths of meaning in which they lie,—transitions in which one thought develops itself out of another, and a succeeding proposition is frequently but an explanatory amplification of the preceding,69—are indicative of a pliable, unresisting mass, such as is never presented to a writer by the traditional sayings of another, but such as proceeds from the stores of his own thought, which he moulds according to his will. For this reason the contributions of tradition to these stores of thought (apart from the sayings which are also found in the earlier gospels) were not so likely to have been particular, independent dicta of Jesus, as rather certain ideas which formed the basis of many of his discourses, and which were modified and developed according to the bent of a mind of Alexandrian or Greek culture. ... "

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October 25 2021 - October 25, 2021.

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CHAPTER VIII.

EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUSIVE OF THE MIRACLES.

§ 84. General comparison of the manner of narration that distinguishes the several Evangelists

85. Isolated groups of anecdotes. Imputation of a league with Beelzebub, and demand of a sign

86. Visit of the mother and brethren of Jesus. The woman who pronounces the mother of Jesus blessed

87. Contentions for pre-eminence among the disciples. The love of Jesus for children

88. The purification of the temple

89. Narratives of the anointing of Jesus by a woman

90. The narratives of the woman taken in adultery, and of Mary and Martha

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84. GENERAL COMPARISON OF THE MANNER OF NARRATION THAT DISTINGUISHES THE SEVERAL EVANGELISTS.

"If, before proceeding to the consideration of details, we compare the general character and tone of the historical narration in the various gospels, we find differences, first, between Matthew and the two other synoptists; secondly, between the three first evangelists collectively and the fourth."

" ... we cannot disapprove the decision of this criticism, that Matthew’s whole narrative resembles a record of events which, before they were committed to writing, had been long current in oral tradition, and had thus lost the impress of particularity and minuteness. But it must be admitted, that this proof, taken alone, is not absolutely convincing; for in most cases we may verify the remark, that even an eye-witness may be unable graphically to narrate what he has seen."

"But our modern critics have not only measured Matthew by the standard of what is to be expected from an eye-witness, in the abstract; they have also compared him with his fellow-evangelists. They are of opinion, not only that John decidedly surpasses Matthew in the power of delineation, both in their few parallel passages and in his entire narrative, but also that the two other synoptists, especially Mark, are generally far clearer and fuller in their style of narration. ... But it is chiefly in the lively description of particular incidents, that we perceive the decided superiority of Luke, and still more of Mark, over Matthew. Let the reader only compare the narrative of the execution of John the Baptist in Matthew and Mark (Matt. xiv. 3; Mark vi. 17), and that of the demoniac or demoniacs of Gadara (Matt. viii. 28 ff. parall.)."

"These facts are, in the opinion of our latest critics, a confirmation of the fourth Evangelist’s claim to the character of an eye-witness, and of the greater proximity of the second and third Evangelists to the scenes they describe, than can be attributed to the first. But, even allowing that one who does not narrate graphically cannot be an eye-witness, this does not involve the proposition that whoever does narrate graphically must be an eye-witness. In all cases in which there are extant two accounts of a single fact, the one full, the other concise, opinions may be divided as to which of them is the original.4 When these accounts have been liable to the modifications of tradition, it is important to bear in mind that tradition has two tendencies: the one, to sublimate the concrete into the abstract, the individual into the general; the other, not less essential, to substitute arbitrary fictions for the historical reality which is lost. ... "

Still, it doesn't occur to Strauss that none of them were quite authentic; that they'd all been pruned, whitewashed, tailored, and the more genuine ones ordered destroyed.

" ... The decision with which the other inference is drawn, is in fact merely an after-taste of the old orthodox opinion, that all our gospels proceed immediately from eye-witnesses, or at least through a medium incapable of error. Modern criticism has limited this supposition, and admitted the possibility that one or the other of our gospels may have been affected by oral tradition. Accordingly it maintains, not without probability, that a gospel in which the descriptions are throughout destitute of colouring and life, cannot be the production [389]of an eye-witness, and must have suffered from the effacing fingers of tradition. But the counter proposition, that the other gospels, in which the style of narration is more detailed and dramatic, rest on the testimony of eye-witnesses, would only follow from the supposed necessity that this must be the case with some of our gospels. For if such a supposition be made with respect to several narratives of both the above kinds, there is no question that the more graphic and vivid ones are with preponderant probability to be referred to eye-witnesses. But this supposition has merely a subjective foundation. It was an easier transition for commentators to make from the old notion that all the gospels were immediately or mediately autoptical narratives, to the limited admission that perhaps one may fall short of this character, than to the general admission that it may be equally wanting to all. But, according to the rigid rules of consequence, with the orthodox view of the scriptural canon, falls the assumption of pure ocular testimony, not only for one or other of the gospels, but for all; the possibility of the contrary must be presupposed in relation to them all, and their pretensions must be estimated according to their internal character, compared with the external testimonies. From this point of view—the only one that criticism can consistently adopt—it is as probable, considering the nature of the external testimonies examined in our Introduction, that the three last Evangelists owe the dramatic effect in which they surpass Matthew, to the embellishments of a more mature tradition, as that this quality is the result of a closer communication with eye-witnesses."

"Matthew (viii. 16 f.) states in general terms, that on the evening after the cure of Peter’s mother-in-law, many demoniacs were brought to Jesus, all of whom, together with others that were sick, he healed. Mark (i. 32) in a highly dramatic manner, as if he himself had witnessed the scene, tells, that on the same occasion, the whole city was gathered together at the door of the house in which Jesus was; at another time, he makes the crowd block up the entrance (ii. 2); in two other instances, he describes the concourse as so great, that Jesus and his disciples could not take their food (iii. 20, vi. 31); and Luke on one occasion states, that the people even gathered together in innumerable multitudes so that they trode one upon another (xii. 1). All highly vivid touches, certainly: but the want of them can hardly be prejudicial to Matthew, for they look thoroughly like strokes of imagination, such as abound in Mark’s narrative, and often, as Schleiermacher observes,7 give it almost an apocryphal appearance. ... On the mention of a blind beggar of Jericho, Mark is careful to give us his name, and the name of his father (x. 46). From these particulars we might already augur, what the examination of single narratives will prove: namely, that the copiousness of Mark and Luke is the product of the second function of the legend, which we may call the function of embellishment. Was this embellishment gradually wrought out by oral tradition, or was it the arbitrary addition of our Evangelists? Concerning this, there may be a difference of opinion, and a degree of probability in relation to particular passages is the nearest approach that can be made to a decision. In any case, not only must it be granted, that a narrative adorned by the writer’s own additions is more remote from primitive truth than one free from such additions; but we may venture to pronounce that the earlier efforts of the legend are rapid sketches, tending to set off only the leading points whether of speech or action, and that at a later period it aims rather to give a symmetrical effect to the whole, including collateral incidents; so that, in either view, the closest approximation to truth remains on the side of the first gospel."

" ... It is true that the three first Evangelists sometimes mention, by way of conclusion, the offence that Jesus gave to the narrow-hearted, and the machinations of his enemies against him (Matt. viii. 34, xii. 14, xxi. 46, xxvi. 3 f.; Luke iv. 28 f., xi. 53 f.); and, on the other hand, the fourth Evangelist closes some discourses and miracles by the remark, that in consequence of them, many believed on Jesus (ii. 23, iv. 39, 53, vii. 31, 40 f., viii. 30, x. 42, xi. 45). But in the synoptical gospels, throughout the period previous to the residence of Jesus in Jerusalem, we find forms implying that the fame of Jesus had extended far and wide (Matt. iv. 24, ix. 26, 31; Mark i. 28, 45, v. 20, vii. 36; Luke iv. 37, v. 15, vii. 17, viii. 39); that the people were astonished at his doctrine (Matt. vii. 28; Mark i. 22, xi. 18; Luke xix. 48), and miracles (Matt. viii. 27, ix. 8, xiv. 33, xv. 31), and hence followed him from all parts (Matt. iv. 25, viii. 1, ix. 36, xii. 15, xiii. 2, xiv. 13). In the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we are continually told that the Jews sought to kill Jesus (v. 18, vii. 1); the Pharisees wish to take him, or send out officers to seize him (vii. 30, 32, 44; comp. viii. 20, x. 39); stones are taken up to cast at him (viii. 59, x. 31); and even in those passages where there is mention of a favourable disposition on the part of the people, the Evangelist limits it to one portion of them, and represents the other as inimical to Jesus (vii. 11–13). He is especially fond of drawing attention to such circumstances, as that before the final catastrophe all the guile and power of the enemies of Jesus were exerted in vain, because his hour was not yet come (vii. 30, viii. 20); that the emissaries sent out against him, overcome by the force of his words, and the dignity of his person, retired without fulfilling their errand (vii. 32, 44 ff.); and that Jesus passed unharmed through the midst of an exasperated crowd (viii. 59, x. 39; comp. Luke iv. 30). The writer, as we have above remarked, certainly does not intend us in these instances to think of a natural escape, but of one in which the higher nature of Jesus, his invulnerability so long as he did not choose to lay down his life, was his protection. ... "

There it is, again - blame Jews, or even him, for crucifixion; blame anybody but the real culprits responsible, namely, Roman rulers who crucified Jews on an everyday basis, by dozens if not more, on an average. Somehow, prevent the real memory, of the king of Jews and his strife to free Jews from Roman yoke, from being out in the open, and represent his execution by Rome as divine laying down his life as a sacrifice for humanity, while representing Rome as the only path to access the Divine.

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85. ISOLATED GROUPS OF ANECDOTES-IMPUTATION OF A LEAGUE WITH BEELZEBUB, AND DEMAND OP A SIGN.

" ... Matthew mentions two instances, in which a league with Beelzebub was imputed to Jesus, and a sign demanded from him; circumstances which in Mark and Luke happen only once.8 The first time the imputation occurs (Matt. ix. 32 ff.), Jesus has cured a dumb demoniac; at this the people marvel, but the Pharisees observe, He casts out demons through the prince (ἄρχων) of the demons. Matthew does not here say that Jesus returned any answer to this accusation. On the second occasion (xii. 22 ff.), it is a blind and dumb demoniac whom Jesus cures; again the people are amazed, and again the Pharisees declare that the cure is effected by the help of Beelzebub, the ἄρχων of the demons, whereupon Jesus immediately exposes the absurdity of the accusation. That it should have been alleged against Jesus more than once when he cast out demons, is in itself probable. It is [392]however suspicious that the demoniac who gives occasion to the assertion of the Pharisees, is in both instances dumb (in the second only, blindness is added). Demoniacs were of many kinds, every variety of malady being ascribed to the influence of evil spirits; why, then, should the above imputation be not once attached to the cure of another kind of demoniac, but twice to that of a dumb one? The difficulty is heightened if we compare the narrative of Luke (xi. 14 f.), which, in its introductory description of the circumstances, corresponds not to the second narrative in Matthew, but to the first; for as there, so in Luke, the demoniac is only dumb, and his cure and the astonishment of the people are told with precisely the same form of expression:—in all which points, the second narrative of Matthew is more remote from that of Luke. But with this cure of the dumb demoniac, which Matthew represents as passing off in silence on the part of Jesus, Luke connects the very discourse which Matthew appends to the cure of the one both blind and dumb; so that Jesus must on both these successive occasions, have said the same thing. This is a very unlikely repetition, and united with the improbability, that the same accusation should be twice made in connexion with a dumb demoniac, it suggests the question, whether legend may not here have doubled one and the same incident? How this can have taken place, Matthew himself shows us, by representing the demoniac as, in the one case, simply dumb, in the other, blind also. Must it not have been a striking cure which excited, on the one hand, the astonishment of the people, on the other, this desperate attack of the enemies of Jesus? Dumbness alone might soon appear an insufficient malady for the subject of the cure, and the legend, ever prone to enhance, might deprive him of sight also. If then, together with this new form of the legend, the old one too was handed down, what wonder that a compiler, more conscientious than critical, such as the author of the first gospel, adopted both as distinct histories, merely omitting on one occasion the discourse of Jesus, for the sake of avoiding repetition."

