mr. robertson’s vital interpolations now let us turn to the epistles of paul, a person whom these writers, as we have seen above, admit to have lived, and to have played no small part in the establishment of christianity.
in using these epistles, they all three make a reservation to the effect that any evidence which they may supply in favour of the historicity of jesus, and which cannot be explained away, shall be regarded as an interpolation; and as it is something that slays his hypothesis, mr. robertson has taught us to call such evidence “vital interpolation.” it must die in order that his hypothesis may live. they also claim, ab initio, to deny pauline authorship to any epistles that may turn out to be a stumbling-block in the way of their theories, and lean to the view of van manen and others, who held that the entire mass of the pauline letters are the “work of a whole school of second-century theologians”—in other words, forgeries of the period 130–140. defying textual evidence he relegates the paulines to second centurythey would, of course, set them later than that, only it is overwhelmingly certain that marcion made about that time a collection of ten of them, which he expurgated to suit his views, and arranged in order, with galatians first; this collection he called the apostolicon. it runs somewhat counter to this view that, twenty years earlier, we already have a reference to these epistles in [126]ignatius, who, with an exaggeration hardly excused by the fact that he is addressing members of the ephesian church, informs us that the ephesians are mentioned “in every letter” by paul. those who desire ample proof that ignatius was well acquainted with paul’s epistles cannot do better than refer to a work, drawn up and published in 1905 by members of the oxford society of historical theology, entitled the new testament in the apostolic fathers. in this the new testament originals and the citations are arranged in parallel columns in the order of their convincingness.
professor smith’s kindred thesis offends the facts at a still earlier date—say a.d. 95—clement of rome cites the paulines. as professor w. b. smith makes herculean efforts to show that he did not, i venture to set before my readers a passage—chap. xxxv, 5, 6 of his epistle face to face with romans i, 29–32—so that they may judge for themselves. i print identical words in leaded type:—
1 clement.
?πορρ?ψαντε? ?φ’ ?αυτ?ν π?σαν ?δικ?αν κα? ?νομ?αν, πλεονεξ?αν, ?ρει?, κακοηθε?α? τε κα? δ?λου? ψιθυρισμο?? τε κα? καταλαλ?α?, θεοστυγ?αν, ?περηφαν?αν τε κα? ?λαζονε?αν, κενεδοξ?αν τε κα? ?φιλοξεν?αν.
τα?τα γ?ρ ο? πρ?σσοντε? στυγητο? τ? θε? ?π?ρχουσιν? ο? μ?νον δ? ο? πρ?σσοντε? α?τ?, ?λλ? κα? ο? συνευδοκο?ντε? α?το??.
romans.
πεπληρωμ?νου? π?σ? ?δικ??, πονηρ??, πλεονεξ??, κακ??, μεστο??, φθ?νου, φ?νου, ?ριδο?, δ?λου, κακοηθε?α?, ψιθυριστ??, καταλ?λου?, θεοστυγε??, ?βριστ??, ?περηφ?νου?, ?λαζ?να?, ?φευρετ?? κακ?ν, γονε?σιν ?πειθε??, ?συν?του?, ?συνθ?του?, ?στ?ργου?, ?νελεημ?να?, ο?τινε? τ? δικα?ωμα το? θεου ?πιγν?ντε?, ?τι τ? τοια?τα πρ?σσοντε? ?ξιοι θαν?του ε?σ?ν, ο? μ?νον α?τ? ποιο?σιν, ?λλ? κα? συνευδοκο?σι το?? πρ?σσουσι.
the dependence of clement’s epistle on that of paul’s letter to the romans is equally visible if the english renderings of them be compared, as follows:— [127]
[translation.]
clement xxxv, 5, 6.
casting away from ourselves all unrighteousness and lawlessness, covetousness, strife, malignity, and deceit; whisperings and backbitings, hatred of god, haughtiness and boastfulness, vainglory and inhospitableness.
for they that practise these things are hateful to god. and not only they which practise them, but also they who consent with them.
romans i, 29–32.
being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to god, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of god, that they which practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.
some of the sources of paul approximate in text still more to clement—e.g., the reading πονηρ?? “wickedness” is not certain. in some, “malignity” precedes “deceit.” in some, “and” is added before the words “not only.”
in the above parallel passages the agreement both in kind and sequence of the lists of vices is too close to be accidental; and this is clinched by the identity of sense and form of the clauses which follow the two lists. nor is this the only example of the influence of the paulines on clement. we give one more, giving the english only:—
paul (1 cor. i, 11–13).
for it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by those of chloe, that there are contentions among you. now this i mean, that each one of you saith, i am of paul; and i of apollos; and i of cephas; and i of christ.
clement xlvii, 1.
take ye up the epistle of the blessed paul, the apostle, what did he write first to you in the beginning of the good tidings. in verity he spiritually indited you a letter about himself and cephas and apollos.
