Member of the French Academy, and
of the Academy of Inscriptions
and Fine Arts.
LONDON PRINTED BY THE TEMPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY.
I thought at first that this Sixth Book would finish the
series of volumes which I have devoted to the history of the origins of
Christianity. It is certain that at the death of Antoninus, circa A.D. 160, the
Christian religion had become a complete religion, having all its sacred books,
all its grand legends, the germ of all its dogmas, the essential parts of its
liturgies; and in the eyes of most of its adherents, it was a religion standing
by itself, separated from and even opposed to Judaism. I, however, thought it
right to add a last work, containing the ecclesiastical history of the reign of
Marcus Aurelius, to the preceding books. In the truest sense, the reign of
Marcus Aurelius belongs to the origins of Christianity. Montanism is a
phenomenon of about the year 170, and is one of the most notable events of early
Christianity. After more than a century had elapsed since those strange
hallucinations which had possessed the apostles at the Last Supper at Jerusalem,
But besides that, there was another reason that decided me
to treat the reign of Marcus Aurelius in its relations to the Christian
community in the fullest detail. It is partial and unjust to represent the
endeavours of Christianity as an isolated fact, as a unique, and, in a manner, a
miraculous attempt at religious and social reform. Christianity was not alone in
attempting what it alone was able to carry out. Timidly still in the first
century, openly and
The name of Marcus Aurelius is the most noble among all
that noble school of virtue which tried to save the ancient world by the force
of reason, and thus a thorough study of that great man belongs essentially to
our subject. Why did not that reconciliation between the Church and the Empire,
which took place under Constantine, take place under Marcus Aurelius? It is all
the more important to settle this question, as already in this volume we
In the latter half of the second century, some Christian doctors of the highest authority seriously faced the possibility of making Christianity the official religion of the Roman world, and it might almost be said that they divined the great events of the fourth century. Looked at closely, that resolution by which Christianity, having entirely changed its past, has become the protégé, or perhaps we had better say the protector, of the State, from having been persecuted by it, ceases to be surprising. St Justin and Melito foresaw this quite clearly. St Paul’s principle, “All power is of God,” will bear its fruits, and the Gospel will become, what Jesus certainly did not foresee, one of the bases of absolution. Christ will have come into the world to guarantee the crowns of princes, and in our days a Roman Pontiff has tried to prove that Jesus Christ preached and died to preserve the fortunes of the wealthy, and to consolidate capital.
As we advance in this history, we shall find that documents
become more certain, and preliminary discussions less necessary. The question of
the Fourth Gospel has been so often treated in the preceding volumes, that we
need not return to that subject now. The falseness of the Epistles to Timothy
and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul, has been already demonstrated, and
the apocryphal character of the Second Epistle of St Peter is shown
Trajan’s health was daily growing worse, and so he set out for Rome, leaving the command of the army at Antioch to Hadrian, his second cousin, and grand-nephew by marriage. He was forced to stop at Selinus, on the coast of Cilicia, by inflammation of the bowels, and there he died August 11, 117, at the age of sixty-four. The condition of affairs was very unfortunate: the East was in a state of insurrection; the Moors, the Bretons, the Sarmatians were becoming menacing, and Judea, subjugated but still in a state of suppressed agitation, appeared to be threatening a fresh outbreak. A somewhat obscure intrigue, which appears to have been directed by Plotina and Matidias, bestowed the Empire on Hadrian, under these critical circumstances.
It was an excellent choice, for though he was a man of
equivocal morals, he was a great ruler. Intellectual,
Up till his time, the house of the sovereign had been the house of the highest personage in the land,—an establishment composed like any other of servants, freemen, and private secretaries. Hadrian organised the palace, and for the future it was necessary to be a knight in order to arrive at any office in the household, and the servants in Cæsar’s palace became public functionaries. A permanent council of the prince, composed chiefly of jurisconsults, undertook all definite public powers; those senators who were specially attached to the government already were made comtes (counts); everything was done through regular offices, in the constitution of which the senate took its proper share, and not through the direct will of the prince. It was still a state of despotism, but of despotism which was analogous to that of the old French royalty, kept in check by independent councils, law courts, and magistrates.
The social ameliorations which took place were still more
important, for everywhere a really good and great spirit of liberalism was
manifested; the position of slaves was guaranteed, the condition of women was
raised, paternal authority was restricted within certain limits, and every
remaining vestige of human sacrifices was abolished. The Emperor’s personal
character responded to the excellence of these reforms, for he was most affable
towards those of
In spite of all his failings, he was a man of a quick, unbiassed, original intellect. He admired Epictetus and understood him, without, however, feeling obliged to follow out his maxims. Nothing escaped him, and he wished to know everything; and as he did not possess that insolent pride and that fixed determination which altogether excluded the true Roman from all knowledge of the rest of the world, Hadrian had a strong inclination for everything that was strange, and would wittily make fun of it. The East, above all, had strong attractions for him, for he saw through Eastern impostures and charlatanism, and they amused him. He was initiated into all their absurd rites, fabricated oracles, compounded antidotes, and made fun of the medicine; and, like Nero, he was a royal man of letters and an artist, while the ease with which he learnt painting, sculpture, and architecture was surprising. Besides this, he also wrote tolerable poetry, but his taste was not pure, and he had his favourite authors and singular preferences; in a word, he was a literary smatterer, and a theatrical architect. He adopted no system of religion or of philosophy, but neither did he deny any of them, and his distinguished mind was like a weather-cock, which moves its position with every wind; his elegant farewell to life, which he murmured a few moments before his death,
“Animula, vagula, blandula,”
gives us his measure exactly. For him, whatever he examined
into ended in a joke, and he had a smile for everything that was an object of
his curiosity. The sovereign power itself could not make him more than half
serious, and his bearing always had that easy grace and negligence of the
All that naturally made him tolerant. He did not indeed abrogate the laws which indirectly struck at Christianity, and so put it continually in the wrong, and he even allowed them to be applied more than once, but he personally very much modified the effect of them. In this respect he was superior to Trajan, who, without being a philosopher, had very fixed ideas about State affairs, and to Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, who were men of high principle, but who thought that they did right in persecuting the Christians. In this respect Hadrian’s laxity of morals was not without a good effect, for it is the peculiarity of a monarchy that the defects of sovereigns serve the public good even more than their better qualities. The immorality of a really witty man, of a crowned Lucian, who looks upon the whole world as some frivolous game, was more favourable to liberty than the serious gravity and lofty morality of the most perfect Emperors.
Hadrian’s first care was to settle the difficulties of the
accession which Trajan had left him. He was a distinguished military writer, but
no great general. He clearly saw how impossible it would be to keep the newly
conquered provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, and so he gave them
up. That must have been a very solemn hour, when, for the first time, the Roman
eagles retreated, and when the Empire was obliged to acknowledge that it had
exceeded its programme of conquest, but it was an act of wisdom. Persia was as
inaccessible for Rome as Germany, and the mighty expeditions which Crassus,
Trajan, and Julian had led into that part of the world failed, whilst less
ambitious expeditions—those of Lucius Verus and of' Septimus Severus,
whose object was not to attack the very foundations of the Parthian Empire, but
to detach the feudatory provinces
Hadrian was a year on his return journey to Rome, thus at
once beginning those roaming habits which were to make his reign one continual
rush through the provinces of the Empire. After another year devoted to the
gravest cares of government administration, which was fertile in constitutional
reforms, he started on an official progress (tour) and successively visited Gaul,
the banks of the Rhine, Britain, Spain, Mauritania and Carthage, and his vanity
and antiquarian tastes made him dream of becoming the founder of cities, and the
restorer of ancient monuments. Moreover, he did not approve of the idleness of
garrison life for soldiers, and he found a means of occupying them in great
public works, and that is the reason for these innumerable constructions—roads, ports, theatres—temples which date from Hadrian’s reign.
He was surrounded by a crowd of architects, engineers, and artists, who were
enrolled like a legion. In each province where he set his foot, everything
seemed to be restored and to spring up afresh. At the Emperor’s suggestion,
enormous public companies were formed to carry out great public works, and
generally the State appeared as a shareholder. If any city had the smallest
title to celebrity, or was mentioned in classical authors, it
After a short stay in Rome, during which he extended the
circumference of the pomœsium (the symbolical, not actual wall of the city), he
started, during the course of the year 121, on another journey, which lasted
nearly four years and a half, and during which he visited nearly the whole of
the East. This journey was even more brilliant than the former, and it might
have been said that the ancient world was coming to life again beneath the
footsteps of a beneficent deity. Thoroughly acquainted with ancient history,
Hadrian wished to see everything, was interested in everything, and wished to
have everything restored that had existed formerly. Men sought to revive the
lost arts, in order to please him, and a neo-Egyptian style became the fashion,
as did also a neo-Phœnician. Philosophers, rhetoricians, critics, swarmed
about him, and he was another Nero without his follies. A number of ancient
civilisations which had disappeared, aspired after their resuscitation, not
actually, but in the writings of historians and archæologists. Thus Herennius,
Philo of Byblos, tried—very likely under the direct inspiration of the Emperor
himself—to discover ancient Phœnicia. New fêtes, the
Hadrianian Games, which
the Greeks introduced—recalled for the last time the splendour of Hellenic life;
it was like a universal restoration to life of the ancient world, a brilliant
restoration indeed, but it was hardly sincere, and rather theatrical, and each
country found, in Rome’s comprehensive bosom, its former titles of nobility
again, and became attached to them. Whilst studying that singular spectacle, one
cannot help thinking of that and of resurrection from the dead which our own
Hadrian, the turn of whose mind was more Greek than Roman, favoured this ecclectic movement, and contributed powerfully towards it, and what he did in Asia Minor was really prodigious. Cyzicus, Nicaea, Nicomedia, sprang up again, and everywhere temples of the most splendid works of architecture, immortalised the memory of that learned sovereign, who seemed to wish that another world, in all the freshness of its youth, should date from him. Syria was no less favoured. Antioch and Daphne became the most delightful places of abode in the world, and the combinations of picturesque architecture, the imagination of the landscape painter, and the forces of hydraulic power, were exhausted there. Even Palmyra was partially restored by the great imperial architect, and, like a number of other towns, took the name of Hadrianople from him.
Never had the world had so much enjoyment or so much hope.
The Barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube were hardly thought about, for
the liberal spirit of the Emperor caused a sort of feeling of universal
contentment; and the Jews themselves were divided into two parties. Those who
were massed at Bether, and in the villages south of Jerusalem, seemed to be
possessed by a sort of sombre rage. Their one idea was to take the city, to
which access was denied them, by force, and to restore to the hill which God had
chosen for his own, its former honours. Hadrian had not at first been obnoxious
to the more moderate party, especially to the half-Christian, half-Essenian
survivors of the Egyptian catastrophe under Trojan. They could imagine that he
had ordered the death of Quietus to punish him
Hatred for Rome bursts out at the very beginning:—
O Virgin, enervated and wealthy daughter of Latin Rome, who hast joined the ranks of slavery whilst drunk with wine, for what nuptials hast thou reserved thyself! How often will a cruel mistress tear these delicate locks!
The author, who is a Jew and a Christian at the same time, looks upon Rome as the natural enemy of the saints, and to Hadrian alone he pays the homage of admiring him thoroughly. After enumerating the Roman Emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Trajan, by the nonsensical process of ghematria, the Sybil sees a man ascend the throne—
Who has a skull of silver, who will give his name to a sea. He will be unequalled in every way and know everything. Under thy reign O excellent, O eminent and brilliant sovereign, and under thy offspring, the events which I am about to mention shall take place.
According to custom, the Sybil now unfolds the most gloomy
pictures; every scourge is let loose at the same time, and mankind becomes
altogether corrupt. These are the throes of the Messianic child-birth. Nero,
who had been dead for more than fifty years, was still the author’s nightmare.
That destructive dragon, that actor, that murderer of his own relations, and
assassin of the chosen people, that kindler of numberless wars, will return to
put himself on an equality with God. He weaves the darkest plots
Unstable, corrupted, reserved for the very lowest destinies, the beginning and end of all suffering, because in thy bosom creation perishes and is born again continually, source of all evil, scourge, the point where everything ends for mortal men, who has ever loved thee? who does not detest thee internally? what dethroned king has ended his life in peace within thy walls? By thee the whole world has been changed in its innermost recesses. Formerly there existed in the human breast a splendour like a brilliant sun; it was the rays of the unanimous spirits of the prophets, which brought to all the nourishment of life, and thou hast destroyed these good gifts. Therefore, O imperious mistress, origin and cause of all these great evils, sword and disaster shall fall on thee . . . Listen, O scourge of humanity, to the harsh voice which announces thy misfortunes.
A divine race of blessed Jews, come down from heaven, shall inhabit Jerusalem, which shall extend as far as Jaffa, and rise to the clouds. There shall be no more trumpets or war, but on every side eternal trophies shall rise, trophies consecrating victories over evil.
Then there shall come down from heaven once more an extraordinary man, who has stretched out his hands over a fruitful wood, the best of the Hebrews, who formerly stopped the sun in his course by his beautiful words and his holy lips.
This is doubtlessly Jesus, Jesus, in an allegorical manner, by his crucifixion, playing the part of Moses stretching out his arms, and of Joshua the saviour of the people.
Cease at length to break thy heart, O daughter of divine
race, O treasure, O only lovely flower, delightful brightness, exquisite plant,
cherished germ, gracious and beautiful city of Judea, always filled with the
sound of inspired hymns. The impure feet of the Greeks, their hearts filled with
plots, shall not tread thy soil under them, but thou shalt be surrounded by the
respect of thy illustrious children, who shall deck thy table
At last the runaway parricide, who has been announced three times, enters upon the scene again. The monster inundates the earth with blood, and captures Rome, causing such a conflagration as has never been seen. There is a universal overturning of everything in the world; all kings and aristocrats perish, in order to prepare peace for just men—that is to say, for Jews and Christians, and the author’s joy at the destruction of Rome breaks out a third time.:—
Parricides, leave your pride and your culpable haughtiness, for you have reserved your shameful embraces for children and placed young girls, who were pure up till that time, in houses of ill-fame where they have been subjected to the vilest outrages . . . Keep silence, wicked and unhappy city, thou that wast formerly full of laughter. In thy bosom the sacred virgins will no longer find again the holy fire that they kept alive, for that fire, which was so preciously preserved, went out of its own accord, when I saw for the second time another temple fall to the ground, given up to the flames by impure hands, a temple which flourishes still, a permanent sanctuary of God, built by the saints, and incorruptible throughout eternity . . . It is not, indeed, a god made of common clay that this race adores; amongst them the skilful workman does not shape marble; and gold, which is so often employed to seduce men’s souls, is no object of their worship, but by their sacrifices and their holy hecatombs they honour the great God whose breath animates every living thing.
A chosen man, the Messiah, descends from heaven, carries off the victory over the Pagans, builds the city beloved of God, which springs up again more brilliant than the sun, and founds within it an incarnate temple, a tower with a frontage of several stadii, which reaches up to the clouds, so that all the faithful may see the glory of God. The seats of ancient civilisation—Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome—disappear one after the other; above all, the giant monuments of Egypt fall over and cover the earth; but a linen-clad priest converts his compatriots, persuades them to abandon their ancient rites, and to build a temple to the true God. That, however, does not arrest the destruction of the ancient world, for the constellations come in contact with each other, the celestial bodies fall to the earth, and the heavens remain starless.
Thus we see that under Hadrian there existed in Egypt a body of pious monotheists for whom the Jews were still pre-eminently the just and holy people, in whose eyes the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem was an unpardonable crime, and the real cause of the fall of the Roman Empire; who entertained a cause for hatred and calumny against Flavius; who hoped for the restoration of the Temple and of Jerusalem; who looked on the Messiah as a man chosen of God; who saw that Messiah in Jesus, and who read the Apocalypse of St John. Since then, Egypt has for a long time made us grow accustomed to great singularities in all that concerns Jewish and Christian history, and its religious development did not proceed pari passu with that of the rest of the world. Accents such as we have just beard could hardly find an echo either in pure Judaism or in the Churches of St Paul. Judea, above all, would never have consented, even for an hour, either to regard Hadrian as the best of men, or to found such hopes upon him.
During his peregrinations in Syria, Hadrian saw the site where Jerusalem had stood. For fifty-two years the city remained in its state of desolation, and offered to the eye nothing but a heap of immense blocks of stone lying one on another. Only a few groups of miserable houses, belonging to Christians for the most part, stood out from the top of Mount Sion, and the site of the Temple was full of jackals. One day, when Rabbi Aquiba came on a pilgrimage to the spot with some companions, a jackal rushed out of the place where the Holy of Holies had stood. The pilgrims burst into tears, and said to each other: “What! is this the place of which it is written that any profane person who approaches it shall be put to death, and here are jackals roaming about in it!” Aquiba, however, burst out laughing, and proved to them the connexion between the various prophecies so clearly, that they all exclaimed: “Aquiba, thou hast consoled us! Aquiba, thou has consoled us!”
These ruins inspired Hadrian with the thought with which
all ruins inspired him, namely, the desire to rebuild the ruined city, to
colonise it, and to give it his name or that of his family Thus Judea would
become once more restored to cultivation, and Jerusalem, raised to the rank of
a fortified place in the hands of the Romans, would serve as a check upon the
Jewish population. All the towns of Syria, moreover,—Gerasae, Damascus, Gaza,
Peah,—were being rebuilt in the Roman manner, and were inaugurating new eras.
Jerusalem was too celebrated to be an
It is very probable that if the Jews had been less unanimous in their views, if some Philo of Byblos had existed amongst them to represent to him the Jewish past as nothing but a glorious and interesting variety amongst the different literatures, religions, and philosophies of humanity, the curious and intelligent Hadrian would have been delighted, and re-built the Temple, not exactly as the Doctors of the Law would have wished it, but in his ecclectic manner, like the great amateur of ancient religions that he was. The Talmud is full of conversations between Hadrian and celebrated rabbis, which of course are fictitious, but which correspond very well with the character of this Emperor, who had a great mind, and was a great talker, very fond of asking questions, curious about strange matters, anxious to know everything, that he might make fun of it afterwards. But the greatest insult that can be shown to absolutists is to be tolerant towards them, and in this respect the Jews resembled exactly the enthusiastic Catholics of our days. Men of such convictions will not be satisfied with their reasonable share; they want to be everything. It is the highest indignity for a religion which looks upon itself as the only true one to be treated like a sect amongst many others; they would rather be outside the pale of the law, and be persecuted; and this violent situation appears to them a mark of divinity. The faithful are pleased at persecution, for in the very fact that men hate them, they see a mark of their prerogative, for the wickedness of men, according to them, is naturally an enemy to truth.
There is nothing to prove that when Hadrian wished to
rebuild Jerusalem, be consulted the Jews, or wished to come to any agreement
with them. Nothing either leads us to believe that he entered
For the Jews, Jerusalem was something almost as sacred as the Temple itself. In fact, they did not distinguish one from the other, and at that time they already called the city by the name of Beth hammigdas. The only feeling which the hasidim felt when they heard that the city of God was going to be rebuilt without them, was one of rage. It was very shortly after the extermination which Quietus and Turbo had carried out, and Judea was weighed down by an extraordinary terror. It was impossible to move, but from that time forward it was allowable to foresee in the future a revolution that should be even more terrible than those which had preceded it,
About 122, probably, Hadrian issued his orders, and the reconstruction commenced. The population consisted chiefly of veterans and strangers, and no doubt it was not necessary to keep out the Jews, as their own feelings would have been enough to have caused them to flee. It seems that, on the other hand, the Christians returned to the city with a certain amount of eagerness, as soon as it was habitable. It was divided into seven quarters or groups of houses, each with an amphodarch over it. As the immense foundations of the Temple were still in existence, that seemed the fittest spot on which to place the principal sanctuary of the new city. Hadrian took care that the temples which be erected in the Eastern Provinces should call to mind the Roman religion, and the connection between the provinces and the metropolis. In order to point out the victory of Rome over a local religion, the temple was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, the god of Rome, above all others a god whose attitude and grave demeanour recalled Jehovah, and to whom, since the time of Vespasian, the Jews had paid tribute. It was a tetrastyle building, and like in most of the temples erected by Hadrian, the entablature of the pediment was broken by an arch, under which was placed a colossal figure of the god.
The worship of Venus was no less intended than that of
Jupiter by the choice of the founder of the colony. Everywhere Hadrian built
temples to her, the protectress of Rome, and the most important of his personal
edifices was that great temple of Venus and Rome, the remains of which can still
be seen near the Coliseum, and so it was only natural that Jerusalem should
have, by the side of its temple of Jupiter Capitolinus its temple of Venus and
Rome. It happened that this second temple was not far from Golgotha, and this
fact gave rise, later on, to singular reflections on the part of the Christians.
For a long time a strange story went about amongst the Christians, to the effect that a Greek of Sinope, called Aquila, who was nominated overseer of the works for the rebuilding of Ælia by Hadrian, knew the disciples of the Apostles at Jerusalem, and that, struck by their piety and their miracles, he was baptised. But no change in his morals followed on his change of religion. He was given to the follies of astrology; every day he cast his horoscope, and was looked upon as a learned man of the first order in such matters. The Christians regarded all such practices with an unfavourable eye, and the heads of the Church addressed remonstrances to their new brother, who took no notice of them, and set himself up against the views of the Church. Astrology led him into grave errors on fatalism and man’s destiny, and his incoherent mind tried to associate together things which were utterly opposed to each other.
The Church saw that he could not possibly merit salvation, and he was driven outside the pale, in consequence of which he always entertained a profound hatred for her. His relations with Adrian may have been the reason why that Emperor seems to have had such an intimate acquaintance with the Christians.
The period was one of toleration. Colleges and religious societies were on the increase everywhere. In A.D. 124, the Emperor received a letter from Quintus Licinus Silvanus Granianus, Pro-consul of Asia, which was written in a spirit very much the same as that which dictated to Pliny that beautiful letter of his, so worthy of an upright man. Roman functionaries of any weight all objected to a procedure which admitted implicit crimes that individuals were supposed to have committed, because of the mere name they bore. Granianus showed how unjust it was to condemn Christians on the strength of vague rumours, which were the fruit of popular imagination, without being able to convict them of any distinct crime, except that of their Christian profession. The drawing by lot for the appointments to the Consular Provinces having taken place a short time afterwards, Caius Minutius Fundanus, a philosopher and distinguished man of letters, a friend of Pliny and of Plutarch, who introduces him as asking questions in one of his philosophic dialogues, succeeded Granianus, and Hadrian answered Fundanus by the following rescript
Hadrian to Minicius Fundanus. I have received the letter
which Licinius Granianus, an illustrious man whom you have succeeded, wrote to
me. The matter seemed to me to demand inquiry, for fear lest people who are
otherwise peacefully disposed may be disquieted, and so a free field be opened
to calumniators. If therefore the people of your province have, as they say, any
weighty accusations to bring against the Christians, and if they can maintain
their accusation before the tribunals, I do not forbid them to take legal
steps; but I will not allow them to go
It would seem that Hadrian gave similar replies to other questions of the same nature. Libels against the Christians were multiplying everywhere, and they paid very well, for the informer got part of the property of the accused if he were found guilty. Above all, in Asia the provincial meetings, accompanied by public games, almost invariably ended in executions. To crown the festivities, the crowd would demand the execution of some unfortunate creatures. The redoubtable cry:—The Christians to the lions, became quite common in the theatres, and it was a very rare occurrence when the authorities did not yield to the clamour of the assembled people. As has been seen, the Emperor opposed such wickedness as far as he could; the laws of the Empire were really alone to blame for giving substance to vague accusations which the caprice of the multitude interpreted according to its own pleasure.
Hadrian spent the winter of 125-126 at Athens. In this
meeting-place for all men of culture he always experienced the greatest
enjoyment. Greece had become the plaything to amuse all Roman men of letters.
Quite reassured as to the political consequences, they adopted, the
easy liberalism of restoring the Pnyx, the popular assemblies, the Areopagus; of
raising statues to the great men of the past, of giving the ancient
constitutions another trial, and of setting up Pan-hellenism—the confederation
of the so-called free states— again. Athens was the centre of all this
childish folly. Enlightened Mæcenases—especially Herod Atticus, one of the most
distinguished
This world of professors, of philosophers, and of men of
enlightenment, was Hadrian’s real element. His vanity, his talent, his taste
for brilliant conversation, were quite at their ease amongst colleagues whom he
honoured by making himself their equal, without, however, the least yielding his
royal prerogative. He was a clever arguer, and thought that he only owed the
advantage, which of course always remained with him, to his own personal
talent. It was an unlucky thing for those who hurt his feelings or who got the
better of him in an argument. Then the Nero whom, though carefully hidden, he
always had in him, suddenly woke up. The number of new professorial chairs that
he founded, or of literary, pensions that he bestowed, is
incalculable. He took his titles of archon and agonothetes quite seriously. He
himself drew up a constitution for Athens, by combining in equal proportions the
laws of Draco and of Solon, and wished to see whether they would work
satisfactorily. The whole city was restored. The temple of the Olympian Jupiter,
near the river Ilisus, begun by Pisistratus, and one of the wonders of the
world, was finished, and the Emperor took the title of Olympian. Within the
city, a vast square, surrounded by temples, porticos, gymnasia, establishments
for public instruction, dated from him. All that is certainly very far from
possessing the perfection of the Acropolis, but these buildings excelled
anything that had ever been seen, by the rarity of their marbles and the
richness of their decorations. A central Pantheon contained a catalogue of the
temples which the Emperor had built, repaired or ornamented, and of the gilts
which he had bestowed
Hadrian’s intellectual activity was sincere, but he lacked a scientific mind. In those meetings of sophists all questions, human and divine, were discussed, but none were settled, nor does it seem that they went so far as complete rationalism. In Greece the Emperor was looked upon as a very religious and even as a superstitious man. He wished to be initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, and, on the whole, Paganism was the only thing that gained by all this. As, however, liberty of discussion is a good thing, good always results from it. Phlegon, Hadrian’s secretary, knew a little about the legend concerning Jesus, and the wide expansion which the spirit of controversy assumed under Hadrian gave rise to an altogether new species of Christian literature, the apologetic, which sheds so much brightness over the century of the Antonines.
Christianity, preached at Athens seventy-two years previously, had borne its fruit. The Church at Athens had never had the adherents nor the stability of certain others; its peculiar character was to produce individual Christian thinkers, and so apologetic literature naturally sprang from it.
Several persons, who were specially called philosophers,
had adhered to the doctrine of Jesus. The name philosopher implied severity of
morals, and a distinguishing dress,—a sort of cloak, which sometimes made the
wearer the subject of the jokes, but more often, the respect, of the passers by.
When they embraced Christianity, the philosophers took care neither to
repudiate their name nor their dress, and from that there proceeded a category
of Christians unknown till then. Writers and talkers by profession,
The first attempt of this sort was the work of a certain
Quadratus, an important personage of the third Christian generation, and of whom
it was said that he had even been a disciple of the Apostles. He sent an apology
for Christianity to the Emperor, which has been lost, but which was very highly
thought of during the first centuries. He complained of the annoyances to which
wicked people subjected the faithful, and proved the harmlessness
Another apology, written by a certain Aristides, an Athenian philosopher and a convert to Christianity, was also presented to Hadrian. Nothing is known about it, except that amongst the Christians it was held in as high repute as the one of which Quadratus was the author. Those who had the opportunity of reading it, admired its eloquence, the author’s intellect, and the good use he made of passages from heathen philosophers to prove the truth of the doctrines of Jesus.
These writings, striking as they were by their novelty,
could not be without their effect upon the Emperor. Singular ideas with regard
to religion crossed his mind, and it seems that more than once he showed
Christianity marks of true respect. He had a large number of temples or
basilicas built, which bore no inscription, nor had they any known purpose. Most
of them were unfinished or not dedicated, and they were called hadrianea, and
these empty, statueless temples lead us to believe that Hadrian bad them built
so purposely. In the third
Even the follies of Hadrian with Antinous possessed an element of the Christian apology. Such a monstrosity seems the culminating point of the reign of the devil. That recent God, whom all the world knew, was made great use of to beat down the other gods, who were more ancient and so easy to lay hold of. The Church triumphed, and later the period of Hadrian was looked upon as the luminous point in a splendid epoch in which the truths of Christianity shone without any obstacle in all eyes. They owed some thanks to a sovereign whose defects and good qualities had had such favourable results. His immorality, his superstitions, his empty initiation into impure mysteries were not forgotten; but in spite of all, Hadrian remained, at any rate in the opinion of part of Christianity, a serious man, endowed with rare virtues, who gave to the world the last of its beautiful days.
It would appear that about this time a mystical book was heard of, of which the faithful thought a great deal; it was a new Gospel, far superior, as was said, to those which were already known; a really spiritual Gospel, as much above St Mark and St Matthew as mind is above matter. That Gospel was the production of that disciple whom Jesus loved,—of St John, who, having been his most intimate friend, naturally knew much that others were ignorant of, so as even to be able on many points to rectify the manner in which they had represented matters. The text in question was a great contrast to the simplicity of the first Evangelical narratives; it put forward much higher pretensions, and certainly it was the intention of those who propagated it that it should replace those humble accounts of the life of Jesus with which men had been contented hitherto. The writer, who was still spoken of in a mysterious manner, had leant upon the Master’s breast, and alone knew the divine secrets of his heart.
This new work came from Ephesus, that is to say, from one
of the principal homes of the dogmatic elaboration of the Christian religion. It
is quite possible that John may have passed his old age and finished his days in
that city. It is at least quite certain that in the early ages of Christianity
there were those at Ephesus who claimed St John as their own, and did all they
could for his aggrandisement. St Paul had his Churches which ardently cherished
his memory, and St Peter and St James had also their families by spiritual
adoption. The adherents of St John, therefore, wished that he should be in the
same
It can never be admitted that St John himself wrote these
words, and it is even very doubtful whether they were written with his consent
in his old age, and by any one of his own immediate surroundings. It seems most
probable that one of the Apostle’s disciples who was a depository of many of his
reminiscences, thought himself authorised to speak and to write in his name—some
twenty-five or thirty years after his death—what he had not, to his followers'
great regret, authoritatively put down during his lifetime. Certainly Ephesus
had its own traditions about the life of Jesus, and, if I may venture to say
so, a life of Jesus for its own particular use. These traditions dwelt
especially in the memory of two persons who were looked upon, in those parts, as
the two highest authorities with regard to Gospel history, namely, one man who
bore the same name as the Apostle John, and who was called Presbeteros Johannes,
and a certain Aristion, who knew many of the Lord’s discourses by heart. At
about this time Papias consulted these two men as oracles, and carefully noted
their traditions, which he intended to insert into his great work, The
Discourses of the Lord. One remarkable feature in the Presbuteros was the
opinion which he gave regarding St Mark’s Gospel. He considered it altogether
insufficient, and written
We are inclined to think that the fourth Gospel represents the traditions of this Presbuteros and of Aristion, which might go back as far as the Apostle John. It seems, moreover, that to prepare the way for this pious fraud a preliminary Catholic Epistle, attributed to John, was published preliminarily, which was intended to accustom the people of Asia to the style which it was intended to make them receive as that of the Apostle. In it the attack against the Docetæ—who at that time formed the great danger to Christianity in Asia—was opened. An ostentatious stress was laid on the value of the Apostle’s testimony, as he had been an eye-witness of the Gospel facts. The author, who is a skilful writer after his own fashion, has very likely imitated the style of St John’s conversation, and that small work is conceived in a grand and lofty spirit, in spite of some Elcesaitic peculiarities. Its doctrine is excellent, and it inculcates mutual charity, love for mankind, and hatred for a corrupt world; and its touching, vehement, and penetrating style is absolutely the same as that of the Gospel; and its faults—its prolixity, and dryness—the results of interminable discourses full of abstruse metaphysics and personal allegations, are far less striking in the Epistle.
'The style of the pseudo-Johannic writings is something
quite by itself, no model for which existed before the Presbuteros. It has been
too much admired; for whilst it is ardent and occasionally even sublime, it is
somewhat inflated, false, and obscure, and it altogether lacks simplicity. The
author relates nothing, he merely demonstrates dogmatically, and his long
account of miracles, and
Whilst insisting strongly on his qualities as an
eye-witness, and on the value of his own testimony, the author of the fourth
Gospel never once says I, John, for his name does not appear in the whole course
of the work, but only figures as its title; but there is not the slightest doubt
that John is the disciple intended or designated in a hidden manner in different
passages of the book, nor is there any doubt that the forger intended to cause
it to be believed that that mysterious personage was the author of the book. It
was merely one of those small literary artifices such as Plato is so fond of
affecting, and the result is that the recital is often very elaborate, and
contains investigations, observations, and literary pranks which are totally
unworthy of an Apostle. Thus John mentions himself without mentioning his own
name, and praises himself without doing it openly, and he does not debar himself
from that literary method which consists in showing, in a very carefully-managed
The two objects which the author had in view were to prove the divinity of Jesus to those who did not believe in Him, but, even more than that, to make a new system of Christianity prevail. As miracles were the proofs, above all others, of His divine mission, he improves on the accounts of the wonders that disfigure the earlier Gospels. It seems on the other hand that Cerinthus was one of the manufacturers of these strange books. He had become almost like John’s spectre, and the versatility of his mind now attracted him to, and then repelled him from, those ideas which were agitating religious circles at Ephesus, so that at the same time he was regarded as the adversary whom the Johannine writings were striving to combat, and as the veritable author of those writings; and the obscurity that reigns over the Johannine question is so dense that it cannot be said that it must be wrong to attribute the authorship to him. If it be a fact, it would correspond very well to what we know of Cerinthus, who was in the habit of covering his thoughts under the cloak of an apostolic name, and it would explain the mystery as to what became of that book for nearly fifty years, and the vehement opposition which it encountered. The ardour with which Epphianius combats this opinion would lead us to believe that it is not without foundation, for in those dark days everything was possible; and if the Church, when it venerates the fourth Gospel as the work of St John, is the dupe of him whom she looks upon as one of her most dangerous enemies, it is not, after all, any stranger than so many other errors which make up the web of the religious history of humanity.
It is quite certain, however, that the author is at the same time the father and the adversary of Gnosticism, the enemy of those who allowed the real human nature of Jesus to evaporate in a cloudy Docetism, and the accomplice of those who would make him a mere divine abstraction. Dogmatic minds are never more severe than they are towards those from whom they are divided by a mere shade of difference. That Anti-Christ whom the pseudo-John represents as already in existence, that monster who is the very negation of Jesus, and whom he cannot distinguish from the errors of Docetism, is almost he himself. How often in cursing others, does one curse oneself! and thus in the bosom of the Church, the personality of Jesus became the object of fierce strife. On the one hand there was no checking the torrent which carried away every one to the most exaggerated ideas as to the divinity of the founder of Christianity, and on the other hand it was of the highest importance to uphold the true character of Jesus, and to oppose the tendency which so many Christians had towards that sickly idealism which was soon to end in Gnosticism. Many spoke of the Eon Christos as of a being that was quite distinct from the man called Jesus, to whom it was united for a time, and whom it abandoned at the moment of the crucifixion. Cerinthus had maintained this, and so did Basilides, and to such heresy a tangible Word must be opposed, and this was just what the new Gospel did. The Jesus whom it preaches is in some respects more historical than the Jesus of the other evangelists, and yet he is only a metaphysical first principle, a pure conception of transcendental theosophy. This may shock our tastes, but theology has not the same requirements as æsthetics, and the conscience of Christianity, after trying in vain for a hundred years to settle what right conception it should make to itself of Jesus, at last found rest.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
In loin was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to became the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of
grace and truth.—
What follows is not less surprising. We have before us a
life of Jesus which is very different to that which the writings of Mark, Luke.
or the pseudo-Matthew have put before us. It is evident that those three
Gospels, and others of the same sort, were but little known in Asia, or at any
rate had very little authority there. During his lifetime, John no doubt, was in
the habit of relating the life of Jesus on a totally different plan to that
slight Galilean outline which the traditionists of Batanea had created, and
which served as a model after them. He knew that Jerusalem had been one of the
chief centres for Jesus' activity, and he drew persons and details which the
first narrators were unacquainted with, or had neglected. As to Jesus'
discourses as given in the Galilean tradition, the Church at Ephesus, supposing
that they were known there, allowed them to
Thus the fourth Gospel came to be produced, and though it
is of no value if we wish to know how Jesus spoke, it is superior to the
synoptic Gospels in the order of facts. The various visits of Jesus to
Jerusalem, the institution of the eucharist, his anticipated agony, a number of
circumstances relating to the Passion, the Resurrection and his life after he
had risen; certain minute details, e. g., concerning Cana, the apostle Philip,
the brothers of Jesus, the mention of Cleopas as a member of his family, are so
many features, which assure to the pseudo-John an historical superiority over
Mark and pseudo-Matthew. Many of these details might be drawn from John’s own
accounts of events which had been preserved, whilst others sprang from
traditions which neither Mark nor he who amplified his narrative under the name
of Matthew, knew anything about. In several cases in fact, where pseudo-John
deviates from the arrangement of the synoptic narrative, he presents singular
features of agreement with Luke, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.