The whole thing reminds one of nothing so much as the inquisition in general, and burning of Jean D'Arc at stake by church, in particular - for far less as a specifically alarming act consodering the occult power, even though far more at the time in terms of the effect on general circumstances.

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86. VISIT OF THE’ MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS--THE WOMAN WHO PRONOUNCES THE MOTIIER OF JESUS BLESSED.

"All the synoptists mention a visit of the mother and brethren of Jesus, on being apprised of which Jesus points to his disciples, and declares that they who do the will of God are his mother and his brethren (Matt. xii. 46 ff.; Mark iii. 31 ff.; Luke viii. 19 ff.). Matthew and Luke do not tell us the object of this visit, nor, consequently, whether this declaration of Jesus, which appears to imply a disowning of his relatives, was occasioned by any special circumstance. On this subject Mark gives us unexpected information; he tells us (v. 21) that while Jesus was teaching among a concourse of people, who even prevented him from taking food, his relatives, under the idea that he was beside himself, went out to seize him, and take him into the keeping of his family.15 In describing this incident, the Evangelist makes use of the expression, ἔλεγον ὅτι ἐξέστη (they said, he is beside himself), and it was merely this expression, apparently, that suggested to him what he next proceeds to narrate: οἱ γραμματεῖς ἔλεγον, ὅτι Βεελζεβοὺλ ἔχει κ.τ.λ. (the scribes said, he hath Beelzebub, etc., comp. John x. 20). With this reproach, which however he does not attach to an expulsion of demons, he connects the answer of Jesus; he then recurs to the relatives, whom he now particularizes as the mother and brethren of Jesus, supposing them to have arrived in the meantime; and he makes their announcement call forth from Jesus the answer of which we have above spoken.

"These particulars imparted by Mark are very welcome to commentators, as a means of explaining and justifying the apparent harshness of the answer which Jesus returns to the announcement of his nearest relatives, on the ground of the perverted object of their visit. But, apart from the difficulty that, on the usual interpretation of the accounts of the childhood of Jesus, it is not to be explained how his mother could, after the events therein described, be thus mistaken in her son, it is very questionable whether we ought to accept this information of Mark’s. ... "

" ... After the refutation of the Pharisaic reproach, and the discourse on the return of the unclean spirit, a woman in the crowd is filled with admiration, and pronounces the mother of Jesus blessed, on which Jesus, as before on the announcement of his mother, replies; Yea, rather blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it! ... "

All this discussion about what he said is peculiar to West; India takes it as routine, and in fact sums it up in a neat phrase, to the effect that one needn't enquire for roots of a spiritual person. It's more than understood that once on spiritual path, one is, one ought to be, first and foremost free of worldly bonds, and only then can hope to progress. Divine Avataars are another matter, but while they are required to fullfill all duties and go through human experience, they are living at a higher level.

" ... But how the woman could feel herself hurried away into so enthusiastic an exclamation, precisely on hearing the abstruse discourse on the return of the expelled demons, or even the foregoing reprehensive reply to the Pharisees, it is difficult to understand, ... "

Oh good heavens! This he finds difficult to understand??!!!!

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87. CONTENTIONS FOR PRE-EMINENCE AMONG THE DISCIPLES. THE LOVE OF JESUS FOR CHILDREN.

" ... Matthew and Mark concur in mentioning a dispute about pre-eminence, which was excited by the two sons of Zebedee. These disciples (according to Mark), or their mother for them (according to Matthew), petitioned for the two first places next to Jesus in the messianic kingdom (Matt. xx. 20 ff.; Mark x. 35 ff.). ... "

This, more than any other, exposes the conspiracy of Rome, of church, and rents the veils they attempted to cover truth with; for who woukd petition for a top place in, much less for "two first places next to Jesus in the messianic kingdom", if it had been understood in the spiritual sense, purely, instead of a spiritual crown over a kingdom of earth, so to speak? And if they were led falsely to believe this, it's highly unsuitable behaviour from a messiah; not suitable coming from anyone who stood for a spiritual preacher. No, it's clear that whatever was understood in terms of God, this was a movement of kingdom of Jews being strived for, with the messiah being exactly what the Jews expected, a king of the Jews in line of descendants of David.

" ... However credible it may be that with the worldly messianic hopes of the disciples, Jesus should often have to suppress disputes among them on the subject of their future rank in the Messiah’s kingdom, it is by no means probable that, for example, the sentence, Whosoever will be great among you, let him be the servant of all: should be spoken, 1st, on the presentation of the child; 2ndly, in connexion with the prayer of the sons of Zebedee; 3rdly, in the anti-pharisaic discourse, and 4thly, at the last supper. There is here obviously a traditional confusion, whether it be (as Sieffert in such cases is fond of supposing) that several originally distinct occurrences have been assimilated by the legend, i.e. the same discourse erroneously repeated on various occasions; or that out of one incident the legend has made many, i.e. has invented various occasions for the same discourse. ... "

He might have had to remind them, explain to them, more than once; but that anyone would petition for a top place at all, shows that such a person had no clue; and that person cannot be mother of a disciple, much less of a close one. Or did her son's never converse with her? In which case she'd hardly dare to make such a petition.

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88. THE PURIFICATION OF THE TEMPLE.

"Jesus, during his first residence in Jerusalem, according to John (ii. 14 ff.), according to the synoptists, during his last (Matt. xxi. 12 ff. parall.), undertook the purification of the temple. ... "

On this incident hangs, chiefly, the argument by the church about claim that it was Jews who quarrel with him, and were responsible for the rest; but Judaism and Jewish history as seen by them has no recriminations, no negative feelings, about one who was one of their own, and a king to boot. They may not accept him as god or his final messiah, but nor do the adherents of the last abrahmic religion; they count him as a prophet, only not the final one. One expects Jews to retain some animosity if this incident were major enough to have caused "Jews" to be responsible for the rest, but they don't; and so it was unlikely it was more than a quarrel with some men, and much less important than that of Luther with church of Rome. The latter did persecute Luther and his followers, and attempt to have him assassinated, but that's routine of Rome - from their own Caesar to king of Jews to Queen Elizabeth I and many more along the millennia. As for this incident, Rome, when uniting with church, used it to hang the deception, to claim it was Jews who caused death of their own, to cover up guilt of Rome. If there had been any truth therein, church wouldn't have kept up with Jews in those three early centuries before the council of Nicea, all the while corresponding to keep track of the various common celebrations or festivals and other religious events, such as Easter, Passover and more. It was only after the betrayal of Jews by church in uniting with Rome that church had to learn to figure out how to fix Easter Sunday.

" ... Modern interpreters soften the picture by supposing that Jesus used the scourge merely against the cattle32 (a supposition, however, opposed to the text, which represents all πάντας as being driven out by the scourge); yet still they cannot avoid perceiving the use of a scourge at all to be unseemly in a person of the dignity of Jesus ... "

How does torturing poor animals reconcile with someone, supposedly not only spiritual, but supposedly kind, loving, beatific, at all times? It's either one or other. If he tortured cattle, beat them, he was no more than king of Jews.

" ... But it is no inconsiderable argument against John’s position of the event, that Jesus, with his prudence and tact, would hardly have ventured thus early on so violent an exercise of his messianic authority.35 For in that first period of his ministry he had not given himself out as the Messiah, and under any other than messianic authority, such a step could then scarcely have been hazarded; moreover, he in the beginning rather chose to meet his cotemporaries on friendly ground, and it is therefore hardly credible that he should at once, without trying milder means, have adopted an appearance so antagonistic. But to the last week of his life such a scene is perfectly suited. Then, after his messianic entrance into Jerusalem, it was his direct aim in all that he did and said, to assert his messiahship, in defiance of the contradiction of his enemies; then, all lay so entirely at stake, that nothing more was to be lost by such a step. ... "

The action and it's nature speaks more of taking control as king and messiah, than as a spiritual man preaching kindness and love.

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89. NARRATIVES OF THE ANOINTING OF JESUS BY A WOMAN.

"An occasion on which Jesus was anointed by a woman as he sat at meat, is mentioned by all the Evangelists (Matt. xxvi. 6 ff.; Mark xiv. 3 ff.; Luke vii. 36 ff.; John xii. 1 ff.), but with some divergencies, the most important of which lie between Luke and the other three. First, as to the chronology; Luke places the incident in the earlier period of the life of Jesus, before his departure from Galilee, while the other three assign it to the last week of his life; secondly, as to the character of the woman who anoints Jesus: she is, according to Luke, a woman who was a sinner, γυνὴ ἁμαρτωλὸς; according to the two other synoptists, a person of unsullied reputation; according to John, who is more precise, Mary of Bethany. From the second point of difference it follows, that in Luke the objection of the spectators turns on the admission [403]of so infamous a person, in the other gospels, on the wastefulness of the woman; from both, it follows, that Jesus in his defence dwells, in the former, on the grateful love of the woman, as contrasted with the haughty indifference of the Pharisees, in the latter, on his approaching departure, in opposition to the constant presence of the poor. There are yet the minor differences, that the place in which the entertainment and the anointing occur, is by the two first and the fourth Evangelists called Bethany, which according to John xi. 1, was a κώμη (town), by Luke a πόλις (city), without any more precise designation; further, that the objection, according to the three former, proceeds from the disciples, according to Luke, from the entertainer. Hence the majority of commentators distinguish two anointings, of which one is narrated by Luke the other by the three remaining Evangelists."

" ... The first difference relates to the house in which the entertainment is said to have been given; according to the two first Evangelists, it was the house of Simon the leper, a person elsewhere unnoticed; the fourth does not, it is true, expressly name the host, but since he mentions Martha as the person who waited on the guests, and her brother Lazarus as one of those who sat at meat, there is no doubt that he intended to indicate the house of the latter as the locality of the repast.46 Neither is the time of the occurrence precisely the same, for according to Matthew and Mark the scene takes place after the solemn entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, only two days at the utmost before the passover; according to John, on the other hand, before the entrance, as early as six days prior to the passover.47 Further, the individual whom John states to be that Mary of Bethany so intimately united to Jesus, is only known to the two first evangelists as a woman, γυνὴ;48 neither do they represent her as being, like Mary, in the house, and one of the host’s family, but as coming, one knows not whence, to Jesus, while he reclined at table. Moreover, the act of anointing is in the fourth gospel another than in the two first. In the latter, the woman pours her ointment of spikenard on the head of Jesus; in John, on the contrary, she anoints his feet, and dries them with her hair,49 a difference which gives the whole scene a new character. ... "

This last mentioned detail is argued in recent times as too intimate from a stranger, and evidence of an intimate relationship between the man and the woman; it furthermore required his compliance for as long as it took, else he need not have allowed it; and it was in public view, witnessed by several disciples, so the relationship was no secret. These were some of the arguments supporting the argument that the two of them were husband and wife, and known as such.

"Thus between the narrative of John, and that of Matthew and Mark, there is scarcely less difference than between the account of these three collectively, and that of Luke: whoever supposes two distinct occurrences in the one case, must, to be consistent, do so in the other; and thus, with Origen, hold, at [404]least conditionally, that there were three separate anointings. So soon, however, as this consequence is more closely examined, it must create a difficulty, for how improbable is it that Jesus should have been expensively anointed three times, each time at a feast, each time by a woman, that woman being always a different one; that moreover Jesus should, in each instance, have had to defend the act of the woman against the censures of the spectators!51 Above all, how is it to be conceived that after Jesus, on one and even on two earlier occasions, had so decidedly given his sanction to the honour rendered to him, the disciples, or one of them, should have persisted in censuring it?"

It would be consistent, however, with church of Rome attempting to wipe out all traces of fact of his wife and family, in the rewritten gospels after council of Nicea, and meanwhile proceeding to wipe out his descendents who had been from the branch of the family - his wife with child - that escaped to Southwest France after crucifixion.

