Part 11

M. Daille, another learned and impartial French writer, in his celebrated work, the "Use of the Fathers," says:

"We find them saying things which they did not themselves believe. They are mutually witnesses against each other, that they are not to be believed absolutely on their bare word."

In book 1, chapter 6, he states upon the authority of St. Jerome, that:

"Origin, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollonaris, have written largely against Celsus and Porphyry. Do but observe their manner of arguing, and what slippery problems they used. They alleged against the Gentiles, not what they believed, but what they thought necessary."

Jerome himself adds:

"I forbear mentioning the Latin writers, as Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hiliary, lest I should rather seem to accuse others than defend myself."

Daille adds of the fathers:

"They made no scruple to forge whole books."

An able writer in the Eclectic Review of 1814, page 179, speaks of the fathers in this way:

"When we consider the number of gospels, acts, epistles, revelations, traditions, and constitutions which were put in circulation during the first three centuries, and which are unquestionably spurious, we find sufficient reason for examining with care and receiving with extreme caution productions attributed to eminent men in the primitive church. Some of the early Christians do not seem to have possessed in some points a nice sense of moral obligation. The writing of books under false names, and the circulating of fables, were not accounted violations of duty; or, if the impropriety of such conduct was felt, the end proposed--the promotion of the Christian cause--was thought to justify the means employed for the accomplishment. (From D. M. Bennett's "Answers to Christian Questions," p. 78-80.)

Jesus Not a Historical Character.

The following very pertinent argument is made use of by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould in his "Lost and Hostile Gospels": "It is somewhat remarkable that no contemporary, or even early account of the life of our Lord exists, except from the pen of Christian writers. That we have none by Greek or Roman writers is not, perhaps, to be wondered at; but it is singular that neither Philo, Josephus, nor Justus of Tiberius, should ever have alluded to Christ or to primitive Christianity. Philo was born at Alexandria about twenty years before Christ. In the year A. D. 40 he was sent by the Alexandrian Jews on a mission to Caligula, to entreat the emperor not to put in force his order that his statue should be erected in the temple of Jerusalem and in all the synagogues of the Jews. Philo was a Pharisee. He traveled in Palestine, and speaks of the Essenes he saw there; but he says not a word about Jesus Christ or his followers. It is possible that he may have heard of the new sect, but he probably concluded it was but insignificant, and consisted merely of the disciples, poor and ignorant, of a Galilean rabbi, whose doctrines he, perhaps did not stay to inquire into, and supposed they did not differ fundamentally from the traditional teaching of the rabbis of his day."

The Spurious Passage in Josephus.

"At this time lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed he ought to be called a man]; for he performed wonderful works [he was a teacher of men who received the truth with gladness]; and he drew to him many Jews and also many Greeks. [This was the Christ.] But when Pilate, at the instigation of our chiefs, had condemned him to crucifixion, they who at first loved him did not cease; [for he appeared to them on the third day again; for the divine prophets had foretold this, together with many other wonderful things concerning him], and even to this time the community of Christians called after him, continues to exist."

That this passage is spurious has been almost universally acknowledged. One may be accused perhaps of killing dead birds, if one again examines and discredits the passage; but as the silence of Josephus on the subject which we are treating is a point on which it will be necessary to insist, we cannot omit as brief a discussion as possible of the celebrated passage.

The passage is first quoted by Eusebius (fl. A. D. 315) in two places (Hist. Eccl. lib. 1. c. 11; Demonst. Evang. lib. 3.), but it was unknown to Justin Martyr (fl. A. D. 140), Clement of Alexandria (fl. A. D. 192), Tertullian (fl. A. D. 193), and Origen (fl. A. D. 230). Such a testimony would certainly have been produced by Justin in his apology, or in his controversy with Trypho the Jew, had it existed in the copies of Josephus at his time. The silence of Origen is still more significant. Celsus in his book against Christianity introduces a Jew. Origen attacks the arguments of Celsus and his Jew. He could not have failed to quote the words of Josephus, whose writings he knew, had the passage existed in the genuine text. He indeed distinctly affirms that Josephus did not believe in Christ. (Contra. Celsus 1.)

