Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?
By G. R. S. Mead
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I. FOREWORD.
WHEN some five and a half centuries before the Christian era the Buddha arose
in ancient Aryavarta to substitute actuality for tradition, to break down the
barriers of convention, and throw open the Way of Righteousness to all,
irrespective of race or birth, we are told that He set aside the ancestral
scriptures of His race and times, and preached a Gospel of self-reliance and a
freedom from bibliolatry that will ever keep His memory green among the
independent thinkers of the world.
When the Christ arose in Judaea, once more to break down the barriers of
exclusiveness, and preach the Way to the 'Amme ha-aretz, the rejected of the
ceremonialists and legal purists, we are told that He extended the aegis of
His great authority over the ancient writings of His fellow-countrymen, and
cited the Torah as the very Law of God Himself.
We are assured by Traditionalists that the Incarnation of Deity Itself, the
very Giver of that Law, explicitly attested the genuineness of the Five Books;
He, with His inerrant wisdom, asserted that Moses wrote them, just as it was
believed by the people of His day.
2
Whereas, if there be anything certain in the whole field of Biblical research,
it is that this cannot be the whole truth of the matter.
It has been said in excuse that the Christ did not come on earth to teach His
disciples the "higher criticism." This may well be so, and yet it is a fact of
profound significance that, as we shall see in the course of the present
enquiry, even in His day this very Torah, and much more the Prophets and
Sacred Writings, were called into serious question by many.
If, however, the Christ actually used the words ascribed to Him in this
matter, it is difficult to understand why a plan so different in thus respect
was adopted in the West from the apparently far more drastic attempt that was
made so many years before in the East. It may, however, have been found that
the effect of a so abrupt departure from tradition had not proved so
successful as had been anticipated, for the Brahman, instead of giving of his
best, and allowing himself to become the channel of a great spiritual
outpouring for the benefit of the world, quickly resumed his ancient position
of exclusiveness and spiritual isolation.
So in the case of the Jew, who was, as it were, a like channel ready to hand
for the West, whereby the new spiritual forces could most efficaciously be
liberated, it may have been thought that if the traditional prejudices of that
"chosen" and "peculiar" people were more gently treated perhaps greater
results would follow. But even so the separative forces in human nature
were too strong, and the Jew, like the Brahman, fell back; into a more rigid
exclusiveness than ever. But thee Wisdom behind Her Servants doubtless knew
that this
3
would be, and reserved both Brahman and Jew for some future opportunity of
greater promise, while She temporarily utilized them, in spite of themselves,
and in spite of the mistakes of their Buddhist and Christian brethren; for all
of us, Brahmans and Buddhists, Hebrews and Christians, are of like passions,
and struggling in the bonds of our self-limitations and ignorance; we are all
children of one Mother, our common human nature, and of one Father, the divine
source of our being.
It may have been that in the first place the great Teacher of the West made
His appeal to the "Brahmans" of Jewry, and only when He found that no
impression could be made upon their rigid adherence to rules and customs, did
he go to the people. There are many Sayings strongly opposed to Legalism, as
understood by subsequent Rabbinical orthodoxy, and, as we shall see, there
were many mystic circles in the early days, even on what was considered "the
ground of Judaism," which not only rejected the authority of the Prophets and
Sacred Writings, but even called into question the Torah proper in much of its
contents. Moreover, we find that Jesus was, among other things, called by the
adherents of orthodox Rabbinism a "Samaritan," a name which connoted "heresy"
in general for the strict Jew, but which, as we shall see, seems to the
student of history sometimes to stand merely for one who held less exclusive
views.
However all this may be, and whatever was attempted or hoped for at the
beginning, the outcome was that until about the end of the first century the
Christians regarded the documents of the Palestinian canon as their only Holy
Scripture, and when they began to add
4
to this their own sacred writings, they still clung to the "Books" of Jewry,
and regarded them with the same enthusiastic reverence as the Rabbis
themselves. The good of it was that a strong link of East with West was thus
forged; the evil, that the authority of this library of heterogeneous legends
and myths, histories and ordinances, the literature of a peculiar people, and
the record of their special evolution, was taken indiscriminately as being of
equal weight with the more liberal and, so to speak, universalizing views of
the new movement. Moreover, every moment of the evolution of the idea of God
in Jewry was taken as a full revelation, and the crude and revengeful Yahweh
of a semi-barbarous stage equated with the evolved Yahweh of the mystic and
humanitarian.
