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Bible Dictionaries
Originality
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or ORIGINALITY.—It is not surprising that attempts should have been made to dispute Christ’s claim to originality. Under whichever aspect we regard His Person, whether we consider Him in His historical relations, or contemplate the eternal truth revealed in Him, on either side opportunity presents itself for disputing the originality of His doctrine. Under the former aspect this is manifestly the case. However fully we may be convinced of the novelty of the doctrine of the Saviour, nobody fancies that that doctrine was without historical connexion with what had gone before. As in the Saviour’s Person the Divine revealed itself in human form, so in His doctrine the Divine truth which He had to communicate clothed itself in the language and thought of the time in which He lived. Though He was the Son of God, He was also the child of His own age and people. Though the truth that He revealed was eternal, it was addressed, in the first instance, to the people of the country and time in which He lived, and linked itself at countless points to the religious ideas and hopes of those who listened to His preaching. And under this aspect of the Saviour’s doctrine the question presents itself, whether it may not be sufficiently accounted for on the lines of a natural development of the religious tendencies of the age in which He lived, and whether He has indeed contributed anything new and original to the religious history of the world.
But, on the other hand, the tendency to emphasize the eternal truth revealed in the Person of Christ, while it seems to rebut such attempts to reduce His doctrine to the product of the religions developments of the age in which He lived, may lead indirectly to the challenging of His originality from another side. The religion which Christ has founded is recognized as a universal religion—a religion destined not for any particular people, but for all mankind. As such it must appeal to the deepest cravings of the human heart, and satisfy those yearnings which had found expression in the thoughts and aspirations of the teachers who had gone before Him. Christ came in the fulness of time. The course of the world’s history before Him had been one long preparation for the revelation given in His Person. The Spirit of God had been at work in the hearts of mankind from the beginning, guiding them gradually to the truth. The very fact that the truth which Christ proclaimed is eternal, may be regarded as a proof that He can lay no claim to originality in the declaration of it. There had been countless anticipations of it in the teachers who had gone before. He did but formulate the truth upon which the mind of man had been brooding from the beginning. ‘Nam res ipsa,’ says Augustine (Retract. i. c. 12), ‘quae nune Christiana religio nuncupatur, erat et apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio generis humani quousque Christus veniret in carne, unde vera religio, quae jam erat, cœpit appellari Christiana.’ It is easy to understand how, from this point of view, arguments might be urged against the originality of Christ, in a spirit very different from that which animates Augustine in his remark. Attempts have been made to prove that the truth revealed in Christ had been anticipated by the sages and religious teachers who had gone before Him. The literature of the ancient world has been ransacked to discover parallels to the doctrine of Christ. And on the strength of the occasional points of resemblance, which have been thus collected, between the teaching of the Saviour and that of those who have gone before Him, the originality of Christ has been disputed, and His claim to be the founder of a new religion denied.
We propose to consider some of the attempts which have thus been made from different sides to prove the indebtedness of Christ to those who preceded Him, and to discuss the worth of the charge of want of originality based upon the evidence thus adduced. In some of the cases we have to consider, it is the question of the originality not so much of Christ as of Christianity that is involved, as the Person of Christ is either left out of account as a pure piece of fiction, or reduced to such mean proportions as rob it of all historical significance. But inasmuch as in such cases the attempt is made to disprove the originality of that religious movement which we, at any rate, associate with the Person of Christ, we may fitly consider them here, so far, at least, as the criticism in question involves the doctrine of the Master as distinguished from the Apostles.
i. Christianity and Graeco-Roman thought.—Occasional attempts have been made to trace the indebtedness of Christianity to Greek and Graeco-Roman thought. We do not refer here to the endeavours of such men as Hatch and Harnack to prove the influence of Greek philosophy on the development of Christian doctrine, but to the much more revolutionary tendency of such writers as Bruno Bauer and Ernest Havet, who have sought to account not only for the development of Christian doctrine, but for the origin of Christianity itself, upon such lines.
