THE EPISTLES OF PAUL
[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 century] They 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
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. Romans.
aporripsantes aph' heautôn pasan peplêrômenous pasê adikia, ponêria,
adikian kai anomian, pleonexian, pleonexia, kakia, mestous, phthonou,
ereis, kakoêtheias te kai dolous phonou, eridos, dolou, kakoêtheias,
psithyrismous te kai katalalias, psithyristas, katalalous,
theostygian, hyperêphanian te theostygeis, hybristas,
kai alazoneian, kenedoxian te hyperêphanous, alazonas, epheuretas
kai aphiloxenian. kakôn, goneusin apeitheis,
asynetous, asynthetous, astorgous,
tauta gar hoi prassontes aneleêmonas, hoitines to dikaiôma
stygêtoi tô theô hyparchousin; tou theou epignontes, hoti ta
ou monon de hoi prassontes auta, toiauta prassontes axioi thanatou
alla kai hoi syneudokountes eisin, ou monon auta poiousin, alla
autois. kai syneudokousi tois prassousi.
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:--
[Translation.]
Clement xxxv, 5, 6. Romans i, 29-32.
Casting away from ourselves all Being filled with all
unrighteousness and unrighteousness, wickedness,
lawlessness, covetousness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of
strife, malignity, and deceit; envy, murder, strife, deceit,
whisperings and backbitings, malignity; whisperers, backbiters,
hatred of God, haughtiness and hateful to God, insolent, haughty,
boastfulness, vainglory and boastful, inventors of evil things,
inhospitableness. disobedient to parents, without
understanding, covenant-breakers,
For they that practise these without natural affection,
things are hateful to God. And unmerciful: who, knowing the
not only they which practise ordinance of God, that they which
them, but also they who consent practise such things are worthy of
with them. 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 ponêria "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). Clement xlvii, 1.
For it hath been signified unto me Take ye up the epistle of the
concerning you, my brethren, by blessed Paul, the Apostle, what
those of Chloe, that there are did he write first to you in the
contentions among you. Now this I beginning of the good tidings. In
mean, that each one of you saith, I verity he spiritually indited you
am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I a letter about himself and Cephas
of Cephas; and I of Christ. and Apollos.
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 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 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 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 Paulines] To 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. [30] The numerous coincidences, 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 Cæsar, 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 (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 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 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-plays [31] 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. 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."
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 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 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, 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 archæological 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" (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,"
[32] 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!
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." [33] It is, 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."
[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 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 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. [34] 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, "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 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 Jerome to deny that
Jesus had real brethren was--as the Encyclopædia 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 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 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. Daûd (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. Kraus (p. 183), "we have got to do here with a chronological
error." Lightfoot, to whose Horæ Hebraicæ 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 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.