SCAURUS ON SOME OF THE MIRACLES
“And now,” continued Scaurus, “I will tell you how the vision of the City
of Truth and Justice, conjured up for me by that dear old dreamer Hermas,
vanished into thin air. I intended to have spoken first about some of the
miracles; but I will come back to them afterwards. For the present, turn
over your Mark till you come nearly to the middle, and you will find a
story about an act of healing at a distance. I have heard a Greek doctor
tell stories of a man’s being influenced by the death of a twin brother
at a distance. He invented the word _telepatheia_ to express it. Well,
I will invent an analogous word for healing at a distance—_teliatreia_.
However, it is not from the miraculous point of view that I wish to
discuss the story, but simply as a question of morality.
“It contains these words, ‘It is not fit to take the children’s bread
and to cast it unto the dogs.’ Who says this? Jesus. To whom? To a poor
woman, called ‘Greek, Syrophœnician by extraction.’ What is her offence?
She has been asking Jesus to cast an evil spirit out of her daughter.
Now what do you think of that? The Greeks, of old, affected to call all
non-Greeks barbarians. But would their philosophers, would Socrates, or
gruff Diogenes, or any respectable Greek philosopher, say such a thing
to any non-Greek woman? I admit that Jesus ultimately granted this
poor creature’s request. But that was only because she answered with
the tact and patience of a Penelope, acquiescing in the epithet ‘dogs’
and replying, ‘Yea, Lord, yet even the dogs beneath the table eat of
the crumbs of the children.’ Had it not been for her almost superhuman
gentleness, she would have retired rejected, gaining from her petition
nothing but the reproach of ‘dog.’ I write bitterly. I confess I felt
bitter when I saw so noble and sublime a character as that of this
Jewish prophet apparently degraded and polluted by an indelible taint of
national uncharitableness.”
I was beginning to investigate the passage, when my eyes fell on a note
that Scaurus had appended at the bottom of the column. “Since writing
this, I have looked into the passage again, to see whether I could have
been misled. And I notice that Luke omits the whole narrative. Also,
while Mark represents the _woman_ as coming to Jesus and ‘asking him’ to
heal the child, Matthew represents the _disciples_ as coming to Jesus
and ‘asking him’ to send her away. I should like to be able to believe
that the woman was really a Jewess turned Gentile, that the disciples
tried to drive the woman away, calling themselves ‘the children’ and her
‘the dog,’ that Jesus replied, as in Matthew, ‘It was precisely these
lost degraded ones that I was sent to restore.’ In order to obtain this
meaning, the changes of the text would not be very great. But I fear this
cannot be maintained.”
I caught at Scaurus’s explanation, and was sorry that he himself did not
hold to it. For I was more troubled by this objection of his than by
anything else that he had said; and I thought long over it. Finally, I
came to the conclusion that Scaurus was nearly right; that this woman,
though called “a Syrophœnician by extraction,” was a Jewess (as Barnabas
the Jew is called “a Cyprian by extraction”) and that she had fallen away
into Greek idolatry and an evil life, so that Jesus—being, like Paul, all
things to all men and women—was on this one occasion cruel in word in
order to be kind in deed, stimulating her to better things. This agreed
with Paul’s use of the word “dogs,” which assuredly he would not have
applied except to “evil-doers.” If, however, it should be demonstrated
that the woman was not a Jewess, and not leading an impure life, and that
Jesus (not the disciples) used these words to her, then I should still
believe in the kindness of Jesus, although these words were apparently
unkind. No one would suspect cruelty, in a man habitually kind, except
on very strong evidence. Here the evidence was not strong. The witnesses
were two, not three; and the two narratives disagreed in important
details. This was the conclusion to which I then came.
If Scaurus had read the epistles before the gospels, approaching the
latter with some feeling of Christ’s constraining “love,” he could
hardly have stumbled (so I thought and so I think still) at this single
narrative. Jesus did not call the centurion a “dog.” Jesus had also
supported the law of kindness against the law of the sabbath. He had said
that “that which goes into the mouth” does not defile a man. He had eaten
and drunk with publicans and sinners. How was it possible that a prophet
of such broad and lofty views as these could call a poor afflicted woman
a “dog” simply because she was not a Jewess? I longed to be near my old
friend and to appeal to his common sense and justice, and I felt sure
that I should have convinced him. Even if Jesus bade the missionaries at
first go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that seemed to
me quite consistent with a purpose that in the end the gospel should be
proclaimed to all nations.
