CHAPTER IX
Two Natures in Conflict
So far, then, it is evident beyond all cavil that, had the Jews listened to the warnings of the historical Jesus, their Temple, their city, and their nation would have been preserved. Titus did not seek their destruction; only such continued obedience and payment of tribute as was due for protection, and such homage as other nations yielded to the power and supremacy of Rome. It was his ardent wish to spare the Temple, the ancient city, and its people from destruction; and he again and again signified to the besieged this wish. He even employed the mediation of Josephus himself, and literally implored them to yield, if they would be spared. These stern realities are worthy of weighty consideration: it was their adoption of the Messianic idea from the false prophets of the day that determined them to resist to the bitter end, in consequence of which they were almost annihilated,
How did it come to pass, then, seeing besieged and besieger equally deprecated the fulfilment of Jesus's prophecy, that it was fulfilled in spite of both their wishes, and in spite of the warning which, had they listened to it, would have saved the city?
It is equally clear and historically established that both the Messianic vision of Judas of Gamala (or the Galilean) and the Christian Messianic story were huge delusions: The Greek Gospels were written to the world in unambiguous language, that God had visited the earth and announced Himself as the redeemer and lord of the human family. Their declaration notified to the world that Jesus was both Messiah and God; that the latter days had come; that, after his ascension to heaven, he would return in the clouds before that generation had passed away; and that some of those to whom this promise was given should be still alive when the Son of man came back again in all his glory. Both those who looked for a Messiah to come and those who look for a Messiah to return, have been disappointed. The last days according to both have come, and he has not, as both predicted, appeared to deliver.
The Jesus of tradition as painted by the four Greek writers is clearly different, though, from the Messiah expected by Judas the Galilean and his followers. The difference resides in his “second nature” presented as being “God-in-the-Flesh.” How can we explain the origin of this conception, and prove by historical evidence that the two natures are referable originally to two different persons, both of whom bore the name Jesus, lived at the same time, and had each a very marked character? — These men whose deeds, whose sentiments, whose characteristics, whose friends and colleagues and their characteristics, together with the incidents that befell them, compose when combined the main features of the picture drawn by the four Greek writers, which is the traditional embodiment of the historical facts. The children of those who were witnesses of the facts did not entirely misinform those who gathered their statements and put them in form, and the error in the chronology, which ascribes the main event to the era of Pontius Pilate, is easily accounted for by reference to the historical fact that a pretender to prophecy had been executed by that procurator, in a way to afford presumptive evidence that those who got up the story had no actual intention to falsify the facts. We therefore exempt those who supplied the traditional accounts from the serious charge of fraud, a charge which we are forced to place against the compilers of a later period, where the perversions which sprung out of the tradition itself were fraudulently and unjustly used as reliable evidence in proof of the truth of gross errors.
We have already quoted the testimony of Josephus to the existence of the prophetic Jesus, whose intense character and emphatic procedure suggested the idea of a man possessed by a divine fury. This historical description, translated into the Greek language by the author himself, could not fail to confirm and intensify the statement made by tradition, that Jesus of Nazareth was a divine character. No other historical character is so described, and the wonderful fulfilment of his prophecies in his own death and the general desolation of Judea and destruction of the Temple, might well furnish the groundwork for those representations of events which, as inexplicable by any known law of cause and effect, are regarded as supernatural and miraculous to this day. It is true that though they are described as presages, portents, and prodigies, they would at this time of day come under the head of what are termed phenomena; but be this as it may, we can see strong reasons for believing that they were deemed miracles; and indeed, under the circumstances, many of the incidents so described are sufficiently inexplicable to exonerate those who so regarded them from the charge of wilful fraud in appealing to them in proof; while we must not forget that the accounts committed to writing were traditions collected, probably, from a multitude of different sources, each supplying a trait differing one from another, without exact dates, and each bringing into one moment incidents that took place on different occasions, many of them true, and confirmed by contemporary historians.