For good or ill Christianity has to this day been bound up with this record of
ancient Judaism. The Ancestors of the Jew have become for the Christian the
glorified Patriarchs of humanity, who beyond all other men walked with God.
The Biblical history of the Jew is regarded as the making straight in the
desert of human immorality and paganism of a highway for the Lord of the
Christians. Jesus, who is worshipped by the Christians as God, so much so that
the cult of the Father has from the second century been relegated to an
entirely subordinate position—Jeschu ha-Notzri was a Jew.
On the other hand we have to-day before us in the Jews the strange and
profoundly interesting phenomenon of a nation without a country, scattered
throughout the world, planted in the midst of every Christian nation, and yet
strenuously rejecting the faith which
5
Christendom holds to be the saving grace of humanity. Even as the Brahmanists
were the means of sending forth Buddhism into the world, and then, by building
up round themselves a stronger wall of separation than ever, cut themselves
off from the new endeavour, so were the Jews the means of launching
Christianity into the world, and then, by hedging themselves round with an
impermeable legal fence, shut themselves entirely from the new movement. In
both cases the ancient blood-tie and the idea of a religion for a nation
triumphed over time and every other modifying force.
What, then, can be of profounder interest than to learn what the Jews have
said concerning Jesus and Christianity? And yet how few Christians today know
anything of this subject; how few have the remotest conception of the
traditions of Jewry concerning the founder of their faith! For so many
centuries have they regarded Jesus as God, and everything concerning Him, as
set apart in the history of the world, as unique and miraculous, that to find
Him treated of as a simple man, and that too as one who misled the children of
His people, appears to the believer as the rankest blasphemy. Least of all can
such a mind realize even faintly that the claims of the Church on behalf of
Jesus have ever been thought, and are still thought, by the followers of the
Torah to be equally the extreme of blasphemy, most solemnly condemned by the
first and foremost of the commandments which the pious Jew must perforce
believe came straight from God Himself.
Astonishing, therefore, as it appears, though Jew and Christian use the same
Scripture in common, with regard to their fundamental beliefs they stand over
6
against each other in widest opposition; and the man who sincerely loves his
fellows, who feels his kinship with man as man, irrespective of creed, caste,
or race, stands aghast at the contradictions revealed by the warring elements
in our common human nature, and is dismayed at the infinite opposition of the
powers he sees displayed in his brethren and feels potential in himself.
But, thank God, to-day we are in the early years of the twentieth century,
when a deeper sense of human kinship is dawning on the world, when the general
idea of God is so evolved that we dare no longer clothe Him in the tawdry rags
of human passions, or create Him in the image of our ignorance, as has been
mostly the case for so many sorrowful centuries. We are at last beginning to
learn that God is at least as highly developed as a wise and just mortal; we
refuse to ascribe to Deity a fanaticism and jealousy, an inhumanity and
mercilessness, of which we should be heartily ashamed in ourselves. There are
many to-day who would think themselves traitors to their humanity, much more
to the divinity latent within them, were they to make distinctions between Jew
or Christian, Brahman or Buddhist, or between all or any of these and the
Confucian, or Mohammedan, or Zoroastrian. They are all our brethren, children
of a common parent, these say. Let the dead past bury its dead, and let us
follow the true humanity hidden in the hearts of all.
But how to do this so long as records exist? How to do this while we each
glory in the heredity of our bodies, and imagine that it is the spiritual
ancestry of
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our souls? What is it that makes a man cling to the story of his "fathers,"
fight for it, and identify himself with all its natural imperfections and
limitations? Are not these rather, at any rate on the ground of religion, in
some fashion the "parents" we are to think little of, to "hate," as one of the
"dark sayings" ascribed to the Christ has it?
Why should a Jew of to-day, why should a Christian of the early years of the
twentieth century, identify himself with the hates of years gone by? What have
we to do with the bitter controversies of Church Fathers and Talmudic Rabbis;
what have we to do with the fierce inhumanity of mediaeval inquisitors, or the
retorts of the hate of persecuted Jewry? Why can we not at last forgive and
forget in the light of the new humanism which education and mutual intercourse
is shedding on the world?
