A modern writer has shown that the story of the persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero (a. d. 54-68) is a modern fabrication. Robert Taylor, in his Diegesis published in 1829, proved that Cornelius Tacitus never could have written the passage describing such persecution. It has been demonstrated that the whole of the so-called Annals of Tacitus, containing the celebrated passage, was forged by a Papal secretary named Poggio Bracciolini. In 1422, while in the receipt of a small salary under Martin V., he was tempted by an offer of five hundred sequins (which would now be equal to fifty thousand dollars) to engage in some mysterious literary work. Seven years later, six books of what are now called the Annals of Tacitus were brought to him by a monk from Saxony. Then all Christendom rejoiced to learn that the heathen Tacitus had mentioned Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate. Poggio, though a father both spiritually and carnally, was not a husband till the age of fifty-four. At seventy-two he accepted the office of secretary to the republic of Florence, and at seventy-nine he died, leaving five sons of his old age. Up to the last he was a busy student and writer. Fifty-six years after his death his fourth son was secretary to Pope Leo X., at which time the pope’s steward, stimulated by a munificent reward, discovered the first six incomplete books of the Annals, being the unfinished work of Poggio in his old age.
The finding of ancient MSS. was a very lucrative business for scholars in those days. It began with Petrarch, who died in 1374, and did not end with Poggio, who died in 1459. Poggio discovered several orations of Cicero, a history by Ammianus Marcollinus, and several other classic works, besides the unclassic writings of Tertullian, the first Latin Father.
The modern fabrication of many of the ancient Latin and Greek MSS. is now becoming apparent. Jean Hardouin, a French Jesuit, died in 1729, aged eighty-three years. He was deeply versed in history, language, and numismatology. At the age of forty-four he began to suspect that certain writings of the Christian Fathers were spurious, and soon became convinced that none of them were genuine. Then turning his attention to the Greek and Latin classics, he found evidence sufficient to convince him that most of those also were forgeries, being fabricated by the Benedictine monks after the middle of the fourteenth century.
Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, first found in Latin in the fifteenth century and then in Greek in the six-teenth century, we have no doubt is a probable forgery. And if so we have really no history of the primitive Church except what may be found in the New Testament and a few uncertain fragments of apocryphal literature, all much corrupted.
The use of the word Christus and Christianus by the Latin writers is sufficient evidence of modern fabrication. Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary has not the word Christus nor Christianus in the Latin part, but in the part which gives the Latin equivalents of English words we find this:
A Christian = Christianus.
Christianism or Christianity = Christianismus.
Christmas = Christianataliam festum.
Now, the words Christus and Christianus are used by Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny (the younger), Tertullian, and all the succeeding Latin Fathers.
Christos in Greek is a very proper word, being a translation of the Hebrew mashiach, meaning “anointed.” Therefore, the Latins would have rendered it unctus.
But the Benedictine monks who forged the literature of the pretended Fathers, instead of translating christos, audaciously transferred the word, and thus the new word Christus, with a capital C, became an additional name for the man-god of the Catholic Church.
Now, we respectfully raise the query whether it is rational to suppose that such wonderful things occurred in the little province of Palestine, surrounded by learned sages and philosophers of the most enlightened nations of the world, and not one direct and intelligent reference should have been made to them? Is it not strange that we have no account of the birth, sayings, and doings of this “last Adam,” who is said to have come into this world on the most important mission, and yet we hear nothing of him except in four or five little anonymous and dateless pamphlets written a long while after the events are said to have transpired? Since the New Testament contains all that has been written on this subject, is it not our highest duty to subject this book to the most thorough examination? This we shall now proceed to do in the most fearless manner, however startling the conclusions which may be reached.
CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS KNOWN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me.”—John 5: 39.
WE of course use the above passage as a motto, as the writer must have referred to the Old-Testament Scriptures, as the New Testament was not yet in existence. As this book is the sole dependence in finding evidence regarding Jesus, we naturally first inquire as to what is known of it. We find this volume to be made up of twenty-seven small tracts or pamphlets, fastened together for the sake of convenience.