Now Josephus describes the Pontius Pilate era, and mentions the deceiver who met his death at that Governor's hands. The deceits practiced by him were ascertained deceits, his delusions were ascertained delusions. He did nothing of a miraculous character; and though he promised to show on the top of Mount Gerizim many wonderful things "placed there by Moses," it was ascertained that his statement was false, and that he deceived those who trusted him. Josephus it is, who earned his reputation for accuracy when the witnesses to the facts narrated were still alive, that gives the account we have so often referred to of the Pontius Pilate pretender, and it is he too that furnishes the account of the Jesus whom we have designated as the historical Jesus, and that in his description speaks of his appearance as a presage of woe to Jerusalem, to the people, and to the Temple.
Now how is it that he should describe this latter personage as a prophet of truth, and the Pontius Pilate victim as a lying pretender? Why should he represent this Jesus as prophesying, in the most public manner, in the Temple and out of it, the judgment of God against the city and the inhabitants, and yet speak of the other as only a common deceiver?
Would he have enumerated the prophetic qualifications possessed by Jesus and yet shrunk from mentioning those of the Pontius Pilate pretender, if he possessed them? If he hesitated to ascribe preternatural attributes to the Pontius Pilate pretender, he would have equally hesitated to do so to the historical Jesus. But Josephus dared not, even if he had been disposed, ascribe, in the teeth of living witnesses, to the Pontius Pilate pretender those prophetical utterances which emanated from Jesus, a contemporary of his own day, who was too marked and well-known a character to be capable of distortion or perversion. If the Pontius Pilate pretender had been called Jesus, if he had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, as well as his own death, if indeed he had performed one hundredth part of the wonders related by the four Greek writers of Jesus the Christ, how could it have been possible for the historian to have omitted or disguised the fact, and that in the presence of those who believed in him as the Messiah of the latter days, and looked for his return while they were yet alive in the flesh?
The Gospel narrative discloses the fact that Jesus promised to return to the earth immediately after the tribulation of those days, and the desolation predicted by Daniel. The 24th chapter of Matthew affords ample proof of this assertion, and we must quote in corroboration a verse or two (chap. 24: 13-31): — "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand), then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child and to them which give suck in those days: But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall he. . . . Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other."
These quotations serve a double purpose: they convict, in the first place, this Gospel of testifying unto all nations of its own falsity, for the end has not come, although close to two thousand years have elapsed since the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stood in the holy place; and we may well add the concluding part of the 15th verse quoted, "Whoso readeth let him understand"
Apart from these reflections, however, it does not appear illogical that the four Greek writers should have believed what tradition reported to them; still, as the narrative, collected from various sources, was committed to writing long after the fall of Jerusalem, we may not unreasonably inquire why they do not refer to the historical Jesus of that date, all the more that their traditional Jesus was expected to reappear.
The only explanation of this is to be found in the fact that the information handed down to the four Greek writers as a tradition referred to this very Jesus of whom Josephus relates. Years had elapsed since the appearance of this remarkable personage, and his career and fate could not fail to leave a deep impression on the generation that followed. His denunciations must have revived in a weird light in the hearts of men after their actual realization, and must have stamped themselves on the memory as the words of a prophet of the Lord; and his character as the possessor of divine attributes would, with each succeeding generation, gradually assume a more and more definite shape as a divine incarnation, the whole being in all probability a development of our historian's characterization of him as a man aflame with a divine fury, and of his description of him as he sent forth his wail of woe on the highway and at the solemn feasts. His heroic appearance under sentence of the rulers of the people and the Governor, when, though his bones were laid bare, he gave utterance to no repining, could not fail to enhance the idea of him in the hearts of his worshippers, and give plausibility, along with other manifestations, to their conception of him as a god. And all the more would this conception of him tend to assume this shape when it was remembered that he uttered his dire denunciations concerning Jerusalem which were so tragically fulfilled, at a time when the horizon seemed clear of storms, and no mere human eye could have forecast the judgment at hand. Well might this reflection concur with others to confirm the conclusion which the traditional accounts say the Roman centurion came to at the cross when he exclaimed, “Truly this was the son of God."
