of the books passed in review in the preceding pages, as of several others couched in the same vein and recently published in england and germany, perhaps the best that can be said is this, that, at any rate, they are untrammelled by orthodox prejudice, and fearlessly written. that they belong, so to speak, to the extreme left, explains the favour with which they are received by that section of the middle-class reading public which has conceived a desire to learn something of the origins of christianity. unschooled in the criticism of documents, such readers have learned in the school bible-lesson and in the long hours of instruction in what is called divinity, to regard the bible as they regard no other collection of ancient writings. it is, as a rule, the only ancient book they ever opened. they have discovered that orthodoxy depends for its life on treating it as a book apart, not to be submitted to ordinary tests, not to be sifted and examined, as we have learned from hume and niebuhr, gibbon and grote, to sift ancient documents in general, rejecting ab initio the supernatural myths that are never absent from them. the acuter minds among the clergy themselves begin nowadays to realize that the battle of freethought and rationalism is won as far as the miracles of the old testament are concerned; but as regards those of the new they are for ever trying to close up their ranks and rally [215]their hosts afresh. nevertheless, the man in the street has a shrewd suspicion that apologetics are so much special pleading, and that miracles cannot be eliminated from the old and yet remain in the new testament. he has never received any training in methods of historical research himself, and it is no easy thing to obtain; but he is clever enough to detect the evasions of apologists, and, with instinctive revulsion, turns away to writers who “go the whole hog” and argue for the most extreme positions, even to the length of asserting that the story of jesus is a myth from beginning to end. any narratives, he thinks, that have the germs of truth in them would not need the apologetic prefaces and commentaries, the humming and hawing, the specious arguments and wire-drawn distinctions of divines, any more than do froissart or clarendon or herodotus. if the new testament needs them, then it must be a mass of fable from end to end. such is the impression which our modern apologists leave on the mind of the ordinary man.
i can imagine some of my readers objecting here that, whereas i have so rudely assailed the method of interpretation of new testament documents adopted by the nihilistic school—i only use this name as a convenient label for those who deny the historical reality of jesus christ—i nevertheless propound no rival method of my own. the truth is there is no abstract method of using documents relating to the past, and you cannot in advance lay down rules for doing so. you can only learn how to deal with them by practice, and it is one of the chief functions of any university or place of higher education to imbue students with historical method by setting before [216]them the original documents, and inspiring them to extract from them whatever solid results they can. a hundred years ago the better men in the college of christchurch at oxford were so trained by the dean, cyril jackson, who would set them the task of “preparing for examination the whole of livy and polybius, thoroughly read and studied in all their comparative bearings.”1 no better curriculum, indeed, could be devised for strengthening and developing the faculty of historical judgment; and the schools of literae humaniores and modern history, which were subsequently established at oxford, carried on the tradition of this enlightened educationalist. in them the student is brought face to face in the original dialects with the records of the past, and stimulated to “read and study them in their comparative bearings.” one single branch of learning, however, has been treated apart in the universities of oxford and cambridge, and pursued along the lines of tradition and authority—i mean the study of christian antiquities. the result has been deplorable. intellectually-minded englishmen have turned away from this field of history as from something tainted, and barely one of our great historians in a century deems it worthy of his notice. it has been left to parsons, to men who have never learned to swim, because they have never had enough courage to venture into deep water. as we sow, so we reap. the english church is probably the most enlightened of the many sects that make up christendom. yet [217]what is the treatment which it accords to any member of itself who has the courage to dissociate himself from the “orthodoxy” of the fourth century, of those greek fathers (so-called) in whom the human intelligence sank to the nadir of fanaticism and futility? an example was recently seen in the case of the rev. mr. w. h. thompson, a young theological tutor of magdalen college in oxford, who, animated by nothing but loyalty for the church, recently liberated his soul about the miracles of the gospels in a thoroughly scholarly book entitled miracles in the new testament. the attitude of the clergy in general towards a work of genuine research, which sets truth above traditional orthodoxy, was revealed in a conference of the clergy of the southern province, held soon after its publication on may 19, 1911. the following account of that meeting is taken from the guardian of may 26, 1911:—
the rev. r. f. bevan, in the canterbury diocesan conference on may 19, 1911, proposed “that this conference is of opinion that the clergy should make use of the light thrown on the bible by modern criticism for the purposes of religious teaching.” the bishop of croydon moved the following rider: “but desires to record its distrust of critics who, while holding office in the church of christ, propound views inconsistent with the doctrines laid down in the creeds of the church.”