We have four sketches, purporting to be brief biographies of Jesus.
Next we have a condensed history, called the Acts of the Apostles.
Then we have twenty-one writings or letters addressed to different churches or individuals in the epistolary form of communication.
And finally we have a highly-wrought allegory, partaking somewhat of the form of both history and prophecy.
We find that this volume of little pamphlets is called the “Authorized Version” of the New Testament.
We inquire who authorized this version, and find that it was gotten up by certain men, mainly Englishmen, in the year 1603 by the “special command” of James, who is called “king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,” and who was addressed by these gentlemen, mostly clergymen, as “the Most High and Mighty Prince, Defender of the Faith,” etc.
It now becomes a matter of superlative importance to determine the basis upon which this version of the New Testament was made. It is well known that in 1881 a New Version was published, and Rev. Alexander Roberts, D. D., a member of the committee of revisers, issued a little book entitled Companion to the Revised Version, to be circulated with it. This is the latest and highest authority by which to settle the question of the basis or standard of our “Authorized Version” of the New Testament. It is stated on its title-page that it is “Translated out of the Original Greek;” and it is safe and fair to let Dr. Roberts, the mouthpiece of the New Version Committee, tell us upon what Greek manuscripts this version of King James was based. After giving a history of the different Greek editions of the New Testament (the first of which was completed in 1514, and its publication formally sanctioned by Pope Leo X. in 1520), he inquires, “Which of the foregoing Greek texts formed the original from which our common English translation was derived?” “To this question the answer is, that Beza’s edition of 1589 was the one usually followed.” Beza’s edition was based on Stevens’ edition of 1550, and that was derived from the fourth edition of Erasmus, published in 1527. Beza, Stevens, Erasmus! In reference to the edition of Erasmus he said himself, “It was rather tumbled headlong into the world than edited.” But the question now comes up, What was the basis of the edition of Erasmus? Dr. Roberts shall answer: “In the Gospels he principally used a cursive MS. of the fifteenth or sixteenth century,”… “admitted by all to be of a very inferior character.”… “He procured another MS. of the twelfth century or earlier, but Erasmus was ignorant of its value and made little use of it.”… “In the Acts and Epistles he chiefly followed a cursive MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, with occasional reference to another of the fifteenth century.”… “For the Apocalypse he had only one mutilated MS.” Dr. Roberts adds: “He had no documentary materials for publishing a complete edition of the Greek Testament.”
The point we here raise is, that it is an admission made by the best orthodox authority that our “Authorized New Testament” was formed out of MSS. dating no farther back than the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and that even these were hastily and unskilfully used or not used at all.
But the question naturally arises, Have not earlier MSS. come to light, substantially confirming what we have in King James’ Version? The answer is, that there are now in existence about two thousand MSS. containing parts of the New Testament, with about one hundred and fifty thousand variations, mostly trivial, but some very important; but no scholar, orthodox or liberal, will dare to pretend that any of these date any farther back than the fourth or fifth century; and he would be a reckless man, feeling bound to lie for what he might regard as the truth, who would contradict the admission of Dr. Roberts, that there are only five copies of the New Testament, at all complete, of a greater antiquity than the tenth century, nor who would dare to question the statement of the Rev. George E. Merrell in his recent Story of the Manuscripts, that “there is a wide gap of almost three centuries between the original manuscripts of the evangelists and apostles and the earliest copies of their writings which have yet been discovered.” Whether there ever were original manuscripts or accurate copies are questions which it would be prudent to hold for consideration until we have made further investigations. When we reverently listen to our ministers as they expound the Word, and learnedly tell us how certain sentences should have been translated from the “original Greek,” let us not laugh in their faces, but respectfully ask them whether they do not know that there is no original Greek Testament or any certified copy, and that all we know upon these matters is highly conjectural and wholly unauthenticated.