Again the paragraph interrupts the chain of ideas in the original text. Before this passage comes an account of how Pilate, seeing there was a want of pure drinking water in Jerusalem, conducted a stream into the city from a spring two hundred stadia distant, and ordered that the cost should be defrayed out of the treasury of the Temple. This occasioned a riot. Pilate disguised Roman soldiers as Jews, with swords under their cloaks, and sent them among the rabble, with orders to arrest the ringleaders. This was done. The Jews finding themselves set upon by other Jews, fell into confusion; one Jew attacked another, and the whole company of rioters melted away. "And in this manner," says Josephus, "was this insurrection suppressed." Then follows the paragraph about Jesus, beginning, "At this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man," etc., and the passage is immediately followed by, "About this time another misfortune threw the Jews into disturbance; and in Rome an event happened in the temple of Isis which produced great scandal." And then he tells an indelicate story of religious deception which need not be repeated here. The misfortune which befell the Jews was, as he afterward relates, that Tiberius drove them out of Rome. The reason of this was, he says, that a noble Roman lady who had become a proselyte, had sent gold and purple to the temple at Jerusalem. But this reason is not sufficient. It is clear from what precedes--a story of sacerdotal fraud--that there was some connection between the incidents in the mind of Josephus. Probably the Jews had been guilty of religious deceptions in Rome, and had made a business of performing cures and expelling demons, with talismans, and incantations, and for this had obtained rich payment.

From the connection that exists between the passage about the "other misfortune which befell the Jews," and the former one about the riot suppressed by Pilate, it appears evident that the whole of the paragraph concerning our Lord is an interpolation. That Josephus could not have written the passage as it stands, is clear enough, for only a Christian would speak of Jesus in the terms employed. Josephus was a Pharisee and a Jewish priest; he shows in all his writings that he believes in Judaism.

It has been suggested that Josephus may have written about Christ as in the passage quoted, but that the portions within brackets are the interpolations of a Christian copyist. But when these portions within brackets are removed, the passage loses all its interest and is a dry statement utterly unlike the sort of notice Josephus would have been likely to insert. He gives color to his narratives; his incidents are always sketched with vigor; this account would be meagre besides those of the riot of the Jews and the rascality of the priests of Isis. Josephus asserts, moreover, that in his time there were four sects among the Jews--the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the sect of Judas of Gamala. He gives tolerably copious particulars about these sects, and their teachings, but of the Christian sect he says not a word. Had he wished to write about it, he would have given full details, likely to interest his readers, and not have dismissed the subject in a couple of lines.

It was perhaps felt by the early Christians that the silence of Josephus, so famous a historian and a Jew, on the life, miracles, and death of the founder of Christianity was extremely inconvenient; the fact could not fail to be noticed by their adversaries. Some Christian transcriber may have argued, either Josephus knew nothing of the miracles performed by Christ--in which case he is a weighty testimony against them--or he must have heard of Jesus, but not having deemed his acts, as they were related to him, of sufficient importance to find a place in history. Arguing thus, the copyist took the opportunity of rectifying the omission, written from the stand point of a Pharisee, and therefore designated the Lord as merely a wise man. (D. M. Bennett in "Jesus Christ.")

That this paragraph, concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, is not Josephus's but an interpolation, is argued from these several following considerations:

1. It is not quoted or referred to by any Christian writer before Eusebius, who flourished at the beginning of the fourth century, and afterward.

2. This paragraph was wanting in the copies of Josephus which were seen by Photius, in the ninth century.

3. It interrupts the course of the narration.

4. It is unsuitable to the general character of Josephus, who is allowed not to have been a Christian.

5. If Josephus were the author of this paragraph, it would be reasonable to expect in him frequent mention of Christ's miracles; whereas he is everywhere else silent about them.

6. The word Christ or Messiah appears not in any place in all the works of Josephus, excepting two; namely, the paragraph which we have been considering, which is now in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities; and another in the twentieth book of the name Antiquities where is mention made of James, the brother Jesus who is called 'Christ.' (Works of N. Lardner, vol. 7, pp. 14, 15.)

