CHAPTER XXIII SCAURUS ON SOME OF THE MIRACLES

“And now,” continued Scaurus, “I will tell you how the vision of the City of Truth and Justice, conjured up for me by that dear old dreamer Hermas, vanished into thin air. I intended to have spoken first about some of the miracles; but I will come back to them afterwards. For the present, turn over your Mark till you come nearly to the middle, and you will find a story about an act of healing at a distance. I have heard a Greek doctor tell stories of a man’s being influenced by the death of a twin brother at a distance. He invented the word telepatheia to express it. Well, I will invent an analogous word for healing at a distance—teliatreia. However, it is not from the miraculous point of view that I wish to discuss the story, but simply as a question of morality.

“It contains these words, ‘It is not fit to take the children’s bread and to cast it unto the dogs.’ Who says this? Jesus. To whom? To a poor woman, called ‘Greek, Syroph?nician by extraction.’ What is her offence? She has been asking Jesus to cast an evil spirit out of her daughter. Now what do you think of that? The Greeks, of old, affected to call all non-Greeks barbarians. But would their philosophers, would Socrates, or gruff Diogenes, or any respectable Greek philosopher, say such a thing to any non-Greek woman? I admit that Jesus ultimately granted this poor creature’s request. But that was only because she answered with the tact and patience of a Penelope, acquiescing in the epithet ‘dogs’ and replying, ‘Yea, Lord, yet even the dogs beneath the table eat[212] of the crumbs of the children.’ Had it not been for her almost superhuman gentleness, she would have retired rejected, gaining from her petition nothing but the reproach of ‘dog.’ I write bitterly. I confess I felt bitter when I saw so noble and sublime a character as that of this Jewish prophet apparently degraded and polluted by an indelible taint of national uncharitableness.”

I was beginning to investigate the passage, when my eyes fell on a note that Scaurus had appended at the bottom of the column. “Since writing this, I have looked into the passage again, to see whether I could have been misled. And I notice that Luke omits the whole narrative. Also, while Mark represents the woman as coming to Jesus and ‘asking him’ to heal the child, Matthew represents the disciples as coming to Jesus and ‘asking him’ to send her away. I should like to be able to believe that the woman was really a Jewess turned Gentile, that the disciples tried to drive the woman away, calling themselves ‘the children’ and her ‘the dog,’ that Jesus replied, as in Matthew, ‘It was precisely these lost degraded ones that I was sent to restore.’ In order to obtain this meaning, the changes of the text would not be very great. But I fear this cannot be maintained.”

I caught at Scaurus’s explanation, and was sorry that he himself did not hold to it. For I was more troubled by this objection of his than by anything else that he had said; and I thought long over it. Finally, I came to the conclusion that Scaurus was nearly right; that this woman, though called “a Syroph?nician by extraction,” was a Jewess (as Barnabas the Jew is called “a Cyprian by extraction”) and that she had fallen away into Greek idolatry and an evil life, so that Jesus—being, like Paul, all things to all men and women—was on this one occasion cruel in word in order to be kind in deed, stimulating her to better things. This agreed with Paul’s use of the word “dogs,” which assuredly he would not have applied except to “evil-doers.” If, however, it should be demonstrated that the woman was not a Jewess, and not leading an impure life, and that Jesus (not the disciples) used these words to her, then I should still believe in the kindness of Jesus, although these[213] words were apparently unkind. No one would suspect cruelty, in a man habitually kind, except on very strong evidence. Here the evidence was not strong. The witnesses were two, not three; and the two narratives disagreed in important details. This was the conclusion to which I then came.

If Scaurus had read the epistles before the gospels, approaching the latter with some feeling of Christ’s constraining “love,” he could hardly have stumbled (so I thought and so I think still) at this single narrative. Jesus did not call the centurion a “dog.” Jesus had also supported the law of kindness against the law of the sabbath. He had said that “that which goes into the mouth” does not defile a man. He had eaten and drunk with publicans and sinners. How was it possible that a prophet of such broad and lofty views as these could call a poor afflicted woman a “dog” simply because she was not a Jewess? I longed to be near my old friend and to appeal to his common sense and justice, and I felt sure that I should have convinced him. Even if Jesus bade the missionaries at first go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that seemed to me quite consistent with a purpose that in the end the gospel should be proclaimed to all nations.