The principal MSS. of the New Testament were unknown for a thousand years after the Christian era—to wit, those from which our “Authorized” New Testament was compiled—and their real origin cannot be traced, and even their accepted date is purely a matter of conjecture. The Alexandrian, Vatican, and Sinaitic MSS., supposed to date from the fourth and fifth centuries, are of uncertain and suspicious origin, and their date is a matter of simple guess by parties whose prepossessions would incline them to make them as ancient as possible. How easy it is for the best scholars to be imposed upon is shown from the fact that the experts of the British Museum would probably have been swindled by the recent Syrian forgery of the very ancient book of Deuteronomy but for the discovery of the fact by a French scholar that the “ancient document” was in fact only a year or two old, the product of a skilled copyist! The fact is, little or nothing is actually known by historical and documentary verification of the origin or dates of the MSS. upon which our New Testament is based.
The next question that arises in a rational mind in this connection is this: Have we in these twenty-seven little pamphlets all that has been written upon the subjects to which they relate? The answer to this question is very embarrassing. It is an undoubted fact that the ecclesiastical council that selected the books composing the New Testament had at least fifty Gospels, from which they selected four, and more than one hundred Epistles, from which they selected seventeen, and that from nearly a score of books professing to be records of the “Acts of the Apostles” they selected one, which Chrysostom in the fifth century says “was not so much as known to many.” Then there are forty-one New-Testament books now extant, called apocryphal, relating to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and besides the canonical and apocryphal books extant there are sixty-eight New-Testament books mentioned by the Christian Fathers of the first four centuries which are not now known to be in existence. Besides these, more than fifty books, written in the second century by more than twenty distinguished persons, have mysteriously disappeared. The fact should also be emphasized that the adoption of the New-Testament books in the early part of the fourth century, as we now substantially have them, was followed by the disappearance and probable destruction of all books that could throw light upon the books received, and all the supposed copies of our Gospels to that period have been lost or destroyed. The fact to be kept in mind is this, that the New-Testament books which we now have were selected from scores and hundreds of writings claiming equal authority by a few self-appoint-ed men, who had very few qualifications and many disqualifications for the work they undertook for all coming generations. We have but a trifling proportion in number of the ancient records regarding Jesus.
But we now take up the little pamphlets as we have them, and try to arrange them in order of time. The oldest writings of the New Testament are the Epistles of Paul. And here we find ourselves embarrassed by the fact that biblical criticism shows that not more than five—some say four—of the Epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him—viz. First Thessalonians, Galatians, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, and Romans. The other nine ascribed to Paul were doubtless written by unknown second-century authors. The same uncertainty prevails in regard to the authorship of several, if not all, of what are called the General or Catholic Epistles, as well as of the Acts of the Apostles and the book of Revelation.
It is impossible to fix the dates of the New-Testament books except approximately. There is a great diversity of opinion. The earliest were probably written in the last half of the first century, and the latest certainly in the last quarter of the second century. Certain it is that no evidence can be found of the existence of our four Gospels until the latter part of the second century, about one hundred and fifty years after the alleged death of Jesus. It is therefore true what Prof. Robertson Smith, D. D., the learned Scotch Presbyterian minister, asserts, that our four Gospels are “unapostolic digests of the second century.” From the Apostolic Epistles we learn nothing of the life and teachings of Jesus. With Paul, Christ was an idea rather than a person. Not a syllable do we find in his writings of the miraculous birth of Jesus, no reference to the Sermon on the Mount, much less to the miracles ascribed to him. He rather boasted that he had learned nothing of him from his disciples, but what he knew he had received at the time of his own miraculous conversion. He dwells upon the death and spiritual resurrection of Jesus, not upon his life; and the only words of Jesus quoted by Paul, “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” are not found at all in the Gospels. All that Paul ever claimed to know about Jesus as a person he learned in a vision, and it is to be taken for what it is worth.
