SCAURUS ON THE FOURTH GOSPEL
The sun had set, and the moon was well above the sea, when, after parting
from Clemens, I turned towards Nicopolis, with the new gospel in my hand.
Unrolling it, I found twilight enough to read the first few lines while
I walked slowly for some two or three hundred paces. Then I stood still
to read better in the fading light. When it had quite faded, I sat down
repeating what I had read.
“In the beginning was the Logos.” Never shall I forget the unexpectedness
of those words. I had supposed that the Christians altogether rejected
the Logos except as meaning “utterance” or “doctrine.” “In the beginning”
was, in some senses, familiar. I had read in Mark, “The _beginning_ of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Luke, too, had spoken of “those who were
from the _beginning_ eyewitnesses and ministers of the Logos.” But how
different was Luke’s “Logos” and Luke’s “beginning” from this!
I read on: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God.”
What did “with” mean? Was the Logos “at home with God”? Or “conversing
with God”? Or “in union with God”? Or did “with” include all these
meanings? And what was this Logos? The next words gave the answer: “The
Logos was God.”
These words alone, contrasted with Luke’s preface, sufficed to indicate
a difference between Luke and John, just such as Clemens had suggested.
Luke began with a reference to many inadequate “attempts” to draw up
a relation about what he called “the _facts_”—meaning “_facts_” as
distinct from _fancies_—“consummated among us.” Then, like a careful
compiler, he distinguished his authorities, giving the first place to
“_eyewitnesses_,” the second to accessories, or “_ministers_.” These
were eyewitnesses, he said, “from the beginning”; and he declared that
he had followed and traced their evidence from the fountain head. John,
like a prophet, went back to a “beginning” of which there could be no
“eyewitnesses.” He did not say, as Luke did, “_it seemed good to me_” to
write. He said—as though he had himself been with Him who was from the
beginning—“_The Logos was God._”
Glancing down the column before folding up the scroll, I could barely
read in the fast expiring twilight the words, “And the Logos became flesh
and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father.” Clemens had prepared me for such words. As I
understood them, the “glory” did not mean any splendour of material light
or fire, such as is mentioned sometimes in the theophanies of Greek,
Roman, and Hebrew writers, but the glory of God’s constraining love.
But I greatly desired to study the words in their context. Repeating
them over and over again, as I rolled up the book, I hurried homeward.
Star after star came out in the darkness; and with each new star a new
suggestion of invisible “glory” shone on me more clearly. “This gospel,”
I said, “will grow on me like these visible glories. Night by night, and
day by day, its words will become less strange and more wonderful.”
On my arrival, I lit my lamp, and sat down at once, preparing to continue
my reading, when my servant entered with a letter. Not recognising the
superscription, I put it on one side. The boy waited about in the room,
doing nothing that needed doing. I was on the point of dismissing him,
when he said, “Sir, I think it is from Tusculum; but the superscription
is not in my lord’s handwriting.” Looking again, I saw that it was
in the handwriting of Marullus, Scaurus’s secretary. Scaurus usually
superscribed his letters to me with his own hand. In alarm about his
health, I tore the letter open, and throwing the cover hastily aside,
glanced at the beginning. This reassured me. It was from Scaurus, and in
his handwriting.
My apprehensions were soon banished. He had been ill, he said, but had
now recovered after a somewhat severe attack. Then the old war-horse
passed on to his favourite battle-field—criticism of Christian gospels.
I was in the act of putting the letter down—for I had had enough, for
the present, of criticizing the old gospels, and was longing to study
the new one—when I caught sight of the words “fourth gospel,” and
discovered that he had recently procured the very book I was beginning
to read, and that his letter contained a discussion of it. This was not
quite welcome—not, at least, at the moment. I wished to read the gospel
first, for myself, before looking at Scaurus’s criticism, which (I felt
sure) would be destructive. “Yet,” thought I, “I have heard Clemens on
the one side; ought I not to hear Scaurus on the other? If Scaurus goes
wrong, ought I not to be able to find it out?” Scaurus was always fair
and honest, and had helped me hitherto, even when I had not agreed with
him. These considerations made me finally decide to read the letter and
the gospel together, comparing each criticism with the passage or subject
criticized, as I went on.