[128]
here clement only alludes to paul’s letter, not citing it, and he betrays a knowledge of the order and times in which paul wrote his epistles; for he declares that 1 corinthians was written by paul in the beginning of the good tidings—i.e., of his preaching to them of the gospel. the corinthians had been first evangelized by him three years before. the same phrase meets us in the same sense in paul (philippians iv, 15):—
and ye yourselves also know, ye philippians, that in the beginning of the gospel, when i departed from macedonia, etc.
altogether there are thirty passages in clement’s epistle to the corinthians which indicate more or less clearly a knowledge of the pauline epistles, including that to hebrews. if we were tracing the relation of two profane authors, no scholar would hesitate to acknowledge a direct influence of one on the other. merely because one of them happens to belong to the new testament, such writers as van manen, w. b. smith, et hoc genus omne, feel themselves in duty bound to run their heads against a brick wall. the responsibility, it must be admitted, lies at the door of orthodox theologians. for centuries independent scholars have been warned off the domain of so-called sacred literature. the bible might not be treated as any other book. i once heard the late canon liddon forecast the most awful fate for oxford if it ever should be. the nemesis of orthodox superstition is that such writers as those we are criticizing cannot bring themselves to treat the book fairly, as they would other literature; nor is any hypothesis too crazy for them when they approach church history. the laity, in turn, who too often do not know their right hand [129]from their left, are so justly suspicious of the evasions and arrière-pensée of orthodox apologists that they are ready to accept any wild and unscholarly theory that labels itself rationalist.
presuppositions of the argument from silence the epistles of paul, then, must obviously have been widely known before marcion issued an expurgated edition of them in the year 140. we have shown that many of them were familiar to clement of rome in the last decade of the first century. but even if we had no traces of the pauline epistles before the year 140, as van manen and these writers in the teeth of the evidence maintain, it would not follow that they were as late as the first irrefragable use of them by a later author. professor w. b. smith’s argument is based on the supposed silence of earlier authors, and he entitles his chapter on this subject “silentium saeculi.” a magnificent petitio principii! he has never thought over the aptitudes of the “argument from silence.” this argument, as mm. langlois and seignobos remark in their introduction to the study of history (translation by berry; london, duckworth, 1898),
is based on the absence of indications with regard to a fact. from the circumstance of the fact [e.g., of paul’s writing certain epistles] not being mentioned in any document it is inferred that there was no such fact?…. it rests on a feeling which in ordinary life is expressed by saying: “if it were true, we should have heard of it.” … in order that such reasoning should be justified it would be necessary that every fact should have been observed and recorded in writing, and that all the records should have been preserved. now the greater part of the documents which have been written have been lost, and the greater part of the events which happen are not recorded in writing. in the majority of cases the [130]argument would be invalid. it must, therefore, be restricted to the cases where the conditions implied in it have been fulfilled. it is necessary not only that there should be now no documents in existence which mention the fact in question, but that there should never have been any.
now it is notorious that in the case of the earliest christian literature there was a special cause at work of a kind to lead to its disappearance; this was the perpetual alteration of standards of belief, and the anxiety of rival schools of thought to destroy one another’s books. the philosophic authors above cited further point out that “every manuscript is at the mercy of the least accident; its preservation or destruction is a matter of pure chance.” in the case of christian books malice prepense and odium theologicum were added to accident and mere chance.
how, then, can mr. w. b. smith be sure that there were not fifty writings before the year 140 which by citation or otherwise attested the earlier existence of all or some of the pauline epistles? we have the merest debris of the earliest christian literature. what right has he to argue as if he had the whole of it in the hollow of his hand? in such a context the argument from silence is absolute rubbish, and he ought to know it. but, alas, the orthodox apologist has trained him in this sphere to be content with “demonstrations” which in any other would be at once extinguished by ridicule.
date of paulines to be determined by contents obviously the genuineness and date of the pauline epistles can only be determined by their contents, and not by a supposed deficiency of allusions to them in a literature that is well-nigh completely lost to us. judged by these considerations, and by the hundreds of undesigned coincidences with the book of acts, we [131]must conclude in regard to most of them that they are from the hand of the paul who is so familiar a figure in that book. the author of the paulines has just the same supreme and exclusive interest in the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of jesus the messiah as the paul of acts; he manifests everywhere the same aloofness from the earthly life and teaching of jesus. they yield the same story as does acts of his birth and upbringing, of his persecution of the messianist followers of jesus and of his conversion; much the same record of his missionary travels can be reconstructed from the letters as we have in acts. yet there is no sign of borrowing on either side. by way of casting doubt on the pauline letters the deniers of the historicity insist on the fact that in acts there is no hint of paul ever having written epistles to the churches he created or visited. why should there be? undesigned agreement between acts and paulinesto a companion paul must have been much more than a mere writer of letters. to luke the letter writing must have seemed the least important part of paul’s activity, although for us the accident of their survival makes the epistles seem of prime importance. in the epistles, on the other hand, it is objected that there is no indication of any use of acts. how could there be, seeing that the book was not penned (except on van manen’s hypothesis) until long after the epistles had been written and sent? i admit that paul’s account in galatians of his personal history is difficult to reconcile with acts, and has provided a regular crux for critics of every school.1 the numerous coincidences, [132]however, of the two writings are all the more worthy of attention. if we found them agreeing pat with each other we should reasonably suspect some form of common authorship, if not of collusion. as it is they attest one another very much in the way in which the letters of cicero attest and are attested by sallust, julius c?sar, and other contemporary or later writers of roman history. there is neither that complete accord nor complete discord between acts and paulines, which would lead a competent historian to distrust either as fairly contemporary and trustworthy witnesses to the same epoch and province of history.
