The Life of Jesus. Ernest Renan
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was the sixth hour;" "it was night;" "the servant's name was Malchus;" "they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold;" "the coat was without seam." Hence, lastly, the disorder of the compilation, the irregularity of the narration, the disjointedness of the first chapters, all so many inexplicable features on the supposition that this Gospel was but a theological thesis, without historic value, and which, on the contrary, are perfectly intelligible, if, in conformity with tradition, we see in them the remembrances of an old man, sometimes of remarkable freshness, sometimes having undergone strange modifications.
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20.]
[Footnote 2: John xviii. 15–16, xx. 2–6, xxi. 15–16. Comp. i. 35, 40, 41.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 65, xii. 6, xiii. 21, and following.]
[Footnote 4: The manner in which Aristion and Presbyteros Joannes expressed themselves on the Gospel of Mark before Papias (Eusebius, H.E., III. 39) implies, in effect, a friendly criticism, or, more properly, a sort of excuse, indicating that John's disciples had better information on the same subject.]
[Footnote 5: Compare John xviii. 15, and following, with Matthew xxvi. 58; John xx. 2 to 6, with Mark xvi. 7. See also John xiii. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 6: Chap. i. 14, xix. 35, xxi. 24, and following. Compare the
First Epistle of St. John, chap. i. 3, 5.]
A primary distinction, indeed, ought to be made in the Gospel of John. On the one side, this Gospel presents us with a rough draft of the life of Jesus, which differs considerably from that of the synoptics. On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses of which the tone, the style, the treatment, and the doctrines have nothing in common with the Logia given us by the synoptics. In this second respect, the difference is such that we must make choice in a decisive manner. If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he could not have spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has ever hesitated, or can ever hesitate. Far removed from the simple, disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John shows incessantly the preoccupation of the apologist—the mental reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to convince adversaries.[1] It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural, ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they present with the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their perfect harmony with the natural phenomena of Galilee—all these characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism, with the distorted metaphysics, which fill the discourses of John, would speak loudly enough. This by no means implies that there are not in the discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come from Jesus.[2] But the mystic tone of these discourses does not correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as we picture it according to the synoptics. A new spirit has breathed; Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is finished; the hope of the near advent of Christ is more distant; we enter on the barrenness of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and, if the son of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had certainly, in writing them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the charming discourses which he had heard upon its shores.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, chaps. ix. and xi. Notice especially, the effect which such passages as John xix. 35, xx. 31, xxi. 20–23, 24, 25, produce, when we recall the absence of all comments which distinguishes the synoptics.]
[Footnote 2: For example, chap. iv. 1, and following, xv. 12, and following. Many words remembered by John are found in the synoptics (chap. xii. 16, xv. 20).]
One circumstance, moreover, which strongly proves that the discourses given us by the fourth Gospel are not historical, but compositions intended to cover with the authority of Jesus certain doctrines dear to the compiler, is their perfect harmony with the intellectual state of Asia Minor at the time when they were written. Asia Minor was then the theatre of a strange movement of syncretical philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism existed there already. John appears to have drunk deeply from these strange springs. It may be that, after the crisis of the year 68 (the date of the Apocalypse) and of the year 70 (the destruction of Jerusalem), the old apostle, with an ardent and plastic spirit, disabused of the belief in a near appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, may have inclined toward the ideas that he found around him, of which several agreed sufficiently well with certain Christian doctrines. In attributing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a very natural tendency. Our remembrances are transformed with our circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we change.[1] Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the truth.
[Footnote 1: It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society of the time.]
If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from the death of John himself, (ver. 21–23.) Many other places bear the trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics,[3] resume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal,[4] would not be tolerated by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions,[5] which represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render us the conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the variations of a musician improvising on a given theme. The theme is not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel, presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles of St. John; we see that in writing the discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea ("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.). If Jesus had ever spoken in this style, which has nothing of Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus express myself, is it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well kept the secret?
[Footnote 1: The verses, chap. xx. 30, 31, evidently form the original conclusion.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. vi. 2, 22, vii. 22.]
[Footnote 3: For example, that which concerns the announcement of the betrayal