“Let me begin,” wrote Scaurus, “with the point that will most interest
you. I have accused Epictetus of borrowing from the Christians. I now
assert that this writer—Flaccus tells me that the Christians say it was
John the son of Zebedee; I am sure they are wrong, but for convenience
I will call him John—this man John deliberately contradicts Epictetus,
using our friend’s language but in a different or opposite sense, or with
opposite conclusions.
“For example, Epictetus mocks at Agamemnon for calling himself a shepherd
of the people. He dislikes the Homeric language and says ‘Shepherd you
are in truth; for you weep, _as the shepherds do, when a wolf snatches
away one of their sheep_.’ John makes Christ distinguish between the good
shepherd and the hireling. It is only the hireling that _flees and lets
the wolf snatch away the sheep_. In John, Christ says, ‘I am the good
shepherd,’ and ‘_The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep_.’
“Again, Epictetus declares that a good man never weeps. He blames
Ulysses in particular for weeping at his separation from Penelope. John
represents Christ as shedding tears in sympathy with a woman weeping for
her dead brother.
“Epictetus constantly says that self-knowledge is everything—herein
(I must admit) going with other philosophers. John represents Christ
as saying, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.’ It is impossible that Christ could
have uttered the last part of this sentence exactly as it stands. But
that does not weaken my argument, which is, that John (alone of the
evangelists) insists on other-knowledge, not on self-knowledge, as being
the essential thing. And this he does throughout his gospel.”
Then Scaurus came to that cardinal doctrine of Epictetus which had
caused Glaucus and me so many searchings of heart. “You know,” he said,
“that Epictetus teaches that no good man is ever troubled. It is not
John’s custom to contradict what he deems errors in a formal and direct
way. But if he had resorted for once to direct methods, he could hardly
have contradicted this Epictetian doctrine more effectively than he
does in his indirect dramatic fashion. He represents Christ as thrice
‘troubled.’ First—on the same occasion on which he lets fall tears in
sympathy with the woman above mentioned—he is said to have ‘troubled
himself.’ Secondly, on an occasion when he is (as I take it) preparing
for some act of self-sacrifice, he says, ‘Now is my soul troubled.’ On a
third occasion, when announcing that he is to be betrayed by one of the
Twelve, he is said to have been ‘troubled in spirit.’ I cannot doubt that
this description of threefold ‘trouble’ is intended to attack the Stoic
doctrine that the wise and good man is to shrink from ‘trouble’.” This
convinced me, and it convinces me still.
Scaurus proceeded to say, “Some innocent readers of this gospel might
say, ‘Well at all events John agrees with Epictetus in his use of the
term Logos.’ And (no doubt) the first three lines of the gospel might
suggest this. But read on, and you will find the two are in absolute
opposition. The Logos, in John, instead of being the philosophic Logos or
reason, is really an unreasonable and hyperbolical sort of love, regarded
by him as born from God, and as part of God’s personality, and as
constituting unity in God’s nature. This Logos he regards as incarnate as
a man for the purpose of uniting mankind to God! This doctrine Epictetus
would absolutely reject.
“Later on, in this gospel, you will find Christ saying to the disciples,
‘Ye are clean on account of the Logos that I have spoken to you.’ Now
Epictetus also connects cleanness with the Logos. ‘It is impossible,’
he says, ‘that man’s nature should be altogether clean, but the Logos
being received into it, as far as possible attempts to make it cleanly.’
Verbally, there is an appearance of agreement. Read the two contexts,
however, and you will find that, whereas Epictetus makes ‘cleanness’
consist in right convictions, John makes it consist in a mystical
doctrine of sacrifice, or service, typified by the Master’s washing the
feet of the disciples.
“I could give you other instances of the way in which John uses other
language of philosophers in a non-philosophic sense. But his use of
Logos suffices for my purpose. It gives the clue to the whole gospel.