Wise indeed are the words: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" And yet in theology all the
trouble is about this God whom we have not seen. Theology, which ought to be a
help and a comfort, becomes the greatest scourge of humanity, for in theology
we do not say this or that is true because the present facts of nature and
human consciousness testify to its truth, but this is true because many years
ago God declared it was so—a thing we can never know on the plane of our
present humanity, and a declaration which, as history proves, has led to the
bitterest strife and discord in the past, and which is still to-day a serious
obstacle to all progress in religion.
When, then, we take pen in hand to review part of
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the history of this great strife between Christian and Jew in days gone by, we
do so because we have greater faith in present-day humanity than in the
inhumanity of the past.. Let us agree to seek an explanation, to confer
together, to sink our pride in our own opinion, and discover why we are
enemies, one of another, in things theological, while we are friends perchance
in things scientific and philosophic.
But this book is not intended for the man whose "Christianity" is greater than
his humanity, nor for him whose "Judaism" is stronger than his love of
humankind; it is not meant for the theologian who loves his preconceptions
more than truth, or for the fanatic who thinks he is the only chosen of God.
It is a book for men and women who have experience of life and human nature,
who have the courage to face things as they are; who know that on the one hand
the Churches of to-day, no matter how they strive carefully to disguise the
fact, are confronted by the gravest possible difficulties as to doctrine,
while many of the clergy, owing to a total lack of wise guidance by those in
authority, are becoming a law unto themselves, or, because of the terrorism of
ecclesiastical laymen, are forced to be hypocrites in the pulpit; and, on the
other hand, that Judaism cannot continue in its traditional mould without
doing the utmost violence to its intelligence.
Traditional theology, traditional history, traditional views in general are
being questioned on all hands, and there is an. ever-growing conviction that
the consciousness and conscience of a Church, whether that Church be the
Congregation of Christendom or the Dispersion of
9
Israel, evolve from century to century; that religion is not an exception to
the law which is seen to be operative in every department of nature and human
activity; and that, therefore, it is incumbent upon all who have the best
interests of religion at heart "to maintain the right and duty of [any] Church
to restate her belief from time to time, as required by the progressive
revelation of the Holy Spirit," as one of the objects of the Churchmen's Union
declares.
To-day, in thinking and progressive Christendom, we have before us the
spectacle of the mind and heart of the earnest seeker after truth torn and
lacerated by the contradictions and manifest absurdities of much in the
tradition of the Faith. The only relief from this most painful state of
affairs is to be found in the courageous recognition, that in the early days
the marvelous mysteries of the inner life and the inner nature of man were
objectivized and historicized by those who either did not understand their
true spiritual import, or who deliberately used this method for the
instruction of the many who were unable to grasp in their proper terms the
spiritual verities of man in his perfectioning. To this we will return at the
end of our present enquiry and endeavour to show how even Jew and Christian
can learn to understand and respect each other even on the ground of
religion.
And, indeed, the time is very opportune, for some of the preliminary
conditions for a better understanding are being prepared. To-day there is
being given to the world for the first time what purports to be "a faithful
record of the multifarious activity" of the Jewish people. The Israelite has
been a mystery to the
10
Christian, a mystery to humanity, from generation to generation; he has lived
in our midst, and we have not known him, nay, we have been content to believe
anything of him, while he for the most part has been inarticulate as to
himself, his hopes, and his fears. The Jewish Encyclopaedia [1] is to remedy
this evil, for it sets before itself the endeavour "to give, in systematized,
comprehensive, and yet succinct form, a full and accurate account of the
history and literature, the social and intellectual life of the Jewish people,
of their ethical and religious views, their customs, rites, and traditions in
all ages and in all lands."
Such a work is an undertaking of the most profound interest and importance,
and we look forward to its publication with the liveliest anticipation, asking
ourselves the questions: What will the Jew in this comprehensive Encyclopaedia
have to tell us of Christianity? How will he treat the traditions of his
fathers concerning Jesus? To-day we can no longer burn or torture him or
confiscate his goods.[2] His account of himself, moreover, is to be given by
the best intelligence in him. What, then, will he say concerning Jesus and the
long centuries of bitter strife between the Christians and his own people?
From the three volumes which have so far appeared it is not possible to answer
this question; but that it is the question of all questions in Jewish affairs
that demands a wise answer, will be seen from our present
[1] Three of its twelve volumes only have so far appeared. (New York: Funk &
Wagnalls; 1901, in progress.)
