Every race has a pride in its great men which ultimately prevails over any pious taboo imposed on them in life or by tradition. Some years ago it was announced that a German scholar was about to publish proofs that Jesus was not of the Hebrew race, and while Christendom showed little concern, all Israel sat upon that German almost furiously. It is an old story. Banished Buddha becomes an avatar of Vishnu, and his image now appears in India beside Jagenath. For the heresiarch must be adapted before adoption. So Solomon returns as a preacher of orthodox Jahvism, in the “Wisdom of Solomon,” but so rigid had been the taboo in his case that the writer did not venture to insert the name of so famous a liberal and secularist.

That was about the first year of our era. But presently we hear about the “Son of David.” Was that because of David himself? Interest in David had so receded that in the “Wisdom of Solomon” the resuscitated Wise Man barely alludes (once) to his “father’s seat.” Was it because of any popular interest in the legendary throne or house of David? That old “covenant” is not alluded to by the resuscitated monarch, and in the apostolic writings nothing is said about it. In the Gospels the title “Son of David” is generally connected with certain alleged miracles of Jesus, which recalled legends of Solomon, and it is only in the account of the entry into Jerusalem that it carries any connotation of royalty corresponding to the genealogies afterwards elaborated. Unless these narratives are accepted as historical they must be regarded as phenomena, and, taken in connection with what may be reasonably regarded as genuine teachings of Jesus, the phenomena point to a probability that he had reawakened interest in the Wise Man’s teachings, and that this interest, by a compromise with Jahvist prejudices, coined the expression “Son of David” as an alias of Solomon.

However this may be, it appears certain that there was in the teachings of Jesus some substantial recovery of the ancient and unconverted Solomon, the proverbial philosopher, the man of the world. How much Jesus may have said to revive interest in Solomon, and how many of his secular utterances have been hidden in the grave of his humanity, can only be conjectured; but there are two direct sayings concerning Solomon ascribed to him which may be regarded as the only unreserved tributes to the Wise Man that had ever been uttered since his idealization in Chronicles. And our own Protestant Jahvism has tried so hard to manipulate these tributes into partial disparagements that we may easily imagine early Christian Jahvism destroying similar testimonies altogether.

A. S. V. Luke xi. 31: “The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold a greater than Solomon is here.”

True rendering: “The Queen of the South shall stand in the judgment with the men of this [Abrahamic] brood, and condemn them; for she came from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold something more than Solomon is here.” (p?e??? S??????? ?de)

The word mistranslated “greater,” p?e???, is neuter and cannot be applied to a man. Jesus is not speaking of himself, but of the new Spirit animating a whole movement.

The word “generation” as a translation of ?e??a is, in this connection, misleading. No one English word can convey the satire on people who regarded themselves as holy by generation from Abraham (cf. Luke iii. 8), which is in the vein of Carlyle’s ridicule of English “Paper Nobility.” Above these self-satisfied claimants of inherited wisdom Jesus sets the Gentile Queen journeying to sit at the feet of Solomon. At the feet of Solomon Jesus also was sitting, and he certainly did not call himself personally greater than Solomon.

The other allusion to Solomon (Matt. vi. 28, 29) is rendered thus: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Here “glory,” which when applied to a man has a connotation of pride and pomp, is made to translate d???, which means honour in its best sense, as preserved in “doxology.” Jesus really says, “Solomon amid all his honours never arrayed himself (pe??e??et?) like one of these.” The greatest and wisest of men did not affect display in dress.1

The apparent slightness of these English changes reveals their deliberate subtlety. Puritanism, taking its cue from King James’s translators, has bettered the instruction, and steadily pictured Jesus pointing to a lily,—white emblem of purity,—and censuring (implicitly) the ostentation of Solomon. Even in rationalistic hymn-books is found the pretty hymn of Agnes Strickland, beginning:

Very sweet! But the “lilies of the field” in Palestine are not “fair,” their charms are not “simple”; they are large and gorgeous combinations of red and gold; and Solomon, so far from being proud in the contrast, “outvied” in simplicity the pride of the lily.