paul witnesses a real jesus the testimony of paul to a real and historical jesus is to be gathered from those passages in which he directly refers to him or in which he refers to his brethren and disciples, for obviously a solar myth cannot have had brethren nor have personally commissioned disciples and apostles. i have pointed out in the first chapter of myth, magic, and morals that the interest of paul in the historical jesus was slender, and have explained why it was so. but that is no excuse for ignoring it, or pretending it is not there.
summary of pauline evidence what does it amount to? this, that jesus the messiah “was born of the seed of david according to the flesh” (rom. i, 2); that “he was born of a woman, born under the law”—that is to say, he was born like any other man, and not, as a later generation believed, of a virgin mother. it means also that he was born into jewish circles, and that he was brought up as a jew, obedient to the mosaic law [133](gal. iv, 4). his gospel was intended “for the jews in the first instance, but also for the greeks” (rom. i, 16, ii, 11). he was “made a minister of the circumcision” (rom. xv, 8); in other words, he had no quarrel with circumcision, even if he did not go out of his way to insist on it as part of the law which, in the first gospel it is recorded, he came not to destroy but to fulfil.
evidence of epistles to timothy according to tim. ii, 8, jesus was “of the seed of david according to my gospel.” this implies that others than paul did not admit the davidic ancestry of jesus, and it is implicitly rejected by jesus himself in mark xii, 35, as i point out in myth, magic, and morals, ch. xii. that is good proof that the epistle preserves a tradition that was quite independent on the later gospels; and that proves that even if the epistles to timothy be not paul’s, they are anyhow very early documents, and constitute another witness to the historicity of jesus. in the first of them, ch. vi, 13, we learn that christ jesus witnessed the good confession before pontius pilate.
pauline evidence as to death of jesus, the passages in which paul insists that jesus was crucified, died, and rose again are so numerous that they almost defy collection. in 1 cor. xv, 3, paul relates the story of the resurrection at length. he says he had “received” it from those who believed before himself. from them he had learned that christ had “died for our sins,” had been “buried,” and “raised on the third day,” after which he appeared first “to cephas” or peter, next “to the twelve”—i.e., the twelve apostles of whom we read in the gospels that jesus chose them and sent them forth to herald to the jews the speedy approach of the kingdom of god. next “he appeared to 500 brethren [134]at once” of whom most were still alive when paul wrote; then “to james,” then “to all the apostles,” and “last of all” to paul himself.
and as to his hebrew disciples on the strength of this last vision of the lord, paul claimed to be as good an apostle as any of those who were apostles before him (gal. i, 17). accordingly, in 1 cor. ix, 1, he writes in answer to those who pooh-poohed his mission: “am i not an apostle? have i not seen jesus our lord?” and again, 2 cor. xi, 22, in the same vein: “are they hebrews? so am i. are they israelites? so am i. are they the seed of abraham? so am i. are they ministers of christ? i speak as one beside myself. i am more; in labours more abundantly, in prisons,” etc.
so 2 cor. xii, 11: “in nothing came i behind the very chiefest apostles.”
from such passages we can realize what a purely hebrew business the church was to begin with. to be an apostle you had to be at least a hebrew, and it is clear that the earlier apostles challenged the right of paul to call himself an apostle on the ground that he had not, as they, been a personal follower of jesus. their challenge led him to preface his epistles with an assertion of his apostleship: “paul, an apostle of messiah jesus.”
we learn further (1 cor. xi, 23 foll.) how on a certain night “the lord jesus was betrayed” or handed over to his enemies (n.b.—the occasion is referred to as one well known); how he then took bread, and when he had given thanks, brake it, etc. all this ill agrees with the view that paul believed the jesus of the gospels to be an ancient palestinian sun-god-saviour joshua. we read also (1 cor. ix, 5) that “the brethren of the lord,” like “the rest of [135]the apostles and cephas,” led about wives (probably spiritual ones), and paul claims the same right for himself. in galatians, ch. ii, he recounts how he went up to jerusalem to visit cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days, on which occasion he associated with james, the brother of the solar myth. on another occasion this brother of the sun-god sent emissaries to antioch to warn peter or cephas against eating with gentiles, as paul had taught him to do. peter had been “intrusted with the gospel of the circumcision,” as paul with that of the uncircumcision. on this occasion there was a stand-up quarrel between paul and the older apostle of the sun-myth, and paul’s epistles ring from beginning to end with echoes of his quarrel over circumcision with the sun-myth’s earlier followers.
how do mr. robertson and his friends get round all this evidence? their way out of it is beautifully simple. it consists in ruling out every passage as an interpolation that stands in their way. so i have seen an ill-tempered chess-player, when he lost his queen, kick over the chess-table and begin to swear. that is one device. the other is to pretend that the apostles with whom paul was in personal touch were not apostles of the solar god, but of the jewish high priest, who was also president of that secret society in whose bosom were acted the ritual and dramas or mystery-plays2 of annually slain joshuas, of vegetation-gods, of osiris, krishna, and the whole pack of mythical beings out of whom the jewish messiah jesus was compacted.
the “myth” of the twelve let us take first the “myth,” as mr. robertson styles it, of the twelve apostles. needless to say, mr. [136]robertson and his friends regard the gospel story of their choice and mission as a fable. but they have the bad grace to turn up afresh in paul’s epistles. away with them, therefore, exclaims mr. robertson; and his friends echo his cry.