In another narrative, which had caused me difficulty of the same kind,
Scaurus gave me help. It is not in Mark. But I will set it down here
because it bears on kindness. Matthew and Luke represented a disciple as
asking to be allowed, before following Christ, to “bury” his father, and
as not being allowed. “As to this,” said Scaurus, “I have no doubt that
the man meant, ‘Suffer me to wait at home till I have seen my aged father
into the grave and have duly buried him.’ Similarly Esau says, in effect,
‘My father will die before long. I will wait till I have mourned for him
before killing Jacob.’ So, in Latin, we say ‘I have buried them all,’
meaning ‘I have survived and buried all my relations.’ My rabbi confirms
me in this view. Christ always defends nature and natural affection
against man’s conventions, so that it seems to me absurd to suppose that
he would enjoin anything really inhuman.”
Scaurus next proceeded to attack the miraculous part of Mark’s narrative.
Mark, he said, considering the smallness of his gospel, describes many
more miracles, relatively, than Matthew and Luke. “As to miracles,” said
he, “I am ready to believe in anything, miraculous or non-miraculous, on
sufficient evidence. But the evidence about Mark’s miracles leads me to
two conclusions. Some of them occurred but were not miraculous. The rest,
although they were honestly supposed to have occurred, did not occur.
“Let us take the first class first. Mark calls them ‘powers,’ _i.e._
works of power. That is a good name for them. But Mark seems to think
that, if a man has ‘power’ to cast out demons and perform cures without
medical means, such a one must be a great prophet or even a Son of God.
To that I demur. I remember, when I was in Dacia, one of my men was down
with fever, and bad fever, too. But when the bugles sounded out one
night, and the enemy came on, beating in our outposts and pouring into
our camp on the backs of some of our cowardly rascals, this brave fellow
was up and doing, without helmet or armour, in the front with the best of
them. Next morning, he was none the worse. Nor was there any relapse. He
was quite cured. I think I have told you how Josephus described to me the
casting out of a demon in the presence of Vespasian. And I might remind
you of Tacitus’s story about the cure of a blind man by the same emperor.
I suspect, however, that the former was a mere conjuring trick and that
the latter was got up by the priests of—Serapis, I think it was. So I
lay no stress on either. But I have spoken to many sensible physicians,
who tell me that paralysis and some kinds of fever can be cured by what
they call an emotional shock. Often the cure does not last. Some of these
physicians go a little further and ascribe to certain persons a peculiar
power of quieting restless patients and pacifying or even healing the
insane. But I entirely refuse to believe that, if a man has such a power,
he can consequently claim to be a Son of God.”
About the objection thus raised by Scaurus I have said enough already.
It seemed to me that the power of permanently healing the paralysed, and
permanently pacifying and healing the insane, was quite different from
that of startling a paralysed man into a temporary activity. The former
appeared to me allied with moral power and with steadfastness of mind,
and likely to be an attribute of the Son of God. Still I was sorry that
Mark devoted so much space to it. Here I agreed, in part, with Scaurus.
He then passed to the second class of miracles, “those that were honestly
supposed to have occurred, but did not occur.” “If,” said he, “I assert
that Mark turned metaphorical traditions into literal prose, you must not
suppose that I accuse him of dishonesty. All the ancient Jews did it.
Look at the story of Joshua, describing how he stopped the sun. Perhaps
also you have read how God caused a stream to spring up from the Ass’s
Jawbone (originally a hill of that name, like the headland or peninsula
called _Ass’s Jawbone_ in Laconia, which you and I passed together some
five or six years ago). The second (the jawbone miracle) is somewhat
different in origin from the first (the sun miracle). There are many
shades of verbal misunderstanding capable of converting non-fact into
alleged fact. There was all the more excuse for this error in Christian
Jews (such as Mark and others) because of two reasons. In the first
place, the prophets had predicted that all manner of disease (blindness,
deafness, lameness) would be cured in the days of the Messiah (using
even such expressions as ‘thy dead men shall awake’). In the second
place, Christ did actually—as I have admitted—cure some diseases, such
as insanity, fever, and paralysis. How, then, could it be other than a
difficult task, in such circumstances, to distinguish the literal from
the metaphorical traditions about the cures effected by Christ?”