In another narrative, which had caused me difficulty of the same kind, Scaurus gave me help. It is not in Mark. But I will set it down here because it bears on kindness. Matthew and Luke represented a disciple as asking to be allowed, before following Christ, to “bury” his father, and as not being allowed. “As to this,” said Scaurus, “I have no doubt that the man meant, ‘Suffer me to wait at home till I have seen my aged father into the grave and have duly buried him.’ Similarly Esau says, in effect, ‘My father will die before long. I will wait till I have mourned for him before killing Jacob.’ So, in Latin, we say ‘I have buried them all,’ meaning ‘I have survived and buried all my relations.’ My rabbi confirms me in this view. Christ always defends nature and natural affection against man’s conventions, so that it seems to me absurd to suppose that he would enjoin anything really inhuman.”

Scaurus next proceeded to attack the miraculous part of Mark’s narrative. Mark, he said, considering the smallness of[214] his gospel, describes many more miracles, relatively, than Matthew and Luke. “As to miracles,” said he, “I am ready to believe in anything, miraculous or non-miraculous, on sufficient evidence. But the evidence about Mark’s miracles leads me to two conclusions. Some of them occurred but were not miraculous. The rest, although they were honestly supposed to have occurred, did not occur.

“Let us take the first class first. Mark calls them ‘powers,’ i.e. works of power. That is a good name for them. But Mark seems to think that, if a man has ‘power’ to cast out demons and perform cures without medical means, such a one must be a great prophet or even a Son of God. To that I demur. I remember, when I was in Dacia, one of my men was down with fever, and bad fever, too. But when the bugles sounded out one night, and the enemy came on, beating in our outposts and pouring into our camp on the backs of some of our cowardly rascals, this brave fellow was up and doing, without helmet or armour, in the front with the best of them. Next morning, he was none the worse. Nor was there any relapse. He was quite cured. I think I have told you how Josephus described to me the casting out of a demon in the presence of Vespasian. And I might remind you of Tacitus’s story about the cure of a blind man by the same emperor. I suspect, however, that the former was a mere conjuring trick and that the latter was got up by the priests of—Serapis, I think it was. So I lay no stress on either. But I have spoken to many sensible physicians, who tell me that paralysis and some kinds of fever can be cured by what they call an emotional shock. Often the cure does not last. Some of these physicians go a little further and ascribe to certain persons a peculiar power of quieting restless patients and pacifying or even healing the insane. But I entirely refuse to believe that, if a man has such a power, he can consequently claim to be a Son of God.”

About the objection thus raised by Scaurus I have said enough already. It seemed to me that the power of permanently healing the paralysed, and permanently pacifying and healing the insane, was quite different from that of startling a paralysed man into a temporary activity. The former appeared[215] to me allied with moral power and with steadfastness of mind, and likely to be an attribute of the Son of God. Still I was sorry that Mark devoted so much space to it. Here I agreed, in part, with Scaurus.

He then passed to the second class of miracles, “those that were honestly supposed to have occurred, but did not occur.” “If,” said he, “I assert that Mark turned metaphorical traditions into literal prose, you must not suppose that I accuse him of dishonesty. All the ancient Jews did it. Look at the story of Joshua, describing how he stopped the sun. Perhaps also you have read how God caused a stream to spring up from the Ass’s Jawbone (originally a hill of that name, like the headland or peninsula called Ass’s Jawbone in Laconia, which you and I passed together some five or six years ago). The second (the jawbone miracle) is somewhat different in origin from the first (the sun miracle). There are many shades of verbal misunderstanding capable of converting non-fact into alleged fact. There was all the more excuse for this error in Christian Jews (such as Mark and others) because of two reasons. In the first place, the prophets had predicted that all manner of disease (blindness, deafness, lameness) would be cured in the days of the Messiah (using even such expressions as ‘thy dead men shall awake’). In the second place, Christ did actually—as I have admitted—cure some diseases, such as insanity, fever, and paralysis. How, then, could it be other than a difficult task, in such circumstances, to distinguish the literal from the metaphorical traditions about the cures effected by Christ?”

