Part 8

I need not detail to thee, Aglaophonos, what these acts and words were which have given me an altogether new light as to the character and thoughts of the man Jesus. From certain words of thine in thy letter, which I understood not then when I first read it, I can see now that thou must have had some such account of the life and death of Jesus before thee as this which Rufus hath shown unto me. Now I can understand wherefore thou hast inquired about this Jesus with such eager insistence. And to thee as a Gentile the revelation of his character would come with more attractive force than to us that be Jews. For in almost every way this Jesus fulfilleth the idea of a Jew as we have it in these later days. Working with his hands, yet teaching with his voice; obedient to the Law, yet ever eager to take a new law upon himself; doing acts of love among men, yet rebuking in love their ill acts, and doing all things as in the presence of the Glory;—in all this Jesus was as the best of our Sages.

“Wherefore, then, did ye suffer him to be killed?” thou wilt ask me, and indeed I ask myself. If I were to answer thee in the way Jesus was wont to answer us, I would say, “Why did ye Hellenes condemn Socrates to the hemlock?” For he was as much the Ideal of the Hellenes as Jesus of the Jews. Every Hellene would be eloquent and reasonable, and that was Socrates. Every Jew would be wise and good and pious, and that was Jesus. Yet each of these men, if I read their lives aright, died the death of a criminal, because he cared not for that which his fellow‐countrymen cared for most. Socrates died because he would force his countrymen to examine by their reason the ideas and ideals which they all accepted. Jesus died for the same reason, but also for another—for that he cared naught for our national hopes. We were all panting for national freedom; he would have naught of it. Whether it was that he felt in some sort to be not of our nation, I know not; but in all his teaching he dealt with us as men, not as Jews. It is this, I can see, that has attracted thee to his doctrine, whereas thou wert always scornful of our Jewish pretensions, as thou calledst them.

Yet herein again was he at one with the best thoughts of our Sages. Our God is the God of all, and his Law shall be one day the Law of all. If we yearn for the universal realm of the Messiah, it is as much for the sake of the world as for ourselves. But methinks I see in the thoughts of this Jesus an idea quite other than ours as to what the Anointed One shall be and shall do. We hope for him as a Deliverer and a Conqueror with force of arms by God’s aid. Now, Jesus seemed not to think of the Anointed One in any way like this. His mind seemed to be filled rather with the picture of the Servant of God as drawn by the Prophet Esaias. Thou knowest the passage, Aglaophonos; I remember thy laughter when first I read it thee, that men could look forward to contempt and hatred as a good. Truly the idea is far different from the saying of the barbarian, “Woe to the conquered!” And surely to us all, Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, the greatest of joys is this—to worst an equal foe in fair fight. But to Esaias the prophet, and to Jesus the Nazarene after him, the higher victory is with him that is worsted in the battle of life. That will come as good tidings to nine out of every ten of men.

Therefore, if Jesus thought of himself as the Anointed One, it was as being anointed with the woes of the vanquished, with the sweat and the blood of the lowly and despised. Now I know why he seemed so sad when he was greeted at Jerusalem as a victor. He had spent his life in trying to impress a new ideal upon his people, and they had welcomed him only as the fulfilment of the old ideal which he desired to replace. None of thy poets have given a drama with more of _eironeia_ in it than this.

Yet why did he remain silent before us as to these ideas of his? If, indeed, these were his ideas; for even with the new light given by the Hebrew Memorabilia, I can see his thought but dimly. Why spake he not his own thought to the people in Jerusalem, and tell us no longer to hope for worldly dominion as the best means for spreading the Law of the Lord, but rather to be as servants of God, even as Esaias the Prophet hath spoken? Was it that he wished to carry out the description of the prophet even to every iota of his text? For, behold, the prophet sayeth, “He let himself be humbled, and opened not his mouth.” If so, then was the death of Jesus but a sublime suicide.

For surely by this silence he has committed a grievous sin against us his people. For if we committed aught of sin and crime that handed him over to the Romans as a pretender to empire, he indeed shared our sin and crime by his silence. Ye Hellenes were at least greater in fault than we in the matter of Socrates; for ye condemned him after he had spoken his whole mind and made known his whole thought to his people; whereas we condemned one who, I make bold to say, was even greater than thy Socrates, mainly because of what seemed to us his sullen and arrogant silence, broken only by a confession of guilt when he knew he was not guilty.

But yet, let me not be as harsh in judgment upon him after his death, as perhaps I was when I allowed the sentence to be declared against him without protest. He, least of all men, could have died with a lie upon his lips. In some sort and in some way he must have combined the thought of the triumphant Messiah and of the despised Servant of God. For in those Memorabilia of him which have come into my hands during the last days as being a message from him that is dead, I find these two things combined. He speaketh ever of the blessedness of the poor and the humble and the despised, even as the Ebionim speak. So that if a man would be blessed, he would choose a lowly career, even as did Jesus. Yet withal he speaketh oft of himself as the Son of Man, and every Jew that heard him would think he knew what he thereby claimed. For in the Prophets Daniel and Enoch it is clearly said that the Son of Man would come in victory over the world; and what other could this universal victor be than the Anointed One whom the prophets had foretold? If Jesus put another meaning upon the prophetic words, why spake he not his meaning fully unto the people? All we may have gone like sheep astray, but he that might have been our shepherd went apart alone with God.

O Jesus, why didst thou not show thyself to thy people in thy true character? Why didst thou seem to care not for aught that we at Jerusalem cared for? Why, arraigned before the appointed judges of thy people, didst thou keep silence before us, and, by thus keeping silent, share in pronouncing judgment upon thyself? We have slain thee as the Hellenes have slain Socrates their greatest, and our punishment will be as theirs. Then will Israel be even as thou wert, despised and rejected of men—a nation of sorrows among the nations. But Israel is greater than any of his sons, and the day will come when he will know thee as his greatest. And in that day he will say unto thee, “My sons have slain thee, O my son, and thou hast shared our guilt.”

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FOOTNOTES

1 This, like most other utterances of Jesus, found in this book but not in the Gospels, is also found in the early patristic literature.—ED.

2 _Ὄχλος τοῦ ἀγροῦ_, seemingly the translation of the Hebrew _עם הארץ_ used for those unlearned in the Law; this term seems to have passed through much the same history as “pagan.”—ED.

3 Each of the Jewish rabbis used to sum up his teaching in some pregnant sentence. These are given in the Talmudic treatise, _The Ethics of the Fathers_.—ED.

4 José ben Joeser said, “Let thy place be a place of meeting for the wise; dust thyself with the dust of their feet, and drink greedily of their teaching” (_Pirke Aboth_, i. 4).—ED.

5 The rabbis use this expression, _Bath Kol_, for any supernatural revelation.—ED.

6 This Logion is only found elsewhere in one MS. of the Gospels, viz., in the Codex Bezæ at Cambridge.—ED.

7 It must have been from a report of this discourse, and that given on p. 92, that the majority of those utterances of Jesus have been derived which are known in modern theology as “Agrapha.”—ED.

8 The gospel version reads “Samaritan.”—ED.

9 See note on p. 42.—ED.

10 _Bar Abba_ means “son of his father.”

11 _Bar Amma_ means “son of his mother.”—ED.

12 Probably the so‐called Primitive Gospel, the common foundation of our Synoptics. But the date is somewhat early.—ED.