" ... The breaking of the box of ointment, in Mark, although a dramatic particular, is readily rejected as a mere embellishment; but does not John’s statement of the quantity of spikenard as a pound, border on exaggeration? and ought not the extravagance which Olshausen, in relation to this disproportionate consumption of ointment, attributes to Mary’s love, to be rather referred to the Evangelist’s imagination, which would then also have the entire credit of the circumstance, that the house was filled with the odour of the ointment? It is worthy of notice, that the estimate of the value of the perfume at 300 denarii, is given by John and Mark alone; as also at the miraculous feeding of the multitude, it is these two Evangelists who rate the necessary food at 200 denarii. If Mark only had this close estimate, how quickly would it be pronounced, at least by Schleiermacher, a gratuitous addition of the narrator! What then is it that, in the actual state of the case, prevents the utterance of this opinion, even as a conjecture, but the prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel? Even the anointing of the head, which is attested by two of the synoptists, is, because John mentions the feet instead of the head, rejected as unusual, and incompatible with the position of Jesus at a meal:65 whereas the anointing of the feet with precious oil was far less usual; and this the most recent commentator on the fourth gospel admits."

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90. THE NARRATIVES OF THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY, AND OF MARY AND MARTHA.

"In the Gospel of John (viii. 1–11), the Pharisees and scribes bring a woman taken in adultery to Jesus, that they may obtain his opinion as to the procedure to be observed against her; whereupon Jesus, by appealing to the consciences of the accusers, liberates the woman, and dismisses her with an admonition. ... The circumstance of Jesus writing on the ground has a legendary and mystical air, for even if it be not correctly explained by the gloss of Jerome: eorum videlicet, qui accusabant, et omnium mortalium peccata, it yet seems to imply something more mysterious than a mere manifestation of contempt for the accusers. Lastly, it is scarcely conceivable that every one of those men who dragged the woman before Jesus, zealous for the law, and adverse to his cause as they are supposed to be, should have had so tender a conscience, as on the appeal of Jesus to retire without prosecuting their design, and leave the woman behind them uninjured; this rather [410]appears to belong merely to the legendary or poetical embellishment of the scene. ... "

"In any case, the narrative of an interview between Jesus and a woman of the above character must be very ancient, since, according to Eusebius, it was found in the Gospel of the Hebrews, and in the writings of Papias.74 It was long thought that the woman mentioned in the Hebrew gospel and by Papias was identical with the adulteress in John; but against this it has been justly observed, that one who had the reproach of many sins, must be distinct from her who was detected in the one act of adultery.75 I wonder, however, that no one has, to my knowledge, thought, in connexion with the passage of Eusebius, of the woman in Luke of whom Jesus says that her many sins, ἁμαρτίαι πολλαὶ, are forgiven. It is true that the word διαβληθείσης does not fully agree with this idea, for Luke does not speak of actual expressions of the Pharisee in disparagement of the woman, but merely of the unfavourable thoughts which he had concerning her; and in this respect the passage in Eusebius would agree better with the narrative of John, which has an express denunciation, a διαβάλλειν."

It's unclear why they didn't concern themselves with their own virtue, instead of that of others, particularly women; but then it's abrahmic culture, and it's cheap and easy to victimise women.

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October 25, 2021 - October 26, 2021.

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CHAPTER IX.

MIRACLES OF JESUS.

§ 91. Jesus considered as a worker of miracles

92. The demoniacs, considered generally

93. Cases of the expulsion of demons by Jesus, considered singly

94. Cures of lepers

95. Cures of the blind

96. Cures of paralytics. Did Jesus regard diseases as punishments?

§ 97. Involuntary cures

98. Cures at a distance

99. Cures on the sabbath

100. Resuscitations of the dead

101. Anecdotes having relation to the sea

102. The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes

103. Jesus turns water into wine

104. Jesus curses a barren fig-tree

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91. JESUS CONSIDERED AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES.

" ... not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the Messiah should work miracles in general,—the particular kinds of miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in accordance with Old Testament types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17): the same was expected, as the rabbins explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings vi.): the Messiah also was to open the eyes of the blind. By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been raised (1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv.): hence to the Messiah also power over death could not be wanting.2 Among the prophecies, Isa. xxxv. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this portion of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times: Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.

"Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when, according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38, xvi. 1, parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him; when, after the violent expulsion of the traders and money-changers from the temple, the Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an assumption of authority (John ii. 18); and when the people in the synagogue at Capernaum, on his requiring faith in himself as the sent of God, made it a condition of this faith that he should show them a sign (John vi. 30).

"According to the gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by his cotemporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of the evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles; not only did his disciples after his death especially call to their own remembrance and to that of the Jews the δυνάμεις (miracles) σημεῖα (signs) and τέρατα (wonders) wrought by him (Acts ii. 22; comp. Luke xxiv. 19): but the people also were, even during his life, so well satisfied with this aspect of his character that many believed on him in consequence (John ii. 23; comp. vi. 2), contrasted him with the Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed that he would not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 31). The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately after important miracles, e.g. after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii. 38; and after the feeding of the five thousand, John vi. 30. ... "

Obviously, they did not; but his being a messiah meant delivering them from subjection to Rome and assuming his position as king; which didn't happen. What it did not mean was the twist given by church after uniting with Rome for sake of survival.

" ... If however it be preferred to sever the connexion between these demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that Jesus may have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile Pharisees, who had not happened to be eyewitnesses of any of them, may still have desired to see one for themselves.

"That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses to comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself prove that he might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other cases, when they appeared to him to be more seasonable. ... "

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92. THE DEMONIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY.

" ... The power to cast out devils is before anything else imparted by Jesus to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7; Luke ix. 1), who to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13)."

" ... the attempt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, such as Winer,7 to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on demoniacal possession, but merely accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. ... "

" ... Justin and the rabbins more nearly particularize, as spirits that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who allied themselves to the daughters of men; the rabbins further add the souls of those who perished in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel;25 and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for, according to them also, these souls of the giants, having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies.26 As, however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be [419]regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it;27 while Josephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, and of the great criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only engendered by the union of the Græco-roman culture with the Hebraic: the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like,—all names for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. ... "

"It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the authority of Jesus and the Evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, especially since the time of Semler,28 in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes to the prejudices of that age. ... "

" ... But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen’s opinion concerning demons is this: it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ;—hence he understands the question, What is thy name? (Mark v. 9) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to the man,31 plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the right answer—the one expected by Jesus."

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93. CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMONS BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY.

"Among the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three first gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are especially remarkable: the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, that of the Gadarenes possessed by a multitude of demons, and lastly, that of the lunatic whom the disciples were unable to cure.

"In John the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle performed by Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; but in Mark (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 ff.) the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum has this position. Jesus had produced a deep impression by his teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac who was present, cried out in the character of the demon that possessed him, that he would have nothing to do with him, that he knew him to be the Messiah who was come to destroy them—the demons; whereupon Jesus commanded the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which happened amid cries and convulsions on the part of the demoniac, and to the great astonishment of the people at the power thus exhibited by Jesus."

Strauss gives an explanation in accord with psychology as known in his times.

"But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon, speaking through the man, evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, in the words, οἶδά δε τίς εἶ κ.τ.λ., not as information casually imparted by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature. Further, when Jesus cries, Hold thy peace! he refers to what the demon had just uttered concerning his messiahship; for it is related of Jesus that he suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him (Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 41), or because they [424]made him known (Mark iii. 12). If then Jesus believed that by enjoining silence on the demon he could hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, he must have been of opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something of it from the people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might learn it from the demoniac; and this accords with the fact, that at the time of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the Evangelists place the occurrence, no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah."

He follows up with facts and analysis, that of others and his own.

"If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the Messiah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into his service the preternaturally heightened activity of the nervous system, which, in demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the presentient power, and produces a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such a man might very well discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the whole realm of spirits. The evangelical narrative, it is true, does not ascribe that knowledge to a power of the patient, but of the demon dwelling within him, and this is the only view consistent with the Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, in order to overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (ἀπολέσαι ἡμᾶς, comp. 1 John iii. 8; Luke x. 18 f.) and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of fire (Matt. xxv. 41; Rev. xx. 10): it followed of course that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them. This however might be deducted as an admixture of the opinion of the narrator, without damage to the rest of the narrative; but it must first be granted admissible to ascribe so extensive a presentient power to demoniacal subjects. Now, as it is in the highest degree improbable that a nervous patient, however intensely excited, should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when he was not believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by himself; and as on the other hand this recognition of the Messiah by the demon so entirely agrees with the popular ideas;—we must conjecture that on this point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with historical truth, but has been attuned to those ideas. There was the more inducement to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on the part of the demons would redound to his glory. ... "

"In the above history of the cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the simplest kind; the cure of the possessed Gadarenes on the contrary (Matt. viii. 28 ff.; Mark v. 1 ff.; Luke viii. 26 ff.) is a very complex one, for in this instance we have, together with several divergencies of the Evangelists, instead of one demon, many, and instead of a simple departure of these demons, their entrance into a herd of swine."

" ... At first the pith of the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognized and supplicated Jesus; but the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his command in the first instance.

"To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put by Jesus to the demon: What is thy name? In reply, a multitude of demons make known their presence, and give as their name, Legion. ... Let us examine the reasons that render it probable: the wish immediately expressed by the demons to enter the herd of swine, does not in Matthew presuppose a multitude of demons in each of the two possessed, since we cannot know whether the Hebrews were not able to believe that even two demons only could possess a whole herd of swine: but a later writer might well think it requisite to make the number of the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, what a herd is in relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in relation to men and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman legion, which term in Matt. xxvi. 53, is applied to angels, as here to demons. ... "

"All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. ... "

Strauss analyses and discusses this in light of thinking of his time, and further says -

" ... Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires;61 if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, than an impure animal ζῶον ἀκάθαρτον, like a swine?62 So far, therefore, it is possible that the Evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. ... "

Funny, he criticised the virgin birth a good deal, but never criticised the authorities that myth rests on - the church of Rome; Jews, Judaism, and everything related, he's at once ready to take up a disparaging attitude, except when church is in line with them.

" ... Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative.75 It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he liberated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them.

"Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. ... The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained?"

"We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of information that will throw light on this also. Josephus tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he set a vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was out of the man.79 In like manner it is narrated of Apollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to [431]depart with a visible sign, whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue that stood near at hand; which to the great astonishment of the spectators actually ensued in the very moment that the demon went out of the youth.80 If then the agitation of some near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a little (μικρὸν) removed from the exorciser and the patient, the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other Evangelists, the fact that the herd of swine was feeding a good way off (μακρὰν), thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the relation between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the history first considered; he must have succeeded in the most difficult cures of this kind. ... "

And now he comes to a critical point, suddenly, mentioning it for the first time -

" ... It is the evident object of the present narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven demons ... "

- before continuing -

" ... As in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;—what wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory features in the narrative?"

" ... Jesus, when his disciples ask him why they could not cast out the demon, answers; Because of your unbelief, and proceeds to extol the power of faith, even though no larger than a grain of mustard seed, as sufficient to remove mountains (v. 19 ff.): it cannot be doubted that in this expression of dissatisfaction Jesus apostrophizes his disciples, in whose inability to cast out the demon, he finds a proof of their still deficient faith. ... "

" ... Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme difficulty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here insufficient."

And now another contradiction reiterated -

"If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that it does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission has not seldom been turned to the advantage of the Apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment.94 If however this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the Apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to [437]liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John’s adored master, from whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair’s breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporaries and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that the Apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the other Evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction,—we have seen, in our examination of the cures of demoniacs, that in many a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel."

- as usual, Strauss, or Europe, or West in general, is highly confused between the various streams of cultural herirage.

On one hand, there are Egypt, Greece and Rome, all considered highly cultured, albeit not identical; on the other, the Judaic tradition inherited by church. So on one hand Jews are seen as less cultured, and on the other, the others are clubbed under the label heathen, along with other ancient cultures of the world!

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94. CURES OF LEPERS.

Strauss starts off with a prejudice, probably not conscious, that helps cover up deficiency in Europe adroitly.

"Among the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent part, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate of Palestine to produce cutaneous disease."