[2] Though the East of Europe is not yet quite powerless in this respect.
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enquiry. To ignore it, or merely to confine it to vague generalities, is of no
advantage to the world.
As the New Testament was added to the Old Covenant Bible by the Church
Fathers, and formed the basis of their exegesis, so was the Talmud added to
the Torah by the Rabbis, and formed the special study of later Jewry. The
Talmud covers the whole period of the early Christian centuries. What has the
Talmud to say of Christianity? For as the editors of the Encyclopaedia well
say:
"The Talmud is a world of its own, awaiting the attention of the modern
reader. In its encyclopaedic compass it comprises all the variety of thought
and opinions, of doctrine and science, accumulated by the Jewish people in the
course of more than seven centuries, and formulated for the most part by their
teachers. Full of the loftiest spiritual truths and of fantastic imagery, of
close and learned legal disquisitions and of extravagant exegesis, of earnest
doctrine and of minute casuistry, of accurate knowledge and of popular
conceptions, it invites the world of to-day to a closer acquaintance with its
voluminous contents."
To-day it is becoming a canon of historical research that the study of ancient
history can hardly ever reward us by the attainment of incontrovertible fact;
it can at best only tell us what the opinions of certain writers were about
the facts of which we are in search. Many years of study of Christian origins
have convinced some of us that it is impossible to be absolutely certain
historically of any objective fact relating to the life of Jesus as handed on
by tradition. We can only say that this or that seems more likely to have
occurred;
12
and here again our preference, if we trace it deep enough, will be found to
depend entirely on subjective considerations. Canonical Christianity gradually
evolved the mind-bewildering dogma that Jesus was in deed and truth very God
of very God, unique and miraculous in every possible respect; and the Church
for some seventeen or eighteen centuries has boldly thrown down this challenge
to the intellect and experience of humanity. Strong in the strength of her
faith in miracle she has triumphed in her theology, and imposed it on the West
even until the present day; but at last she has herself developed an intellect
which can no longer fully believe in this. A new spirit is at work in her
children, who are busily trying to convince their mother that she has been
mistaken in many things, and has often misunderstood the wisdom of the
Master.
It is because of this stupendous claim on behalf of a claim which has perhaps
astonished none more than Himself, that the Church has brought upon herself a
scrutiny into the history of her origins that it is totally unable to bear.
Every single assertion about her great Teacher is scrutinized with a
minuteness that is not demanded in the case of any other historical problem,
and the lay student who follows the researches of specialists meets with so
many contradictions in the analysis of the traditional data, and is brought
face to face with so many warring opinions, that he is in despair of arriving
at any patent historic certainty on any single point in the Evangelical
record. Nevertheless he is confronted by the unavoidable fact that a great
religion came to birth; and, if he be not an out and out five-sense
rationalist, his
13
only relief lies in the belief that the secret of this birth must have been
hidden in a psychic womb, and the real history of the movement must therefore
be sought in some great drama that was enacted in the unseen world.
But the interest in the problem is by no means lessened because of the
historical uncertainty; on the contrary it is a thousand-fold increased. The
subject can never be made solely a matter of dry historical research; it will
always be involved in the most profoundly instructive psychological phenomena,
and that too not only in the study of the minds of the ancient writers, but
also in the appreciation of the preconceptions of their modern critics. Hence
it is that any book dealing with the question of Christian origins is before
all others a human document from which, no matter what view a man may take,
there is always something to be learned of our complex human nature.
And with regard to our present enquiry, what can be of greater interest than
to observe how that from the same facts, whatever those facts may have been,
on the one hand, under the expansive influence of love, wonder, credulity, and
intense religious enthusiasm, there was evolved the story of God Himself
uniquely incarnate in man; while on the other, from feelings of annoyance, of
surprise, and disbelief, and, later, of hate, bred of an equal enthusiasm for
religion, there was built up the story of a deceiver of Israel? Here we see
evolved, generation by generation, and side by side, absolutely contradictory
representations purporting to be the accounts of the doings and sayings of one
and the same person.
