JESUS AND HEBREW HUMAN NATURE.
There are writers who see clearly that the four evangelists could not
have invented the character of Jesus, and who know that the story of
his manifestation violates every known law that governs the birth and
growth of myths; but they tell us Jesus was nevertheless only a man.
They say he did really live in Palestine in the days of Augustus,
Tiberius, Herod, and Pilate, and that he was only a man after all--a
man of very great gifts and virtues, the best man and the greatest
teacher that ever lived. This means that human nature was capable of
producing Jesus; it means that Hebrew human nature in that country
and in that age was capable of producing Jesus, his doctrines and his
life. In other words, he was a most extraordinary but still a natural
product of his race, country, and time; the normal product, though the
consummate flower, of Jewish life.
In considering that the evangelists, granting them ability of all sorts
for the invention of so perfect a character and such a character, must
have given us a different character, some of the difficulties of the
natural development theory were incidentally brought into view. But
there are other matters to be fairly considered in connection with this
method of accounting for Jesus.
Jesus, in one of the simplest--yet it is one of the profoundest and
most comprehensive of philosophical principles--gave us the germ of our
inductive philosophy and our modern scientific method. When he said,
“By their fruits ye shall know them,” he taught us that we are to make
our theories conform to ascertained facts rather than explain our facts
by our preconceived theories. It is by the fruit we are to know what
the quality of the tree is.
What manner of fruit grew on this long-lived Hebrew tree? You can seek
the answer for yourself; all Hebrew history will tell you.
Begin with the story of Abraham, in Genesis, and follow through
the centuries the thread of Hebrew history to the times of Cæsar
Augustus and of Jesus, if you will, till our own time. We find in
that history patriarchs, law-givers, priests, judges, soldiers,
kings, statesmen, poets, reformers, and prophets. We have Abraham and
the other patriarchs; Moses, Aaron, and his successors; Joshua and
his compatriots; Samuel, last and best of a long line of judges;
Saul, David--poet, as well as soldier and king; Solomon, genius and
philosopher, sage and profligate; Isaiah and the other prophets;
Nehemiah and other reformers; Daniel, the statesman, in the service of
an alien prince, the conqueror of his people. In later times we have
Judas Maccabæus, the heroic defender of his country, and the other
mighty men who gave their lives in a hopeless struggle for the freedom
of their nation. Still later we read of men like Annas and Caiaphas,
the wicked high-priests of an evil time. We have Gamaliel, learned in
the law, and his pupil, Saul of Tarsus. (But for Jesus there would have
been no Paul.) We have the men brought to view as “disciples” of Jesus.
Later on appear such a man as Josephus and the brave men who fought the
Romans and died for Jerusalem. Consider them all, the strong and the
weak, the good and the bad, as they grew upon this Hebrew tree. These
men show the best as well as the worst it could do. We must judge this
tree by its fruits.
Can we place Jesus among them and count him as one of them--the best of
them? Could a tree which produces these others produce him? To ask the
question is to answer it.
I know what some writers have to say when they speak of finding types
of Jesus among those who lived before him; what they say of Moses,
Joshua, and others. Some of them were truly great and good men--among
the best the human race can show for itself. But we cannot place Jesus
among them; they do not approach him, and they are not like him. He
stands alone and apart. He is not only above them, he is unlike them.
The question is not simply whether the Hebrew tree, judging it by all
its other fruits, was capable of producing this one perfect character
in all the world, but also whether it could have produced this kind
of character? Certainly it never did before him or after him. Search
history for one shadow of proof that this race--wonderful and unique in
all times and countries--from Abraham to Disraeli had in it any powers
that could, as a normal development, produce Jesus of Nazareth.
If you will you may give your inquiries wider range. Forget that Jesus
was a Jew by blood and birth and training. Try all history; search
the records of other nations. Tell me of the sages and reformers--the
great and good men of other peoples and countries; of Zoroaster,
Confucius, Socrates, Buddha, and the rest; of Moses or any other Jew
you could name along with them. Is Jesus only one of them? The best of
them perhaps--but only one of them? Read all you may of them as their
best friends tell their stories, and you would recoil if some maker of
cyclopedias should talk of only adding the name of Jesus.
It is not simply that you have heard your mother pray to Jesus; it
is not simply the prompting of your “cradle faith.” The reason lies
deeper; if to-day for the first time you were to read of the great and
holy men of other nations and of Jesus you must think of him, without
waiting to reason why, in a place by himself, as a great star shines
alone. No light is so splendid but the eye knows the sunlight for what
it is.