In his work, Christus und die Caesaren: Der Ursprung des Christenthums aus dem römischen Griechenthum (1877, 2nd ed. 1879), Bauer seriously undertakes to prove that Christianity is not Jewish in its origin, but is really the product of Graeco-Roman thought. Its birthplace was not Palestine, but the two cities in which the blending of East and West took place,—Alexandria and Rome. Judaism in its monotheism did but give the skeleton; it was the West that gave the soul. Philo and Seneca were its real founders. At Alexandria, Judaism was enriched by a combination of the Platonic world of ideas with the Heraclitic Logos. Philo made of this Logos a priestly mediator who brings the extremes of the Divine and the human into relation to one another. Seneca gave to this mediator reality, brought him down to earth into touch with men, and made him approve himself by suffering. In the picture he has painted of the ideal man who would one day arise and fulfil the destiny of mankind, he is the real creator of the Christian Messiah. He introduced to the masses the wisdom of Greece, with its call to self-denial and renunciation of the world, whereby man may attain to God-likeness and eternal peace. It was Seneca who laid the foundation for Christian Rome. In the contrast which he presents between the old law with its formal requirements and the new with its higher, more spiritualistic demands, he has supplied the theme for the Sermon on the Mount. Many of his sayings have been reproduced in the NT, sometimes in a manner which conclusively proves the secondariness of the Scripture version. It is true that he is never mentioned by name in the NT. This Bauer would explain by the fact that the NT literature is so late in date that its compilers were ignorant of the fact that Seneca was the author of the maxims which were current among the society for whom they wrote. Still, In some cases the correspondence between the NT parallels and the original utterances of Seneca is so close, that Bauer is of opinion that the NT authors must have had the writings of the Roman sage before them.
Another factor to which Bauer attaches importance in accounting for the origin of Christianity, is the influence of the political conditions of the time. Despair over the downfall of the Republic, which seemed to portend the end of the world, awakened the yearning for a new spiritual world. The levelling of classes, which followed on the establishment of the Empire, begot a faith in human rights and inspired a feeling of mutual dependence such as the Republic had never awakened. Further, the emperors themselves contributed to the ideal which was gradually taking shape in the mind of the age. The Christian Saviour and the Roman emperors are both products of the same tendency, which sought to sum up the aspirations and immaterial goods of antiquity in one personal, all-powerful form. Augustus was the prince of peace who healed the wounds of the Civil War; Tiberius, the servant of the community; Caligula, the god-man and world-judge; Nero, the philanthropist who dedicated himself to the service of humanity; Vespasian caused the Jewish oracle, which had called him to be ruler of the world, to be carried before his legions; Nerva and his successors gave to the Roman world an example of mildness and tranquillity. The central figure of the new religion is a composite character constructed out of the aspirations and ideals of Greek philosophy and various traits borrowed from the occupants of the imperial throne, in whom the Roman world recognized the mediators between heaven and earth.
Such are the lines on which Bauer seeks to ascribe the origin of Christianity to Graeco-Roman influence. It is evident that his theory involves not only the complete overturn of all but the most extreme theories as to the date of the NT literature, but also a very different reading of the course of profane history from that which has hitherto obtained. Bauer has no hesitation in setting aside the testimony of Tacitus, Suetonius, and the other Roman historians. A theory which represents Nero in the character of philanthropist, and finds in his reign an anticipation of the Messianic blessedness, makes the strongest demands on our credulity-Bauer’s views as to the date of the NT writings are wild in the extreme. The Epistles to the Corinthians are a late composition of the 2nd cent.; the Urevangelium is ascribed to the first half of Hadrian’s reign; the Apocalypse and Fourth Gospel to the time of Marcus Aurelius, the latter being an attempt to carry out systematically the Gnostic opposition to Judaism. The Jewish element in the NT is persistently denied. The author of the Urevangelium is ‘an Italian by birth, who was at home in Rome and Alexandria’; the author of Matthew, no Jewish Christian, but ‘a Roman nourished by Seneca’s spirit.’ Such theories justify H. Holtzmann’s characterization of Bauer as ‘a critical Herostratus’ (Einl. in d. NT, p. 183). If their very wildness calls for no serious refutation, it at any rate serves to demonstrate the impracticability of the attempt to assign a Hellenic origin to Christianity.
Havet’s work, Le Christianisme et ses Origines, is on somewhat similar lines, but much more moderate in tone.