14
The philosophic mind can thus derive much food for reflexion by a comparison
of the Christian and Jewish traditions concerning Jesus, and his studies will
lead him to understand how that a thing which may be perfectly true
psychically or spiritually, and of great help to the religious life, can, when
taken out of its proper sphere, and aggressively asserted as a purely physical
and historical fact, be turned into a subject of grossest material
controversy. Thus it may be that we shall be able to estimate, at their just
values, some things which cannot but appear extremely shocking to conventional
religious minds, and be able to understand how what was regarded by the one
side as a saving truth, could be regarded by the other as a mischievous error;
how what was declared by the Christians to be the highest honour, could be
regarded by the Jew as a proof of dishonour; how what was believed in by the
former as the historic facts of a unique divine revelation, could be treated
disparagingly, or with mockery and even humour, by those who held to the
tradition of what they believed to have been equally a unique revelation of
the Divine.
But it is not the doctrinal quarrels which chiefly interest us in studying
these traditions of Jewry. What, in our opinion, is of far greater interest is
that the Jewish traditions, in spite of some gross contradictions, in the main
assign a date to Jesus which widely differs from that of Christian tradition.
The main object of this enquiry is to state this problem, to show that in
moderate probability for many centuries this was the Jewish tradition as to
the date of Jesus, not to attack or defend it. Moreover, we have taken up this
subject
15
not only on general grounds of interest, but also for a special reason.
For this problem, though not as yet even heard of by the general public, is,
nevertheless, of great interest to many students of Theosophy, and, therefore,
it seems to press, not for solution—for of that there are no immediate
hopes—but for a more satisfactory definition than has been as yet accorded to
it.
The problem, then, we are about to attempt more clearly to define is not a
metaphysical riddle, not a spiritual enigma, not some moral puzzle (though all
of these factors may be made to inhere in it), but a problem of physical fact,
well within the middle distance of what is called the historic period. It is
none the less on this account of immense importance and interest generally,
and especially to thoughtful students of "origins," for it raises no less a
question than that of an error in the date of the life of the Founder of
Christianity; and that, too, not by the comparatively narrow margin of some
seven or eight years (as many have already argued on the sole basis of
generally accepted traditional data), but by no less a difference than
the (in such a connection) enormous time-gulf of a full century. Briefly, the
problem may be popularly summed up in the startling and apparently ludicrous
question: Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?
Now, had all such questioning been confined to a small circle of first-hand
investigators of the hidden side of things, or, if we may say so, of the
noumena of things historic underlying the blurred records of phenomena handed
down to us by tradition, there would be no immediate necessity for the present
enquiry;
16
but of late years very positive statements on this matter, based on such
methods of research, have been printed and circulated among those interested
in such questions; and what, in the opinion of the writer, makes the matter
even more pressing, is that these statements are being readily accepted by
ever-growing numbers. Now, it goes without saying, that the majority of those
who have accepted such statements have done so either for subjective reasons
satisfactory to themselves, or from some inner feeling or impression which
they have not been at pains to analyse. The state of affairs, then, seems
clearly to demand, that as they have heard a little of the matter, they should
now hear more, and that the question should be taken out of the primitive
crudeness of a choice between two sets of mutually contradictory assertions,
and advanced a stage into the subtler regions of critical research. As far as
the vast majority of the general public who may chance to stumble on the
amazing question which heads our enquiry, is concerned, it is only to be
expected that they will answer it offhand not only with an angry No, but with
the further reflection that the very formulating of such a query betokens the
vagaries of a seriously disordered mind; indeed, at the outset of our
investigations we were also ourselves decidedly of the opinion that no mind
trained in historic research, even the most cautious, would hesitate for a
moment to sum up the probabilities of the accessible evidence as pointing to a
distinct negative. But when all is said and done, we find ourselves in a
position of doubt between, on the one hand, the seeming impossibility of
impugning the genuineness of the Pilate date, and on the other, an
17
uncomfortable feeling that the nature of the inconsistencies of the Hebrew
tradition rather strengthens than diminishes the possibility that there may be
something after all in what appears to be its most insistent factor—namely,
that Jesus lived in the days of Jannai.
It is not, then, with any hopes of definitely solving the problem that these
pages are written, but rather with the object of pointing out the difficulties
which have to be surmounted by an unprejudiced historian, before on the one
hand he can rule such a question entirely out of court, or on the other can
permit himself to give even a qualified recognition to such a revolutionary
proposition in the domain of Christian origins; and further, of trying to
indicate by an object lesson what appears to me to be the sane attitude of
mind with regard to similar problems, which those of us who have had some
experience of the possibilities of so-called occult research, but who have not
the ability to study such matters at first-hand, should endeavour to hold.