Jesus may not indeed have said these things concerning Solomon, but the probability that he did say something of the kind is suggested by the adroit mistranslations. The same puritanical spirit, the same prejudice against human wisdom and love of beauty, prevailed even more when the Gospels were written. The Jahvist jealousy of the wisdom of the world which in a Targum added to Jeremiah ix. 23 a fling at Solomon,—“Let not Solomon the Son of David, the Wise Man, glory in his Wisdom,”—screamed on in Christian anathemas on science, and laudations of the silly. (For “silly” is of pious derivation, from German selig—blessed.) Solomon had not been named in any canonical scripture for centuries, and even in apocryphal “Wisdom” (Ecclesiasticus) he appears as if a brilliant but fallen Lucifer. The cult of Solomon continued no doubt, in a sense, among the Sadducees (respectfully treated, by the way, by Jesus), but they were comparatively few, and like the rationalists of the English Church, cautious about outside heresies. It was probably characteristic that their name is derived from Solomon’s priest, Zadok, instead of from Solomon himself. As for the Gentile Queen, she is not named in the Bible after the record of her visit to Solomon until the homage of Jesus was given her. It appears, therefore, very unlikely that such homage and the unqualified tributes to Solomon, would have been put into the mouth of Jesus.

But why, it may be asked, were not these tributes suppressed? There is in one case a recognition of a Gentile lady which would recommend the text to the writer of Luke, and in the other a lesson against luxury which would recommend this to all believers. At any rate, whatever may have been the suppressions, and no doubt there were many, two of the Gospels have preserved these sentences, which, so far as the glorious “idolator” is concerned, neither of them would have invented. There are the words; somebody uttered them; and the question arises, who was that daring man who broke the severe silence or reservations of centuries and did honour to the king who built shrines to gods and goddesses?2

As Solomon said, “A man is proved by what he praises.” That Jesus did appreciate the greatness of the Solomonic literature is not a matter of conjecture. The sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels—apart from Pauline importations and quotations from Jahvist scriptures—are largely pervaded by the spirit and even by the phraseology of the Solomonic books. Remembering that the phrases “kingdom of heaven,” “kingdom of God,” are post-resurrectional, and that Jesus could not, unless by miraculous foresight, use those phrases for any external dominion connected with himself, there is reason to believe that his conception was of a sway of Wisdom, and that Wisdom was to him the Saviour, as to Jesus Ben Sira, her realm “within,” her leaven hid in the world, her advance without observation.

Of course those who read the Bible in the light of a supernatural theory, see these things very differently, but considering the records as if they were those of uninspired people, one may say that some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus are, in their present form, meaningless. For example, what should we think if we found an ancient record of some poor Egyptian reported as saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” How incongruous the “I am meek” with “learn of me”! How could he give the heavy laden rest? And what rest? what yoke? But we would surely feel enlightened should we presently discover an Egyptian book of “Wisdom,” with proof of its popularity when the mysterious words were orally repeated, containing such language as this from personified Wisdom: “Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.” And if we found in the same book a teacher saying: “I directed my soul unto Wisdom, and I found her in pureness.... Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in the house of Wisdom.... Buy her for yourselves without money. Put your neck under her yoke, and let your life receive instruction: she is near at hand to find. Behold with your eyes that I have had but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest.”

Here is sense. These are the words of Wisdom in Jesus Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19, li. 23–27). Can any unbiased mind fail to recognize in Matthew xi. 28–30 a mangled quotation from this Hebrew book of the second century, before Jesus of Nazareth was born, but in his time cherished in many Jewish households as much as any Gospel is cherished in Christian households?

Consider the Sermon on the Mount. In the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon is found the beatitude pronounced by Jesus on the lowly, no doubt literally quoted by him: “With the lowly is wisdom” (Prov. xi. 2). The blessing of those who hunger for righteousness (justice) is in Prov. x. 24, where it is said their desire shall be granted. The blessing of the peacemakers is joy (Prov. xii. 20). The merciful man doeth good to his own life (Prov. xi. 17). The pure in heart shall have the King for his friend (Prov. xxii. 11). The house that stands and the house overthrown (Prov. x. 25; xii. 7; xiv. 11); the two ways (Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 12, xvi. 17); the tree known by its fruits (Prov. xi. 30, xii. 12); give and it shall be given you (Prov. xxii. 9); the sower (Prov. xi. 18, 24, 25); taking the lower place so as to be placed higher and not moved down (Prov. xxv. 6–8); searching for and buying Wisdom as the precious silver, the pearl, the treasure (Prov. vi. 11, 12, 17, 19, 35; xx. 15; xxiii. 23); the prodigal (Prov. xxix. 3); those who wrong parents (Prov. xx. 20; xxviii. 24; cf. Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 11). The lamps of the wise and foolish virgins are found in Prov. xiii. 9; also xxiv. 20.