Moreover, several features of the fourth Gospel are to be found in Justin, and
in the pseudo-Clementine romance, although neither Justin nor the author of the
romance knew the fourth Gospel. It is clear, therefore, that, besides the synoptists, there existed a collection of traditions, and of ready-made
expressions, which were, so to speak, scattered about in the atmosphere, which
the fourth Gospel partially represents to us; and to treat this Gospel as an
artificial composition with no traditional basis is to mistake its character
just as seriously as when it
The discourses which are put into the mouth of Jesus in the fourth Gospel are certainly artificial, and without any traditional basis, and criticism ought to put them on the same footing as the discourses with which Plato honours Socrates. There are two striking omissions in it; it does not contain a single parable, nor a single apocalyptic discourse about the end of the world, and the appearance of the Messiah; and one feels that the hopes of an approaching manifestation in the clouds had partly lost their force. According to the fourth Gospel, Jesus' real return after he had left the world, would be the sending of the Paraclete, his other self, who would comfort his disciples for his departure. The author takes refuge in metaphysics, because material hopes, already at times appear to him mere chimeras, and the same thing seems to have happened to St Paul. The taste for abstraction was the reason why then little weight was attached to what is regarded as the most really divine in Jesus. Instead of that refined feeling of the poetry of the earth which fills the Galilean Gospels, we find here nothing but a dry system of metaphysics and dialectics, which turn on the ambiguity between the literal and the figurative sense. In the fourth Gospel, indeed, Jesus speaks for himself, for he makes use of language which no one could be expected to understand, as he uses words in a different sense to their general acceptation, and then is angry because he is not understood. This false situation produces an impression of fatigue in the end, and at last one thinks that the Jews were excusable for not comprehending those new mysteries which were presented to them in such an obscure fashion.
These defects are the consequence of the exaggerated
attitude which the author has given to Jesus,
That religious philosophy which serves as the basis for all
those exemplications which were so foreign to the mind of Jesus, is by no means
original. Philo had expounded its essential principles more harmoniously and
logically. Both Philo and the author of the fourth Gospel attach very little
importance to the fulfilment of the words of the Messiah or to apocalyptic
belief. All the imagination of popular Judaism
The expression dabar, in Chaldean, memara, i.e., “the
Word,” become especially fruitful. Ancient texts made God speak on
all solemn occasions, which justified such phrases as: “God does everything by
His word; God created everything by His word.” Thus people were led to regard
“the Word” as a divine minister, as an intermediary by whom God works on the
outer world. By degrees this intermediary was substituted for God in visible
manifestations in apparitions, in all relations of the Deity with man. That
mode of expression had much greater consequences amongst the Egyptian Jews who
spoke Greek. The word Logos, corresponding to the Hebrew dabar, and the Chaldean
memara, and having the twofold meaning of The Word, and
Philo combined such forms of expression with his notions of Greek philosophy. His Logos is the Divine in the universe—it is an exteriorised God; it is the legislator, the revealer, the organ of God as regards spiritual man. It is the Spirit of God,—the wisdom of Holy Scripture. Philo has no idea of the Messiah, and establishes no connection between his Logos and the divine being which was dreamt of by his compatriots in Palestine. He never departs from the abstract, and for him the Logos is the place of spirits just as space is the place of bodies; and he goes so far as to call it “a second God,” or “the man of God;” that is to say, God, considered as anthropomorphous. The end of man is to know the Logos, to contemplate reason; that is to say, God and the universe. By that knowledge man finds life, the true manna that nourishes.
Although such ideas were, by their origin, as far as
possible, removed from Messianic ideas, one can see that a sort of effusion
might be brought about between them. The possibility of a full incarnation of
the Logos is quite in accordance with Philo’s ideas. It was a
generally received opinion, that in all the various divine manifestations in
which God wished to make Himself visible, it was the
Certainly the author of the book of Daniel had no idea that
his Son of Man had anything in common with the Divine Wisdom, whom, in his time,
some Jewish thinkers were already elevating into a personality; but with the
Christians the two ideas were very easily reconciled. Already, in the Apocalypse
the triumphant Messiah is called “the Word of God,” and in St Paul’s
later Epistles, Jesus is separated almost altogether from his human nature.
In the fourth Gospel, the identification of Christ and the Word is an
accomplished fact, and the national avenger of the Jews has totally disappeared
under a metaphysical conception; henceforth, Jesus is the Son of God, not by
virtue of a simple Hebrew metaphor, but in a strictly theological sense. The
very slight reputation in which the writings of Philo were held in Palestine,
and amongst the popular classes of Jews, must be the only explanation why
Christianity did not bring about such a necessary evolution till such a late
period, but this evolution took effect in several directions simultaneously, for
St Justin has a theory which is very similar
Side by side with the theory of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit was developed that of the Paraclete, who was not kept very distinct from the former. In Philo’s philosophy, Paraclete was an epithet of, or an equivalent for, Logos. For Christians he became a sort of substitute for Jesus, proceeding from the Father as he did, and who was to console the disciples for the absence of their Master when he should have left them. That Spirit of Truth, which the world does not know, is to inspire the Church throughout all time. Such a manner of raising abstract ideas into personalities was quite in keeping with the fashion of the time. Allius Aristides, who was a contemporary and a compatriot of the author of the fourth Gospel, expresses himself in his sermon on Athēnē, in a manner which is hardly distinguishable from that of the Christians:—
She dwells in her father, closely united to his essence; she breathes in him, and is his companion and counsellor. She sits at his right hand and is the supreme minister of his orders, and their wills are so conjoined that to her may be attributed all her father’s acts.
It is well known that Isis played the same part with regard to Ammon.
The profound revolution which each idea must introduce into
the manner of looking at the life of Jesus is self-evident. For the future he
was to have no more human qualities, and would know neither temptation nor
weakness. In him everything existed before it happened; everything was settled a
priori, nothing happened naturally; He knew his life in advance, and did not
pray to God to save him from that fatal hour. One fails to see why he lived this
life which was forced upon him, gone through merely as a part, without any
sincerity about it.
Naturally, the conditions under which a book became known,
were so different then to what they are now, that we must not be surprised at
singularities which would be inexplicable in these days. Nothing is more
deceiving than to imagine to ourselves writings of that date, as a printed
book, offered to everybody’s reading, with newspapers to review the new work, favourably or otherwise. All the Gospels were written for restricted circles of
readers, and no edition aspired to being the last and final one. It was a
species of literature which could be practised at will, like the legends of
Hasan and Hossein amongst the modern Persians. The fourth Gospel was a
composition of the same order. In the
To sum up, it seems most probable that, several years after
the Apostle John’s death, somebody or other determined to write in his name, and
to his honour a gospel that should represent, or should be supposed to
represent, his traditions. The definite success of the book was just as
brilliant as its beginning had been obscure. This fourth Gospel, the last to
appear, which had been manipulated in so many respects, where Philonian tirades
were substituted for the actual discourses of Jesus, took more than half a
century to assume its place, but then it triumphed all along the line. It was
very convenient for the theological and apologetic requirements of the time,
to have a sort of metaphysical drama which could escape from the objections
which a Celsus was already preparing, instead of a small, very human history of
a Jewish prophet in Galilee. The Divine Word in the bosom of God; the Word
creating all things; the Word made flesh, dwelling amongst men, so that certain
privileged mortals had the happiness of seeing and even touching him! flaying
regard to the especial turn of the Greek intellect, which seized upon
Christianity at a very early date, this seemed most sublime, and a whole
The literary faults of the fourth Gospel thus make up its
general character. It frees Christianity from a number of its original chains,
and gives it free scope for that which is essential for any innovation, i.e.,
ingratitude towards what has preceded it. The author seriously believes that no
prophet ever came out of Galilee. Christian metaphysics already sketched out in
the Epistle to the Colossians, and in that which is called the Epistle to the Ephesians, are fully developed in the fourth Gospel. It would be dear to all
those who, humiliated at the fact that Jesus was a Jew, would neither hear of
Judeo-Christianity, nor of the millennium, and who would have liked to have
burnt the Apocalypse. Thus the fourth Gospel takes its stand, in the great work
of separating Judaism from Christianity, far above St Paul. He wished that Jesus
had abrogated the Law, but he never denies that he lived under the
The future belonged altogether to transcendental idealism.
This Gospel, attributed to the well-beloved disciple, which transports us at
first into the pure atmosphere of the Spirit and of Love, which substitutes the
love of truth for everything else, and proclaims the sway of Mount Gerizim and
of Jerusalem equally at an end, was bound in time to become the fundamental
Gospel of Christianity. No doubt it will be said that this was a great
historical and literary error; but it was also a theological and political
necessity of the first order. The idealist is always the worst revolutionary,
and a definite rupture with Judaism was the indispensable condition of the
foundation of a new religious system. The only chance of success that
Christianity had was, that it should be a perfectly pure form of worship,
independent of any material creed. “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” If Jesus is understood in such a
manner, he is no longer a prophet, and Christianity under that aspect is no
longer a sect of Judaism; it becomes the Religion of Reason, and
Only those who are not well acquainted with religious
history will be surprised to see such a part filled by an anonymous writer in
the history of Christianity. The editors of the Thora, most of the Psalmists,
the author of the book of Daniel, the first editor of the Hebrew Gospel, the
author of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which are attributed to St Paul,
gave works of the greatest importance to the world, and yet they are anonymous.
If it is admitted that the Gospel and the Epistle which is so closely connected
with it are the work of Presbuteros Johannes, it might be thought that it would
be all the less difficult to accept those writings as the works of St John,
since the forger’s name was John, and he appears often to have been confounded
with the apostle. He was merely called Presbuteros, and after the falsely
so-called Epistle of John, there are two short letters by some one who seems to
call himself “The Elder.” The style, the thoughts, and the doctrine are very
nearly the same as in the Gospel
At the end of the third century two tombs were mentioned at Ephesus, which were held in the highest veneration, and to both of which the name of John was given. In the fourth century when, from the passage in Papias, the idea of the distinct existence of Presbuteros Johannes was being firmly established, one of these tombs was allotted to the Apostle and the other to the Presbuteros. We shall never know the exact truth of those extraordinary combinations in which history, legends, fable, and, up to a certain point, pious fraud were all united in proportions which we cannot separate now. An Ephesian called Polycrates, who was destined to become, one day, with his whole family, the centre of Asiatic Christianity, was converted A.D. 131, and this Polycrates fully admitted the pseudo-Johannine tradition, and cited it most confidently in his old age.
Everybody allows that the last chapter of the fourth
Epistle is an appendix which was added after the work had been written, though
possibly it was
With the Johannine writings begins the era of Christian
philosophy and of abstract speculation, which had hitherto found but little room
in the world, whilst at the same time dogmatic intolerance increased most
lamentably. The more fact of saluting a heretic was represented as an act of
communion with him. How far we are from Jesus here! He wished us to salute
everybody, even at the risk of saluting the unworthy, in imitation of our
Heavenly Father, who looks on all with a paternal eye, but yet how it was to be
obligatory to ascertain the opinions of anyone before saluting him. The essence
of Christianity was transferred to the realm of dogma; gnosis was every thing,
and salvation consisted in knowing Jesus and knowing him in a certain manner.
Theology, that is to say, a rather unwholesome application of the intellect, was
the result of the fourth Gospel, and the Byzantine world, from the beginning of
the fourth century, wore itself out by
In this matter Christianity decidedly turned its back on Judaism; and Gnosticism, which is the highest expression of speculative Christianity, had some reason for pushing its hatred of Judaism to the highest point. The latter made religion consist in outward observances, and left everything that bordered on philosophic dogma as a matter of private opinion, and the Cabala and Pantheism would naturally find an easy development by the side of observances which were carried to the minutest details. A Jewish friend of mine, as liberal a thinker as can be found, and at the same time a scrupulous Talmudist, said to me, “One makes up for the other. Close observances are a compensation for wideness of ideas, and our poor humanity has not enough intelligence to support liberty in two directions at the same time. You Christians did wrong in insisting that the bonds of communion should consist in certain beliefs, for a man does what he pleases, but he believes what he can, and I would rather go without pork all my life, than be obliged to believe in the dogmas of the Trinity and of the Incarnation.”
The progress of the Church in discipline and in her
hierarchy was in proportion to her progress in dogma. Like every living body she
developed an astonishing instinctive cleverness in completing all that was still
wanting for her solid foundation and her perfect
The strangest movement that ever took place in a democracy
took place within the Church. The ecclesia, the voluntary reunion of persons
meeting on a footing of equality amongst themselves, is the most democratic
thing that can be imagined; but the ecclesia,
the club has that fatal defect which causes every association of that kind to
fall to pieces, and that defect is anarchy, the ease with which schisms arise.
But more fatal still are the contentions for pre-eminence in the midst of small
confraternities which have been founded on an altogether spontaneous vocation.
That seeking after the highest place was the principal evil which affected the
Christian churches, and which caused the greatest trouble to the simple and
faithful members of the flock. It was thought that this danger might be
prevented by supposing that Jesus, in a similar case, could have taken a child
and said to the contending parties, “This is the greatest.” On different
occasions the Master had, as was said, opposed the ecclesiastical primacy,
brotherly as it was, to that of the depositories of worldly authority who were
given to assume a masterful manner. But that was not enough, and the association
of Christians would soon be menaced by a great danger, if some salutary
institution
Every ecclesia presupposes a small hierarchy of its own,—what we call in these days a committee, a president, assessors, and a small body of assistants. Democratic clubs take care that these functions shall be as limited as possible both as to time and privileges, but there is something precarious in that, and the result has been that no club has outlived the circumstances which called it into existence. The synagogues had a much longer continuance, although the personnel was never a clerical body. The reason for that is, the subordinate position which Judiasm held for centuries, so that the pressure from without counterbalanced the unwholesome effects of internal divisions. If the Christian Church had suffered from the same want of discretion, she would no doubt have missed her destinies; and if ecclesiastical powers had continued to be regarded as emanating from the Church itself, she would have lost all her hieretic and theocratic character; but, on the other hand, it was fated that the clergy should monpolise the Christian Church, and should substitute itself in her place. Speaking in her name, representing itself in everything as her sole authorised agents, that clergy would constitute her strength, but would at the same time be her canker-worm, and the chief cause of her future decline.
History has no example of a more wonderful transformation.
What happened in the Christian Church is just what would happen in a club, if
the members were to abdicate all their powers into the hands of the committee,
and the committee to abdicate theirs into the hands of the president, so that
neither those who were present, nor the seniors in office, would have any
deliberative voice; no influence, no control over the management of the funds,
so that the president might be able to say
Within a hundred years the change was almost accomplished.
When Hegesippus, during the second half of the second century, travelled
throughout the whole of Christendom, he remarked nothing but the bishops;
everything for him resolves itself
In one sense it may be said that this was a falling off, a
diminution of that spontaneity which had hitherto been such a creative power. It
was evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb and to destroy the
work of Jesus, and that all free manifestations of Christian life would soon be
stopped. Under episcopal censorship, the glossolalia, prophecy, the
creation of legends, and the production of new sacred books, would be
withered-up faculties, and the Christian graces would be reduced to official
sacraments. In another sense, however, such a transformation was an essential
condition of the strength of Christianity. In the first place, the concentration
of their forces became necessary, as soon as the churches became at all
numerous, for relations between these small religious societies would have been
quite impossible, unless they had an accredited representative who was entitled
to act for them. It is, moreover, an incontestable
That is the real miracle of infant Christianity. It
produced order, a hierarchy, authority, obedience from the ready subjection of
men’s wits; it organised the crowd and disciplined anarchy, and it was the
spirit of Jesus with which his disciples were so deeply imbued, that spirit of
meekness, of self-denial, of forgetfulness of the present, the pursuit of
spiritual joys which destroys ambition, that preference for a childlike mind,
these words of Jesus, “Let him who would be first among you become as he that
serveth,” that worked this miracle. The impression which the apostles left
behind them also did its share. They and their immediate vicars had an
uncontested power over all the churches, and as episcopacy was supposed to have
inherited apostolic powers, the apostles governed even after their death. The
idea that the chief officer of the Church holds his mandate from the members of
that Church who have appointed does not appear once in the literature of that
time, and thus the Church escaped, by the supernatural origin of her power, from
anything that is defective in delegated authority. Legislative and executive
authority can come from the majority, but the sacraments and the
Properly speaking, the bishops had never been nominated by the whole community. It was quite sufficient for the spontaneous enthusiasm of the first churches that he should be designated by the Holy Ghost, that is to say, that electoral means should be employed which extreme simplicity alone could excuse. After the apostolic age, and when it became necessary that that sort of divine right with which the apostles and their immediate disciples were supposed to be invested, should be supplemented by some ecclesiastical decision, the elders chose their president from among themselves, and submitted his name to popular approval. As this choice was never made without the people’s opinion having been consulted in the first instance, this approval, or rather the vote by raising the hand, was nothing more than a mere formality, but it was enough to preserve the recollection of the gospel ideal, according to which the spirit of Jesus essentially dwelt in the community, The election of deacons was also of a double nature, for they were nominated by the bishop, but they had to be approved by the community before the choice could be valid. It is a general law of the Church that the inferior never nominates his superior, and this is one of the reasons which still gives to the Church, in spite of the totally different tendency of modern democracy, such a great power of reaction.
In the churches of St Paul this movement towards a
hierarchy and an episcopate was particularly felt. The Jewish Christian
churches, which had less life in them, remained synagogues, and did not land so
immediately in clericalism, and thus, by writings attributed to St Paul,
arguments for the doctrine which
These three short works, evidently the production of the
same pen, and written most likely at Rome, are a sort of treatise on
ecclesiastical duties, a first attempt at false decretals, a code for the use of
churchmen. Episcopacy is a grand thing, and the bishop is a sort of model of
perfection, set up before his subordinates. He must, therefore, be
irreprehensible in the eyes of the faithful and of others; he must be sober,
chaste, amiable, kind, just, not proud, given to hospitality, moderate,
inoffensive, free from avarice, and earning his livelihood honestly. He may
drink a little wine for his health’s sake, but he must not marry more
than once. His family must be grave like himself, and his sons submissive,
respectful and free from any suspicion of dissolute morals. If anyone cannot
rule his own house, how can he take care of the Church of God? Orthodox above
everything; attached to the true faith, the sworn enemy of error,
The deacons must be as perfect as the bishops; serious, not double-tongued, drinking little wine, not given to filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. So must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. They must be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well, and as a trial is necessary for such difficult functions, no one is to be raised to them till after a kind of noviciate.
Widows were an order in the Church, and their first duty
was to perform their household duties, if they had any to fulfil. They who were
widows indeed, and desolate, ought to trust in God, and continue in
supplications and prayers night and day, but such as live in pleasure are dead
whilst they live. These interesting but feeble persons were subject to a certain
rule; they had a female superior, and every Church had side by side with its
deacon also its widow, whose duty it was to watch over the younger widows, and
to exercise a sort of female diaconate. The author of the false epistles to
Timothy and Titus wishes that the widow thus chosen should not be less than
sixty years of age, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good
works, if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she
have washed the saints' feet. But he instructs Timothy to refuse the younger
widows, for they will wax wanton against Christ and marry, and withal they learn
to be idle, wandering about front house to house, and not only idle, but
tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things that they ought not. “I will
therefore that the
From all this may be seen what a complete society the church already was. Every class had its own particular functions in it, and represented a member of the social body; all had their duties, were it only slaves, the power of the precepts of Jesus was to be admired by their virtuous life. As examples of this, slaves were particularly relied upon, and they are reminded that none can honour the new doctrine mere than they. If their master were a heathen, they were to be counted worthy of all honour, that the name of God and His doctrine might not be blasphemed; and if they had believing masters, they were not to be despised because they were brethren, but they were to be served because they were faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. Of course there was no word of emancipation. The aged men were to be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith; the aged women, in behaviour such as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, for they should be like catechists and teach the young women to be sober and love their husbands and their children; to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God might not be blasphemed. The young men were to he exhorted to be sober minded.
The married women’s part is humble indeed, but still a beautiful one.
In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest
apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold or
pearls or costly array; but (which becometh women
All should be submissive, as subjects, obedient, gentle, inoffensive, enemies to revolution, interested in the preservation of public peace, which alone would allow them to lead their usual holy life. They need not be surprised if they were persecuted, that was the natural lot of Christians. They ought to be the very opposite to the heathen. A man who only follows the dictates of nature is the slave of his desires, carried away by sensuality, wicked, envious, hating and hateful. The transformation which makes the natural man one of the elect is not the fruit of his own merits, but of the compassion of Jesus Christ, and of the efficacy of his sacraments.
This short Epistle, which is already quite Catholic, is a
true type of the ecclesiastical spirit, and for seventeen centuries has been the
manual of the clergy, the gospel of seminaries, the rule of that spiritual
policy as it is carried out by the Church. Piety, which is the soul of the
priest, the secret of his resignation and of his authority, is the foundation of
this spirit. But the pious priest has his rights; those of reprimanding and
correcting—respectfully, indeed, in the case of old people, but always with
firmness. “Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove,
rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine” (
In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus orthodoxy has made as
much progress as episcopacy. Already there is a rule of faith, a Catholic centre
in existence, which excludes everything that does not receive its life from the
parent stem as dead branches. The heretic is a guilty man, a dangerous being,
who must be avoided. He has every vice, is capable of every crime, and acts
which are even laudable in the Christian priest, such as a wish to direct women
on certain matters of internal government, are acts of usurpation on his part.
The heretics of whom the author is thinking seem to be the Essenes, the
Elkasaites, Jewish Christian sectaries, who occupied their minds with
genealogies of æons, who insisted on certain acts of abstinence and on a
rigorous distinction between things pure and impure, who condemned marriage, and
who yet were great seducers of women, whom they overcame by holding
The composition of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus most
likely coincided with what may be called the publication of St Paul’s Epistles.
Up till that time those letters had been scattered, and each church had kept
those which had been addressed to them, whilst several had been lost. At about
the period of which we are now speaking they were collected, and the three short
epistles, which were looked upon as a necessary complement of St Paul’s
writings, were embodied with them. They were most likely published at Rome, and
the order which the first editor adopted has always been preserved. They were
divided into two categories, Epistles to
Meanwhile, however, the world would persist in not coming
to an end, and it required all that inexhaustible measure of patience,
self-denial and gentleness which formed the basis of the character of every
Christian, when they saw how slowly the prophecies of' Jesus were being
accomplished. The years went by, and the vast Northern glorious light in the
centre of which, it was believed, the Son of Man would appear did not yet begin
to dawn in the clouds. Men grew weary of seeking for the cause of this delay,
and whilst some grew discouraged, others murmured. St Luke, in his Gospel,
announced that he would avenge his Elect speedily, that the long-suffering of
God would come to an end, and that, by praying day and night under their
persecution, the elect would obtain justice like the importunate widow did over
the unjust judge. Nevertheless, they began to be tired of waiting. That
generation which was not to have passed away before the appearance of Christ in
His Glory must all have been dead. More than fifty years had passed since those
events had taken place, which were only to precede the accomplishment
Then it was that a pious writer, in order to make these doubts cease, had the idea of disseminating amongst the faithful an epistle that was attributed to Peter. The Churches of St Paul had just collected their master’s works, and made important additions to them. It appears that a Christian of Rome, who belonged to that group which wished to reconcile St Peter and St Paul at any price, wished to enlarge the very slight literary legacy which the Galilean apostle had left behind him. Already there was one epistle which bore the name of the chief of the apostles, and by taking it for a foundation, and embodying in it phrases borrowed from all sides, there resulted a “Second Epistle of Peter” which, it was hoped, would circulate on the same footing as the former.
Nothing was neglected in the composition of the second
epistle to make it coextensive in authority with the first. Whilst composing
this little work, the author certainly had before him the short letter of the
Apostle Jude, and, no doubt, supposing that it was very little known, he did not
scruple to incorporate it almost wholly into his own writing. He was penetrated
The teaching of the Epistle, however, is quite worthy of
the apostolic age, by its purity and loftiness of thought. The Elect become
participators of the divine nature because they renounce the corruptions of the
world. Patience, sobriety, piety, paternal love, horror of heresy, to wait, to
be always waiting and expecting, is the whole Christian life (
With the Second Epistle of Peter ended, about a hundred
years after the death of Jesus, the cycle of writings, which were called, later
on, the New Testament, in contradiction to the Old. This second Bible, which was
inspired by Jesus, although there is not a single line of his in it, was far
from admitting any settled canon; many small works, all more or less
pseudo-epigraphs, were admitted by some and discarded by others. The new
writings were, as yet, very little circulated, and very unequally read, and the
list was not looked upon as final; and we shall see that other works, such as
the Pastor of Hermas, take their place by the side of writings which were
already sacred, almost on a footing of equality. Yet the idea of a new revelation
Of course the Jewish Bible maintained all its authority, and continued to be looked upon as the direct revelation of God. That ancient Canon and the apocryphal writings that had been appended to it (such as the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, etc., etc.) were looked upon, above all, as the immediate revelation of God. It was not touched; whereas, with regard to the new Scriptures, neither additions nor suppressions, nor arbitrary manipulations were forbidden. Nobody had any scruple in attributing to the Apostles and Christ himself such words and writings as they thought good, useful, and worthy of such a divine origin. If they had not said all those beautiful things, they could have said them, and that was enough. An ecclesiastical usage, that of reading aloud in churches, was an incentive to these sort of frauds, and made them almost necessary. In their meetings, the reading of the prophetical and apostolical writings was to take up all the time that was not occupied by the mysteries and the sacraments. The prophetical and the genuine apostolical writings were soon exhausted, and so something fresh was required: and to provide for the constantly occurring requirements of these readings, any edifying work was eagerly welcomed, as long as it had the slightest appearance of apostolicity, or bore the most distant resemblance to the writings of the ancient prophets.
Thus Christianity had accomplished the first duty of a religion, which is to introduce a new sacred book to the world. Another Bible had been added to the old one, which was much inferior to it in classic beauty, but was very efficacious for the conversion of the world. The old Hebrew language, that venerable aristocratic instrument of poetry, of the feelings of the soul and of passion, had been dead for centuries. The Semetic-Aramean patois of Palestine, and that popular Greek, which the Macedonian conquest had introduced into the East, and which the Alexandrian translators of the Bible raised to the height of a sacred language, could not act as the organs for those literary master-pieces; but although it lacked genius, it possessed goodness; and though it had no great writers, it had men who were filled with Jesus, and who have given us the reflex of his spirit. The New Testament introduced a new idea into the world, that of popular beauty, and in any case there is no book which has dried so many tears and soothed so many hearts as it has.
We cannot speak in a general manner of the style of the New
Testament, because its writings are divided into four or five different styles.
All these various parts, however, have something in common, and it is just that
something which imparts their power and success to them. Though written in
Greek, their conception is Semetic. Such phrases, without any circumlocution,
that language whose everything is black or white, sunshine or darkness, as, “Jacob have I loved; but Esau have I hated,” to express “I preferred Jacob to
Esau,” have carried away the world by their rugged grandeur. Our races were not
used to Oriental fulness, to such energetic partiality, to this manner of
procedure, all at once used, as it were, by bounds; and so they were overcome
and crushed, and even at this present time that style constitutes the great
power of
The canon of Old Testament Scripture, which the Christians admitted, was, as far as regarded the essential works, the same as that of the Jews. Christians who were ignorant of Hebrew read these ancient writings in the Alexandrine version, which is called the Septuagint, and which they reverenced as equal to the Hebrew text, and where the Greek version adds expansions to the original, as is the case in Esther and Daniel, these additions were accepted. Less severely guarded than the Jewish canon, the Christian admitted besides such books as Judith, Tobias, Baruch, the Fourth Book of Esdras, the assumption of Moses, Enoch, and the Wisdom of Solomon, which the Jewish rabbis excluded from the sacred volume and even systematically destroyed; whilst such books as Job, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, were very little read by people who looked, above all things, for edification, on account of their bold or altogether profane character. The books of the Maccabees were preserved rather as instructive or pious books, than as sources of inspiration.
The Old Testament, which has been mauled in different ways,
and been interpreted with all the latitude that a text without vowels allows of,
was the storehouse for the arguments of Christian apologists and Jewish
polemics. Most frequently these disputes took place in Greek, and though the
Alexandrine versions were used, they daily became more and more insufficient.
The advantages which the Christians gained from them made the Jews suspicious
of them, and a saying was disseminated, which was reputed to be prophetic, in
which some wise men of old had announced all the evil that should some day
spring from those accursed versions. The day on which the Septuagint version was
made
Aquila was the most celebrated of those who were devoted to a senseless literal translation. His work dates from the twelfth year of Hadrian’s reign. Although he was a mere proselyte, he had very likely been educated by Aquiba, and, in fact, his exegesis is an exact pendant to the rabbi’s casuistry. A Greek word corresponds exactly to every Hebrew word, even when nothing but nonsense is the result.
The Christians soon got to know Aquila’s translation, and
they were much vexed at it, for, as they were accustomed to depend on the
Septuagint for their texts, they saw that this new translation would overthrow
all their methods and their apologetic system. One passage especially troubled
them very much. The churches wished at any price to see the prophetic
announcement of the birth of Jesus from a virgin from
The Jews, on the other hand, delighted at the apparent exactness of the new version, openly proclaimed their preference for it over the Septuagint. The Ebionites or Nazarenes also frequently used it, for the manner in which Aquila had rendered the passage of Isaiah enabled them to prove that Jesus was merely the son of Joseph.
However, Aquila was not the only one who translated Hebrew after Rabbi Aquiba’s method. The Greek version of Ecclesiastes, which forms part of the Greek Vulgate, presents the very same peculiarities which Rabbi Aquiba caused the translators of his school to adopt, and yet that version is not by Aquiba.
The most different tendencies were apparent in the Church
of Jesus, which demonstrated the wonderful fecundity of the newly-awakened
conscience in the bosom of humanity; but which at the same time created an
immense danger for that newly-born institution. Thousands of hands, so to say,
were tearing the new religion to pieces, some wishing to
But we must speak of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, the
most striking personality at a period when two Christians could still differ
from each other to an extent which we cannot picture to ourselves now. It has
often been thought that Papias was one of St John’s disciples, but this must
certainly be a mistake. He never saw any of the Apostles, as he belongs to the
third generation of Christians, but no doubt he consulted those who had seen
them. He was a very careful man, a searcher after truth in his own fashion, and
one who knew the Scriptures thoroughly. He made it his occupation zealously to
collect the words of Jesus, to comment on those words in their most literal
sense, to classify them according to their matter, and, in a word, to gather
together all the traditions of the apostolic age which had already
“I am not,” he says, in his preface, “like most of those who allow themselves to be captivated by a flow of words; all I cared for were those which teach the truth. Full of mistrust for the extraordinary precepts which have got about, I only wish to know those that the Saviour had entrusted to his disciples, and which spring from truth itself. If, for example, I were to meet any one who had been a follower of the elders, I should ask him, What did Andrew say? What did Peter say? What did Philip, Thomas, James, John, or any other of the disciples of our Lord say? What do Aristion and Presbuteros Johannes, disciples of the Saviour, say? For I did not think that all the books could bring me so much profit as data collected from living and permanent tradition.”
No Apostle had been alive for some time when Papias
conceived this project, but there were still persons living who had known some
of the members of that first upper chamber. The daughters of Philip, who had
reached an extreme old age, and who were not quite in their right mind, filled
Hierapolis with their wonderful stories, and Papias had seen them. At Ephesus
and at Smyrna Presbuteros Johannes and Aristion both asserted that they were
the depositants of precious traditions which it seems they said they had
received from the Apostle John. Papias did not belong to that school which was
This attempt to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus by mere
oral tradition a hundred years after his death would have been a paradox if
Papias had refused to make use of the written texts, and in this respect his
method was not so exclusive as he seems to imply in his preface. Whilst
preferring oral tradition, and whilst, perhaps, not assigning any absolute value
to any of the texts which were in circulation, he read the Gospels of which
copies came into his possession. It is certainly vexing that we cannot judge for
ourselves how much he knew in this respect. But here Eusebius appears to have
been very far-sighted. According to his usual custom, he read the works of
Papias pen in hand, to note his quotations from the canonical writings, and he
only found two of our Gospels—that of St Mark and of St Matthew—mentioned.
Papias noticed a curious opinion of Presbuteros on Mark’s Gospel, and the
citations by which this latter traditionalist excused, as he imagined, the
disorder and the fragmentary character of the compilation of the said
Evangelist. As to the Gospel attributed to St Matthew, Papias looked upon it as
a free and tolerably faithful translation of the Hebrew work written by the
Apostle of that name, and he valued it especially on account of the authentic
words of Jesus which were to be found in it. Besides this, he met with an
anecdote in Papias, which formed part of the Gospel according to the Hebrews,
but he
Thus it will be seen that this learned man who was so well acquainted with the Scriptures, who had been in the habit of associating, so it was said, with the disciples of John, and had learnt from them the words of Jesus, did not yet know St John’s Gospel, a work which appears to have been produced only a few miles from the town in which he was living. Certainly if Eusebius had found any traces of it in the writings of the Bishop of Hierapolis, he would have mentioned it, just as he tells us that he found quotations from the first Epistle of John. It is a singular fact that Papias, who does not know St John’s Gospel, knows the Epistle attributed to him, and which is, in a manner, intended to prepare the way for the Gospel. Perhaps the forgers communicated this Epistle to him, but not the Gospel, as they feared his stringent criticism, or perhaps some time elapsed between the Epistle and the Gospel. One can never touch on this question of the writings said to be John’s without meeting with contradictions and anomalies.
From this mass of conscientious research Papias composed
five books which he called Exegeses or “Expositions of the Words of the
Saviour,” and which he certainly looked upon as a correct representation of the
teachings of Jesus. The disappearance of this work is the most regrettable loss
which the field of primitive Christian literature has ever sustained.
If we had Papias' book, no doubt a large number of difficulties which confront
us in that obscure history would be removed, and most likely that is the very
reason why we do not possess it. His work was written from so personal a point
of view that it became a scandal for orthodoxy. The four Gospels had an
authority which excluded every other, and in fifty years we shall find mystical
reasons
Besides this, Papias, although he seems to be a very severe critic, was really extremely credulous. He added things to the Gospels which, not being protected by the authority of inspiration, seemed shocking and absurd. St Mark, with his ponderous thaumaturgy, appears reasonable beside the extravagant wonders which he alleges. The teaching and the parables which he attributes to Jesus are, to say the least of it. extraordinary and absurd, and the whole had that fabulous character which the Gospel accounts, or at least those of the first three, avoided so carefully. The miracles that he attributed to Philip, on the authority of his old, half-crazy daughters, exceeded everything, and those which he alleged Justus Barsabbas worked, went beyond tradition, whilst his account of the death of St John, and especially that of Judas, was such as nobody had ever heard before. He even seemed to be versed in the dreams of Gnosticism when he asserts that God gave the government of the world to angels, who acquitted themselves badly of their duty.
But his wild millenarianism damaged Papias more than anything else in the mind of all the orthodox. His mistake was that he accepted the apocalypse of the year 68 in the sense that its author meant. With the Seer of Patmos he admitted that after the first resurrection of the dead Christ would reign personally on earth for a thousand years. This is what he makes Jesus say, according to a tradition that had been handed down by the presbuteroi:—
A day will come in which vines shall grow, each of which
shall contain ten thousand stems; and each stem shall have ten thousand
branches; and each branch, ten thousand shoots; and on each shoot there shall
be ten thousand grapes; and each
It was added that Judas refused to believe all these fine things, and from the day that he heard his Master speak thus he became a semi-unbeliever.
Besides this, Papias did not make use of any great amount of discernment in his choice of the words of Jesus when he attributed to him such which appear to have been scattered about in the Jewish apocalypses, and which may be seen more particularly in the Apocalypse of Baruch. His book was directly opposed to the proposition which the other held so dear, and proved how valuable the written Gospels were, by checking the manner in which the traditional words of Jesus were degraded. Already Montanist ideas, with their simple materialism, were making themselves felt, and, like certain Gnostics, Papias could not understand any perfect innocence of life without a total abstention from animal food. The relative good sense of the Galilean dreams had disappeared to make way for the extravagancies of the far East, and so the impossible was sought after, and a sort of subversive gentleness of humanity, such as India alone, as the price of her political annihilation, has been able to realise in life.
The orthodox Church perceived the danger of these chimeras
very quickly, and the millenium, above all, became an object of repugnance for
every Christian of common sense. Minds who, like Origen, Dionysius of
Alexandria, Eusebius, and the
Papias' mistake was that of being too conservative, and by
being the friend of tradition he seemed to be behind everybody else. The
progress of Christianity would naturally make of him an inconvenient man, and a
witness to be suppressed, whilst in his own time he certainly responded to the
state of many men’s minds. The millennists looked upon him as their principal
authority; Irenæus esteems him openly, and places him immediately after the
Apostles, on the same footing as Polycarp, and calls him by a name which is very
appropriate to his character: “A Father of the Church.”
Besides this there were degrees in the materialism of those
simple believers. Some, like Irenæus, saw
The ideas of the infinite, of the immortality of the soul, were so far absent from these Jewish dreams that a thousand years seemed enough for the most exacting minds. A man must have been very greedy of life if at the end of that time he had not been surfeited with it. In our eyes, a paradise of a thousand years seems only a small thing, as every year would bring us nearer to the time when everything would vanish. The last years which preceded annihilation would seem to us to be a hell, and the thought of the year 999, would be quite enough to poison the happiness of the foregoing years. But it is no good to ask for logic to try and solve the intolerable destiny which falls to the lot of man. Carried away irresistibly to believe in what is right, and cast into a world that is injustice itself, requiring an eternity to make good his claims, and stopped short by the grave, what can he do? He clings to the coffin and yields his flesh to his fleshless bones, his life to the brain full of rottenness, light to the closed eye, and pictures to himself chimeras that he would laugh at in a child, so that he may not have to avow that God has been able to mock his own creatures to the extent of laying upon them the burden of duty without any future recompense.