It's hardly possible that climate of what he calls Palestine - a pejorative epithet applied to the region that was more properly named Israel, as Europe did to lands and their cultures colonised by European populations or powers, usually - was ever radically different from that of Mediterranean coastal regions in general, or southern Europe in particular. What is known in recent times, apart from it being a desert, is that it's extremely hot in day and correspondingly cold at nights. This can only differ in other coastal lands around Mediterranean sea by virtue of bodies of water or mountains. A wet or colder climate is hardly known to be healthier, per se, as such, however better for agriculture it be.

What is likely, however, is that the state of hygiene wasn't great, due to washing of body and clothing being not as regular, frequent and routine, as necessary; this was equally true of Europe, due chiefly to cold climate, which determined custom; and other factors didn't help. So for example other diseases spread, and death of women was routine in childbirth, until better understanding of hygiene and its relationship to washing was understood. Europeans still don't shower or bathe as frequently as do people in India or U.S., taking an obstinate pride in custom.

But it's convenient for Strauss to make general statements heaping disdain on what, on the other hand, is called Holy Land in Europe, due to church!

"One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is placed by them in two different connexions: namely, by Matthew, immediately after the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount (viii. 1 ff.); by the other Evangelists, at some period, not precisely marked, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff.; Luke v. 12 ff.). According to the narratives, a leper comes towards Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed; this Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself to the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean (Lev. xiv. 2 ff.). ... "

" ... And in the fabulous region of Oriental and more particularly of Jewish legend, the sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy presents itself the first thing. When Jehovah endowed Moses, as a preparation for his mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds of signs, amongst other tokens of this gift he commanded him to put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with leprosy; again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing it out a second time it was once more clean (Exod. iv. 6, 7). Subsequently, on account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was soon [440]healed (Num. xii. 10 ff.). Above all, among the miracles of the prophet Elisha the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this event Jesus himself refers (Luke iv. 27.). The Syrian general, Naaman, who suffered from leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his aid; the latter sent to him the direction to wash seven times in the river Jordan, and on Naaman’s observance of this prescription the leprosy actually disappeared but was subsequently transferred by the prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings v.). I know not what we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narratives to account for the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first Goël was empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah’s commission, the second Goël must also be able to perform and the greatest of prophets must not fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah; the Christians, who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the person of Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his history by such traits, taken from the Mosaic and prophetic legend; with the single difference that, in accordance with the mild spirit of the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) they dropped the punitive side of the old miracles."

"But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the [441]former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, the cure does not properly form the main object of the narrative: this lies rather in the different conduct of the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there not ten cleansed, etc. (v. 17), forms the point of the whole, which thus closes altogether morally, and seems to have been narrated for the sake of the instruction conveyed.99 That the one who appears as a model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, cannot pass without remark, in the narrative of the Evangelist who alone has the parable of the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Levite, show themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves exemplarily compassionate: so here, nine unthankful Jews stand contrasted with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far as the sudden cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have here, as well as there, a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he intended to represent gratitude, as in the other case compassion, in the example of a Samaritan? It would then be with the present narrative as some have maintained it to be with the history of the temptation. But in relation to this we have both shown, and given the reason, that Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and this he must have done if he had given a narrative of ten lepers once healed by him. If then we are not inclined to relinquish the idea that something originally parabolic is the germ of our present narrative, we must represent the case to ourselves thus: from the legends of cures performed by Jesus on lepers, on the one hand; and on the other, from parables in which Jesus (as in that of the compassionate Samaritan) presented individuals of this hated race as models of various virtues, the Christian legend wove this narrative, which is therefore partly an account of a miracle and partly a parable."

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95. CURES OF THE BLIND.

"The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a cure of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 29 parall.): but there are important differences both as to the object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the two other Evangelists only one; and also as to its locality, Luke making it take place on the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and Mark on his departure out of Jericho. ... "

"It seems probable that Matthew was led to add a second blind man by his recollection of a previous cure of two blind men narrated by him alone (ix. 27 ff.). Here, likewise, when Jesus is in the act of departure,—from the place, namely, where he had raised the ruler’s daughter,—two blind men follow him (those at Jericho are sitting by the way side), and in a similar manner cry for mercy of the Son of David, who here also, as in the other instance, according to Matthew, immediately cures them by touching their eyes. ... "

" ... the washing in the pool of Siloam which was prescribed to the patient was perhaps continued many days—was a protracted cure by means of the bath—and the words ἦλθε βλέπων he came seeing, do not necessarily imply that he came thus after his first bath, but that at a convenient time after the completion of his cure, he came again seeing."

" ... The narrator interprets the name of the pool, Siloam, by the Greek ἀπεσταλμένος (v. 7); a false explanation, for one who is sent is called ‏שָׁלוּחַ‎, whereas ‏שִּׁלחַ‎ according to the most probable interpretation signifies a waterfall.127 The Evangelist, however, chose the above interpretation, because he sought for some significant relation between the name of the pool, and the sending thither of the blind man, and thus seems to have imagined that the pool had by a special providence received the name of Sent, because at a future time the Messiah, as a manifestation of his glory, was to send thither a blind man. ... "

" ... The observation has been already made by others, that the fourth Evangelist has fewer miracles than the synoptical writers, but that this deficiency in number is compensated by a superiority in magnitude.131 Thus while the other Evangelists have simple paralytics cured by Jesus, the fourth gospel has one who had been lame thirty-eight years; while, in the former, Jesus resuscitates persons who had just expired, in the latter, he calls back to life one who had lain in the grave four days, in whom therefore it might be presumed that decomposition had begun; and so here, instead of a cure of simple blindness, we have that of a man born blind,—a heightening of the miracle altogether suited to the apologetic and dogmatic tendency of this gospel. ... "

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96. CURES OF PARALYTICS. DID JESUS REGARD DISEASES AS PUNISHMENTS ?

"An important feature in the history of the cure of the man born blind has been passed over, because it can only be properly estimated in connexion with a corresponding one in the synoptical narratives of the cure of a paralytic (Matt. ix. 1 ff.; Mark ii. 1 ff.; Luke v. 17 ff.), which we have in the next place to consider. Here Jesus first declares to the sick man: ἀφέωνταί σοί αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου, thy sins are forgiven thee, and then as a proof that he had authority to forgive sins, he cures him. It is impossible not to perceive in this a reference to the Jewish opinion, that any evil befalling an individual, and especially disease, was a punishment of his sins; an opinion which, presented in its main elements in the Old Testament (Lev. xxvi. 14 ff.; Deut. xxviii. 15 ff.; 2 Chron. xxi. 15, 18 f.) was expressed in the most definite manner by the later Jews.133 Had we possessed that synoptical narrative only, we must have believed that Jesus shared the opinion of his cotemporary fellow-countrymen on this subject, since he proves his authority to forgive sins (as the cause of disease) by an example of his power to cure disease (the consequence of sin). But, it is said, there are other passages where Jesus directly contradicts this Jewish opinion; whence it follows, that what he then says to the paralytic was a mere accommodation to the ideas of the sick man, intended to promote his cure."

" ... Here the disciples, seeing on the road the man whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the question, whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or of those of his parents? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the Jewish theory of retribution. With respect to diseases which attach themselves to a man in his course through life, an observer who has once taken a certain bias, may easily discover or assume some peculiar delinquencies on the part of this man as their cause. With respect to inborn diseases, on the contrary, though the old Hebraic opinion (Exod. xx. 5; Deut. v. 9; 2 Sam. iii. 29), it is true, presented the explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited on their posterity: yet as, for human regulations, the Mosaic law itself ordained that each should suffer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv. 16; 2 Kings xiv. 6); and as also, in relation to the penal justice of the Divine Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer. xxxi. 30; Ezek. xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the expedient of supposing, that men so afflicted might probably have sinned in their mother’s womb,135 and this was doubtless the notion which the disciples had in view in their question, v. 2. Jesus says, in answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, did this man come into the world blind; but in order that by the cure which he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument in manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion, that disease and other evils were essentially punishments of sin. But the words of Jesus are expressly limited to the case before him; he simply says, that this particular misfortune had its foundation, not in the guilt of the individual, but in higher providential designs. ... in the passage in question in the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the declaration of Jesus had a more general meaning."

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97. INVOLUNTARY CURES.

"Occasionally in their general statements concerning the curative power of Jesus, the synoptical writers remark, that all kinds of sick people only sought to touch Jesus, or to lay hold on the hem of his garment, in order to be healed, and that immediately on this slight contact, a cure actually followed (Matt. xiv. 36; Mark iii. 10, vi. 56; Luke vi. 19). In these cases Jesus operated, not, as we have hitherto always seen, with a precise aim towards any particular sufferer, but on entire masses, without taking special notice of each individual; his power of healing appears not here, as elsewhere, to reside in his will, but in his body and its coverings; he does not by his own voluntary act dispense its virtues, but is subject to have them drawn from him without his consent."

" ... After all the narrators have described how the woman, as timid as she was believing, came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his garment, Mark and Luke state that she was immediately healed, but that Jesus, being conscious of the egress of curative power, asked who touched me? The disciples, astonished, ask in return, how he can distinguish a single touch amidst so general a thronging and pressure of the crowd. According to Luke, he persists in his assertion; according to Mark, he looks inquiringly around him in order to discover the party who had touched him: then, according to both these Evangelists, the woman approaches trembling, falls at His feet and confesses all, whereupon Jesus gives her the tranquillizing assurance that her faith has made her whole. Matthew has not this complex train of circumstances; he merely states that after the touch Jesus looked round, discovered the woman, and announced to her that her faith had wrought her cure."

" ... That the woman according to Matthew also, only touched Jesus from behind, implied the effort and the hope to remain concealed; that Jesus immediately looked round after her, implied that he was conscious of her touch. This hope on the part of the woman became the more accountable, and this consciousness on the part of Jesus the more marvellous, the greater the crowd that surrounded Jesus and pressed upon him; hence the companionship of the disciples in Matthew is by the other two Evangelists changed into a thronging [459]of the multitude (βλέπεις τὸν ὄχλον συνθλίβοντά σε). Again, Matthew mentions that Jesus looked round after the woman touched him; on this circumstance the supposition might be founded that he had perceived her touch in a peculiar manner; hence the scene was further worked up, and we are shown how Jesus, though pressed on all sides, had yet a special consciousness of that particular touch by the healing power which it had drawn from him; while the simple feature ἐπιστραφεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν, he turned him about, and when he saw her, in Matthew, is transformed into an inquiry and a searching glance around upon the crowd to discover the woman, who then is represented as coming forward, trembling, to make her confession. Lastly, on a comparison of Matt xiv. 36, the point of this narrative, even as given in the first gospel, appears to lie in the fact that simply to touch the clothes of Jesus had in itself a healing efficacy. Accordingly, in the propagation of this history, there was a continual effort to make the result follow immediately on the touch, and to represent Jesus as remaining, even after the cure, for some time uncertain with respect to the individual who had touched him, a circumstance which is in contradiction with that superior knowledge elsewhere attributed to Jesus. Thus, under every aspect, the narrative in the first gospel presents itself as the earlier and more simple, that of the second and third as a later and more embellished formation of the legend."

