Читать книгу The Life of Jesus Critically Examined - David Friedrich Strauss - Страница 52

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The most conclusive exegetical ground of decision against the supernatural conception of Jesus, which bears more closely on the point than all the hitherto adduced passages, is found in the two genealogies previously considered. Even the Manichæan Faustus asserted that it is impossible without contradiction to trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, as is done by our two genealogists, and yet assume that Joseph was not the father of Jesus; and Augustine had nothing convincing to answer when he remarked that it was necessary, on account of the superior dignity of the masculine gender, to carry the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was Mary’s husband if not by a natural by a spiritual alliance.41 In modern times also the construction of the genealogical tables in Matthew and in Luke has led many theologians to observe, that these authors considered Jesus as the actual son of Joseph.42 The very design of these tables is to prove Jesus to be of the lineage of David through Joseph; but what do they prove, if indeed Joseph was not the father of Jesus? The assertion that Jesus was the son of David, ὑὸς Δαβὶδ, which in Matthew (i. 1) prefaces the genealogy and announces its object, is altogether annulled by the subsequent denial of his conception by means of the Davidical Joseph. It is impossible, therefore, to think it probable that the genealogy and the history of the birth of Jesus emanate from the same author43; and we must concur with the theologians previously cited, that the genealogies are taken from a different source. Scarcely could it satisfy to oppose the remark, that as Joseph doubtlessly adopted Jesus, the genealogical table of the former became fully valid for the latter. For adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion of certain external family rights and inheritances; but such a relationship could in no wise lend a claim to the Messianic dignity, which was attached to the true blood and lineage of David. He, therefore, who had regarded Joseph as nothing more than the adopted father of Jesus, would hardly have given himself the trouble to seek out the Davidical descent of Joseph; but if indeed, besides the established belief that Jesus was the son of God, it still remained important to represent him as the son of David, the pedigree of Mary would have been preferred for this purpose; for, however contrary to custom, the maternal genealogy must have been admitted in a case where a human father did not exist. Least of all is it to be believed, that several authors would have engaged in the compilation of a genealogical table for Jesus which traced his descent through Joseph, so that two different genealogies of this kind are still preserved to us, if a closer relationship between Jesus and Joseph had not been admitted at the time of their composition.

Consequently, the decision of the learned theologians who agree that these genealogies were composed in the belief that Jesus was the actual son of Joseph and Mary, can hardly be disputed; but the authors or compilers of our Gospels, notwithstanding their own conviction of the divine origin of [134]Jesus, received them among their materials; only that Matthew (i. 16) changed the original Joseph begat Jesus of Mary—Ἰωσὴφ δὲ ἐγέννησε τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐκ της Μαρίας (comp. verses 3. 5. 6) according to his own view; and so likewise Luke (iii. 23) instead of commencing his genealogy simply with, Jesus—the son of Joseph—Ἰησοῦς υἱὸς Ἰωσὴφ, inserts being as was supposed, ὢν, ὡς ἐνομίζετο κ.τ.λ.

Let it not be objected that the view for which we contend, namely, that the genealogies could not have been composed under the notion that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, leaves no conceivable motive for incorporating them into our present Gospels. The original construction of a genealogy of Jesus, even though in the case before us it consisted simply in the adapting of foreign already existing genealogical tables to Jesus, required a powerful and direct inducement; this was the hope thereby to gain—the corporeal descent of Jesus from Joseph being presupposed—a main support to the belief in his Messiahship; whilst, on the other hand, a less powerful inducement was sufficient to incite to the admission of the previously constructed genealogies: the expectation that, notwithstanding the non-existence of any real relationship between Joseph and Jesus, they might nevertheless serve to link Jesus to David. Thus we find, that in the histories of the birth both in Matthew and in Luke, though they each decidedly exclude Joseph from the conception, great stress is laid upon the Davidical descent of Joseph (Matt. i. 20, Luke i. 27, ii. 4); that which in fact had no real significance, except in connexion with the earlier opinion, is retained even after the point of view is changed.

