Читать книгу The Life of Jesus Critically Examined - David Friedrich Strauss - Страница 63

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The basis of the narrative, the arrival of Joseph and Mary as strangers in Bethlehem on account of the census, being once chosen by Luke, the farther details are consistently built upon it. In consequence of the influx of strangers brought to Bethlehem by the census, there is no room for the travellers in the inn, and they are compelled to put up with the accommodation of a stable where Mary is forthwith delivered of her first-born. But the child, who upon [157]earth comes into being in so humble an abode, is highly regarded in heaven. A celestial messenger announces the birth of the Messiah to shepherds who are guarding their flocks in the fields by night, and directs them to the child in the manger. A choir of the heavenly host singing hymns of praise next appears to them, after which they seek and find the child. (Luke ii. 6–20.)

The apocryphal gospels and the traditions of the Fathers still further embellished the birth of Jesus. According to the Protevangelium Jacobi,26 Joseph conducts Mary on an ass to Bethlehem to be taxed. As they approach the city she begins to make now mournful, now joyous gestures, and upon inquiry explains that—(as once in Rebecca’s womb the two hostile nations struggled, Gen. xxv. 23)—she sees two people before her, the one weeping, the other laughing: i.e. according to one explanation, the two portions of Israel, to one of whom the advent of Jesus was set (Luke ii. 34) εἰς πτῶσιν, for the fall, to the other εἰς ἀνάστασιν, for the rising again. According to another interpretation, the two people were the Jews who should reject Jesus, and the heathens who should accept him.27 Soon, however, whilst still without the city—as appears from the context and the reading of several MSS.—Mary is seized with the pains of child-bearing, and Joseph brings her into a cave situated by the road side, where, veiled by a cloud of light, all nature pausing in celebration of the event, she brings her child into the world, and after her delivery is found, by women called to her assistance, still a virgin.28 The legend of the birth of Jesus in a cave was known to Justin29 and to Origen,30 who, in order to reconcile it with the account in Luke that he was laid in a manger, suppose a manger situated within the cave. Many modern commentators agree with them31; whilst others prefer to consider the cave itself as φάτνη, in the sense of foddering-stall.32 For the birth of Jesus in a cave, Justin appeals to the prophecy in Isaiah xxviii. 16: οὗτος (the righteous) οἰκήσει ἐν ὑψηλῷ σπηλαίῳ πέτρας ἱσχυρᾶς. In like manner, for the statement that on the third day the child Jesus, when brought from the cave into the stable, was worshipped by the oxen and the asses, the Historia de Nativitate Mariae,33 etc. refers to Isaiah i. 3: cognovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe domini sui. In several apocryphas, between the Magi and the women who assist at the birth, the shepherds are forgotten; but they are mentioned in the Evangelium infantiae arabicum,34 where it says, that when they arrived at the cave, and had kindled a fire of rejoicing, the heavenly host appeared to them.

If we take the circumstances attending the birth of Jesus, narrated by Luke, in a supranaturalistic sense, many difficulties occur. First, it may reasonably be asked, to what end the angelic apparition? The most obvious answer is, to make known the birth of Jesus; but so little did it make it known that, in the neighbouring city of Jerusalem, it is the Magi who give the first information of the new-born king of the Jews; and in the future history of Jesus, no trace of any such occurrence at his birth is to be found. Consequently, the object of that extraordinary phenomenon was not to give a wide-spreading intimation of the fact; for if so, God failed in his object. Must we then agree with Schleiermacher, that the aim was limited to an immediate operation [158]upon the shepherds? Then we must also suppose with him, that the shepherds, equally with Simeon, were filled with Messianic expectations, and that God designed by this apparition to reward and confirm their pious belief. The narrative however says nothing of this heavenly frame of mind, neither does it mention any abiding effects produced upon these men. According to the whole tenor of the representation, the apparition seems to have had reference, not to the shepherds, but exclusively to the glorification and the proclaiming of the birth of Jesus, as the Messiah. But as before observed, the latter aim was not accomplished, and the former, by itself, like every mere empty display, is an object unworthy of God. So that this circumstance in itself presents no inconsiderable obstacle to the supranaturalistic conception of the history. If, to the above considerations, we add those already stated which oppose the belief in apparitions and the existence of angels in general, it is easy to understand that with respect to this narrative also refuge has been sought in a natural explanation.