In what is set forth in this essay, then, I hope most honestly to endeavour to
treat the matter without prejudice, save for this general prepossession, that
I consider it saner for the only normally endowed individual to hold the mind
in suspense over all categorical statements which savour in any way of the
nature of "revelation," by whomsoever made, than to believe either on the one
hand without investigation, or on the other in despair of arriving at any real
bed-rock of facts in the unsubstantial material commonly believed in as
history, and thus in either case to crystallise one's mind anew into some
"historic" form, on lines of
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evidence concerning the nature of which we are as yet almost entirely
ignorant.
And, first of all, let me further set forth very briefly some of the
considerations which render it impossible for me to assume either a decidedly
negative, or even a purely agnostic, attitude with regard to possibilities of
research other than those open to normal ability and industry; for if a man
would honestly endeavour, in any fashion really satisfactory to himself, to
interpret the observed phenomena of life, he is compelled by a necessity
greater than himself to take into consideration all the facts of at least his
personal experience, no matter how sceptical he may be as to the validity of
the experiences of others, or how critical he may be concerning his own. On
the other hand, I most freely admit that those who have not had experiences
similar to my own, are quite justified in assuming an agnostic attitude with
regard to my declarations, but I doubt that it can be considered the nature of
a truly scientific mind to deny a priori the possibility of my
experience, or merely contemptuously to dismiss the matter without any attempt
at investigation.
It has been my good fortune—for so I regard it—to know a number of people who
have their subtler senses, to a greater or less degree, more fully developed
than is normally the case, and also to be intimate with a few whose power of
response to extra-normal ranges of impression, vibration, or stimulation (or
whatever may be the more correct term) may be said to be, as far as my
experience goes, highly developed. These latter are my personal friends, whom
I have known for many years, and with whom I have been most closely
associated.
19
From long knowledge of their characters, often under very trying
circumstances, I have no reason to believe they are trying to deceive me, and
every reason to believe in their good faith. They certainly would have nothing
to gain by practising, if it were possible, any concerted imposition upon me,
and everything to lose. For, on the one hand, my devotion to the studies I
pursue, and the work upon which I am engaged, is entirely independent of
individuals and their pronouncements, and, on the other, my feeling of
responsibility to humanity in general is such, that I should not have the
slightest hesitation in openly proclaiming a fraud, were I to discover any
attempt at it, especially in matters which I hold to be more than ordinarily
sacred for all who profess to be lovers of truth and labourers for our common
welfare. Nor again is there any question here of their trying to influence
some prospective "follower," either of themselves, or of some particular sect,
for we are more or less contemporaries in similar studies, and one of our
common ideals is the desirability of breaking down the boundary walls of
sectarianism.
Now, this handful of friends of mine who are endowed in this special fashion
are unanimous in declaring that "Jeschu," the historical Jesus, lived a
century before the traditional date. They, one and all, claim that, if they
turn their attention to the matter, they can see the events of those far-off
days passing before their mind's eye, or, rather, that for the time being they
seem to be in the midst of them, even as we ordinarily observe events in
actual life. They state that not only do their individual researches as to
this date work out
20
to one and the same result, but that also when several of them have worked
together, checking one another, the result has been still the same.
Familiar as I am with the hypotheses of "collective hallucination," "honest
self-deception," and "subjectivism" of all kinds, I have been unable to
satisfy myself that any one of these, or any combination of them, will
satisfactorily explain the matter. For instance, even granting that certain of
the Jewish Jesus stories may have been previously known to some of my
colleagues, and that it might be reasonably supposed that this curious
tradition had so fascinated their imagination as to become the determining
factor in what might be called their subjective dramatising faculty—there are
two considerations which, in my opinion, based on my own knowledge and
experience, considerably weaken the strength of this sceptical and otherwise
apparently reasonable supposition.
First, the general consideration that my friends differ widely from each other
in temperament; they are mostly of different nationalities, and all vary
considerably in their objective knowledge of Christian origins, and in their
special views of external Christianity. Moreover—though they all sincerely
endeavour to be impartial on so important a matter, seeing that it touches the
life of a Master for whom they have in a very real sense the deepest
reverence—while some of them do not happen to be special followers of this
particular Teacher, others, on the contrary, are specially attracted by this
Way, and might, therefore, be naturally expected to counteract in the interest
of received tradition any tendency to apparent extrava-
21
gance, which was not justified by repeated subjective experiences of such a
nature as to outweigh their objective training and natural preconceptions.