he said it was needful to define what was meant by modern criticism. he referred to a book which had been published quite lately by the dean of divinity of magdalen college, oxford, a review of which would be found in the guardian of may 12. he must honestly confess he had not read the book for himself?…. he then premised from the review that the work in question rejects the evidence both for the virgin birth of christ and for his bodily [218]resurrection from the tomb …, and added that the toleration by churchmen of such doctrines and such views being taught within the bosom of the church was to him most sad and inexplicable. if such was the instruction which young divinity students were receiving at the universities, no wonder that the supply of candidates for ordination was falling off.
the rev. j. o. bevan said it was not in the power of any man or any body of men to ignore the higher criticism or to suppress it. it had “come to stay,” and its influence for good or evil must be recognized.
the president (archbishop of canterbury) said that “bible teaching ought to be given with a background of knowledge on the part of the teacher. he should deprecate as strongly as anybody that men who felt that they could not honestly continue to hold the christian creeds should hold office in the church of england. but he saw no connection between the sort of teaching which the conference had now been considering and the giving up of the christian creed. the old testament was a literature which had come down to them from ancient days. modern investigation enabled them now to set the earlier stages of that literature in somewhat different surroundings from those in which they were set by their fathers and grandfathers.” with regard to the book which had been referred to, the archbishop said that, if the rider proposed was intended to imply a censure upon a particular writer, nothing would induce him to vote for it, inasmuch as he had not read the book, and knew nothing, at first hand, about it. he thought members ought to pause before they lightly gave votes which could be so interpreted.
the motion, on being put to the meeting, was carried with one dissentient. the rider was also carried by a majority.
it amounts, then, to this, that a rule of limited liability is to be observed in the investigation of early christianity. you may be critical, but not up to the point of calling in question the virgin birth [219]or physical resurrection of christ. the bishop of croydon opines that the free discussion of such questions in university circles intimidates young men from taking orders. if he lived in oxford, he would know that it is the other way about.2 if mr. thompson had been allowed to say what he thought, unmolested; if the bishops of winchester and of oxford had not at once taken steps to silence and drive him out of the church, students would have been better encouraged to enter the anglican ministry, and the more intellectual of our young men would not avoid it as a profession hard to reconcile with truth and honesty and self-respect.
in the next number of the same journal (june 2, 1911) is recorded another example of how little our bishops are inclined to face a plain issue. it is contained in a paragraph headed thus:—
symbolism of the ascension.
the bishop of birmingham on the second coming.
preaching to a large congregation in birmingham cathedral … the bishop of birmingham said that people had found difficulty in modern times about the ascension, because, they said, “god’s heaven is no more above our heads than under our feet.” that was perfectly true. but there were certain ways of [220]expressing moral ideas rooted in human thought, and we did not the less speak continually of the above and the below as expressing what was morally high and morally low, and we should go on doing so to the end. the ascension of jesus christ and his concealment in the clouds was a symbolical act, like all the acts after his resurrection; it was to impress their minds with the truth of his mounting to the glory of god. symbols were the best means of expressing the truth about things which lay outside their experience; and the ascension symbolized christ’s mounting to the supreme state of power and glory, to the perfect vision of god, to the throne of all the world?…. the kingdom was coming—had to come at last—“on earth as it is in heaven”; and one day, just as his disciples saw him passing away out of their experience and sight, would they see him coming back into their experience and their sight, and into his perfected kingdom of humanity.