The results of the first attempts at a natural explanation were certainly sufficiently rude. Thus Eck regarded the angel as a messenger from Bethlehem, who carried a light which caught the eye of the shepherds, and the song of the heavenly host as the merry tones of a party accompanying the messenger.35 Paulus has woven together a more refined and matter of fact explanation. Mary, who had met with a hospitable reception in a herdsman’s family, and who was naturally elated with the hope of giving birth to the Messiah, told her expectations to the members of this family; to whom as inhabitants of a city of David the communication could not have been indifferent. These shepherds therefore on perceiving, whilst in the fields by night, a luminous appearance in the air—a phenomenon which travellers say is not uncommon in those regions—they interpret it as a divine intimation that the stranger in their foddering-stall is delivered of the Messiah; and as the meteoric light extends and moves to and fro, they take it for a choir of angels chaunting hymns of praise. Returning home they find their anticipations confirmed by the event, and that which at first they merely conjectured to be the sense and interpretation of the phenomenon, they now, after the manner of the East, represent as words actually spoken.36

This explanation rests altogether on the assumption, that the shepherds were previously acquainted with Mary’s expectation that she should give birth to the Messiah. How otherwise should they have been led to consider the sign as referring particularly to the birth of the Messiah in their manger? Yet this very assumption is the most direct contradiction of the gospel account. For, in the first place, the Evangelist evidently does not suppose the manger to belong to the shepherds: since after he has narrated the delivery of Mary in the manger, he then goes on to speak of the shepherds as a new and distinct subject, not at all connected with the manger. His words are: and there were in the same country shepherds, καὶ ποιμένες ἦσαν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῇ αὐτῇ. If this explanation were correct he would, at all events, have said, the shepherds etc. οἱ δὲ ποιμένες κ.τ.λ.; besides he would not have been wholly silent respecting the comings and goings of these shepherds during the day, and their departure to guard the flock at the approach of night. But, grant these presupposed circumstances, is it consistent in Paulus to represent Mary, at first so reserved concerning her pregnancy as to conceal it even from Joseph, and then so communicative that, just arrived among strangers, she [159]parades the whole history of her expectations? Again the sequel of the narrative contradicts the assumption that the shepherds were informed of the matter by Mary herself, before her delivery. For, according to the gospel history, the shepherds receive the first intelligence of the birth of the Saviour σωτὴρ from the angel who appears to them, and who tells them, as a sign of the truth of his communication, that they shall find the babe lying in a manger. Had they already heard from Mary of the approaching birth of the Messiah, the meteoric appearance would have been a confirmation to them of Mary’s words, and not the finding of the child a proof of the truth of the apparition. Finally, may we so far confide in the investigations already made as to inquire, whence, if neither a miraculous announcement nor a supernatural conception actually occurred, could Mary have derived the confident anticipation that she should give birth to the Messiah?

In opposition to this natural explanation, so full of difficulties on every side, Bauer announced his adoption of the mythical view37; in fact, however, he did not advance one step beyond the interpretation of the Rationalists, but actually repeated Paulus’s exposition point for point. To this mixed mythical explanation Gabler justly objected that it, equally with the natural interpretation, multiplies improbabilities: by the adoption of the pure, dogmatic mythus, everything appears simpler; thereby, at the same time, greater harmony is introduced into the early christian history, all the preceding narratives of which ought equally to be interpreted as pure mythi.38 Gabler, accordingly, explained the narrative as the product of the ideas of the age, which demanded the assistance of angels at the birth of the Messiah. Now had it been known that Mary was delivered in a dwelling belonging to shepherds, it would also have been concluded that angels must have brought the tidings to these good shepherds that the Messiah was born in their manger; and the angels who cease not praising God, must have sung a hymn of praise on the occasion. Gabler thinks it impossible, that a Jewish christian who should have known some of the data of the birth of Jesus, could have thought of it otherwise than as here depicted.39

