SCAURUS ON CHRIST’S BIRTH
On the following morning my indignation against Mark began to seem
certainly hasty and possibly unjust. True, his book was apparently
without beginning or end, disfigured by superfluities and omissions, and
extraordinarily disproportioned. But what if he had no time to revise
it? What if it was a collection of notes about Christ’s mighty works and
short sayings, which he was intending to combine with a collection of
Christ’s doctrine when he died—died perhaps suddenly, perhaps was put
to death? I tried to find excuses for his work. Still, I could not deny
that, if Scaurus was right as to the story of the fig-tree, the earliest
of the evangelists shewed a deplorable inability to distinguish the
things that preceded Christ’s resurrection from the things that followed
it. I resolved, however, that this should not deter me from continuing
my study of the other gospels. My disappointment with Mark increased
my admiration—it was not then more than admiration—for Christ, whom he
seemed to me to have failed to represent. “Perhaps,” said I, “Matthew and
Luke will do more justice to the subject.” So I took up their gospels.
The resurrection was what I most wanted to read about. But I decided to
begin at the beginning.
“In style, proportion, arrangement, and subject-matter,” said Scaurus,
“Matthew and Luke are much more satisfactory than Mark, although
Mark often preserves the earliest and purest form of Christ’s short
sayings. When I say ‘Matthew,’ you must understand that I do not know
who he is. I am convinced that Matthew the publican, one of Christ’s
twelve apostles, is not responsible for the work called by his name.
Flaccus—whom I more than suspect of Christian proclivities—knows a good
deal about these matters. Well, according to Flaccus, ‘Matthew’ wrote
in Hebrew. ‘Everyone agrees about it,’ he says. An early Hebrew gospel
would naturally be attributed to Matthew. He, being a ‘publican,’ or
tax-collector, would necessarily be able to write. Peter and John are
said to have been ignorant of letters. There are more styles than one
in Matthew—a fact that suggests compilation. Luke, an educated man, and
perhaps identical with a ‘beloved physician’ mentioned in one of Paul’s
epistles, certainly compiled his books from various sources; ‘Matthew’
almost certainly did the same. Later on, I will speak of their versions
of Christ’s discourses. Now I must confine myself to their accounts of a
very important subject—Christ’s supernatural birth.”
Up to this point I had been reading with little interest, doubting
whether it would not be better to pass on to the accounts of the
resurrection. As I have explained above, my study of Paul’s epistles
had not led me to believe that there would be anything miraculous about
the birth of Christ. The phrase “supernatural birth,” therefore, came
on me quite unexpectedly. What followed, riveted my attention: “Mark,
as you know, says nothing about Christ’s parentage. First he gives, as
title, ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’—where, by the way,
old Hermas has written, in my margin, ‘some add, _Son of God_.’ Then
there is a Voice from heaven, at the moment of Christ’s baptism, heard
(apparently) only by John the Baptist and Jesus, ‘Thou art my beloved
Son.’ A similar Voice occurs later on. Mark represents a blind man as
calling Jesus ‘son of David,’ and his fellow-townsmen say, ‘Is not this
the carpenter, the son of Mary?’ This might indicate merely that Joseph
the carpenter was dead. But ‘Son of Mary’ might be used in two other
ways. The enemies of Jesus might use it to suggest that he was a bastard.
The worshippers of Jesus might use it (later on) to shew that he was a
Son of God, not born of any human father. Matthew has, ‘Is not this the
carpenter’s son?’ This, however, Matthew might write not as his own
belief, but as that of Christ’s fellow-townsmen. Luke, who has ‘Is not
this Joseph’s son?’, gives the whole of the narrative quite differently.
I should add that the first Voice from heaven is differently given in
some copies of Luke.” I examined this at once. My copy had a marginal
note, “Some have, _Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee_.”
“You see,” said Scaurus, “in these early divergences, traces of early
differences as to the time and manner in which Jesus became the Son of
God. Paul appears to me to have believed that the sonship pre-existed
in heaven. ‘God,’ he says, ‘in the fulness of time, sent forth His son,
born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those that
were under the law.’ In Job, ‘born of a woman’ implies imperfection, or
mortality. In Paul, ‘born of a woman’ and ‘born under the law’ imply two
self-humiliations undergone by the Son of God. Paul’s view is that the
Redeemer must needs make himself one with those whom he redeems. Since
the Jews were not only ‘born of a woman’ but also ‘born under the law,’
the Son of God came down from heaven and placed himself under both these
humiliations. Paul, therefore, seems to have regarded the divine birth
as taking place in heaven from the beginning, but the human birth as a
self-humbling on earth, wherein the Son of God becomes incarnate in the
form of the son of Joseph, of the seed of David, after the flesh.”