I could all the less deny the force of these remarks because I had been
studying the words, “Whatsoever things ye ask, praying, believe that ye
have received them and they shall be unto you.” These words, if applied
literally—to bread, for example, or money—were manifestly not true.
Indeed they were absurd. How could a man honestly believe that he had
received a thousand sesterces in the act of praying for them? But if
applied spiritually, as in Paul’s prayer concerning the thorn in the
flesh, they might (I felt) be true for one endowed with great faith. Paul
prayed that the “thorn” might “depart” from him. In one sense it did not
depart. But in another sense, it did depart because God so increased his
strength that the “thorn” became as nothing.
Now in this same passage of Mark I found the following: “Whosoever shall
say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted and thrown into the sea,’ and shall not
doubt in his heart but believes in that very moment that what he says is
happening, it shall be unto him.” Luke also elsewhere had, “If ye have
faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye would say to this sycamine-tree,
‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would have obeyed you.”
I took for granted that “mountain,” “mustard-seed,” and “sycamine-tree,”
must all have been metaphorically used.
Scaurus confirmed this view, saying that the Jews were in the habit of
calling a learned interpreter of the Law an uprooter of mountains, _i.e._
of spiritual obstacles blocking the path of the students of the law. But
then he added something that amazed me, “Matthew has, ‘If ye have faith,
and doubt not, ye shall not only do the deed of the fig-tree, but even
if ye say to this mountain, Be lifted and thrown into the sea, it shall
come to pass.’ Now, ‘mountain’ being metaphorical, you might naturally
anticipate that Matthew intended ‘fig-tree’ to be metaphorical. But if
you look back a little, you will find that _Matthew actually imagines
that there was a literal fig-tree in question_. So does Mark. He and
Matthew turn the metaphor into a literal miracle, as follows.
“In the first place, Jesus comes to a literal fig-tree, seeking literal
fruit. He finds none. Consequently, say Mark and Matthew, a curse of
barrenness was pronounced on it by Jesus. What followed? The tree was at
once ‘dried up,’ or (according to Mark) ‘dried up from the roots.’ Now
first note that the Hebrew word that means ‘barren’ means also ‘_root
up_,’ ‘_cut off_,’ or ‘_cut down_.’ Then pass to Luke. He omits the
whole of this _miracle_ about a fig-tree. But he has a _parable_ about a
fig-tree. The Lord of a vineyard comes to a barren fig-tree, and gives
orders that it shall be ‘_cut down_.’ The vinedresser intercedes for it
that it may be spared for one year more in case it may bear fruit.”
I looked and found that the story in Mark and Matthew was as Scaurus
had described it. But another detail astonished me. It was a phrase
that followed the words, “While they were passing by early in the
morning”—_i.e._ the morning after the curse had been pronounced—“they
saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.” Instead of writing that they
were all amazed at the speed with which the curse had been fulfilled,
Mark wrote, “And _Peter, remembering it_, says to him, ‘Rabbi, behold,
the fig-tree that thou cursedst is withered up’.” Trying to put myself in
the place of Peter, I asked, “What should I have done when I approached
the spot? How could I fail to be on the alert to note the tree that my
Master cursed yesterday? How could any of my companions fail? How was it
possible that any of us could forget? How could I possibly talk about
‘_remembering_’ it? How, therefore, could a historian suppose it needful
to insert that I, or any of us, ‘_remembered_’?”
Turning to Matthew, I found that he got rid of “remembering,” and of
“Peter” too, by making the miracle occur instantaneously, thus, “He
said unto it [_i.e._ to the tree], ‘Let there be no fruit from thee
henceforward for ever.’ And immediately the fig-tree withered away. And
when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, ‘How did the fig-tree
immediately wither away’?”
Scaurus explained the whole matter as follows: “Look at Ezekiel’s
saying, ‘I the Lord have _dried up the green tree_,’ and its context.