At this period Christianity was a newborn child, and when it emerged from its swaddling-clothes, a most dangerous sort of croup threatened to choke it. The root of this illness was partly internal, partly external, and in some respects the child had been born with the germs of it. In a great measure, however, the illness came from without, and the unhealthy locality in which the young Church dwelt caused it a sort of poisoning to which it very nearly succumbed.
As the Church grew more numerous and began to develop a hierarchy, the docility and self-denial of the faithful began to have its merit. It seemed to be irksome to walk like a lost sheep amongst the close ranks of the whole herd, and so men wished to leave the crowd and have rules for themselves: the universal law seemed to be a very commonplace matter. In all directions small aristocracies were formed in the Church which threatened to rend the seamless robe of Christ, and two of them were marked by rare originality. One was the aristocracy of piety, Montanism; the other, the aristocracy of science, was Gnosticism.
This latter was the first to develop itself. To minds that
were initiated into the philosophical subtleties of the times, the ideas and the
government of the Church must have appeared very humble, for the via media of
relative good sense to which orthodoxy adhered did not suit all men’s minds, and
refined intellects asserted that they had loftier ideas about the dogmas and the
life of Jesus than the vulgar herd who took matters literally, and gave
themselves up without reasoning to the direction of their pastors; and sublimity
of doctrine was sought, whereas
Jesus and his immediate disciples had altogether neglected that part of the human intellect which desires to know; with knowledge they had nothing to do, and they only addressed themselves to the heart and the imagination. Cosmology, psychology, and even lofty theological speculations, were a blank page for them, and very likely they were right. It was not the part of Christianity to satisfy any vain curiosity; it came to console those who suffer, to touch the fibres of moral sense, and to bring man into relation not with some one or abstract logos, but with a heavenly Father full of kindness, who is the author of all the harmonies and of all the joys of the universe. Especially towards the end of his life St Paul felt the want of a speculative theology, and his ideas became assimilated to those of Philo, who a century before had striven to impart a rationalistic turn of mind to Judaism. About the same time the Churches of Asia Minor launched forth into a sort of cabala which connected the part of Jesus with a chimerical ontology and an indefinite series of avatars. The school from which the fourth Gospel sprung felt the same need of explaining the miracles of Galilee by theology, and so Jesus became the Divine logos made flesh, and the altogether Jewish idea of the future appearing of the Messiah was replaced by the theory of the Paraclete. Cerinthus obeyed an analogous tendency. At Alexandria this thirst for metaphysics was even more pronounced, and produced strange results, which it is time for us to study now.
In that city a crude and unwholesome mass of all theologies
and all cosmogonies had been formed, which, however, was often traversed by rays
of genius, and which was a doctrine that set up the
Philosophy did exist still, and was trying to raise its
head again, but great minds were scarce. Platonism had gained the upper hand
over all the other Greek systems in Egypt, and in Syria, which was a great
misfortune, for Platonism is always dangerous, unless corrected by a scientific
education. There were no more any men of taste refined enough to appreciate the
wonderful art in Plato’s Dialogues, for most received those charming
philosophical fancies in a clumsy spirit; but instruction such as they
conveyed, which rather satisfied the imagination than the reason, would please
Eastern ideas. The germ of mysticism which they contained made its impress on
those races who could not receive pure and simple rationalism. Christianity
followed the general fashion, and already Philo had sought to make Platonism the
philosophy of Judaism, and
To accommodate itself to this unnatural fusion, Greek genius, healthy and intelligible as it was, had to make many sacrifices. Philosophers were to believe in ecstasies, in miracles, in supernatural relations between God and man. Plato becomes a theosophist and a mystagogue, and the invocation of good spirits is taken as a serious matter, and whilst the scientific spirit disappears altogether, that habit of mind which was fortified by mysteries begins to gain the upper hand. In those small religious assemblies of Eleusius and Thrace, where men were in the habit of throwing dust into their own eyes so as to imagine that they knew the unknowable, it was already asserted that the body was the prison of the soul, that the actual world was a decadence from the divine world; teaching was divided into esoteric and exoteric, and men into spiritual, animal, and material beings. The habit of clothing doctrine in a mythical form after the manner of Plato, and of explaining ancient texts allegorically after the manner of Philo, became general. The highest bliss was to be initiated into pretended secrets, into a superior gnosis. These ideas of a chimerical intellectual aristocracy daily gained ground. and the truth was looked upon as a privilege reserved for a small number of the initiated, and thus every master became a charlatan who sought to increase the number of his customers by selling them the secret of the absolute.
The fields of the propaganda of the gnosis and of
Christianity in Alexandria were very closely allied. Gnostics and Christians
resembled each other in their ardent wish to penetrate into religious mysteries
without any positive science, of which they were both equally ignorant, and this
brought about their sublime amalgamation. On the one hand, the Gnostics, who
alleged that they embraced every belief, and accustomed
The Fathers of the Church insist upon it that all this rank
and poisonous growth had its origin in the Samaritan sects which sprang from
Simon of Gitto (Simon Magus), and he certainly seems already to have presented
most of the features which characterise Gnosticism. The Great Announcement,
which he certainly did not write himself, but which most likely represents his
doctrines, is an altogether Gnostic work. His followers Menander, Cleobius, and
Dosistheus seem to have had the same views, and all Catholic writers make
Menander to be the father of all the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s
time. If we are to believe Plotinus on the other hand, a travestied and
disfigured Platonic philosophy was the only origin of Gnosticism. Such
explanations appear to be altogether insufficient to account for such a
complicated fact. There were Christian, Jewish, Samaritan
It is an impossible task to unravel all that contributed
to the formation of that strange religious philosophy. Neo-platonism, a tissue
of poetical dreams, the ideas that men had in consequence of apocryphal
traditions about Pythagorism, already supplied models for a mythical philosophy
bordering on religion. About the very time when Basilides, Valentinus, and
Saturninus were developing their dreams, one of Hadrian’s pensioned orators,
Philo of Byblos, gave to the world the old Phœnician theogonies, mixed up as it
seems with the Jewish cabala, under a form of divine genealogies which were very
analogous to those of the first Gnostics. The Egyptian religion, which was still
in a very flourishing state, with its mysterious ceremonies and its striking
symbols, Greek mysteries and classical polytheism interpreted in an
allegorical sense. Orphism, with its empty formulas; Brahminism, which had
become a theory of endless emanations; Buddhism, oppressed by the dream of an
expiatory existence, and by its myriads of Buddhas; ancient Persian Dualism,
which was so contagious, and to which perhaps the ideas of the Messiah and of
the millenium owed their first existence, all these in turn appeared as profound
and seductive dogmas to the imaginations of men who were beside themselves
As we have said, the Church of Alexandria was soon tinged
with these chimeras. Philo and Plato already had many readers amongst the
faithful who had any education. Many joined the Church, already imbued with
philosophy, and found Christian teaching poor and meagre, whilst the Jewish
Bible seemed to them to be still more feeble, and, in imitation of Philo, they
saw in it nothing but an allegory. They applied the same method to the Gospel,
and in some fashion remodelled it, to which it lent itself easily, on account of
its plastic character. All the peculiarities of the life of Jesus regained
something sublime, according to these new evangelists; all his miracles became
symbolical, and the follies of the Jewish ghemetria were heightened and
aggravated. Like Cerinthus, these new doctors treated the Old Testament as a
secondary revelation, and could not understand
It will be seen that the Christianity of those sectaries was that of Cerinthus and the Ebionites. Their Gospel conformed to the Hebrew Gospel, and they described the scene of the baptism of Jesus as it was related in that Gospel, and believed, with the Docetm, that Jesus had nothing human but his appearance. The Galilean accounts appeared to them nothing but childish nonsense, altogether unworthy of the Deity, and which must be explained allegorically. For them the man Jesus was nothing, the æon Christos was everything; and his earthly life, far from being the basis of doctrine, was nothing but a difficulty to be got rid of at any price.
The ideas of the first Christians about the appearance of the
Messiah in the heavens, about the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment, were
looked upon as antiquated. The moment of the Resurrection for every individual
was that at which he became a gnosticos. A certain relaxation of morals was the
consequence of these false aristocratic ideas;
The sources of piety, however, were not yet corrupted by a
proud rationalism, which generally frees itself from material practices. A
liturgy, veiled in secrecy, offered abundant sacramental consolation to the
faithful of those singular Churches, and life became a mystery, each one of
whose acts was sacred. Baptism was a solemn ceremony, and recalled the worship
of Mithra. The formula which the officiating minister pronounced was in Hebrew,
and immersion there followed the anointing, which
In this respect their influence on the history of
Christianity was of the highest order, arid they formed the bridge by which a
number of Pagan practices were introduced into the Church. In the Christian
propaganda they played a principal part, for, by means of Gnosticism,
Christianity first of all proclaimed itself as a new religion which was destined
to endure, and which possessed a form of worship and sacraments, and which could
produce an art of its own. By means of Gnosticism, the Church effected a
juncture with the ancient mysteries, and appropriated to herself all that they
possessed that satisfied popular requirements. Thanks to it, in the fourth
century, the world could pass from Paganism to Christianity without noticing it,
and, above all, without guessing that it was becoming Jewish. The eclecticism
and the ingratitude of the Catholic Church are here shown in a wonderful manner.
Whilst repudiating and anathematising the chimeras of the Gnostics, orthodoxy
received a number of happy popular devotional inspirations from them, and from
the theurgical the Church advanced to the sacramental view. Her feasts, her
sacraments, her art were in a great measure taken from those sects which she
condemned. Christianity, pure and simple, has not left any material object, for
primitive Christian archeology is Gnostic. In those small, free, and inventive
sects life was without rule but full of vitality. Their very metaphysics
Moreover, some men of rare talent, making themselves the organs of those doctrines which had hitherto been without authority, withdrew them from that state of individual speculation in which they might have remained indefinitely, and raised them to the height of a real event in the history of humanity.
Basilides, who seems to have come from Syria to live at
Alexandria, in Lower Egypt. and in the adjacent departments, was the first of
those foreign dogmatisers to whom one hesitates at times to give the name of
Christian. He is said to have been a disciple of Menander, and seems to have had
two courses of instruction: the one, which was intended for the initiated, was
restricted to religions of abstract metaphysics which were more in keeping with
those of Aristotle than those of Christ, and the other was a sort of mythology,
founded, like the Jewish cabala, on abstractions, which men took for realities.
The metaphysics of Basilides remind us of those of Hegel, because of their
unhealthy grandeur. His system owed much to the Stoic cosmogony. Universal life
is a development of a πανσπερμα. Just as the seed contains the trunk, the roots,
the flowers, and the fruits of the future plant, so the future of the universe
is only an evolution. Filiation is the secret of everything; the species is
the child of the genius, and is only an expansion of it.
In order to make these ideas more accessible, Basilides gave them a cosmogonic form analogous to those which were common in the religions of Phœnicia, Persia, and Assyria. It was a sort of divine epopæia, having for its heroes divine attributes personified, and whose diverse episodes represented the strife between good and evil. The good is the supreme god, ineffable and lost in himself. His name is Abraxas. That eternal being develops himself in seven perfections, which form with the Being himself the divine ogdoade. The seven perfections, Nous, Logos, Sophia, etc., by pairing together, have produced the orders of inferior angels (æons, worlds), to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, That number is made up by the letters of the word Abraxas added together according to their numerical value.
The angels of the last heaven, whose prince is Jehovah,
created the earth, which is the most mediocre
To put an end to this war of the gods, the supreme God sent the prince of the æons, the Nous, his first son, with the mission to deliver men from the power of the demiurge angels. The Nous did not exactly become incarnate. At the moment of baptism the Nous attached to itself the person of the man Jesus, and did not leave it till the moment of the Passion. According to some disciples of Basilides, a substitution took place at that moment, and Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus' stead. The persecutions to which Jesus and the apostles were subjected by the Jews arose from the anger of Jehovah, who, seeing that his rule was threatened, made a last effort to avert the dangers of the future.
The place which Basilides attributed to Jesus in the
economy of the world’s history does not differ essentially from that which is
attributed to him in the Epistle to the Colossians and in the pseudo-Johannine
Gospel. Basilides knew some words of Hebrew, and had certainly taken his
Christianity from the Ebionites. He gave a so-called Glaucias, St Peter’s
interpreter, as his master. He made use of the New Testament very nearly as it
had been formed by general consent, excluding certain books,
Theurgy is generally the ordinary companion of religious
intemperance. The disciples of Basilides did not invent, but they adopted, the
magic virtues of the word Abraxas. They were also reproached with a very lax
state of morals. It is certain that when so much importance is attached to
metaphysical formulas, simple and good morality seems to be a humble and almost
indifferent matter. A man who has become perfect by gnosis can allow himself
anything. It seems that Basilides did not say that, but he was made to say it,
and that was to a certain point the consequence of his theosophy. The saying
which was attributed to him,—“We are men, the others are only swine and dogs,”
was, after all, only the brutal translation of the more acceptable saying,—
Valentinus was certainly superior to him. Something sorrowful, a gloomy and icy resignation makes a sort of bad dream out of the system of Basilides. Valentinus penetrates everything with love and pity. The redemption of Christ has for him a feeling of joy; his doctrine was a consolation for many, and real Christians adopted, or at least admired him.
That celebrated, enlightened man, born, as it seems, in
Lower Egypt, was educated in the schools of Alexandria, and first taught there.
He would also appear to have dogmatised in Cyprus. Even his enemies allow that
he had genius, a vast amount of knowledge, and rare eloquence. Gained over by
the great seductions of Christianity, and attached to the
If Valentinus had limited himself to cherishing these
thoughts internally, to speaking about them to his friends, and to not
frequenting the Church except in so far as it answered to his feelings, his
position would have been altogether correct. But he wanted more: with his
ideas, he wished to have a place of importance in the Church; and he was wrong,
for the order of speculation in which he delighted was not one which the Church
could encourage. The Church’s object was the amelioration of morals and the
diminution of the people’s sufferings, not science or philosophy. Valentinus
ought to have been satisfied with being a philosopher. Far from that, he tried
to make disciples, like the ecclesiastics. When he had insinuated himself into
any one’s confidence, he proposed different questions to him, in
order to prove the absurdity of orthodoxy. At the same time, he tried to
persuade him that there was something better than that: he expounded that
superior wisdom with mystery. If objections were made to him, he would
Already it was the essence of Catholicism not to suffer any aristocracy,—that of elevated philosophy no more than that of pretentious piety. Valentinus’s position was a very false one. In order to make himself acceptable to the people, he conformed his discourses to those of the Church; but the bishops were on their guard, and excluded him. The simple believers allowed themselves to be caught; they even murmured because the bishops drove such good Catholics out of their communion. Useless sympathy! for already the Episcopate had restricted the Church on all sides. Valentinus thus remained in the state of an unfortunate candidate for the pastoral ministry. He wrote letters, homilies, and hymns of a lofty moral tone. The fragments by him that have been preserved have vigour and brilliancy, but their phraseology is eccentric. It resembles the mania which the Saint Simonians had of building up great theories in abstract language to express realities which were almost paltry. His general system had not that appearance of good sense that succeeds with the masses. The pretended Gospel of St John, with its far simpler combinations of the Logos and the Paraclete, had far greater success.
Valentines starts, like all the Gnostics, from a system of
metaphysics whose fundamental principle is that God manifests himself by
successive emanations, of which the world is the most humble. The
In consequence of the ardour of her insensate passion,
Sophia had produced by herself a sort of hermaphrodite abortion
without consciousness,
With the psychic element Hakamoth creates the demiurge,
which serves her as an instrument for organising the remaining beings. The
demiurge creates the seven worlds, and man in the last of these
worlds. But the surprising thing is that a superior and altogether
divine principle is revealed in man, and that is the spiritual element, which
Hakamoth had imparted to her work from oversight. The creator is jealous of his
own creature; he lays a snare for him (the prohibition to eat the fruit of
Paradise); man falls into it. He would have been eternally lost except for the
love which his mother
Men by their very nature, and independently of their
efforts, are divided into three categories, according as the material element,
the psychic or animal element, and the spiritual element predominate in them.
The heathen are the material men who are irrevocably devoted to the works of the
flesh. The simple faithful, the generality of Christians, are the psychic men;
in virtue of their intermediate essence, they can rise or fall, lose themselves
in matter, or be absorbed into the spirit. The Gnostics are the spiritual men,
whether they be Christians, whether they be Jews, like the prophets, or
heathens, like the sages of Greece. The spiritual men will some day be joined to
the Pleroma. The material men will die altogether; the psychic men will be
There is certainly something grand in these strange myths.
When it is a question of the infinite, of things which can only be known
partially and secretly, which cannot be expressed without being strained, pathos
itself has its charms; one takes pleasure in it, like in those somewhat
unhealthy poems whose taste one blames, though one cannot help liking them. The
history of the world, conceived like an embryo which is seeking for life, which
painfully attains consciousness, which troubles everything by its movements,
whilst those movements themselves become the cause of progress and end in the
full realisation of the vague instincts of the ideal, such are the ideas which
are not very far removed from those which we choose at times to express our
views about the development of the infinite. But all that could not be
reconciled to Christianity. Those metaphysics of dreamers, that system of
morality thought out by recluses, that brahminical pride which would have
brought back the rule of castes had it been allowed its own way, would have
killed the Church, if the Church had not taken the initiative. It was not
without reason that orthodoxy kept a middle position between the Nazarenes, who
only saw the human side of Jesus, and the Gnostics, who saw nothing but his
divine nature. Valentinus made fun of the simple eclecticism which induced the
Church to wish to join two
These despairing efforts to reconcile God and man in Jesus,
resulted from difficulties that were inherent in the nature of Christianity. In
fact, the travail which was agitating the Christian conscience in Egypt
manifested itself also in Syria. Gnosticism appeared in Antioch almost at the
same time as it did in Alexandria. Saturninus, or Satorniles, who was said to
have been a pupil of Menander, like Basilides was, put forth views which were
analogous to those of the latter, though they bore an even stronger impress of
Persian dualism. The Pleroma and matter—Bythos and Satan—are the two poles
of the universe. The kingdoms of good and evil are the two confines on which
they meet. Near those confines the world came into existence, and it was the
work of the seven last Eons or demiurges who were wandering in the realms of
Satan. Those æons (Jehovah is one of them) divide the government
Man, as he left the hand of the demiurges, was pure matter. He crawled on the earth like a worm, and had no intelligence. A spark from the Pleroma gives him true life. He thinks, and rises to his feet. Then Satan is filled with rage, and dreams of nothing but of opposing this regenerate man, the mixed work of the demiurges and of God, a man who shall spring entirely from himself. Side by side with divine humanity there is for the future the satanic humanity. To crown the evil, the demiurges revolt against God, and separate creation from that superior principle from which it ought to draw its life. The divine spark no longer circulates between the Pleroma and humanity—between humanity and the Pleroma. Man is devoted to evil and to error. Christ saves him by suppressing the action of the God of the Jews, but the strife between the good and evil men continues. The former are the Gnostics; the soul is entirely in them, and consequently they live eternally. On the other hand, the body cannot rise again: it is condemned to perish. Whatever propagates the body propagates the empire of Satan, and, consequently, marriage is an evil. It weakens the divine principle in man, by subdividing that principle to infinity.
It will be seen that all those sects were equally incapable
of giving a serious basis to morality. They even had difficulty in avoiding the
breakers of secret debauches and accusations of infamy. Alexandria could not
stop on that slippery ground. That extraordinary city was destined to see, at
its
Far from exhibiting the slightest complaisance towards the
culpable mysteries, the Church only held them in abhorrence and visited them
with the most violent anathemas which she could find in her sacred texts. What
was said of the Nicolaitanes at the beginning of the Apocalypse was brought to
mind. By the name Nicolaitanes, the Seer of Patmos most likely intends to
designate St Paul’s partisans: at any rate such a designation has nothing at
all to do with the Deacon Nicholas, who was one of the Seven in the Primitive
Church of Jerusalem. But that false identification was soon accredited.
Scandalous stories were told against the alleged heresiarch which very much
resembled those which were told about the Carpocratians. Many aberrations took
place on all sides, and no paradox was without its defender. People were found
who took the part of Cain, of Esau, of Korah, of the Sodomites, of Judas
himself. Jehovah was the evil,—a tyrant filled with hatred, and it had been
right to brave his laws. These were kinds of literary paradoxes; just as thirty
or forty years ago it was the fashion to set up criminals as heroes, because
they were supposed to be in revolt against bad social order. There was a Gospel
of Judas. In excuse for this latter, it was said that he had betrayed Jesus with
a good intention, because he had found out that his master wished to ruin the
truth. The traitor’s conduct was also explained by a motive of interest for
humanity. The powers of the world (that is to say, Satan and his agents) wished
to stop the work of salvation, by preventing Jesus from dying. Judas, who knew
that the death of Jesus on the cross was beneficial, broke the charm, by giving
him up to his enemies. Thus he was
These were aberrations without any real object, and which certainly the serious-minded Gnostics rejected just as much as the orthodox Christians. The really grave part about it was the destruction of Christianity, which was at the bottom of all these speculations. In reality the living Jesus was suppressed, and only a phantom Jesus, without any efficacy for the conversion of the heart, was left. Moral effort was replaced by so-called science; dreams took the place of Christian realities, and every man arrogated to himself the right to carve out as he chose a Christianity according to his fancy, from the dogmas and earlier books. This was no longer Christianity, it was a strange parasite which was trying to pass for a branch of the tree of life. Jesus was no longer a fact without analogy; he was one of the apparitions of the divine spirit. Docetism, which reduced all the human life of Jesus to a mere appearance, was the basis of all these errors. Still, moderate with Basilides and Valentinus, it becomes absolute with Saturninus, and with Marcion we shall see that the whole of the Saviour’s earthly career is reduced to a pure appearance.
Orthodoxy will be able to resist these dangerous ideas, whilst at times allowing itself to be drawn away by their seductive qualities. Gospels, deeply tinged with new ideas, were spread abroad. The “Gospel of Peter” was the expression of pure Docetism. The “Gospel according to the Egyptians” was a remodelling, after the Alexandrine ideas, of the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The union of the sexes was forbidden in it. The Saviour, on being questioned by Salome when his kingdom would come, answered, “When you tread under foot the garment of shame; when two shall make one; when that which is outside shall be like that which is inside, and the male joined to a female shall be neither male nor female.” Interpreted according to the rules of the vocabulary of Philo, these strange words signify that when humanity is no more, the body will be spiritualised and enter into the soul, so that man will be nothing but a pure spirit. The “coats of skins” with which God covered Adam will then be useless; primitive innocence will reign again.
After staying in Jerusalem for two years, Hadrian got tired
of doing nothing, and again began to think of his travels. First of all he paid
a visit to Mauritania, and then directed his course for the second time to
Greece and the East. He stayed at Athens for nearly a year, and consecrated the
edifices that he had ordered to be erected during his first journey; and Greece
had one long festival, and seemed but to
The august traveller then continued his journey through the East, and visited Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Judea. As far as outward appearances went, he was everywhere received as a guardian spirit, and medals which were struck for the occasion bade him welcome in every province. That of Judea is still in existence. Alas; what a falsehood. Below the inscription ADVENTVI AVG. IVDAEAE is to be seen the Emperor in a noble and worthy attitude receiving Judea with kindness, and she is presenting her sons to him. Already the Emperor has the handsome and gentle look of the Antonines, and seems to be the impersonification of calm civilisation educating fanaticism. Children go before him bearing palms, whilst in the middle a Pagan altar and a bull symbolise religious reconciliation; and Judea, a patera in her hand, seems to share in the sacrifice that is being prepared. This is how official optimism instructs sovereigns. The opposition between the East and the West was actually getting more and more accentuated, and the signs of this were so certain that the Emperor could not doubt them—his benevolent eclecticism was, however, at times singularly unsettled.
From Syria Hadrian went to Egypt by way of Petra. His
discontent and his ill temper with the peoples of the East increased daily. A
short time before Egypt had been in a state of great agitation.
I have found that Egypt, my dear Servian, which you praised to me, to be a very flighty country, hanging by a thread, turning round with every breath of fashion. There, those who adore Serapis are Christians at the same time, and men who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There is not a president of a synagogue, not a Samaritan, not a Christian priest, who does not supplement his functions by those of the astrologer, of the diviner, and the charlatan. The patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to adore Serapis, and by the others to adore Christ. It is a seditious, futile, and irrelevant education, and a rich and productive city, where nobody lives in idleness. Some are glassblowers, others papermakers, others again dyers, and all understand and practise some trade. The gouty can find something to do, the shortsighted can obtain employment, the blind are not without occupation, and even the one-armed are not idle. Money is their only god, the divinity which Christians, Jews, people of all sorts, adore. One regrets to find such a low state of morals in a city which by its manufactures and its grandeur is worthy of being the capital of Egypt. I have granted it everything; I have restored its ancient privileges, and given it new ones, and I forced them to thank me whilst I was there; but I had scarcely left when they began to talk about my son Verus, and to say, what no doubt you know, about Antinous. The only revenge that I wish to have is that they may always be forced to eat their own fowls, fecundated in a manner that I do not like to mention. I have sent you some glasses of prismatic colours, which the priests of the temple offered me: they are specially dedicated to you and to my sister. Have them used on festive occasions, only take care that our Africanus does not make too good use of them.
From Egypt Hadrian returned to Syria, and there he found the people very badly disposed. They were getting bolder. Antioch gave him an unfavourable reception, and so he went to Athens, where be was worshipped. There he heard of some very serious events, for the Jews were having recourse to arms for the third time. Their attack of furious madness of the year 117 seemed as if it were about to recommence, and Israel disliked the Roman government more than ever. Every malefactor who revolted against the State was a saint, and every brigand became a patriot. It was looked upon as an act of treason to arrest a robber. “Vinegar, off-spring of wine,” said a rabbi to a Jew, whose business it was to arrest evil-doers, “why do you denounce God’s people?” Elijah also met this worthy public officer and exhorted him to give up his odious trade.
It seems that the Roman authority also committed more than one mistake. Hadrian’s administration became more and more intolerant towards the Eastern sects, whom the Emperor made fun of. Several lawyers thought that circumcision, like castration, was punishable ill-usage, and so it was forbidden. The cases in which those who had practised epispasm, and had been forced by fanatics to be circumcised over again, would more especially give rise to these prosecutions; and we do not know how far imperial justice advanced along this difficult road which was so opposed to liberty of conscience. Hadrian was certainly not a man given to excessive measures, and in Jewish tradition all the odium of these measures rests on Tineius Rufus, who was the Legate Proprætor of the Province of Judea, and whose name the malcontents changed into Tyrannus Rufus.
These annoyances, which were so easily avoided in the only
cases which were of any importance
Far from wishing to return to this profaned Jerusalem, they fled from it like an abomination, whilst the south of Judea was more than ever a Jewish country. A number of large places had sprung up there which could defend themselves, thanks to the position of their houses, which were massed together on the summit of low hills. For the Jews of that district, Bether had become another holy city, and equivalent to Zion. The fanatics procured arms by a singular stratagem. They were bound to furnish the Romans with a certain number of implements of war, and so they manufactured them badly, on purpose that the rejected weapons might come to them. Instead of visible fortifications, they constructed immense tunnels; and the fortifications of Bether were completed by advanced works of broken stone, and all the Jews who remained in Egypt and Libya hastened to swell the number of the rebels.
We must do that justice to the clear-sighted portion of the
nation that they took no part in a movement that presupposed enormous ignorance
of the world, and complete blindness as to what they were doing. As a general
rule, the Pharisees were defiant and reserved, and many of the doctors
The Christians resisted the temptation even better. Although revolt might gratify the hatred of some of them for the Roman Empire, a distinct distrust for all that proceeded from fanatical Israel stopped them on the dangerous descent. They had already chosen their part, and the form of their resistance to the Empire was not revolt but martyrdom. They were tolerably numerous in Judea, and, contrary to the orthodox Jews, they might even live in Ælia. Of course the Jews tried to gain over their quasi-compatriots, but the disciples of Jesus were already very far from all earthly politics, for he had buried for ever the hopes of a material patriotism and Messiah. Hadrian’s reign was far from being unfavourable to the Churches, and so they did not move; and some voices were even raised to foretell to the Jews the consequences of their obstinacy, and the extermination that awaited them.
Every Jewish revolt had, more or less, to do with Messianic
hopes, but never before had any one given himself out for the Messiah; but this
took place now. No doubt under the influence of Christian ideas, and in
imitation of Jesus, a man gave himself out for the
The name of his father, or of the place where he was born, was Coziba, and he was always called “the son of Coziba” (Bar or Ben-Coziba), but his real name is unknown. Perhaps his partisans were induced to conceal his name, and that of his family, purposely in the interests of his part as Messiah. He seems to have been a nephew of Rabbi Eleazar of Modin, an Agadist of the highest renown, who had lived very much with Rabbi Gamaliel II. and his companions. One asks oneself whether the recollection of the Maccabees, who were still living at Modin, did not excite Bar-Coziba’s patriotic enthusiasm. There can be no doubt as to his courage, but the scantiness of historical information prevents us from saying more than that. Was he serious? Was he a religious enthusiast or a fanatic? Was he one of those sincere believers in the Messiah who came on to the scene too late? Or are we only to see in this equivocal person a charlatan, an imitator of Jesus, with a totally different object, a common impostor, even a criminal, as Eusebius and St Jerome assert? We cannot tell, for the only circumstance in his favour is that the principal Jewish Doctor of the Law at that period was in his favour, a man who, from his habit of thought, would be far removed from the dreams of an impostor, and that was the Rabbi Aquiba.
For many years he had been the chief authority amongst the
Jews, and he was compared to Esdras and even to Moses. As a general rule, the
doctors were not at all favourable to popular agitators. Taken up with their own
discussions, they thought that the destinies of Israel, dependent on the
observance of the Law and Messianic dreams, were limited for them to the Mosaic
ideal which those who were scrupulously devout realised. How could Aquiba incite
the people, whose confidence he enjoyed, to commit a veritable act of folly?
Perhaps the fact of his having sprung from the people, and his democratic
tendency to contradict the traditions of the Sadducees, may have helped to lead
him astray, and perhaps also the absurdity of his exegesis deprived him of all
practical rectitude. One can never with impunity play with common sense, or put
such pressure on the springs of the intellect as may threaten to snap them. At
any rate the fact appears certain, though it is difficult to believe it, that
Aquiba recognised Bar-Coziba’s Messianic character. After a fashion he invested
him with it before the people when he gave him the commander’s baton and held
his stirrup for him when he mounted his war-horse to inaugurate his reign as
Messiah. His name of Bar-Coziba was an unhappy one, and lent itself to all kinds
of unfortunate allusions. Looking on the bearer of it as the predestined Saviour
of Israel, it is said that Aquiba applied the verse from
Bar-Coziba being thus recognised as the man who, without
any official title, it is true, but in virtue of a sort of universal acceptance,
passed as the religious guide of the people of Israel, became the chief of the
revolution, and war was decided on. At first
As long as Hadrian was in Egypt and Syria, the conspirators did not let their plans be seen, but as soon as he had gone to Athens the revolt broke out. It appears that the report was spread that the Emperor was ill and attacked by leprosy. Ælia, with its Roman colony, was strongly guarded. The Legio Decima Fratensis was still in garrison there, and no doubt the road between Ælia and Cæsarea, the city which was the centre of the Roman authority, also remained open, and thus ælia was never surrounded by the insurrection. It was easy to keep communications open, thanks to a circle of colonies which were established in the east and north of the city, and especially owing to such places as Nicopolis and Lydda, which were assured to the Romans.
It is therefore probable that the revolt in its northward
progress did not go beyond Bether, and
The first case of the insurgents was the monetary question.
One of the greatest punishments of the faithful Jews was to be obliged to handle
money bearing the effigy of the Emperor, and idolatrous figures. For religious
purposes, above all, they either sought for coins of the Asmonean princes, which
were still current in the country, or else those of the first rebellion, when
the Asmonean coinage had been imitated. The new insurrection was too poor and
too badly provided with machinery to issue coins of a new mould. They were
satisfied with withdrawing the coins bearing the stamp of Flavius and Trajan,
and impressing them anew with an orthodox stamp which the people knew, and which
had a national meaning for them; and perhaps some ancient coins had been found
which facilitated the operation. For this imitation, the handsome coins of Simon
Maccabæus, the first Jewish prince who coined money, were especially selected.
From their date, which was that of the liberty of Israel or of Jerusalem, those
coins seemed to have been struck for the very purpose, and those on which was to
be seen a temple surmounted by a star, and those which bore only the impress of
the two trumpets which were destined, according to the Law, to summon Israel to
the Holy War, were more appropriate still. The stamp upon stamp was done very
roughly, and on a great number of coins the first Roman impress is still
visible. This
It was a long and terrible war, and lasted for over two years, whilst the best generals seem to have worn themselves out in it. Tineius Rufus, seeing that he was outnumbered, asked for assistance, and though his colleague Publicius Marcellus, Legate of Syria, hastened to bring it him, both failed. In order to crush the revolt, it was necessary to summon the first captain of his period, Sextus Julius Severus, from Britain. He received the title of Legate of the Province of Judea, in the place of Tineius Rufus, and Quintus Lollias Urbicus was his second in command as Hadrian’s legate.
The rebels never showed themselves in the open country, but they were masters of the heights, on which they built fortifications, and between their embattled towns they dug out covered ways, subterranean communications, which were lighted from above by air-holes, which gave air as well as light. The secret passages were places of refuge for them when they were driven back, and enabled them to go and defend another point. Unhappy race! Driven from its own soil, it seemed as if it preferred to bury itself in its bowels rather than leave it, or allow it to be profaned. This war of moles was extremely murderous, and fanaticism reached the same height as in 70. Nowhere did Julius Severus venture to come to an engagement with his adversaries, for, seeing their number and despair, he feared to expose the heavy masses of the Romans to the danger of a war of barricades and of fortified hill tops. He attacked the rebels separately, and, thanks to the number of his soldiers, and to the skill of his lieutenants, he nearly always succeeded in starving them out, by surrounding them in their trenches.
Bar-Coziba, driven into a corner by impossibilities,
As usual, Rome prevailed in the end, and in turn each centre of resistance fell. Fifty improvised fortresses, which the rebels had built, and nine hundred and fifty-five market towns were taken, and turned into ruins. Beth-Rimmon, on the Idumæan frontier, was the scene of a terrible slaughter of fugitives. The siege of Bether was particularly long and difficult; the besieged endured the last extremities of hunger and thirst, and Bar-Coziba was killed there, though nothing is known of the circumstances of his death.
The massacre was terrible. A hundred and eighty thousand
Jews were killed in the various engagements, whilst the number of those who
perished from hunger, by burning, and from sickness, is incalculable. Women and
children were murdered in cold blood.
The Roman army had been sorely tried. Hadrian, writing to the senate from Athens, does not make use of the ordinary preamble which emperors were in the habit of using: Si vos liberique vestri valetis, bene est; ego quidem et exereitus valemus. Severus was rewarded as he deserved for this well-conducted campaign, for, at Hadrian’s suggestion, the senate decreed him triumphal ornaments, and he was raised to the dignity of Legate of Syria. The army of Judea was overwhelmed with rewards, and Hadrian was hailed as Emperor for the second time.
Whatever was not killed was sold at the same price as the horses, at the annual fair of the 'I'erebinthe, near Hebron. That was the spot where Abraham was supposed to have pitched his tent when he received the visit of the three Divine Beings. The field in which the fair was held, carefully marked out by a rectangular enclosure, exists still. From that time forward a terrible memento was attached to that place, which, up till then, had been so sacred in their eyes, and they never mentioned the fair of the Terebinthe without horror. Those who were not sold there were taken to Gaza and there put up for sale at another fair that Hadrian had established there. Those unfortunate wretches who could not be got rid of in Palestine were taken to Egypt, and many suffered shipwreck, whilst others died of hunger; others, again, were killed by the Egyptians, who had not forgotten the atrocities which the Jews committed in the same parts eighteen years previously. Two brothers who still kept up the resistance at Kafar-Karouba were killed, with all their followers.
The subterranean works of Judea, however, still contained a crowd of unfortunate beings, who did not dare to leave them for fear of being killed. Their life was terrible; every sound seemed to herald the approach of the enemy, and in their mad terror they rushed at and crushed each other. The only means they had of assuaging their hunger was by eating the bodies of their neighbours who had died. It seems that, in certain cases, the Roman authorities forbade the burial of corpses, so as to make the impression of their chastisement even greater. Judea was like a vast charnel-house, and those wretches who succeeded in reaching the desert looked upon themselves as favoured by God.