We are absolutely driven to the Gospels for information regarding the alleged founder of Christianity, his birth, his life, his teachings, and his death. And here the fact should be faced that Jesus never wrote anything about himself, his mission, or his doctrines. We should not even know that he had learned the art of writing but for the incident mentioned in one of the Gospels (John 8:6) that on a certain occasion he stooped down and wrote in the sand; and now our learned New Versionists come along and snatch this from us by declaring that the beautiful story about the kind treatment of the woman taken in adultery is an interpolation not found in the best early MSS., so that we are not even sure that Jesus wrote anything even with his finger in the sand, or that he even knew how to write! Nobody pretends that Jesus ever directed his disciples or any one else to write down what he said and did, but, on the other hand, he often forbade his disciples to tell what he said and did; and much of what he is reported to have said was so obscure that the disciples themselves continually misunderstood him. Two reasons have been assigned for this omission of Jesus to write himself or to commission others to write down his sayings. The first is, that he said nothing which could not be found in then existing writings (as can easily be shown), and the second is, that he was so sure that the world was about to be destroyed, and that his own kingdom would so soon be set up and established upon the general ruin, that it was useless to write down what was said and done in the short remaining period of mundane history.
We have four brief sketches claiming to be biographies of Jesus, which the Church claims as authentic, from which we must draw all our information regarding Jesus.
It is not necessary here to assign the reasons of learned critics for their conclusion that the Gospel “according to” Mark is the older of the four. But it is worthy of note that there is not in it one word of the miraculous conception story, and not a hint of the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as the critics have a way of proving that the last chapter of Mark was added by a later hand.
Then we are embarrassed by the testimony of Irenæus, Origen, Jerome, and other Christian Fathers that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, while there are indubitable internal evidences that this Gospel, as we have it, was written in Greek and by a Greek, and not a Jew, and that it is really a theological treatise written by some partisan for ecclesiastical reasons, and that if Matthew ever wrote a Gospel, it has been unfortunately lost or purposely destroyed. An early Christian sect, called in derision Ebionites, are supposed to have had the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and they were persecuted and stamped out for denying the miraculous conception and divinity of Christ, and with them, some critics suppose, perished the only genuine Gospel of Matthew. There is little if any doubt that the first and second chapters of our Matthew, giving an account of the miraculous birth and genealogy of Jesus, were added when this fiction was incorporated into Christianity as necessary to a divine Church establishment which should almost deify a hierarchy and bring the common people into subjection. In reading Matthew’s Gospel we should undoubtedly begin at chapter 3, and especially as the first two chapters are absurd, contradictory, and inconsistent. If Jesus was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it was not consistent or necessary to notice the genealogy of Joseph, and there is nothing more bungling than the genealogies of Mary and Joseph as given in Matthew and Luke. Indeed, the name Matthew is not Jewish, and there are those who doubt if there ever was such a man. It is a suggestive fact that the Egyptians had a Matthu, and that he was the registrar, or keeper of their records.
The Gospel ascribed to Luke he himself admits to be a résumé or compilation of what had been written by others and was the prevalent belief (Luke, chapter 1). In making a close analysis of this little tract a learned German critic Schleiermacher, shows that it was probably compiled from thirty-three different manuscripts. But since Luke himself claims nothing more than the office of a collector, his work is a mere digest of what others had written and a summary of what was then believed by some persons.
The Gospel according to John deserves a more careful and extended notice, from the fact that it differs in so many particulars from the other three Gospels. There is no evidence of the existence of this writing until A. D. 175, when it was mentioned in the Clementine Homilies, and in 176, Theophilus of Antioch ascribed its authorship to John. But nothing is more certain than that John the Evangelist did not write this little book, as it contains internal evidence of its Grecian origin, and that it could not have been written by one familiar with Judaism and the geography of Palestine. Many of the best biblical scholars, orthodox and rationalistic, admit this fact, and our Methodist friends may amuse themselves at their leisure in reading a learned note from the pen of their great commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, at the close of his exposition of the first chapter of John, in which he points out thirty-five parallels between the writings of Philo the learned Platonist and the Gospel of John, unwittingly showing that it must have been written by an Alexandrian Greek.