In Proverbs xx. 9, we have the words, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean, I am pure from sin?’” In Ecclesiastes iii. 16, it is said, “Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness that wickedness was there.” (Cf. also vii. 20.) In the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” Jesus, declaring that an offender should be forgiven seventy times seven, adds: “For in the prophets likewise, after they were anointed by the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found.”

Although in the language ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel (iii. 1–10) there are post-resurrectional phrases, whatever he may have said about birth and about the wind-like spirit seems to have been what he expected Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, to understand. We may therefore suppose that it was substantially a quotation from Ecclesiastes xi. 5: “As thou knowest not the way of the wind, nor the growth of the bones in the mother’s womb, even so thou canst not fathom the work of God, who compasseth all things.”

In relation to Woman Jesus seems to have appealed to Solomon against Ecclesiastes, where (vii. 25–29) it is said:

In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the personification in Proverbs ix. 13–18. The Woman of the fifth line is “Dame Folly”; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,—a suspicion further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read, it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly, or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men, the interpretation has been adverse to woman.

But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly, is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: “Wisdom is justified by her works.” In Luke vii. 35 it is, “Wisdom is justified of all her children.” Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says, “Let her works praise her,” and verse 28, “her children rise up and call her blessed.”

In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word “all” renders it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman.3 Some such incident may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by her faith (“pleasing God”) looks like a criticism on the “fling” at woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of the Pharisee, who thought “the prophet” ought to abhor the “sinner,” immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported Jesus by their means,—Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward; Susanna, “and many others.” They “ministered to him of their substance,” and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally suspect him of being among “the ensnared.” The fact is strange enough to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that the woman’s sins were “many,” which he could not have known, or that he gave her formal absolution.

The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon’s religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology, with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely suggested in “Proverbs” are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17, 18). “Hide not thy wisdom” (iv. 23, xx. 30). “Say not, ‘I have enough (goods) for my life’” (v. 1, xi. 24). “Extol not thyself” (vi. 2). We find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16–19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good (xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2); treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); “Judge of thy neighbor by thyself” (xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18–20); he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not sacrifice (xxxv. 2).

These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances attributed to him may be made clear.4 Apart from the importations of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see, by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.

It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.

The story of the woman taken in adultery, known to have been in the suppressed “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” and by some strange chance preserved in the fourth gospel (viii), I believe to have really occurred. It would have required a first-century Boccaccio to invent such a story, and I cannot discover anything similar in Eastern or in Oriental books. Augustine says that some had removed it from their manuscripts, “I imagine, out of fear that impunity of sin was granted to their wives.” It is not likely that any of the earlier fathers, any more than the later, would have invented so dangerous a story.

Another anecdote, preserved only in the fourth Gospel, probably contains some elements of truth, namely, the words uttered to the Samaritan woman. Who would have been bold enough, even had he been liberal enough, to invent the words: “Neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father”? Even in the one Gospel that ventures to preserve it this noble catholicity is immediately retracted (John iv. 22) in a verse which obviously interrupts the idea. That the story is an early one is also suggested by the fact that no reproach to the woman on account of her many husbands is inserted. It is remarkable to find such a story related without any word about sin and forgiveness.

The so-called “Sermon on the Mount” is well named: it is evidently made up of reports of sermons in amplification of sayings of Jesus in the style of the Wisdom Books, among which probably were:

The following sentences in the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” do not appear to have been very seriously influenced by post-resurrectional ideas.

These instructions have no connotations of the end of the world. They appear like the words of a man of the world, but not a man of the people. There is a certain unity in them, indicating a mind more developed than the semi-Jahvist Alexandrian philosophers of the later Wisdom cult, as represented by Jesus Ben Sira’s “Wisdom,” and by the “Wisdom of Solomon”; also a mind more practical.

