CHAPTER V
The Gospel Script
The ordinary rules of evidence should not be set aside because the interests involved are of the highest importance. Not the less reason is there in that case, but the more, why the related statements should be put to the test, especially when it is in our power to correct mere hearsay accounts by contemporary ones. The four Greek authors themselves ought to have known that they had departed in their statements from the current reports, and the motive, aim, and end of such contradictions should be given by them. It was their duty, also, to refer to such previous accounts, and to combat those statements to which they take exception.
Yet they never even once refer to Josephus, whose History, embracing the self-same Messianic period as theirs, was already published in the Greek tongue, and must have been well known both to the educated Greeks and the dispersed Judeans in the Roman Empire. They refer to a multitude of events reported by him but record them in such disorder as regards date that no two of the narratives correspond together. Indeed, it is not necessary to compare their writings with those of Josephus in order to prove them false, for each, as we insist, not only contradicts another, but each makes statements that are self-contradictory. The dramatic narrative composed by these writers, each more or less in his own way, though it embraces much that is historically true, is extensively blended with sheer fiction; to such an unprecedented extent, that the Christian Apologists found it necessary to invent for the proceeding a new name, and call it vicarious statement; that is to say, a statement which, as a general rule, is not to be seriously accepted as truth, but only used in the way of argument for the defense of the Gospel and its peculiar theories. And indeed the Christian Apologist is apt to grasp at any weapon by which he can repel attack, so that what is sometimes regarded as vicarious is at other times relied upon as literally true, and the alternations, significant as they are, pass unnoticed by many, who are too much overawed by the drama itself to note any inconsistency in the details of it.
It must be conceded that the four Greek writers did not originate the plot of their story, but they altered its incidents very materially, and so shortened the intervening periods as to render their chronology entirely anomalous. The material for the plot was most ample; it was coextensive with the scheme sketched in the Hebrew Bible; only the new composition took liberties, for it introduced elements that were not only discordant therewith, but contradictory. Josephus could have had no object in misstating the facts of history; he does not pretend to be the founder of a new philosophy; he is not even a fanatical adherent of the old; he is of no philosophy except that which loves, seeks, and speaks truth. The four Greek writers are desirous, even zealous, to found a new sect, with a new philosophy, in support of which they avowedly write their histories. Josephus writes to record facts, not in their bearing on any system, but simply as unprejudiced, unimpassioned statements of actualities. The four Greek writers are wedded to a superstitious belief, and bigotedly intolerant of every other. Josephus could only succeed as a historian, and obtain acceptance for his work, by being dispassionately truthful and impartial. There would have been thousands to accuse him had he written falsehood, and he never would have had the reputation which has come down to our day as the most reliable of all historians. There is this, we allow, to be said in behalf of the four Greek writers: their primary object was not to maintain the dignity of history, but to establish and obtain acceptance for an alleged realized life-philosophy; their primary interest was religious, and not scientific. Hence the penalty with which they threaten those who do not adopt their view of things and the high award they hold out to those who accept their doctrine.
The gospel they preached may be summed up in three propositions: — 1. That biblical prophecy had been fulfilled by the actual advent of the latter days. 2. That the Messiah who was to usher in the latter days had actually come. 3. That this Messiah was none other than Almighty God Himself in human form.
As Jesus had revealed himself, not only as Messiah, but as God Almighty, he had, by dying and rising again as immortal, transferred the seat of the house from the Jerusalem on earth to the Jerusalem in heaven. David's line had culminated in deity, and henceforth that line rules the earth from the throne of eternity, and the world's God is of David's issue and David's dynasty. The Greek writers fortify their statements about the transfer of the throne of David from earth to heaven by quotations from the prophets, which, they aver, have this reference; others, not aware of this reference, simply record the events which they knew had befallen this kingdom of David, but say nothing about its translation to heaven.
Josephus furnishes his readers with very full particulars of the destruction of the old Jerusalem, and thus of its ancient throne; and one of the four Greek writers (John) has a minute account to give of a New Jerusalem, more glorious and abiding. The one account cannot be contradicted, because it has been realized; the other cannot, because it has not. One thing is evident, that the idea of the New Jerusalem did not arise till after the destruction of the old one; otherwise it would have been designated another or a second, not a New Jerusalem. And to bear out this view it is enough to remark that the kingdom of Israel first fell to pieces with the fall of the City and the ruin of the Temple. The question is alleged to have been put to Jesus by his Apostles, when would he restore the kingdom to Israel? Such a question could not have been put into their lips except in retrospect of the downfall of the city in 70CE.