This had been my inference from Paul’s epistles, as I have said above.
But what followed was quite new to me: “You are aware from Paul’s
epistles that Christ is regarded by him as preeminently the Seed of
Promise, Isaac being merely the type. Well, listen to what Philo, a Jew,
somewhat earlier than Paul, declares about the birth of Isaac. Philo
says, ‘The Lord begot Isaac.’ Philo describes Sarah as ‘becoming pregnant
when alone and visited by God.’ It was God also, he says, who ‘opened the
womb of Leah.’ Moses, too, ‘having received Zipporah, finds her pregnant
by no mortal.’ All this is, of course, quite distinct from our popular
stories of the love affairs of Jupiter. You may see this from Philo’s
context: ‘It is fitting that God should converse, in an opposite manner
to that of men, with a nature undefiled, unpolluted, and pure, the
genuine Virgin. For whereas the cohabitation of men makes virgins wives
(lit. women), on the other hand when God begins to associate with a soul,
what was wife before He now makes Virgin again.’ I could quote other
instances, but these will suffice. Now I ask you to reflect how such
language as this would be interpreted in the west, not only by slaves,
but even by people of education, unaccustomed to the language of the
east, but familiar with our western stories of the births of Hercules,
Castor and Pollux, Bacchus and others.”
I saw at once that the language would be liable to be taken literally.
But on the other hand it seemed to me that no disciple of Paul could
accept anything like our western stories. Scaurus had anticipated an
objection of this kind in his next words: “You must not suppose, however,
that Hebrew literature contains, or that Jewish or Christian thought
would tolerate, such stories as those in Ovid. Nor will you find anything
of this kind in Matthew and Luke, to whose narratives we will now pass.
Matthew says, rather abruptly, that Joseph, finding Mary, his betrothed
but not yet his wife, to be with child, and intending to put her away
secretly, received a vision of an angel and a voice bidding him not to
fear to take to himself Mary his wife, for she was with child from the
Holy Spirit, and ‘she will bring forth a child and thou shalt call his
name Jesus.’ Luke, after a much longer introduction (about which I shall
speak presently), says that a vision and a voice came to Mary—he does not
mention one to Joseph—bidding her not to fear, and saying ‘Thou shalt
conceive and bring forth a child, and shalt call his name Jesus.’ In
theory, it is of course possible that two similar visions might come, one
to Mary and another to Joseph, bidding both ‘not to fear.’ But Matthew
adds something that points to an entirely different explanation: ‘Now all
this hath come to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
Lord through the prophet, saying, _Behold the virgin shall be with child
and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel_’.”
These words I had myself read in Isaiah and had taken as referring to a
promise made in the context, namely, that in a short time—two or three
years, just time enough for a child to be conceived and to be born and
to grow up to the age when it could say “father” and “mother”—the kings
of Syria and Samaria would be destroyed. Accordingly Isaiah says that
he himself married a wife immediately afterwards and that the prophecy
was fulfilled. Having recently read these words more than once, I was
prepared to find that Scaurus interpreted them in the same way. He added
that the most learned of the Jews themselves did the same, and that the
Hebrew does not mention “virgin,” but “young woman.” “This,” said he, “I
heard from a learned rabbi, who added, ‘The LXX is full of blunders, but
we are hoping for a more faithful rendering, from a very learned scholar
named Aquila, which will probably appear soon’.” Here I may say that this
translation has actually appeared—it came out about ten years ago—in
quite unreadable Greek, but very faithful to the Hebrew; and it renders
the word, not “virgin,” but “young woman,” as Scaurus had said.
It was this very rendering that caused a coolness between me and Justin
of Samaria. It happened, I am sorry to say, shortly before he suffered
for the sake of the Saviour, in this present year in which I am writing.