This explanation of Gabler shows, in a remarkable manner, how difficult it is entirely to extricate oneself from the natural explanation, and to rise completely to the mythical; for whilst this theologian believes he treads on pure mythical ground, he still stands with one foot upon that of the natural interpretation. He selects from the account of Luke one incident as historical which, by its connexion with other unhistorical statements and its conformity to the spirit of the primitive christian legend, is proved to be merely mythical; namely, that Jesus was really born in a shepherd’s dwelling. He also borrows an assumption from the natural explanation, which the mythical needs not to obtrude on the text: that the shepherds, to whom it is alleged the angels appeared, were the possessors of the manger in which Mary was delivered. The first detail, upon which the second is built, belongs to the same machinery by which Luke, with the help of the census, transported the parents of Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Now we know what is the fact respecting the census; it crumbles away inevitably before criticism, and with it the datum built entirely upon it, that Jesus was born in a manger. For had not the parents of Jesus been strangers, and had they not come to Bethlehem in company with so large a concourse of strangers as the census might have occasioned, the cause which obliged Mary to accept a stable for her place of [160]delivery would no longer have existed. But, on the other hand, the incident, that Jesus was born in a stable and saluted in the first instance by shepherds, is so completely in accordance with the spirit of the ancient legend, that it is evident the narrative may have been derived purely from this source. Theophylact, in his time, pointed out its true character, when he says: the angels did not appear to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem who were full of all malice, but to the shepherds, in the fields, on account of their simplicity and innocence, and because they by their mode of life were the successors of the patriarchs.40 It was in the field by the flocks that Moses was visited by a heavenly apparition (Exod. iii. 1 ff.); and God took David, the forefather of the Messiah, from his sheepfolds (at Bethlehem), to be the shepherd of his people. Psalm lxxviii. 70 (comp. 1 Sam. xvi. 11). The mythi of the ancient world more generally ascribed divine apparitions to countrymen41 and shepherds42; the sons of the gods, and of great men were frequently brought up among shepherds.43 In the same spirit of the ancient legend is the apocryphal invention that Jesus was born in a cave, and we are at once reminded of the cave of Jupiter and of the other gods; even though the misunderstood passage of Isaiah xxxiii. 16 may have been the immediate occasion of this incident.44 Moreover the night, in which the scene is laid,—(unless one refers here to the rabbinical representations, according to which, the deliverance by means of the Messiah, like the deliverance from Egypt, should take place by night45)—forms the obscure background against which the manifested glory of the Lord shone so much the more brilliantly, which, as it is said to have glorified the birth of Moses,46 could not have been absent from that of the Messiah, his exalted antitype.