now, i am sure that what people in modern times chiefly want to know about the ascension is whether it really happened. did jesus in his physical body go up like a balloon before the eyes of the faithful, and disappear behind a cloud, or did he not? that is the plain issue, and dr. gore seems to avoid it. if he believes in such a miracle, why expatiate on the symbolism of all the acts of jesus subsequent to his resurrection? such a miracle was surely sufficient unto itself, and never needed our attention to be drawn to its symbolical aspects and import. does he mean that the legend is no more than “a certain way of expressing moral ideas rooted in human thought”? may we welcome his insistence on its moral symbolism as a prelude to his abandonment of the literal truth of the tale? i hope so, for in not a few apologetic books published by divines during the last twenty-five years i have encountered a [221]tendency to expatiate on the moral significance of extinct biblical legends. it is, as the rev. mr. figgis expresses it, a way of “letting down the laity into the new positions of the higher criticism.” would it not be simpler, in the end, to tell people frankly that a legend is only a legend? they are not children in arms. why is it accounted so terrible for a clergyman or minister of religion to express openly in the pulpit opinions he can hear in many academical lecture-rooms, and often entertains in the privacy of his study? when the archbishop of canterbury tells his brother-doctors that “modern investigation enables them now to set the earlier stages of old testament literature in somewhat different surroundings from those in which they were set by their fathers and grandfathers,” he means that modern scholarship has emptied the old testament of its miraculous and supernatural legends. but the anglican clergyman at ordination declares that he believes unfeignedly the whole of the old and new testaments. how can an archbishop not dispense his clergy from belief in the new, when he is so ready to leave it to their individual consciences whether they will or will not believe in the old? the entire position is hollow and illogical, and most of the bishops know it; but, instead of frankly recognizing facts, they descant upon the symbolical meaning of tales which they know they must openly abandon to-morrow. one is inclined to ask dr. gore why christ could not have imparted in words to his followers the secret of his mounting to the supreme state of power and glory? did they at the time, or afterwards, set any such interpretation on the story of his rising up from the ground like an airship or an exhalation? of [222]course they did not. they thought the earth was a fixed, flat surface, and that, if you ascended through the several lower heavens, you would find yourself before a great white throne, on which sat, in oriental state, among his winged cherubim, the most high. they thought that jesus consummated the hackneyed miracle of his ascension by sitting down on the right hand of this heavenly potentate. if dr. gore doubts this, let him consult the voluminous works of the early fathers on the subject. the entire legend coheres with ancient, and not with modern, cosmogony. how can it possibly be defended to-day on grounds of symbolism, or on any other? the same criticism applies to the legend of the virgin birth. the bishop of london is reduced to defending this thrum of ancient paganism by an appeal to the biological fact of parthenogenesis among insects. imagine the mentality of a modern bishop who dreams that he is advancing the cause of true religion and sound learning by assimilating the birth of his saviour to that of a rotifer or a flea!
the books of dr. drews and mr. robertson and others of their school are, no doubt, blundering extravaganzas, all the more inopportune because they provoke the gibes of dr. moulton; but they are at least works of freethought. their authors do not write with one eye on the truth and the other on the pope in the vatican, or on the obsolete dogmas of byzantine speculation. it is possible, therefore, to discuss with them, as it is not with apologists, who take good care never to lay all their cards on the table, and of whom you cannot but feel, as the great historian mommsen remarked, that they are chattering in chains (ex vinculis sermocinantes). in the [223]investigation of truth there can be no mental reserves, and argument is useless where the final appeal lies to a pope or a creed. you cannot set your hand to the plough and then look back.
it was not, then, within the scope of this essay to try to determine how much and what particular incidents traditionally narrated of jesus are credible. such a task would require at least a thousand pages for its discharge; i have merely desired to show how difficult it is to prove a negative, and how much simpler it is to admit that jesus really lived than to argue that he was a solar or other myth. the latter hypothesis, as expounded in these works, offends every principle of philology, of comparative mythology, and of textual criticism; it bristles with difficulties; and, if no better demonstration of it can be offered, it deserves to be summarily dismissed.