There are, Havet thinks, three elements to be taken into account in considering the origin of Christianity, the Hellenic, the Jewish, represented by the Prophets and the Psalms, and a third which he calls the Galilaean, by which he means the sentiments and ideas which developed at first among the turbulent population of Galilee under the misery of the Roman dominion, and then raised up Jesus, and determined His action and destiny, and which gradually spread throughout the great cities of the Roman Empire. He admits that Christianity is not to be found ‘tout entier’ in Hellenism, but insists, on the other hand, that however large may be the share of Galilaean Judaism in the Christian revolution, far more considerable is that of Hellenism in Christianity once It was established. We must distinguish, he contends, between the essence and the accident, between the Christian spirit and the Christian revolution. The Christian revolution came from Judaea and Galilce. But the Christian spirit Is essentially that of Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion. On the appearance of Christianity it was not the faith and wisdom of Hellenism that were absorbed into Judaism, but Judaism that was absorbed into the common beliefs of the human race. In order to establish this contention, Havet gives an exhaustive examination of Hellenic literature from the earliest times, making an anthology of all the passages which seem to breathe anything of the Christian spirit. In summarizing his conclusions, he paints a picture of the heathen world designed to show how nearly it approached to Christianity in its beliefs and hopes. The heathen believed in the immortality of the soul, in the resurrection of the dead, in a future life with punishments and rewards, in the existence of gods who were offended by the faults of men, in the approaching end of this world and the coming of a new one. They had their temples, their altars, their prayers, their sacred songs; while there were not wanting among them loftier spirits who held that the divinity desired no other temple than the heart of man, nor other worship than the practice of virtue. Their moral code breathed the same spirit of self-denial as Christianity inculcated; taught men to despise riches, honours, pleasures, yea, happiness itself; inspired an abborrence of sin, a consciousness of our moral infirmity, and a passionate longing for salvation; inculcated chastity, alms, charity, a horror of war, submission to authority. How is it possible, asks Havet, with such a picture before us, to speak of Christianity as renewing the face of the earth, or to hail its advent as something entirely new and unexpected? He believes that the heathen world, if left to itself, would not have remained heathen, that its mythology and superstition would gradually have vanished, and that the feeling of human fraternity and the need of equality and justice would have developed more and more and passed into its manners and laws. This natural development it was not permitted to pursue. The Judaizers precipitated the crisis; the reform was carried through with too great haste, with the result that the world, in becoming Christian, remained more pagan than if Hellenism had retained its mastery.
While Havet recognizes that Judaism thus played a considerable part in the origin of Christianity, he assigns but little importance to the Person of Christ Himself in the movement which bore His name. He believes that John the Baptist was the principal personage in the religious revolution of which Jesus has the honour. Of the life of Jesus Himself we know almost nothing. Havet denies that He claimed to be the Christ, and that He was tried before the Sanhedrin and condemned for blasphemy or any religious crime. He did not break with Judaism, nor was He the opponent of the Pharisees in the way He is represented in the Gospels. He was a Jew, ardent to fanaticism, a Galilaean zealot who had inflamed the people of His country, and, in the end, so agitated Jerusalem itself that the Jewish authorities, whom He had compromised, handed Him over to the Roman police, by whom He was put to death as a disturber of the peace. At the moment of His death, that which we call Christianity had no existence. He was Himself a Christian only in His manner of feeling; otherwise He was a pure Jew, and there is neither word nor act in His life that is not thoroughly Jewish. He introduced no new dogma or practice. He had no conception of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or other mysteries,—no idea of Church or Sacraments. It was not till after His death that some began to ask, ‘Was He not the Christ?’, and the thought once started gained currency. In order to give the suggestion any plausibility, it was necessary to combine with it the belief that this Jesus who had perished miserably had been raised up from the dead to enter on a life of glory. If Jesus was the Christ, then all was not finished. He must reappear. He must come again as the Christ on the clouds of heaven to destroy this wicked world and restore Israel. The hope thus cherished was converted into actual fact. The step was taken from the thought, ‘He must rise again,’ to the belief, ‘He has risen.’ The news spread among the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Roman Empire, and from them to the Roman world in the midst of which they lived, that the Christ, who was to come to inaugurate the kingdom of the God of the Jews in place of that of the Romans, had actually appeared, that He had been crucified, and had risen from the dead, and was to reappear to destroy the sinners, and to raise up from the dead all the righteous, and reunite them in an eternal life with those who were still alive. With faith in Christ and His resurrection, the Gentile converts to the new faith accepted also the worship of the one God alone, and the denial of idolatry; while in their turn they set aside, in the name of Christ, the more repugnant elements of Judaism, particularly circumcision. This purified Judaism purified itself more and more as it spread among the Gentiles, and became permeated by the spirit of Greek philosophy. The two spirits came in time to be confounded.