I could all the less deny the force of these remarks because I had been studying the words, “Whatsoever things ye ask, praying, believe that ye have received them and they shall be unto you.” These words, if applied literally—to bread, for example, or money—were manifestly not true. Indeed they were absurd. How could a man honestly believe that he had received a thousand sesterces in the act of praying for them? But if applied spiritually, as in Paul’s prayer concerning the thorn in the flesh, they might (I felt) be true for one endowed with great faith. Paul prayed that the “thorn” might “depart” from him. In one sense it did not depart. But in another[216] sense, it did depart because God so increased his strength that the “thorn” became as nothing.

Now in this same passage of Mark I found the following: “Whosoever shall say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted and thrown into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart but believes in that very moment that what he says is happening, it shall be unto him.” Luke also elsewhere had, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye would say to this sycamine-tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would have obeyed you.” I took for granted that “mountain,” “mustard-seed,” and “sycamine-tree,” must all have been metaphorically used.

Scaurus confirmed this view, saying that the Jews were in the habit of calling a learned interpreter of the Law an uprooter of mountains, i.e. of spiritual obstacles blocking the path of the students of the law. But then he added something that amazed me, “Matthew has, ‘If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do the deed of the fig-tree, but even if ye say to this mountain, Be lifted and thrown into the sea, it shall come to pass.’ Now, ‘mountain’ being metaphorical, you might naturally anticipate that Matthew intended ‘fig-tree’ to be metaphorical. But if you look back a little, you will find that Matthew actually imagines that there was a literal fig-tree in question. So does Mark. He and Matthew turn the metaphor into a literal miracle, as follows.

“In the first place, Jesus comes to a literal fig-tree, seeking literal fruit. He finds none. Consequently, say Mark and Matthew, a curse of barrenness was pronounced on it by Jesus. What followed? The tree was at once ‘dried up,’ or (according to Mark) ‘dried up from the roots.’ Now first note that the Hebrew word that means ‘barren’ means also ‘root up,’ ‘cut off,’ or ‘cut down.’ Then pass to Luke. He omits the whole of this miracle about a fig-tree. But he has a parable about a fig-tree. The Lord of a vineyard comes to a barren fig-tree, and gives orders that it shall be ‘cut down.’ The vinedresser intercedes for it that it may be spared for one year more in case it may bear fruit.”

I looked and found that the story in Mark and Matthew[217] was as Scaurus had described it. But another detail astonished me. It was a phrase that followed the words, “While they were passing by early in the morning”—i.e. the morning after the curse had been pronounced—“they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.” Instead of writing that they were all amazed at the speed with which the curse had been fulfilled, Mark wrote, “And Peter, remembering it, says to him, ‘Rabbi, behold, the fig-tree that thou cursedst is withered up’.” Trying to put myself in the place of Peter, I asked, “What should I have done when I approached the spot? How could I fail to be on the alert to note the tree that my Master cursed yesterday? How could any of my companions fail? How was it possible that any of us could forget? How could I possibly talk about ‘remembering’ it? How, therefore, could a historian suppose it needful to insert that I, or any of us, ‘remembered’?”

Turning to Matthew, I found that he got rid of “remembering,” and of “Peter” too, by making the miracle occur instantaneously, thus, “He said unto it [i.e. to the tree], ‘Let there be no fruit from thee henceforward for ever.’ And immediately the fig-tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, ‘How did the fig-tree immediately wither away’?”

