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if the word of the gospel did not suffice to establish the new kingdom.

"Jesus, on the other hand, was absolutely averse to violence. Jesus was penetrated with the belief in the power of 'little ones' and 'babes' and 'sucklings.' How far he anticipated the future in store for himself I cannot say. Sometimes I am inclined to believe that he thought God would intervene at the last moment and deliver him from the jaws of death. Sometimes he seems to have deliberately faced death with the conviction that he would be swallowed up by it for a short time, emerging from it to victory.

"The Baptist certainly expected to be delivered by Jesus from the prison in which he was being kept by Antipas, and to have been disappointed by his friend's inaction. It must have been a very bitter moment for the latter when John sent to reproach him, as good as saying, 'Are you, too, a false Messiah? Will you leave me to perish in prison? Are you really our Deliverer, or must we, the whole nation, turn from you as a laggard, and wait for another?' In my opinion, this was the very greatest temptation to which Jesus was exposed. In that moment-as I judge when I try to guess the eastern metaphor corresponding to western fact-Jews would say that Satan said to Christ Worship me, and I will give you the empire of the world,' or 'Take the risk! Throw yourself down from the pinnacle! See whether God will save you!' In plain words, the temptation was, 'Appeal to the God of battles! Rouse the people to arms, first against Antipas, and then against the Romans!' For a perfectly unselfish and noble nature, believing in divine interventions, this must indeed have been a great, a very great temptation."

Scaurus finished this part of his letter by quoting a passage that I had long had in mind, but I had forgotten its context, "Do you remember, Silanus, how the old Egyptian priest says in the Timaeus, 'Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always boys'? Then comes the reason, 'You have not in your souls any ancient belief based on tradition from the days of old.' Well, we Romans are in the same position as the poor Greeks. So are

For it is not antiquity

None of us have this

the Egyptians for the matter of that. alone, but divine antiquity, that counts. divine antiquity of tradition from the days of old' going back to such characters as Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. I think we must put up with our inferiority. These things we had better leave to others. We have, as Virgil says, 'arts of our own, the arts of war and empire. There, we are men, full-grown men. But as compared with Moses, Isaiah, and above all with this Jesus, or Christ, I must frankly confess I sometimes feel myself a 'boy,' and never so much as now. My conclusion is, I will keep to the things in which I am not a 'boy.' Do you the same."

CHAPTER XXVI

SCAURUS ON CHRIST'S RESURRECTION (I)

PASSING next to the subject of Christ's resurrection, “To deal first," said Scaurus, " with Christ's alleged predictions that he would rise again,' what strikes me as the strangest point in them is his frequent mention of being 'betrayed.' For the rest, if Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah or Christ as I think he did, if not at first, yet soon- -or even if he did not believe himself to be the Christ, but thought that he was to reform the nation, I can well understand that he adopted the language of one of their prophets, Hosea by name, who says, 'Come and let us return unto the Lord...he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us. On the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.' Using such language as this, a later Jewish prophet, such as Christ, might lead his followers up to Jerusalem at the Passover, not knowing whether he should live or die, but convinced that the Lord would work some deliverance for Israel. And the predictions of scourging,' and 'smiting,' and 'spitting,' I could also understand, as coming from the prophets. But 'betrayal is not mentioned by the prophets, and I cannot understand its insertion here."

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With this I have dealt above, and with the double sense of the word meaning "deliver over" and "betray." I now found that the evangelists sometimes apply the word to the act of Judas the betrayer (because by his betrayal Christ was "delivered over" to the Jews); and Scaurus regarded it as meaning "betray" here. I could not however believe that Jesus, when predicting His death, used the word in the sense "betray."

It seemed to me that He predicted that His end would be like that of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, namely, that He would be "delivered over as a ransom for the sins of the people by the will of His Father. Long afterwards, I found that, whereas the Greek in Isaiah has "delivered over for," the Hebrew has "make intercession for." Then I saw, even more clearly than before, the reason why Christ may have often repeated this prediction, if He foresaw that His death would "make intercession" for the people. The evangelists rendered this so that it might be mistaken for "would be betrayed." But Paul made the matter clear.

Scaurus added that the rising again was predicted as about to occur, sometimes "on the third day," as in Hosea, but sometimes" after three days," corresponding to a period of three days and three nights spent by Jonah (according to a strange Hebrew legend) in a whale's belly. And he also said, "Mark and Matthew represent Jesus as saying, concerning what he would do after death, I will go before you to Galilee.' But Luke omits these words. Later on, after the resurrection, Mark and Matthew again mention this prediction; but there Luke has remember that which he said to you while yet in Galilee.' My rabbi tells me that the words 'to Galilee' might easily be confused with other expressions having quite a different meaning. This seems to me probable, but into these details I cannot now enter. I take it, however, that Luke knew Mark's tradition to Galilee,' and rejected it as erroneous. Matthew also says that certain women, meeting Jesus after death, took hold of his feet,' and Jesus sent word by them to the disciples to 'depart into Galilee.' Here you see ‘Galilee' again. But this tradition is not in any other gospel. Luke makes no mention of any appearance in Galilee."

These discrepancies about "Galilee " might have interested me at any other time; but "took hold of his feet"—this was the assertion that amazed me and carried away my thoughts from everything else. I had approached the subject of the Resurrection through Paul, who mentions Christ merely as having "appeared" to several of the apostles and last of all to himself. I had all along assumed that the "appearances" of

the Lord to the other apostles had been of the same kind as the appearance to Paul, that is to say, supernatural, but not material nor tangible. Having read what Paul said about the spiritual body and the earthly body, I had supposed that Christ's earthly body remained in the tomb but that His spiritual body rose from the dead, passed out of the tomb-as a spirit might pass, not being confinable by walls or gates or by the cavernous sides of a tomb-and "appeared" to the disciples, now in this place, now in that. That the "spiritual body" meant the real spiritual "person"-and not a mere "shade" or breath-like "spirit" of the departed—this (as I have explained above) I had more or less understood. But I had never supposed that the "body" could be touched. And now, quite unexpectedly, Scaurus thrust before me, so to speak, a tradition that some women "took hold of Christ's feet" after He had risen from the dead.

"Of course," said Scaurus, "most critics would say at once that the women lied. But in the first place, even if they did lie, that would not explain why Mark and Luke omitted it. For you may be quite sure the evangelists would not believe that the women told a lie; and, if they believed that the women told the truth, why should they not report it? For the fact, if a fact, is a strong proof of resurrection. In the next place, I am convinced that the Christian belief in Christ's resurrection is far too strong to have been originated by lies. I believe it was originated by visions, and that the stories about these visions were exaggerated in various ways, but never dishonest ways. In this particular case, the explanation probably is, that the women saw a vision of Christ in the air and would have held it fast by the feet,' that is, desired to do so, but could not. I could give several instances from the LXX where would have' is thus dropped in translation. The belief of the Christians was, that Christ ascended to heaven. The women are perhaps regarded as desiring to grasp his feet while he was ascending, but Christ prevents them, sending them away to carry word to his 'brethren-for so he calls them-of his resurrection." I had not, at the time, knowledge enough to judge of Scaurus's explanation; but I afterwards found that “would have” might

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