Such is Havet’s account of the origin of Christianity. Although his theories are not so extreme as those of Bauer, his attempt to assign Hellenic culture as the main source from which Christianity has sprung serves, equally with Bauer’s, to illustrate to what desperate expedients such a theory is reduced in order to give itself even some measure of plausibility. Both essays result in the attempt to explain Christianity without the Person of Christ; for though Havet does not, like Bauer, deny the existence of Christ altogether, there are few Christians who will recognize, in the Jewish fanatic whom he presents to us, the Saviour whom they worship. We must allow to both authors—to Havet especially—a certain merit, in so far as they demonstrate how well Greek thought had prepared the soil for the seeds of Christian truth. As contributions to the study of the early history of the Christian Church and the development of Christian doctrine, their works may prove of value; but as accounts of the origin of Christianity itself, we cannot assign to them any worth (Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, English translation i. 52 f.). They virtually recognize the impracticability of any attempt to trace the indebtedness of the historical Jesus to Hellenic culture. Whatever parallels they may bring forward to any of the recorded utterances of Jesus, they make no attempt to show in what way He could have been brought into contact with the literature from which He is supposed to have derived inspiration. Only by critical theories regarding the Gospels which would deprive them of all historical worth, can they find room to introduce that Hellenic influence which they seek to trace.
ii. Christianity and Buddhism.—From the side of Buddhism, also, attacks have been made on the originality of Christianity. It is an undoubted fact, that long before the Christian era Buddhist doctrine had penetrated to distant regions, and the possibility of the indebtedness of the Christian Gospels to the Buddha legend is not so remote as to be dismissed without careful consideration. Various attempts have been made to prove that much of the material in the Gospel narratives may be traced to Buddhist sources—notably by Bunsen, Seydel, Lillie, and more recently by Stix, Pfleiderer, and van den Bergh van Eysinga (for titles of works see below in list of Literature). Among the earlier group of writers, Seydel is generally recognized to be the most scholarly; and we may devote our attention chiefly to him. In his book, Das Evangelium Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zu Buddha-sage und Buddha-lehre, he endeavours to construct a ‘Buddhist-Christian Gospel Harmony’ by drawing up a list of the parallels that may be traced between the two religions.
In all, Seydel collects 51 such parallels, which he proceeds to arrange in 3 groups. In the first he places those resemblances which may be accidental; in the second, those cases in which we are forced to conclude that there has been borrowing on one side or the other. The third group contains parallels in which it is clear not only that there has been borrowing, but on which side the borrowing has taken place. This last group contains only five parallels, and in each case Seydel concludes that the verdict must be given in favour of Buddhism. They are as follows:—(1) the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple, compared with that of Buddha; (2) the fast of Jesus and of Buddha; (3) the pre-existence of Jesus and of Buddha; (4) the fig-tree as the place of Buddha’s first conversion, compared with Jesus’ interview with Nathanael (John 1:46 ff.); (5) the question of the disciples regarding the man who was born blind (John 9:2), which seems to imply a former state of existence whose sinfulness might account for present affliction. The verdict in favour of Buddhism in this third group of parallels strengthens the probability that in the second group also it is Christianity that is the debtor. In this group the number of parallels runs to 23, 12 of which Seydel regards as of greater cogency than the rest. Among the Gospel facts which he introduces in this first division of his second group may be mentioned the annunciation to Mary, the gifts to the newborn child, the temptation, and the Beatitudes. Lastly, even in the first group of 23 parallels, which Seydel admits may be wholly accidental, he believes that in view of the conclusions reached by an examination of the two other groups, there is a possibility that in at least 15 cases the Gospels may have been subject to Buddhist influence.
To account for the presence of so much material in the Gospels borrowed front Buddhist sources, Seydel formulates the hypothesis that, in addition to the two sources generally recognized as underlying the Synoptic Gospels—the collection of Sayings, and the original Mark—there must also have existed a third source, a poetic-apocalyptic Gospel, in which the Christian material must have been worked up after the pattern of the Buddhist Gospels, with the incorporation of much that was derived from Buddhist sources. This poetic source was used by all the Synoptists and by the Fourth Evangelist as well. That it has been lost is to be explained by the fact that the available material which it afforded had been incorporated in the Gospels, whose more historical form and genuine Christian doctrine caused the early poetical work to be quite forgotten.
Seydel claims a certain apologetic value for his investigations. If he has shaken our faith in much in the Gospel narratives which he has shown to be derived from Buddhism, we may comfort ourselves, he thinks, with the reflexion that those features in the life of Jesus to which he has found no analogy in Buddhist tradition,—such, e.g., as the Passion and certain fundamental doctrines and personal characteristics of Jesus,—are thus indirectly confirmed. In what remains after we have taken away what may be traced to Buddhism, we have a kernel of historical fact which is unassailable.