But these wise sayings do not convey the full idea of a man whose execution the Sanhedrim would require, nor a man whose resurrection from the grave would be looked for by the populace. These two phenomenal facts imply some strong antagonism to the priesthood and their system. Martyrdoms do not occur for ethical generalizations, much less for philosophical affirmations. The faith that strikes deep is that which speaks in great denials.

Trying to follow his advice to “Become proved bankers,” we may detect in some probable sayings of Jesus a transitional ring, e. g., “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” The effort at self-emancipation is still more traceable in certain incidents related in the “Gospel according to the Hebrews”:

That a man should regard the Holy Spirit as unable to make men infallible; that he should have discovered immoral utterances in the prophets; that he should regard it as a sign of enlightenment to disregard the Sabbath deliberately and intelligently—this is surely all very striking.

Who, in the second century, could have invented these anecdotes about Jesus? They are not harmonious with the Pauline Epistles; their heretical character is proved by the repudiation of the Gospel containing them, while their genuineness is implicitly confessed by the ultimate suppression of that Gospel. For surely it cannot be supposed that such a work, well known in the fifth century, was lost; nor is there much doubt that any learned rationalist, if permitted the free range of all the libraries in Rome, without the presence of polite librarians, could bring to light that first-century Gospel, the only one written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

But, when we come to consider the mature and positive teachings of Jesus, there may be placed in the front a sentence preserved from the suppressed Gospel by Epiphanius, who writes (Haer. xxx. 16): “And they say that he both came, and (as their so-called Gospel has it) instructed them that he had come to dissolve the Sacrifices: ‘and unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease from you.’” Dr. Nicholson is shocked at this threat, and suspects the Ebionites of having altered what Jesus said. But surely it is a true and grand admonition by one superseding a phantasm of heavenly Egoism, demanding gifts from men for pacification, with the idea of a Father. Dr. Nicholson connects it, no doubt rightly, with Luke xiii. 1–3, which should probably read: “There were some present at that very season who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered, Think ye these Galileans were sinners rather than all other Galileans because they suffered these things? I tell you, No! And unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath will not cease from you.” That is, they would always be haunted by the delusion of a bloodthirsty god, a god of Wrath, and see a judgment, not only in every accident, but in every calamity wrought by fiendish men.

In his quotation from Hosea—“I desire charity, and not sacrifice”—Jesus speaks as if with a transitional accent, as compared with the declaration that sacrifices imply deified Wrath. The contempt of Ecclesiastes for “the sacrifice of fools who know not that they are doing evil” (v. 1), has here become a great and far-reaching affirmation, which must have impressed the orthodox Jews as atheism. For, although there are passages in several psalms and in the prophets which disparage sacrifice, they were all interpreted by the Rabbins, as now by Christian theologians, as meaning their purification and spiritualization—by no means their abolition. Indeed, this higher interpretation of sacrifices appears to have given them fresh lease; and in the time of Jesus, when to the priesthood remained only control over their religious ordinances, the sacrifices were apparently preserved with increased rigour. Jesus himself, unless the gospeller (Matt. v. 23, 24) has softened his language, had at one time only demanded that none should offer a gift at the altar until he had done justice to any who had aught against him. But a remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5) represents Jesus as going to the world with a quotation from Psalm xl. 6, 7, for a clause of which a parenthesis is given, saying:

The sentence preserved by Eusebius, however, shows that his attitude toward sacrifices was not merely to “lift” from men (Heb. x. 9, ??a??e?) the burden of sacrifice, but to denounce it as an offering to the devil. “Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath shall not cease from you.”

In this sentence “the Wrath” (? ????) is clearly a personification. It does not in the same form occur elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew and Mark report John the Baptist as speaking of “the impending wrath,” and Paul occasionally gives “Wrath” a quasi-personification (e. g., “children of Wrath,” Eph. ii. 1–3). These expressions, and the “destroyer” Abaddon or Apollyon, of Revelations ix. and (xii. 12) the devil “in great temper” (????), all show that the Jewish mind had become familiar with the idea of a dark and evil power quite detached from official relation to Jahveh, no longer “the wrath of God” executing divine judgments, but organized Violence, eager to afflict mankind as the creation of his enemy.