I chanced to meet him coming out of the school of Diodorus, in his
philosopher’s cloak as usual, but hot and flustered, not looking at
all like a philosopher. Some people—Jews, to judge by their faces—were
jeering and pointing after him in mockery. Justin—furious with them,
but also (as I thought) worried and uncomfortable in himself—appealed
to me: “I have been contending for the Lord,” said he, “against these
dogs. They flout and mock me for demonstrating how fraudulently and
profanely they have mutilated the Holy Scriptures, cancelling some parts
and altering others, when translating them into Greek.” Then he instanced
this very passage, in which he said the Jews had vilely corrupted the
rendering of the Hebrew from “virgin” to “young woman.” I would have kept
silence; but, as he pressed me to say whether I did not agree with him,
I was obliged to reply that I did not; and I added that not only Aquila
rendered it thus, but other good scholars, many of them Christians. Upon
this, he flung away from me in disgust, without one word of salutation,
and I never saw him again.
The fact was, he had committed himself in writing, about ten years
before, to this false charge against the Jews, and to many other baseless
accusations. There was no way out of it now, but either to retract or to
face it out. He was a brave man and knew how to face death. But he was
not brave enough to allow himself to be conquered by facts. Samaritan by
birth, he had something of the Samaritan—but not of the Good Samaritan—in
his hatred of the Jews. Had he loved the truth as much as he hated those
whom he called truth’s enemies, he would perhaps have gone on to cease
from his hate, and would have become no less faithful as a Christian than
as a martyr.
Now I must return to Scaurus. “Luke,” said he, “was an educated man,
and saw at once that this prophecy about ‘the virgin’ did not apply. So
he omitted it. This he had a right to do. It was only an evangelist’s
opinion, not a statement of anything that had actually occurred. But
there remained the tradition of _fact_, namely, that an angel had
appeared and had announced the future birth of a child begotten from
the Holy Spirit. Luke regarded this announcement as made to the mother,
like the announcements—not the same of course, but similar—made to
Sarah, Rebecca, and the mothers of Samson and Samuel. Moreover in
Matthew’s account—as I judge from Hermas’s marginal notes—there are many
variations, some of which leave it open to believe that the utterance
to Joseph (like that to Abraham before Isaac’s birth) referred merely
to God’s spiritual generating, so that Jesus, though the Son of God
according to the spirit, was yet, according to the flesh, the son of
David by descent from Joseph. Luke expresses his disagreement from
this view by giving various utterances of Mary and the angel at such
length that they may be called hymns or poems. And indeed—if judged
liberally and not by the pedantical rules of Atticists or over-strict
grammarians—they are poems, by no means without beauty.
“Luke adds another narrative in which he makes the birth of John the
Baptist serve as a foil (so to speak) to the birth of Christ. John,
like Christ, was born as a child of promise, after a vision of an angel.
But there the likeness ceases. The vision is to the father, not to the
mother. The father disbelieves and is punished by dumbness. Elizabeth,
the mother, was not a virgin. She, like the wife of Abraham, was barren
up to old age. There is no vision to Elizabeth, and no mention of divine
generation. If a Jew, Philo for example, were to say to Luke, ‘Your
Messiah may have been a son of God and yet son of Joseph (as Isaac was
son of Abraham)’ Luke might reply, ‘Read my book, and you will see that
it was not so. John the Baptist might be called son of God after this
fashion, but Jesus was born in quite a different manner’.”
After this, Scaurus went on to treat of Christ’s pedigrees, as given by
Matthew and Luke, shewing Christ’s descent, the former from Abraham, the
latter from Adam. These details I shall not give in full. Scaurus had
something of the mind of a lawyer and something of the eagerness of a
hound hunting by scent, and, as he said himself, when once on a trail
he could not stop. “Matthew,” said he, “omits three consecutive kings
of Judah in one place and a fourth in another. I pointed this out to
my old rabbi above-mentioned, and he laughed and said, ‘My own people
do that sort of thing. History is not our strong point. We like facts
to fit nicely, and this writer of yours has made them fit. Does he not
himself almost tell you that he is squaring matters, when he says that
there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and fourteen from
David to the captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Christ? This
is symmetrical, but it is not what your model Thucydides would call
history.’ My rabbi went on to say, ‘A more serious blunder, from our
point of view, is that this Christian has included in the ancestry of his
Christ a king called Jeconiah about whom one of our prophets, Jeremiah,
says, “Write ye this man childless, for no man of his seed shall prosper,
sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah”.’ Then,
seeing the two papyri lying side by side on the table before me, he
added, ‘I see you have another pedigree there, does that make the
same blunder?’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘the author was named Luke, a physician,
an educated man and a great compiler of documents. He gives quite a
different pedigree.’ ‘I am not surprised,’ said my rabbi. ‘If he was a
sensible man, he could hardly do otherwise’.”