But it is not, as you know, a question as to what the human race in
some age could do; it is, what could the Hebrew race do in the age of
Cæsar Augustus? For Jesus was of the Hebrew race and of that age.
But for the moment forget this limitation of our inquiry and ask, What
could that age do? It is like asking, What could the Roman race and
civilization do? For the glory of Egypt and Babylon had long departed,
and the great Greeks were before the time of Jesus. Roman life then
dominated the world, and Roman life did its utmost in producing
Julius Cæsar. But there was not in Roman life, tradition, thought,
sentiment, one quality or influence of any sort whatsoever that could
have any relation to the production of a character like this that the
evangelists have given us.
But at last we must ask simply this question: What could the Hebrew
race in that age do?
Only Jewish influences entered into the life of Jesus. There is not
in any single thought or word of his so much as an echo of any thing
characteristic of other peoples. There is not an undertone in his
thoughts from the Greek or Roman masters. He had nothing from other
teachers or thinkers. He was only a Jew, never out of Palestine, of a
peasant family in Galilee. The Galilean was a narrow, suspicious, and
revengeful man; provincial to the last degree; holding fast old ideas
and rejecting new ones with little regard to argument or evidence--the
“Bourbon” of his time. He was a man of bitterer prejudices than
characterized even the men of Judea. But even Galilee had its best and
its worse, and Jesus was brought up in a disreputable mountain town.
“Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” was a common proverb,
carrying its own answer and indicating the estimate placed upon the
little town by the better people of the country.
Jesus was untaught in the greater schools of his own people. “How
knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” implies more than
that his hearers knew his history well enough to know he was not
school-trained as their scribes were; it means that they knew he did
not speak as their scholars spoke. Jesus did not talk like a book;
he was not learned in books; his language indicates, so far as books
count, knowledge of the Scriptures only; he could read, but he was no
scholar.
Compare now the conditions under which this young carpenter of
Nazareth, working at his trade, and doing good work till he was thirty
years old, grew into manhood; consider what his people were at their
best; consider how little of what was best in Hebrew life entered
into his Galilean bringing up; consider the hard conditions and the
narrow limitations of his life, and tell me whether Jesus is a normal
development of his race and time and place?
We will not now speak of his teachings; compare him with his natural
conditions. There is nothing in all human history that makes it
possible to believe that a mere Jew, brought up in that Nazareth, could
have become this flawless, perfect character. If it be otherwise there
is nothing, absolutely nothing, in heredity or environment; then any
soil can produce any fruits. Better expect to find the kingly trees of
the Yosemite Valley growing with the stunted sage of Arizona.
Consider the teachings of Jesus and tell me can this perfection of
truth come out of Nazareth? Consider what he teaches about God, the
human soul, sin, reconciliation, salvation and immortality. Consider
how he teaches and illustrates in his life the brotherhood of the human
race. Consider his ethics--his doctrines of rights and wrongs. What
he teaches about rights and wrongs, in principle and practice, is so
absolutely full and perfect that good men--the best men in the world
to-day, so long after his time--cannot so much as conceive of one
single virtue he did not teach or of one single evil that he did not
condemn. Nay, the wisest and best are always trying to teach men the
truth Jesus taught; and his standard is so high that no sane and honest
man has ever professed to have reached it.
One writer has ventured, in order to find one spot on this sun, to
say, Jesus did not teach patriotism! His whole life was devoted to
his people; his doctrines nourish and conserve patriotism. He did not
teach the thing a mere partisan of a clan or tribe calls patriotism;
then he would have been only a Galilean zealot. He teaches the only
patriotism a good man can respect--a love of country that believes in
righteousness and the golden rule that loves its own and another’s
too. If Jesus be only a man--a Galilean Jew, we must remember--he
contradicts in his flawless all-round character and perfect teaching
the conditions of his life. This perfection of character and teaching
on the one hand, and this Galilean Jew and Nazarene carpenter on the
other, not only do not agree, they cannot exist together. It is by
his life that we realize how imperfect all others are; it is by his
teachings that we test the rights and wrongs of all other teachings.
There is absolutely nothing in his race or age that accounts for Jesus.
That he was a normal product of his race and age contradicts every law
of life we know. If it be not so all history goes for nothing and there
is no law or reason in the nature of things.