"As regards the common substance of the narratives, it has in recent times been a difficulty to all theologians, whether orthodox or rationalistic, that the curative power of Jesus should have been exhibited apart from his volition. Paulus and Olshausen agree in the opinion,153 that the agency of Jesus is thus reduced too completely into the domain of physical nature; that Jesus would then be like a magnetiser who in operating on a nervous patient is conscious of a diminution of strength, or like a charged electrical battery, which a mere touch will discharge. Such an idea of Christ, thinks Olshausen, is repugnant to the Christian consciousness, which determines the fulness of power resident in Jesus to have been entirely under the governance of his will; and this will to have been guided by a knowledge of the moral condition of the persons to be healed. It is therefore supposed that Jesus fully recognized the woman even without seeing her, and considering that she might be spiritually won over to him by this bodily succour, he consciously communicated to her an influx of his curative power; but in order to put an end to her false shame and constrain her to a confession, he behaved as if he knew not who had touched him. But the Christian consciousness, in cases of this kind, means nothing else than the advanced religious culture of our age, which cannot appropriate the antiquated ideas of the Bible. Now this consciousness must be neutral where we are concerned, not with the dogmatical appropriation, but purely with the exegetical discovery of the biblical ideas. The interference of this alleged Christian consciousness is the secret of the majority of exegetical errors, and in the present instance it has led the above named commentators astray from the evident sense of the text. For the question of Jesus in both the more detailed narratives τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου; who touched me? repeated as it is in Luke, and strengthened as it is in Mark by a searching glance around, has the appearance of being meant thoroughly in earnest; and indeed it is the object of these two Evangelists to place the miraculous nature of the curative power of Jesus in a particularly clear light by showing that the mere touching of his clothes accompanied by faith, no previous knowledge on his part of the person who touched, nor so much as a word [460]from him, being requisite, was sufficient to obtain a cure. Nay, even originally, in the more concise account of Matthew, the expressions προσελθοῦσα ὄπισθεν ἥφατο having come behind him, she touched, and ἐπιστραθεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν he turned him about, and when he saw her, clearly imply that Jesus knew the woman only after she had touched him. If then, it is not to be proved that Jesus had a knowledge of the woman previous to her cure and a special will to heal her; nothing remains for those who will not admit an involuntary exhibition of curative power in Jesus, but to suppose in him a constant general will to cure, with which it was only necessary that faith on the part of the diseased person should concur, in order to produce an actual cure. But that, notwithstanding the absence of a special direction of the will to the cure of this woman on the part of Jesus, she was restored to health, simply by her faith, without even touching his clothes, is assuredly not the idea of the Evangelists. On the contrary, it is their intention to substitute for an individual act of the will on the part of Jesus, the touch on the part of the sick person; this it is which, instead of the former, brings into action the latent power of Jesus: so that the materialistic character of the representation is not in this way to be avoided."

" ... Hence, according to a later opinion, the saint must continue to work miracles when his bones are distributed as relics, and the body of Christ must be present in the transubstantiated host; hence also, according to an idea developed much earlier, the curative power of the men celebrated in the New Testament must be attached to their body and its coverings. The less the church retained of the words of Jesus, the more tenaciously she clung to the efficacy of his mantle, and the further she was removed from the free spiritual energy of the apostle Paul, the more consolatory was the idea of carrying home his curative energy in a pocket-handkerchief."

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98. CURES AT A DISTANCE.

"The cures performed at a distance are, properly speaking, the opposite of these involuntary cures. The latter are effected by mere corporeal contact without a special act of the will; the former solely by the act of the will without corporeal contact, or even local proximity. But there immediately arises this objection: if the curative power of Jesus was so material that it dispensed itself involuntarily at a mere touch, it cannot have been so spiritual that the simple will could convey it over considerable distances; or conversely, if it was so spiritual as to act apart from bodily presence, it cannot have been so material as to dispense itself independently of the will. ... "

That sounds strangely like an echo of seemingly perfect logical discourse from a bunch of flatearthers! Strauss here assumes that if someone has willpower, he or she cannot have physical power to cure by touch, which really has no logic; and while he can deny that such physical power existed in someone, finding contradictions in accounts thereof isn't refutation, or even denial - which he has not stated clearly.

" ... Since we have pronounced the purely physical mode of influence in Jesus to be improbable, free space is left to us for the purely spiritual, and our decision on the latter will therefore depend entirely on the examination of the narratives and the facts themselves."

Again, Strauss finding disparities in the accounts does not refute anything. But more than anything else, if Strauss does not call the fraud by church in imposing virgin birth, and he does not realise that the story is made up by church in painting a king of Jews as a saintly guy talking of mercy and kindness who was hated by Jews, his splitting hair about gospels is merely a toddler's stamping a foot.

" ... But the most important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that all which according to Matthew the centurion does in his own person, is in Luke done by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends to act in his stead. ... "

Strange, a supplication for a cure to a person, and an attempt to prevent entrance of the person expected to perform the cure!

" ... But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single root."

" ... In both Luke and John, namely, a kind of embassy is spoken of, which towards the close of the narrative comes out of the house of the officer; in the former it consists of the centurion’s friends, whose errand it is to dissuade Jesus from giving himself unnecessary trouble; in the latter, of servants who rejoicingly meet their master and bring him the news of his son’s recovery. ... "

" ... But especially the double message in Luke is, according to Schleiermacher, a feature very unlikely to have been invented. How if, on the contrary, it very plainly manifested itself to be an invention? While in Matthew the centurion, on the offer of Jesus to accompany him, seeks to prevent him by the objection: Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, in Luke he adds by the mouth of his messenger, wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee, by which we plainly discover the conclusion on which the second embassy was founded. ... "

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99. CURES ON THE SABBATH.

"Jesus, according to the gospels, gave great scandal to the Jews by not seldom performing his curative miracles on the sabbath. One example of this is common to the three synoptical writers, two are peculiar to Luke, and two to John."

"Decisive evidence, alike for the necessity of viewing this as a miraculous cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin of the anecdote, is to be obtained by a closer examination of the Old Testament narrative already mentioned, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff.. A prophet out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, while offering incense on his idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar and the overthrow of his false worship; the king with outstretched hand commanded that this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand dried up so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the altar was rent. On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet besought Jehovah for the restoration of the hand, and its full use was again granted.184 Paulus also refers to this narrative in the same connexion, but only for the purpose of applying to it his natural method of explanation; he observes that Jeroboam’s anger may have produced a transient convulsive rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the hand just stretched out with such impetuosity. But who does not see that [473]we have here a legend designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, and to hold up to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder Jeroboam? The man of God denounces on the idolatrous altar quick and miraculous destruction; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth his hand against the man of God; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous altar falls asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the prophet is the king restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and the natural in what is so evidently a mythus? And who can fail to perceive in our evangelical narrative an imitation of this Old Testament legend, except that agreeably to the spirit of Christianity the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive miracle, but as a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus; whence also the outstretching of the hand is not, as in the case of Jeroboam, the criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the drawing of it back again a sign of cure; but, on the contrary, the hand which had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after the completion of the cure be again extended. ... "

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100. RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.

"The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John."

" ... Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. ... "

Here comes another attack of antisemitism founded in ignorance -

" ... We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210 but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. ... "

Strauss knows obviously nothing about living in a hot climate! Burying dead within a few hours isn't "bad custom", it's a dire necessity for the life and hygiene of the living, unless the dead are cremated rather than buried, which too must happen within a few hours, as soon as possible, less than a day.

Strauss lived out his life in a cold climate, and even in late twentieth century with heated buildings and hit water showers, a Bavarian has been known to proudly confess publicly to not even changing underwear for at least a weak, showering no more than once a month - which would disgust and horrify majority of Indian population.

So the unthinking comment from Strauss could only be due to his antisemitism founded in church preaching for two millennia, and here used subconsciously to shield himself from possible wrath of church against writing this book looking critically at writings approved by church.

"From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee, ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows, Thy brother shall rise again, ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is not πιστεύω but οἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218 But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.), I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? evidently alluding to v. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought."

"Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave, Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει (v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial. But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40): Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the words τὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦ in our present passage we need only refer to v. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was not unto death, πρὸς θάνατον, but for the glory of God, ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis, not unto death, clearly shows that the δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ signifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled. After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man, Come forth! he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. ... "

"But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. ... "

Strauss brings up a good question now, from another source -

" ... These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? ... "

And promptly answers it, from other sources, with an inane -

" ... But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control."

Which is a meaningless tautology, unless the reader is meant to infer, that the stories of resurrection are false; if the latter, why wouldn't he say so? It could only be a lack of courage, in not opposing church doctrine so clearly.

" ... Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.

"But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the authors or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they could not, for more than one reason, avoid introducing it into their writings. For, first, of all the resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay, of all his miracles, this resurrection of Lazarus, if not the most wonderful, is yet the one in which the marvellous presents itself the most obviously and strikingly, and which therefore, if its historical reality can be established, is a pre-eminently strong proof of the extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger;245 whence the [492]Evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances of the kind, could not think it superfluous to add this also. But, secondly, the resurrection of Lazarus had, according to the representation of John, a direct influence in the development of the fate of Jesus; for we learn from xi. 47 ff., that the increased resort to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led to that consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double importance—pragmatical as well as dogmatical; consequently, the synoptical writers could not have failed to narrate it, had it been within their knowledge. Nevertheless, theologians have found out all sorts of reasons why those Evangelists, even had the fact been known to them, should refrain from its narration. Some have been of opinion that at the time of the composition of the three first gospels, the history was still in every mouth, so that to make a written record of it was superfluous;246 others, on the contrary, have conjectured that it was thought desirable to guard against its further publication, lest danger should accrue to Lazarus and his family, the former of whom, according to John xii. 10, was persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy on account of the miracle which had been preformed in him; a caution for which there was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote his gospel. ... The proposition, that the resurrection of Lazarus was not recorded by the synoptists because it was generally known in their circle, proves too much; since on this rule, precisely the most important events in the life of Jesus, his baptism, death, and resurrection, must have remained unwritten. Moreover, writings, which like our gospels, originate in a religious community, do not serve merely to make known the unknown; it is their office also to preserve what is already known. In opposition to the other explanation, it has been remarked by others, that the publication of this history among those who were not natives of Palestine, as was the case with those for whom Mark and Luke wrote, could have done no injury to Lazarus; and even the author of the first gospel, admitting that he wrote in and for Palestine, could hardly have withheld a fact in which the glory of Christ was so peculiarly manifested, merely out of consideration to Lazarus, who, supposing the more improbable case that he was yet living at the time of the composition of the first gospel, ought not, Christian as he doubtless was, to refuse to suffer for the name of Christ; and the same observation would apply to his family. The most dangerous time for Lazarus according to John xii. 10, was that immediately after his resurrection, and a narrative which appeared so long after, could scarcely have heightened or renewed this danger; besides, in the neighbourhood of Bethany and Jerusalem whence danger was threatened to Lazarus, the event must have been so well-known and remembered that nothing was to be risked by its publication."

" ... But this renunciation of the apostolic origin of the first gospel, does not by any means enable us to explain the ignorance of its author and his compeers of the resurrection of Lazarus. For besides the remarkable character of the event, its occurrence in the very heart of Judæa, the great attention excited by it, and its having been witnessed by the apostles,—all these considerations render it incomprehensible that it should not have entered into the general tradition, and from thence into the synoptical gospels. It is argued that these gospels are founded on Galilean legends, i.e. oral narratives and written notices by the Galilean friends and companions of Jesus; that these were not present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and therefore did not include it in their memoirs; and that the authors of the first gospels, strictly confining themselves to the Galilean sources of information, likewise passed over the event.250 But there was not such a wall of partition between Galilee and Judæa, that the fame of an event like the resurrection of Lazarus could help sounding over from the one to the other. Even if it did not happen during a feast time, when (John iv. 45) many Galileans might be eye-witnesses, yet the disciples, who were for the greater part Galileans, were present (v. 16), and must, so soon as they returned into Galilee after the resurrection of Jesus, have spread abroad the history throughout this province, or rather, before this, the Galileans who kept the last passover attended by Jesus, must have learned the event, the report of which was so rife in the city. ... "

" ... We, nevertheless, distinctly declare that we regard the history of the resurrection of Lazarus, not only as in the highest degree improbable in itself, but also destitute of external evidence; and this whole chapter, in connexion with those previously examined, as an indication of the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel."

" ... According to rabbinical,254 as well as New Testament passages (e.g. John v. 28 f., vi. 40, 44; 1 Cor. xv.; 1 Thess. iv. 16), the resuscitation of the dead was expected of the Messiah at his coming. Now the παρουσία, the appearance of the Messiah Jesus on earth, was in the view of the early church broken by his death into two parts; the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which began with his human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension; the second was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, in order to open the αἰὼν μέλλων, the age to come. As the first appearance of Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the great demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general resurrection of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet future appearance on earth. ... "

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101. ANECDOTES HAVING RELATIONS TO THE SEA.

