The Jesus of History | Page 7

In the experience of every man there
are such moments, and the reminiscences can be trusted. The Gospels
are almost avowedly not first-hand. Peter is said to be behind Mark;
Mark and at least one other are behind Matthew and Luke. Luke in his
preface explains his methods. They are collectors and transmitters; and
the indications--are that they did their work very faithfully. There is a
simplicity and a plainness about the stories in the Gospels, which

further guarantees them. It is remarkable how little of the adjective
there is--no compliment, no eulogy, no heroic touches, no sympathetic
turn of phrase, no great passages of encomium or commendation. It is
often said about the Greek historian, Thucydides, that, among his many
intellectual judgements, he never offers a criticism of any act that
implies moral approbation or disapprobation; that he says nothing to
show that he had feelings or that he cared about questions of right and
wrong. Page after page of Thucydides will make the reader tingle with
pity or indignation; there is hardly in literature so tragic a story as the
Syracusan expedition--and the writer did not feel! Is it not the sternest
and deepest feeling, after all, when a man will not "unpack his heart
with words"? Something of this kind we find in the Gospels. There is
not a word of condemnation for Herod or Pilate, for priest or Pharisee;
not a touch of sympathy as the nails are driven through those hands; a
blunt phrase about the soldiers, "And sitting down they watched him
there" (Matt. 26:36)--that is all. (From a literary point of view, what a
triumph of awful, quiet objectivity! and they had no such aim.) Luke
indeed has one slight touch that might be called irony[4]--"And he
released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into
prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will"
(Luke 23:25)--and yet the irony is in the story itself. "Why callest thou
me good?" So it is recorded that Jesus once answered a compliment
(Matt. 19:17); and it looks as if the mood had passed over to his
intimates, and from them to their friends who wrote the Gospels. He
meant too much for them to seek the facile relief of praise. The words
of praise die away, yes, and the words of affection too; and their silence
and self-restraint are in themselves evidence of their truth; and more
winning than words could have been.
Here and there the Gospels keep a phrase actually used by Jesus, and in
his native Aramaic speech. The Greek was not apt to use or quote
foreign phrases--unlike the Englishman who "has been at a great feast
of languages and stolen the scraps." Why, then, do the Evangelists,
writing for Greek readers, keep the Aramaic sentences? It looks like a
human instinct that made Peter--if, as we are told, he had some part in
the origination of Mark's Gospel--and the rest wish to keep the very
words and tones of their Master, as most of us would wish to keep the

accents and phrases of those we love. Was there no satisfaction to the
people who had lived with Jesus, when they read in Mark the very
syllables they had heard him use, and caught his great accents again? Is
there not for Christians in every age a joy and an inspiration in
knowing the very sounds his lips framed? The first word that his
mother taught him survives in Abba (Father)--something of his own
speech to let us begin at the beginning; something, again, that takes us
to the very heart of him at the end, in his cry: Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani (Mark 15:34). Is it not true that we come nearer to him in
that cry in the language strange to us, but his own? Would not the story,
again, be poorer without the little tender phrase that he used to the
daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41).
From time to time we find in the Gospels matters for which the writers
and those behind them have felt that some apology or at least some
explanation was needed. His friendship for sinners was a taunt against
him in his lifetime; so was his inattention to the Sabbath (Mark 2:24,
3:2), and the details of ceremonial washing (Mark 7:1-5). The faithful
record of these is a sound indication both of the date[5] and of the truth
of the Gospels. But these were not all. Celsus, in 178 A.D., in his True
Word, mocked at Jesus because of the cry upon the cross; he reminded
Christians that many and many a worthless knave had endured in brave
silence, and their Great Man cried out. It was from the Gospels that his
knowledge came (Mark 15:37). Even during