This writer adds one more to my list of Christian _retiarii_. The
innocent reader, unrolling the book and reading its first words, prepares
himself for a Platonic treatise in which he is to ‘follow the Logos’ in
accordance with Socratic precept. Then, step by step, he is lured on into
regions of non-logic and sentiment, till the net suddenly descends on
him, and he finds himself repeating, ‘the Logos became flesh’.”
What Scaurus said interested me but did not convince me as to John’s
motive. Nor did Scaurus himself adhere to it. He did not always use the
epithet “retiarian” in a bad sense. As I have said above, I had come to
believe that right “feeling,” rather than right “reason,” may be regarded
as revealing the nature of God. So I did not feel that John was beguiling
his readers. But Scaurus’s criticism helped me to recognise the extreme
skill and tact—as well as the terseness, beauty, and solemnity—with
which the evangelist introduces the doctrine of the incarnation. And I
could not help agreeing with my friend’s next remark, “The man that wrote
the Apocalypse—though he, too, was a prophet and a poet in his line—could
no more have written this prologue than Ennius could have written the
Æneid.”
After some more observations on the difference of style in the Apocalypse
and the Gospel, he returned to the criticism of the latter. “Compare,”
he said, “the prologue and the conclusion with the rest of this book,
and you will see that there is some mystery about its authorship.
Under one style it conveys two currents of thought. Sometimes it
repeats itself like an old man. Sometimes it is as brief and dark as an
oracle. Moreover, some events—such as the expulsion of the tradespeople
from the temple—which ought to come at the end—this writer places
at the beginning. It has occurred to me that he must have started
with the intention of describing nothing but Christ’s acts in Judæa
and then changed his mind. Or is it possible that documents arranged
Hebrew-fashion—last, first—have been interpreted Greek-fashion and
consequently reversed? Allegory is most strangely mixed with fact. There
is a wedding in which water is changed into wine. This is allegory. The
Bride is the Church. The water of the law is changed into the wine of the
gospel. After that, comes a statement that Christ spoke about destroying
the temple and building it in three days. This is, according to Mark
and Matthew, history. Luke took it as not history and left it out. John
took it as history and allegory and put it in. But how differently from
Mark and Matthew! Look at the passages. John often does this. I mean,
that where Luke differs from Mark, John (who prefers Mark) intervenes to
support the latter.”
This general remark (about John’s “preferring Mark”) agreed with what
Clemens had said. As for the particular instance, I found that Scaurus
was right. Mark and Matthew had mentioned a project to “destroy the
temple” as having been imputed to Christ by false witnesses. Luke omitted
it. John declared that Christ said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple!”
and that Christ “spoke about the temple of his body.”
“If I could believe,” continued Scaurus, “that John the son of Zebedee,
the author of the Apocalypse, had any part in the production of this
gospel, I should be disposed to say that he must have contributed to
it, not as a scribe, but as a prophet or seer. Take, for example, the
description, recorded in this gospel alone, of a flow of blood and water
from the side of Christ on the cross. I do not believe for a moment
that this was invented, any more than Luke’s description of the sweat
of blood on the night before the crucifixion. But I should explain the
two as resulting from two quite different causes, differing as the
authors differ. Luke was not a seer, but a man of literature, a student
of documents. He found some narrative based on the expression that it
was ‘a night of watching and sweat’—which you know very well means in
Greek ‘watching and anxious toil.’ The narrator took this literally. This
literal interpretation commended itself to Luke, who desired to connect
the death of Christ with the Jewish sacrificial ‘blood of sprinkling’.”
I had not noticed in Luke any tradition about “sweat.” But on referring
to my copy I found that, though not in the text, words of this kind were
written in the margin.