"As in general, at least according to the representations of the three first Evangelists the country around the Galilean sea was the chief theatre of the ministry of Jesus; so a considerable number of his miracles have an immediate reference to the sea. One of this class, the miraculous draught of fishes granted to Peter, has already presented itself for our consideration; besides this, there are the miraculous stilling of the storm which had arisen on the sea while Jesus slept, in the three synoptists; Matthew, Mark, and John; the summary of most of those, the walking of Jesus on the sea, likewise during a storm, in incidents which the appendix to the fourth gospel places after the resurrection; and lastly, the anecdote of the coin that was to be angled for by Peter, in Matthew.

"The first-named narrative (Matt. viii. 23 ff. parall.) is intended, according to the Evangelist’s own words, to represent Jesus to us as him whom the winds and the sea obey, οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ ἡ θάλασσα ὑπακούουσιν. Thus, to follow out the gradation in the miraculous which has been hitherto observed, it is here presupposed, not merely that Jesus could act on the human mind and living body in a psychological and magnetic manner; or with a revivifying power on the human organism when it was forsaken by vitality; nay, not merely as in the history of the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act immediately with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, but that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of Jesus, and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases: here, at the latest, there is an end to miracles in the wider and now more favoured sense; and we come to those which must be taken in the narrowest sense, or to the miracle proper. ... "

He discusses the above, rationally -

"But it is only that limited observation of nature which in noting the particular forgets the general, that can regard storms, tempests, and similar phenomena (which in connexion with the whole have their necessary place and beneficial influence) as evils and departure from original law: and a theory of the world in which it is seriously upheld, that before the fall there were no storms and tempests, as, on the other hand, no beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes—one does not know whether to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what purpose, if the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such a power over nature? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was inadequate and superfluous: because Jesus found individual adherents without any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general acceptance even this did not procure him. As little can it be regarded as a type of the original dominion of man over external nature, a dominion which he is destined to reattain; for the value of this dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a mediate one, achieved by the progressive reflection and the united efforts of [497]ages, not an immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a word. Hence in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking the compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of man’s dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere word."

One finds oneself perplexed - he is denying the biblical accounts of Jesus, but not the orthodox view of Oldhausen in holding nature's phenomena such as storms, as related to sin? And it's more of an achievement to invent compass and steam engine than quieten a storm?

" ... But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man over nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or theoretical, that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the might of the elements, yet is not internally conquered by them; but, in the conviction that the powers of physical nature can only destroy in him that which belongs to his physical existence, is elevated in the self-certainty of the spirit above the possible destruction of the body. ... "

That sounds twisted and bordering on lacking sense, until -

" ... This spiritual power, it is said, was exhibited by Jesus, for he slept tranquilly in the midst of the storm, and when awaked by his trembling disciples, inspired them with courage by his words. But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of this theoretical power."

That double twist leaves one uncertain if it did make sense! So - in short, cutting through twists and knots - if one can calm a storm, one lacks courage? By that logic, someone intelligent shouldn't teach, because such a person wouldn't know what lesser persons go through? Or to bring it clearer, gym trainers for weight loss must be those who have lost corresponding amounts of weight? Funnily enough the last bit makes sense, although the one about teachers does not.

" ... His address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated saying of Cæsar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an impress on the world’s history, could not so lightly be cut short in his career by an accident. ... "

Whereas, his end via execution by Rome, beginning a concatenation of events and actions and thought that led to more horrors perpetrated on his people by Roman empire in guise of church, until genocide of twentieth century - was better? Why, because it all left a mark, unlike a, ending by a storm?

" ... That those who were in the ship regarded the subsidence of the storm as the effect of the words of Jesus, proves nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their inference.259 But neither does he disapprove it, although he must have observed the impression which, in consequence of that inference, the result had made on the people;260 he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, have designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. ... "

So, if he didn't quieten the seas and a storm, it amounts to bordering dishonesty on his part in allowing his disciples to assume he did? Or an inability to know that they'd so interpret his words, implying he didn't know what his disciples thought? That'd contradict every assumption about such a person's capabilities as a teacher, much less any divinity.

"But, setting this altogether aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the storm should have been better understood by Jesus, who had never been occupied on the sea, than by Peter, James, and John, who had been at home on it from their youth upwards?

"It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the Evangelists, we must regard it as a miracle; but to raise this from an exegetical result to a real fact, is, according to the above remarks extremely difficult: whence there arises a suspicion against the historical character of the narrative. Viewed more nearly however, and taking Matthew’s account as the basis, there is nothing to object to the narrative until the middle of v. 26. It might really have happened that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Galilean sea, was sleeping when a storm arose; that the disciples awaked him with alarm, while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? What follows—the commanding of the waves, which [498]Mark, with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words, reproduces as if he were giving the exact words of Jesus in a Greek translation (σιώπα, πεφίμωσο!)—might have been added in the propagation of the anecdote from one to another. There was an inducement to attribute to Jesus such a command over the winds and the sea, not only in the opinion entertained of his person, but also in certain features of the Old Testament history. Here, in poetical descriptions of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, Jehovah is designated as he who rebuked the Red Sea, ἐπετίμησε τῇ ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῇ (Psa. cvi. 9; LXX. comp. Nahum i. 4), so that it retreated. Now, as the instrument in this partition of the Red Sea was Moses, it was natural to ascribe to his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function; accordingly we actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was expected to be wrought by God in the messianic times, doubtless through the agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses. That instead of drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a calm, may be explained, on the supposition that the storm and the composure exhibited by Jesus on the occasion were historical, as a consequence of the mythical having combined itself with this historical element; for, as according to this, Jesus and his disciples were on board a ship, a drying up of the sea would have been out of place."

" ... If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his disciples to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging waves of the sea, [499]it is certainly possible that he may once have done this in a storm at sea; but just as he said: if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye may say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21), or to this tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6), and both shall be done (καὶ ὑπήκουσεν ἂν ὑμῖν, Luke): so he might, not merely on the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to him who has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word (ὅτι καὶ τοῖς ἀνέμοις ἐπιτάσσει καὶ τῷ ὕδατι, καὶ ὑπακούουσιν αὐτῷ, Luke). If we now take into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown,266 that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was in the early times of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage through a stormy ocean; we see at once, how easily legend might come to frame such a narrative as the above, on the suggestions afforded by the parallel between the Messiah and Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and the conception of him as the pilot who steers the little vessel of the kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves of the world. Setting this aside, however, and viewing the matter only generally, in relation to the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power over storms and tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras.

"We have a more complicated anecdote connected with the sea, wanting in Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 ff., as well as in Matt. xiv. 22 ff., and Mark vi. 45 ff., where a storm overtakes the disciples when sailing by night, and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards them on the sea. Here, again, the storm subsides in a marvellous manner on the entrance of Jesus into the ship; but the peculiar difficulty of the narrative lies in this, that the body of Jesus appears so entirely exempt from a law which governs all other human bodies without exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not only does not sink under the water, but does not even dip into it; on the contrary, he walks erect on the waves as on firm land. If we are to represent this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of Jesus as an ethereal phantom, according to the opinion of the Docetæ; a conception which the Fathers of the Church condemned as irreligious, and which we must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in a superior corporeality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world, such an appearance need not create surprise:268 but these are words to which we can attach no definite idea. If the spiritual activity of Jesus which refined and perfected his corporeal nature, instead of being conceived as that which more and more completely emancipated his body from the psychical laws of passion and sensuality, is understood as if by its means the body was exempted from the physical law of gravity:—this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, it is difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. ... We must also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus did not exhibit this property, but was submerged like an ordinary man. Now had he at that time also the power of sustaining himself on the surface of the water, and only refrained from using it? and did he thus increase or reduce his specific gravity by an act of his will? or are we to suppose, as Olshausen would [500]perhaps say, that at the time of his baptism he had not attained so far in the process of subtilizing his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that he only reached this point at a later period? These are questions which Olshausen justly calls absurd: nevertheless they serve to open a glimpse into the abyss of absurdities in which we are involved by the supranaturalistic interpretation, and particularly by that which this theologian gives of the narrative before us."

What if the whole event was spiritual, experienced on another level, and either recounted later literally, or even recalled only on physical level? That makes it one of a higher level than if it had been physical.

"But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while, according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the place of disembarkation. ... "

That fits the interpretation, that it was all in spiritual realm, even better. But then -

" ... According to the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the disciples, who saw Jesus come towards them, walking on the sea: John adds to these few immediate witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the people who were assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus on the same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the sea by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and no other boat was there (v. 22); while, that he did not go by land, is involved in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith crossed the sea, find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he could hardly have arrived by land in the short interval. Thus in the narrative of the fourth gospel, as all natural means of passage are cut off from Jesus, there remains for him only a supernatural one, and this consequence is in fact inferred by the multitude in the astonished question which they put to Jesus, when they find him on the opposite shore: Rabbi, when camest thou hither? As this chain of evidence for the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid transportation of the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats ἄλλα πλοιάρια for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v. 22, 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed, and these amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth, nay, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of the Probabilia has justly observed, a whole fleet of ships, especially if they were fishing boats; but even if we suppose them vessels of freight, these would not all have been bound for Capernaum, or have changed their destination for the sake of accommodating the crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears only to have been invented,279 on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence the walking of Jesus on the sea; on the other, as we shall presently see, to gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition had gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on the subject of this miracle."

That may have, all, been part of the Rome rewriting, to insist and fix it at physical level. Was that because Rome did not wish people other than church authorities to have a clue? Or did church not have a clue? Why else fix your only god at a lowest possible level?

"We have seen, by an example already adduced, that it was usual with the Hebrews and early Christians, to represent the power of God over nature, a power which the human spirit when united to him was supposed to share, under the image of supremacy over the raging waves of the sea. In the narrative of the Exodus this supremacy is manifested by the sea being driven out of its place at a sign, so that a dry path is opened to the people of God in its bed; in the New Testament narrative previously considered, the sea is not removed out of its place, but only so far laid to rest that Jesus and his disciples can cross it in safety in their ship: in the anecdote before us, the sea still remains in its place as in the second, but there is this point of similarity to the first, that the passage is made on foot, not by ship, yet as a necessary consequence of the other particular, on the surface of the sea, not in its bed. Still more immediate inducements to develop in such a manner the conception of the power of the miracle-worker over the waves, may be found both in the Old Testament, and in the opinions prevalent in the time of Jesus. Among the miracles of Elisha, it is not only told that he divided the Jordan by a stroke of his mantle, so that he could go through it dry shod (2 Kings ii. 14), but also that he caused a piece of iron which had fallen into the water to swim (2 Kings vi. 6); an ascendancy over the law of gravitation which it would be imagined the miracle-worker might be able to evince in relation to his own body also, and thus to exhibit himself, as it is said of Jehovah, Job ix. 8, LXX., περιπατῶν ὡς ἐπ’ ἐδάφους ἐπὶ θαλάσσης, walking upon the sea as upon a pavement. In the time of Jesus much was told of miracle-workers who could walk on the water. Apart from conceptions exclusively Grecian,280 the Greco-oriental legend feigned that the hyperborean Abaris possessed an arrow, by means of which he could bear himself up in the air, and thus traverse rivers, seas, and abysses, and popular superstition attributed to many wonder-workers the power of walking on water. Hence the possibility that with all these elements and inducements existing, a similar legend should be formed concerning Jesus, appears incomparably stronger, than that a real event of this kind should have occurred:—and with this conclusion we may dismiss the subject."

" ... narrative of Peter’s draught of fishes, so here to institute a comparison between its other features, and the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. In both cases, Jesus is perceived by the disciples in the twilight of early morning; only in the latter instance he does not, as in the former, walk on the sea, but stands on the shore, and the disciples are in consternation, not because of a storm, but because of the fruitlessness of their fishing. In both instances they are afraid of him; in the one, they take him for a spectre, in the other, not one of them ventures to ask him who he is, knowing that it is the Lord. ... "

There it is again, the abrahmic dominant concept - of human fear of the only god they are avowed to believe, worship, have faith in! If fear be the relationship, it's not with Divine.

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102. THE MIRACULOUS MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES.