“in the documents from which all scientific study of christian origins must proceed—the epistles of paul—there is no evidence of such a body” (christianity and mythology, p. 341).
in the passage in which the twelve are mentioned (1 cor. xv, 3 foll.) we are further instructed “there is one interpolation on another.” it does not in the least matter that the passage stands in every manuscript, and in every ancient version and commentator. it offends mr. robertson and his friends; so we must cut it out. bos locutus est; and he complacently sums up his argument (p. 342) in the words: “paul, then, knew nothing of a ‘twelve.’?”
difficulties about judas and yet he notes (p. 354) that in the fragments of the peter gospel recently recovered from the sands of egypt, jesus is still credited with twelve disciples immediately after the crucifixion, and it is therein related that they “wept and grieved” at the loss of their master. no hint, mr. robertson justly remarks, is here given of the defection of judas from the group. no more is any hint given of it in paul’s epistle. these two sources, therefore, support each other in a most unexpected manner in ignoring the judas story. at the same time twelve disciples or apostles (in the context they are the same thing) are incredible as an interpolation; for an interpolator would have adjusted his interpolation to the early diffused story of judas’s treason, and have written not “the twelve,” but “the eleven.” [137]
mr. robertson admits that “at the stage of the composition of this (the peter) gospel, the judas myth was not current,” and that therefore the “judas myth” is later than that of the twelve. it must, by parity of reasoning, be later than the text of paul, which, therefore, if interpolated, must have been interpolated before the legend, if such it be, of judas the traitor got abroad. now we already meet with this legend in mark, and it is taken over from him by the other evangelists, matthew embellishing it with the tale of judas hanging himself, and luke in acts with that of his bursting asunder. papias, before a.d. 140, knew of further details of judas’s story of a most macabre kind; the story stood also in the lost form of gospel used by celsus, about 160–180, against whom origen wrote. the tale of judas, then, was of wide and early diffusion; yet mr. robertson, as we have seen, admits that at the time when the peter gospel emerged the judas myth was not yet abroad. neither, then, can it have been current at the stage of the interpolating of paul’s epistle, and this interpolation, therefore, is prior to all the gospels, to acts, and to the sources used by papias and by the authors of the peter gospel and of celsus’s gospel. nevertheless, on p. 357, mr. robertson, as a last method of avoiding paul’s testimony on another point, is inclined to “decide with van manen that all the pauline epistles are pseudepigraphic,” and merely express the views of “second-century christian champions.” he therefore commits himself to the supposition that epistles forged not earlier than a.d. 130, were yet interpolated in the interests of a tradition in which “the twelve are treated as holding together after the resurrection (p. 354),” which tradition, however, must [138]have long before that date been abrogated by the growing popularity of the judas myth. could texts be treated with greater levity? i may also note that the inconsistency of paul’s statement that jesus “was seen” by the twelve with the judas story was so patent to scribes of the third and fourth centuries that they had already begun to alter it in the greek texts and versions to the statement that “he was seen by the eleven.” now is it likely that paul’s text at any time would have been interpolated in such a way as to make it contradict so early and popular a christian belief as that in the treason and hurried suicide of judas? the hypothesis is absurd, and not the less absurd because it is framed merely to save the other hypothesis that the twelve apostles of the gospels were for the authors of the gospels and for their readers an allegory of the twelve signs of the zodiac revolving round the solar myth joshua. such are the lengths to which the exigencies of his “mythic” system drive mr. robertson.
paul testifies that the older apostles conversed with jesus some texts which imply that paul, if he did not actually see jesus walking about on this earth, yet imply that he might have done so, he seems to despair of, and passes them over in silence. such is the text, 2 cor. v, 16: “wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.”
the older apostles, as is implied in verse 12 of the same chapter, prided themselves on their personal intercourse with jesus, and twitted paul with never having enjoyed it. paul’s answer is that henceforth—i.e., now that he is converted—he has no interest in any man, not even in jesus, as a being of flesh and [139]blood, but only as a vessel filled with the spirit of election, and so a new creature in christ, the first member of the heavenly kingdom on earth. he seems to aver that he had actually seen his redeemer in the flesh, but before he was converted. but such knowledge with him counts nothing in his own favour; nor will he allow it to count in favour of the older apostles. their association with jesus in the flesh failed to render them apostles in any other sense than his vision of the risen jesus rendered him one also.
but there are other texts in paul most inconvenient to the zodiacal theory of the apostles. such are the texts i have cited from galatians. how does mr. robertson get rid of their evidence?