All certainly had not deserved such severe punishment, and
in this instance, as happens so often, wise men paid for fools. A nation is a
solidarity, and the individual who has contributed nothing towards the faults of
his compatriots, who has even groaned under them, is punished no less than the
others. The first duty of a community is to check its absurd elements; and the
idea of withdrawing from the great Mediterranean confederation that Rome had
created, was absurdity itself. Just as history ought to sympathise with those
gentle and pacific Jews who only desired freedom to meditate on the Law, so also
our principles oblige us to be severe towards a Bar-Coziba who plunged his
country into a abyss of ills, and towards an Aquiba who upheld popular follies
by his authority. Every one who sheds his blood for the cause which he
considers righteous, is deserving of our respect; but we owe him no approval
for that. The Jewish fanatics were not fighting for their liberty, but for a
theocracy, for liberty to harass the Pagans, and to exterminate everything that
appeared to them to be bad. The ideal which they sought after would
The immediate consequence of this mad act of rebellion was
a real persecution of Judaism. The Jews were weighed down by a tribute that was
heavier still than the fiscus judaicus imposed by Vespasian. The
exercise of the most essential practices of the Mosaic religion—circumcision,
the observance of the Sabbath and of feasts, apparently insignificant simple
usages were forbidden, under pain of death; and even those who taught the Law
were prosecuted. Renegade Jews, who had turned spies, tracked the faithful who
met in the most secret places to study the sacred code, and the Jews were
reduced to reading it on the roofs
About that period the schools of the Casuists were chiefly
taken up with the question of those precepts which might be broken in order to
avoid death, and those for which martyrdom ought to be suffered. The doctors
generally admit that in times of persecution all observances may be renounced as
long as three prohibited things, idolatry, fornication (i.e., unlawful unions),
and murder are abstained from. This sensible principle was put forward: “It is
suicide to resist the Emperor’s orders.” It was admitted that
religious worship might be kept secret, and that the circumcision of children
might be announced by the sound of hand-mills instead of with the usual noisy
demonstrations. It was also pointed out that, according to
The great doubt about Providence that takes possession of the Jew as soon as he is no longer prosperous and triumphant, made the position of those martyrs a particularly cruel one. The Christian, depending as he does altogether on the future life, is never firmer in his faith than when he is being persecuted; but the Jewish martyr has not the same light. “Where is now your God?” is the ironical question which he constantly fancies that he hears from Pagan lips. To the very last Rabbi Ishmael ben Elischa never ceased to fight against the ideas that sprang up in his mind, and in the minds of his companions, against divine justice. “Do you still trust in your God?” he was asked, and his answer was, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” using the words of Job that have been badly translated.
Aquiba, who had been a prisoner for a long time, nevertheless kept up a correspondence with his disciples. “Prepare for death, terrible days are coming,” was the sentence always on his lips. He was put to death because the was betrayed to the Romans for imparting profound doctrine. He is said to have been flayed alive with red-hot iron hooks. Whilst he was being torn to pieces he cried incessantly, “Jehovah is our God! Jehovah is our only God!” and he laid a stress on the word “only” (ehad), till he expired, when a heavenly voice was heard saying, “Happy Aquiba, as you died whilst uttering that word ‘only.’”
It was not till late, and by means of successive
experiences, that Israel arrived at the idea of immortality. Martyrdom made
this belief almost a necessity. Nobody could pretend that those scrupulous
From thenceforward all hopes of seeing the Temple raised
up again were lost, and the Jews had even to give up the consolation of living
near the holy places. The species of worship that the Jewish people vowed to the
soil which they thought God had given them, was the evil that the Roman
authorities wished to cure at any price, so that for the future they might cut
off the root of Jewish wars. An edict drove the Jews from Jerusalem and its
neighbourhood under pain of death, and the very sight of Jerusalem was refused
them. Only once a year, on
The Samaritans, who had taken no part in the revolt, hardly suffered less than the Jews. Mount Gerizim, like Mount Moriah, had its temple of Jupiter; the prohibition of circumcision attacked them in the free exercise of their religion; and the memory of Bar-Coziba seems to have been execrated by them.
The construction of Ælia Capitolina went on more actively
than ever, and everything was done to efface the recollection of the past, which
had been so threatening. The old name of Jerusalem was almost forgotten, and Ælia took its place throughout the whole of the East, so that a hundred and
fifty years later Jerusalem had become a name in ancient geography which nobody
knew any more. The city was full of profane edifices, forums, baths, theatres,
tetranymphea, etc. Statues were erected in all directions, and the subtle Jewish
mind tried to discover mocking allusions in them, which Hadrian’s engineers
certainly never intended. Thus over the gate leading to Bethlehem there was a
piece of sculpture in marble which they thought resembled a pig, and in that
they saw a most insulting piece of irony towards the
On the site of the Temple, as has been said, was raised the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte, the Dioscuri were associated there with the principal god. As usual, statues of the Emperor were scattered broadcast, and one of them at least was equestrian; whilst the statues of Jupiter and Venus were also set up near Golgotha. When, in later years, the Christians settled their sacred topography, they were scandalised at this proximity, and looked upon it as an outrage; and in the same way they thought that the Emperor had intended to profane Bethlehem by setting up the worship of Adonis there.
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus occupied themselves in beautifying the city, and improving the highroads that led to it, and these public works irritated the real Jews. “In spite of all, the works of this nation are admirable,” said Rabbi Juda bar Ilaï one day to two of his friends who were seated with him. “They build forums, construct bridges, and establish baths.” “That is much to their merit!” replied Simeon ben Jochaï; “they do it all for their own benefit: they put brothels into the forums; they have the baths for their own amusement, and they construct the bridges so that they may receive the tolls.
The hatred of Greek life, which was always so active
amongst the Jews, was redoubled at the sight of a material renovation which
seemed to be its striking triumph. Thus finished the final attempt of the Jewish
people to remain a nation which possessed a name and a defined territory. In
the Talmud, the war of Bar-Coziba is very rightly called “the war of
extermination.” Dangerous movements, which seemed to be the rekindling of the
flame, appeared again during the first years of Antoninus: they were easily
repressed. From that moment Israel had no longer a fatherland, and then it began
its wandering life, which for centuries has marked it as the wonder of the
world. Under the Roman sway the civil situation of the Jew was lost without
recovery. If Palestine had wished it, it would have become a province like
Syria, and its lot would have been neither worse nor better than that of the
other provinces. In the first century, several Jews played most extraordinarily
important parts. Afterwards that will never be seen, and it seems as if the Jews
had disappeared underground: they are only mentioned as beggars who have taken
refuge in the suburbs of Rome, sitting at the gates of Aricia, besieging
carriages, and clinging to the wheels, so as to obtain something from the pity
of travellers. They are a body of raïas, having, it is true, their statutes, and
their personal magistrates, but who are outside the pale of common law, forming
no part of the State, in some measure analogous to the Zingari in Europe. There
was no longer a single rich notable Jew of any consideration associating with
men of the world. The great Jewish fortunes did not re-appear again till the
sixth century, and then it was chiefly amongst the Visigoths of Spain, in
consequence of the false ideas with regard to usury and commerce which were
spread abroad by Christianity. Then the Jew became, and continued
In that world which was burnt up by a sort of internal volcanic fire, there were some oases. Some survivors of Sadduceeism, who were treated as apostates by their co-religionists, preserved amidst these mystical dreams the healthy philosophy of Ecclesiasticus. The provincial Jews, who were subject to the Arsaeides, lived tolerably happily, and observed the Law without being interfered with. The composition of a charming book, the date of which is uncertain, and which was not translated into Greek till towards the end of the second century, may be attributed to these provinces. It is a little romance, full of freshness, such as the Jews excelled in, the idyl par excellence of Jewish piety and domestic pleasures.
A certain Tobit, son of Tobiel, who sprung from Cades of
Naphtali, was taken captive to Nineveh by Shalmaneser. From his childhood he had
been a model of goodness, and, far from participating in the idolatry of the
Northern tribes, he regularly went to Jerusalem, the only spot that God had
chosen as a place of worship, and offered his tithe to the priests, the
descendants of Aaron, according to the rules of the Teruma and of the Maaser
scheni. He was charitable, benevolent, and amiable towards all; he abstained
from eating the bread of the heathen, and in return God obtained Shalmaneser’s
favour for him, who made him his purveyor. After Shalmaneser’s death.
Sennacherib, who had returned furious from his expedition to Jerusalem, began to
act very severely towards the Jews; their bodies were lying
Tobit persists in the affirmation of a true Israelite that God is just and good, and he even carries his heroism so far as to vilify himself so as to justify God; he declares that he has deserved his lot, firstly on account of the sins and omissions that he has been guilty of through ignorance, then because of the sins of his fathers. Because the ancestors of the then existing generation were guilty, therefore that generation is dispersed and dishonoured. Tobit only begs for one favour, which is to die at once, so that he may return to the earth and go to the eternal place.
Now on that same day, at Ecbatana, another afflicted
creature had also asked God for death.
Everybody knows the charming idyl that follows. It has rightly found a place amongst these sacred fables which, reproduced under many different shapes, never weary us. Gentle morality, family feeling, filial piety, the love and the eternal union of the husband and wife, charity towards the poor man, devotion to Israel, have never been expressed in a more charming fashion. Good will to all, strict honesty, temperance, great care not to do to others what one would not wish to have done to oneself; care in the choice of one’s company and to be intimate only with good people, the spirit of order, regularity in one’s affairs, judicious family arrangements, that is that excellent Jewish morality which, though it is not exactly that of a nobleman, or of a man of the world, has become the code of the Christian middle classes in its best sense. Nothing is further removed from avarice. That same Tobit, who lives on intimate terms with the persecutors of his co-religionists because it is an advantageous place, lays it down as a principle that happiness consists in a moderate fortune joined to justice; he can put up with poverty with a light heart, and declares that real pleasure consists in giving, and not in laying up treasure.
Above all, the ideas of matrimony as developed here are particularly chaste, sensible, and refined. The Jew, with his recollections always fixed on his ancestors the prophets and patriarchs, and persuaded that his race will possess the earth, marries only a Jewess of good family, whose relatives are honourable and known to be so. Beauty is far from being a matter of indifference; but, before everything else, laws and usages and family convenience must be consulted, so that the fortune may not change hands. The man and woman are reserved for one another throughout all eternity. Marriages founded on sensual love turn out badly, but on the other hand, a union founded on real sentiment is the agglutination of two souls: it is blessed by God when it is sanctified by the prayers of the two lovers, and then becomes friendship full of charm, especially when the man maintains that moral superiority over his companion that belongs to him by right. To grow old together, to be buried in the same tomb, to leave their children well married, to see their grand-children, and perhaps the children of the latter, what more can be requisite for happiness?
The author, separated from the book of Job by nearly a thousand years, has in reality not an idea beyond that of the old Hebrew book. All ends for eth best, as Tobit dies at a hundred and sixty-eight years of age, having had nothing but happiness since his trials, and being honourably buried by the side of his wife. His son dies at a hundred and twenty-seven years of age, in possession of his own and of his father-in-law’s property. Before dying, he hears that Nineveh is taken, and rejoices at that good news, for what can be sweeter than to see the chastisement of the enemies of Israel?
Thus God appears like a father who chastises a son whom he
loves and then takes pity on him. When the just man suffers, it is as a
punishment for
What happened to Tobit will happen to Israel. After having chastised it, God will repair its disasters. The Temple will be rebuilt, but not as it was before, and then all those who were dispersed shall be restored to their own country. Israel, thus reunited, will rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple with all the magnificence which was foretold by the prophets, and this time for eternity. It will be a city of sapphires and emeralds; its walls and towers shall be of pure gold; its squares shall be like mosaics of beryl and carbuncle, and its streets shall say Alleluia. All people shall be converted to the true God, and shall bury their idols. Happy shall they be then who have loved Jerusalem and pitied her sufferings.
As soon as it was translated, that little book came into great favour with the Christians. Some of its features were of a nature to shock the delicacy of a few; it was, in some respects, too Jewish; some places in it might be touched up in a still more edifying manner. Hence arose a series of alterations, whence sprang a variety of Greek and Latin texts. The last alteration, that of St Jerome, which was made with remarkable literary feeling, gave that form to the book which it has in the Latin text of the Vulgate. The awkwardness and the clumsiness of the original have disappeared, and the result of those corrections is a small masterpiece which all succeeding centuries have read and admired.
The Jewish people are without an equal when it is a
question of accentuating and imparting a charm to an ideal of justice and
domestic virtues. The Thora is the first book in the world, regarded as a book of
devotion, but it is an impracticable code. No society
The Law, with that calmness of mind that it produced, acted like a sedative which quickly restored serenity to the troubled spirit of Israel. The Jewish quarters of the West do not appear to have suffered much from the follies of their co-religionists of the East. Even in the East peaceable Israelites had not participated in the strife, and soon became reconciled to the conquerors. Some ventured to believe that heaven was favourable to the Romans, and that, after all, the Law, when it was strictly observed in families, always gave the Jews a modus vivendi. Thus order was re-established in Syria sooner than one might have thought. The fugitives from Jerusalem went either to the East to Palmyra, or else into the South towards Yemen, or else to Galilee. That latter country above all received a new impulse from the emigration, and for centuries afterwards remained an almost exclusively Jewish country.
After the extermination of the year 67, Galilee had been
lost to Judaism for some time. Perhaps the revolt of 117 was the reason that the
beth-din was
In fact, in that tranquil country, restored to its
favourite retired and studious life, the family life and that of the synagogue,
Israel definitely renounced its earthly visions, and sought the kingdom of God,
not like Jesus in the ideal, but in the rigorous observance of the Law. From
that time forward proselytism disappears by degrees from amongst that people
who had been its most ardent followers. A law of Antoninus put a stop to the
restrictive measures of Hadrian, and allowed the Jews to circumcise their
children; but Modestinus the lawyer draws attention to the fact that such
permission applied only to their own children, and exposed those who should
perform that operation on any one who was not a Jew to capital
It was the Talmud that created the Jewish people during
that long period of repose. The doctors of old had taught the Law without any
logical order, solely according to the cases that were brought before them. Then
in their teaching they had followed the order of the hooks of the Pentateuch.
With Rabbi Ben Aquiba a fresh distribution was introduced, a kind of
classification according to matter, necessitating divisions and subdivisions,
like a Corpus juris. Thus a second code, the
Mischna, was formed side by side
with the Thora. The Scriptures were no longer taken as the foundation, and, to
speak truly, with that taste for arbitrary interpretation that had been
introduced, the Scriptures had become almost useless. It was no longer a
question of understanding the will of the legislator clearly, it was a question
of finding
The attempt to codify the oral Jewish law was made in different directions at the same time. We have no longer the Mischna of Rabbi Aquiba, nor many others that existed. The Mischna of Juda the Holy, written sixty years later, has thrown those that preceded it into oblivion, but he neither invented all the divisions nor all the titles. Many of the treatises in his compilation had been completely drawn up before his time. Besides that, after Aquiba, the original schools disappeared, and the doctors, full of respect for their predecessors, who seemed to them to be surrounded by the halo of martyrdom, tried no new methods—they were mere compilers.
Thus the Jews made a new Bible for themselves, which rather
threw the first one into the shade, at the same time that the Christians did.
The Mischna was their Gospel, their New Testament. The distance between the
Christian and the Jewish book is enormous. The simultaneous appearance of the
Talmud and the Gospel from the same race of people,—of a slight masterpiece of
elegance, lightness, and moral subtlety, and of a ponderous monument of
There certainly are in this confused medley of the Talmud
some excellent maxims, more than one precious pearl of the kind as those which
Jesus adopted and idealised. and which the Evangelists made divine in writing
them. From the point of view of the preservation of the individuality of the
Jewish people,
One very sensible feature, in fact, was to have
Great disadvantages counterbalanced the advantages of that severe discipline to which Israel submitted in order to retain the unity of its race. Their ritual united co-religionists amongst themselves, but separated them from the rest of the world, and condemned them to an isolated life. The chains of the Talmud forged those of the Ghetto. The Jewish people, which up till then had been so devoid of superstition, became its most thorough type, and the mocking allusions that Jesus made to the Pharisees were justified. For centuries their literature turned chiefly on the sacred furniture and vestments, and on slaughter houses. That other Bible became a prison in which the new Judaism carried on its unhappy life of reclusion up to our days. Enclosed in that unwholesome encyclopedia, the Jewish intellect got so sharp that it went wrong. For the Israelites the Talmud became a sort of Organon, in every respect inferior to that of the Greeks. The Jewish doctors put forward the same claims as the jurists who in the sixteenth century declared that they could find a whole system of intellectual culture in Roman Law. In our time, this vast collection, which still serves as the basis for Jewish education in Hungary and in Poland, may be considered as the principal source of the defects which may be remarked occasionally amongst the Jews of those countries. The belief that Talmudic studies supply the place of all others, and make those who devote themselves to them fitted for everything, is the great cause of that presumption, that subtlety, that want of general culture, which so often destroy really fine qualities in the Israelite.
The Jewish mind is endowed with extreme vigour. For centuries it was forced to rave because it was restricted to a narrow and barren circle of ideas. The activity which it displayed was the same as if it had been working in a wide and fertile soil, and thus the result of headstrong work, applied to a thankless dry matter, was mere subtlety. To wish to find everything in texts was to oblige themselves to childish feats of strength. When their natural sense is exhausted, a mystical sense is sought for, and then men set to work to count letters, and to compute them as if they were numbers. The chimeras of the Cabala and of the Notarikon were the last results of that extreme spirit of exactitude and of servile adherence. In such an accumulation of disputes as to the best means of fulfilling the Law, there was the proof of a very ardent religious spirit; but we may be allowed to add that there was in it something of a witticism and of amusement. Ingenious and active men, who were condemned to a sedentary life, driven from public places and from the general society of the time, sought means to get rid of their weariness by combining dialectics with the texts of the Law. Even in our time, in those countries where Jews live exclusively among themselves, the Talmud is, if we may say so, their chief diversion. The meetings which they have to explain its difficulties, and to discuss obscure or imaginary cases, seem to them to be pleasure parties, and those subtleties which we look upon as irksome, have seemed, and still seem, to thousands of men to be the most attractive matter to which human genius can be applied.
From that moment the Jews acquired all the faults of
isolated men: they became morose and malevolent. Till that time the spirit of
Hillel had not altogether disappeared, and at least some gates of the
synagogue were open to converts; but now they would
Morals suffered somewhat from so many attacks on nature.
Without containing any bad advice, and, even strangely enough, whilst insisting
on bashful modesty, the Talmud often mentions lascivious subjects, and takes a
tolerably excited imagination on the part of its writers for granted. In the
third and fourth centuries, Jewish morals, especially those of the patriarchs
and doctors, are said to have been very lax, but, above all things, in this
decrepit Israel, reason seems to have been weakened. The supernatural is
scattered about lavishly in an
A small sect, hedged in by numerous rules which prevent it from living the general life, is unsociable by nature, and is necessarily hated and easily gets to hate others in turn. In a large society which is imbued with great liberal principles, as our modern civilisation is, and as in some respects Arabian civilisation, and that of the first half of the Middle Ages were, that causes no great inconvenience. But in a society like that of the Christian Middle Ages, and like in the East in our time, it is the cause of accumulated antipathies and contempt. The Jewish Talmudist, who, wherever he went, was a stranger without a fatherland, often proved himself a scourge for the country to which chance had taken him. We must remember the Jews of the East and of the coast of Barbary, who are filled with hatred when they are persecuted, and are arrogant and insolent as soon as they feel that they are protected. The noble efforts of the Jews of Europe to improve the moral condition of their Eastern brethren are themselves the best proof of the inferiority of these latter. No doubt the detestable social organisation of the East is the primary cause of the evil, but the exclusive spirit of Judaism has also much to do with it. The regulations of the Ghetto are always disastrous, and, I repeat it, that Pharisaism and Talmudism made that rule of reclusion the natural state of the Jewish people. For the Jew, the Ghetto was not so much a restraint coming from outside as a consequence of the Talmudic spirit. Any race would have perished under it, and the manner in which the Jewish people resisted this deleterious mode of life, speaks highly for its moral constitution.
No one who has any lofty mind can help feeling a profound
sympathy for a people which has played so extraordinary a part in this world,
that one cannot imagine what would have been the history of the human race if
chance had checked the destinies of that small tribe. In judging of that
terrible crisis which the Jewish people went through about the beginning of our
era, which caused, on the one hand, the foundation of Christianity, and, on the
other, the destruction of Jerusalem and the introduction of Talmudism, there are
several acts of injustice that have to be repaired. The colours in which the
Pharisees are represented in the Gospels have been rather heightened; the
Evangelists seem to have written under the influence of the violent ruptures
which took place between the Christians and the Jews about the time of the siege
of Titus. In the Acts of the Apostles, in all that we know about the Church of
Jerusalem, and of James, the Saviour’s brother, the Pharisees have a very
different part to that which they play in the discourses which the Synoptists
attribute to Jesus. Nevertheless, one cannot prevent one’s self from
being decidedly with Hillel, with Jesus, with St Paul against Sehamaï, or with
the Haggadists against the Halachists. It was the Haggada (popular preaching)
and not the Halacha (the study of the Law) which conquered the world. Certainly
Judaism, serried, resisting, enclosed between the double hedge of the Law and
the Talmud which survived the destruction of the Temple, is still grand and
imposing. It has done the greatest service to the human intellect; it saved the
Hebrew Bible, which the Christians would probably have allowed to be lost, from
destruction. Judaism, since it has been dispersed, has given great men to the
world, and some of the highest moral and philosophical characters; and on
several occasions it has been a valuable auxiliary to civilisation; but it
St Paul, Philo, the author of the Sibylline verses, and of those attributed to Phocylides, were right then when they rejected the practices of Judaism, whilst they maintained its basis. These practices would have made all conversions impossible, for, scrupulously observed by the majority of the nation, they were, and are still, a real misfortune for it and for those countries which they inhabit in large numbers. The prophets, with their lofty aspirations, and not the Law, with its strict observances, contained the future of the Hebrew people. Jesus is the outcome of the prophets, and not of the Law, whereas the Talmud is the worship of the Law carried to superstition. After having waged relentless war on all idolatries, Israel substituted a fetichism for them, the fetichism of the Thora.
The Jewish catastrophe of the year 134 was almost as
advantageous for the Christians as that of the year 70 had been. In their eyes,
everything that savoured of the law of Moses must have appeared to be abrogated
without a chance of return; faith alone,
Thus the Christians reaped the fruits of their prudent conduct during the insurrection of Bar-Coziba. They had suffered for Rome that had persecuted them; and in Syria, at least, they found the prize of their meritorious fidelity. Whilst the Jews were punished for their ignorance and their blindness, the Church of Jesus, faithful to the Spirit of her Master, and, like Him, indifferent to politics, was peaceably developing in Judea and the neighbouring countries. The expulsion of the Jews was also the lot of those Christians who were circumcised and kept the Law, but not of those uncircumcised Christians who only practised the precepts of Noah. That latter circumstance made such a difference for their whole life that men were classified by it, and not by faith or disbelief in Jesus. The Hellenistic Christians formed a group in Ælia, under the presidency of a certain Mark. Till then, what was called the Church of Jerusalem had had no priest who was not circumcised, and, more than that, out of regard for the old Jewish nucleus, nearly all the faithful of that Church united the observation of the Law with belief in Jesus. From that time the Church in Jerusalem was wholly Hellenistic, and her bishops were all Greeks, as they were called. But this second Church did not inherit the importance of the former one. Hierarchically subordinate to Cæsarea, she only occupied a relatively humble position in the universal Church of Jesus, and nothing more was heard of the Church of Jerusalem till two hundred years later.
In those countries the controversy with the Jews became an
object of paramount importance. The Christians thought them much more difficult
to
The essential matter for the Christians was to prove that
Jesus had accomplished all the texts of the prophets and the psalms which were
thought to apply to the Messiah. Nothing can equal the arbitrariness with which
the Messianic application was carried out. The Christian exegesis was the
Dialogue seemed to be a convenient form by which to attain
to the wished-for object in these controversies. A certain Ariston of Pella,
doubtlessly the same from whom Eusebius has borrowed the account of the Jewish
war under Hadrian, wrote a discussion that was supposed to have taken place
between Jason, a Jew who had been converted to Christianity and Papiscus, a Jew
of Alexandria, who obstinately adhered to his ancient faith. As usual, the war
was
Another very inferior book that appeared in Judea has
preserved for us the echo of these intestine broils. The author made use of the
wills or rather of the recommendations that he put into the mouths of the
patriarchs, Jacob’s sons, as the basis of his writing. The language of the
original is that Greek interspersed with Hebraisms which is the language of the
greater part of the New Testament writings. The quotations are taken from the
Septuagint. The author was a born Jew, but he belonged to Paul’s
party, for he speaks of the great apostle in a tone of enthusiasm, and he shows
himself most severe towards his former co-religionists, whom he accuses of
felony and treason. In the work, traces of nearly all the writings in the New
Testament are to be found, and the two Bibles are comprehended under the common
term of “The Holy Books,” and the book of Enoch is quite confidently
A striking vision expresses the sentiments of the author with regard to his ancient race. Napthali relates that one day in a dream he saw himself sitting with his brothers and his father on the shore of the lake Jabneh where they saw a vessel sailing at random. It was laden with mummies, and had neither crew nor captain, and its name was The Ship of Jacob. The patriarchal family embarked on it, but soon a terrible tempest arose, and the father, who was holding the rudder, disappeared like a phantom; Joseph saved himself on the mast, the others escaped on ten planks, Levi and Juda on the same one. The shipwrecked men were dispersed in all directions; but Levi, clothed in sackcloth, prayed to the Lord, when the tempest was stilled, the vessel reached the land in the midst of a profound calm, the ship-wrecked men found their father Jacob again, and joy became universal.
The intention of the author of the testaments of the twelve
patriarchs had been to enrich the list of the writings contained in the sacred
canon; his book is of the same order as the pseudo-Daniel, the pseudo-Esdras,
the pseudo-Baruch, the pseudo-Enoch. Its success, however, was not the same. By
its declamatory tone and its emphatic commonplaceness, by an exaggerated
severity towards the pleasures of love and the luxury of women, by its severe
tirades against the Jews, the book was
The philosopher Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, was a much more valuable defender whom the Church acquired at about that period. His father, Priscus, or his grandfather, Bacchius, doubtlessly belonged to the colony which Vespasian established at Sychem, and which procured for that town the name of Flavia Neapolis. His family was heathen, and gave him a careful Hellenistic education. Justin had more heart and religious requirements than rational faculties. He read Plato, tried the different philosophical schools of his time, and as happens to ardent but not very judicious minds, he found satisfaction in none of them. He required the impossible from those schools. He wanted a complete solution of all the problems which the universe and the human conscience raise. The sincere avowal of powerlessness which his different masters made to him attracted him towards the disciples of Jesus. He was the first man who became a Christian through scepticism, the first who embraced the supernatural, that is to say, the negation of reason, because he was out of temper with reason.
He has related to us, with too much art for his account to
be looked upon as an exact autobiography, how he went through all the sects, his
errors, the charm which the Jewish revelation exercised on him
The attraction which Rome possessed over all the sectaries made itself felt by Justin. Shortly after his conversion he set out for the capital of the world, and there it was that he composed those Apologies, which, by the side of Quadratus and Aristides, were the first manifestation of Christianity to the eyes of a public initiated to philosophy. His antipathy for the Jews, which was inflamed by the recollection of the recent acts of violence of Bar-Coziba, inspired him with another work, whose exegesis was as singular as that of Ariston of Pella, and in which error and injustice have perhaps been pushed even further.
In fact, the parts were changed. The heathen entered the
Church in crowds, and became its most numerous members. The two great bonds that
attached the new worship to Judaism—the Passover and the Sabbath—were getting
looser day by day. Whilst in St Paul’s day the Christian who did not observe the
law of Moses was hardly tolerated, and
“As for me,” Justin says, “I believe that when a person, from weakness of understanding, wishes to observe as much as he can of that Law which was imposed upon the Jews because of the hardness of their heart, when, at the same time, that person hopes in Jesus Christ, and is determined to satisfy all the eternal and natural duties of justice and of piety, that he makes no difficulty in living with other Christians without wishing to induce them to be circumcised or keep the Sabbath, I believe, I repeat, that such a person ought to be received to friendly intercourse in every way. But any Jews who pretend to believe in Jesus Christ and wish to force the faithful Gentiles to observe the Law, I reject absolutely. . . . Those who, after having known and confessed that Jesus is the Christ, abandon their faith because they are persuaded by these obstinate-minded men in order to go over to the Law of Moses, whatever may be their reason for doing so, will find no salvation unless they acknowledge their fault before their death.”
Origen looks at matters in a similar fashion. Jews who have become Christians, according to him, have abandoned the Law. Jews who observe the Law as Christians are Ebionites and sectaries, because they value circumcision and practices that Jesus has abolished. Logic accomplished itself. It was inevitable that a duality which prevented Christians from eating together even at Easter, must end in a complete schism.
From the middle of the second century, in fact, the hatred between the two religions was sealed. The quiet disciples of Jesus, and the Jews who were exiled for their territorial fanaticism, became daily more mutually furious. According to the Christians, a new people had been substituted for the ancient. The Jews accused the Christians of apostacy, and subjected them to real persecution.
“They treat us like enemies, as if they were at war with us, killing us and torturing us when they can, just as you do yourselves,” Justin said to the Romans.
Women who wished to become converts were scourged in the
synagogues and stoned. The Jews reproached the Christians for no longer sharing
the anger and the griefs of Israel. The Christians began to inflict a reproach
on the whole Jewish nation which certainly neither Peter, nor James, nor the
author of the Apocalypse would have addressed to them, that of having crucified
Jesus. Up till then his death had been looked upon as Pilate’s crime, as that of
the High Priests and of certain Pharisees, but not of the whole of Israel. Now
the Jews were made to appear as a decided nation, one that assassinated God’s
envoys and rebelled against the clearest prophecies. The Christians made a sort
of dogma out of the non-reconstruction of the Temple, and looked upon those as
their most mortal enemies who put forward any pretensions to giving the lie to
their prophecies on this matter. As a matter of fact, the Temple was not
The Ebionites or Nazarenes, who had for the most part retired to the other side of the Jordan, naturally did not share these sentiments. They were a numerous body, and by decrees gained possession of Paneas, all the country of the Nabateans, Hauran, and Moab. They kept up their relations with the Jews and Aquiba, and the most celebrated doctors were known to them; Aquila was their favourite translator, but the mistakes that they made with regard to the period at which those two teachers flourished, proves that they had only received a vague echo of their celebrity. Besides this, the writers of the Catholic Church speak about two sorts of Ebionites, one of which retained all the Jewish ideas, and only attributed an ordinary birth to Jesus, whereas the other agreed with St Paul in admitting that observances were necessary only for Israelites by blood, and admitted that Jesus had a supernatural birth, such as is recounted in the first chapter of Matthew. The dogmas of the Ebionite school followed the same line of development as those of the Catholic Church; by degrees, even in that direction, there was a tendency to elevate Jesus above humanity.
Although they were excluded from Jerusalem as being
circumcised, the Ebionites of the East were always supposed to dwell in the Holy
City. The Ebionites of the rest of the world still looked upon the Church of
Jerusalem as it had been in the time of Peter and James as the peaceful capital
of Christendom. Jerusalem is the universal kibla of Judeo-Christianity; the
Elkasaites, who observed
Hated by the Jews, almost strangers to the Churches of St Paul, the Judeo-Christians decreased daily. It was not with them as it was with other Churches, which were all situated in large cities, and participated in the general civilisation, for they were scattered about in unknown villages, to which no rumours from the outside world had access. Episcopacy was the product of great cities: they had no Episcopacy. Thus having no organised hierarchy, deprived of the ballast of Catholic orthodoxy, tossed about by every wind, they were more or less lost in Essenism and Elkaism. With them the Messianic belief resulted in an endless theory about angels. The theosophy and the asceticism of the Essenes caused the merits of Jesus to be forgotten; abstinence from flesh, and the ancient precepts of the Nazarites, assumed an exaggerated importance. The literature of the Ebionites, which was all in Hebrew, appears to have been weak. Only their old Hebrew gospel, which resembled that of Matthew, preserved its value. The converted Jews who knew no Greek were fond of it, and still made it their gospel in the fourth century. Their Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, were more or less sophisticated. The journeys of Peter, which are scarcely mentioned in the canonical Acts, received a large development through their imagination. They added on to them some wretched apocryphas, which were attributed to some of the prophets and apostles, and in which James seems to have played a principal part. Hatred for St Paul breathes out of all those writings, the like of which we shall find written in Greek at Rome.
Such a false position was sure to condemn Ebionism to death. “Wishing to maintain an intermediary position,” Epiphanius wittily remarks, “Ebion was nothing, and in him this saying was accomplished: ‘I came near suffering every misfortune, party wall as I am between the Church and the synagogue.’” St Jerome also says that because they wished to be Jews and Christians at the same time, they did not succeed in being either Jews or Christians. Thus at the very birth of Christianity occurred what has happened in nearly all religious movements. The first century of the Hegira witnessed the extermination of the companions, relations, and friends of Mahomet, of all those, in a word, who wished to enjoy the monopoly of that revolution of which they were the authors. In the Franciscan movement, the real disciples of St Francis d’Assisi found, at the end of a generation, that they were dangerous heretics who were given up to the flames by hundreds.
The fact is that in those first days of a creative activity
ideas progress with giant strides: the imitator soon becomes retrograde, and a
heretic amongst his own sect, an obstacle to its views, which wish to progress
in spite of him, and thus often insult and kill him. He does not advance any
more, and everything is advancing around him. The Ebionim, for whom the first
Beatitude had been pronounced (Blessed are the Ebionim!), were now a scandal
for the Church, and their pure doctrine was looked on as blasphemy. Certainly
the jokes of Origen, and the insults of Epiphanius towards the real founders of
Christianity, have something offensive about them. On the other hand, it is
certain that the Ebionim of Kokaba would not have transformed the world if
Christianity had remained a Jewish sect; a small Talmud would have been the
result, and the Thora would never have been abandoned. In time the relations of
Jesus would have become a religious aristocracy,
Behold, my mother and my brethren. Whoever does the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
Ebionism and Nazaraism continued till the fifth or sixth
centuries in the more remote parts of Syria, especially in the countries beyond
Jordan, which was the refuge of all the sects, as well as in the region of Alep,
and in the island of Cyprus. Persecuted by the orthodox emperors, it disappeared
in the whirlwind of Islam. In one sense it might be said that it was continued
by Islam. Yes, Islamism is, in many respects, the prolongation or rather the
revenge of Nazaraism. Christianity, such as the Greek polytheists and
metaphysicians had made it, could not suit the Syrians or Arabs, who held
strongly to the view of separating God from man, and who required the greatest
religious simplicity. The heresies of the fourth and fifth centuries, having
their centre in Syria, are a sort of permanent protestation against the
exaggerated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which the Greek fathers
I do not envy Christ, who has become God, for I may become what he has become.
And on Easter Day he ventured to express himself thus:
To-day, Jesus has become immortal.
That is the pure Ebionite or Nazarene doctrine. Islamism says nothing more. Mahomet knew Christianity from those communities established beyond the Jordan which were opposed to the Council of Nicæa and to the councils which it developed. For him, Christians are Nazarenes. Mussulman Docetism has its roots in the same sects. If Islamism substitutes the Kibla of Mecca for that of Jerusalem, on the other hand it renders the greatest honour to the site of the Temple: the mosque of Omar rises from that ground which was defiled by the Christians. Omar himself worked to clear away the filth, and pure monotheism rebuilt its fortress on Mount Moriah. It is often said that Mahomet was an Arian: that is not exact. Mahomet was a Nazarene, a Judeo-Christian. Under him Semitic monotheism regained its rights, and avenged itself for those mythological and polytheistic complications which Greek genius had introduced into the theology of the first disciples of Jesus.
There was one direction in which the Hebrew Ebionites were
important in the literary work of the Universal Church. The study of Biblical
Hebrew, which was so neglected in Paul’s Churches, continued to
flourish amongst them. From their midst, or from the midst of neighbouring
sects, there sprang
It was under conditions which differed but little from those that have been described that, apparently, the Syriac version of the Old Testament, called Peschito, was made. According to some, Greeks were its authors; according to others, Judeo-Christians; it is, however, certain that Jews collaborated in it, as it is produced directly from the Hebrew, and as it has some passages which are remarkably parallel with the Targums. According to all appearances, this version was produced at Edessa. Later, when Christianity dominated in those countries, the New Testament writings were translated into a dialect which is altogether analagous to that of the ancient Peschito.
That school of Hebraising Christians did not outlive the
second century. The orthodoxy of the Hellenistic Churches was always suspicious
of Hebraic truth; piety did not inspire men with any wish to consult it, and the
study of Hebrew offered almost insurmountable obstacles to any one who was not a
Jew. Origen, Dorotheus of Antioch, and St Jerome were exceptions. Even Jews who
were living in Greek or Latin countries greatly neglected the ancient text.
Rabbi Meir, obliged to go to Asia, could not find a Hebrew copy of the book of
Esther
Hadrian returned to Rome, which he did not leave again, in 135. Roman civilisation had just exterminated one of its most dangerous enemies, Judaism. On all sides there was peace, the respect of peoples, the barbarians apparently submissive, and the mildest maxims of government introduced and carried out.
Trajan had been perfectly right in believing that men can
be governed whilst they are treated with civility. The idea that the State was
not only tutelary but also benevolent was taking deep root. Hadrian’s
private conduct gave rise to grave reproach; his character got worse as his
health became worse, but the people did not notice it. Unexampled splendour and
well-being which enveloped everything like a brilliant halo, hid the defective
sides of the social organisation. To speak the truth, these defective sides were
capable of being corrected. The door was open to any progress. Stoic philosophy
was penetrating the legislature, and introducing into it the idea of the rights
of man, of civil equality, and
Hadrian was amusing himself, and he had the right to do so.