You will find that ‘_the green tree_’ is Tyre. Elsewhere Luke has a
proverb about ‘the green tree and the dry,’ where ‘the dry’ refers to
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. So here, the fig-tree, green
but barren, is Jerusalem. Luke has given the parable correctly. The Lord
of the vineyard, he says, comes to a fig-tree, _i.e._ Jerusalem, in the
vineyard, that is, in Judah. He does not say that it is green, but we
may imagine that. However, it has no fruit. ‘Let it be cut down,’ says
the Lord. Well, I have shewn you that ‘Let it be _cut down_’ might mean,
in Hebrew, ‘Let it be _barren_ so that none may eat fruit from it,’ or
‘Let it be _dried up_.’ As a historical fact, the fig-tree was _cut
down_, or _dried up_, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. But that
was not immediate. It was long after the resurrection. _When Jerusalem
was destroyed_, the disciples _remembered_”—this explained my difficulty
above mentioned—“that the Lord had pronounced this curse on Jerusalem. I
could shew you, if space allowed, that the name ‘Peter’ (which would be
in Hebrew ‘Simon’) might be confused (in Hebrew) with our Latin phrase
‘qui cum eo erant’ meaning ‘those that were with him,’ _i.e._ Christ’s
disciples, and also that Mark’s phrase ‘passing by _early_’ may be
an error for ‘passing along to _inspect_, _visit_, or _seek_ fruit.’
Having regard to the fact that Peter died a year or two before the city
was destroyed, I am inclined to think that it was ‘the disciples,’ not
‘Peter,’ that ‘remembered.’ But there is no space for details. It must
suffice to have shewn you how a _parable_ of Jesus, about _cutting down_
a fig-tree, ‘_remembered_’ by his disciples long afterwards as referring
to Jerusalem, has been converted by Mark and Matthew into a portentous
miracle about _withering_ a fig-tree instantaneously (according to
Matthew) or by the following morning (according to Mark).”
This explanation of “_remembering_” seemed exactly to meet my difficulty.
I accepted it at once. Subsequently I found that the fourth gospel twice
represents the disciples as “_remembering_,” after Christ’s resurrection,
things that He had said or done before the resurrection, which things, at
the time, they had not fully understood. Moreover that gospel declared
that, up to the evening before Christ’s crucifixion, His words had been
“dark sayings” to them, but that the Spirit would “call them back to
their minds,” or “remind them” of their meaning. This confirmed me in
the conclusion that the Withering of the Fig-Tree was a parable, not a
history, and that the disciples “_remembered_” it, and were reminded of
its meaning by the Holy Spirit, after the Lord had risen from the dead.
Scaurus added a reference to a lecture of Epictetus, which, he said, I
must have heard, and which bore on the story of the fig-tree. I had heard
it and remembered it well. The subject was, in effect, “The Precocious
Philosopher.” Epictetus likened him to a precocious fruit-tree. “You have
flowered too soon,” he said; “The winter will scorch you up, or rather
you are already frostbitten. Let me alone! Why do you wish me, before
my season”—he meant, blooming before the seasonable preparation—“to be
withered away as you are withered yourself?” This, Scaurus said, was
perhaps borrowed from Mark. I examined the text of the lecture, and it
seemed to me that his conjecture was by no means improbable.
Scaurus proceeded, “I could go through Mark’s other miracles in the same
way—those I mean that are not acts of healing—and shew you that they are
all metaphors misunderstood. But I have given too much space to these
unimportant matters. At least I consider them unimportant except so far
as they shew Mark to be historically untrustworthy. Now I must pass to
more important things, merely adding—as an instance of this man’s curious
want of all sense of proportion—that while giving—how often must I repeat
this!—a whole column to Herod Antipas’s birthday and its consequences,
he does not give one line, or one word, to Christ’s resurrection—except
in predictions made by Christ himself or in statements made by angels.
I am not a Christian, nor a half-way Christian. But I have an immense
admiration for Christ and an immense curiosity to know the exact facts
about his life, death, and subsequent influence on his disciples. To
me therefore, simply as a historian—or as a mere man interested in the
affairs of men—this absolute silence about that which should have been
most fully stated and supported by the evidence of eyewitnesses, is
nothing short of provoking. Will you not agree with me, after this, that
Mark is the most inadequate of biographers?”
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read this. “Scaurus,” I said,
“must for once have made a mistake, or his copy of Mark must have been
defective.” But my copy confirmed his. It ended with the words, “For
they were afraid.” This was too much for me. Perhaps I was overwrought
with long and close study and with the strain of attempting to grapple
with Scaurus’s criticisms. I remember to this day—and not with entire
self-condemnation, for it was Mark, not Mark’s subject, that disappointed
me—that in a sudden storm of passion I threw the gospel down and vowed I
would never look at it again.