Sideline Criticism

I HAVE never given serious thought or essential study to what is caled the "historicity of Jesus" question, and what is here said must be discounted from that angle. Nevertheless, I have formed an opinion from the Gospels themselves, which lead me to believe that there isn't an historical rag to wrap around Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John strike me as what Mr. McCabe might felicitously call "amateur historians".

Regarding these four Gospels, Prof. John B. Bury (rated, I think correctly, by Mr. McCabe as "first of recent British historians") states: "The result is that it can no longer be said that for the life of Jesus there is the evidence of eye-witnesses." And why have we only four Gospels in the Bible testifying to Jesus instead of a dozen or more? Because Irenaeus, the real founder of the Canon, was explicit in the matter: there are four quarters of the earth, four universal winds, and animals have four legs. This bright boy of the Church should have added one more: a roller skate has four wheels.

Personally, I have never cared two straws whether Jesus lived or not. Nor do I care two straws now. I judge the Gospel stories on their face and read them as I do Aesop's Fables. I am not interested whether a particular fox or bull-frog, mentioned by Aesop, really existed or not. Jesus' existence, or Buddha's, or the existence of Solomon's thirty-second wife can be wrangled over by those who like this sort of thing; for me, I think of the three emperors of ancient China, Fu-hi, Shon-nung and Huang-ti, of whom it is said by Frederick Hirth, Professor of Chinese in Columbia University: "Although we have no reason to deny their existence, the details recorded concerning them contain enough in the way of improbabilities to justify us in considering them as mythical creations. The chronology, too, is apparently quite fictitious." Like Jesus, these three seem to be living in a world of hot air.

What essential difference does it make whether a man named Jesus lived or not? Suppose he did? Does it help Christianity? And if he didn't, what then? One thing is certain: No one (whether his name was Jesus, Jake or Tweedledee) ever did the things that Jesus is said to have done in the four Gospels. One doesn't have to be a trained historian, a certified public accountant, a professional rag-picker, or the seventh-son of a seventh-son, to know this, and I, for one, being a rather perverse individual, reject, on the evidence of the Gospel stories themselves, the whole silly mess as a pack of lies.

Whether some one by the name of Jesus once lived and had a lot of mythology built up around him, is a matter for special students to decide; whether the Gospel Jesus grew out of a solar myth, or out of the mountains on the moon, or from the blue grass of Kentucky, is for them also. It is, to me, all immaterial. I am concerned only with the Gospel story itself: is it true?

This we know: Jesus was not the first individual who is said to have performed miracles. The woods are full of these birds, so why all the dawdling over whether this particular Jew lived or not? The foundations of Christianity rest on the claim that an individual named Jesus performed certain miracles, in proof of his divinity, but since miracles do not happen in nature, the whole scheme of Christian theology, from this fact alone, is rotten to the roots. Jesus or no Jesus, the story is false on its face.

The Historicus-McCabe discussion in The Truth Seeker (Sept., 1944) has now reached a point of petty bickering where even the tyro may step in. I myself have learned nothing from it except that each side has its line-up of "authorities". Authorities in what? Intelligent men who are able to grasp and understand a subject are "authorities" for me. And I personally don't care whether the "authority" is a cab-driver on the side or a professional square-cap. A good part of our ignorance today is traceable to our academic stuffed shirts, and philosophical jitter-bugs. McCabe's very impressive list of professional historians who he says are all on his side, in support of an historical Jesus, becomes less impressive when we remember his own words, that professors of history, being professors, are not in a position to be "candid" in the matter. As for the "early rabbis", I would as soon rely on their testimony concerning Jesus as I would on their statements concerning the historicity of Noah's Ark and Balaam's ass. When has this bunch of sanctified prevaricators been other than a hotch-potch of amateur historians?

On the other hand, Historicus, I think, has missed a fine opportunity to enlighten us all. I was awaiting some unfolding of the theme itself, an exposition of the myth theory, rather than an attempt to show that his "authorities" have the other side's "authorities" groggy on the ropes. Maybe they have, but no one would learn how it came about by reading the article. But what does it matter? Man or myth, Jesus never did the wonders imputed to him.

Meanwhile, what is a mere sideliner like myself to do? Go to the movies, perhaps watch Mickey Mouse, and wonder whether there ever was a real mouse like that in real life.