Scaurus went on to shew in detail that John’s tradition was quite
different in origin. It was supported by an asseveration, “He that hath
seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true; and _he knoweth_ that
he saith true that ye also may believe.” As to this, Scaurus said,
“Only a little child, a baby Gaius, would use such an asseveration as
‘_Gaius knows_ that Gaius is telling the truth.’ ‘He knoweth’ means ‘HE
knoweth,’ _i.e._ ‘The Lord knoweth.’ HE is often thus used in the epistle
that forms a sort of epilogue to this gospel. The prophet, or seer, is
appealing to his Lord about the truth of the vision of blood and water,
which the Lord has revealed to him. In the Bible ‘he that seeth’ is a
common phrase for ‘the seer,’ a man habitually seeing visions. When John
came back from Patmos and wrote the Apocalypse, he might naturally be
called by preeminence, ‘he that hath seen.’ Or the phrase might apply to
this special vision: ‘The seer (he that hath seen) hath borne witness
to the vision of the stream of blood and water, and HE (_i.e._ the Lord)
knoweth that his witness is true.’
“I do not deny that the vision is a fulfilment of a prophecy—which you
may have read in the book of Zechariah—concerning a certain ‘fountain
to cleanse sin and defilement.’ But still I say that it is an honest,
genuine, vision, not an invention. That it is not a fact could be proved,
if needful. According to the other evangelists, some women were present
near the cross, but no men are mentioned. It is extremely doubtful
whether two streams of water and blood could issue from the side. If
they had issued, and if John had been present, the soldiers would not
have let him stand near enough to distinguish them. My copy of Matthew,
in a marginal note, has a similar tradition, but _before the death_, and
without any order from Pilate to kill the crucified criminals—as if a
soldier would dare to do this at his own pleasure! A book called Acts of
John (only recently circulated, Flaccus tells me) contains other visions
of John, and, among them, some revealed during the crucifixion. The Acts
is not written by the author of this new gospel, and it is very wild and
fanciful; but it suggests that visions may have been falsely ascribed to
John because he was known to have really seen visions (like laws falsely
assigned to Numa because he was supposed to have really made laws). I
take it that John the son of Zebedee may have had a vision of this kind
about a ‘fountain’ of blood and water. This may have been current among
the Christians for some time. My annotator in Matthew seems to have found
it in a wildly improbable form. The new gospel gives it less improbably.”
Scaurus then commented on the contrast between what he called the
“soaring” thought of the book and its occasionally “pedestrian” or
vernacular language, as when John preserves the old traditional “crib”
for “bed”—a word abominated by Atticists and avoided by Luke. He also
commented on his ambiguities, his subtle plays on words, his variations
in the forms of words, and his veiled allusions—utterly unlike anything
that might be expected from a fisherman of Galilee—declaring that the
writer must have been conversant with the works of Philo as well as with
the teaching of the Cynics.
Then he pointed out how Christ in this gospel never uses the word “cross”
but always speaks of being “lifted up”—a phrase, he said, current among
Jews as well as Roman slaves, to mean “hanged” or “crucified”: and he
gave it as an instance of the writer’s irony—and of his recognition that
things low in man’s eyes are high in God’s eyes—that a criminal’s death
is called by this writer “being exalted,” or “being glorified.” “Have you
not”—he said—“heard your servants ever say that Geta has been ‘lifted
up,’ or that Syrus has been a rich man and has ‘fed multitudes’—meaning
that the poor wretch has been crucified and has fed multitudes of crows
with his flesh on the cross?” I had often heard it; and I was astonished
that such a phrase could be used in this gospel. Scaurus continued, “He
uses this vernacular talk, this unfeeling slavish jest, to represent the
very highest truth of Christian doctrine, that the Redeemer is to be
‘exalted’ by suffering on the cross so as to give his flesh and blood to
be the food of all the world!”
According to Scaurus, although the style was very different indeed from
that of Philo, and although the writer knew (what Philo did not) that the
Septuagint was often erroneous, yet there was a great likeness between
John and Philo in respect of their symbolism. Of this he gave a great
number of instances. And he also quoted allusions to Jewish proverbs or
sayings, one of which I will set down here, because it has given rise to
an error among some of the brethren at the present day.