Scaurus explained the whole matter as follows: “Look at Ezekiel’s saying, ‘I the Lord have dried up the green tree,’ and its context. You will find that ‘the green tree’ is Tyre. Elsewhere Luke has a proverb about ‘the green tree and the dry,’ where ‘the dry’ refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. So here, the fig-tree, green but barren, is Jerusalem. Luke has given the parable correctly. The Lord of the vineyard, he says, comes to a fig-tree, i.e. Jerusalem, in the vineyard, that is, in Judah. He does not say that it is green, but we may imagine that. However, it has no fruit. ‘Let it be cut down,’ says the Lord. Well, I have shewn you that ‘Let it be cut down’ might mean, in Hebrew, ‘Let it be barren so that none may eat fruit from it,’ or ‘Let it be dried up.’ As a historical fact, the fig-tree was cut down, or dried up, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. But that was not immediate. It was long after the resurrection. When Jerusalem[218] was destroyed, the disciples remembered”—this explained my difficulty above mentioned—“that the Lord had pronounced this curse on Jerusalem. I could shew you, if space allowed, that the name ‘Peter’ (which would be in Hebrew ‘Simon’) might be confused (in Hebrew) with our Latin phrase ‘qui cum eo erant’ meaning ‘those that were with him,’ i.e. Christ’s disciples, and also that Mark’s phrase ‘passing by early’ may be an error for ‘passing along to inspect, visit, or seek fruit.’ Having regard to the fact that Peter died a year or two before the city was destroyed, I am inclined to think that it was ‘the disciples,’ not ‘Peter,’ that ‘remembered.’ But there is no space for details. It must suffice to have shewn you how a parable of Jesus, about cutting down a fig-tree, ‘remembered’ by his disciples long afterwards as referring to Jerusalem, has been converted by Mark and Matthew into a portentous miracle about withering a fig-tree instantaneously (according to Matthew) or by the following morning (according to Mark).”

This explanation of “remembering” seemed exactly to meet my difficulty. I accepted it at once. Subsequently I found that the fourth gospel twice represents the disciples as “remembering,” after Christ’s resurrection, things that He had said or done before the resurrection, which things, at the time, they had not fully understood. Moreover that gospel declared that, up to the evening before Christ’s crucifixion, His words had been “dark sayings” to them, but that the Spirit would “call them back to their minds,” or “remind them” of their meaning. This confirmed me in the conclusion that the Withering of the Fig-Tree was a parable, not a history, and that the disciples “remembered” it, and were reminded of its meaning by the Holy Spirit, after the Lord had risen from the dead.

Scaurus added a reference to a lecture of Epictetus, which, he said, I must have heard, and which bore on the story of the fig-tree. I had heard it and remembered it well. The subject was, in effect, “The Precocious Philosopher.” Epictetus likened him to a precocious fruit-tree. “You have flowered too soon,” he said; “The winter will scorch you up, or rather you are already frostbitten. Let me alone! Why do you wish me, before my season”—he meant, blooming before the seasonable[219] preparation—“to be withered away as you are withered yourself?” This, Scaurus said, was perhaps borrowed from Mark. I examined the text of the lecture, and it seemed to me that his conjecture was by no means improbable.

Scaurus proceeded, “I could go through Mark’s other miracles in the same way—those I mean that are not acts of healing—and shew you that they are all metaphors misunderstood. But I have given too much space to these unimportant matters. At least I consider them unimportant except so far as they shew Mark to be historically untrustworthy. Now I must pass to more important things, merely adding—as an instance of this man’s curious want of all sense of proportion—that while giving—how often must I repeat this!—a whole column to Herod Antipas’s birthday and its consequences, he does not give one line, or one word, to Christ’s resurrection—except in predictions made by Christ himself or in statements made by angels. I am not a Christian, nor a half-way Christian. But I have an immense admiration for Christ and an immense curiosity to know the exact facts about his life, death, and subsequent influence on his disciples. To me therefore, simply as a historian—or as a mere man interested in the affairs of men—this absolute silence about that which should have been most fully stated and supported by the evidence of eyewitnesses, is nothing short of provoking. Will you not agree with me, after this, that Mark is the most inadequate of biographers?”

I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read this. “Scaurus,” I said, “must for once have made a mistake, or his copy of Mark must have been defective.” But my copy confirmed his. It ended with the words, “For they were afraid.” This was too much for me. Perhaps I was overwrought with long and close study and with the strain of attempting to grapple with Scaurus’s criticisms. I remember to this day—and not with entire self-condemnation, for it was Mark, not Mark’s subject, that disappointed me—that in a sudden storm of passion I threw the gospel down and vowed I would never look at it again.