These were spurious.
And right here it is proper to expose an ancient fraud perpetuated in the Church to the present day—to wit, that Papius and Polycarp, early Christian writers, were personally acquainted with and instructed by John, and that therefore a succession was established with the teachings of Jesus himself, whose personal disciple John was. This story was originated by Irenæus, and the fraud consists in confounding John the son of Zebedee and Salome with one John who was said to be a presbyter in Asia Minor. This ingenious device is clearly exposed by Reber in his work—The Enigmas of Christianity. Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, may be called one of the founders of the papal hierarchy, as he in the second century attempted, but miserably failed, to furnish a catalogue of bishops in orderly succession from the apostles; and soon after he was followed in the same vain attempt by Tertullian, who first claimed supremacy for the bishop of Rome, calling him “epis-copus episcoporum,” a bishop of bishops. The fact is, it is not known who wrote the fourth Gospel, but it is certain that it was not written by the humble, amiable Galilean fisherman, but by a learned neo-Platonist, who was familiar with the dialectics of the learned Gnostic philosophers, and who desired most earnestly their complete suppression as essential to the success of the fixed purpose of priests to establish a Church, under an alleged divine commission, in which they were to be the kings and princes. Priests have always been the corrupters and perverters of truth for their own aggrandizement, and the Grecian treatise palmed upon the Church as the Gospel of St. John is one of the most illustrious examples. But for this so-called “Gospel” the existence of the papal hierarchy, and the consequent priestly pretensions in Protestant churches, would have been impossible. Enough has been presented to show that we have no alternative but to depend upon the synoptical Gospels, credited to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in our inquiry as to Jesus.
Now let us see just where we stand as to the sources of information to which we are to look in learning whom Jesus was.
We are restricted to four, if not three, short biographies, accredited to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only two of whom, Matthew and John, were mentioned among the disciples of Jesus.
That these sketches were written by those whose names they bear is not supported by a particle of proof, but, on the other hand, there is strong evidence that they were not written by the persons to whom they are credited; and this is especially true in regard to Matthew and John. Strictly speaking, our Gospels are anonymous.
These documents are without date, both as to the time in which they are written and the place of writing, and there is no proof of their existence until more than one hundred and fifty years after the alleged occurrence of the things recorded.
That these four Gospels were selected from many other writings most of which have been lost or destroyed.
That the men who made our four Gospels canonical, and rejected all the rest, were for the most part narrow, bigoted partisans, and had good reasons of a selfish nature to reject whatever did not favor their ambitious designs.
We have no proof that the four Gospels made canonical by the early ecclesiastical councils were the original writings of the evangelists, even if we were sure that they wrote anything, nor have we any proof that the copies adopted were genuine and authentic and the best then extant.
We have no proof that the copies we have are accurate copies of the ones adopted by the councils, but we have proof positive, admitted by the New Version-ists of 1881, that they contain many interpolations and additions and many evidences of forgeries and alterations by the ignorant, designing, and selfish ecclesiastics of the mediaeval centuries known as the Dark Ages.
That the Authorized Version read in the churches and in our families is based upon MSS. dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and that only fragmentary MSS. and unauthenticated copies are now in existence, dating from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.
That the copies we have bound up in our New Testament contradict themselves and one another in a great many particulars, and contain many statements which are geographically, historically, and philosophically absurd and incredible.
That, therefore, our Gospels are of uncertain authority and of undoubted human origin, and are to be so regarded without a doubt.
Now, it will be said that this is an infidel attack upon the New Testament, and that it tends to the overthrow of the only religion that can do the world any good. And yet, strange as it may appear, these facts are presented in the best interests of true religion—presented because they are true, and therefore best adapted, nay absolutely essential, to the successful defense and propagation of virtue and morality.