St. Patricks "Gift" To Ireland

WHOEVER got the assignment to prepare the editorial on St. Patrick's for the New York Times on March 17, did a perfect job of rhetorical gush-writing for the Catholic Church. If the patron saint of Ireland were with us in the flesh it is doubtful whether he would recognize himself as the hero of the following blurb:

"Today, perhaps, as we recall again his gift of Christianity to Ireland that was to preserve the treasure of ancient civilization when the foundations of older Rome had fled, he may seem our contemporary in a stricken world."

Setting aside the sloppy diction of the editorial (we have heard of "foundations" that "crumble" and "collapse", but never of those that are known to have "fled"), we may remark that there is nothing in St. Patrick's life to suggest that he was interested in the preservation of "ancient civilization". What he was concerned about was preaching an Asiatic creed which he believed would save men from the wrath of God and eternal damnation.

If Christianity is St. Patrick's "gift" to Ireland, the noted saint should be burned in effigy by every self-respecting Hibernian. What he brought to Ireland was the hang-over of an abominable superstition, hatched in ancient Israel by an insufferable tribe of Bedouin barbarians, whose culture for the most part, as measured even by the standards of the time, was abysmally low.

St. Patrick's "gift" to Ireland was a hodgepodge of mythology and ignorance which he had imbibed as a child. In early life, infused with Christian fervor and beholding visions, he sought to displace the religion of the Druids with the religion of Christ. Like Jacques Bossuet, a French bishop and historian of a later period, St. Patrick saw in the sacred delusions of a Semitic tribe a divine revelation which was to redeem the world.

In referring to the obsessions of Bossuet, the English historian Buckle observes:

"Because Bossuet had been taught that the Jews are the chosen people of God, he under the title of Universal History, almost confines his attention to them, and treats this obstinate and ignorant race as if they formed the pivot upon which the affairs of the universe had been made to turn. His idea of a universal history excludes those nations who were the first to reach civilization, and to some of whom the Hebrews owed the scanty knowledge which they subsequently acquired. He says little of the Persians, and less of the Egyptians; nor does he even mention that far greater people between the Indus and the Ganges, whose philosophy formed one of the elements of the school of Alexandria, whose subtle speculations anticipated all the efforts of European metaphysics, and whose sublime inquiries, conducted in their own exquisite language, date from a period when the Jews, stained with every variety of crime, were a plundering and vagabond tribe, wandering on the face of the earth, raising their hand against every man, and ever man raising his hand against them."

How different might have been the history of Ireland if St. Patrick's "gift" had come from the pagan world, with its rich treasures of literature and learning. The classical culture of the Greek and Roman civilizations, with its love of knowledge and inquiry, its appreciation of art and drama, its unsurpassable glorification of wisdom and intellectual liberty would have raised the Emerald Isle to something less pathetic than a broken reed among the nations of the world. Intellectually pauperized, Ireland has suffered more from her venal priesthood and groveling superstition than from her plagues and famines.

If Irishmen had a tenth of the wit and sense of humor they are said to have (there is, I understand, a little Irish somewhere along the line of my antecedents), they would have long ago laughed the Catholic Church out of existence, ridiculed its ludicrous and asinine doctrines, its crass stupidities, its priestly arrogance. They would have scorned the idea that a small and obscure cult, masquerading as the elite of heaven, had been favored by the Almighty with a divine revelation while they, the Irish, were left to gather the crumbs of Hebraic tradition.

St. Patrick, if he existed (and there is considerable controversy among scholars as to whether or not he lived), is anything but a commanding figure in the pages of history and would hardly have called for laudation by the Times had it not been for journalistic expediency. He was not a scholar, a thinker, even a man of moderate culture; his alleged "Confessions" stamp him as an intellectual nonentity, possessed of enough fanatical zeal and muscular vigor to instill an Oriental superstition into the social blood stream of an alien people. "Various charges," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "had been brought against him by his enemies, among them that of illiteracy, the truth of which is borne out by the crudeness of his style, and is fully admitted by the writer himself."

But a saint does not have to be literate to meet religious standards; it is enough that he have "spiritual insight," a flair for the mystical, the ability to see and converse with spooks. If he has these, he will not only fulfill, as St. Patrick did, the requirements of the Church, but merit the awe and adoration of its insatiable dupes. His emotional instability will more than compensate for anything he may lack in intellectual experience.

Our venerable New York Times could have done better than laud a vulgar superstitionist. If it wished to pay tribute to Irish glory and intelligence, it could have signaled out worthy individuals, such as Tyndall, the scientist, Bury, the historian, and the scholar, Joseph McCabe. These men, born in Ireland and interested in preserving the treasures of civilization, will be remembered in cultural circles long after Patrick, the pious ignoramus, is buried in oblivion.