epistle to galatians attests reality of peter, john, and james he begins (p. 342) with the usual caveat that the epistle to the galatians is probably not genuine, and, even if it be, is nevertheless “frequently interpolated.” and yet any reader, with eyes in his head and an intelligence behind them, must recognize in this epistle a writing which, above all other ancient writings, rings true, and is instinct with the personality of a missionary, who in it bares his inmost heart to his converts. against this impression, which it must leave upon anyone but a pedant, and against the fact that in the external tradition there is nothing to suggest either that it is not genuine or that it is a mass of interpolations, what has mr. robertson to offer us in support of his thesis? nothing, except his ipse dixit. we are to accept on a purely philological question the verdict of one whose mythological equations are on a par with those of the editors of the banner of israel. however, he does condescend to explain away the apostles with whom, at jerusalem, [140]paul held personal converse; and, taking from professor w. b. smith a cue, which is also caught at by professor drews, he assures us that the peter (or cephas), james, and john, whom paul knew personally, were not men who had been “in direct intercourse with jesus,” but were merely “leaders of an existing sect”—i.e., of the secret sect of jews who, after celebrating endless ritual dramas of annually slain joshuas and vegetation-gods, had, by dint of prolonged arch?ological study of pagan mythology, art, and statuary, elaborated the four gospels, adopted the old testament as their holy scripture, and messianic judaism as their distinctive creed; for such in essence the christianity of the last half of the first century was, as even mr. robertson will hardly deny.
but paul (gal. i, 18, 19) expressly ranks peter, or cephas, together with james, among the apostles, using that word in a wide sense of persons commissioned by jesus; and he describes james and cephas and john (ii, 9) as men “who were reputed to be pillars,” or leading men of the church. he declares that in the end they made friends with him, and arranged that he should preach the kingdom to the uncircumcised gentiles as they were doing to the circumcised jews.
the “twelve” were apostles of the jewish high priest! now who had commissioned these three apostles, if not jesus? who had taught them about the kingdom and sent them forth to proclaim it? mr. robertson, oddly enough, scents a difficulty in the idea of a sun-god-saviour joshua, albeit son of miriam a virgin, sending forth apostles; so he decides that “apostles” in galatians means “the twelve apostles of the patriarch, of whom he must have had knowledge” [141](p. 342). of what patriarch? why, of course, “of the patriarch or high priest,” whose “twelve apostles” formed “an institution which preceded and survived the beginning of the christian era” (p. 344). and, to use mr. robertson’s own phrase in such connections, “the plot thickens” when we find (ibid.) that
the twelve jewish apostles aforesaid, who were commissioned by the high priest—and later by the patriarch at tiberias—to collect tribute from the scattered faithful,
were no others than the twelve apostles who wrote the and they wrote the didaché!“teaching of the twelve apostles,” recovered in 1873 by bryennios! these “judaizing apostles preached circumcision,”3 and “were among the leaders of the jesuist community in its pre-pauline days.”
this discovery of mr. robertson’s is of stupendous interest. it amounts to nothing less than this: that the pre-pauline secret sect of “jesuists” which kept up in jerusalem the cult of the sun-god-saviour joshua, with his late persian appendage of a virgin mother miriam; and, not content with doing that, padded it out with ritual dramas of vegetation-gods, cults of osiris, of dionysus, proteus, hermes, janus, and fifty other gods and heroes (whose legends mr. robertson has studied in smith’s dictionary of mythology)—this sect, i say, had for its president the jewish high priest, and for its “pillars” the apostles, or messengers, whom the said high priest was in the habit of sending out to the jews of the dispersion for the collection of the temple tribute! [142]
this high priest, we further learn on p. 342, was the “man” who sent out the apostles in the first verse of galatians, from which apostles paul expressly dissociates himself when he writes: “paul, an apostle, not from men, neither through a man, but through jesus christ.” here we are to understand that paul is pitting his sun-god-saviour joshua against the jewish high priest. the sun-god has sent him forth, though not the other apostles. that must be mr. robertson’s interpretation, and we must give up the older and more obvious one which saw in the words “not from men, neither through man,” no reference to a jewish high priest or priests, but a mere enhancement of the claim, ever reiterated by paul, that he owed his apostleship direct to the risen jesus christ and god the father; so that he held a divine and spiritual, not an earthly and carnal, commission.
my readers must by now feel very much like poor little alice when the black queen was dragging her across wonderland. if they find the sensation delightful, they can, i daresay, enjoy plenty more of it by a closer study of mr. robertson’s books on the subject. if they do not like it, then they must not blame me for taking him seriously; for is he not acclaimed by dr. drews as our greatest exegete of the new testament, dr. frazer alone excepted? is he not the spiritual guide of learned german orientalists like winckler and jensen? has not professor w. b. smith assured us of how much he feels he can learn from such a scholar and thinker, though “he has preferred not to poach on his preserves.”4 it is, [143]therefore, incumbent on me to probe his work a little further. let us return to the passage, 1 cor. xv, 5, where we are told that jesus appeared first to cephas. we have already seen that the peter of the gospels is in this new system alternately a sign of the zodiac, a mithraic myth, an alias of janus, of proteus, a member of any other pantheon you like. obviously he has nothing to do with paul’s acquaintance. the latter in turn is “not one of the pupils and companions of the crucified jesus” (p. 348). how, indeed, could he be, seeing that jesus is a sun-god crucified upon the milky way? no, he is something much humbler—to wit, “simply one of the apostles of a judaic cult that preaches circumcision,” and, more definitely, as we have seen, one of the twelve apostles of the jewish high priest. james and john must equally have belonged to this interesting band of apostles.