Since, in this way, we discover both the genealogies to be memorials belonging to the time and circle of the primitive church, in which Jesus was still regarded as a naturally begotten man, the sect of the Ebionites cannot fail to occur to us; as we are told concerning them, that they held this view of the person of Christ at this early period.44 We should therefore have expected, more especially, to have found these genealogies in the old Ebionitish Gospels, of which we have still knowledge, and are not a little surprised to learn that precisely in these Gospels the genealogies were wanting. It is true Epiphanius states that the Gospel of the Ebionites commenced with the public appearance of the Baptist45; accordingly, by the genealogies, γενεαλογίαις, which they are said to have cut away, might have been meant, those histories of the birth and infancy comprised in the two first chapters of Matthew; which they could not have adopted in their present form, since they contained the fatherless conception of Jesus, which was denied by the Ebionites: and it might also have been conjectured that this section which was in opposition to their system had alone perhaps been wanting in their Gospel; and that the genealogy which was in harmony with their view might nevertheless have been somewhere inserted. But this supposition vanishes as soon as we find that Epiphanius, in reference to the Nazarenes, defines the genealogies, (of which he is ignorant whether they possessed them or not,) as reaching from Abraham to Christ, τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ ἕως Χριστοῦ46; consequently, by the genealogies which were wanting to some heretics, he evidently understood the genealogical tables, though, in relation to the Ebionites, he might likewise have included under this expression the history of the birth.

How is the strange phenomenon, that these genealogies are not found among that very sect of Christians who retained the particular opinion upon which they were constructed, to be explained? A modern investigator has [135]advanced the supposition, that the Jewish-christians omitted the genealogical tables from prudential motives, in order not to facilitate or augment the persecution which, under Domitian, and perhaps even earlier, threatened the family of David.47 But explanations, having no inherent connexion with the subject, derived from circumstances in themselves of doubtful historical validity, are admissible only as a last refuge, when no possible solution of the questionable phenomenon is to be found in the thing itself, as here in the principles of the Ebionitish system.

But in this case the matter is by no means so difficult. It is known that the Fathers speak of two classes of Ebionites, of which the one, besides strenuously maintaining the obligation of the Mosaic law, held Jesus to be the naturally begotten Son of Joseph and Mary; the other, from that time called also Nazarenes, admitted with the orthodox church the conception by the Holy Ghost.48 But besides this distinction there existed yet another. The most ancient ecclesiastic writers, Justin Martyr and Irenæus for example, are acquainted with those Ebionites only, who regarded Jesus as a naturally born man first endowed with divine powers at his baptism.49 In Epiphanius and the Clementine Homilies, on the other hand, we meet with Ebionites who had imbibed an element of speculative Gnosticism. This tendency, which according to Epiphanius is to be dated from one Elxai, has been ascribed to Essenic influence,50 and traces of the same have been discovered in the heresies referred to in the Epistle to the Colossians; whereas the first class of Ebionites evidently proceeded from common Judaism. Which form of opinion was the earlier and which the later developed is not so easily determined; with reference to the last detailed difference, it might seem, since the speculative Ebionites are mentioned first by the Clementines and Epiphanius, whilst Ebionites holding a simpler view are spoken of by Justin and by Irenæus, that the latter were the earlier; nevertheless as Tertullian already notices in his time the Gnosticising tendency of the opinions of the Ebionites respecting Christ51, and as the germ of such views existed among the Essenes in the time of Jesus, the more probable assumption is, that both opinions arose side by side about the same period.52 As little can it be proved with regard to the other difference, that the views concerning Christ held by the Nazarenes became first, at a later period, lowered to those of the Ebionites53; since the notices, partly confused and partly of late date, of the ecclesiastical writers, may be naturally explained as arising out of what may be called an optical delusion of the church, which,—whilst she in fact made continual advances in the glorification of Christ, but a part of the Jewish Christians remained stationary,—made it appear to her as if she herself remained stationary, whilst the others fell back into heresy.