EUSEBIUS.

The Father of Church History.

In referring to his work of writing a history of the church up to his own times, he says:

"We are attempting a kind of trackless and unbeaten path."

Again he says of Philo Judæus that he was a very "learned man." Among many other things which contradict this estimate, is the fact that Philo takes more than one hundred pages in showing how that dreams are sent from God.

Again, Eusebius does not say that the last works of Hegesippus, Papias and Dionysius of Corinth, contain anything concerning the canonical gospels; therefore, they contained none.

We give the opinion of a few well-known writers upon this "father of church history":

In Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 197, Bunsen and Niebuhr are quoted--the one (Bunsen) as saying that he purposely "perverted chronology for the sake of making synchronisms," and the other (Niebuhr) declaring "he is a very dishonest writer."

"Eusebius had a peculiar faculty of diverging from the truth." ("History of Christian Religion," p. 7.)

"The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius, himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion." (Gibbon's "Rome," vol. 1, p. 493.)

"In one of the most learned and elaborate works that antiquity has left us, the thirty-second chapter of the twelfth book of his evangelical preparation, bears for its title this scandalous proposition: 'How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.'" (Gibbon's "Vindication," p. 76.)

"But Eusebius, the father of church history, capped the climax by fabricating the celebrated passage about "Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him such." ("Anti-Christ," p. 28.)

"He (Eusebius) has frankly told us that his principle in writing history was to conceal the facts that were injurious to the reputation of the church." (Lecky's "European Morals," vol. 1, p. 492.)

"Eusebius, who would never lie or falsify except to promote the glory of God." (Taylor's Diegesis, p. 345.)

Eusebius pronounces a panegyric upon Constantine. The following is the list of Constantine's murders as given by Robert Taylor:

[**TODO: Verify table] Maximinian, his wife's father A. D. 310 Bassianus, his sister Anastacia's husband A. D. 314 Licinianus, his nephew by Constantina A. D. 319 Fausta, his wife A. D. 320 Sopater, his former friend A. D. 321 Licinius, his sister Constantina's husband A. D. 325 Crispus, his own son A. D. 326

And the church still continues to regard these two persons as holy men of God, raised up for a wise purpose--the one an open, wholesale murderer, and the other a cowardly, cunning and corrupt priest. The vast injury they have done the human race can never be computed. They poisoned the fountains of civilization, and all Christendom has been drinking its poisoned waters ever since. If there are anywhere in history two men who have done their fellow men more positive harm and wrong, I do not know them. Their names should be held up to eternal scorn.

Baronius, a sincere advocate of the Christian faith, calls Eusebius: "the great falsifier of ecclesiastical history, a wily sychophant, a consummate hypocrite, a time serving persecutor, who had nothing in his known life or writings to support the belief that he himself believed in the Christian system."

Eusebius is the source from whom all have drawn their material. Of him Dean Milman in a note to Gibbon's Rome says: "It is deeply to be regretted that the history of this period rests so much on the loose, and, it must be admitted, by no means scrupulous authority of Eusebius." (Page 85.)

Spurious Writings of the Early Church.

"Not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance." (Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History.")

"Christian churches had scarcely been gathered and organized when here and there men rose up who, not being contented with the simplicity and purity of that religion which the apostles taught, attempted innovations, and fashioned religion according to their own liking." (Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. 1, c. 5.)

"To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit, unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity." (Extract from Bower's "Lives of the Popes.")

"This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to remove out of the way whatever may be an hindrance to it. Neither ought we to wonder that even those of the honest, innocent, primitive times made use of these deceits, seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books." (Daille on the Use of the Fathers, b. 1, c. 3.)

The Bible Not an Inspired Revelation.

"What would be the characteristics of a revelation? 1st. A revelation would be free from inherent contradictions. Does the New Testament revelation stand this test? 2d. A revelation would not contradict natural laws, for nature is the only undisputed revelation to man. 3d. A revelation would be so authenticated that it would be more reasonable to admit than to deny its claims. The history of thousands of years proves that, so far, no revelation has been made that compels the mind's assent, as thousands of thinking men reject the so-called revelation of the New Testament. The New Testament does not claim infallibility for itself; and proving that a book is infallible does not prove that it was inspired, else we might claim inspiration for the problems of Euclid." (Anon.)

