CHAPTER I

JESUS THE PEASANT-POET OF GALILEE

I

JESUS wrote nothing.

He was content to follow the method traditional among his people, the method of oral instruction to a few disciples, varied by occasional discourses to larger assemblies, fearlessly hazarding his golden precepts upon the memories of his hearers. In this he was by no means unique. Of the world's paramount religious teachers, Siddhartha, Zoroaster and Socrates also left their disciples to gather up and commit to writing the maxims of their Masters. Only Confucius and Mohammed left behind them a written word for which they were personally responsible.

We do not know, in the case of Jesus, if this method was matter of choice or of necessity. He may have been unable to write, as Mohammed seems to have been. The incident of the Pericope, where he is described as writing on the ground(') is indecisive, for he may only have appeared to spectators to be writing words: and it is not in harmony with another passage of undoubted genuineness in the same Gospel, "How does this fellow know letters,

(1) John 8:6, 8. But the entire Pericope (John 7:53-8:11) is now recognized as an interpolation in this Gospel of an incident doubtless true, but belonging originally to some other book. This makes such a detail of the story as the alleged writing of Jesus less convincing. By a decision of the Holy Office, February 13, 1897, confirmed two days later by the Pope, Catholic exegetes are required to believe that the Pericope is genuine and an integral part of the Fourth Gospel.

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having never learned ?" (1) It is true that "letters" Yoάuata may not be used here in the classic Greek sense of "rudiments," for we know from Josephus that it was a common word for "sacred learning." The only literature to a Jew was the Old Testament Scriptures. But the speakers at least intended to suggest that Jesus had been trained in no rabbinic school and we believed therefore to be practically illiterate.

The frequent quotations from the Old Testament in the sayings of Jesus have often been cited as evidencing a thorough acquaintance with the sacred writings of his people, so thorough as to presuppose both ability to read and much study. But a critical weighing of those quotations fairly warrants us in inferring only that Jesus attended regularly the synagogue, and perhaps a synagogue school at Nazareth, and that he had a good memory. He presumably received the usual instruction of a Galilean youth of his day, but just what that was we do not know. That it included oral instruction in the Law is as certain as it is uncertain whether it included anything else. Galilee of the year 1 A. D. was as much gentile as Jewish, and the common language of gentile Galilee was Greek; but what opportunities a youth like Jesus would have of acquiring a speaking knowledge of Greek is matter, not of evidence, but of unprofitable speculation. Even if Jesus spoke any language other than the vernacular of Galilee, that he was acquainted with any literature but that of his own people is most improbable. No re

(1) John 7:15. Those who accept the story of Luke 4:16-30 as entirely historical cannot well deny the ability of Jesus to read the Hebrew rolls of the synagogue. Many have pointed out that it was already in his time esteemed a religious duty to teach every Jewish child to read the Law. The boast of Josephus is well known: "If anyone asked one of his nation a question respecting the Law, he could answer it more readily than give his own name; for he learns every part of it from the first dawn of intelligence, till it is graven into his very soul." C. Apion, ii 18. But this may mean memoriter instruction, not learning to read.

ligious teacher ever owed less to instruction, we may safely conclude, or was more utterly thrown back upon himself for his religious ideas. Therefore, of all choice spirits of the past to whom we of the present look for light and leading, Jesus was most original. His schooling was of the slightest; God and nature were his teachers; and he became deeply learned in the lore of sky and field and flower, not in the lore of books.

In the case of any teacher who pursues the oral method exclusively, whose words are for an indefinite period handed on from lip to lip, and not published for a generation or more after his death, it becomes a question as inevitable as it is serious. How nearly do these reports of his teaching correspond to his actual words? How far were these misunderstood by those who heard, distorted by memory and travestied by tradition, before they were committed to writing? How many recensions of the words of Jesus have we, and just what authority is to be attributed to each? What proportion of the sayings truly represent his own personality, and what should be credited to the personalities of the various reporters?

The doctrine of inspiration grew up in the second century largely to answer these questions. Its aim was to give unequivocal assurance to Christians that the Gospels were at once authentic and authoritative. This met the difficulty for the time, and for some centuries there was no questioning of the authenticity of the words of Jesus, save on the part of a few bold spirits that from time to time questioned everything, and mostly got themselves burned for their enterprise. But when, during the Renaissance, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was revived, and critical study of the original Scriptures began anew, the doubts and questionings reappeared. It was noted that not one of the Gospels gives the slightest hint that its author supposed himself to have received

any unusual, not to say supernatural, assistance in the composition of his book; while the author of the third Gospel distinctly claims to have made use of the ordinary methods of research employed by other historians, in order to discover the facts and set them forth in fuller and better form than his predecessors.

The great leaders of the Reformation were not without some comprehension of facts like these. Erasmus, Luther and Calvin, differing about almost everything else, were agreed in doubting the inspiration and authority of some books of the New Testament canon. But this first tendency towards a free handling of the New Testament documents was quickly checked by the controversial necessity, which all Protestants realized, of having an infallible Bible to cite in opposition to an infallible Church. The result was a tightening of the doctrine of inspiration, an assertion by Protestants generally of a more extreme view of the inerrancy of Scripture than had ever been held by the Roman Church.

But it was perceived after a little that this was but a falsidic solution-that a doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the New Testament made the difficulties much worse than they were before the doctrine was promulgated. There were patent and grave differences between the discourses of Jesus as reported in the fourth Gospel and those of the other three, the so-called Synoptic Gospels-differences that might perhaps be successfully accounted for, but that in any case demanded explanation. Not only so, but the same discourse was often variously reported in the Synoptics. True, these variations did not often affect the substance of a discourse, but they often did affect the form much; and sometimes form is important, not seldom it is vital. For example, take the two versions of the Beatitudes. follows:

Luke gives them as