His curious and active mind dreamt of all sorts of chimeras at one and the same
time, but his judgment was not sure enough to preserve him from faults of taste.
At the foot of the hills of Tibur he had a villa built which was, as it were,
the album of his journeys and the pandemonium of celebrity. It might have been
called the noisy and somewhat bold fair of a dying world. Everything was there:
false Egyptian, false Greek, the Lyceum, the Academy the Prytaneum, the Canous,
the Alpheus, the vale of Tempe, the Elysian Fields, Tartarus; temples,
libraries, theatres, a hippodrome, a naumachia, baths. It was a strange place,
and yet attractive I For it was the last place in which men amused themselves,
where men of intellect went to sleep to the empty noise of “greedy Acheron.” At
Rome the chief care of the fantastic emperor was that senseless tomb, that vast
mausoleum, where Babylon was outdone, and which, stripped of its ornaments, has
been the citadel of Papal Rome. His buildings covered the world; the atheneums
that he founded, the encouragement that he gave to letters and fine arts, and
the immunities that he granted to professors, rejoiced the hearts of all men of
learning. Unhappily superstition, eccentricity, and cruelty more and more
Perhaps some martyrdoms which took place during his reign, and for which there seems to have been no motive, are to be attributed to the caprices and disorders of his last months. Telesphorus was then the head of the Church at Rome; he died confessing Christ, and passed to the number of the glories of the faith.
The death of this amateur Cæsar was sad and without
dignity, for no really lofty moral sentiment animated him. Nevertheless, in him
the world lost a powerful support. The Jews alone triumphed over the agonies of
his last moments. It was customary amongst them not to mention him except saying
after his name, “May God smash his leg.” He was sincerely attached to
civilisation, and understood well what it would come to in time. With him
ancient literature and art came to an end. He was the last emperor who believed
in glory, just as Ælius Verus was the last man who knew how to enjoy delicate
pleasures. Human affairs are so frivolous that brilliancy and splendour must
take their share in them. A world will not hold together without that; Louis
XIV. knew it, and men lived and live still in his sun of gilded copper. In his
own fashion, Hadrian marked a summit, after which a rapid descent commenced.
Certainly Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius were vastly his superiors in virtue, but
under them the world was getting sad and losing its gaiety, was beginning to
wear the monk’s cowl and become Christian; superstition was on the increase.
Antoninus was a St Louis as far as heart and rectitude went, with much more judgment, and a wider range of intellect. He was the most perfect sovereign that ever reigned. He was even superior to Marcus Aurelius, as the reproaches of weakness which may be addressed to the latter cannot be applied to him. To enumerate his virtues would be to enumerate all the qualities of which a perfect man can command. In him all the world saluted an incarnation of the mythical Numa Pompilius. He was the most constitutional of sovereigns, and, of the same time, simple, economical, quite taken up with good deeds and public works, far from any excess, free from rhetoric and any affectation of mind. By his means philosophy really became a power; everywhere philosophers were richly pensioned; already he was surrounded by ascetics, and the general direction of the education of Marcus Aurelius was his work.
Thus the world’s ideal seemed to have been attained, wisdom
reigned, and for twenty-three years the world was governed by a father.
Affectation, false taste in literature, fell to the ground; people became simple; public instruction became an object of lively solicitude. The condition of
the whole world was ameliorated;
The similarity between these aspirations and those of Christianity was striking, but a profound difference separated the two schools, and was bound to make them hostile to each other. By its hope in the approaching end of the world, by its badly-concealed wishes for the ruin of ancient society, Christianity in the midst of the beneficent empire of the Antonines became a subverter that it was necessary to combat. Always pessimistic, inexhaustible in mournful prophecies, the Christian, far from being of service to national progress, showed that he disdained it. Nearly all the Catholic doctors looked upon war between the empire and the Church as necessary, as the last act in the strife between God and Satan; they boldly affirmed that persecution would last till the end of time. The idea of a Christian empire, though it sometimes presented itself to their mind, seemed to them a contradiction and an impossibility.
Whilst the world again began to live, the Jews and Christians
wished more obstinately than ever that it should be approaching its last hour.
We have seen the false Baruch exhaust himself in vague announcements. The
Judeo-Christian Sibyl never ceased thundering the whole time. The
ever-increasing
It was difficult for a society to put up with such attacks, without replying. The Sibylline books which contained those which were attributed to the pretended Hystaspes, and which announced the destruction of the empire, were condemned by the Roman authorities, and those who possessed them or read them were condemned to death. The uneasy search into the future was a crime under the empire; in fact, such vain curiosity almost always served as a cloak or a wish for revolutions and incitements to murder.
It would certainly have been worthy of the wise emperor, so
many humane reforms, if he had despised the intemperate imagination without a
real object, and if he had abrogated the severe laws which, under Roman
despotism, weighed on the liberty of worship and of meeting; but evidently no
one about thought of it, any more than any one did who was about Marcus
Aurelius. The unfettered thinker alone can be quite tolerant; now Antoninus
observed and scrupulously maintained the ceremonies of the Roman worship. The
policy of his
The Christians seemed to understand this. Far from finding
fault with Antoninus personally, they rather looked upon him as having
ameliorated their lot. A fact which does this sovereign infinite honour, is that
the principal advocate of Christianity ventured to address him with full
confidence, in order to obtain redress from a legal situation which he
reasonably found unjust and unbecoming in such a fortunate reign. They went
further, and there is no doubt that during the first years of Marcus Aurelius
different rescripts were forged in the name of Antoninus, which, supposed to be
addressed to the Lariseans, the Thessalonians, the Athenians, to all
Such was the rigour of the established legal order, such was the popular effervescence against the Christians, that even 'during this reign one is sorry to find many martyrs. Polycarp and Justin are the most illustrious amongst them, but they were not the only ones. Asia Minor was stained with the blood of very many judicial murders, which were all provoked by riots; we shall see Montanism rise up like a hallucination of that intoxication for martyrdom. In Rome, the book of the false Hernias will appear to us as if it came out of a bath of blood. Prejudice for martyrdom, questions relating to renegades, or to those who had shown some weakness, fill up the whole book. Justin has described to us on every page Christians as victims who expect nothing but death; their very name, like in the time of Pliny, was a crime.
Jews and heathens persecute us on all sides; they rob us of
our possessions, and only leave us our life when they cannot deprive us of it.
They cut off our heads, nail us to the cross, expose us to wild beasts, torture
us with chains, with fire, with the most horrible torments. But the more ills we
have to endure,
In order to be just, one must picture to oneself the prejudices amongst which the public then lived. Christianity was very little known. The lower classes do not like distinctions, or for some to live apart by themselves, for others to be more Puritan than they are, and to abstain from feasts and their usages. When one hides oneself, they always suppose that there is something to hide. In all time secret religious rites have provoked certain calumnies, which are always the same. The mysteries by which they are surrounded cause others to believe in unnatural debaucheries, in infanticide, incest, even in anthropophagy. They are tempted to believe that it is a secret camorra, organised in opposition to the laws. Besides this, informing had in ancient law, in spite of the efforts of good emperors, an importance which fortunately it no longer possesses, and thence sprang a type of libel, drawn up, so to say, in advance, from which no Christian could escape.
Everything was certainly false in those popular rumours,
but some badly-understood fact seemed to give some substance to them. Certain
inquiries had turned out to the detriment of those who were inculpated. The
apologists do not deny it: respect for the matter which had been judged stops
them, but
The accusation of atheism was even more redoubtable. It
entailed the punishment of death as a parricide, and worked up all
superstitions at once. The undissembled aversion of the Christians for the
temples, statues, and altars was constantly productive of some incident. There
was no scourge, no earthquake, for which they were not held responsible. Every
act of sacrilege, every fire in a temple, was attributed to them. Christians and
Epicureans were confounded in this respect, and their secret presence in any
town caused consternation, which was worked upon to raise the mob. The lower
classes were thus the centre of hatred for the Christians. What the authentic
acts of the martyrs treat with the greatest contempt, and as the worst enemies
of the saints, are the ruffians of the large towns. The faithful never looked
upon themselves as belonging to the people;
The Christians made use of the arguments of free-thinkers and of the incredulous to turn the popular beliefs into ridicule, and to fight against fatalism. The oracles were an object of mockery to all men of intellect and common sense; the Christians applauded this quizzing. One curious fact is that of Œnomaüs of Gadara, a Cynic philosopher, who having been deceived by a false oracle, lost his temper, and took his revenge in a book called The Deceits Unveiled, in which he wittily ridiculed as an imposture the superstition of which he had for a moment been the dupe. This book was eagerly received by Jews and Christians. Eusebius has inserted it entire in his Evangelical Preparations, and the Jews appear to have put the author on a footing with Balaam, in the class of involuntary apologists of Israel, and of the apostles amongst the heathen.
The Christians and Stoics, between whom there was really more resemblance than between the Christians and the Epicureans, never blended. The Stoics did not make a parade of contempt for public worship. The courage of the Christian martyrs seemed to them foolish obstinacy, an affectation of tragical heroism, a determination to die, which merited nothing but blame. These crowds of infatuated individuals of Asia irritated them. They confounded them with vain and proud Cynics who sought for theatrical deaths, and burnt themselves alive, in order that they might be spoken about.
There was certainly more than one point of resemblance
between the Christian philosopher and the Cynic; austere dress, constant
declamation against the century, an isolated life, open resistance to the
authorities. The Cynics, besides a dress which was analogous to that of the
begging friars in the Middle
There is no doubt that in many cases the provocation came
from the martyrs. But civil society is wrong to allow itself to be drawn into
acts of rigour, even towards those who seem to ask for them. The atrocious
cruelty of the Roman penal code creates a martyrology which is itself the source
of a vast legendary literature, full of unlikelihoods and exaggeration.
Criticism, in exposing what is untenable in the accounts of the acts of the
martyrs, has sometimes gone to the opposite extreme. The documents which were at
first represented as reports of the trials of the martyrs, have been mostly
found to be apocryphal. As the texts of historians, properly so called, relating
to persecutions are rare and short; as the collections of Roman laws contain
next to nothing about the matter, it was natural that the greatest reserve
should be imposed on it. One might be tempted to believe that the persecutions
really were only a slight matter, that the number of martyrs was
inconsiderable, and that the whole ecclesiastical system
Certainly if we were reduced to the acts of the martyrs to
know about the persecutions, scepticism could have a free course. The
composition of the acts of the martyrs became at a certain period a species of
religious literature for which the imagination, and a certain pious enthusiasm,
were much more consulted than authentic documents. With the exception of the
letter relative to Polycarp’s death, that which contains the account of the
sufferings of the heroes of Lyons, the acts of the martyrs of Africa, and some
other accounts which bear the stamp of being written in the most serious manner,
one must allow that the documents of this character, which have been too easily
accepted as sincere, are nothing but pious romances. We know also that the
historians of the empire were singularly poor in detail on what refers to the
Christians as well as on other matters. The true documents concerning the
persecutions which the Church had to suffer, are the works that compose the
primitive Christian literature. These works need not be by the authors to whom
they are attributed, to have authority on such a question. There was such a
widespread taste at that date for attributing documents, that a great number of
those books which have been left to us by the first two centuries are by
uncertain authors; but that does not prevent these books from being exact
mirrors of the time at which they were written. The first Epistle attributed to
St Peter, the Revelation of St John, the fragment that is called the Epistle of
Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement Romanus, even though it be not by him, the
totally or partially apocryphal Epistles of St Ignatius and Polycarp, the
From Nero to Commodus, except at short intervals, one might say that the Christian lived continually with the prospect of being put to death before his eyes. Martyrdom is the basis of Christian apology. To listen to the controversialists of the period, it is the sign of the truth of Christianity. The orthodox Church alone has martyrs; the dissenting sects, the Montanists, for example, made ardent efforts to prove that they were not deprived of that supreme criterion of truth. The Gnostics are put under the ban by all the Churches, above all because they declared martyrdom to be useless. In fact then, as Tertullian wishes, persecution was the natural state of the Christian. The details of the acts of the martyrs may be mostly wrong, but the terrible picture that they lay before us, was nevertheless a reality. One has often drawn a wrong picture to oneself of that terrible strife which has surrounded the origins of Christianity with a brilliant halo and impressed on the most beautiful centuries of the empire a hideous blot of blood: one has not exaggerated its gravity. The persecutions were an element of the first order in the formation of that great association of men which was the first to make its rights triumph over the tyrannical pretensions of the State.
As a matter of fact, men die for their opinions, not for
certainties—for what they believe, and not
“You Europeans will never understand anything about religions,” said to me the most intelligent of Asiatics, “for you have never had the opportunity of seeing them formed amongst yourselves; whereas we, on the contrary, see them formed every day. I was there whilst people who were cut to pieces and burnt, suffered the most horrible tortures for days, danced and jumped for joy because they were dying for a man whom they had never known (the Bab), and they were the greatest men of Persia. I, who am now speaking to you, was obliged to stop my legend, which in a manner preceded me, to prevent the people from getting killed for me.”
Martyrdom does not at all prove the truth of a doctrine, but it proves the impression that it has made on men’s minds, and that is all that is needed for success. The finest victories of Christianity, the conversion of a Justin, of a Tertullian, were brought about by the spectacle of the courage of the martyrs, of their joy under torments, and of the sort of infernal rage which urged the world on to persecute them.
Rome was at the highest period of her grandeur: her sway over the world seemed uncontested; no cloud was visible on the horizon. Far from growing weaker, the movement that led the provincials, above all those of the East, to come there in crowds, increased in intensity. The Greek speaking population was more considerable than ever. The insinuating Græculus, who was good for every trade, was driving the Italian from the domesticity of great houses; Latin literature was daily losing ground, whilst Greek was becoming the literary, philosophical, and religious language of the enlightened classes, just as it was the language of the lower classes. The importance of the Church of Rome was measuring itself with that of the city itself. That Church, which was still quite Greek, had an uncontested superiority over the others. Hyginus, her chief, obtained the respect of the whole Christian world. Rome was then for the provinces what Paris is in its brilliant days, the city of all contacts, all fecundations. Whoever wished to find a place of mark aspired to go thither; nothing was consecrated but what had received its stamp at that universal exhibition of the productions of the entire universe.
Gnosticism, with its ambition of setting the fashion in
Christian preaching, especially yielded to that tendency. None of the Gnostic
schools sprang from Rome, but nearly all came to an end there. Valentinus was
the first to try it. That daring sectary may even
Another heterodox doctor, Cerdon, appeared at Rome about
that time. He was a native of Syria, and introduced doctrines which differed but
little from those of the Gnostics of that country. His manner of distinguishing
God from the Creator; of placing another unknown god above God, the father of
Jesus; of representing one of the gods as just, the other as good, sounds
contrary to right. Cerdon found that this world was as imperfect a work as that
Jehovah Himself to Whom it was attributed, and who was represented as subject to
human passions. He rejected all the Jewish books in a mass, as well as all the
passages in Christian writings, from which it might result that Christos had
been able to take real flesh. It was quite simple: matter seemed to him to be a
deterioration, an evil. The Resurrection was repugnant to him for the same
reason. The Church censured him; he submitted, and retracted his opinions, then
began to dogmatise afresh, either in public or private. Thence arose a most
equivocal position. His life was spent in leaving the Church and joining it
again, in doing penance for his errors, and in maintaining them afresh. The
unity of the Church was too strong in Rome for Cerdon to be able to dream of
forming a separate congregation there as he would certainly have done in Syria.
He exercised his influence over a few isolated individuals,
The abstract Gnosticism of Alexandria and Antioch, appearing under the form of a bold philosophy, found little favour in the capital of the world. It was the Ebionites, the Nazarenes, the Elkasaites, the Essenes, which were all Gnostic heresies in a way, but of a moderate and Judeo-Christian Gnosticism in their affinities, it was those heresies, I say, that swarmed at Rome, which made the legend of Peter, and created the future of that great Church. The mysterious formulas of Elkasaism were usual in their midst, especially for the baptismal ceremony. The neophyte, presented on the edge of a river or a fountain of flowing water, took heaven and earth, air and water, to witness that it was his firm resolve to sin no more. For these sectaries, who sprang from Juda, Peter and James were the two corners of the Church of Jesus. We have often remarked that Rome was always the principal home of Judeo-Christianity. The new spirit, represented by the school of Paul, was checked there by a highly conservative one. In spite of the efforts of conciliatory men, the apostle of the Gentiles had here also obstinate adversaries. Peter and Paul fought their last battle before becoming definitely reconciled in the bosom of the Universal Church for eternity.
The life of the two apostles was beginning to be much
forgotten. They had been dead about seventy-seven years; all who had seen them
had disappeared, the greater portion without leaving any writings behind them.
One was at perfect liberty to embroider on that still virgin canvas. A vast
Ebionite legend had been formed in Rome and was
I have lied about Peter he is the true apostle of the prophet who was sent by God for the salvation of the world. The angels beat me last night for having calumniated him. Do not listen to me if I speak against him in the future!
Naturally all Antioch returned to Peter and cursed his rival.
Thus the real apostle continued his journeys, following the traces of the Samaritan impostor, and arrived at the capital of the empire immediately after him. The impostor redoubled his artifices, invented a thousand spells, and gained Nero’s mind. He even succeeded in passing off as God, and in being adored. His admirers raised altars to him, and, according to the author, these altars were still shown in his time. On the island of the Tiber, in fact, a college of the Sabine god Semo Sancus was established. There there were a number of votive columns, SEMONI DEO SANCO, on which it was easy to read, with a little goodwill, SIMONI DEO SANCTO.
The decisive struggle was to take place in the emperor’s presence. Simon’s programme was that he would raise himself into the air, and would hover there like a god. He did raise himself in fact, but on a sign from Peter the skin of his magic was burst, and he fell ignominiously, and was shattered to pieces. A similar accident had happened in the amphitheatre of the Campus Martius under Nero. An individual who had claimed to be able to raise himself into the air like Icarus, fell on to the angle of the emperor’s box, and he was covered with blood. Perhaps some real facts in the life of the Samaritan charlatan served as a foundation for these stories. At any rate the discomfiture of the impostor was represented as Peter’s greatest glory, and by it he really took possession of the eternal city. According to the legend his death followed very soon on his victory; Nero, irritated at the misadventure that had happened to his favourite juggler, put the apostle to death.
Such is the legend which, started about the year 125 by the
passions and rancour of the Jewish party in the Church at Rome, was by degrees
softened down, and produced, towards the end of Hadrian’s reign, the work, in
ten books, called “The Preaching
All that first literature of the Cerygmas and of the Periodi was the work of Ebionite, Essenian, and Elkasaite sectaries. Peter, represented as the real apostle of the Gentiles, was always its hero; James appeared in it as the invisible president of a cœnaculum filled with the divine spirit, having its seat at Jerusalem. Animosity against Paul was evident Like the Essenes and the Elkasaites of the East, those of Rome attached great importance to the possession of a secret literature which was reserved for the initiated, and the commonest frauds were employed to give to those later productions of Christian inspiration an authority which they did not merit.
The most ancient edition of the Cerygmas of Peter is lost,
and we only possess two fragments which form a sort of introduction to the work.
The first is a letter in which Peter addresses the book of his Cerygmas to
James, “master and bishop of the Holy Church,” and begs him not to communicate
it to any
I do not know that as a prophet, but because I already see the beginning of the evil. Some of those who are of heathen origin have rejected my preaching, which is conformable to the Law, and have attached themselves to the frivolous teaching of the enemy, which is contrary to the Law. During my life people have tried, by different interpretations, to pervert my words, in the sense of destroying the Law. According to them, that is my idea, but I am not bold enough to declare it. God forbid! that would be to blaspheme the Law of God which Moses proclaimed, and whose eternal duration our Saviour attested when He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the Law shall pass away.” This is the truth, but there are some people who think themselves authorised, I do not know how, to expound my thoughts, and who claim to interpret the discourses that they have heard from me more pertinently than I do myself. They put before their catechumens as my true opinion matters of which I have never dreamt. If such lies are produced during my life, what will they not dare to do after my death?
James decided in fact that the book of the Cerygmas should
only be communicated to circumcised men of mature age who aspired to the title
of doctor, and who had been tested for at least six years. The initiation was to
take place by degrees, in order that if the results of a first experience were
bad it might be stopped. The communication was to be made mysteriously, on the
very spot where baptism was administered, and with the formulas of baptismal
promises according to the Essenean or Elkasaite rite. The person who was
initiated was to promise to submit himself to him who gave the Cerygmas, not to
pass them on to any one else, not to copy them or allow them to be copied. If
some
The absurdities of the sectaries would have been without
any consequence anywhere but in Rome, but everything that referred to Peter
assumed considerable proportions in the capital of the world. In spite of its
heresies, the book of the Cerygmas was of great interest for the orthodox. The
primacy of Peter was proclaimed in it; St Paul was abused, but a few after
touches might soften down anything offensive in such attacks. Thus several
attempts were made to lessen the singularities of the new book and to adapt it
to the wants of the Catholics. This fashion of altering books to suit the sect to
It is difficult to say who gained most by that
reconciliation. The concessions chiefly came from Paul’s side: all
his disciples admitted Peter without difficulty, whilst most of the Christians
of Peter rejected Paul. But concessions often come from the strongest. In
reality, every day gave the victory to Paul, and every Gentile who was converted
made the balance incline to his side. Out of Syria, the Judeo-Christians were,
so to say, drowned by the waves of the newly converted. St Paul’s churches
prospered; they had sound sense, a sobriety of intellect, and pecuniary
resources which the others did not possess. The Ebionite churches, on the other
hand, were daily getting poorer. The money of Paul’s churches was
used for the support of poor saints who could not gain their own livelihood, but
who possessed the living tradition of the primitive spirit. The communities of
Christians of heathen origin admired, imitated, and assimilated to themselves
the others' elevated piety and strictness of
So from the reconciliation of parties and the settlement of the earlier strifes there sprang a great unity, the Catholic Church, the Church at the same time of Peter and of Paul, a stranger to the rivalries which had marked the first century of Christianity. Paul’s churches had shown the most conciliatory spirit, and they triumphed. The stubborn Ebionites remained Jewish, and shared the Jewish immovableness. Rome was the point where this great transformation took place. Already the high Christian destiny of that extraordinary city was being written in luminous characters. The transference of Easter to the day of the resurrection, which was in some measure the proclamation of the autonomy of Christianity, was accomplished there, at anyrate in the time of Hadrian.
The fusion that took place between the groups also took
place with regard to their writings. Books were exchanged from one country to
another. The
The fundamental condition of the success of Christianity was
now settled. Neither Peter nor Paul could succeed separately. Peter was
preservation, Paul revolution: both were necessary. It is told in Brittany that
when St Peter and St Paul went to preach Christianity in America, they reached a
deep and narrow arm of the sea. Although they were agreed on essential points,
they determined to establish themselves one on one side and one on the other, so
that they might both teach the Gospel in their own fashion; for it seems that,
in spite of their intimate fellowship, they could not live together very well.
Each of them, according to the custom of the saints of Brittany, set to work to
build his chapel. They had the materials, but only one hammer, so that every
evening the saint who had worked during the daytime threw the hammer across the
arm of the sea to his neighbour. Thanks to the alternative labour resulting from
this arrangement,
Above all, the death of the two apostles preoccupied the
different parties, and gave rise to the most diverse combinations. A legendary
tissue was woven with regard to this by an instinctive work which was almost as
imperious as that which had presided over the formation of the legend of Jesus.
The end of the life of Peter and Paul was ordered à priori. It was maintained
that Christ had announced Peter’s martyrdom just as he had foretold the death
of the sons of Zebedee. A want was felt of associating two persons in death who
had been forcibly reconciled. Men wished to prove, and perhaps in that they were
not far wrong, that they were put to death at the same time, or at least in
consequence of the same event. The spots which were looked upon as having been
sanctified by this sanguinary drama were fixed upon at an early date, and
consecrated by memoriæ. In such a case, what the people wants always gains the
day in the end. There is no popular place in Italy where the portraits of Victor
Emmanuel and Pius IX. are not seen side by side, and general belief will have it
that those two men, representing principles whose reconciliation is, according
to the most general sentiment, necessary to Italy, were really very good
friends. If such ideas obtruded themselves into history in our time, one would
read some day, in documents which are looked upon as serious, that
Victor-Emmanuel, Pius IX. (most probably Garibaldi would be joined in with them)
saw each other secretly, understood each other, and liked each other. The
association of Voltaire and Rousseau was brought about by analogous necessities.
The Middle Ages also tried several times, in order to appease the hatred between
Dominicans and Franciscans, to prove that the founders of those two orders had
been two brothers,
The Cerygma of Peter and Paul was all the more important as it filled up the unfortunate gaps which the Acts of the Apostles showed. In this latter book Peter’s preaching was cut very short, and the circumstances of the apostles' deaths were passed over in silence. The success of a book that represented Peter and Paul going everywhere in company to convert the Gentiles,—going to Rome, preaching there, and both finding the crown of martyrdom there, was assured. The doctrine which they taught, according to this book, was equally removed from Judaism and Hellenism. The Jews were treated by them as enemies of Jesus and of the apostles. At Rome, Peter and Paul announced the destruction of their city, and their perpetual exile from Judea, because they had leaped with joy at the trials of the Son of God.
It seems at first sight as if such an important work ought
to find a place in the canon of Scripture immediately after the Acts of the
Apostles. But the wording of it was incoherent, and incapable of satisfying the
whole Christian community in a permanent manner. The evangelical knowledge of
the author was too incomplete. He admitted the most childish statements from the
Gospel to the Hebrews. Jesus confessed his sins; his mother Mary forced him to
be baptised, and at the moment of his baptism the water seemed to be covered
with fire. In his discourses to the Gentiles, Paul cited the apocryphal Sibyl of
the Jews of Alexandria and of Hystaspes, a heathen prophet who announced the
league of the kings against Christ and the Christians, the patience of the
martyrs, and the final appearance of Christ, as authorities that ought to
convince them. Then, contrary to Paul’s formal assertions in the
Thus the account of the death of the two apostles, like
that of their preaching and journeys, was a matter of caprice, at anyrate as far
as regarded form. Simplicity of style, which assures the eternal fortune of a
narrative text, something decided in the outline, which makes the reader believe
that events could not have happened differently, all those qualities which
constitute the beauty of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles, are
wanting in the legend of the death of Peter and Paul. Ancient compilations
about it existed which have disappeared, but which were not very different from
those which have been preserved, and which have fixed the tradition on this
important subject. The effect of the legend was abundant and rapid. Rome and all
its environs, above all the Via Ostia, were, so to say, filled with pretended
recollections of the last days of the apostles. A number of touching
circumstances—Peter’s flight, the vision of Jesus bearing his cross, the iterum
crucifigi, the last farewell of Peter and Paul, the meeting of Peter with his
wife, St Paul at the fountain of Salvian, Plautilla sending the kerchief which
kept up her hair to bandage Paul’s eyes—all that made a beautiful whole that
only required a clever and simple compiler. It was too late; the vein of the
first Christian literature was exhausted; the serenity of the historian of the
Acts was lost, and the tone never rose above the level of story or
The creative vein with regard to Gospel literature also
grew daily weaker, although it had not absolutely dried up. The Gospel of the
Nazarenes, or of the Hebrews, or of the Ebionites, was almost as different in
texts as it was in manuscripts. Egypt extracted from them its “Gospel of the
Egyptians,” in which the exaggeration of a sickly enthusiasm bordered so closely
on immorality. A compilation which had a very great success for a long time was
the Gospel of Peter, which was most likely composed at Rome. Justin and the
author of the pseudo-Clementine romance seem to have made use of it. It differed
little from the Ebionite Gospel, and already showed that prepossession in favour
of many which is the feature of the apocryphal writings. Men reflected more and
more on the part which would be suitable to the mother of Jesus. They sought to
connect her with David’s race; round her cradle miracles were created which
were analogous to those which occurred at John Baptist’s birth. A
book that was later filled with absurdities by the Gnostics, but which perhaps,
when it appeared, did not go beyond the main note of the Catholic Church, the
Genna Marias, which differed but little from the writing that is called the
Protovangelium of James, satisfied those wants of the imagination. Legends got
more material every day. Men occupied themselves with the evidence of the
midwife who attended Mary, and who vouched for
The desire of finding arguments which the heathen could not challenge was the cause of some pious frauds whose success was rapid in that world, which was not hard to please, and which it was intended to impress. The monotheistic Sibyl of Alexandria, which for centuries had not ceased to anounce the ruin of idolatry, was becoming more and more Christian. The authority that was accorded to it was of the first order. The ancient Sibylline collections were continually increasing, by additions in which no trouble was taken to keep up an appearance of probability. The heathen were enraged at what they looked upon as interpolations into venerable books. The Christians answered them with more humour than justice: “Show us any old copies in which those passages are not to be found.” Men of intellect made fun equally of the heathen and Christian Sibyls, and parodied them cleverly, so much so that Origen, for instance, never makes use of these depreciated arguments.
To these oracles were added those of a certain Hystaspes,
under whose name some pretended books on the mysteries of Chaldea were current
amongst
About the same time, the documents which were supposed to be official, of Pilate’s administration relating to Jesus, may have been forged. In a controversy with the heathen and the Jews it was a great power to be able to appeal to pretended reports contained in the State archives. Such was the origin of those Acts of Pilate which St Justin, the Quartodecimans, and Tertullian had quoted, and which possessed sufficient importance for the Emperor Maximian II., at the beginning of the fourth century, to look upon it as an act of fair warfare to counterfeit them, in order to cast ridicule and contempt on the Christians. From the moment that it was admitted that Tiberius was officially informed of the death of Jesus, it was natural to suppose that this notification had some effect, and from that fact sprang the opinion that Tiberius had proposed to the Senate to place Jesus in the ranks of the gods.
Rome, as has been seen, continued to be the centre of an
extraordinary movement. Heretics of all sorts met there, and were anathematised
there. The centre of a future orthodoxy was evidently there. Pius had succeeded
Hyginus, and was as firm as his predecessor had been in defending the purity of
the faith. Pius is already a bishop in the proper sense of the word. Valentinus
and Cerdon, although condemned by Hyginus, were always at Rome, trying to regain
their lost ground, retracting at times, received as penitents, then returning to
their dreams and continuing to have partisans. At length they were finally
excommunicated. Valentinus would seem to have withdrawn to Cyprus; it is tot
known what became of Cerdon. His name
The great peculiarity of Christianity, the fact of a new religion springing from another religion, and becoming by degrees the negation of the one that had preceded it, naturally gave rise to the most opposite phenomena, till the two forms of worship were completely separated. The reaction would be of two kinds amongst those who did not exactly keep their balance on the narrow edge of orthodoxy. Some, going beyond Paul’s principles, fancied that the religion of Jesus had no connection with the religion of Moses. Others, Judeo-Christians, looked upon Christianity as a mere continuation of the Jewish religion. In general, it was the Gnostics who inclined to the former idea, but those dreamers seemed to be attacked by a sort of practical incapacity. An ardent, intelligent man was found to give the necessary cohesion to the divergent elements, and to form a lasting Church, side by side with that which already called itself—
The Universal Church, the great Church of Jesus.
Marcion was a native of Sinope, a city full of
We have already remarked several times on the sort of
attraction which brought to Rome, under the pontificate of Hyginus and in the
first years of Pius, all those whom the phosphorescent lights of growing
Gnosticism seduced. Marcion arrived in the eternal city at the moment when
Cerdon unsettled the most sincere believers by his brilliant metaphysics.
Marcion, like all the sectaries, first of all showed himself a zealous
Catholic. The Church of Rome possessed such great importance that all those who
felt any ecclesiastical ambition aspired to govern her. The rich Sinopean
apparently made the community a present of a large sum of money, but his hopes
were disappointed. He had not that spirit which the Church of Rome has always
required in her clergy. Intellectual superiority was but little valued there.
His ardent curiosity, his vivacity of thought, and his learning, all appeared
dangerous. It could easily be seen that they would not allow him to remain
quietly within the narrow limits of orthodoxy. Cerdon, like he did, expiated his
pretensions to dogmatic originality in isolation. Marcion became his disciple.
The transcendent theories of Gnosticism, taught by that master, must have
appeared to be the highest form of Christianity to a mind imbued with
philosophical doctrines. Moreover, Christian dogma was so little settled as yet
that every one of strong
Marcion’s theology only differed from that of the Gnostics of Syria and Egypt by its simplicity. The distinction between the good God and the just God, between the invisible God and the demiurge, between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, formed the basis of his system. Matter was the eternal evil. The ancient Law, Jehovah’s work, which was essentially material, interested, severe, cruel and loveless, had only one object: to subject the other peoples, Egyptians, Canaanites, etc., to Jehovah’s people, and it did not even succeed in procuring their happiness, as Jehovah was continually obliged to console them by the promise of sending them his Son. It would have been vain to have expected that salvation from Jehovah if the Supreme God, who was good and invisible and unknown to the world till then, had not sent his Son Jesus, that is to say meekness itself under the apparent form of a man, to combat the influence of the demiurge and to introduce the law of love. The Jews will have their Messiah, son of their God, that is to say, of the demiurge. Jesus is by no means that Messiah; his mission, on the contrary, was to abolish the Law, the prophets, and the works of that demiurge generally; but his disciples understood him wrongly: Paul was the only true apostle. Marcion imposed the task upon himself of finding the ideas of Jesus again which had been obliterated and maladroitly brought back to Judaism by those who succeeded him.
That was already Manichæism, with its dangerous
It will be seen that the doctrine of the Epistles to the
Colossians and Ephesians, and that of the fourth Gospel, was far exceeded.
Everything Jewish in the Church became mere dross which must be eliminated.
Marcion looked upon Christianity as an entirely new religion, and one without
precedent. In that he was a disciple of Paul who had lost his way. Paul
believed that Jesus had abolished Judaism, but he did not mistake the divine
character of the ancient Law. Marcion, on the contrary, declared that there was
no appearance of God in history till Jesus. The Law of Moses was the work of a
particular demiurge (Jehovah) whom the Jews adored, and who, to keep them in the
fetters of theocracy, gave them priests, and sought to retain them by promises
and threats. Such a Law, without any superior character, was powerless against
evil. It represented justice but not kindness. The appearance of Christ was the
manifestation of a complete God who was kind and just at the same time. The Old
Testament was not only different from Christianity, it was contrary to
A chief objection to that theory arose from the different
Gospels which were then in circulation, and which more or less agreed with what
we call the synoptic type. The fourth Gospel had as yet but very little
circulation, and Marcion did not know it, otherwise he would have preferred it
to the others. In the generally admitted accounts about Jesus, the Jewish
impress can be seen on every page; Jesus speaks as a Jew and acts as a Jew.
Marcion imposed the difficult task upon himself of changing all that. He
composed a Gospel in which Jesus was no longer a Jew, or rather, was no longer a
man; he wanted a life of Jesus which should be that of a pure won. Taking St
Luke’s Gospel as his basis, which may be called Paul’s Gospel up to a certain
point, he remodelled it according to his own ideas, and was not satisfied till
Jesus had no more ancestors, parents, forerunners, or masters. If Jesus had
only been known to us from texts of that nature, one might doubt whether he had
really existed, or whether he were not an à priori fiction, detached from any
tie with reality. In such a system, Christ was not born (for Marcion, birth was
a stain), did not suffer, did not die. All the Gospel passages in which Jesus
recognised the Creator as his father, were suppressed. After his descent into
hell he took to heaven with him those persons who were cursed in the Old
Testament—Cain, the Sodomites, etc. These poor wanderers, interesting, like all
those who have revolted under an ancient fallen régime, came to meet him and
were saved. On the other hand, Jesus left Abel, Noah, Abraham, who were servants
of the demiurge, that is to say, of the God of the Old
It would be impossible to take up a position more utterly opposed to the ideas of Peter, James, and Mark. The last conclusions had been drawn from St Paul’s principles. Marcion put no author’s name to his Gospel, but he certainly looked upon it as “the Gospel according to Paul.” Jesus is no more a man at all, he is the first ideal appearance of a good God, nearly like Schleiermacher understood it sixteen centuries later. A very fine system of morality, summed up in a striving after good, resulted from this spiritualistic and rationalistic philosophy. Marcion was the most original of the Christian masters of the second century after the author of the pseudo-Johannistic writings. But the belief in two gods, which was the foundation of his system, and the colossal historical error which it contained in representing a religion which sprang from Judaism as contrary to Judaism, were profound blemishes which must prevent such a doctrine from becoming those of the Catholicity.
Its success was extraordinary at first: Marcion’s doctrines
spread very quickly over the whole Christian world, but they met with strenuous
opposition. Justin, who was then in Rome, combated the innovator in writings
which we have not got any longer. Polycarpus received the new ideas with the
most lively indignation. It appears that Meliton wrote against them.
Several anonymous priests attacked them, and furnished Irenæus with the weapons
that he was to use later. Marcion’s position in the Church was a very
false one. Like Valentinus and Cerdon, he wished to be part of the Church, and
doubtless to preach in it; now the Church of Rome
In any case, Marcion remains the boldest innovator whom Christianity has known, not even excepting St Paul. He never denied the connection between the two Testaments; Marcion opposed them to each other as two antitheses. He even went so far as to claim the right of' re-making the life of Jesus according to his own fashion, and of systematically altering the Gospels. Even St Paul’s Epistles, which he adopted, were arranged and mutilated by him in order to efface the quotations from the Old Testament, and Abraham’s name, which he hated.