Second, the very special consideration, that I have had the opportunity on
many occasions of testing the accuracy of some of my colleagues with regard to
statements either of a similar nature or of a more personal character. And
lest my evidence on this point should be too hastily put out of court by some
impatient reader, let me briefly refer to the nature of such verification.
But before doing so, it would be as well to have it understood that the method
of investigation to which I am referring does not bring into consideration any
question of trance, either self-induced, or mesmerically or hypnotically
effected. As far as I can judge, my colleagues are to all outward seeming in
quite their normal state. They go through no outward ceremonies, or internal
ones for that matter, nor even any outward preparation but that of assuming a
comfortable position; moreover, they not only describe, as each normally has
the power of description, what is passing before their inner vision in
precisely the same fashion as one would describe some objective scene, but
they are frequently as surprised as their auditors that the scenes or events
they are attempting to explain are not at all as they expected to see them,
and remark on them as critically, and frequently as sceptically, as those who
cannot "see" for themselves, but whose knowledge of the subject from objective
study may be greater than theirs.
Now, although it is true that in the majority of
22
cases I have not been able to check their statements, and doubt whether it
will ever be possible to do so owing to the lack of objective material,
nevertheless, in a number of instances, few when compared with the mass of
statements made, but numerous enough in themselves, I have been able to do so.
It can, of course, be argued, as has been done in somewhat similar cases, that
all of this is merely the bringing into subjective objectivity the imaginative
dramatisation of facts which have been normally heard or read, or even
momentarily glanced at, and which have sunk beneath the threshold of
consciousness, either of that of the seers themselves or of one or other of
their auditors, or even some permutation or combination of these. But such an
explanation, seems somewhat feeble to one who, like myself, has taken down
laboriously dictated passages from MSS., described, for instance, as written
in archaic Greek uncials—MSS., the contents of which, as far as I am aware,
are not known to exist—passages laboriously dictated letter by letter, by a
friend whose knowledge of the language extended hardly beyond the alphabet.
Occasionally gaps had to be left for certain forms of letters, with which not
only my colleague, but also myself, were previously entirely unacquainted;
these gaps had to be filled up afterwards, when the matter was transcribed and
broken up into words and sentences, which turned out to be in good construable
Greek, the original or copy of which, I am as sure as I can be of anything,
neither my colleague nor myself had ever seen physically. Moreover, I have had
dates and information given by these methods which I could only verify
23
afterwards by long and patient research, and which, I am convinced, no one but
a widely read scholar of classical antiquity could have come across.
This briefly is the nature of some of the facts of my personal experience in
this connection, and while others who have not had such experience may
permissibly put it aside, I am unable to do so; and not only am I unable to do
so personally, but I further consider it more honest to my readers to admit
them to my privacy in this respect, in order that they may be in a better
position to estimate the strength or weakness of my preconceptions or
prejudices in the treatment of the exceedingly interesting problem which we
are about to consider.
It will thus be seen at the outset that I am unable, a priori to refuse
any validity to these so-called occult methods of research; the ghost of my
repeated experience rises up before me and refuses to be laid by an impatient
"pshaw." But it by no means follows that, because in some instances I have
been enabled to verify the truth of my colleagues' statements, I am therefore
justified in accepting the remainder on trust. Of their good faith I have no
question, but of the nature of the modus of their "seeing" I am in
almost complete ignorance. That it is of a more subtle nature than ordinary
sight, or memory, or even imagination, I am very well assured; but that there
should be entrusted to an apparently favoured few, and that, too,
comparatively suddenly, a means of inerrant knowledge which seemingly reduces
the results of the unwearied toil of the most laborious scholars and
historians to the most beggarly proportions, I am not prepared at present to
24
accept. It would rather seem more scientific to suppose that, in exact
proportion to the startling degree of accuracy that may at times be attained
by these subtle methods of research, the errors that may arise can be equally
appalling.