jesus of nazareth was jesus ben pandira, this being so, it is pertinent to ask why paul so persistently indicates that these apostles and pillars of the church had seen jesus and conversed with him in the flesh. to this question mr. robertson attempts no answer. for he believes that the crucified jesus, to whom paul refers on every page of his epistles, was not the jesus of christian tradition, but “jesus ben pandira, dead long before, and represented by no preserved biography or teachings whatever” (p. 378). this jesus had “really been only hanged on a tree” (ibid.); but “the factors of a crucifixion myth,” among which we must not forget its “phallic significance,” for that “should connect with all its other aspects” (p. 375),—these factors, says mr. robertson, “were conceivably strong enough to turn the hanging into a crucifixion.” [144]
who had died one hundred years before it follows that paul was quite mistaken in indicating the apostles whom he conversed with at jerusalem to be apostles of the crucified one; in order to be so, they must all have been over-ripe centenarians, since pandira had died at least a hundred years before. it matters nothing that on the next page (379) mr. robertson entertains doubts as to whether this worthy ever lived at all. who else, he asks (p. 364), could “the pauline jesus, who has taught nothing and done nothing,” be, save “a doctrinal evolution from the jesus of a hundred years before?” we must, he adds with delightful ignoratio elenchi, “perforce assume such a long evolution.” otherwise it would not be “intelligible that, even if he had been only hanged after stoning, he should by that time have come to figure mythically as crucified.” he admits that paul’s “references to a crucified jesus are constant, and offer no sign of interpolation.” and he is quite ready to admit also that, “if the jesus of paul were really a personage put to death under pontius pilate, the epistles (of paul) would give us the strongest ground for accepting an actual crucifixion.” but, alas, the jesus put to death under pontius pilate, the javelin-man, is no more than an allegory of joshua the ancient palestinian sun-god, rolled up with a vegetation-god and other mythical beings, and slain afresh once a year. there is thus no alternative left but to identify paul’s crucified jesus with jesus ben pandira; and mr. robertson, with a sigh of relief, embraces the alternative, for he feels that paul’s evidence is menacing his whole structure.
it was nasty of paul not to indicate more clearly to us that by his crucified jesus he intended jesus ben pandira; and, in view of the circumstance that we [145]have left to us no “biography or teachings whatever” of this jesus, paul might surely have communicated to us some details of his career. it would have saved mr. robertson the trouble of inventing them.
james, brother of jesus, only in a pickwickian sense at first sight, too, it was extremely inconsiderate of paul to “thicken the plot” by bringing on his stage a brother of jesus ben pandira or of the solar myth joshua. i am not sure which. but mr. robertson, like alice, is out for strange adventures, and prepared to face any emergency. “brother,” therefore, is here to be taken in a pickwickian sense only. and here we will let dr. w. b. smith take up the parable, for it is he who has, with the help of st. jerome, found his friends a way out of their difficulty. moreover, he is more in need of a way out than even mr. robertson; for he declines to admit behind jesus of nazareth even—what mr. robertson styles, p. 364—“a talmudic trace of a jesus (ben pandira), who was put to death on the eve of the passover about a century before the time of pontius pilate.” professor smith cannot hesitate, therefore, to be of opinion that, when paul calls james a brother of the lord, he does not “imply any family kinship,” but one of a “class of earnest messianists, zealots of obedience” to the mosaic law. he appeals in confirmation of his conjecture to the apostrophe of jesus when his mother and brethren came to arrest him as an ecstatic (mark iii, 31–35):—
who is my mother and my brethren? … whosoever shall do the will of god, the same is my brother and sister and mother.
he also appeals to 1 cor. ix, 5, where paul alludes to “the brethren of the lord” as claiming a right to lead about a wife that is a sister. and he argues that those who in corinth, to the imperilling of christian [146]unity, said, some, “i am of cephas”; others, “i am of christ”; others, “i am of apollos,” were known as brethren of christ, of cephas, etc. now it is true that paul and other early christian writers regarded the members of the church as brethren or as sisters, just as the members of monastic society have ever styled themselves brothers and sisters of one another. but there is no example of a believer being called a brother of the lord or of jesus.5 the passage in mark and its parallels are, according to professor smith, purely legendary and allegorical, since he denies that jesus ever lived; and he has no right, therefore, to appeal to them in order to decide what paul intended by the phrase when he used it, as before, not of a mythical, but of a concrete, case. however, if professor smith is intent on appealing to the gospels, then he must allow equal weight to such a text as matthew xiii, 55: “is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called mary? and his brethren, james and joseph and simon and judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us?”
did all these people, we may ask, including his mother, stand in a merely spiritual relationship to jesus? impossible. if they were not flesh and blood relations, then the passage is meaningless even as allegorical romance. again, in the very passage to which professor smith appeals (mark iii, 31–35), we read that his mother and brethren came and stood without, and it was their interference with him that provoked the famous apostrophe. were they, too, only spiritually related to him? were they, too, [147]“earnest messianists, zealots of obedience”? in john’s gospel we hear afresh that his brethren believed not in him. were they, too, mere “earnest messianists, zealots of obedience”? when josephus, again, alludes to “james the just who was brother of jesus,” is he, an enemy of the christian faith, adopting christian slang? does he, too, mean merely to “denote religious relation without the remotest hint of blood kinship”? in 1 cor. ix, 5, the most natural interpretation is that the brothers of the lord are his real brothers, whose names are supplied in the gospels.