By thus distinguishing the simple and the speculative Ebionites, so much is gained, that the failure of the genealogies among the latter class, mentioned by Epiphanius, does not prove them to have been also wanting among the [136]former. And the less if we should be able to make it appear probable, that the grounds of their aversion to the genealogical table, and the grounds of distinction between them and the other class of Ebionites, were identical. One of these grounds was evidently the unfavourable opinion, which the Ebionites of Epiphanius and of the Clementine Homilies had of David, from whom the genealogy traces the descent of Jesus. It is well known that they distinguished in the Old Testament a twofold prophecy, male and female, pure and impure, of which the former only promised things heavenly and true, the latter things earthly and delusive; that proceeding from Adam and Abel, this from Eve and Cain; and both constituted an under current through the whole history of the revelation.54 It was only the pious men from Adam to Joshua whom they acknowledged as true prophets: the later prophets and men of God, among whom David and Solomon are named, were not only not recognized, but abhorred.55 We even find positive indications that David was an object of their particular aversion. There were many things which created in them a detestation of David (and Solomon). David was a bloody warrior; but to shed blood was, according to the doctrines of these Ebionites, one of the greatest of sins; David was known to have committed adultery, (Solomon to have been a voluptuary); and adultery was even more detested by this sect than murder. David was a performer on stringed instruments; this art, the invention of the Canaanites (Gen. iv. 21), was held by these Ebionites to be a sign of false prophecy; finally, the prophecies announced by David and those connected with him, (and Solomon,) had reference to the kingdoms of this world, of which the Gnosticising Ebionites desired to know nothing.56 Now the Ebionites who had sprung from common Judaism could not have shared this ground of aversion to the genealogies; since to the orthodox Jew David was an object of the highest veneration.

Concerning a second point the notices are not so lucid and accordant as they should be; namely, whether it was a further development of the general Ebionitish doctrine concerning the person of the Christ, which led these Ebionites to reject the genealogies. According to Epiphanius, they fully recognized the Gnostic distinction between Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, and the Christ who descended upon him57; and consequently might have been withheld from referring the genealogy to Jesus only perhaps by their abhorrence of David. On the other hand, from the whole tenor of the Clementines, and from one passage in particular,58 it has recently been inferred, and not without apparent reason, that the author of these writings had himself abandoned the view of a natural conception, and even birth of Jesus59; whereby it is yet more manifest that the ground of the rejection of the genealogies by this sect was peculiar to it, and not common to the other Ebionites.

Moreover positive indications, that the Ebionites who proceeded from Judaism possessed the genealogies, do not entirely fail. Whilst the Ebionites [137]of Epiphanius and of the Clementines called Jesus only Son of God, but rejected the appellation Son of David, as belonging to the common opinion of the Jews60; other Ebionites were censured by the Fathers for recognizing Jesus only as the Son of David, to whom he is traced in the genealogies, and not likewise as the Son of God.61 Further, Epiphanius relates of the earliest Judaising Gnostics, Cerinthus and Carpocrates, that they used a Gospel the same in other respects indeed as the Ebionites, but that they adduced the genealogies, which they therefore read in the same, in attestation of the human conception of Jesus by Joseph.62 Also the ἀπομνημονεύματα cited by Justin, and which originated upon Judæo-christian ground, appear to have contained a genealogy similar to that in our Matthew; since Justin as well as Matthew speaks, in relation to Jesus, of a γένος τοῦ Δαβὶδ καὶ Ἀβραὰμ, of a σπέρμα ἐξ Ἰακὼβ, διὰ Ἰούδα, καὶ Φαρὲς καὶ Ἰεσσαὶ καὶ Δαβὶδ κατερχόμενον63; only that at the time, and in the circle of Justin, the opinion of a supernatural conception of Jesus had already suggested the reference of the genealogy to Mary, instead of to Joseph.

Hence it appears that we have in the genealogies a memorial, agreeing with indications from other sources, of the fact that in the very earliest Christian age, in Palestine, a body of Christians, numerous enough to establish upon distinct fundamental opinions two different Messianic tables of descent, considered Jesus to have been a naturally conceived human being. And no proof is furnished to us in the apostolic writings, that the Apostles would have declared this doctrine to be unchristian; it appeared so first from the point of view adopted by the authors of the histories of the birth in the first and third Gospels: notwithstanding which, however, it is treated with surprising lenity by the Fathers of the church.