And, indeed, this is borne out not only by the perusal of the little studied,
but enormous, literature on such subjects, both of antiquity and of the
present day, but also by the repeated declarations of those of my colleagues
themselves who have endeavoured to fit themselves for a truly scientific use
of such faculties. They all declare that their great aim is to eliminate as
far as possible the personal factor; for if, so to say, the glass of their
mind-stuff, through which they have to see, is not most accurately polished
and adjusted, the things seen are all blurred, or distorted into the most
fantastic shapes. This "glass" is in itself of a most subtle nature, most
plastic and protean; it changes with every desire, with every hope and fear,
with every prejudice and prepossession, with every love and hate.
Such factors, then, are not unthought of by my colleagues; rather are they
most carefully considered. But this being so, it is plain that it is very
difficult to discover a sure criterion of accuracy in such subtle research,
even for the practised seer, or seeress, who is willing to submit himself to
the strictest discipline; while for those of us who have not developed these
distinct inner senses, but who desire eventually to arrive at some certain
criterion of truth, and who further believe that this is a thing beyond all
sensation, we must be content to develop our critical faculties on
25
the material accessible to us, and do all we can with it before we abandon the
subject to "revelation."
Nor is this latter attitude of mind opposed to the best interests of religion;
for, if we are in any way right in our belief, we hold that the workman is
only expected to work with his own tools. To use in an expanded sense a phrase
of the "Gita," there should be no "confusion of castes"; or to employ the
language of one of the Gospel parables, a man should lay out the "talent"
entrusted to him to the best advantage, and if he do this, no more for the
moment, we may believe, is expected of him. We have all, each in our own way,
to labour for the common good; but a workman whose trade is that of objective
historical research is rarely trusted with the tools of seership as well,
while the seer presumably is not expected to devote his life to historical
criticism. Doubtless there may be some who are entrusted with two or more
talents of different natures, but so far we have not as yet in our own times
come across the desirable blend of a competent seer and a historical critic.
We must, then, each of us in his own way, work together for righteousness;
hoping that if in the present we employ our single talents rightly, and prove
ourselves profitable servants, we may in the future become masters of two or
even more "cities," and thus (to adapt the wording of a famous agraphon)
having proved ourselves trustworthy in the "lesser," be accorded the
opportunity of showing ourselves faithful in the "greater (mysteries)."
Having, then, prefaced our enquiry by these brief remarks on the nature of the
methods of research em-
26
ployed by those whose statements have lately brought this question into
prominence in certain circles, we proceed to enumerate the various deposits of
objective material which have to be surveyed and analysed, before a mind
accustomed to historical study and the weighing of evidence can feel in a
position to estimate even approximately the comparative values of the various
traditions.
We have, then, in the first place to consider the Christian tradition that
Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, and was put to death under Pontius
Pilate, and further, to glance at the material from Pagan sources claimed to
substantiate this tradition; in the second to acquaint ourselves with the
Talmud Jeschu stories which purport to preserve traditions of the life and
date of Jeschu totally at variance on almost every point with the Christian
account; further to investigate the Toldoth Jeschu or mediaeval Jewish Jesus
legends; and lastly to consider some very curious passages in the writings of
the Church Father Epiphanius of Salamis.
That there are many better equipped and more competent than myself to discuss
these difficult subjects, no one is more keenly aware than I am. But seeing
that there are no books on the subject readily accessible to the general
reader, I may be excused for coming forward, not with the pretension of
discovering any facts previously unknown to specialists, but with the very
modest ambition of attempting some new combinations of some of the best-known
of such facts, while generally indicating some of the outlines of the question
for those who cannot find the information for themselves, and of pointing to a
few of the difficulties which con-
27
front a student of the labours of these specialists, in the hope that some
greater mind may at no distant date be induced to throw further light on the
matter.
Finally, seeing that in the treatment of the Jewish Jeschu stories many things
exceedingly distasteful to lovers of Jesus will have to be referred to, and
that generally, in the whole enquiry, many points involved in the most violent
controversy will have to be considered, let me say that I would most gladly
have avoided them if it were possible. But a greater necessity than personal
likes or dislikes compels the setting forth of the whole matter as it is
found. We are told that the truth alone shall make us free; and the love of it
compels us sometimes to deal with most distasteful matters. Few things can be
more unpleasing than to be even the indirect means of giving pain to the
sincere lovers of a great Teacher, but the necessities of the enquiry into the
question: Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?—primarily involves a discussion of the
Jewish Jeschu stories, and it is therefore impossible to omit them.
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