The memory of the character and mission of this historical Jesus would never die out; his mission took undebatable form in the minds of his disciples as a Messianic mission, while his personal qualities, both as a man and a seer, would, as they loomed larger through the increasing haze of tradition, be more and more referred to godhead and worshipped as divine. The Jewish nation had received no such warning from any preceding Jesus, and no prophet that had appeared had shown such signs. Had the Pontius Pilate pretender been inflamed with such zeal, made display of such heroic virtue, and sounded forth such words, Judea was not the country where nor was that the time when the memory of them would all at once have died out. The Greeks and Romans of the day would have been quite as alert as the Jews, and would not have left such marvelous wonders to be first rehearsed by four obscure writers, who produced their accounts long after the events, and when all the contemporaries of the period were dead. Has not the world, we repeat, extant at this hour, all that contemporary men could know of the real character of him who was killed by Pontius Pilate, written too while the witnesses of the period were still alive?
But while we think we have given the soundest reasons to disprove the chronology which refers the death of Jesus to the procuratorship of Pilate, we are bound to confess that the character of the later historical Jesus is not ample enough to cover the conception given in the Gospels of the traditional Christ or Messiah.
In such circumstances as these, we might stop short with the statement of our theory, and content ourselves with an appeal to what is recorded of the historical Jesus as explanatory of much that is peculiar to the traditional one; we might even be allowed to have made good our point, had we found ourselves unable to complete the account. But we have other historical material to refer to, however, and that we shall now bring to the reader's attention.
At the beginning of this chapter we referred to a certain duality of character which the Evangelical writers ascribe to the traditional Jesus. If they mention but one person, they at least ascribe to him attributes which can co-exist only in two separate natures, and are inconceivable in the unity of one and the same personality. No one who applies to the subject due reflection will long hesitate to admit this fact. Thus at one time we find him enforcing meekness and mercy, while at another his words are beset with the harshest severity: “Ye have heard that it hath been said" (Matt 5: 43), he insists on one occasion quoting a text as from the Bible, which is not there, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you." (KJV) At another time this is what he says (Matt. 10: 14-1 5), "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily, I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment than for that city." (KJV) And again, while we read this in Matt.
9: 18-20, "And when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain scribe came and said unto him, ‘Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.’ And Jesus saith unto him. ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head;’" it is immediately added verse 21, that "another of his disciples said unto him, ‘Lord suffer me first to go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said unto him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.’” (KJV)
The one who would follow, he bids go, for he is poor; the one who would go, he bids follow, even at the sacrifice of his natural affection. Is not this proof of a contradictory temper, a sign which points to the hypothesis of two personalities?
At one time he insists on the eternal immutability of the Mosaic creed, and actually argues therefrom in assertion of the unity of God and his incommunicable goodness; at another he speaks of his gospel as the publication of a new law, and himself, not, like Moses, a servant, but the very son of the Most High. It is not, then, a consistently meek and merciful character that is here portrayed to us. At times, indeed, and often, the loving, merciful nature comes into relief and wins us by its tenderness, but at others he wears an air quite out of keeping with that of the helpless one who inspires us with sympathy for his deep sorrows and his tragic fate.
He who is alleged at one time to be poor and defenseless is at another invested with a power to work miracles and relieve others' wants; he can turn water into wine, and multiply a few loaves and fishes so as to feed a host. Of no one character could such contradictory sentiments and actions be predicated; in no one living character could they by any possibility unite. The man who could pray earnestly for mercy in behalf of his enemies, would not have cautioned his followers to provide themselves with swords. He whose meekness and mercifulness would not allow him to speak evil of his enemies could never be represented as an evil-doer, and under that accusation be put to death. Indeed it is impossible to conceive how such heterogeneous qualities should unite in one person; and it will be our business to furnish historical evidence to prove that the character conceived as one in tradition, and described as one by the four Greek writers, has resulted from identifying two separate historical personages, contemporaries of one another, who, as related by Josephus, lived in Judea under the procuratorship of Albinus, the one described by us as the meek prophet, and the other, as we shall show in our next chapter, a great innovator, who was escorted by a number of poor Galilean fishermen, who was betrayed, who had coworkers and friends in the persons of John and Simon, both of whom were imprisoned and released, and who had to give to Josephus, as governor, seventy of the Galileans as hostages in pledge of peace.