The Life of Jesus | Page 2

CHAPTER IX
The Disciples of Jesus 173
CHAPTER X
The Preachings on the Lake 184
CHAPTER XI
The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor 194
CHAPTER XII
Embassy from John in Prison to Jesus--Death of John--Relations of His
School with That of Jesus 206
CHAPTER XIII
First Attempts on Jerusalem 213
CHAPTER XIV
Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans 227

CHAPTER XV
Commencement of the Legends Concerning Jesus--His Own Idea of
His Supernatural Character 235
CHAPTER XVI
Miracles 248
CHAPTER XVII
Definitive Form of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom of God
259
CHAPTER XVIII
Institutions of Jesus 273
CHAPTER XIX
Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation 285
CHAPTER XX
Opposition to Jesus 295
CHAPTER XXI
Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem 305
CHAPTER XXII
Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus 319
CHAPTER XXIII
Last Week of Jesus 329

CHAPTER XXIV
Arrest and Trial of Jesus 344
CHAPTER XXV
Death of Jesus 360
CHAPTER XXVI
Jesus in the Tomb 370
CHAPTER XXVII
Fate of the Enemies of Jesus 376
CHAPTER XXVIII
Essential Character of the Work of Jesus 381

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION,
In Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated
A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the
obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend
from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its
existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of all.
Such a history would consist of four books. The first, which I now
present to the public, treats of the particular fact which has served as
the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely filled by the
sublime person of the Founder. The second would treat of the apostles
and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the revolutions which
religious thought underwent in the first two generations of Christianity.
I would close this about the year 100, at the time when the last friends
of Jesus were dead, and when all the books of the New Testament were

fixed almost in the forms in which we now read them. The third would
exhibit the state of Christianity under the Antonines. We should see it
develop itself slowly, and sustain an almost permanent war against the
empire, which had just reached the highest degree of administrative
perfection, and, governed by philosophers, combated in the new-born
sect a secret and theocratic society which obstinately denied and
incessantly undermined it. This book would cover the entire period of
the second century. Lastly, the fourth book would show the decisive
progress which Christianity made from the time of the Syrian emperors.
We should see the learned system of the Antonines crumble, the
decadence of the ancient civilization become irrevocable, Christianity
profit from its ruin, Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in
company with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession
of a society for which philosophy and a purely civil government no
longer sufficed. It was then that the religious ideas of the races grouped
around the Mediterranean became profoundly modified; that the
Eastern religions everywhere took precedence; that the Christian
Church, having become very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a
millennium, broke its last ties with Judaism, and entered completely
into the Greek and Roman world. The contests and the literary labors of
the third century, which were carried on without concealment, would
be described only in their general features. I would relate still more
briefly the persecutions at the commencement of the fourth century, the
last effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied
to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only
foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed
the position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious
movement an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its
turn.
I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to complete
a plan so vast. I shall be satisfied if, after having written the Life of
Jesus, I am permitted to relate, as I understand it, the history of the
apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during the weeks which
followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the cycle of legends
concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the Church of Jerusalem,
the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of Nero, the appearance of

the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the foundation of the
Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and
the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor originated by John.
Everything pales by the side of that marvellous first century. By a
peculiarity rare in history, we see much better what passed in the