So far Scaurus. He did not anticipate what I have lived to experience.
Quite recently I heard some Christians use this very mention of Jeconiah
in an opposite direction, namely, as a proof that Matthew believed Jesus
to have descended from God, but _not_ from Joseph after the flesh. In
particular, I have heard a young but rising teacher, Irenæus by name,
argue as follows, “If indeed He had been the son of Joseph, He could
not, according to Jeremiah, be either king or heir, for Joseph is shewn
to be the son of Joachim and Jeconiah as also Matthew sets forth in his
pedigree.” Then he went on to quote Jeremiah’s prophecy that Jeconiah
should be childless and have no successor on the throne of David. And
his argument was to this effect, “Christ is the royal son of David.
Therefore He could not have descended from Jeconiah, Joseph’s ancestor.
Matthew knew this. Therefore Matthew, though giving Joseph’s pedigree,
did not mean to imply that Jesus was the son of Joseph.” And this seemed
to convince those who heard him! I also heard this same Irenæus, in the
same lecture, say, “If He were the son of Joseph, how could He be greater
than Solomon, … or greater than David, when He was generated from the
same seed, and was a descendant of these men?” After we had gone out
from Irenæus’s lecture, I asked the friend sitting next to me to explain
this argument to me; for it seemed to me to prove that a man could not
be greater than his ancestors. “Ah, but you forget,” he replied, “_what_
ancestors. They were _royal_ ancestors. How could the son of a mere
carpenter be greater than David or Solomon?” It seemed to me that the
sinless son of “a mere carpenter” might be greater in the eyes of God
than a whole world of such royal sinners. But I found it hard to convince
him that I was even speaking seriously!
To return to Scaurus. He dealt next with the pedigree in Luke. “You might
have supposed in these circumstances,” said he, “that Luke would drop
the pedigree of Joseph altogether, and give only that of Mary. Well,
he has not done this. Another course would have been to state clearly
that Jesus was not really, but only putatively, the son of Joseph (being
really the son of God) and to add that he gave the pedigree of Joseph, as
Matthew gives it, because Joseph was the putative father. Well, he has
not quite done this either; but he has done half of it. He has written
‘being the son, as was supposed, of Joseph.’ But he has also given a
pedigree of Joseph differing from that of Matthew in that portion which
extends from Joseph to David. What do you think of this?”
I thought that the whole thing was a cobweb and wished Scaurus would pass
to something more interesting. But he continued, “My rabbi suggested
that Luke had invented a new genealogy. But when I dissented—for I am
convinced that neither Luke nor Matthew invented, and that these early
writers generally were very simple honest souls—he asked me whether I
knew of any instance in the gospels where the name spelt in Greek _Eli_
or _Heli_ was misunderstood. I replied that there was one instance where
Jesus used it to mean _my God_, but the bystanders took it to mean
_Elias_. ‘Well then,’ said the rabbi, ‘I should not be surprised if your
honest compiler Luke, a learned man perhaps in Greek, but innocent of
Hebrew, had got hold of some tradition saying, _Jesus was supposed to be
the son of Joseph, being the son of God_. Though in Hebrew there is a
difference between the spelling of _El_, God, and the name _Eli_, there
is not much difference in Greek. And Luke, having once started on the
scent of a new pedigree supposed to connect Jesus with _Heli_, ransacked
various Jewish genealogies till he found one containing the name, and
adopted it as a substitute for Matthew’s.’ This was what my rabbi
suggested. All I can say is that it seems to me more probable than that
Luke invented the genealogy.”