John represents the Jews as saying to Jesus, “Thou art not yet fifty
years old.” Now, according to Scaurus, this referred to an enactment in
the Law that the Levites must serve with laborious service “up to fifty
years of age,” after which they are exempt, so that the saying, “Thou
art not yet fifty” meant, “Thou art but a junior Levite,” used as a term
of reproach. “This enactment,” said Scaurus, “was applied by Philo to
inferior spiritual attainment, and, I have no doubt, was used allusively
by John. But it might easily give the impression that Christ was about
fifty years old and that the Jews meant the saying literally.”
I mention this because I have myself heard the young Irenæus maintain
that Christ was actually about fifty years of age. And he not only
quoted John in support of this assertion but declared that it was also
the opinion of the elders conversant with John. When I heard him, I
remembered what Scaurus had said. I have never had any doubt that Scaurus
was right. At the same time it seems to me that a Jewish allusion of this
kind was extremely liable to be misunderstood, and that the writer of
this gospel would not perhaps have set it down if he had not received it
from the originator, John the son of Zebedee. This, however, is only my
conjecture. The error of Irenæus is a fact. And I could mention another
of the brethren, who wrote a commentary on John, and actually altered
“fifty” to “forty”—I suppose, to make sense! Both these errors arose from
not understanding John’s allusion.
Then Scaurus passed to the structure of the work which, he said, under
appearance of great simplicity, and of an iteration that might sometimes
seem almost garrulous or senile, conformed to certain Jewish rules of
twofold and threefold attestation. He shewed how the book—describing
a new creation of the world—begins and ends with six days. He also
shewed how the author takes pleasure in refrains of words, and cycles or
repetitions of events. For example, he describes Christ as being baptized
at the beginning in one Bethany and anointed at the end in another
Bethany. “I could give you,” he said, “other instances of this sort of
thing. The book is a poem, not a history.”
About this I was not yet able to judge; but I felt that by “poem” he
did not mean “mere fiction.” For he had already admitted that the book
contained historical as well as spiritual truth. And knowing his deep
love of goodness, I was not altogether surprised at what came next: “O my
dear Quintus, while reading this extraordinary book I have been more than
once tempted to say, ‘Along with a great deal that I do not want, this
man almost gives me what I do want—what I have been long desiring.’ I
have told you how, years ago, I craved for a city of truth and justice.
Well, I knew the Jews were a narrow, bigoted, and uncharitable race. No
Jewish philosopher or prophet was likely to be my guide to such a city.
But Isaiah was an exception. And somehow I fancied that this Jesus might
be a developed Isaiah, and that his new city would have over its gates,
‘Entrance free. Not even Roman patricians excluded.’ But what did I find
in some of the earliest gospels? In effect, this, ‘None but the lost
sheep of the House of Israel admitted here!’
“Now comes this latest of all the evangelists and says, ‘We have changed
all that. The old inscription is taken down. See the new inscription,
ROOM FOR ALL! We welcome the universe. Read me, and see what I say about
_other sheep_, and about _one flock, one shepherd_.’ To all which I
reply, ‘Alas, my unknown but well-intentioned friend, I see, too clearly,
that your friendliness exceeds your judgment. You honestly think that
your gospel is so good that it must be true. You are not, I feel sure,
decoying me—not consciously at least. You are the decoy bird. You have
been decoyed yourself to decoy others. But Scaurus is too old a bird to
be caught in such a manifest net. Whence this new doctrine? Why was it
not in the earliest gospels?’ I think John would find it hard to answer
that question! If I had come to Jesus the Nazarene and said to him, ‘What
shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ I doubt not that he would have
replied to me, ‘Marcus Æmilius Scaurus, you doubtless think yourself a
great person, as much superior to the low born Pontius Pilate as Pilate
thinks himself superior to me. Understand, then, that I have no message
for you. You know what name I gave to the Syrophœnician woman. I give the
same to you’.”
This passage was written in very large irregular characters, especially
towards the close, quite unlike my old friend’s usual hand. Then
followed these words, in his own neat regular writing—as though he had
been interrupted and resumed his pen in a cooler mood—“Let me try to be
honest. I may have said rather more than I meant. I meant this fifteen
years ago. Perhaps I mean it still. But after reading this new gospel, I
feel somewhat less certain. Still, I fear that the truth may be as I have
said.”