on the other hand, no absolute rules can be laid down a priori for the discerning in early christian or in any other ancient documents of historical fact. but students embarking on a study of christian origins will do well to lay to heart the aphorism of renan (les ap?tres, introd. xxix), that “one can only ascertain the origin of any particular religion from the narratives or reports of those who believed therein; for it is only the sceptic who writes history ad narrandum.” it is in the very nature of things human that we could not hope to obtain documents more evidential than the gospels and acts. it is a lucky chance that time has spared to us the epistles of paul as well, and the sparse notices of first-century congregations and personalities preserved in josephus and in pagan writers. for during the first two or three generations of its existence the church interested few [224]except itself. in the view of a josephus, the jewish converts could only figure as jews gone astray after a false messiah, just as the gentile recruits were mere judaizers, objects—as he remarks, b. j., ii, 18, 2—of equal suspicion to syrian pagans and jews alike, an ambiguous, neutral class, spared by the knife of the pagans, yet dreaded by the jews as at heart aliens to their cause.3 there were no folklorists or comparative religionists in those days watching for new cults to appear; and there could be little or no inclination to sit down and write history among enthusiasts who dreamed that the end of the world was close at hand, and believed themselves to be already living in the last days. for this is the conviction that colours the whole of the new testament; and that it does so is a signal proof of the antiquity of much that the book contains. if a christian of the first century ever took up his pen and wrote, it was not to hand down an objective narrative of events to a posterity whose existence he barely contemplated, but, as against unbelieving jews, to establish from ancient prophecy his belief in jesus as the promised messiah, or perhaps as the word of god made flesh. all christians were aware that jews, both in jud?a and of the dispersion, roundly denied their christ to have been anything better than an impostor and violator of the law. they heard the pagans round them echoing the scoffs of their messiah’s own countrymen. accordingly, the earliest literature of the church, so far as it is not merely homiletic and hortative, is controversial, [225]and aims at proving that the jewish people were mistaken in rejecting jesus as the messiah. the jews neither then nor now have fought with mere shadows; and just in proportion as they bore witness against his messiahship, they bore witness in favour of his historical reality. it is a pity that the extreme negative school ignore this aspect of his rejection by the jews.
let me cite one more wise rule laid down by renan in the same introduction: “an ancient writing can help us to throw light, firstly, on the age in which it was composed, and, secondly, on the age which preceded its composition.”
this indicates in a general fashion the use which historians should make of the new testament. we have at every turn to ask ourselves what the circumstances its contents reveal presuppose in the immediate past in the way both of ideas or aspirations and of fact or incidents.
in conclusion, i cannot do better than quote the words in which renan defines in general terms the sort of historical results we may hope to attain in the field of christian origins. it is from the introduction already cited, pp. vi and vii:—
in histories like this, where the general outline (ensemble) alone is certain, and where nearly all the details lend themselves more or less to doubt by reason of the legendary character of the documents, hypothesis is indispensable. about ages of which we know nothing we cannot frame any hypothesis at all. to try to reconstitute a particular group of ancient statuary, which certainly once existed, but of which we have not even the debris, and about which we possess no written information, is to attempt an entirely arbitrary task. but to endeavour to recompose the friezes of the parthenon from what remains [226]to us, using as subsidiary to our work ancient texts, drawings made in the seventeenth century, and availing ourselves of all sources of information; in a word, inspiring ourselves by the style of these inimitable fragments, and endeavouring to seize their soul and life—what more legitimate task than this? we cannot, indeed, after all, say that we have rediscovered the work of the ancient sculptor; nevertheless, we shall have done all that was possible in order to approximate thereto. such a method is all the more legitimate in history, because language permits the use of dubitative moods of which marble admits not. there is nothing to prevent our setting before the reader a choice of different suppositions, and the author’s conscience may be at rest as soon as he has set forth as certain what is certain, as probable what is probable, as possible what is possible. in those parts of the field where our footstep slides and slips between history and legend it is only the general effect that we must seek after?…. accomplished facts speak more plainly than any amount of biographic detail. we know very little of the peerless artists who created the chefs d’?uvre of greek art. yet these chefs d’?uvre tell us more of the personality of their authors and of the public which appreciated them than ever could do the most circumstantial narratives and the most authentic of texts.
[227]
1 i cite an unfinished memoir of my grandfather, w. d. conybeare, himself a pioneer of geology and no mean pal?ontologist, who owed much of his discernment in these fields to such a training in historical method as he describes. ↑
2 within the last two months the theological faculties of oxford and cambridge, and the examining chaplains (of various bishops) resident in those universities, have addressed a petition to the archbishop of canterbury praying him to absolve candidates for ordination of the necessity of avowing that “they believe unfeignedly in the whole of the old and new testaments,” because so many competent and well-qualified students are thereby deterred from taking holy orders. the archbishop would, it seems, make the individual clergyman’s conscience the sole judge (to the exclusion of the bishop of croydon) of the propriety of his retaining his orders in spite of his rejection of this and that tradition or dogma. that is at least a sign that opinion is on the move. ↑
3 such is renan’s interpretation of this passage in l’ante-christ, ed. 1873, p. 259, and he is undoubtedly right in detecting in it a reference to the christians scattered abroad in the half-syrian and pagan, half-jewish and monotheist, cities of syria. ↑