The mythical interpretation of this section of the gospel history has found an opponent in Schleiermacher.47 He thinks it improbable that this commencement of the second chapter of Luke is a continuation of the first, written by the same author; because the frequent opportunities of introducing lyrical effusions—as for example, when the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God, v. 20—are not taken advantage of as in the first chapter; and here indeed we can in some measure agree with him. But when he adds that a decidedly poetical character cannot be ascribed to this narrative, since a poetical composition would of necessity have contained more of the lyrical, this only proves that Schleiermacher has not justly apprehended the notion of that kind of poetry of which he here treats, namely, the poetry of the mythus. In a word, mythical poetry is objective: the poetical exists in the substance of the narrative, and may therefore appear in the plainest form, free from all the adornments of lyrical effusions; which latter are rather only the subsequent additions of a more intelligent and artificially elaborated subjective poetry.48 Undoubtedly this section seems to have been preserved to us more nearly in its original legendary form, whilst the narratives of the first chapter in Luke bear rather the stamp of having been re-wrought by some [161]poetical individual; but historical truth is not on that account to be sought here any more than there. Consequently the obligation which Schleiermacher further imposes upon himself, to trace out the source of this narrative in the Gospel of Luke, can only be regarded as an exercise of ingenuity. He refuses to recognize that source in Mary, though a reference to her might have been found in the observation, v. 19, she kept all these sayings in her heart; wherein indeed he is the more right, since that observation (a fact to which Schleiermacher does not advert) is merely a phrase borrowed from the history of Jacob and his son Joseph.49 For as the narrative in Genesis relates of Jacob, the father of Joseph, that child of miracle, that when the latter told his significant dreams, and his brethren envied him, his father observed the saying: so the narrative in Luke, both here and at verse 51, relates of Mary, that she, whilst others gave utterance aloud to their admiration at the extraordinary occurrences which happened to her child, kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. But the above-named theologian points out the shepherds instead of Mary as the source of our narrative, alleging that all the details are given, not from Mary’s point of view, but from that of the shepherds. More truly however is the point of view that of the legend which supersedes both. If Schleiermacher finds it impossible to believe that this narrative is an air-bubble conglomerated out of nothing, he must include under the word nothing the Jewish and early christian ideas—concerning Bethlehem, as the necessary birthplace of the Messiah; concerning the condition of the shepherds, as being peculiarly favoured by communications from heaven; concerning angels, as the intermediate agents in such communications—notions we on our side cannot possibly hold in so little estimation, but we find it easy to conceive that something similar to our narrative might have formed itself out out of them. Finally, when he finds an adventitious or designed invention impossible, because the Christians of that district might easily have inquired of Mary or of the disciples concerning the truth of the matter: he speaks too nearly the language of the ancient apologists, and presupposes the ubiquity of these persons,50 already alluded to in the Introduction, who however could not possibly have been in all places rectifying the tendency to form christian legends, wherever it manifested itself.

The notice of the circumcision of Jesus (Luke ii. 21), evidently proceeds from a narrator who had no real advice of the fact, but who assumed as a certainty that, according to Jewish custom, the ceremony took place on the eighth day, and who was desirous of commemorating this important event in the life of an Israelitish boy;51 in like manner as Paul (Phil. iii. 5) records his circumcision on the eighth day. The contrast however between the fulness of detail with which this point is elaborated and coloured in the life of the Baptist, and the barrenness and brevity with which it is stated in reference to Jesus, is striking, and may justify an agreement with the remark of Schleiermacher, that here, at least the author of the first chapter is no longer the originator. Such being the state of the case, this statement furnishes nothing for our object, which we might not already have known; only we have till now had no opportunity of observing, distinctly, that the pretended appointment [162]of the name of Jesus before his birth likewise belongs merely to the mythical dress of the narrative. When it is said his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb, the importance attached to the circumstance is a clear sign, that a dogmatic interest lies at the bottom of this feature in the narrative; which interest can be no other than that which gave rise to the statement—in the Old Testament concerning an Isaac and an Ishmael, and in the New Testament concerning a John—that the names of these children were, respectively, revealed to their parents prior to their birth, and on account of which interest the rabbins, in particular, expected that the same thing should occur in relation to the name of the Messiah.52 Without doubt there were likewise other far more natural reasons which induced the parents of Jesus to give him this name (‏יֵשׁוּעַ‎ an abbreviation of ‏יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎, ὁ Κύριος σωτηρία); a name which was very common among his countrymen; but because this name agreed in a remarkable manner with the path of life subsequently chosen by him as Messiah and σωτὴρ, it was not thought possible that this coincidence could have been accidental. Besides it seemed more appropriate that the name of the Messiah should have been determined by divine command than by human arbitration, and consequently the appointment of the name was ascribed to the same angel who had announced the conception of Jesus.