In the “Wisdom of Solomon” (xviii.) there is a complete picture of the two opposing Destroyers. The divine destroyer (“thine Almighty Word”) leaps down with his sword and slays the firstborn of Egypt; the antagonist Destroyer begins the same kind of work among the Israelites in Egypt, but Moses by prayer and the “propitiation of incense” sets himself “against the Wrath” and overcomes him,—“not with physical strength, nor force of arms, but with a word.” The incense used by Moses to put the demon to flight recalls the “perfume” used by Tobit, on the advice of the angel, to put to flight Asmodeus; and Asmodeus is notoriously the Persian AÊshma, a name meaning “Wrath,” who occupies so large space in the ParsÎ scriptures.5 The especial antagonist of AÊshma “of the wounding spear,” is Sraosha, “the incarnate Word, a mighty-speared god.” (Farvardin Yast, 85.) As Moses overcomes “the Wrath” “with a word,” Zoroaster is given a form of words to conquer AÊshma (“Praise to ArmaÎti, the propitious!”) and the VendÎdÂd says, “The fiend becomes weaker and weaker at every one [repetition] of those words.” The ZamyÂd Yast says, “The Word of falsehood smites, but the Word of truth shall smite it.” AÊshma is the child of Ahriman, the Deceiver of the World, and a ParsÎ would recognize him in the declaration ascribed to Jesus, “The devil is a liar and so is his father.” (John viii. 44.)

That Jesus regarded the whole realm of evil as absolutely antagonistic to the Good is reflected in the epistle “To the Hebrews.” There his mission is to abolish the devil (ii. 14), which is very different from abolishing death (2 Tim. i. 10). For a long time the devil was suppressed in the “Lord’s Prayer,” but in that brief collection of Talmudic ejaculations the only original thing is, “Deliver us from the evil one.” In the Clementine Homilies Jesus is quoted as having said, “The evil one is the tempter,” and “Give not a pretext to the evil one.” Nay, the single clause preserved in Matthew, that it is an enemy that sows tares,—these being as much parts of nature as corn,—is a sentence that divides the Ahrimanic creation from the Ahuramazdean creation as clearly and profoundly as anything ascribed to Zoroaster.

Theological harmonists have for centuries been at work on the contrarious doctrines of all scriptures, and even among the ParsÎs some kind of metaphysical alliance has taken place between the Kingdoms of Good and Evil. Devout Christians find it quite consistent that one person of the trinity should say, “I create good and I create evil,” and another person of the trinity should say of natural evil, “An enemy hath done this.” But no such harmony existed in the Jerusalem of Jesus. Under a teaching that symbolized the deity as the Sun, shining alike on the thankful and thankless, individually, desiring no sacrifices, and concentrating human effort against the forces of evil in nature, in society—the evil principle—Jahveh falls like lightning from heaven. Like “the blameless man” of the “Wisdom of Solomon,” Jesus “sets himself against the Wrath,” however sanctified as the Wrath of God, and sees all sacrifices as eucharists of the Adversary. He not only repudiates the name “Jahveh,” but tells the official agents of Jahvism that their god is his devil. (John viii. 44).

Of course one can only refer cautiously to anything in the fourth Gospel, for it is a composite book, but it contains, as I believe, passages or fragments of the early apostolic theology, wherein dualism, until crushed by Paul, was prominent, and the good God represented in hard struggle with Satan for the rescue of mankind.

This aspect of the teaching of Jesus cannot be dealt with here as its importance deserves. We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus Jewish monotheism has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the moral perfection and benevolence of the deity, which is certainly inconsistent with his omnipotence, or his “permission” of the tares in nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed by Jesus; and, also, that it was so subversive of sacrifices, priesthood, and the very foundations of the temple—all dependent on Jahveh’s menaces—that the execution of Jesus appears more rationally explicable by this dualistic propaganda than by any other ascribed to him.

It was the birth of a new God that moved Jerusalem: a unique God in Judea—and almost unknown in modern Christendom—namely, a Good God. As the Arabian gospel significantly relates, the Eastern Wise Men came to the cradle of Jesus as that of a saviour “prophesied by Zoroaster,”—the one prophet who separated deity from the realm of evil.