Scaurus entered into further details to vindicate Luke’s honesty,
concluding as follows, “My own belief is that the parents of John and of
Jesus were good, pure, simple, noble-minded people, liable to dreams and
to the seeing of visions and to the hearing of voices. As to ‘dreams,’
by the way, look at the earliest account of the Lord’s appearing to
Solomon, ‘In Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon _in a dream … Solomon
awoke, and behold it was a dream_.’ Then look at the later account in
Chronicles, ‘_In that night did God appear unto Solomon_.’ No ‘dream’ and
no ‘awaking’! _Verbum sapienti!_ The facts above alleged—to which I could
add—when combined with the influence of prophecy—seem to me to explain
everything in Matthew’s and Luke’s Introductions as being at once morally
truthful and historically untrue.”
Later on, Scaurus said, “Luke himself in his story of Christ’s childhood,
does not seem to me to be so consistent as an educated writer would have
been if he had been dishonestly inventing. For he represents Mary as
saying to her son, ‘Behold, thy father and I seek thee sorrowing.’ By
‘thy father’ she means Joseph. But could she have used this language, or
felt this sorrow, if she had realised indeed that her son was not one of
the many children of the Father of Gods and men, but that he was unique,
God incarnate? This and many other points convince me that Luke (in his
account of the birth) is not composing fiction, but only compiling,
harmonizing, adapting, and moulding into a historical shape, what should
have been preserved as poetic legend.”
Scaurus then gave one more detail from Mark, “who,” said he, “meagre
though he is, often records actual history where later accounts disguise
it. Mark says that, when Jesus was preaching the gospel, his own family
(literally ‘_those from him_,’ that is, ‘_those of his household_’) ‘came
to lay hands on him; for they said, _He is beside himself_.’ Matthew and
Luke omit this. But Matthew and Luke agree with Mark when the latter
goes on to describe how the mother of Jesus and his brethren come to the
place where he is preaching. Not being able to reach him through the
crowd, they send word that they desire to speak to him. Jesus does not go
out nor stop his preaching. Those who obeyed the gospel, he said, were
his mother and his brethren. I have said that Matthew and Luke omit the
attempt of Christ’s family to stop him from preaching as being out of
his mind. Probably variations in the text enabled them honestly to omit
it, believing it to be erroneous. And indeed how could they believe
otherwise? How could Matthew and Luke believe that Mary would accompany
the brethren of Jesus in an attempt to ‘lay hands’ on him after recording
what they have previously recorded about the supernatural birth? Lay
hands on her divine Son, the Son of God, engaged in proclaiming the will
of his Father in heaven! The story might well seem to them incredible.
But it bears the plain stamp of genuine truth.”
Scaurus then pointed out the divergence between Matthew and Luke as to
the manner in which Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem. This I omit.
But in the course of it he shewed me how Matthew has been influenced
by prophecies applied by the Christian Jews to Christ, as being their
Deliverer from Captivity, and their Comforter in time of trouble. “For
example,” said he, “since ‘_Egypt_’ in Hebrew poetry is often synonymous
with ‘_bondage_,’ the Christian Jews might naturally praise God in their
songs and hymns for fulfilling, through Christ, the prophecy, ‘Out of
Egypt have I called my son,’ i.e. Israel, meaning that God had called
them, the new Israel, out of ‘_bondage_’ (as Paul often says) into the
liberty of the children of God. But Matthew takes this as meaning that,
when Christ was a little child, he was literally ‘_called out of Egypt_.’
Hence he is driven to infer that he must have been taken to Egypt. For
such a journey he finds a reason by supposing that it was to escape
from the sword of Herod. He fits in this story with another prophecy
representing Rachel as weeping for her children, and as being consoled
by the Lord. Hence Matthew infers a massacre of children by Herod in
Bethlehem, corresponding, on a small scale, to the wholesale destruction
from which the infant Moses escaped. But such a massacre is not mentioned
by any evangelist, or by Josephus, or by any other historian or writer
known to me.”
I was depressed by this, and eager to pass on to something more
satisfactory. So was Scaurus. “I have no desire,” he said, “to dwell on
these points. I am interested in the biographies of all great teachers,
philosophers, and lawgivers, as well as conquerors—_so far as they are
true_. Untruth gives me no pleasure, but disappointment—unmixed except
for the slight pleasure one may find in tracking an error to its hole and
killing it.