This was the third attempt to make the life of Jesus the
life of an abstract being instead of a Galilean reality. The results of
different tendencies, which were all equally necessary,—of the wish to idealise
a life which became that of a God,—of the desire of denying that that God had a
family lineage or country upon earth,—of the impossibility for the Greek
Christian to admit that Christianity had anything
A principal fact which may clearly be seen developing from
this time forward, is that in the midst of these agitated waves there is a sort
of immovable rock, a doctrine between the two extremes, which resists the most
diverse attacks, Judeo-Christian
A man who is very highly esteemed for his profane studies, and his knowledge of the Scriptures—Justin of Neapolis, in Samaria, who had been residing in Rome for several years—taught Christian philosophy and fought energetically for the orthodox majority. He was used to and fond of polemics. Valentinians, Marcionites, Samaritan Jews, heathen philosophers, were in turn the object of his attacks. Justin was not a man of great intellect; he did not know much of philosophy and criticism, and, above all, his exegesis would be looked upon as very defective in our time; but he gives proof of general good sense; he had that sort of mediocre credulity which allows a man to reason sensibly from puerile premisses, and to stop in time so as only to be half ridiculous. His general treatise against heresies, his particular writings against the Valentinians and Marcionites, have been lost, but his works for the general defence of Christianity had an extraordinary success amongst the faithful, and they were copied and imitated; thus, Justin was, in a manner, the first Christian doctor, in the classic sense of the word, whose works have been preserved to no in a relatively complete state.
Justin, as we have said, had not a strong intellect, but he had a noble and good heart. His great demonstration of Christianity was the persecution of which that doctrine, which was so beneficial in his eyes, was the ceaseless object. The fact that the other sects, the Jews especially, were not persecuted, the joy that the Christians evinced under torture, the calumnies that were spread abroad with regard to the faithful, the number of informers, the peculiar hatred which the princes of this world showed towards the religion of Jesus, a hatred that Justin could only explain to himself by the hatred of evil spirits, all that seemed to him to be a glorious sign of divine truth in favour of the Church. This idea inspired him to take a bold step, to do which he must have been encouraged by the earlier example of Quadratus and Aristides. This was to address himself to the Emperor Antoninus and his two associates, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, in order to obtain redress for a position which he rightly looked upon as unjust and in contradiction to the liberal principles of the government. The Emperor’s great wisdom, the philosophical tastes of one at least of his associates, Marcus Aurelius, who was then twenty-nine years old, inspired him with the hope that such a great injustice would be made good. Such was the occasion of that eloquent petition which begins thus:—
To the Emperor Titus Ælius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Cæsar; and to his son Verissimus, a philosopher; and to Lucius, a philosopher, son of Cæsar according to nature, and of Pius by adoption, the friend of knowledge; and to the sacred senate; and to the whole Roman people, for a group of men of every race who are hated and persecuted unjustly, I, one of them, Justin, son of Prixus, grandson of Bacchius, citizens of Flavia Neapolis of Syria, Palestine, I have made this pleading and this request.
The two titles of Pius and Philosophus obliged those who
bear them only to love what is true, and
The reason for this hatred of the Christians is quite simple: it comes from demons. Polytheism was nothing more than the reign of demons. Socrates was the first who wished to overthrow their worship; the demons succeeded in having him condemned as an atheist and an impious man. What Socrates did amongst the Greeks in the name of reason, Reason itself, clothed in a form become man and called Jesus Christ, did amongst the barbarians. This is why the Christians are called Atheists. They are, if by Atheism is understood the denial of the false gods in which men believe, but they are not so in a true sense, since their religion is the pure religion of the Creator, admitting, in the second rank, the worship of Jesus, the Son of God, and in the third rank the worship of the Prophetic Spirit. They do not expect an earthly kingdom, but a divine one. How is it that the authorities do not see that such a faith is a great aid to them in maintaining order in the world? What stronger barrier can there be against crime than the Christian doctrine?
Here Justin draws a picture of the morality inculcated
The purity of Christian morals contrasts admirably with the
general corruption of the century. The faithful who prohibit marriage live in
perfect chastity.
The picture of the Christian reunions is chaste and beautiful. First the introduction of those who have just received baptism, that is to say, the “illuminated,” to their place amongst the brethren takes place. Then long prayers are offered up for the whole human race.
When prayers are over we mutually kiss each other. Then the bread, a cup of water, and some wine, is brought to the president. He, taking them into his hands, gives praise and glory to the Father of all things, in the name of his Son and of the Holy Ghost; then he thanks God at some length for those gifts which he has bestowed on us. The people show their assent by saying Amen. Then those who are called deacons amongst or give the bread, the wine, and water over which the prayers have been pronounced, to all those who are present, and take them to those who are absent.
“This food we call the Eucharist. Only those who believe in
the truth of our doctrines, and who have been washed in the laver of
regeneration for the remission of sins, and who live according to Christ’s
precepts, are allowed to participate in it. For we do not take this food as
ordinary bread and wine; but as Jesus Christ, our incarnate Saviour, assumed
flesh and blood for our salvation by the word of God, no we are taught that the
nourishment over which the prayer composed from the words of Jesus has been
pronounced with thanksgiving,—we are taught, I say, that this nourishment, by
which our blood and our flesh are nourished by assimilation, are the flesh and
blood of Christ Incarnate. For the Apostles, in the memoirs which they have
written, and which are called Gospels, tell us that Jesus bade them do this.
Taking the bread, he gave thanks, and said: “Do this in remembrance of me;
This is my body;” likewise taking the cup be gave thanks, and said: “This is my
blood; “ and he reserved that dogma for them
During the days that follow the meetings, we continually remind each other of what has taken place, and those who are able supply the wants of the poor, and we habitually live together. In our oblations we bless the Creator of all things through his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And on the day which is called the Day of the Sun all those who live in towns or in the country assemble in the same place, and the memorials of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, as far as time allows. When the reader has finished, the president addresses words of exhortation and admonition to those who are present, to induce them to conform to such beautiful teaching. Then we all rise together, and send up our prayers to heaven, and, as we have already said, when the prayer is ended the bread and the wine and water is distributed, and he who presides prays and gives thanks with all his night, and the people show their assent by saying “Amen.” Then the offerings over which thanksgivings have been pronounced are distributed; each one receives his share, and that of the absent is sent to them by the deacons. Those who are well off and who wish to give, give what they please, each one as he is disposed. The amount of the collection is handed over to the president; he succours the widows and orphans and those who are m distress through sickness or any other reason, those who are in prison, and strangers who may come; in short, he takes care of all those who are in want. We have this general meeting on the day of the Sun, in the first place, because it is the first day, the day on which God, having metamorphosed darkness and matter, made the world; in the second place, because our Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day. They crucified him, in fact, on the day which precedes that of Saturn, and, the day that follows that of Saturn—that is to say, the day of the Sun—having appeared to his apostles and disciples, he taught them those things which we have just submitted to your judgment.
Justin finished his pleading by quoting a letter of Hadrian
to Minicius Fundanus. Believer as he was, he was naturally astonished that men
would not yield to such clear arguments, and his manner proves that he thought
he should have converted the Cæsars. Certainly the frivolous Lucius Verus did
not touch this solemn writing with the tip of his fingers. Perhaps Antoninus
and Marcus Aurelius read it; but were
It appears that Justin joined to his pleading some illustrations from these apocryphal apologies, and imagined that they would exercise a decisive influence on the minds of the Cæsars. His hopes went beyond that: he demanded that his request should be communicated to the Senate and the Roman people, especially that the falsity of the divinity of Simon the magician should be acknowledged, and that the statue he had at Rome (a certain half column of Semo Sancus) should be officially cast down.
Justin’s ardent convictions would allow him no rest. He imagined himself responsible for all the errors he did not combat. The Jews who persisted in not becoming Christians, were the perpetual object of his pre-occupations. He wrote against them in dialogue form, perhaps in imitation of Aristo of Pella, a polemical work which may be reckoned among the most curious literary monuments of budding Christianity.
Justin supposes that, in his journey from Syria to Rome,
about the time of the war of Bar-Coziba, kept back by an accident in navigation
at Ephesus, he walked into the alleys of the Xystus, when an unknown person,
surrounded by a group of disciples, was struck by the dress he wore, and,
approaching him, said, “Hail, philosopher!” He told him, at the same
time, that a Socratic sage, whose lessons he had learned at Argos, had
instructed him always to respect the philosopher’s mantle, and to
seek to have himself instructed by those who wore it. The conversation took a
very literary turn, and he found that the unknown was no other than the Rabbi Tryphon or
Tarphon, who had fled from Judea to escape the fury of
Bar-Coziba’s war, had taken refuge in Greece, and lived oftenest at Corinth.
They spoke
Impartiality compels us to say that if Justin was in those
oral disputes such as we see him to be in his book (and unfortunately what we
know of his controversies with Cresceus leads us to believe so), the Jews had
thoroughly good reason to complain of his inexactness. There never had been a
weaker interpreter of the Old Testament. Not only did Justin not know Hebrew,
but he had no critical talent; he admitted the most manifest interpretations.
His Messianic applications of the texts of the Bible are of the most arbitrary
description, and are founded on the errors of the Septuagint. His book certainly
It is useless to say that the gulf between Judaism and Christianity appears as absolute in this book. Judaism and Christianity are two enemies occupied in doing each other all the evil possible. The Law is abrogated—it has always been powerless to produce justification. Circumcision and the Sabbath not only are abolished things, they were never good things. Circumcision had been imposed by God on the Jews, in foresight of their crimes against Christ and the Christians. “This sign has been given you that you may be separated from other nations and ourselves, and that you should suffer alone that which you now justly suffer, that your country may be rendered desert, your towns delivered to the flames, that strangers may eat your fruits before your eyes, and that no one among you may be able to go up to Jerusalem.” This pretended mark of honour is thus become for the Jews a punishment, a visible sign which marks them out for punishment. The law of the Mosaic precepts has only been instituted because of the iniquities and the hardness of the heart of the people. The Sabbath and the sacrifices have had no other cause. The impossibility which there was for a Jew holding to his old Scriptures, to admit that God had been born and become man, is not even comprehended by Justin. Tarphon would truly have been a most tractable man, if after such controversy he had left his adversary confessing, as Justin pretends, that he had profited much by the discussion.
Conversions, moreover, became more and more rare. Sides
were taken. The moment when dispute is organised is usually that in which
already each is hardened in his own view. Transfers have been
Justin still lived for some years disputing always against
the Jews, the heretics, and the Pagans, writing polemical works without end. An
act of juridic severity on the part of Q. Lollius Urbicus, prefect of Rome, will
place again the advocate’s pen in his band in the last years of Antoninus'
reign. Like nearly all the apologists, he was not a member of the hierarchy.
This position without responsibility suits the volunteers of the faith better,
and at a pinch allows the Church to disavow them. Justin was always dear to the
Catholics. His distance from the sects preserved him from the aberrations which
Tatian and Tertullian could not escape. His theology is far from
being the orthodox theology of the following ages, but the sincerity of the
author made that to be easily shown on his behalf. The Trinity, according to St
Justin, was in a state of badly formed embryo; his angels and his demons were
conceived in a prodigiously materialistic and infantine fashion; his
millenarianism is naive as that of Papias; he systematically grieved St Paul. He
believed that Jesus was born in a supernatural fashion, but he knew some
Christians who did not admit it. His Gospel differed considerably from some
texts held sacred to-day; he made no use of the Gospel called that of John; and
the writing that he quotes although approaching most frequently Matthew,
sometimes Luke, is not precisely any of the three synoptists. It was probably
the Gospel of the Hebrews, called “the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles,” or of
Peter, not without analogy with the Gemma
His admiration for the Greek philosophy could not be to the
taste of everyone, but it appeared to be good policy. The time had not yet
arrived when insults were hurled against the sages of antiquity: people took the
good where they found it; they saw in Socrates a forerunner of Jesus, and in
Platonic idealism or sort of pre-Christianity. Justin was as much a disciple of
Plato and Philo as he was of Moses and Christ; Moses was older than the Greek
sages, and they had borrowed from him their dogmas of natural religion, hence
its whole superiority. No theologian had ever opened so widely as Justin the
portals of salvation. Revelation, according to him, is a permanent fact in
humanity; it is the eternal fruit of the Logos spermaticos, who enlightens
naturally the human understanding. All that philosophers and legislators—the
Stoics, for instance—ever discovered of good, they owed to the contemplation of
the Logos. The Logos is nothing else than reason universally diffused; all who,
in whatever country or time they may be, have loved and cultivated reason, have
been Christians. Socrates shines in the first rank in this phalanx of the
Christians before Jesus. He knew Christ partly. He did not perceive the whole
truth, but what he saw was a fraction of Christianity; the combated polytheism,
as the Christians do, and be had the honour, like them, to give up his life in
the conflict. The Logos descended and resided absolutely
With such an idea of reason, it was natural to admit philosophy as an element in the composition of the Christian dogmas. The traces of Greek philosophy are still weak in St Paul and in the pseudo-Johannic writings. In the gnosis, on the contrary, according to Marcion, according to the author of the psuedo-Clementine romance, according to Justin, the Greek philosophy runs with full stream. It was found quite natural to mingle in the Jewish theory of the Logos ideas of the same kind as were believed to be met in Stoicism. Far from renouncing reason, they pretended to give it its share. They held sound philosophy to be the surest ally for Christianity; the great men of the past were considered as the anticipative disciples of Christ, who had come not to overthrow but to purify, complete, and accomplish their work. They admired Socrates and Plato; they were proud of the courage of their great contemporaries, such as Musonius. They said, with a just and large sentiment of truth: “What has been thought or felt before among the Greeks and barbarians, belongs to us.”
A sort of eclecticism, founded on a mystical rationalism,
was the character of this first Christian philosophy. The apologist applied
himself to show that the fundamental points of Christianity had not been strange
to Pagan antiquity,—that the dogmas on the divine essence, on the Logos, the
divine spirit, special providence, prayer, angels, demons, the future life, and
the end of the world, might be established by certain profane texts. Even the
teaching, most specially Christian, on the birth, the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, had analogues in the religions of antiquity. It
was maintained that Plato had expressed in the Timæus the doctrine of the Son
The Church was like the pious Israel at the time when it built its new temple; with the one hand they fought, with the other they built. The philosophic prepossessions were the act of a very small number. The great Christian work was moral and popular. The Church of Rome especially showed Itself more and more indifferent to these extravagant speculations which delighted minds full of the intellectual activity of the Greeks, but corrupted by the reveries of the East. The disciplinary organisation was the principal work at Rome; that extra-ordinary city applied to that its thoroughly practical genius and its strong energy.
Penitence had always been a fundamental institution of
Christianity. The elect of the future city of God should be absolutely pure. To
avoid sin was impossible; it was therefore necessary that means should be found
for recovering lost grace. The Church accordingly at an early period erected
itself into a tribunal, and transformed repentance into public penitence,
imposed by authority and accepted by the delinquent. A mass of questions which
were to trouble the Church for a century and a half date
It was this last category of persons who caused the
greatest embarrassment. The Church was a source of such gentleness, that the day
after their fall, the apostates, the denouncers of their brethren, experienced
cruel remorse. They would have desired to re-enter the assembly they had
betrayed. The situation of those unfortunates was distressing. Despairing of
their salvation, they became the prey of frightful terrors. They could be seen
prowling around the Church where they had tasted so many spiritual joys. There
was no connection between them and the faithful. With a severity which Jesus
would not have approved, but which the gravity of the circumstances excused,
they were treated as people infected by the itch, and were called by a cruel
pleasantry “the savages, the solitary ones.” Many went to see the confessors in
prison and found a sort of austere joy in the hard words which those addressed
to them. The larger portion of the faithful considered them as totally dead to
the Church, and would not admit that there could be any place of penitence for
them there. Some, less harsh, distinguished between those who had blasphemed
Christ or denounced their brethren and those who had
Besides those great culprits, there were the weak, the uncertain, the worldly—Christians in some sense ashamed, and who dissembled as to their faith, and were thus led unceasingly into semi-apostacies. The Christian profession was something so strict that, if the Christian did not live in the society of his brethren, he was exposed to continual mockery. As he existed only with the end of the world before his mind, the Christian of that time was quite sequestered from public life. Those who were obliged to mix themselves in temporal affairs were led more and more to forsake the society of the saints, and soon to disdain them, to blush for them as brethren, to hear them laughed at without replying. Half-dead to the spiritual life, they fell into doubt. They became rich; they made a separate company, in virtue of the principle that man is led almost necessarily to cultivate the society of persons who have the same fortune as himself. They shunned meeting with the servants of God, fearing that they would ask for alms. The company of the faithful appeared humble; those quitted it in order to lead a more brilliant life with the Gentiles. These worldlings did not abandon God, but they deserted the Church; they kept the faith, but ceased to practise it. Some became repentant, and gave themselves up to works of charity; others, brought into the society of the Pagans, became like them, and abandoned themselves to pleasure. This equivocal middle course did not dispose them to martyrdom. At the least sound of persecution they made an appearance of returning to idols, to escape being disturbed.
In the very bosom of the Church what imperfection! Such were constantly associated with the congregation, and did not cease to be slanderous, envious, blundering, bold, and presumptuous. The administration of the funds of the Church gave place to such abuses; certain deacons took the supplies of the widows and orphans for themselves. Then the teachers of strange doctrines abounded and seduced the faithful. Placed as judges in the midst of all these troubles, the saints inclined sometimes to indulgence and sometimes to severity. What was serious was that certain sectarian doctors flattered those who had sinned, in the view of personal interest. They sold them indulgence, after a fashion; and in the hope of being recompensed for their casuistry, they told them that they had no need of penitence, and that the pastors were people of an exaggerated severity.
The fact is that, in such an assembly of saints, there was scarcely room for lukewarmness. An enthusiastic piety made them believe everything. Prophecy and revelations flourished as in the palmiest days. There resulted serious abuses from this. The individual prophets became the plague of the Church. People went to interrogate them as to the future, even as to temporal affairs. These men received money, and gave the replies which were desired of them. The orthodox admitted that the devils sometimes revealed certain things to impostors, the better to try the righteous; but they maintained that they could always distinguish the prophets of God from frivolous prophets. Naturally this caused serious embarrassment, for he whom one called frivolous the other believed guided by “the angel of the prophetic spirit.”
The orthodox scrupled no more than the heterodox
to provide as food for the pious public the most audaciously fabricated
revelations, and these revelations
The symbolism of these new prophets appears sometimes strange and in bad taste. The exhaustion of their species was visible. All these used-up machines produce on us nothing but a result of fatigue and disgust. But for the simple the effect was great; such prophecies fortified the hesitating and warmed the cool. They believed they heard admonitions directly from God.
An apocalypse attributed to Peter was a very great success; it was admitted into the canon, beside that of John, and read in the greater
number of the Churches. Like all apocalypses, it told the faithful of terrors
and future calamities; like the Shepherd, of which we shall soon speak, it
insisted on the punishment of different sins; like the apocalypse of Esdras,
it treated, it would seem, of the state of souls after death. A particular idea
of the author is that abortions are entrusted to a guardian angel, who charges
himself with their education and development. They suffer the share of
sufferings they would have endured if they had lived, and they are saved. The
milk that women lose, and which coagulates, is changed into little animalculæ,
which
The habit of public reading of the apostolical and prophetical readings in the Churches consumed, if one may so express it, many books: the circle of received writings was quickly run through, and the readers were thrown with earnestness on the new books which appeared, even when their titles to theopneusty were not very correct. There resulted from this a certain style of habit which went on for ten or twenty years. Sometimes, when the book was out of vogue, they limited its reading to one fixed day yearly.
This may be seen clearly in a curious little writing of that time, which has been preserved to us. It is a sort of homily, evidently for the use of the Roman Church, which the anagnost read after the large readings drawn from the sacred pages. This homily is itself a tissue of quotations taken from the Gospels, the ancient prophecies, and writings which it is now impossible to determine. The most compromising passages of the Gospel of the Egyptians are there quoted side by side with Matthew and Luke, and framed in a style of language destined to excite the piety of the “brethren and sisters.” The writing was attached, as a Roman document, to the epistle of Clement, and, with it, was copied accordingly into a great number of Bibles.
One book had in this fashion a durable success, and served during several centuries for the nourishment of Christian piety. It had as its author a brother of Pius, the bishop of Rome. This personage, who doubtless occupied a considerable place in the Church, conceived the project of striking a great blow, sufficient to awaken the saints. He pretended that, fifty or sixty years before, in the time of the persecution of Domitian, a certain Hermas, an elder of the Church of Rome, had had a revelation. Clement, the guarantee for all the pious frauds of Roman Ebionism, covered the book with his authority, and was believed to have it addressed to the churches of the whole world.
Hermas, a foundling born in slavery, had been sold, by the
proprietor of slaves who had brought him up, to a Roman lady named Rhoda. He had
doubtless succeeded in buying his liberty, and setting himself up in life; for
at the opening of the work, he is under the blow of annoyances which his wife,
his children, and his affairs have caused him, as these last, in consequence of
the disagreement of his family, proceed very badly. His sons had even committed
the greatest crime of which a Christian could be culpable; they had blasphemed
Christ to escape persecution, and had denounced their parents. In the midst of
these sorrows, poor Hermas found out Rhoda, whom he had not seen for many years.
The small consolation he had in her household rendered his heart sensitive, it
would appear; he began to love his old mistress like a sister. One day, seeing
her bathe in the Tiber, he presented his hand to her to help her out of the
river, and said to her, “How
Some time after—in fact, as he was going to his country house, situated at Cuma, ten stadia from the Campanian Way, and while he admired the beauty of God’s works, he slept when travelling. In spirit he traversed rivers, ravines, mountain crevasses, and, returning to the plain, began to pray to the Lord and to confess his sin.
Now, while he prayed, the heaven was opened, and he saw the woman he had desired saying to him, “Good day, Hermas.” Having looked at her, “Mistress, what are you doing here?” asked he. And she replied, “I have been brought here to accuse you of your sins before the Lord.” “What! are you my accuser?” “No; but listen to the words I am speaking to you. God, who dwells in heaven, who has created all things that exist out of nothing, and has made them great for the holy Church, is angry with you, because you have sinned in regard to me.” “I have sinned in regard to you!” replied Hermas; “and in what way? Have I ever said an improper word to you? Have I not always treated you as my mistress? Have I not always respected you as my sister? Why do you represent me falsely, oh, woman, for wicked and impure acts?” And then, smiling, she said to him, “For a righteous man like you desire alone is a great sin; but pray to God and he will pardon your sins and those of all your household and those of all the saints.” After she had said these words, the heavens were closed, and Hermas was afraid. “If this is to be looked on as sin, how is it possible to be saved?”
As he was plunged in these reflections, he saw before him a
great armchair covered with white cloth. An aged female, richly dressed, having
a book in her hand, came and sat down in it. Having saluted Hermas by name, “Why
are you sad, Hermas—you who are usually so patient, equable, and always
The following year, at the same period, as he went to his
country house at Cuma, Hermas saw the same old woman walking and reading a
little book. She explained to him the object of the book, which was to exhort
all men to repentance, for the times of persecution were drawing very near. A
handsome young man appeared. “Who, do you think, is that old woman from whom
you have received the book?” “The sibyl perhaps,” answered Hermas,
his mind pre-occupied by the neighbourhood of Cuma. “No; she is the Church.”
“Why then is she old?” “Because she has been first created, and the world has
been made for her.” The old woman enjoined Hermas to send two copies of the
book—the one to Clement, the other to the Deaconess Grapte. “Clement,” said she,
“will address the book to the cities without, for there is in that his special
work. Grapte will send it to the widows and orphans, and you will read it in the
city for the elders who preside over the Church. This little book is naturally
the work of
The third vision is more mysterious. The old woman appeared again to Hermas, after some fasts and prayers. They arranged to meet in the country. Hermas arrived first; to his great astonishment he found himself in front of an ivory bench; on the bench was placed a linen pillow, covered with very fine gauze. He began to pray and confess his sins. The old woman arrived with six young people. She made Hermas sit at her left (the right being reserved for those who have suffered for God the lash, the prison, tortures, the cross, the wild beasts). Hermas then saw the six young men build a square tower, emerging from the bosom of the water. Some thousands of men served them, and brought the stones to them. Among the stones, those drawn from the channel of the water were hewn. Those were the most perfect; they joined so well that the tower appeared a monolith. Among the others, the young men made a selection. Around the tower was a pile of rubbishy materials, either because they had defects, or because they were not cut as they should have been.
“The tower,” said the old woman, “is the Church—that is, I,
who have appeared to you, and who shall appear to you again. . . The six young men
are the angels created first, to whom the Lord has entrusted the care of
developing and governing his creation; those who carry the stones are the
inferior angels. The beautiful white stones, which are dressed no finely, are
the apostles, bishops, doctors, deacons, living or dead, who have been chaste,
and who have lived on a good understanding with the faithful. The stones which
are drawn from the channel of the water, represent those who have suffered death
for the name of the Lord. Those which have been rejected, and remain near the
tower, represent those who have sinned, and who wish to repent. If they did this
while the building was going on they might be employed in it; but once the
building is completed, they are of no more use. The stones which are broken and
rejected are the wicked there is no more place for them. Those which are thrown
to a distance from the
Hermas asks his informant as to the proximity more or less of the consummation of the times. “Fool,” replies the old woman, “do you not see that the tower is yet being built? When it shall be finished, the end will be; now it advances towards completion. Ask no more!”
The fourth vision is again on the Campanian Way. The Church, which has appeared up till now throwing aside all the signs of old age, and with all the marks of rejuvenation, now appears in the style of a girl wonderfully arrayed. A frightful monster (perhaps Nero) would have devoured her, but for the help of the angel Thegri, who presides over the fierce beasts. This monster is the herald of a fearful persecution which is at hand. Some tortures shall be passed through which nothing but purity of heart can enable one to escape. The world shall perish in fire and blood.
There is here only the mise en scene, in some sense
preliminary. The essential part of the book commences with the appearance of a
venerable personage in shepherd dress, clothed with a white beast’s
skin, with a scrip hung on his shoulders, and a crook in his hand. It is the
guardian angel of Hermas, clothed as the angel of penitence, who is sent by the
venerable
An affecting asceticism filled up the entire life of the
Christian. The cares of business hindered from the service of God: it was
necessary to withdraw from these. Fasting is recommended: now fasting consists
in withdrawing every morning to one’s retreat; in purifying one’s thoughts from
the remembrances of the world; in not eating all day anything but bread and
water; in saving what you might have spent, and giving it to the widows and
orphans, who will pray for you. Repentance is necessary even to the righteous
for their venial sins. Certain severe angels are charged with over-looking them,
and with punishing not only their sins but even those of their family. All the
misfortunes of life were held to be chastisements inflicted by these angels on
“penitenital pastors.” The penitent should afflict himself voluntarily, should
humble himself, seek adversities and sorrows, or at least accept those which
come upon him, as expiations.
In the weighty questions relating to public penitence, Hermas avoids exaggerated severity; he has comparisons which shall irritate Tertullian, and give him, on the part of that fanatic, the name of “the friend of adulterers.” He explains the delay in the appearing of Christ by a decree of the mercy of God which allows sinners the chance of a last and definitive appeal. He who has blasphemed Christ to escape punishment, those who have denounced their brethren, are dead for ever: they resemble dry branches into which the sap can no longer ascend; but yet is their lot irrevocable? In certain cases, mercy is brought into the author’s mind; for the sons of Hermas, who were blasphemers of Christ and traitors to the Church, were admitted to pardon, for their father’s sake. Those who have simply denied Jesus can repent. “As to him who has denied from the heart,” says Hermas, “I do not know if he can live.” It is necessary also to distinguish the past from the future. To those who henceforth would deny Christ, there is no pardon; but those who had this misfortune before may be admitted to penitence. Sinners who have not blasphemed God nor betrayed his servants may return to penitence; but they hasten onwards; death threatens; the tower is about to be finished, and then the stones which have not been employed would be irrevocably rejected. For great crimes, there is but one repentance; for the lesser faults, it is allowable to repent more than once; but he who is constantly falling is a suspected penitent, and penitence will serve him in no wise.
A perfume of chastity, somewhat unhealthy, is breathed from
the vision of the mountain of Arcadia, and the twelve virgins. The fêtes which
are given
“Thy shepherd will not come to-night,” they said “if he does not come thou wilt remain with us.” “No,” said I to them; “if he does not come, I shall return home, and to-morrow I will come back.” “Thou shouldst confide in us,” they replied; “thou canst not leave as!” “Where would you have me remain?” “Thou shalt sleep with us like a brother, and not as a man,” they answered; “for thou art our brother henceforth; we shall remain with you, for we love you very much” I blushed to remain in their company, but, lo! she who seemed to be their leader, began to embrace me; seeing which, the others imitated, causing me to make the tour of the building, and to play with me. And, as I was young, I began also to play with them. Some executed choruses, some danced, and others sang. As for me, I walked silently with them round the building, and was joyful with them. As it was late, I wished to return to the house, but they would not allow me, and I remained with them over night, sleeping by the side of the tower. The virgins had stretched out their linen tunics on the ground, and did nothing but pray. I prayed also with them incessantly, and the virgins rejoiced to see me pray thus: and I remained there till next morning at the second hour with the virgins. Then the shepherd arrived, and he addressed himself to them, “You have not done him any harm?” asked he, looking at them. “My lord,” I said to him, “I have only had the pleasure of abiding with them.” “Of what have you eaten? said he. “My lord,” said I to him; “I have lived all the night on the words of the Lord.” “Did they receive you well?” asked he. “Yes, my lord,” said I to him.
Those virgins are the “holy spirits,” the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the spiritual powers of the Son of God, and also the fundamental virtues of the Christian. A man cannot be saved except through these. The guardian angel of Hermas giving good testimony to the purity of his house—the twelve virgins who wish to have extreme propriety around them, and are repelled by the slightest defilement, consent to dwell there. Hermas promises that they shall always have with him a residence suited to their tastes.
The author of Hermas is a pure Ebionite. The only good use of a fortune is to redeem slaves—captives. The Christian, as to himself, is essentially a poor man; to practise hospitality towards the power, the servants of God, that washes out even great crimes. “One does not imagine,” says he, “what torment is in the punishment; it is worse than prison; so that we even see people committing suicide to escape it. When such a misfortune occurs, he who, knowing the unfortunate one, does not save him, is guilty of his death.” The antipathy of Hermas to people of the world is extreme. He is not pleased except when in a circle of simple people, not knowing what wickedness is, without differences among themselves, and looking on one another’s affairs, and mingling with each other; rejoicing in each other’s virtues, always ready to share with him who has nothing the result of their labours. God, seeing the simplicity of the holy child-likeness of these good workers, is pleased with their little charities. Childlikeness is that which, to Hermas as to Jesus, takes the first place in God’s sight.
The Christianity of the author of Hermas suggests
Gnosticism. He never names Jesus in any other way than as Christ. He always
calls him the Son of God, and makes him a being before the creatures, a
counsellor of the plans on which God made his creation. At the same time as this
Divine assessor has created all things, he maintains all things. His name is
beyond comparison with every other name. Sometimes, in the style of the
Elkasaites, Hermas would conceive Christ as a giant. Oftener still he identifies
him with the Holy Spirit, the source of all the gifts. Like the Gnostics, Hermas
plays with abstractions. At other times, the Son of God is the law preached
throughout all the earth. The dead will receive the seal of the Son of God,
baptism, when the apostles and the Christian preachers, after
A parable explains this singular Christology, and gives it much analogy with that which, later on, constituted Arianism. A master (God) plants in a certain corner of his property (the world) a vine (the circle of the Elect). Leaving for a journey, he has entrusted it to a servant (Jesus), who attends to it with wonderful care, roots out the weeds (blots out the sin of believers), and endures extreme pain (an allusion to the sufferings of Jesus). The master filled with joy at his return (on the day of judgment), calls his only Son and his friends (the Holy Spirit and the angels) and communicates to them the idea he has of associating this servant as an adopted son in the privileges of the only Son (the Holy Spirit). All consent to this by acclamation. Jesus is introduced by the resurrection into the divine circle; God sends him a part of the feast, and he, remembering his old fellow-servants, shares with them his heavenly gifts (the charisma). The divine rôle of Jesus is thus conceived as a sort of adoption and co-optation which places him beside a former Son of God. Moreover, Hermas sets forth a theology analogous to that which we have found among the Ebionites. The Holy Spirit pre-existed before all, and has created all. God chose him a body in which he could dwell in all purity, and realises for him a completed humanity: it is the life of Jesus. God takes counsel of his Son and of his angels, so that this flesh which has served the Spirit without reproach should have a place of rest, that this body without stain, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, would appear not to remain without reward.
All the chimeras of the times came into collision with each
other, we can see, without succeeding in coming into agreement in the head of
poor Hermas. Some grotesque theories, such as the descent of the
The intention of the pseudo-Hermas has been, in fact,
simply and well to introduce a new book into the body of the sacred writings.
Perhaps his brother Pius lent himself as his support in this. The attempt of the
pseudo-Hermas was very nearly the last of this kind; it did not succeed, for the
author was known; the origin of the book was too clear. The writing pleased by
what was edifying in it;
The work has in some parts a charm; but a certain want of
taste and talent are to be felt in it. The symbolism so energetic and so just in
the old apocalypses, is here feeble, ill-adjusted, and without precise
adaptation. The vein of Christian prophecy is altogether weakened. The language,
simple, and in some sense flat, is nearly that of modern Greek as to the syntax; the choice of expression, on the contrary, is happy enough. It is the
eloquence of a country curé, simple and grumbling, mingled with the cares of a
sacristan concerned as to gauzes, cushions, and everything which serves to
ornament his church. Hermas, in spite of his temptations and his pecadilloes, is
certainly chastity itself, although the way he insists on this point makes us
smile a little. To the terrible images of the old apocalypses,
The prophetic attempt of pseudo-Hermas was not, moreover, an isolated fact; it belonged to the general state of the Christian conscience. In fifteen years the same causes will produce facts of the same order in the most remote districts of Asia Minor, against which the episcopacy will employ much greater severity.
Although Asia was already disturbed by the sectarian
spirit, it nevertheless continued to be, next to Rome, the province in which
Christianity flourished the most. It was the most pious country in the world;
the country in which credulity offered to the inventors of new religions the
most fertile field. To become a god was a very easy matter; incarnations, the
terrestrial alternations of the immortals, were looked upon as ordinary events:
every kind of imposture succeeded. People were still full of the recollection of
Apollonius of Tyana—the legend regarding him increased day by day. An author,
who took the name of Mœragenes, wrote the most marvellous stories about him;
then a certain Maximus of Æges composed a book exclusively devoted to the
extraordinary things which Apollonius had done at ages in Cilicia. In spite of
the railleries of Lucian, “the tragedy,” as he calls it, succeeded
astonishingly. Later, about the year 200, Philostratus wrote at the
Nerullinus, at Troas, succeeded in a fraudulent enterprise
of the same kind. His statue uttered oracles, cured maladies; sacrifices were
offered to it, and it was crowned with flowers. It was especially the absurd
ideas about medicine, the belief in medical dreams, in the oracles of
Esculapius, etc., which kept the minds of people in that state of superstition.
We
People gloried especially over the considerable number of
martyrs and confessors. Asia Minor witnessed numerous executions, in particular
crucifixions. The different Churches made a boast of this, alleging that
persecution was the privilege of truth; a matter that is debateable, seeing
that all those sects had martyrs; at times, the Marcionites and Montanists had
more than the orthodox. No calumny then was spared by the latter in order to
depreciate the martyrs of their rivals. These enmities endured to the death. We
see the confessors, while expiring for the same Christ, turning their backs on
one another, in order to avoid all that
Far from being hurtful to propagandism, these divisions
were serviceable to it. The churches were rich and numerous. Nowhere else did
the episcopate contain so many capable, moderate, and courageous men. We may
cite Thraseas, Bishop of Eumenia; Sagaris, Bishop of Laodicea; Papirius, whose
birthplace is not known; Apollinaris of Hierapolis, who was destined to play a
considerable part in the capital controversies which were soon to divide the
Churches of Asia; Polycrates, the future Bishop of Ephesus, the descendant of a
family seven members of which before him had been bishops. Sardis possessed a
real treasure, the learned Bishop Melito, who already had prepared himself for
the vast labours which, later on, rendered his name celebrated. Like Origen, at
a subsequent date, he was anxious that his chastity should be distinctly
attested. His erudition resembled much that of Justin and of Tatian. His
theology had also a little of the materialistic dulness which was a
characteristic of these two doctors; for he thought that God had a body. He
appears to have been reproached by Papias for his apocalyptic ideas. Miltiades,
on his part, was a
The aged Polycarpus, in particular, enjoyed high authority at Smyrna. He was more than an octogenarian, and it would seem that he was believed to have inherited his longevity from the Apostle John. He was accredited with the gift of prophecy: it was alleged that each word that he uttered would come to pass. He himself lived in the belief that the world was full of visions and of presages. Night and day he prayed, including in his prayers the wants of the entire world. As everybody admitted that he had lived several years with the Apostle John, people believed that they still possessed in him the last witness of the apostolic age. People surrounded him; everybody sought to please him; a mark of his esteem was regarded as a high favour. His person was charming in the extreme. The docile Christians adored him; a band of disciples and of admirers pressed around him, eager to render him every service. But he was not popular in the city. His intolerance, the pride of orthodoxy, which he did not pretend to dissimulate, and which he communicated to his disciples, wounded deeply both the Jews and the heathen; the latter knew but too well that the disdainful old man looked upon them as wretches.