"When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it, than his telling them so; and I have no authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator, could produce himself without having recourse to supernatural intervention." (Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason.")

"Revelation is a communication of something which the person, to whom that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it." (Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason.")

"If it was worth God's while to make a revelation to man at all, it was certainly worth his while to see to it that it was correctly made. He would not have allowed the ideas and mistakes of pretended prophets and designing priests to become so mingled with the original text that it is impossible to tell where he ceased and where the priests and prophets began. Neither will it do to say that God adapted his revelation to the prejudices of mankind. Of course it was necessary for an infinite being to adapt his revelation to the intellectual capacity of man; but why should God confirm a barbarian in his prejudices? Why should he fortify a heathen in his crimes? If a revelation is of any importance whatever, it is to eradicate prejudices from the human mind. It should be a lever with which to raise the human race. Theologians have exhausted their ingenuity in finding excuses for God. It seems to me that they would be better employed in finding excuses for men. They tell us that the Jews were so cruel and ignorant that God was compelled to justify, or nearly to justify, many of their crimes, in order to have any influence with them whatever. They tell us that if he had declared slavery and polygamy to be criminal, the Jews would have refused to receive the ten commandments. They insist that, under the circumstances, God did the best he could; that his real intention was to lead them along slowly, step by step, so that, in a few hundred years they would be induced to admit that it was hardly fair to steal a babe from its mother's breast. It has always seemed reasonable that an infinite God ought to have been able to make man grand enough to know, even without a special revelation, that it is not altogether right to steal the labor, or the wife, or the child of another. When the whole question is thoroughly examined, the world will find that Jehovah had the prejudices, the hatreds, and superstitions of his day.

"If there is anything of value, it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of life. Without it the world is a prison and the universe an infinite dungeon.

"If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him, like a panorama, moved the history yet to be. He knew exactly how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that brave men would languish in dungeons, in darkness, filled with pain; that the church would use the instruments of torture, and that his followers would appeal to whip and chain. He must have seen the horizon of the future red with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew all the creeds that would spring like poisoned fungi from every text. He saw the sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building dungeons for their fellow men. He saw them using instruments of pain. He heard the groans, saw the faces white with agony, the tears, the blood--heard the shrieks and sobs of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of faggots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of teachings attributed to him. He saw all the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these burnings, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh, that cradles would be robbed, and woman's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world, that man should not persecute, for opinion's sake, his fellow man? Why did he not cry, You shall not persecute in my name; you shall not burn and torment those who differ from you in creed? Why did he not plainly say, I am the Son of God? Why did he not explain the doctrine of the trinity? Why did he not tell the manner of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not say something positive, definite, and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven to the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?

"You may ask, And what of all this? I reply, As with everything in nature, so with the Bible. It has a different story for each reader. Is, then, the Bible a different book to every human being who reads it? It is. Can God, through the Bible, make precisely the same revelation to two persons? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is not inspired. God should inspire readers as well as writers.

"You may reply: God knew that his book would be understood differently by each one, and intended that it should be understood as it is understood by each. If this is so, then my understanding of the Bible is the real revelation to me. If this is so, I have no right to take the understanding of another. I must take the revelation made to me through my understanding, and by that revelation I must stand. Suppose, then, that I read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through am compelled to say, 'The book is not true.' If this is the honest result, then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or that the revelation that it is not true is the revelation made to me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book. The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the credulity of him who reads. There was a time when its geology, its astronomy, its natural history, were thought to be inspired: that time has passed. There was a time when its morality satisfied the men who ruled the world of thought: that time has passed.

"These are the passages that have liberated woman!

"According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and had to be purified, for the crime of having borne sons and daughters. If in this world there is a figure of perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms her child. The doctrine that the woman is the slave, or serf, of man--whether it comes from heaven or from hell, from God or a demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem or from the very Sodom of perdition--is savagery, pure and simple.