“With much greater pleasure shall I turn to Matthew’s and Luke’s
accounts of the words and deeds of Christ. Only I will add that, were I
a Christian, I should long for a new gospel that would go back to facts,
rejecting these additions of Matthew and Luke. Not that I would go back
to Mark. By ‘_facts_,’ I do not mean such facts as John the Baptist’s
diet of locusts and clothing of camel’s hair. But surely a genuine
worshipper of Christ—I can conceive such a thing; for after all, what
is more worthy of worship on earth, next to God Himself, than ‘the man
that is as righteous as possible,’ concerning whom Socrates says that
there is ‘nothing more like God’?—I say a genuine Christian, if he were
also a philosopher, might surely find it possible to state in a few
simple words his conviction that, whereas John the son of Zachariah was
sent by the Logos, and contained only a portion of the Logos, Jesus the
son of Joseph was actually the Logos incarnate. I wholly reject such a
notion myself, partly because I am not sure that I believe that there is
any divine Logos at all—having, in fact, given up speculating on these
matters. But if I were as sure on that point as your Epictetus is, and if
I were a Christian to boot, I am not sure that I should have any great
difficulty in believing that some one man might exist—might be ‘sent into
the world,’ I suppose, a Christian would say—as different from ordinary
possessors of the Logos as steam is from water—after all, steam is
water—superior to Numa the Roman, superior to Lycurgus the Spartan, to
Solon the Athenian, yes, superior to Moses the Hebrew.
“You will be disposed to smile at my ‘Moses,’ as an anticlimax. But
let me tell you that this Moses was a very great man. He was a genuine
maker of a republic. I don’t mention your friend’s ideal, Diogenes, for
I don’t regard him as a maker of anything. I do not even mention my own
favourite Socrates. He is not for the man in the street. He is a maker
of thinkers. I am speaking of makers of men, and contemplating the
possibility of a unique Maker, a Creator of an altogether new social
condition. Well, then, suppose I believed in the Logos in heaven and the
Logos on earth. Your philosophers would tell me to regard it as a divine
flame lighting many human torches without self-diminution. Granted. Then
I should believe that every man had his share of the Logos; some, a
great share; others, a very great one. Why should I not contemplate the
possibility of a unique and complete man, not ‘sharing,’ but containing
or being—a man that might be or contain the totality, or, as Paul says,
the fulness, of the Logos? I see weak points in this torch-analogy except
as an illustration of the belief; yet the belief itself does not appear
to me against reason. But enough of this rambling! I have discerned of
late many signs that I am growing old, and none more patent than this
tendency to expatiate on my cast-off Christian explorations begun in the
years when I was vigorous. I pass, and with great relief, to some things
that are real possessions—I mean some portions of Matthew’s and Luke’s
versions of Christ’s discourses.”
For my part, it was not with unmixed “relief” that I turned to the
next portion of Scaurus’s letter. His conclusions about Christ’s birth
had merely accorded with my inferences from Paul’s epistles; but he
had shaken my faith in Matthew and Luke as trustworthy historians; and
I looked forward with misgivings to his further criticism, which, I
feared, might prove destructive. In this depression, I endeavoured to
recall the words of Paul to the Corinthians about having a “treasure
in earthen vessels.” Mark certainly was an “earthen vessel.” Matthew
appeared likely to be no better, so far as I could judge from his story
of Christ’s birth and childhood. Luke, trying to reduce these legends to
historic shape, did not seem to me to have succeeded, in spite of all
his pains and sincerity. While I was unrolling the Corinthian epistle
to refresh my memory, the thought occurred to me, “Is it possible that
any God should choose such writers to set forth the life and character
of His Son! How could the All-wise be guilty of such foolishness?” I
had hardly uttered the word “_foolishness_” when my eyes fell on the
words, “The _foolishness_ of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.” Then I
became more modest. “God’s ways,” I said, “are not our ways. Perhaps He
desires to force us to think and to feel for ourselves.” I felt grateful
even to Mark because he alone had preserved some of Christ’s deep and
difficult sayings. And in the end I recurred to the thought that had been
of late growing stronger and stronger within me concerning the possible
inferiority of Romans and Greeks to Jews in things of the spirit.
“Thucydides,” I said, “would have surpassed Isaiah in describing exactly
the campaign of Sennacherib against Hezekiah. But in describing visions
and judgments of the Lord, Isaiah is, perhaps, the man, and Thucydides
the babe. I will continue my exploration, with Scaurus as a guide.”