It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. “Then was brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his dominion stand?”

Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan.

And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil, and who even had lying spirits in his employ.

Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than the personification of a power representing both the good and the evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood, as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.

That Jesus did not adopt the Zoroastrian theology is shown in his hostility to sacrifices which are of vital importance in the ParsÎ system, though they were not of the cruel kind; nor, as we have seen, were they to propitiate gods, but to assist them. Moreover, belief in Ahriman had naturally evoked a militant spirit in the war against evil, and Jesus seems to have for this reason separated himself from the dervish, John the Baptist, whose violence had landed him in prison. The incident (Matt. xi.) is so wrapped in post-resurrectional phraseology that any rational interpretation must be conjectural; but there is a certain accent about it which can hardly be explained as part of the evangelical doctrine that the Baptist was a mere preface to Christ. Jesus seems to regard John the Baptizer as the ablest man of his time (verse 11), but as of a revolutionary spirit, as if the reformation were a siege against some political kingdom or throne. Violent people had been pressing around John, and the cause of spiritual liberation had suffered. There was too much of the old law with its thunders, too much of fiery Elijah, surviving in John. The ideal is not a thing to be clutched at, or taken by force, but all of the conditions—every tittle—must be fulfilled. (Luke xvi. 17.)

This is in substance a doctrine of evolution as opposed to revolution, and my interpretation may be suspected of rationalistic anachronism; but it must be remembered that the Golden Age behind Israel was an epoch of Peace, which was represented in the ancient name of their city (Salem), and of its greatest monarch, Solomon. The prophets had long been painting the visionary dawn with pigments of that glorious sunset. Solomon, true to his name, had allowed dismemberment of his kingdom rather than go to war against rebellion; and it is noticeable that in the apostolic age there was a principle against carnal weapons, the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 3, 4) especially reminding the brethren of the patient endurance of Jesus, and commending their not having “resisted unto blood.” This peacefulness of Jesus had indeed become a basis of the doctrine that the triumph of Jesus over Satan was conditioned on his not using any force, or other satanic weapon. Those who took to the sword would perish thereby—i. e., remain in sheol.

But in a realm of practically oppressive and cruel superstitions, established and consecrated, an absolute appeal to the moral sentiment cannot escape being revolutionary. The American Anti-Slavery Society were non-resistants; their great leader, William Lloyd Garrison, thus apostrophised his “elder brother” of Jerusalem:

“O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love—of uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against ‘principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’; therefore hast thou put on the whole armor of God, having the loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and going forth to battle with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit! Worthy of imitation art thou, in overcoming the evil that is in the world; for by the shedding of thine own blood, but not even the blood of thy bitterest foe, shalt thou at last obtain a universal victory.”

So, across the ages, does deep answer unto deep. But all the same Garrison’s feet were unconsciously shod with the preparation of the gospel of war, even as those of Jesus were. In a realm of consecrated wrong every appeal to the moral sentiment is necessarily revolutionary; far more so than physical rebellion, against which preponderant moral forces combine with the immoral, as being a greater evil than the orderly wrong assailed. Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub. A god of wrath, enthroned on reeking altars, could better stand the axe of the Baptist than the sunbeam of Jesus, the arrow feathered with gentleness and culture. John the Baptist was not a religious martyr; he suffered from a ruler quite indifferent to his religion, with whose personal affairs he had interfered. But Jesus suffered because he proclaimed, with irresistible eloquence, a new religion, one involving practically the existing institutions of the priesthood, and their whole moral system. It was virtually the setting up of a new deity in place of Jahveh, reason in place of the Bible, the heart worshipping in spirit and in truth in place of the temple, and humanizing the moral sentiment—turning the conventional morality to “dead works” (Heb. vi. 1). He expected the reform to be peaceful!

Rousseau’s remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments have been made to prove that he did not die at all on “the cross” (a word unknown to the New Testament),6 and that Pilate not only “set himself” to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father, and exacted only by the Devil.

Did he pray, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”? Only Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him, and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true.

The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple “whom he loved,” told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan’s agent, on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediÆval folklore.

The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the “Wisdom of Solomon”: the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, “My master!” From that time may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh!