We cannot enter into detail here in regard to all the objections that adversaries have been pleased to collect against the veracity of the Gospels. Moreover, the solid character of our thesis does not require this special refutation, particularly as we are treating the question of the veracity of the Scriptures only from a historical point of view. Therefore we shall confine ourselves to the following reflections. . . .
All the objections usually alleged either against the authenticity of the Gospels or the truth of the facts related in them come necessarily under one or other of the following principal heads:
- The miraculous character of the facts stated
- The want of harmony in the various Gospel narratives
- The contradiction between certain facts related by the evangelists and the facts of chronology or contemporaneous history as given us by profane writers
Let us see what we are to think of each of these chief accusations.
1. The miraculous character of the facts of the Gospel proves absolutely nothing against the authenticity and truth of them, unless we claim to reject a priori, without any proof, all miracles as impossible. If, as logic and common sense require, we admit the possibility of miracles, the miraculous events related in the Gospels cannot be urged against the veracity of the evangelists: These facts are capable of proof like any other: first by the senses, and afterward by testimony when they have ceased to exist. . . .
2. As to the variations in the Gospels, they may be ranged into two classes: variations through omission, when one evangelist omits what another includes, is silent when another speaks; variations through contradiction, when several evangelists give apparently irreconcilable versions of the same fact.
The first are of no importance whatever, and this is the case with the majority of the variations found in the Gospels.
We know, moreover, that the apostles—whose teaching, like that of the Jewish rabbis and according to the command of Jesus himself, was essentially oral—wrote only occasionally, with no intention to form a complete body of doctrine, nor to relate all the acts of Jesus. The evangelists expressly declare that they are far from having written all that they knew upon this subject.
The variations through contradiction constitute a more serious difficulty. But let us remark that the contradictions between two versions of the same fact, even if duly proved, impugn the accuracy only of certain details of the fact; they do not authorize us to reject either the substance of the fact, or other facts concerning which the narrations agree. Now the apparent contradictions between the evangelists all relate to insignificant points, unimportant details. As to the whole history, and the precious and touching truths contained in the simple Gospel narrative, the agreement is complete. Never have writers better described the same person; never have they more strikingly exhibited that perfect unity that is the appanage only of truth.
3. In regard to the disagreement of the Gospel with the facts of the history of that time, by making the same distinctions we shall attain the same result. These variations, which are, moreover, very few, may also be ranged as omissions and contradictions.
The first class prove nothing, particularly as the Gospel does not deal with facts that at that period would certainly have come within the province of the historians of Rome and have figured in contemporaneous annals; it relates the history of a carpenter, living in a city of the province and whose influence was at first sufficiently restricted to have escaped the attention of Suetonius and Tacitus. When the Christians became numerous enough in Rome itself to awaken the attention of philosophers and the Roman officials (that is, about thirty years after the death of Christ), then, and then only, would the great annalists have to mention them. It is precisely at this period that Tacitus speaks of the Christians (followers of Christ) as persecuted in Rome by Nero.
There remain the contradictions that may be found between the very small number of dates mentioned in evangelical history and the general chronology of contemporaneous history. As we have already said, even though we could not explain them or do away with them by any plausible supposition, the only result would be to make doubtful the dates of certain events in the Gospel, the name of some governor of Judea at that period, and similar absolutely secondary points. But the essential facts would remain no less firmly established; it would be no less incontestable that Jesus Christ came into the world, that he spoke in prophecy, that he wrought miracles, that he died on the cross, that he rose from the dead. Now these are not points of secondary but of primary importance that cannot be disputed and serve to prove the divinity of the mission of Christ and of his work, the Christian religion.
In regard to the difficulties concerning details, they are to be found stated and explained in the commentaries on the Holy Scriptures.
Reply to Special Objections
Let us remark, first, that it is not at all astonishing that we should sometimes be perplexed concerning the interpretation of a text when there is question of peoples whose customs, habits, and language are so different from our own. Many things that are obscure to us, and seem at times to imply contradiction, must have been very clear, very comprehensible to contemporaries, and consequently required no explanation. Thus, according as linguistics, numismatics, history, and geography advance, the obscurities disappear and the texts become clearer.
First Objection: There have been false gospels, hence ours may be false.
Reply: l. It would be just as reasonable to say there is false coin, hence there is no genuine. It is the contrary of the proposition that is true, and we may say with Pascal: “Instead of concluding that because there are apocryphal gospels there are none that are genuine, we have to admit, on the contrary, that there must be genuine Gospels since there are apocryphal and that it is the genuine that have given rise to the apocryphal.” The latter could have been only counterfeits of the real Gospels, to which this very attempt at imitation renders homage. In fact, if the authors of the apocryphal gospels presumed to relate such things and succeeded in obtaining credence for them, it was only because they were more or less in harmony with the authentic Gospels, of which they assumed the character and authority, and because one and the other were in accord with recent events, with tradition, with all the monuments, with all the contemporaneous memories of Judea.
2. We have positive proof of the false character of the gospels called apocryphal, while, on the contrary, the authenticity and truth of our four Gospels are established . . . by incontestable proofs. In proportion as these bear all the marks of absolute authenticity, the others bear evidence of improbability or bad faith. “These compositions,” says Renan, “should not by any means be placed on a footing with the canonical Gospels.”
3. These apocryphal gospels were never accepted by the Church and soon disappeared, while our four Gospels have always been distinguished as the only authentic ones not only by the Church but by heretics and pagans themselves. “The Church,” says Origen, “has four Gospels; heresy has many.”
Second Objection: We are told by Strauss that all religion among the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, and the Indians began with myths, that is, with fables, in which a moral idea, a physical event, etc., was represented under the figure of a man who never existed. He also claims that it is the same with the Christian religion, where all that belongs to humanity is attributed to a unique hero, to Jesus Christ.
Reply: l. What we have just said in regard to the absurd consequences of any fraud on the part of the apostles is equally applicable to the hypothesis of a myth. We should have to admit that a myth, a lying fabrication, founded an institution as real, as efficacious, as indestructible as the Church; that a myth wrought the conversion of the world; that the very authors of the fraud and millions of their followers laid down their lives to witness to its truth.
2. That other religions should be based upon fables is perfectly natural, since they are false. For this reason their origin is carefully assigned to prehistoric times, that is, to an obscure period where the imagination of the poets is untrammeled by historical facts. It is quite otherwise with Christianity: It belongs to a period subjected to the full light of history, to a period of intellectual activity where even skepticism was rife, to a period, consequently, where fabulous relations would be received with even greater incredulity than at the present day. How can the mythical characters of other religions compare with that of Jesus—so lifelike, so imbued with sweet and simple majesty? The most superficial observer, to recognize the incontestable character of historical truth in the Gospel, has only to compare the mythical legends—always so obscure, so vague, confounding times, places, and persons—with the detailed, explicit narration of the acts of the Gospel hero.
3. Moreover, to apply the system of myths to Jesus Christ is to destroy all history. Certainly no one doubts the existence of Napoleon I and the reality of his renowned deeds. Yet by having recourse to myths we could demonstrate very plausibly that the great conqueror of modern times never existed. If we are told that the works of Napoleon survive him and powerfully protest against the hypothesis of a myth, we do not deny it; but the Church also and the whole Christian world, the works of Jesus Christ, have shone before the eyes of the whole universe for more than eighteen centuries; their very existence proves most clearly that Christ, as he is represented in the Gospel, was the grandest and most powerful reality that ever appeared in this world.
Third Objection: Renan, in his Life of Jesus, not daring to reproduce the too absurd theory of Strauss, modifies it in a way to attain the same end, that is to deny the divinity of Christ. As he has no belief in the supernatural and alleges that no miracle has yet been proved, he denies all that is miraculous in the life of our Savior. It must necessarily be attributed to the excited imagination of his disciples; all that they relate of miraculous events are only legends with no historic value.
Reply: We shall not reproduce here the magnificent and annihilating arguments with which Renan’s sad and impious romance has been refuted but content ourselves with a few reflections.
1. Renan’s whole theory rests solely on the affirmation of the non-existence of the supernatural and of miracles. But whatever the vigor of this affirmation, it does not cease to be purely gratuitous, unproven, and contrary to the legitimate and universal belief. Let us remark, first, that if we prove the existence of one miracle since the beginning of the world, Renan’s entire structure crumbles to its base. Now we shall prove, very decisively, the reality of numerous miracles.
2. All that we have said of Strauss’s myths is equally applicable to Renan’s legends. The arguments that destroy one are equally fatal to the other.
3. Renan is in contradiction with his own theory when he affects to respect Jesus. According to him this Jesus was nothing more than a base impostor who, knowing that he was a mere man like his fellows, allowed himself to be honored as a worker of miracles and adored as a God.
4. Let us add that this same writer gives in his book numerous and absolutely manifest proofs of bad faith; he goes so far as to falsify texts with the greatest effrontery, to cite them in a sense contrary to their natural and certain signification; he refers the reader to passages saying the very opposite of what he claims. Abundant proofs of this want of honesty are to be found in Henri Lasserre’s interesting work entitled Le 13e Apôtre.
Conclusion
The inevitable conclusion of the preceding pages is that the Pentateuch and the Gospels possess, in a historical point of view, incontestable authority and merit unreserved belief. They afford an invulnerable basis for the proofs in favor of supernatural religion, which we shall presently give. Supported by these documents we can establish successively the divinity of the primitive revelation, then that of the Mosaic religion, finally that of the Christian religion. This historical method will have the advantage of being very complete, and it has been employed to advantage, particularly in the last century, by the defenders of the faith.
Contemporaneous infidels, Voltaire particularly, had in fact accumulated against the teachings and the relations of the Old Testament a quantity of sophisms that it was necessary to destroy. But these objections, devoid of all foundation, and bolstered, for the most part, by scoffs and jests, have lost their force; we have no need to occupy ourselves with them.
Today the discussion has reached the very heart of the question. The rationalist school pretends to find in Jesus sometimes a wise man who by the power of his genius has done much to promote the progress of the human race, sometimes an arrant impostor by whom men have been too long deceived.