Polycarpus had all the peculiarities of an old man; he had
a certain manner of acting and speaking which made a vivid impression on young
auditors. His conversation was fluent, and when he went to sit down on the place
which he affected—doubtless one of the terraces of the slopes of Mount Pagus,
whence one could see the sparkling gulf, and its beautiful surrounding of
mountains, it was known beforehand what he was going to say. “John and
The impression which Polycarpus produced was not less
profound. A long time after, his disciples would remind one another of the
bench on which he sat, his gait, his habits, his bodily peculiarities, his
manner of speaking. Every one of his words were graven on their hearts. Now in
the circle which surrounded him there was a young Greek, of about fifteen years
of age, who was destined to play one of the leading parts in ecclesiastical
history. His name was Irenæus, who afterwards transmitted to us the
image—doubtless often false, yet, at the same time, in many respects very
vivid—of the last days of the apostolic world, whose setting sun he had, in a
sort of way, been a witness of. Irenæus was born a Christian, which did not
prevent him from frequenting the schools of Asia, where he acquired an extensive
knowledge of the poets, and of the profane philosophers, especially of Homer and
of Plato. He had for a young friend and co-disciple, if one may so express
oneself, near the old man, a certain Florinus, who held a somewhat important
posit on at court, and who, subsequently,
Polycarpus, in the eyes of every one, was regarded as the perfect type of orthodoxy. His doctrine was the materialistic Millenarianism of the old apostolic school. Far from having broken with Judaism, he conformed to the practices of the moderate Judeo-Christians. He resented the foolish embellishments which the Gnostics had introduced into the Christian teaching, and appears to have ignored the Gospel which in his time already circulated under the name of John. He held to the simple and unctuous manner of the apostolic catechesis, and would not have anything at all added to it. Everything that had the resemblance of a new idea put him beside himself. His hatred of heretics was intense, and some of the anecdotes which he delighted to tell about John were destined to make the violent intolerance which, in his opinion, formed the basis of the apostle’s character, appear in a strong light. When any one dared to give vent in his presence to some doctrine analogous to that of the Gnostics, some theory calculated to introduce a little of rationalism into the Christian theology, he would get up, stop his ears, and take to flight, exclaiming, “Oh, good God, to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should have to put up with such language!” Irenæus was permeated to a large extent with the same spirit, but the sweetness of his character served to correct it in practice. The idea of holding fast to the apostolic teaching became the basis of orthodoxy, in opposition to the presumption of the Gnostics and Montanists, who pretended to have re-discovered the actual doctrine of Jesus, which, in their opinion, had been corrupted by his immediate disciples.
Following the example of Paul, Ignatius, and other
celebrated pastors, Polycarpus wrote many letters to
Polycarpus, in those years of extreme old age, was regarded as
the President of the Church of Asia. Some grave questions, which at first had
barely been stated, began to agitate these Churches. With his ideas of hierarchy
and of ecclesiastical unity, Polycarpus naturally thought of turning towards
the Bishop of Rome, to whom almost the whole world about that time acknowledged
a certain authority in composing the divisions in Churches. The controversial
points were numerous; it appears, moreover, that the two heads of the
Churches—Polycarpus and Anicetus—had some petty grievances against one another.
One of the questions in controversy was in regard to the celebration of Easter.
In the early days, all the Christians continued to make Easter their principal
feast. They celebrated that feast on the same day as the Jews, the 14th Nisan,
no matter on what day of the week that day fell. Persuaded, according to the
allegations of all the ancient Gospels, that Jesus, on the eve of his death, had
eaten the Passover with his disciples, they regarded such a solemnity rather as
a commemoration of the supper than as a memorial of the resurrection. When
Christianity became separated more and more from Judaism, such a manner of
viewing it was found to be much out of place. First, a new tradition was
circulated, according to which Jesus before his death had not eaten the
Passover; but died on the same day as the Jewish Passover, thus substituting
himself for the Paschal Lamb. Besides this, that purely Jewish
At Rome this practice prevailed, at least from the
pontificates of Xystus and Telesphoros (about 120). In Asia, people were much
divided. Conservatives like Polycarpus, Melito, and all the old school, held to
the ancient Jewish practice, in conformity with the first Gospels and with the
usage of the Apostles John and Philip. It hence happened that people did not
pray or fast on the same days. It was not till about twenty years after that
this controversy attained in Asia the proportions of a schism. At the epoch in
which we now are, it had only just had its birth, and was no doubt one of the
least important among the questions about which Polycarpus felt himself obliged
to go to Rome to have an interview with Pope Anicetus. Perhaps Irenæus and
Florinus accompanied the old man on that journey, which being undertaken
during the summer, according to the customs of navigation of the age, had
nothing fatiguing about it. The interview between Polycarpus and Anicetus was
very cordial. The discussion upon certain points appears to have been somewhat
lively; but they understood one another. The question of Easter had not yet
reached maturity. For a long time before this, the Church of Rome had acted upon
the principle of exhibiting in this matter great tolerance. Conservatives of
the Jewish order, when they came to Rome, practised their rites
without anybody finding fault with them, or without causing any one to cease
fraternising with them. The Bishops of Rome sent the Eucharist to some of the
bishops who followed in this particular another rule. Polycarpus and
The orthodox bishops had still too many common enemies for
them to pay attention to pitiful liturgic rivalries. The Gnostic and Marcionite
sects inundated Rome, and threatened to put the orthodox Church in a minority.
Polycarpus was the declared adversary of such ideas. Like Justin, with whom he
was probably in accord, he inveighed fiercely against the sectaries. The rare
privilege which he possessed of
But that tone of assurance exercises a great efficacy upon semi-cultured men. Many Valentinians and Marcionites saw Polycarpus at Rome, and returned to the orthodox Church. Polycarpus hence left in the capital of the world a venerated name. Irenæus and Florinus in all probability remained at Rome after the departure of their master; these two minds, so different from one another, were destined to pursue paths the most opposite.
An immense result was accomplished. The rule of' prescription
was laid down. The true doctrine will henceforth be that which is generally
professed by the apostolic Churches, which it has always been. Quod semper quod
ubique. Between Polycarpus and
Polycarpus returned to Symrna, as far as we can make out,
in the autumn of 154. A death worthy of him awaited him there. Polycarpus had
always professed the doctrine that one ought not to court martyrdom; but many
people who were not possessed of his virtue were not so prudent as he. To be in
the vicinage of the sombre enthusiasts of Phrygia was dangerous. A Phrygian
named Quintus, a Montanist formerly, came to Smyrna and attracted a few
enthusiasts, who followed his example of self-denunciation, and provoked penal
condemnation. Sensible men blamed them, and said, with good reason, that the
Gospel did not demand such a sacrifice. Besides these fanatics, several
Smyrniote Christians were also imprisoned. Amongst them were found some
Philadelphians, whom either accident had conducted to Smyrna or whom the
authorities, after arresting them, had caused to be transferred to Smyrna—a city
of very considerable importance, in which were celebrated great games. The
number of those so detained was about a dozen. According to the hideous usage of
the Romans, it was in the
The tortures endured by these unfortunates were of the most horribly atrocious character. Some were so lacerated by whips that their veins, their arteries, and the whole of their intestines were exposed. Onlookers wept over them, but they could not extort from them either a murmur or a plaint. The idea was hence spread abroad that the martyrs of Christ, during the torture, were separated from the body, and that Christ himself assisted them, and spoke with them. Fire produced on them the effect of a delicious coolness. Exposed to wild beasts, dragged over sand full of jagged shells, they appeared insensible to pain.
One only succumbed, and that was rightly the one who had compromised the others. The Phrygian was punished for his boasting. In sight of the wild beasts he began to tremble. The men of the pro-consul who surrounded him urged him to give in; he consented to take the oath and the sacrifice. In that the faithful saw a sign from heaven, and the condemnation of those who of their own accord sought for death. Such conduct, arising from pride, was considered as a sort of defiance of God. It was admitted that the courage to endure martyrdom came from on high, and that God, in order to demonstrate that he was the source of all strength, was pleased sometimes to show the greatest examples of heroism in those who, put to the proof, had been, distrustful of themselves, almost cowards.
People admired especially a young man named Germanicus. He
gave to his companions in agony an example of superhuman courage. His struggle
with the wild beasts was admirable. The pro-consul, Titus Statius Quadratus, a
philosophic and moderate man, a friend of Ælius Aristides, exhorted him to
take pity on his own youth. He thereupon set himself
Polycarpus, although blaming the foolish act of Quintus, had not at first any desire to flee. Yielding to eager solicitations, he consented, however, to withdraw into a small country house, situated at no great distance from the city, where he passed several days. They came thither to arrest him. He quitted the house precipitately and took refuge in another; but a young slave, when put to the torture, betrayed him. A detachment of mounted police came to take him. It was a Friday evening, the 22d February, at dinner-hour, the old man was at table in an upper room of the villa; he might still have escaped, but he said, “Let God’s will be done!” He quietly came downstairs, spoke with the police, gave them something to eat, and asked only an hour in which to pray unmolested. He made then one of those long prayers to which he was accustomed, in which he included the whole Catholic Church. The night was passed in this manner. The following morning, Saturday, 23d February, he was placed upon an ass, and they departed with him.
Before reaching the city, Herod, the Irenach, and his
father Nicetas, appeared in a carriage. They had had some relations with the
Christians. Alces, sister of Nicetas, appears to have been affiliated with the
Church. They, it is said, placed the old man in the carriage between them, and
attempted to gain him over. “What harm can it be,” said they, “in
order to save one’s life, to say Kyrios Kesar, to make sacrifice,
and the rest?” Polycarpus was inflexible. It seems that the two magistrates
then flew into a passion, said hard words to him, and ejected him
He was taken to the stadium, which was situated about midway up Mount Pagus. The people were already assembled there; there was a tumultuous noise. At the moment the old man was brought in, the noise redoubled; the Christians alone heard a voice from heaven saying: “Be strong, be manly, Polycarpus!” The bishop was led to the pro-consul, who employed the ordinary phrases in such circumstances.
“From the respect that thou owest to thy age, etc., aware by the fortune of Cæsar, cry as every one does, ‘Death to Atheists’”
Polycarpus thereupon cast a severe look upon the multitude which covered the steps, and pointed to them with his hand.
“Yes, certainly,” said he, “no more Atheists,” and he raised his eyes to heaven with a deep sigh. “Insult Christ,” said Statius Quadratus.
“It is now eighty-six years that I have served him, and he has never done me any injury,” said Polycarpus. “I am a Christian. If thou wishest to know what it is to be a Christian,” added he, “grant me a day’s delay, and give me thy attention.”
“Persuade, then, the people to that,” responded Quadratus.
“With thee it is worth one’s while to discuss,” responded Polycarpus. “We hold it as a principle to render to the powers and to the established authorities, through God, the honours which are their due, provided that these marks of respect do no injury to our faith. As for these people there, I will never deign to condescend to make my apology to them.”
The pro-consul threatened him in vain with wild beasts and
with fire. It was necessary to announce to the people that Polycarpus held
obstinately
“Look at him, the doctor of Asia—the father of the Christians,” said the former.
“Behold him, the destroyer of our gods, he who teaches not to sacrifice, not to adore,” said the latter. At the same time they demanded of Philippe of Tralles, asiarch and high priest of Asia, to let loose a lion upon Polycarpus. Philippe drew attention of the multitude to the fact that the games with the wild beasts were at an end.
“To the fire, then!” So was the shout which went up from all sides. The people dispersed themselves amongst the shops and the baths to search for wood and fagots. The Jews, who were numerous at Smyrna, and always strongly incensed against the Christians, exhibited in this work, as usual, a zeal wholly peculiar to them.
While the funeral pile was being made ready, Polycarpus took off his girdle, divested himself of all his garments, and attempted also to take off his shoes. This was not accomplished without some difficulty; for in ordinary times the faithful who surrounded him were in the habit of insisting on relieving him from that trouble, as they were jealous of the privilege of touching him. He was placed in the centre of the apparatus which was used for fixing the victim, and they were about to begin to nail him to it.
“Leave me thus,” said he; “He who gives me the fortitude to endure the fire will bestow on me also the strength to remain immovable on the pile, without its being necessary for you to nail me to it.”
They did not nail him, they simply bound him. So, with his
hands tied behind his back, he had the look of a victim; and the Christians who
watched him from afar saw in him a ram chosen from amongst the whole flock to be
offered up to God as a burnt-offering.
The flames then began to rise. The exaltation of the faithful witnesses of this spectacle was at its height. As they were some distance from the pile, they might indulge in the most singular illusions. The fire seemed to them to round itself into a vault above the body of the martyr, and to present the aspect of a ship’s sail filled with the wind. The old man, placed amidst that chapelle ardent, appeared to them not as flesh which burned, but as bread being baked, or as a mass of gold and silver in the furnace. They imagined that they felt a delicious odour like that of incense, or of the most precious perfumes (probably the vine branches, and the light wood of the pile had something to do with this). They even declared afterwards that Polycarpus had not been burned, that the confector was obliged to give him a thrust with a poignard, and that there flowed from the wound so much blood that the fire was extinguished by it.
The Christians naturally attached the greatest value to
their possessing the body of the martyr. But the authorities hesitated to give
it to them, fearing that the martyr would become the object of a new worship.
“They might be capable,” said they, laughing, “of abandoning the
Crucified One for him.” The Jews mounted guard near to the funeral pile, to
watch what they were going to do. The centurion on duty showed himself
favourable to the Christians, and allowed them to take these bones, “more
precious than the most precious stones, and than the purest gold.”
They were calcined. In order to reconcile this fact with the marvellous recital,
they pretended that it was the centurion who had burned the body. They put the
ashes into a consecrated place, where people resorted every
The fortitude of Polycarpus made a deep impression on the Pagans themselves. The authorities, not wishing a renewal of similar scenes, put an end to executions. The name of Polycarpus continued to be celebrated at Smyrna, whilst people soon forgot the eleven or twelve Smyrniotes or Philadelphians who had suffered before him. The Churches of Asia and of Galatia, at the news of the death of their great pastor, asked the Smyrniotes for the details of what had taken place. Those of Philomelium, in Phrigian Parorea, exhibited, in particular, a touching zeal. The Church of Smyrna caused one of the elders to write down the account of the martyrdom, in the form of a circular epistle, which was addressed to the different Churches. The faithful of Philomelium, who were not far off, were charged with transmitting the letter to the brethren at a distance.
The copy of the Philomelians, copied by a certain
Evarestur, and carried by one named Marcion, served subsequently as the basis of
the original edition. As happens frequently in the publication of circular
letters, the finales of the different copies were made to dovetail the one into
the other. This rare fragment constitutes the most ancient example known of the
Acts of Martyrdom. It was the model which people imitated, and which furnished
the form and the essential parts of those kinds of compositions. Only the
imitations had not the naturalness and simplicity of the original. It
seems that the author of the false Ignatian letters had read the Smyrniote
epistle. There is the closest connection between these writings, and a great
similarity of thought. After Ignatius, Polycarpus was the person who copied the
most of the thoughts of the false letters and it is in the true or supposed
epistle of Polycarpus
Frivolous, light-headed, prone to whimsicalities, Asia
turned these tragedies into stories, and made a caricature of martyrdom. About
that time there lived a certain Peregrinus, a cynic philosopher of Parium, upon
the Hellespont, who called himself Protéus, and in regard to whom people boasted
of the facility with which he could assume any character, and undertake any
adventure. Among these adventures was that of posing as a bishop and a martyr.
Having begun life by committing the most frightful crimes, parricide even, he
became a Christian, then a priest, a scribe, a prophet, a thiasarch, and chief
of the synagogue. He interpreted the sacred books, as composed by himself; he
passed for an oracle, for a supreme authority, in fact, on ecclesiastical rules.
He was arrested for that offence, and put in chains. This was the commencement
of his apotheosis. From that hour he was adored; people raised heaven and earth
to affect his escape, and manifested the greatest anxiety in regard to him. In
the mornings, at the prison gate, the widows and orphans gathered to see him.
The notables obtained, by means of money, the privilege of passing the night in
his society. It was a constant
All this took place in Syria. These public scandals delighted the Christians; they spared no effort in such a case to render the manifestation a brilliant affair. Envoys arrived from every town in Asia for the purpose of rendering service to the confessor, and of condoling with him. Money flowed in upon him. But it was found that the governor of Syria was a philosopher; he penetrated the secret of our subject, saw that he had but one idea, that of dying in order to render his name celebrated, and he set him free without punishment. Everywhere in his travels Peregrinus revelled in abundance, the Christians surrounded him, and gave him an escort of honour.
“These imbeciles,” adds Lucian, “were persuaded that they were absolutely immortal, that they would live eternally, which was the reason that they held death in contempt, and that many amongst them offered themselves up as sacrifices. Their first legislator had persuaded them that they were all brothers, from the moment that, denying the Hellenistic gods, they adored the Crucified One, their sophist, and lived according to his laws. They had, then, nothing but disdain for things terrestrial, and they held the latter as belonging to all in common But it were useless to say that they had not a serious reason for believing all this. If, then, some impostor, some crafty man, capable of making use of the situation, came to them, they immediately laid their riches at his feet, while he laughed in his sleeve at the silly fools.”
Peregrinus having exhausted his resources, sought, by means
of a theatrical death at the Olympian Games, to satisfy the insatiable desire
that he had, to wit: to make people speak of him. Pompous and
For a short time it was believed that the death of Polycarpus had put an end to persecution, and it would seem that there was in fact an interval of calm. The zeal of the Smyrniotes was but redoubled; and it is about this time that must be placed the departure of a Christian colony, which, setting out probably from Smyrna, carried the Gospel with a bound into distant countries, where the name of Jesus had not yet penetrated. Pothinus, an old man of seventy, probably a Smyrniote and a disciple of Polycarpus, was, it seems, the chief of this new departure.
For a long time a course of reciprocal communication had been
established between the ports of Asia Minor and the shores of the Mediterranean
of Gaul. The ancient traces of the Phœnicians were not yet wholly effaced. These
populations of Asia and Syria, for whom emigration to the East possessed a great
attraction, were fond of ascending the Rhone and the Saone, carrying with them a
portable bazaar of divers merchandise, or else stopping on the banks of these
great rivers, at spots which held out to them the hope of making a living.
Vienne and Lyons, the two principal towns of the country, were mostly the points
aimed at by the emigrants, who went into Gaul as merchants, servants, workmen,
and even as
These Christians of Lyons and Vienne, in setting out from a
very limited region, Asia and Phrygia, being almost all compatriots, and having
been instructed by the same books and by the same teachings, afford an instance
of rare unity. Their intercourse with the Churches of Asia and Phrygia was
frequent: in grave circumstances it was to these Churches that they wrote. Like
Phrygians generally, they were ardent pietists; but they had not that sectarian
tinge which soon made the Montanists a danger, almost a plague, in the Church.
Pothinus, who was at first recognised as the head of the
Attains of Pergamos, who like him was a very old man, appears to have been, after the former, the pillar of the Church and the principal authority. He was a Roman citizen and a rather important personage: he knew Latin, and was recognised in every city as the principal representative of the little community. A Phrygian named Alexander, practising the medical profession, was loved and known by all. Initiated into the pious secrets of the saints of Phrygia, he possessed some of the graces, that is to say, the supernatural gifts, of the apostolic age, which had been revived in his native land. Like Polycarpus, he had reached the highest state of the internal spiritual communion. It was, as we see, a corner of Phrygia which chance had transported bodily into Gaul. The continual accessions coming from Asia maintained that first hold and conserved there the spirit of mysticism which had been its primitive character. As soon as he was able, Irenæus, wearied out perhaps by his struggles with Florimus and Blastus, quitted Rome for this Church, composed entirely of the countrymen, disciples, and the friends of Polycarpus.
Communication between Lyons and Vienne was constant: the two
Churches, in reality, were but one, and in both the Greek dominated; but in both
likewise there existed between the emigrants of Asia and the indigenous
population, who spoke Latin or Celtic, the closest relations. The effect of this familiar preaching in the house and in the workshop was rapid and profound. The
women especially felt themselves vehemently carried away by it. The Gaulish
nature, naturally sympathetic and religious, promptly embraced the new ideas
brought by the strangers. Their religion, at once most idealistic and most
materialistic, their belief in perpetual visions, their habit of transforming
lively and delicate sensations
One of the most important conquests was that of a certain Vettius Epagathus, a young noble Lyonese, who, when he had hardly been affiliated to the Church, excelled everybody in piety and in charity, and became one of the most distinguished amongst them. He led so chaste and so austere a life that he was, in spite of his youth, compared to the aged Zacharias, an ascetic who was constantly visited by the Holy Spirit. Devoted to works of mercy, he became the servant of all, and employed his life to the succour of his neighbours with admirable zeal and fervour. It was believed that the Paraclete dwelt in him, and that he acted in all circumstances under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The recollection left by the virtues of Vettius became a popular tradition, which pretended to ascribe to his family the evangelisation of the neighbouring countries. He was in truth the first-fruits of Christ in Gaul. Sanctus, the deacon of Vienne, and especially the maid-servant Blandina, who was much inferior to him in social dignity, equalled him in earnestness. Blandina, above all, worked miracles. She was so slender of body that it was feared she had not the physical strength sufficient to confess Christ. She displayed, on the contrary, the day when the struggle came, an unexampled nervous force; she wearied out the torturers for a whole day; and it might be said that at each torment she experienced a recrudescence of faith and of life.
Such was this Church, which in a bound attained to the highest
privileges of the Christian Churches
The relations of Epagathus with the Paraclete savoured already of the city of spiritualism, the city in which, towards the end of the last century, Cagliostro had a temple. The anæstheses of Blandina, her familiar conversations with Christ, whilst the bull is tossing her into the air; the hallucination of the martyrs, believing that they saw Jesus in their sister, at the end of the arena bound naked to a stake—the whole of this legend which on the one hand transports you away from stoicism and where on the other one approaches the cataleptic state, and to the experiences of Salpetriere, seems a subject invented for those poets, painters, thinkers, wholly original and idealistic, who imagine themselves to paint only the soul, but in reality only dupes of the body. Epictetus deports himself better; he has shown in the battle of life as much heroism as Attalus and as Sanctus, but there is no legend concerning him. The hegemonikon alone says nothing to humanity. Man is a very complex being. One can never charm or arouse the multitude with pure truth: one has never made a great man out of a eunuch, nor a great romance without love.
We shall soon witness the most dangerous chimeras of
Gnosticism Ending at Lyons a prompt reception, and almost by the side of Blandina the victims of the seductions of Marcus flee from the Church, or come
there to confess their sin, in habits of mourning. The charm of the Lyonese,
living in a sort of tender decency and of voluptuous chastity; her seductive
reserve, implying the secret idea that beauty is a holy thing; her strange
facility for letting herself be captivated by the appearances of mysticism and
of
It was about the same time that Africa witnessed the formation of stable Churches which were soon to constitute one of the most original parties of the new religion. Amongst the first founders of African Christianity, the mystic tinge which in a few years was denominated Montanist was no less strong than amongst the Christians of Lyons. It is probable, nevertheless, that the teaching of the kingdom of God was in this case brought from Rome and not from Asia. The Acts of St Perpetua, and in general the Acts of the Martyrs of Africa—Tertullian, and the other types of African Christianity—have an air of fraternity with Pastor Hermas. Assuredly the first bearers of the good news spoke Greek at Carthage, as they did everywhere else. Greek was almost as widespread in that city as Latin; the Christian community at first made use of both languages; soon, however, the language of Rome predominated. Africa thus gave the first example of a Latin Church. In a few years a brilliant Christian literature was produced in that eccentric idiom which the rude Punic genius had drawn, by the twofold influence of barbarism and rhetoric, from the language of Cicero and of Tacitus. A translation of the works of the Old and New Testaments in that energetic dialect responded to the requirements of the new converts, and was for a long time the Bible of the West.
Distressing scenes, the consequence of a vicious legislation,
under the reign of one of the best of sovereigns, were taking place everywhere.
Sentences of death and the denial of justice multiplied. The Christians were
often in the wrong. Severity, and the ardent love of the good, by which they
were animated, carried them sometimes beyond the bounds of moderation, and
rendered them odious to those whom they censured. The father, the son, the
husband, the wife, the neighbour, irritated by these prying spies, revenged
themselves by denouncing them. Atrocious calumnies were the consequence of these
accumulated hatreds. It was about this time that rumours, which up till then had
no particular force, assumed a definite form, and became a rooted opinion. The
mystery attaching to the Christian reunions, the mutual affection which reigned
in the Church, gave birth to the most foolish notions. They were supposed to
form a secret society, to have secrets known only to the initiated, to be guilty
of shameful promiscuity, and of loves contrary to nature. Some spoke of the
adoration of a god with the head of an ass, others of the ignoble homage
rendered to the priest. One story which received general currency was this: They
presented to the person who was being initiated an infant covered over with
paste, in order to train his hand by degrees to murder. The novice struck, the
blood poured forth, all drank eagerly, they divided the trembling limbs, and
cemented thus their alliance through complicity, and bound themselves to
absolute silence. Then they became drunk, lights were extinguished, and in the
The calumnies, moreover, were reciprocal, the Christians retorting on their adversaries the lies invented against themselves. These sanguinary feasts, these orgies, were practised only by the Pagans. Had not their god set them the example in every kind of vice? In some of the most solemn rites of the Roman worship, in the sacrifices to Jupiter Latiaris, did they not indulge in the shedding of human blood? The accusation was inaccurate, but, for all that, it became one of the bases of apologetic Christianity. The immorality of the gods of ancient Olympus afforded the controversialists an easy triumph. When Jupiter himself was only the pure blue sky, he was immoral like nature herself, and this immorality had no results. But morals had now become the essence of religion; people required of the gods examples of citizen-like integrity; examples like those of which mythology is full yielded only scandalous and irrefutable objections.
Above all things it was the public discussions between the
philosophers and the apologist which embittered the minds of people, and led to
the gravest disturbances. In those discussions people insulted one another,
and, unhappily, the parties were not equal. The philosophers had a sort of
The ardent Justin was at the head of these noisy altercations,
where we see him, towards the end of his life, seconded by a disciple more
violent yet than himself, we mean the Assyrian Latianus, a man of a gloomy
disposition, and filled with hatred against Hellenism. Born a Pagan, he studied
literature extensively, and kept a public school of philosophy, not without
obtaining a certain reputation as a teacher. Endowed with a melancholy
imagination, Latianus was anxious to possess clear ideas upon things which human
destiny interdicted him from acquiring. He had traversed, like his master
Justin, the whole circle of existing religions and philosophies, had travelled,
wished to be initiated into all the pretended religious secrets, and attended
the different schools. Hellenism offended him by its apparent levity of morals.
Destitute of all literary sentiment, he was incapable of appreciating their
divine beauty. The Scriptures of the Hebrews had alone the privilege of
satisfying him.
Their usual antagonist was a cynic philosopher named Crescentius, a personage, it seems, contemptible enough, who had made a position at Rome by his ascetic appearance and by his long beard. His declamations against the fear of death did not impede him from often menacing Justin and Tatian, and of denouncing them: “Ah, you own, then, that death is an evil!” said they to him in turn, wittily enough. Certainly Crescentius was wrong in abusing thus the protection of the State to his adversaries. But it must be confessed that Justin did not in that case show him all the consideration he deserved. He treated his adversaries as gourmands and impostors; he was right, nevertheless, in reproaching them with the emoluments they accepted. One can be a pensioner without being, for all that, a niggardly and covetous person. A circumstance which occurred about that time in Rome, showed how dangerous it is to oppose persecution to fanaticism, even where fanaticism is aggressive and tantalising.
There was in Rome a very wicked household, in which the
husband and the wife seemed to be rivals in infamy. The wife was converted to
Christianity by one Ptolemy, abandoned her evils ways, made every effort to
convert her husband, and not succeeding in this, thought of a divorce. She was
afraid at
He succeeded through a centurion, a friend of his, in having
Ptolemy arrested, and whom he persuaded to ask simply of Ptolemy whether he were
a Christian. Ptolemy confessed that he was, and was put in prison. After a very
cruel detention he was taken before Quintus Lollius Urbicus, prefect of Rome. He
was questioned afresh, and made fresh avowals. Ptolemy was condemned to death. A
Christian, named Lucius, present at the hearing, interpellated Urbicus. “How can
you condemn a man who is neither adulterer, thief, nor murderer, who is guilty
of no other crime than of avowing himself a Christian? Your judgment is indeed
little in accord with the piety of our Emperor, and with the sentiments of the
philosopher son of Cæsar” (Marcus Aurelius). Lucius having avowed himself a
Christian, Urbicus condemned him likewise to death. “Thank you,” responded
Lucius; “I am obliged to you; I am about to exchange wicked masters for a father
who is king of heaven.” A third auditor was seized with the same contagious fury
for martyrdom. He proclaimed himself a Christian, and was ordered to be executed
with the two others, Justin was moved extremely by this sanguinary drama. As
long as Lollius Urbicus was perfect of Rome, he could not protest; but as soon
as that function passed to another, Justin addressed to the senate a fresh
apology. His own position
There is something bold in the attitude which an obscure philosopher takes before the powerful body which the provincials never designated otherwise than hiera syncletos, “the holy assembly.” Justin brings back these arrogant people to a sentiment of justice and of truth. The éclat of their pretended dignity may create an illusion in them; but whether they like it or like it not they are the brothers and the fellow-creatures of those whom they prosecute. This persecution is the proof of the truth of Christianity. The best among the Pagans have in like manner been persecuted—Musonius, for example—but what a difference! Whilst Socrates has not had a single disciple who has been put to death for him, Jesus has a multitude of witnesses—artisans, common people, as well as philosophers, men of letters—who have offered up their lives for him.
It is to be regretted that some of the enlightened men of
which the senate was then composed did not study these beautiful pages. Perhaps
they were turned from them by other passages less philosophic, in particular by
the absurd demonomania which bristled in each page. Justin challenges his
readers to prove a notorious fact, which was, that people brought to the
Christians the possessed whom the Pagan exorcists were unable to heal. He held
that to be a decisive proof of the eternal fires in which demons shall one day
be punished along with the men who have adored them. One page which ought to
shock wholly those whom Justin wished to convert, is the one in which, after
having established that the violent
That which shows indeed what an amount of simplicity of mind Justin combined with his rare sincerity, is the petition by which he finishes his apology. He requests that there should be given to his writing an official approbation, in order to correct the opinion as to what concerns the Christians. “At least,” says he, “such a publicity would be less objectionable than that which is given every day to foolish farces, obscene writings, ballets, Epicurean books, and other compositions of the same sort, which are represented or are read with entire freedom. We see already how much Christianity shows itself favourable to the most immoderate exercise of authority, when this authority shall have been acquired by it”
Justin touches us more, when he regards death with impassability:—
I fully expect, says be, to see myself denounced some day, and
put into the stocks by the people whom I have mentioned, at least by this
Crescentius, more worthy of being called the friend of noise and of vain show
than the friend of wisdom, who goes about every day affirming of as things of
which he knows nothing, accusing us in public of atheism and of impiety, in
order to gain the favour of an abused multitude. He must have a very wicked
soul to decry us thus, since even the man of ordinary morality makes a point of
not passing judgment upon things of which he is ignorant. If he pretends that he
is perfectly instructed in our doctrine, it must be that the baseness of his
mind has prevented him from comprehending its majesty. If he understood it
thoroughly, there is nothing which obliges him to decry it, if it
The forecasts of St Justin were but too well justified. Crescentius denounced him when he ought to have contented himself by refuting him, and the courageous doctor was put to death. Tatian escaped the snares of the Cynic. We cannot enough regret, for the sake of the memory of Antonine (or, if it is wished, of Marcus Aurelius), that the courageous advocate of a cause which was then that of liberty of conscience should have suffered martyrdom under his reign. If Justin called his rival “impostor,” or “shark,” as Tatian informs us, he deserved the full penalty which attached to the crime of proffering insults in public. But Crescentius may have been no less offensive, and he escaped punishment. Justin was therefore punished for being a Christian. The law was formal, and the conservators of the Roman common weal hesitated to abrogate it. How many precursors of the future suffered similarly under the reign of the just and pious St Louis!
The attacks of Crescentius were but an isolated circumstance.
In the first century, some of the most enlightened men were wholly ignorant of
Christianity; but this is no longer possible. Everybody has an opinion on the
subject. The first rhetorician of the times, L. Cornelius Fronton, certainly
wrote an invective against the Christians. That discourse is lost; we do not
know in what circumstances it was composed, but we can form some idea of it from
that which Municius Felix puts
The discourse of Fronton appealed only to the lettered. Fronton rendered a very bad service to Christianity in inculcating his ideas on the illustrious pupil whom he educated with so much care, and who came to be called Marcus Aurelius.
If we accept the apologists, such as Aristides, Quadratus, and
Justin, who addressed themselves to the Pagans, and the pure traditionists, such
as Papias and Hegesippus, who regarded the new revelation as essentially
consisting in the words of Jesus, almost all the Christian writers of the age we
have just left had the idea of augmenting the list of sacred writings
susceptible of being read in the Church. Despairing of succeeding in this
through their private authority, they assumed the name of some apostle or of
some apostolic personage, and made no scruple in attributing to themselves the
inspiration which was indiscriminately enjoyed by the immediate disciples of
Jesus. This vein of apocryphal literature was now exhausted. Pseudo-Hermas only
half succeeded. We shall see the Reconnaissances of pseudo-Clementine and the
pretended Constitutions of the twelve apostles equally stamped with suspicion
in respect of canonicity. The numerous Acts of Apostles which were produced
everywhere had only a partial success. No Apocalypse appeared again to disturb
seriously the masses. The success of public readings had, up to this point, been
the criterions of canonicity. A Church admitted such a writing imputed to an
apostle or to an apostolic personage to the public reading. The faithful were
edified. The rumour was spread in the neighbouring Churches that a very
beautiful communication had been made in such a community, on such a day; people
wished to see the new writing, and thus, little by little, this writing came to
be accepted, provided that it did not contain some stumbling-block. But as time
went on people became critical,
The fertility of evangelical invention was in reality exhausted; the age of great legendary creation was past; people no longer invented anything of importance; the success of psuedo-John was the last. But the liberty of remodelling was sufficiently extensive, at least outside the Churches of St Paul. Although the four texts which became subsequently canonical, had already a certain vogue, they were far from excluding similar texts. The Gospel of the Hebrews retained all its authority. Justin and Tatian probably made use of it. The author of the Epistles of St Ignatius (second half of the second century) cites it as a canonical and accepted text. No text, in fact, destroyed the tradition or suppressed its rivals. Books were rare, and badly preserved. Dionysius of Corinth, at the end of the second century, speaks of the falsifiers of the “Scriptures of the Lord,” which induces the belief that the retouching continued for more than a hundred years after the compilation of our Mathew. Hence the indecisive form in the sayings of Jesus which is to be remarked in the apostolic fathers. The source is always vaguely indicated; great variations are produced in the citations up to the time of St Irenæus. Sometimes the words of Isaiah and Enoch are put forth for the words of Jesus. There is no longer any distinction between the Bible and the Gospel, and some words of Luke are cited with this heading, “God says.”
The Gospels thus were until about the year 160 and even beyond
that, private writings designed for small circles. Each of the latter had its
own, and for a long time individuals did not scruple to complete and to continue
already accepted texts. The compilation had not taken a definite form. The texts
were added to, they were abridged; such and
Certain abridgements which were threatened to be made were much more serious. Every detail which represented Christ as a man, appeared scandalous. The fine verse of Luke, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, was condemned by the uncultured sectaries who pretended that weeping was a token of weakness. The consoling angel and the bloody sweat on the Mount of Olives provoked objections and analogous mutilations. But orthodoxy, already dominant, prevented these individual conceits from seriously compromising the integrity of the texts already sacred.
In truth, amidst all this chaos, order was established. In
like manner, between opposing doctrines an orthodoxy was designed, just as from
amongst a multitude of Gospels four texts tended to become more and more
canonical, to the exclusion of others. Mark, pseudo-Matthew, Luke, and
pseudo-John, tended towards an official consecration. The Gospels of the
Hebrews, which at first equalled them in value, but of which the Nazarenes and
the Ebionites made a dangerous use, began to be discarded. The Gospels of Peter
and the twelve apostles appeared to have various defects, and were suppressed by
the bishops. How was it that people did not go still further, and
In any case, the Catholic Church no longer now accords to any
person the right to revise from top to bottom the anterior texts, like as has
been done by Luke and pseudo-John. We have passed from the age of living
tradition to the age of moribund tradition. The book, which until now had been
nothing, became everything for the people, who were already removed from the
ocular witnesses by two or three generations. Towards the year 180, the
revolution will be complete. The Catholic Church will declare the last of the
Gospels rigorously closed. There are four Gospels. Irenæus tells us it is
necessary to have four, and it is impossible there can be more than four; for
there are four
The most original endeavour to get out of this confusion was certainly that of Tatian, the disciple of Justin. His Diatesseron was the first essay at harmonising the Gospels. The Synoptics, together with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospels of Peter, were the basis of his labour. The text which resulted from it resembled closely enough the Gospel of the Hebrews; the genealogies, as well as everything which connected Jesus with the race of David, were wanting in it. The success of the book of Tatian was at first very considerable; many of the Churches adopted it as a convenient résumé of evangelical history, but the heresies of the author rendered the orthodoxy suspicious; in the end, the hook was withdrawn from circulation, and the diversity of texts finally gained the day in the Church Catholic.
