CHAPTER XV.

THE PAULINE DEHUMANIZATION OF JESUS.

The Queen of Sheba certainly deserved her exaltation as the Hebrew Athena, and the homage paid to her by Jesus, for journeying so far simply to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In Jewish and Christian folklore are many miraculous tales about the Queen's visit, but in the Biblical records, in the books of "Kings" and "Chronicles," the only miracle is the entire absence of anything marvellous, magical, or even occult. The Queen was impressed by Solomon's science, wisdom, the edifices he had built, the civilization he had brought about; they exchanged gifts, and she departed. It is a strangely rational history to find in any ancient annals.

The saying of Jesus cited by Clement of Alexandria, "He that hath marvelled shall reign," uttered perhaps with a sigh, tells too faithfully how small has been the interest of grand people in the wisdom that is "clear, undefiled, plain." They are represented rather by the beautiful and wealthy Marchioness in "Gil Blas," whose favour was sought by the nobleman, the ecclesiastic, the philosopher, the dramatist, by all the brilliant people, but who set them all aside for an ape-like hunchback, with whom she passed many hours, to the wonder of all, until it was discovered that the repulsive creature was instructing her ladyship in cabalistic lore and magic.

There is much human pathos in this longing of mortals to attain to some kind of real and intimate perception beyond the phenomenal universe, and to some personal assurance of a future existence; but it has cost much to the true wisdom of this world. Some realization of this may have caused the sorrow of Jesus at Dalmanutha, as related in Mark. "The Pharisees came forth and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, testing him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why does this people seek a sign? I say plainly unto you no sign will be given them. And he left them, and reëntering the boat departed to the other side."

They who now long to know the real mind of Jesus are often constrained to repeat his deep sigh when they find the most probable utterances ascribed to him perverted by the marvel-mongers, insomuch that to the protest just quoted Matthew adds a self-contradictory sentence about Jonah. That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. But the deep sigh and the words of Jesus, taken in connection with the entire absence from the Epistles-the earliest New Testament documentsof any hint of a miracle wrought by him, is sufficient to bring us into the presence of a man totally different from the "Christ" of the four Gospels.*

Those who seek the real Jesus will find it the least part of their task to clear away the particular miracles *The name Jesus is used in these pages for the man, Christ being used for the supernatural or risen being.

ascribed to him; that is easy enough; the critical and difficult thing is to detach from the anecdotes and language connected with him every admixture derived from the belief in his resurrection. To do this completely is indeed impossible.

Paul, probably a contemporary of Jesus, knew well enough the vast difference between the man "Jesus" and the risen "Christ"; he insisted that the man should be ignored, and supplanted by the risen Christ, as revealed by private revelations received by himself after the resurrection. The student must now reverse that he must ignore those post-resurrectional revelations if he would know Jesus "after the flesh❞—that is, the real Jesus.

In an age when immortality is a familiar religious belief we can hardly realize the agitation, among a people to whom life after death was a vague, imported philosophy, excited by the belief that a man had been raised bodily from the grave. Immortality was no longer hypothesis. If to this belief be added the further conviction that this resurrection was preliminary to his speedy reappearance, and the world's sudden transformation, a mental condition could not fail to arise in which any ethical or philosophical ideas he might have uttered while "in the flesh" must be thrown into the background, as of merely casual or temporary importance. Such is the state of mind reflected in the Pauline Epistles. In them is found no reference whatever to any moral instructions by Jesus. And when after some two generations had passed, and they who had expected while yet living to meet their returning Lord had died, those who had heard oral reports and legends concern

ing him and his teachings began to write the memoranda on which our Synoptical Gospels are based, it was too late to give these without adulterations from the apostolic ecstasy. His casual or playful remarks were by this time discoloured and distorted, and enormously swollen, as if under a solar microscope, by the overwhelming conceptions of a resurrection, an approaching advent, a subversion of all nationalities and institutions.

The most serious complication arises from the extent to which the pretended revelations of Paul have been built into the Gospels. The so-called "conversion of Paul" was really the conversion of Jesus. The facts can only be gathered from Paul's letters, the book of "Acts" being hardly more historical than "Robinson Crusoe." The account in "Acts" of Paul's "conversion" is, however, of interest as indicating a purpose in its writers to raise Paul into a supernatural authority equivalent to that ascribed to Christ, in order that he might set aside the man Jesus. The story is a travesty of that related in the "Gospel According to the Hebrews," concerning the baptism of Jesus: "And a voice out of the heaven saying, ‘Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased': and again, 'I have this day begotten thee.' And straightway a great light shone around the place. And when John saw it he saith to him, 'Who art thou, Lord?" John fell down before Jesus as did Paul before Christ. "At midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me, and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is

hard for thee to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who art thou, Lord?'" (Precisely what John said to Jesus at the baptism.)

This story (Acts xxvi. 13-15), quite inconsistent with Paul's letters, is throughout very ingenious. Besides associating Paul with the supernatural consecration of Jesus, it replies, by calling him Saul, to the Ebionite declaration that Paul had been a pagan, who had become a Jewish proselyte with the intention of marrying the High Priest's daughter. There is no reason to suppose that Paul was ever called Saul during his life, and his salutation of two kinsmen in Rome with Latin names, Andronicus and Junias (Romans xvi. 7), renders it probable that he was not entirely if at all Hebrew. The sentence, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," is a subtle answer to any who might think it curious that the story of the resurrection carried no conviction to Paul's mind at the time of its occurrence by suggesting that in continuing his persecutions he was going against his real belief-kicking against the goad.

Paul, however, knows nothing of this theatrical conversion in his letters. But in severe competition with other "preeminent apostles," who were preaching “another Christ" from his, he pronounces them accursed, supporting an authority above theirs by declaring that he had repeated interviews with the risen Christ, and on one occasion had been taken up into the third heaven and even into Paradise! The extremes to which Paul was driven by the opposing apostles are illustrated in his intimidation of dissenting converts by his pretence to an occult power of withering up the flesh of those whom he disapproves (1 Cor. v. 5). He tells Timothy of two men, Hymenous and Alexander, whom he thus