"That Jesus miraculously multiplied prepared articles of food, feeding a great multitude of men with a few loaves and fishes, is narrated to us with singular unanimity by all the Evangelists (Matt. xiv. 13 ff.; Mark vi. 30 ff.; Luke ix. 10 ff.; John vi. 1 ff.). And if we believe the two first, Jesus did not do this merely once; for in Matt. xv. 32 ff.; Mark viii. 1 ff. we read of a second multiplication of loaves and fishes, the circumstances of which are substantially the same as those of the former. It happens somewhat later; the place is rather differently described, and the length of time during which the multitude stayed with Jesus is differently stated; moreover, and this is a point of greater importance, the proportion between the stock of food and the number of men is different, for, on the first occasion, five thousand men are satisfied with five loaves and two fishes, and, on the second, four thousand with seven loaves and a few fishes; on the first twelve baskets are filled with the fragments, on the second only seven. Notwithstanding this, not only is the substance of the two histories exactly the same—the satisfying of a multitude of people with disproportionately small means of nourishment; but also the description of the scene in the one, entirely corresponds in its principal features to that in the other. In both instances, the locality is a solitary region in the vicinity of the Galilean sea; Jesus is led to perform the miracle because the people have lingered too long with him; he manifests a wish to feed the people from his own stores, which the disciples regard as impossible; the stock of food at his disposal consists of loaves and fishes; Jesus makes the people sit down, and, after giving thanks, distributes the provisions to them through the medium of the disciples; they are completely satisfied, and yet a disproportionately great quantity of fragments is afterwards collected in baskets; lastly, in the one case as in the other, Jesus after thus feeding the multitude, crosses the sea."

What immediately strikes is the number of people. Five thousand is far too large a number for crowd management, never mind feeding arrangements. Seating arrangements alone would be highly non trivial.

" ... Is it conceivable that the disciples, after they had themselves witnessed how Jesus was able to feed a great multitude with a small quantity of provision, should nevertheless on a second occasion of the same kind, have totally forgotten the first, and have asked, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to feed so great a multitude? ... it would remain just as inconceivable as ever, that the striking similarity of the circumstances [509]preceding the second feeding of the multitude to those preceding the first, should not have reminded even one of the disciples of that former event Paulus therefore is right in maintaining, that had Jesus once already fed the multitude by a miracle, the disciples, on the second occasion, when he expressed his determination not to send the people away fasting, would confidently have called upon him for a repetition of the former miracle."

"In any case then, if Jesus on two separate occasions fed a multitude with disproportionately small provision, we must suppose, as some critics have done, that many features in the narrative of the one incident were transferred to the other, and thus the two, originally unlike, became in the course of oral tradition more and more similar; the incredulous question of the disciples especially having been uttered only on the first occasion, and not on the second. ... "

"Hence later critics have, with more292 or less293 decision, expressed the opinion, that here one and the same fact has been doubled, through a mistake of the first Evangelist, who was followed by the second. They suppose that several narratives of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were current which presented divergencies from each other, especially in relation to numbers, and that the author of the first gospel, to whom every additional history of a miracle was a welcome prize, and who was therefore little qualified for the critical reduction of two different narratives of this kind into one, introduced both into his collection. This fully explains how on the second occasion the disciples could again express themselves so incredulously: namely, because in the tradition whence the author of the first gospel obtained the second history of a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, it was the first and only one, and the Evangelist did not obliterate this feature because, apparently, he incorporated the two narratives into his writing just as he read or heard them. Among other proofs that this was the case, may be mentioned the constancy with which he and Mark, who copied him, not only in the account of the events, but also in the subsequent allusion to them (Matt. xvi. 9 f.; Mark viii. 19 f.), call the baskets in the first feeding, κόφινοι, in the second σπυρίδες.294 It is indeed correctly maintained, that the Apostle Matthew could not possibly take one event for two, and relate a new history which [510]never happened:295 but this proposition does not involve the reality of the second miraculous feeding of the multitude, unless the apostolic origin of the first gospel be at once presupposed, whereas this yet remains to be proved. ... A similar instance of duplication occurs in the Pentateuch in relation to the histories of the feeding of the Israelites with quails, and of the production of water out of the rock, the former of which is narrated both in Exod. xvi. and Num. xi., the latter in Exod. xvii. and again in Num. xx., in each instance with an alteration in time, place, and other circumstances. ... "

" ... such a conception of the matter, as Paul us justly remarks, and as even Olshausen intimates, is precluded by the statement of the Evangelists, that real food was distributed among the multitude; that each enjoyed as much as he wanted; and that at the end the residue was greater than the original store. It is thus plainly implied that there was an external and objective increase of the provisions, as a preliminary to the feeding of the multitude. Now, this cannot be conceived as effected by means of the faith of the people in a real manner, in the sense that that faith co-operated in producing the multiplication of the loaves. The intermediation which Olshausen here supposes, can therefore have been only a teleological one, that is, we are to understand by it, that Jesus undertook to multiply the loaves and fishes for the sake of producing a certain moral condition in the multitude. But an intermediation of this kind affords me not the slightest help in forming a conception of the event; for the question is not why, but how it happened. Thus all which Olshausen believes himself to have done towards rendering this miracle more intelligible, rests on the ambiguity of the expression, intermediation; and the inconceivableness of an immediate influence of the will of Jesus on irrational nature, remains chargeable upon this history as upon those last examined."

As usual, the story parallels one from old testament with a previous prophet.

" ... If the Mosaic manna presents itself as that which was most likely to be held a type of the bread miraculously augmented by Jesus; the fish which Jesus also multiplied miraculously, may remind us that Moses gave the people, not only a substitute for bread in the manna, but also animal food in the quails (Exod. xvi. 8, xii. 13; Num. xi. 4 ff.). On comparing these Mosaic narratives with our evangelical ones, there appears a striking resemblance even in details. The locality in both cases is the wilderness; the inducement to the miracle here as there, is fear lest the people should suffer from want in the wilderness, or perish from hunger; in the Old Testament history, this fear is expressed by the people in loud murmurs, in that of the New Testament, it results from the shortsightedness of the disciples, and the benevolence of Jesus. The direction of the latter to his disciples that they should give the people food, a direction which implies that he had already formed the design of feeding them miraculously, may be paralleled with the command which Jehovah gave to Moses to feed the people with manna (Exod. xvi. 4), and with quails (Exod. xvi. 12; Num. xi. 18–20). But there is another point of similarity which speaks yet more directly to our present purpose. As, in the evangelical narrative, the disciples think it an impossibility that provision for so great a mass of people should be procured in the wilderness, so, in the Old Testament history, Moses replies doubtingly to the promise of Jehovah to satisfy the people with flesh (Num. xi. 21 f.). To Moses, as to the disciples, the multitude appears too great for the possibility of providing sufficient food for them; as the latter ask, whence they should have so much bread in the wilderness, so Moses asks ironically whether they should slay the flocks and the herds (which they had not). And as the disciples object, that not even the most impoverishing expenditure on their part would thoroughly meet the demand, so Moses, clothing the idea in another form, had declared, that to satisfy the people as Jehovah promised, an impossibility must happen (the fish of the sea be gathered together for them); objections which Jehovah there, as here Jesus, does not regard, but issues the command that the people should prepare for the reception of the miraculous food."

And further,

" ... If we search for an intermediate step, a very natural one between Moses and the Messiah is afforded by the prophets. We read of Elijah, that through him and for his sake, the little store of meal and oil which he found in the possession of the widow of Zarephath was miraculously replenished, or rather was made to suffice throughout the duration of the famine (1 Kings xvii. 8–16). This species of miracle is developed still further, and with a greater [518]resemblance to the evangelical narrative, in the history of Elisha (2 Kings iv. 42 ff.). As Jesus fed five thousand men in the wilderness with five loaves and two fishes, so this prophet, during a famine, fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, (which like those distributed by Jesus in John, are called barley loaves,) together with some ground corn (‏כַּרְמֶל‎, LXX. παλάθας); a disproportion between the quantity of provisions and the number of men, which his servant, like the disciples in the other instance, indicates in the question: What! should I set this before a hundred men? Elisha, like Jesus, is not diverted from his purpose, but commands the servant to give what he has to the people; and as in the New Testament narrative great stress is laid on the collection of the remaining fragments, so in the Old Testament it is specially noticed at the close of this story, that notwithstanding so many had eaten of the store, there was still an overplus.307 The only important difference here is, that on the side of the evangelical narrative, the number of the loaves is smaller, and that of the people greater; but who does not know that in general the legend does not easily imitate, without at the same time surpassing, and who does not see that in this particular instance it was entirely suited to the position of the Messiah, that his miraculous power, compared with that of Elisha, should be placed, as it regards the need of natural means, in the relation of five to twenty, but as it regards the supernatural performance, in that of five thousand to one hundred? ... "

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103. JESUS TURNS WATER INTO WINE.

"Not only, however, has the miracle before us been impeached in relation to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged both in ancient316 and modern317 times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their intemperance by an exercise of his miraculous power. ... by this miracle Jesus did not, as was usual with him, relieve any want, any real need, but only furnished an additional incitement to pleasure; showed himself not so much helpful as courteous; rather, so to speak, performed a miracle of luxury, than of true beneficence. ... "

" ... nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition between him who baptized with water (Matt. iii. 11), who at the same time [522]came neither eating nor drinking (Luke i. 15; Matt. xi. 18), and him who, as he baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being a wine-bibber οἰνοπότης (Matt. xi. 19); especially as the fourth gospel, in which the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. On these grounds Herder,321 and after him some others,322 have held the opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, to put an end to the offence which they might take at his more liberal mode of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising. ... "

"Again, the disproportionate quantity of wine with which Jesus supplies the guests, must excite astonishment. Six vessels, each containing from two to three μετρητὰς, supposing the Attic μετρητὴς, corresponding to the Hebrew bath, to be equivalent to 1½ Roman amphoræ, or twenty-one Wirtemberg measures,325 would yield 252–378 measures.326 What a quantity for a company who had already drunk freely! What enormous vessels! ... they to whom the supply of so extravagant and dangerous a quantity of wine on the part of Jesus is incredible, must conclude that the narrative is unhistorical."

"Peculiar difficulty is occasioned by the relation in which this narrative places Jesus to his mother, and his mother to him. According to the express statement of the Evangelist, the turning of water into wine was the beginning [523]of the miracles of Jesus, ἀρχὴ τῶν σημείων; and yet his mother reckons so confidently on his performing a miracle here, that she believes it only necessary to point out to him the deficiency of wine, in order to induce him to afford supernatural aid; and even when she receives a discouraging answer, she is so far from losing hope, that she enjoins the servants to be obedient to the directions of her son (v. 3, 5). How is this expectation of a miracle on the part of the mother of Jesus to be explained? Are we to refer the declaration of John, that the metamorphosis of the water was the first miracle of Jesus, merely to the period of his public life, and to presuppose as real events, for his previous years, the apocryphal miracles of the Gospels of the Infancy? Or, believing that Chrysostom was right in regarding this as too uncritical,327 are we rather to conjecture that Mary, in consequence of her conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, a conviction wrought in her by the signs that attended his birth, expected miracles from him, and as perhaps on some earlier occasions, so now on this, when the perplexity was great, desired from him a proof of his power? ... "

The recent discussions about the event, chiefly that in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, points out that provision of needs of guests at a wedding is the affair of the hosts, and a good guest does not interefere; leading to the question as to whose wedding it was, and concluding that it was his own, hence the role of his mother in asking his help in the matter, an act natural to the mother in her role as the hostess of the feast, under those circumstances.

" ... Now in the present case we need halt neither at the character of eastern legend in general, nor at metamorphoses in general, since transmutations of this particular element of water are to be found within the narrower circle of the ancient Hebrew history. Besides some narratives of Moses procuring for the Israelites water out of the flinty rock in the wilderness (Exod. xvii. 1 ff.; Num. xx. 1 ff.)—a bestowal of water which, after being repeated in a modified manner in the history of Samson (Judges xv. 18 f.), was made a feature in the messianic expectations;340—the first transmutation of water ascribed to Moses, is the turning of all the water in Egypt into blood, which is enumerated among the so-called plagues (Exod. vii. 17 ff.). Together with this mutatio in deterius, there is in the history of Moses a mutatio in melius, also effected in water, for he made bitter water sweet, under the direction of Jehovah (Exod. xiv. 23 ff.341); as at a later era, Elisha also is said to have made unhealthy water good and innoxious (2 Kings ii. 19 ff.342). As, according to the rabbinical passage quoted, the bestowal of water, so also, according to this narrative in John, the transmutation of water appears to have been transferred from Moses and the prophets to the Messiah, with such modifications, however, as lay in the nature of the case. ... "

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104. JESUS CURSES A BARREN FIG-TREE.