It was not thus with the numerous sects which sprang up
everywhere. It did not please the latter that evangelical productions had in a
manner become crystalised, and that there was no longer any reason for writing
new lives of Jesus. The Gnostic sects desired to renew continually the texts, in
order to satisfy their ardent fantasy. Almost all the heads
Such was the origin of that which is called “Apocryphal
Gospels,” a long series of feeble productions, the commencement of which may be
safely placed about the middle of the second century. It would be doing an
injury to Christian literature to place those insipid compositions on the same
footing with the masterpieces of Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The apocryphal Gospels
are the Pouranas of Christianity; they have for their basis the canonical
Gospels. The author takes these Gospels as a theme from which he never deviates;
he seeks simply to elucidate and perfect by the ordinary processes of the
Hebraic legend. Luke already had followed the same course. In his deductions in
regard to the infancy of Jesus, and the birth of John the Baptist, he uses
processes of amplification; his pious mechanism of mise en scene is the prelude
to the apocryphal Gospels. The authors
The real cause of this sad debasement was a total change in
the manner of comprehending the supernatural.
The oldest and the least objectionable of these insipid
rhapsodies is the narrative of the birth of
Many passages of that singular book are not destitute of
grace, nor even of a certain naïveté, The author applies to the birth of Mary,
and to all the circumstances of the infancy of Jesus, the methods of narration
the germ of which was already to be found in Luke and Matthew. The anecdotes in
regard to the infancy of Jesus in Luke and in Matthew are ingenious imitations
of what is recounted in the ancient books and in the modern agadas about the
birth of Samuel, Samson, Moses, Abraham, and Isaac. In this class of writings
there was an habitual introduction giving the history of all the great men,
several species of commonplaces, always the
A multitude of details, sometimes puerile yet always
conforming to the sentiment of the times, or susceptible of removing the
difficulties which the ancient Gospels presented, were disseminated by means of
these compositions, at first not avowed, or even condemned, but which finished
soon in being right. The case of the nativity was completed; the ox and the ass
take definitely their places in it. Joseph is depicted as a widower four score
years old, the simple protector of Mary. We could have wished that the latter
had remained a virgin after as well as before the birth of Jesus. She was made
An accent of lively piety distinguishes all the compositions
of which we have just been speaking, whilst one cannot read without being
disgusted the Gospel of Thomas—an insipid work, which does as little honour as
possible to the Christian family, very old though it be, which produced it. It
is the point of departure of these flat merveilles in regard to the infancy of
Jesus which, by reason of their very dullness had a success so disastrous in the
East. In them Jesus figures as an enfant terrible, wicked, rancorous, the dread
of his parents and of everybody. He kills his companions, transforms them into
he-goats, blinds their parents, confounds his masters, demonstrates to them that
they know nothing about the mysteries of the alphabet, and forces them to ask
pardon of him. People flee from him as from a pestilence. Joseph in vain
beseeches him to remain quiet. This grotesque image of an omnipotent and
omniscient gamin is one of the greatest caricatures that was ever invented, and
certainly those who wrote it had too little wit for one to credit them with the
intention of having meant it as a piece of irony. It was not without a
theological design, that, contrary to the perfect system of tact of the old
evangelists as regards the thirty years of obscure life, it was desired to be
shown that the divine nature in Jesus was never idle, and that he continually
performed miracles. Everything which made the life of Jesus a human life was
vexatious. “This infant was not a terrestrial being,” says Zachæus of him; he
can subdue fire; perhaps he existed before the creation of the
The passion of Jesus owed likewise its development to a cycle of legends. The pretended Acts of Pilate were the framework which was made use of in which to group this order of ideas, with which were readily associated the better polemics against the Jews. It is only in the fourth century that the episodes, of an almost epic character, which were supposed to have taken place in the descent of Jesus to Hades, were put into writing. Later, these legends in regard to the subterranean life of Jesus were joined to the false Acts of Pilate, and formed the celebrated work called the Gospel of Nicodemus.
This base Christian literature, borrowed from a wholly popular
state of mind, was in general the work of the Judaising and Gnostic sects. The
disciples of St Paul had no part in them. It was created, to all appearances, in
Syria. The apocryphal of Egyptian origin, The History of Joseph the Carpenter,
for example, are more recent. Although of humble origin, and tainted with an
ignorance truly sordid, the apocryphal Gospels assumed very early
So the success of these fraudulent writings was immense. From
the fourth century the most instructed Greek fathers—Epiphanes, Gregory of Nyssa—adopted them without reserve. The Latin Church hesitated, even put forth
efforts to take them out of the hands of the faithful, but did not succeed. The
Golden Legend draws largely upon it. In the Middle Ages the apocryphal Gospels
enjoyed an extraordinary
The literature of the false Acts pursues a line quite
different from that of the false Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles, the
individual work of Luke, were not produced, like the narrative of the life of
Jesus, from the diversities of parallel compilations. Whilst the canonical
Gospels served as a basis for the amplifications of the apocryphal Gospels, the
apocryphal Acts have little connection with the Acts of Luke. The narratives of
the preaching and of the death of Peter and Paul never received a final
revision. Pseudo-Clement has used them as a literary pretext rather than a
direct subject of narrative. The apostolic history was thus the roof of a
romantic tissue which never assumed a definite literary form,
Almost all those who compiled this sort of works were heretics; but the orthodox, after subjecting them to corrections, soon adopted them. These heretics were very pious people, and at the same time highly imaginative. After they had been anathematised, their books were found to be edifying, and the Churches did their very best to have them introduced into their religious readings. It is in this way that many of the books, many of the saints, many of the festivals of the orthodox Church are the productions of heretics. The fourth Gospel was in this respect one of the most striking examples. This singular book made its way amazingly. It was read more and more, and, apart from the Churches of Asia, which were too well acquainted with its origin, it was accepted on all hands with admiration, and as being the work of the Apostle John.
The false Acts of the Apostles have no more originality than
the apocryphal Gospels. In this order, similarly, the individual fancy did not
succeed much better in making itself felt. This was plainly visible in that
which concerned the legend of Paul. A priest of Asia, a greet admirer of the
apostle, thought to satisfy his piety by constructing a short charming romance
in which Paul converted a beautiful young girl of Iconium, named Hecla, who was
drawn to him by an invincible attraction, and made of her a martyr of virginity.
The priest did not conceal his game well; he was questioned, nonplussed, and
finished by avowing
St Thomas, the apostle preferred by Gnostics, and later, by the Manicheans, inspired in the same way acts in which the horror of certain sects for marriage is set forth with the utmost energy. Thomas arrived in India while the nuptials of the daughter of the king were in preparation. He so strongly persuaded the fiancés as to the inexpediency of marriage, the wicked sentiments which result from the fact of having begotten children, the crimes which are the consequence of esprit de famille, and the troubles of housekeeping, that they passed the night seated by the side of one another. On the morrow their relations were astonished at finding them in this position, full of a sweet gaiety, and free from any of the ordinary embarrassments incident to such circumstances. The young couple explain to them that bashfulness has no longer any meaning for them, since the cause of it has disappeared. They have exchanged the transient nuptials for the joys of a never-ending paradise. The strange hallucinations to which these moral errors gave scope, are all vividly depicted throughout the entire book. The first outline of a Christian hell, with its categories of torments, is found traced there. This singular writing, which constituted a part of certain Bibles, recalls the theology of the pseudo-Clementine romance, and that of the Elkasaites. In it the Holy Ghost is, like as with the Nazarenes a feminine principle, ‘the mother misericordiæ.’ Water represents the purifying element of the soul and of the body; the unction of oil is then the seal of baptism, like as with the Gnostics. The sign of the cross already possesses all its supernatural virtues, as well as a sort of magic.
The Acts of St Philip have also a theosophic colouring, and a very pronounced Gnosticism. Those of Andrew were one of the parts of the compilation of the pretended Leucius, who merits the most anathemas. The orthodox Church was at first a stranger to these fables; then she adopted them, at least for popular use. Iconography especially found in them, as in the apocryphal Gospels, an ample repository of subjects and of symbols. Almost all the attributes which have been made use of by imaginative writers to distinguish the apostles, comes from the apocryphal Acts.
The apocalyptic form served also to express how much there
existed in the heterodox Christian sects of insubordination, of unruliness, and
of dissatisfaction. An ascension or anabaticon of Paul, which set forth the
mysteries that Paul was reputed to have seen in his ecstasy, was in great vogue.
An apocalypse of Elias enjoyed considerable popularity. It was amongst the
Gnostics in particular that the apocalypses, under the name of apostles and
prophets, germinated. The faithful were on their guard, and the moderate Church
party, who at once feared the Gnostic excesses and the excesses of the pious,
admitted only two apocalypses—that of John and of Peter. Nevertheless, writings
of the same kind, attributed to Joseph, Moses, Abraham, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Zacharias, and the father of John, were in circulation. Two
zealous Christians, preoccupied with the substitution of a new world for an old
world, excited by their persecutions, greedy, like all the fabricators of
apocalypses, of the evil news which came from the four corners of the earth,
took up the mantle of Esdras, and wrote under that revered name a number of new
pages, which were joined to those which the pseudo-Esdras of 97 had already
accepted. It has also been thought that the apocalyptic books attributed to
Enoch received
The Gnostics, in like manner, could show psalms, pieces of apocryphal prophets, revelations under the name of Adam, Seth, Noria, the imaginary wife of Noah, recitals of the nativity of Mary, full of improprieties, and great and small interrogations of Mary. Their gospel of Eve was a tissue of chimerical equivocations. Their Gospel of Philip presented a dangerous quietism, clothed in a form borrowed from Egyptian rituals. The ascension or anabaticon of Isaiah was made up of the same stuff, in the third century, and was a true source of heresies. The Archonties, the Hieracities, the Messalians, proceeded from that. Like the author of the Acts of Thomas, the author of the Ascension of Isaiah is one of the precursors of Dante, by the complaisance with which he expatiates upon the description of heaven and hell. This singular work, adopted by the sects of the Middle Ages, was the cherished book of the Hogomites of Thrace and of the Cathares of the West.
Adam had likewise his apocryphal revelations. A testament
addressed to Seth, a mystic apocalypse borrowed from Zoroastrian ideas,
circulated under his name. It is a clever enough book, which recalls many of the
Jeschts, Sadies, and Sirouzé of the Persians, and also at times the books of the Mendaites. Adam therein explains to Seth, from his recollections of Paradise and
the signs of the angel Uriel, the mystic liturgies of day and night which all
creatures celebrate from hour to hour before the Eternal. The first hour of the
night is the hour of the adoration of demons; during that hour they cease to
annoy man. The second hour is the hour
At each hour of the day the angels, the birds, every creature,
rises up in like manner to adore the Supreme Being. At the seventh hour there is
a repetition of the ceremony of entering and retiring. The prayers (Priéres) of
all living beings enter, prostrate themselves, and walked out again. At the
tenth hour the inspection of the waters takes place. The Holy Spirits descends
over the waters and springs. Without this, in drinking the water, one would be
subject to the malignity of the demons. At this hour again water mixed with oil
cures all manner of sickness. This naturalism, which recalls that of the Elkasaites, was attenuated by the Catholic Church,
The Christian Sibyl women do little more than repeat without
comprehending the ancient oracles. Those of the Apocalypse, in particular, she
never ceases vatianating, though, and announcing the near destruction of the
Roman Empire. The favourite idea at that epoch was that the world, before it
came to an end, would be governed by a woman. The sympathy of the old sibyllists
for Judaism and Jerusalem is now changed to hatred; but the horror for the Pagan
civilisation is no less. The domination of Italy over the world has been the
most fatal of all dominations: it will be the last. The end is near. Wickedness
springs from the rich and the great, who plunder the poor. Rome is to be burned;
wolves and foxes are to live amongst its ruins; it will be seen whether her gods
of brass will save her. Hadrian, when the Sibyllists of the year 117 saluted
with so much expectation, was an iniquitous and avarcious king, a despoiler of
the entire world, wholly occupied with frivolous devices, an enemy of true
religion, the sacreligious instituter of an infamous cult, the abettor of the
most abominable idolatry, Like the sibyllists of 117, he of whom we have been
speaking asserts that Hadrian could have but three successors. Their names
(Antonine) recall that of the Most High (Adonai). The first of the three will
reign a long time, and this evidently refers to Antoninus Pius. This prince, in
reality so admirable, is treated as a miserable king, who out of pure avarice
despoiled the world and heaped up at Rome treasures which the terrible exile,
the assassin of his mother (Nero,
Oh! how thou shalt weep then, despoiled of thy brilliant garments and clad in habits of mourning, O proud queen, daughter of old Latinus! Thou shalt fall, no more to rise again. The glory of thy legions, with their proud eagles, will disappear. Where will be thy strength! what people will be allied to thee, of those whom thou hast overcome by thy follies.
Every plague, civil war, invasion, and famine announces the revenge that God prepares on behalf of his elect. It is towards Italy especially that the judge will show himself severe. Italy will be reduced to a pile of black volcanic cinders, mixed with naphtha and asphalte. Hades will be its portion. Then finally equality will exist for all; no longer will there be either slaves or masters, or kings, or chiefs, or advocates, or corrupt judges. Rome will endure the ills she has inflicted on others: those whom she has vanquished will triumph in their turn over her. That will take place in the year in which the figures cast up will correspond to the numerical value of the name of Rome, that is to say, in the year of Rome 948 (195 of J. C.).
The author calls this the day which he longs for. He employs
epic accents to celebrate Nero, the Antichrist, preparing in the shades or
beyond the seas the ruin of the Roman world. The contests between the Antichrist
and the Messiah will come to pass. Men, far from becoming better, will only grow
more wicked. The Antichrist is to be finally vanquished, and shut up in the
abyss. The resurrection and the eternal happiness of the just will crown the
apocalyptic cycle. Attached to the initials of the verses which express these
terrible images, the eye distinguishes the acrostic
ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟ ΩΓΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΔΟΣ;
the initial letters of the first five words give in their turn ΙΧΘΥΕ
“fish,” a designation under which the initiated were early accustomed to
Such were the sombre images which, under the best of sovereigns, assailed the sectarian fanatics. We must not blame the Roman police for treating such books at times with severity; they were now puerile, then full of menaces: no modern state would tolerate their like. The visionaries dreamed only of conflagrations. The idea of a deluge of fire, in contradistinction to the deluge of water, and distinct from the final conflagration, was accepted by many amongst them. There was also a talk about a deluge of wind. These chimeras troubled more than one bead, even outside of Christianity. Under Marcus Aurelius an impostor attempted, in making use of the same species of terrors, to provoke disorders which might have led to the pillage of the city. It is not wise to repeat too often Judicare seculum per ignem. People are subject to strange hallucinations. When the tragic scenes which he imagined were slow in coming, he sometimes took upon himself to realise them. At Paris the people formed the Commune because the fifth act of the siege, which had been promised, did not come to pass.
The Antichrist continued to be the great preoccupation of the
makers of apocalypses. Although it was evident that Nero was dead, his shadow
From Sebaste was to issue Belial, who commands the high mountains, the sea, the blazing sun, the brilliant moon, the dead themselves, and who was to perform numerous miracles before men. It is not integrity, but error which will be in him. He will lead astray many mortals, both of the Hebrew faithful and of the elect, and others belonging to the lawless race who have not yet heard tell of God. But whilst the threats of the great God are being put into execution, and whilst the conflagration will roll over the earth in huge floods, fire will also devour Belial and the insolent men who have put their faith in him.
We have been struck, in the Apocalypse, with this mysterious
personage of the False Prophet, a thaumaturgic seducer of the faithful and the
Pagans, allied to Nero, who follows him to the region of the Parthians, who must
reappear and perish with him in the lake of brimstone. We are led to surmise
that this symbolical personage designates Simon Magus. In seeing in the
Sibylline Apocalypse “Belial of Sebaste” playing an almost identical part, we
are confirmed in that hypothesis. The personal relations of Nero and Simon Magus
are perhaps not no fabulous as they appear. In any case, this association of the
two worst enemies that nascent Christianity had encountered, was well adapted to
the spirit of the times, and to the taste for apocalyptical poetry in general.
In the Ascension of Isaiah Belial is Satan, and Satan assumes in some sort the
human form of a king, the murderer of his mother, who is to reign over the
world, in order to establish the empire of evil. The author of the pseudo-Clemen
tine romance believes that Simon will reappear as Antichrist at the end of time.
In the third century a still greater trouble was introduced into that order of
fantastic ideas. People distinguished two Antichrists, the one for the East, the
other for the West
It is admitted pretty generally that the Jewish war under Hadrian entailed a siege and a final destruction of Jerusalem. So large a number of texts represent this view, that it at the first glance rash to call the fact in question. Nevertheless, the chief critics who have considered it—Scaliger, Henry de Valois, and P. Pazi—had perceived the difficulties of such an assertion, and rejected it.
And to commence with, what is it that Hadrian should have besieged and destroyed? The demolition of Jerusalem under Titus was entire, even exceeding that usual to military operations.
In admitting that a population of so many thousands of persons was able to dwell within the ruins which the victor of 70 left behind, it is clear in such a case that this heap of ruins was incapable of supporting a siege. Even while admitting that from the time of Titus to Hadrian some timid attempts of Jewish restoration might have been brought about, in spite of the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” who encamped on the ruins, one is not inclined to suppose that these attempts were of such a nature as to give the place any importance whatever in a military point of view.
It is also very true that a great many savants, with whose opinions we coincide, think that the restoration of Jerusalem, under the name of “Ælie Capitolina,” began in the year 122 or thereabouts.
It is of no use to the adversaries of our theme to lay great stress on that argument, because they unhesitatingly admit that Ælia Capitolina was not commenced to be built till after the last destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian. But no matter! If, as we think, Ælia Capitolina had been in existence for about ten years at the time that the revolt of Bar-Coziba broke out, about 133, how can one conceive that the Romans would have had occasion to take it! Ælia would not again have possessed walls capable of sustaining a siege. How, moreover, suppose that the “Legio Xa. Fratensis” had left their positions knowing that it would be obliged to reconquer them. It may be said that the same thing occurred under Nero, when Gessius Florus abandoned Jerusalem, but the situation was totally different.
Gessius Florus found himself in the midst of a great city in
revolution. The “Legio Xa. Fratensis” was situated in the midst of a population
of veterans and squatters, all friendly to the Roman cause. Their retreat would
not have explained itself in any fashion, and the siege
When one examines the texts, very scarce, which relate to the War of Hadrian, it is necessary to make a large distinction. The texts really historical not only do not speak of a capture and a destruction of Jerusalem, but by the style in which they are couched, they exclude such an event.
The oratorial and apologetic texts, on the contrary, where the second revolt of the Jews is cited, “non ad narrandum, sed ad probandum,” for the purpose of serving the arguments and the declamations of the preacher or of the polemic, imply that all the events that happened under Hadrian were as if they happened under Titus. It is clear that it is the first series of texts that deserves the preference. Criticism has for a long time refused to trust to the precision of documents drawn up in a style whose essence is to be inaccurate.
The historical texts reduce themselves unhappily into two in the question which concerns us, but both are excellent. There is, to commence with, the narrative of Dion Caasius, who appeared not to have been here abridged by Xiphilin; there is in the second place, that of Eusebius, who copied Ariston de Pella, a contemporary writer of events, and living close at hand to the seat of the war. These two narratives are in accord with one another. They do not speak a single word of a siege, nor of a destruction of Jerusalem. For an attentive reader of the two tales cannot admit that such a fact would have passed unnoticed. Dion Cassius is very particular; he knows that it was the construction of Ælia Capitolina which occasioned the revolt; he gives well the character of the war, which happened to be a war of little cities, of fortified market towns, of subterranean works—or rural war, if one is permitted thus to express oneself.
He insists on facts so secondary as that of the ruin of the pretended tomb of Solomon. How is it possible that he could have neglected to speak of the catastrophe of the principal city?
The omission of all notice about Jerusalem is still less understood in the narrative of Eusebius or rather of Ariston de Pella. The great event of the war for Eusebius is the siege of Bether, “the neighbouring town to Jerusalem;” of Jerusalem itself not a word. It is true that the chapter of the “Historie Ecclesiastique” relative to that event has for the title: Ἡ κατὰ Ἀνδριανὸν ὑστάτη Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας, as the chapter relative to the war of Vespasian; and of Titus has for title (I. III. C.V.) Περὶ τῆς μετὰ τὸν Χριστὸν ὑστάτης Ἰουδαίων πολιορχίας; but the word adapts itself well to the whole of the campaign of Julius Severus, which consisted in sieges of little cities. In section 3 of the chapter relative to the war of Adrian, the word πολιορχία is used to designate the operations of the capture of Bether.
In his “Chronique” Eusebius follows the same plan. In his
“Demonstration Evangélique,” and in his “Theophaive,” on the contrary, he points
to that fact, and when he is no longer borne out by the very words of Ariston de
Pella, he allows himself to be led away by the resemblance which has deranged
nearly all the Jewish and Christian tradition. He pictures the events of the
year 135 on the model of the events of the year 70, and he speaks of Hadrian as
having contributed
Is not this the proof that he had not separate mementoes of a new siege of Jerusalem, for the good reason that there had not been one. When the tale was started of a siege by a sort of argument a priori, it is possible that one a posteriori should be started also to give it in history a basis which it had not. Naturally, for it is on the first siege on which one falls back for that. That confusion has been the trap where the whole popular history of the Jewish mishaps has suffered itself to be taken. How can we prefer such blunders to strong arguments which, drawn from solitary historical evidence, we now have in the question Dion Cassibus or Ariston de Pella?
Two grave objections remain for me to solve: only can they smooth away the doubts on the theory which I maintain. The first is derived from a passage of Appius. This historian, enumerating the successive destructions which overthrew the walls of Jerusalem, puts one before the other, and on the same line the destruction of Titus and that of Hadrian.
The passage of Appius furnishes in every case a strong inaccuracy—he supposes that Jerusalem was walled under Hadrian. Appius foolishly supposes that the Jews, after Titus, re-erected their town, and fortified it. His ignorance on that point shows that he is not guided by the aforesaid comparison, but by the coarser similarity which has deceived every one. The difficulties of the campaign, the numberless πολιορχίαι of which it is full, show that even a contemporary who had not proof of the facts was able to commit a like error.
Assuredly more grave is the objection derived from the study
of the old coins. It is certain that the Jews during the revolt did not coin nor
stamp money. Such an operation seems at the first glance not to
Jewish coin study is full of uncertainties, and it is dangerous to oppose it to history; it is history, on the contrary, which serves to throw a light upon it. Besides, the objection about which we speak has emboldened certain numismatic students of our days to deny absolutely the occupation of Jerusalem by the followers of Bar-Coziba. One will admit that the insurgents were able to coin money at Bether quite as well as at Jerusalem, if one thinks of the miserable plight in which in that supposition Jerusalem was. On the other hand, it seems that the types of coins of the second revolt had been imitated or taken directly from those of the first revolt, and on those of the Asmoneans. There is here an important point which deserves the attention of numismatists; for one could find here a means of solving the difficulties which yet hover over the entire groups of the autonomous coinage of Israel.
We wish to speak chiefly of the coins with the “impression” of Simeon Nasi of Israel. We fall into the greatest misrepresentation when we seek to find this Simeon in Bargioras, in Bar-Coziba, in Simeon, son of Gamaliel, etc. None of these persons could coin money. They were revolutionaries, or men of high authority, but not sovereigns. If one or the other had placed his name on the money, he would have marred the republican spirit and jealousy of the rebels, and so, up to a certain point, their religious ideas.
A similar matter would be mentioned by Josephus in the first
revolt, and the identity of that Simeon would not be so doubtful as this is. It
is never asked if the French Revolution had any coins with the effigy of Marat,
or of Robespierre. This Simon, I believe, is no other than Simon Maccabeus, the
first Jewish sovereign who coined money, and whose coins ought to be much sought
after by orthodox persons. As the aim which they established was to overcome the
scruples of the religious, such a counterfeit would suffice for the exigencies
of the time. It had also the advantage of not putting into circulation only
those types acknowledged by all. I think then, that neither in the first nor in
the second revolt, that they had money struck in the name of a person then
alive. The “Eleaser-Hac-Cohen” of certain coins ought probably to explain this in
an analogous manner, which the numismatists will hit upon. I strongly think that
the latter revolt had not a proper stamp, and they could best imitate the
earlier ones. A material circumstance confirms that hypothesis. On the coins in
question, in fact, one never sees
שמעון—one frequently sees
שמענו or שמצ. These two forms are
so frequent that one can see a simple fault as to the position of the letters. In
the second, in a great many cases, we cannot help thinking that the last two
letters have disappeared. It is not impossible that the alteration of the name
of Simeon was made expressly to imply a prayer,—“Hear me” or “Hear us.” It
is, at all events, contrary to all probability that one sees in the name of
Simeon the true name of Bar-Coziba. How is it that this royal name of the false
Messiah, written on an abundant coinage, would remain unknown to St Justin, to
Aristion de Pella, to the Talmudists, who clearly speak of the money of Bar-Coziba.
So anyway, one is led to think that the coinage of Bar-Coziba did not consist but in impressions done from a religious motive, and that the types which bear these impressions were of the ancient Jewish types, which I conclude were for the rebellion of the time of Hadrian. By this are raised some enormous difficulties which the Jewish numismatism presents:—Firstly. That these persons unknown to history or these rebels should have coined money like sovereigns. Secondly, The unlikelihood that there is that these miserable insurgents caused issues of money so handsome and so considerable. Thirdly. The employment of the archaic Hebrew character, which was out of use in the second century of our era. Supposing that it had been attempted to bring back the national character, they would not have given them fashioned so grand and handsome. Fourthly, The form of the temple tetrastyle surmounted by a star. This form does not correspond either more or less to that of the temple of Herod. For one knows the scrupulous nicety that the ancient masters took to reproduce the features of the principal temple of the city exactly, by slight but very expressive touches.
The temple of the Jewish money, on the contrary, without the triangular pediment, and with its gate of a singular fashion, represents the second temple, that of the time of the Maccabees, which appears to have been tolerably shabby. If we reject that hypothesis, and which must belong to the second revolt, the types which bear the figure of the temple, and the era of “the liberation of Jerusalem,” we say that the deliverance of Jerusalem, and the reconstruction of the temple, were the only object of the revolts. It is not impossible that they portrayed these two events upon their money before they were realised. One takes for a fact that which one aspires to with such efforts. Bether, before all, was a sort of provisionary Jerusalem, a sacred asylum of Israel.
The numismatism of the Crusades presents, besides, identically the same phenomena. After the loss of Jerusalem, in fact, the later authority, transported to St Jean de Acre, continued to mint money bearing the effigy of the Holy Sepulchre, with the words “+Sepulchri Domini,” or “REX IERLM.” The moneys of John of Brienne, who never possessed Jerusalem, present, also the image of the Holy Sepulchre. “This markedly characteristic type,” says M. de Vogüé, “seems to be on the part of deposed kings a protestation against the invasion, and a maintenance of their rights in misfortune and exile.” There are also moneys with the title ‘Tvrris Davit, struck a long time after the taking of Jerusalem by the Mussulman. It must be admitted, however, that much of the Jewish money of the second revolt was struck away from Jerusalem. Every one, in fact, agrees that if the revolted were masters of Jerusalem, they were quickly driven out. One finds coins of the second and third year of the revolt. M. Caxdoni explained by this difference of the situation, the difference of the legends ישראל לחרות, and לחרות ירושלם, the second only answering to the epoch when the rebels were masters of Jerusalem.
Be that as it may, the possibility of a coinage struck at Bether is placed beyond doubt.
That at one moment of the revolt, and amidst the numberless incidents of a war which occupied two or three years, the revolted occupied Ælia, and were speedily driven out; that the occupation of Jerusalem, in a word, was a brief episode of the aforesaid war, is strictly possible; it is little probable nevertheless.
The “Legio Xa. Fratensis” which Titus left to guard the ruin, was there in the second and in the third century, and even to the time of the Lower Empire, as if nothing had happened in the interval. If the insurgents had been for a day masters of the sacred space, they would have clung to it with fury, they would have come running there from all directions; all the fighting men of Judea would above all bend their steps there; the height of the war would have been there; the temple would have been restored; the religion re-established; there would have been fought the last battle; and as in 70 the fanatics would have caused a general slaughter on the ruins of the temple, or, failing them, on its site. Now it is nothing of the sort. The grand siege operation took place at Bether, nigh to Jerusalem; no trace of the scuffle on the site of the temple in the Jewish tradition, not a memento of a fourth temple, nor of a return to the religious ceremonials.
It seems certain, then, that under Hadrian Jerusalem did not suffer a serious siege, did not undergo a fresh destruction.
How could it be destroyed, I again repeat?
On the supposition that Ælia did not begin to exist until 136, after the end of the war, how could one destroy a heap of ruins?
On the supposition that there was an Alia, dated either 122 or a little after, one would destroy the beginnings of a new city which the Romans would substitute for the old one. What good would such a destruction effect, seeing that, far from relinquishing the idea of a new Jerusalem as irreverent, the Romans resume that idea from that time with more vigour than ever? What has been carelessly repeated about the plough which the Romans had passed over the soil of the temple and city, has no other foundations than the false Jewish traditions, referred to by the Talmud and St Jerome, wherein Terentius Rufus, who was charged by Titus to demolish Jerusalem, has been confounded by Tinlius Rufus, the imperial legate of the time of Hadrian. Here again the error has arisen from the historical delusion which has transferred to the war of Hadrian, which one knows is a trifle, the circumstances much better known of the war of Titus. It has often been attempted to find in the two bulls which are on the reverse of the medal of the foundation of Ælia Capitolina, a representation of a “Templum Aratum.” These two bulls are simply a colonial emblem, and they represent the earnest hopes which the new “Coloni “ entertained for the agriculture of Judea.
The epoch when the book of Tobit was composed is very difficult to fix. In our time, the distinguished critics M. M. Hitzig, Volkmar Grætz, have ascribed that writing to the time of Trajan or of Hadrian. M. Grætz connects it with the circumstances which followed the war of Bar-Coziba, and in particular to the interdiction which according to him was made by the Romans as to the interment of the corpses of the massacred Jews. But besides the fact of a similar interdiction is not founded except upon that of passages of the Talmud stripped of serious historical value, the characteristic importance attributed in our book to the good work of interring the dead, explained itself in a manner much more profound, as we are just now going to show.
Three great reasons, in our opinion, preclude us from accepting the Book of Tobit as being at a date so early,—forbid us to descend, at least for the composition of the book, beyond the year 70.
Firstly, The prophecy of Tobit (
For the old prophet there was no destruction of the second temple; that temple would be the advent of the glory of Israel, would not disappear, except to give place to the eternal temple. M. Volkmar, M. Hitzig observe, it is true, that in the Fourth Book of Esdras, in Judith, and in much of the apocryphal book, the destruction of the temple by Nabuchodnosor is identified with the destruction of the temple by Titus, and that the reflections which are placed in the mouth of the fictitious prophet are those which happen after the year 70.
But this opinion, besides being of such secondary application,
is not here admissible. Evidently the
The critics whom I now am fighting apply here the system,
getting greatly into fashion, which seeks to base upon a passage of the pseudo
Epistle of Barnabas, and according to whom there had been under the reign of
Hadrian, a commencement of the rebuilding of the temple undertaken by consent
with the Jews. It is to this reconstruction that may apply the passage of
Were it true, it would be singular that an abortive attempt, which would not be without interruption, should become thus the base of the whole apocalyptic system.
Secondly, the
The fashion in which he is spoken of, seems to show that he was known by some other means.
The verse we are quoting does not explain this, unless one admits, parallelly to the Book of Tobit, another book where an infidel, called Aman, who had for foster-father a good Jew named Ahkiakar, that he repaid him with ingratitude and thrust him into prison, but Ahkiakar was saved and Aman was punished.
This Aman was evidently, in the Jewish romances, the man who played the part of offering to others snares into which he himself fell, seeing that in the tales to which Tobit made allusion, the same Aman suffered the fate which he intended a certain Manasses to undergo. Impossible, in my opinion, not to see here a parallel of the Haman of the Book of Esther hung from the gallows where he hoped to hang Mordecai, foster-father of Esther.
In a book composed in the year 100 or 135 of our time, all this is inconceivable. One must refer it to a time and to a Jewish society where the Book of Esther would exist under an entirely different form than that of our Bibles, and where the part of Mordecai was played by a certain Ahkiakar, also a servant of the king.
Now the Book of Esther certainly existed, just as we have it, in the first century of our era, since Josephus knows of its being interpolated.
Thirdly, an objection none the less grave against the method of M. Grætz is that, if the Book of Tobit was posterior to the defeat of Bar-Coziba, the Christians would not have adopted it. In the interval between Titus and Hadrian, the religious brotherhood of the Jews and the Christians is sufficient to account for the fact that books newly brought to light in the Jewish community, such as that of Judith, the apocalypse of Esdras, and that of Baruch, would pass without difficulty from the synagogue to the Church. After the intestine broils which accompanied the war of Bar-Coziba, there would be no room for this. The Jewish and Christian faiths are henceforth two enemies; nothing passed from one side to the other of the gulf which divide them. Besides, the synagogue really no longer created such books, calm, idyllic, without bigotry, without hate.
After 135, Judaism produces the Talmud, a piece of dry and
violent casuistry. The religious views are all profane, and of Persian origin,
as that of the healing of demoniacs and of the blind by the viscera of fishes.
This moderation of the marvellous, in consequence of
The condition of the people at the time when our author wrote, was comparatively happy and tranquil, at least in the country where he composed it. The Jews appeared wealthy, they were in domestic service under the nobles, acting as go-betweens in all purchases, and occupying places of confidence, being employed as stewards, major-domos, butlers, as we see in the Books of Esther and of Nehemiah. In place of being troubled by the rain, dreams, and passions which engrossed every Jew at the end of the first century of our era, the conscience of the author is serene in a high degree. He is not exactly a Messianist. He believes in a wonderful future for Jerusalem, but without any miracle from heaven, or Messiah as king. The book then is, in our opinion, anterior to the second century of our era. By the pious sentiment which there reigns, it is far behind the Book of Esther, a book from which all religion sentiment is totally absent. It might be imagined that Egypt was the spot where such a romance could possibly have been composed, if the certainty that the original text was written in Hebrew had not created a difficulty. The Jews of Egypt did not write in that language. I do not think, however, that the book was composed at Jerusalem or in Judea. What the author intends is to cheer up the provincial Jew, who has a horror of schism, and abides in communion with Jerusalem.
The Persian ideas which fill the book, the intimate acquaintance which the author possesses of the great cities of the East, although he makes strange mistakes as to the distances, bring one to imagine that he is in Mesopotamia, particularly at Adiabene, where the Jews were in a very flourishing condition in the middle of the fast century of our era.
In supposing that the book was thus composed about the
year 50 in Upper Syria, one can, it seems to me, satisfy the exigencies of the
problem. The state of the usages and of the ideas of the Jews; above all, that
which concerns the bread of the Gentiles, recalls the time which preceded the
revolt under Nero. The description of the eternal Jerusalem seems based upon the
Apocalypse (
On the contrary, if one admits that it was composed in Oschoene in Adialene a few years before the grand catastrophes of Judea, one may suppose that the Jews engaged in the struggle would have had knowledge of it. The book was not yet translated into Greek: the greater part of the Christians could not read it. Lymmachus or Theodosius would have been found in possession of the original, and they would have translated it. In that case, the fortunes of the book amongst the Christians would be commenced.
One leading element of the question, which has not been used here by the interpreters, are the analogies which a sagacious criticism has discovered between the Jewish narrative and that collection of tales which have gone round the world, without distinction of language or race. Studied from this point of view, the Book of Tobit seems to us like the Hebrew and godly version of a tale which is related in Armenia, in Russia, amongst the Tartars, and the Higanes, and which is probably of Babylonian origin. A traveller finds in the roadway the corpse of a man which had been refused sepulture because he had not paid his debts. He stopped to bury him. Soon afterwards, a companion, clothed in white, offers to journey with him. This companion gets the traveller out of a bad scrape, procures riches for him, and a charming wife, who wrests him away from the evil spirits. At the moment of parting, the traveller offers him the half of all that which he had gained, thanks to him, save and except his wife, and naturally so. The companion demands his half share of the woman: great perplexity arises! At the moment when he is about to proceed to make that strange division, the companion reveals himself—he is the ghost of the dead man whom the traveller had buried.
No doubt that the Book of Tobit is an adaptation according to Jewish ideas of that old narrative, popular throughout the whole of the East. It is this that explains the fantastical importance assigned to the burial of the dead, which constitutes a remarkable feature of our book. Nowhere else in the Jewish literature is the burial of the dead placed on the same footing as that of the observance of the Law. The resemblance to the tales of the East confirms thus our hypothesis concerning the Mesopotamian origin of the book. The Jews of Palestine did not listen to these pagan tales. Those of Oschoene would be more open to the talk of those outside them. We most add that the Book of Esther could not have existed in that country in the form which it was known in Judea: this will explain the strange passage concerning Aman and Ahkiahkar.
Our hypothesis then is that Book of Tobit was composed in Hebrew in the north of Syria, towards the year 40 or 50 after J.C.; that it was at first little known by the Jews in Palestine; that it was translated into Greek towards the year 160 by the Judeo-Christian translators, and that it was immediately adapted by the Christians.
London: Printed by the Temple Publishing Company.
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