both in paul and in the gospels the “myth” has parents and brothers and sisters here, then, are four wholly independent groups of ancient documents, of which one gives us the names of four of the brothers of jesus, clearly indicating that they were real brothers, and sons of mary and the carpenter; while the other group (the paulines) speak as ever of his “brothers,” but give us the name of one only, james; the third—viz., the works of josephus—allude to one only—viz., james, but without indicating that there were not several. lastly, the we document (acts xxi, 18) testifies that “paul went in with us unto james.” is not this enough? surely, if we were here treating of profane history, no sane student would for a moment hesitate to accept such data, furnished by wholly independent and coincident documents, as historical. professor smith’s other guess, that in 1 cor. ix, 5, brethren means spiritual brethren, just begs the question, and, like his spiritual interpretation of james’s relationship, offends greek idiom, as i said above. paul, like the author of acts xxi, 17, speaks of “the brother” or of “the brethren”—e.g., in 1 cor. viii, 11: “the brother for whose sake christ died”; but when [148]the person whose brother it is is named, a blood relationship is always conveyed in the paulines as in the rest of the new testament. if “brethren of the lord” in 1 cor. ix, 5, does not mean real brethren, why are they distinguished from all the apostles, who on professor smith’s assumption, above all others, merited to be called “brethren of the lord”? the appeal, moreover, to 1 cor. i, 12 foll., is absurd; for paul is alluding there to factions among the believers of corinth; how is it possible to interpret these factions as brotherhoods? there was only one brotherhood of the faithful, according to paul’s ideal; and the relationship involved in such phrases as “i of cephas,” “i of paul,” is that of a convert to his teacher and evangelist, not that of spiritual brethren to each other. as used by his corinthian converts, such phrases were a direct menace to spiritual brotherhood and unity, and not an expression of it; and that is why paul wished to hear no more of them. when he makes appeal to them professor smith damages rather than benefits his argument.
jerome’s opinion about jesus’s brothers there remains the appeal to jerome (ecce deus, p. 237):—
no less an authority than jerome has expressed the correct idea on this point. in commenting on gal. i, 19, he says (in sum): “james was called the lord’s brother on account of his high character, his incomparable faith, and his extraordinary wisdom; the other apostles are also called brothers” (john xx, 17).
here professor smith withholds from his readers the fact that jerome regarded james the brother of jesus as his first cousin. it is just as difficult for a mythical personage to have a first cousin as to have a brother. moreover, the reasons which actuated [149]jerome to deny that jesus had real brethren was—as the encyclop?dia biblica (art. james) points out—“a prepossession in favour of the perpetual virginity of mary the mother of jesus.” it is, indeed, a hollow theory that, in order to its justification, must take refuge in the encratite rubbish of jerome.
mutual independence of pauline and gospel stories of the risen christ if the crucified jesus of paul was jesus ben pandira, stoned to death and hanged on a tree between the years b.c. 106–79, then how can paul have written (1 cor. xv, 6) that the greater part of the 500 brethren to whom jesus appeared were still alive? i neither assert nor deny the possibility of so many at once having fallen under the spell of a common illusion, though i believe the annals of religious ecstasy might afford parallels. but this i do maintain, that the passage records a conviction in paul’s mind that jesus, after his death by crucifixion, had appeared to many at once, and that not a hundred years before, but at a comparatively recent time. that is also mr. robertson’s view; for, rather than face the passage, he whips out his knife and cuts it out of the text. yet there is not a single reason for doing so, except that it upsets his hypothesis; for the circumstance that the incident cannot be reconciled with the gospel stories of the apparitions of the risen christ clearly shows that paul’s text is independent on them. mr. robertson argues that, if it were not a late interpolation, the evangelists would have found it in paul and incorporated it in their gospels. i ask in turn, why did the interpolator thrust into the pauline letter not only this passage, but at least two other incidents (the apparitions to peter and james) which figure in no canonical gospel? why, if the evangelists were bound to [150]consult the paulines in giving an account of these posthumous appearances, was not the hypothetical interpolator of the paulines equally bound to consult them? the most natural hypothesis is that the gospels on one side and the pauline epistles on the other led independent lives, till their respective traditions were so firmly fixed that no one could tamper with either of them. the conflict, therefore, such as it is, between this pauline passage and the gospels is the strongest possible proof of its genuineness.
the pauline account of the eucharist mr. robertson’s treatment of the pauline description of the origin of the lord’s supper as described in 1 cor. xi, 23–27, is another example of his determination simply to rule out all evidence which he cannot explain away. “it is evident,” he writes (p. 347), that this whole passage, “or at least the first part of it, is an interpolation.” we would expect him to produce support for this view from some ms. or ancient version for what is so evident. not at all; for he takes no interest in, and has no turn for, the scientific criticism of texts a posteriori, but deals with them by a priori intuitions of his own. “the passage in question (verses 23, 24, 25) has every appearance of being an interpolation.” he is the first to discover such an appearance. it is well known that the words “took bread” as far as “in my blood” recur in luke xxii, 19, 20; and this is how mr. robertson deals with the problem of their recurrence: “no one pretends that the third gospel was in existence in paul’s time; and the only question is whether luke copied the epistle or a late copyist supplemented the epistle from luke.”