"The anecdote of the fig-tree which Jesus caused to wither by his word, because when he was hungry he found no fruit on it, is peculiar to the two first gospels (Matt. xxi. 18 ff.; Mark xi. 12 ff.), but is narrated by them with divergencies which must affect our view of the fact. ... "

Funny, the church clergy that objected to the gospels discovered after centuries of being hidden in desert, on grounds that they portray him as someone conscious of his powers in early youth, and somewhat of a bully threatening playmates - which is an average boy's natural behaviour - do not see this, cursing a tree for lacking fruits at the very moment he was hungry, as more than a bully behaviour, cruel, even, but allow this to be counted as a miracle! Not that this is unexpected from those that consider torture of cattle as something of no consequence, and philosophy of West after all is majorly responsible for the dire state of the earth now, what with caring for environment understood far too late in West, predominantly seeking to control everything.

"If we were restricted to the manner in which the first Evangelist states the consequence of the curse of Jesus: and immediately the fig-tree withered away καὶ ἐξηράνθη παραχρῆμα ἡ συκῆ, it would be difficult here to carry out a natural explanation; for even the forced interpretation of Paulus, which makes the word παραχρῆμα (immediately) only exclude further human accession to the fact, and not a longer space of time, rests only on an unwarranted transference of Mark’s particulars into the narrative of Matthew. In Mark, Jesus curses the fig-tree on the morning after His entrance into Jerusalem, and not till the following morning the disciples remark, in passing, that the tree is withered. ... still, when the prediction was fulfilled, Jesus did nevertheless ascribe the result to his own supernatural influence. For in speaking of what he has done in relation to the fig-tree, he uses the verb ποιεῖν (v. 21 Matt.); which cannot except by a forced interpretation, be referred to a mere prediction. But more than this, he compares what he has done in relation to the fig-tree, with the removal of mountains; and hence, as this, according to every possible interpretation, is an act of causation, so the other must be regarded as an influence on the tree. In any case, when Peter spoke of the fig-tree as having been cursed by Jesus (v. 21 Mark), either the latter must have contradicted the construction thus put on his words, or his silence must have implied his acquiescence. If then Jesus in the issue ascribes the withering of the tree to his influence, he either by his address to it designed to produce an effect, or he ambitiously misused the accidental result for the sake of deluding his disciples; a dilemma, in which the words of Jesus, as they are given by the Evangelists, decidedly direct us to the former alternative."

Whereas, if there was any truth to the figure church presents, as that of a kind, loving, saintly figure advocating mercy and love and forgiveness, and also to the tales of his power of performing diverse miracles, one would think he'd perform one and bless that tree, causing it to immediately come alive with blossoms, fruits, and birdsong from nests in it! So one of the two must be made up, and since saintly, kind people aren't as likely to be remembered if they are without power, it's the figure church presents that is untrue.

" ... Another example of the kind is not found in the canonical accounts of the life of Jesus; the apocryphal gospels alone, as has been above remarked, are full of such miracles. In one of the synoptical gospels there is, on the contrary, a passage often quoted already (Luke ix. 55 f.), in which it is declared, as the profound conviction of Jesus, that the employment of miraculous power in order to execute punishment or to take vengeance, is contrary to the spirit of his vocation; and the same sentiment is attributed to Jesus by the Evangelist, when he applies to him the words of Isaiah: He shall not break a bruised reed, etc. (Matt. xii. 20). Agreeably to this principle, and to his prevalent mode of action, Jesus must rather have given new life to a withered tree, than have made a green one wither; and in order to comprehend his conduct on this occasion, we must be able to show reasons which [529]he might possibly have had, for departing in this instance from the above principle, which has no mark of unauthenticity. The occasion on which he enunciated that principle was when, on the refusal of a Samaritan village to exercise hospitality towards Jesus and his disciples, the sons of Zebedee asked him whether they should not rain down fire on the village, after the example of Elijah. Jesus replied by reminding them of the nature of the spirit to which they belonged, a spirit with which so destructive an act was incompatible. In our present case Jesus had not to deal with men who had treated him with injustice, but with a tree which he happened not to find in the desired state. Now, there is here no special reason for departing from the above rule; on the contrary, the chief reason which in the first case might possibly have moved Jesus to determine on a judicial miracle, is not present in the second. The moral end of punishment, namely, to bring the punished person to a conviction and acknowledgment of his error, can have no existence in relation to a tree; and even punishment in the light of retribution is out of the question when we are treating of natural objects destitute of volition.347 For one to be irritated against an inanimate object, which does not happen to be found just in the desired state, is with reason pronounced to be a proof of an uncultivated mind; to carry such indignation to the destruction of the object is regarded as barbarous, and unworthy of a reasonable being; and hence Woolston is not wrong in maintaining, that in any other person than Jesus, such an act would be severely blamed. ... But that this tree, because just at that time it presented no fruit, would not have borne any in succeeding years, was by no means self-evident:—nay, the contrary is implied in the narrative, since the form in which the curse of Jesus is expressed, that fruit shall never more grow on the tree, presupposes, that without this curse the tree might yet have been fruitful.

"Thus the evil condition of the tree was not habitual but temporary; still further, if we follow Mark, it was not even objective, or existing intrinsically in the tree, but purely subjective, that is, a result of the accidental relation of the tree to the momentary wish and want of Jesus. ... "

Evil? Being for the moment without fruit, or blossoms, shouldn't that be considered pathetic?

" ... For according to an addition which forms the second feature peculiar to Mark in this narrative, it was not then the time of figs (v. 13); it was not therefore a defect, but, on the contrary, quite in due order, that this tree, as well as others, had no figs on it, and Jesus (in whom it is already enough to excite surprise that he expected to find figs on the tree so out of season) might at least have reflected, when he found none, on the groundlessness of his expectation, and have forborne so wholly unjust an act as the cursing of the tree. ... "

And this is the figure imposed on world as saintly, forgiving, merciful, not only worthy of worship but the only one? What's wrong with church of Rome, and with West in general? Or should one take the holocaust and genocides, the inquisition and the colonial empires perpetrated babarisms, as more befitting the one whose worship imposes church of Rome?

" ... Even some of the fathers stumbled at this addition of Mark’s and felt that it rendered the conduct of Jesus enigmatical;349 and to descend to later times, Woolston’s [530]ridicule is not unfounded, when he says that if a Kentish countryman were to seek for fruit in his garden in spring, and were to cut down the trees which had none, he would be a common laughing-stock. ... "

So they are aware of this, and yet led missions supported by military might, through the innocent world! Mere conquistadores?

" ... Expositors have attempted to free themselves from the difficulty which this addition introduces, by a motley series of conjectures and interpretations. On the one hand, the wish that the perplexing words did not stand in the text, has been turned into the hypothesis that they may probably be a subsequent gloss.350 On the other hand, as, if an addition of this kind must stand there, the contrary statement, namely, that it was then the time of figs, were rather to be desired, in order to render intelligible the expectation of Jesus, and his displeasure when he found it deceived; it has been attempted in various ways to remove the negative out of the proposition. ... In any case, if the whole course of the year were unfavourable to figs, a fruit so abundant in Palestine, Jesus must almost as necessarily have known this as that it was the wrong season; so that the enigma remains, how Jesus could be so indignant that the tree was in a condition which, owing to circumstances known to him, was inevitable."

Covering up barbaric acts by lies, of course - what suits church of Rome better, after all!

Strauss now proceeds to discuss why Mark did not refrain from including comment about it being not a season to expect fruit on fig tree, when, as a consequence of his mentioning it, his master would be seen in not too good a light. He discusses various times and places where fruit might be expected in the region, and it all points to an unreal, unreasonable expectation leading to a curse.

"But even when we have thus set aside this perplexing addition of Mark’s, that the tree was not really defective, but only appeared so to Jesus in consequence of an erroneous expectation: there still subsists, even according to Matthew, the incongruity that Jesus appears to have destroyed a natural object on account of a deficiency which might possibly be merely temporary. He cannot have been prompted to this by economical considerations, since he was not the owner of the tree; still less can he have been actuated by moral views, in relation to an inanimate object of nature; hence the expedient has been adopted of substituting the disciples as the proper object on which Jesus here intended to act, and of regarding the tree, and what Jesus does to it, as a mere means to his ultimate design. ... "

So it was intended as a threat to humanity? Obey or else face extinction?

" ... This is the symbolical interpretation, by which first the fathers of the church, and of late the majority of orthodox theologians among the moderns, have thought to free Jesus from the charge of an unsuitable action. According to them, anger towards the tree which presented nothing to appease his hunger, was not the feeling of Jesus, in performing this action; his object not simply the extermination of the unfruitful plant: on the contrary, he judiciously availed himself of the occasion of finding a barren tree, in order to impress a truth on his disciples more vividly and indelibly than by words. This truth may either be conceived under a special form, namely, that the Jewish nation which persisted in rendering no pleasing fruit to God and to the Messiah, would be destroyed; or under the general form, that every one who was as destitute of good works as this tree was of fruit, had to look forward to a similar condemnation. ... "

What a convenient justification for genocides, boots, and other devastation perpetrated shamelessly by conquistadores around the world!

" ... If however Jesus gave an interpretation of his act in the alleged symbolical sense, the Evangelists have not merely been silent concerning this discourse, but have inserted a false one in its place; for they represent Jesus, after his procedure with respect to the tree, not as being silent, but as giving, in answer to an expression of astonishment on the part of his disciples, an explanation which is not the above symbolical one, but a different, nay, an opposite one. For when Jesus says to them that they need not wonder at the withering of the fig-tree, since with only a little faith they will be able to effect yet greater things, he lays the chief stress on his agency in the matter, not on the condition and the fate of the tree as a symbol: therefore, if his design turned upon the latter, he would have spoken to his disciples so as to contravene that design; or rather, if he so spoke, that cannot have been his design. For the same reason, falls also Sieffert’s totally unsupported hypothesis, that Jesus, not indeed after, but before that act, when on the way to the fig-tree, had held a conversation with his disciples on the actual condition and future lot of the Jewish nation, and that to this conversation the symbolical cursing of the tree was a mere key-stone, which explained itself: for all comprehension of the act in question which that [533]introduction might have facilitated, must, especially in that age when there was so strong a bias towards the miraculous, have been again obliterated by the subsequent declaration of Jesus, which regarded only the miraculous side of the fact. ... "

How quick West is to seek support for antisemitism and colonial empires, in every twisted word from the king of Jews crucified by Rome!

" ... But it by no means follows from hence that we too should refrain from all reflection on the subject, and believingly receive the miracle without further question; on the contrary, we cannot avoid observing, that the particular miracle which we have now before us, does not admit of being explained as a real act of Jesus, either upon the general ground of performing miracles, or from any peculiar object or motive whatever. Far from this, it is in every respect opposed both to his theory and his prevailing practice, and on this account, even apart from the question of its physical possibility, must be pronounced more decidedly, than any other, to be such a miracle as Jesus cannot really have performed."

Strauss fails to see that there is no evidence Rome was not lying all along, and that the discord is between the image presented by church of Rome of a benefic, beatific figure on one hand, and this wanton destruction of a tree via a curse on the other; other than letting the tale stand as a threat to those not obedient to church of Rome and complying, there was no reason for this discordant tale to be not expunged from the records like much else, whether just after council of Nicea, or during inquisition. But it suited the policy of terror always maintained by church, whether in preaching of hell to all those non obeying, in general, or preaching antisemitism and conducting centuries of inquisition in particular.

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October 25, 2021 - October 28, 2021.