The real infidels of the day are the theological liars and pretenders who are wilfully ignorant, or too dishonest and cowardly to publish what they know. Infidelity is breach of trust, disloyalty to truth. He who would do the most good must tell the whole truth. If we regard the Gospels as simple compilations from earlier documents and traditions, with occasional additions and alterations to meet occasions and times, we shall find in them very many things to admire and to adopt into our problems of life and systems of morals, many things worthy of imitation, many things to give courage and comfort in the struggle for existence, many things which would be just as true and just as useful if they had only been written yesterday by some one whom we have known from our childhood.
Regarding the Gospels as human, we can excuse their absurdities and errors, and while we cast these errors aside we joyfully accept what is true and good and beautiful; but by claiming for them what they are not we bring even what is true into disrepute.
It was a master-stroke of worldly wisdom and policy when Irenæus in the second century (who first mentioned our four Gospels) sanctioned the monstrous assumption of all ecclesiastical authority by divine right by the bishops and priests, which power soon became centralized at Rome; but it was the greatest misfortune of the ages for the cause of true religion and sound morality. It not only made the Church of Rome with its immense machinery a necessary result, but it made the not less false systems of Protestant dogmatic theology possible. There is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that the so-called scheme of redemption is in principle and substance the same in the Catholic and orthodox Protestant Churches. Many intelligent persons feel that they would as soon belong to one as the other, while they secretly regard the Romanists as logically the more consistent.
The Romanists are strong in that they place the Church first (jure divino) and make the scriptures the product of the Church, and of course subject to its interpretation. Protestants are weak in that they make the Church subject to written scriptures, which were selected by the founders of Catholicism, and then for centuries altered, forged, interpolated, and manipulated by popes and priests to strengthen their authority and secure the absolute submission of the people.
The one fatal blunder of the Protestant Reformers was to found their system of theology upon a written book of the origin of which so little is known, and yet regarding which so much is known that it is impossible for persons of a rational, judicial mind to accept it as an infallible supernatural revelation.
The conclusion is inevitable that in the absence of everything that, by even a strain of language, can be called evidence as to the genuineness and authenticity, of our Gospels we cannot safely accept them as an infallible authority in religious matters. We have a right to examine them critically, just as we would read and study any other ancient writings of uncertain authorship and date.
The Reformation was in part the substitution of a book which was pronounced infallible, but which has proved to be very fallible, for a Church which claimed infallibility, but which had shown itself not only very fallible, but exceedingly corrupt and dangerous. Infallibility belongs to neither men nor books. Infallibility in books is an absurdity. A religion founded upon a printed book must submit to examination of both the origin and character of that book, and must shoulder the imperfections and errors which the discoveries of modern research have fully exposed. The principles of true religion inherent in human nature, an ineradicable constituent of the constitution of man, as has been shown, are to-day obscured and shackled by the false position in which its professed friends have placed it. It will be shown before these papers are concluded that a religion manacled by a printed book claiming infallibility, and made to depend solely upon an historical character who, if admitted to be historical, wrote nothing himself and commissioned no one to write anything for him, and of whose verbal teachings and actual mode of life we can never be sure,—a religion thus encumbered must suffer great loss, if not total failure, as men shall progress in knowledge and science shall uncover the past and demonstrate the absurdities of the superstitious dogmas of the ancient faiths. It is impossible to compress the largest brains of the nineteenth century into the smallest skulls of the twelfth century. The true friend of religion is the fearless man who dares attempt to rescue it from the accretions and perversions of the Dark Ages, and to establish its eternal principles of truth and righteousness in the very nature of man, in the elevation of moral character, in strict agreement with the demonstrated facts of the present, as opposed to the bigoted and degrading fancies of the past. To defend religion from the follies of its mistaken champions, and show that its foundations are secure and its ultimate triumph certain, may now be denounced as treason to the Church, but in coming years it will be seen to have been the work of men of whom the Church of to-day is not worthy.