surely there is another alternative—viz., that a [151]copyist of luke supplemented the gospel from paul. this is as conceivable as that a copyist of paul supplemented the epistle from luke. it is also an hypothesis that has textual evidence in favour of it; for the bezan codex and several old latin mss., as well as the old syriac version, omit the words, which is given on your behalf, as far as on your behalf is shed—that is to say, the end of verse 19 and the whole of verse 20. but, since the bezan omission does not cover the whole of the matter taken from corinthians, we may suppose that luke borrowed the words from the epistle in question. here we have a palmary example of the mingled temerity and ignorance with which mr. robertson applies his principle of “vital interpolations” to remove anything from the new testament texts which stands in the way of his far-fetched hypotheses and artificial combinations.
jesus ben pandira in talmud is jesus of nazareth but it is time to inquire whence mr. robertson derived his certainty that jesus ben pandira died in the reign of alexander jannaeus, b.c. 106–79. dr. samuel kraus, in his exhaustive study of talmudic notices of jesus of nazareth (das leben jesu nach jüdischen quellen, berlin, 1902, p. 242) assumes as a fact beyond dispute that the jeschu or joshua ben pandira (or ben stada or ben satda) mentioned in the toldoth jeschu is jesus of nazareth. in the toldoth he is set in the reign of tiberius. this toldoth is not earlier than a.d. 400, and took its information from the pseudo-hegesippus. the spanish historian abraham b. da?d (about a.d. 1100) already noticed that the talmudic tradition alluded to by mr. robertson set the birth of jesus of nazareth a hundred years too early; but the same tradition corrects itself in that it assigns salome alexandra to alexander jannai as his wife, and then, confusing her with queen helena the proselyte, brings the incident down to the right date. “the truth is,” says dr. [152]kraus (p. 183), “we have got to do here with a chronological error.” lightfoot, to whose hor? hebraic? mr. robertson refers in his footnote (p. 363), also assumed that by jesus ben pandira, or son of panthera, the talmudists intended jesus of nazareth. celsus (about a.d. 170) attested a jewish tradition that jesus christ was mary’s son by a roman soldier named panthera, and later on even christian writers worked panthera into mary’s pedigree. such is the origin of the talmudic tradition exploited by mr. robertson. it is almost worthless; but, so far as it goes, it overthrows mr. robertson’s hypothesis.
the disputed epistles of paul so many fresh witnesses the epistles to colossians, thessalonians, and the so-called pastorals, if they are not genuine works of paul, form so many fresh witnesses against the hypothesis of mr. robertson and his friends. such a verse as col. ii, 14, where in highly metaphorical language jesus is said to have nailed the bond of all our trespasses to the cross, is an unmistakable allusion to the historical crucifixion; as also is the phrase “blood of his cross” in the same epistle, i, 20. in 1 thess. iv, 14, is attested the belief that jesus died and rose again; and again in v, 10. i have already indicated the express reference to the crucifixion under pontius pilate in 1 tim. v, 13, and the statement in 2 tim. ii, 8, that jesus christ, risen from the dead, was of the seed of david. these epistles may not be from paul’s hand, but they are unmistakably early; and their forgers, if they be forged, undoubtedly held that jesus had really lived. so also did the author, whoever he was, of hebrews, who speaks, ch. ii, 9, of jesus suffering death, in ii, 18, of his “having suffered, being tempted.” in vii, 14, we read this: “for it is evident that our [153]lord hath sprung out of judah.” if jesus was only a myth, how could this writer have written, probably before a.d. 70, that he was of the tribe of judah? in ch. xii, 2, we are told that jesus “endured the cross.” that this epistle was penned before the destruction of jerusalem by titus is made probable by the statement in ix, 8, that “the first tabernacle is yet standing.” indeed, most of the epistle is turned into nonsense by any other hypothesis.
catholic epistles the first epistle of peter is very likely pseudepigraphic, but it cannot be later than the year 100. it testifies, iv, 1, that christ “suffered in the flesh.”
the johannine epistles are probably from the same hand as the fourth gospel, and belong to the period 90–110 a.d. their author insists (1 john iv, 2), as against the docetes, that “jesus christ is come in the flesh.”
the epistle of jude, about the same date, exhorts those to whom it was addressed to “remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our lord jesus christ.”
book of revelation lastly, the revelation of john can be definitely dated about a.d. 93. it testifies to the existence of several churches in asia minor in that age, and, in spite of the fanciful and oriental character of its imagery, it is from beginning to end irreconcilable with the supposition that its author did not believe in a jesus who had lived, died, and was coming again to establish the new jerusalem on earth. in ch. xxii, 16, jesus is made to testify that he is the root and offspring of david. that does not look as if its author regarded jesus as a solar or any other sort of myth. [154]
1 the difficulties largely vanish on the assumption that galatians is the earliest of the epistles, and that in gal. ii, 1, dia d “after four” was misread in an early copy as dia id “after fourteen.” this is [132]professor lake’s conjecture. such misreadings of the greek numerals are common in ancient mss. ↑
2 christianity and mythology, p. 354. ↑
3 why did they not do so in their “teaching,” if it was intended (see p. 344) for the jews of the dispersion, instead of confining themselves to precepts “simply ethical, non-priestly, and non-rabbinical”? ↑
4 ecce deus, p. 8. ↑
5 note in matthew the phrase (xxiii, 8): “but be ye not called rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.” ↑