When we turn to examine the various parallels upon which Seydel bases his contention, we find that the resemblance between the Christian and the Buddhist material is frequently exaggerated; that but little attention is paid to the underlying difference between the two sides, which in many cases is much more striking than the apparent resemblance; and that, even where the resemblance is strongest, Seydel has not made out his case, viz., that the fact which he instances from the Gospels is so unintelligible on Christian premises, that borrowing from an external source is the only feasible explanation. We shall endeavour to justify this contention in the case of the five parallels upon which Seydel lays the greatest stress.
(1) The Presentation in the Temple. Here Seydel’s point is that such presentation of the infant Jesus was not required, and that Luke’s appeal to the Law (Luke 2:23) is a mere device to introduce an incident borrowed from a foreign source. We admit that it was not necessary that the infant should be presented in person on the occasion of its being ransomed; but we have only to read the account of the presentation of the infant Buddha, which Seydel thinks may have suggested this incident, with its description of how 100,000 gods drew the waggon which bore him, of how the earth trembled as he entered the temple, of how the images of the gods left their places to throw themselves at his feet, to convince ourselves that among the various motives which might be assigned for the departure from the strict letter of the Law in the case of Jesus, a more unlikely one could hardly be conceived than a desire to institute a parallel with this fantastic story, to which the simple Gospel narrative offers the most striking contrast.
(2) Seydel finds the 40 days’ fast of Jesus in the wilderness inexplicable in view of the contrast He Himself drew between His own conduct and the asceticism practised by John the Baptist, and suggests that this incident is borrowed from the example of Buddha. But if any parallel at all is required, we do not need to go so far afield. The 40 days’ fast of Moses (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 9:9) and that of Elijah (1 Kings 19:8) at once suggest themselves as parallels which do not take us beyond the limits of Jewish history.
(3) Seydel finds a parallel to Christ’s words to the Jews, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58), in Buddha’s assertion of his pre-existence. But the resemblance at once disappears when we realize what is the kind of pre-existence Buddha claims for himself,—not like that of the Johannine Logos who has been with God from the beginning (John 1:1 f.), but that of a being who has undergone countless different forms of incarnation.
(4) It was while sitting under the Bodhi-tree, which was a kind of fig-tree, that Gautama attained Budda-hood, and immediately thereafter converted two brothers, who became his first disciples. Seydel finds a parallel to this in the words of Jesus to Nathanael, ‘When thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee’ (John 1:48). But beyond the facts that a fig-tree and a disciple are mentioned in both cases, there is no resemblance between them. It was not Jesus, but Nathanael, who was sitting under the fig-tree; there is no suggestion of the ‘enlightenment’ of Jesus; and the disciple in connexion with whom the fig-tree is mentioned was not, as in Buddha’s case, the first who was called.
(5) The question of the disciples with regard to the man who was born blind, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ (John 9:2) is brought forward by Seydel as implying belief in the Buddhist doctrine of re-birth, according to which we are punished here for sins committed in a former state of existence. But the doetrine of the pre-existence of the soul was not unknown to the Jews (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 8:20), and it is questionable, further, whether even this doetrine is necessary to explain the question of the disciples. They may have been thinking; of some sin committed in the womb (cf. Genesis 25:22), or may have regarded the blindness of the man as punishment in anticipation of the sins he would commit (cf. B. Weiss in Meyer’s Kommentar, ad loc.).
These are the parallels upon which, as has been said, Seydel lays the chief stress. He admits himself that the force of the other analogies depends, in great measure, upon the verdict we pass upon the evidence afforded by these five parallels, which constitute his third group. And if, as we have endeavoured to show, he has not made good his case in these instances, much of the force of his argument is gone. As to his hypothesis of the existence of a poetic-apocalyptic Gospel imbued with Buddhist doctrine, there is absolutely no proof for the existence of such a document. Seydel can bring forward no particle of evidence to support his hypothesis. He merely invents this fictitious Gospel to supply the lack of historical connexion between Buddhism and Christianity, the want of which is one of the strongest objections to his theory.
As remarked above, attempts have been made more recently by Pfleiderer and van den Bergh van Eysinga to trace Buddhist influence on the Gospel narratives. Among the parallels which the latter finds specially important, may be mentioned Simeon in the Temple, the twelve-year-old Jesus, the baptism of Jesus, the temptation, the blessing of the mother of Jesus (Luke 11:27), the widow’s mite, the walking on the sea, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the world conflagration. Pfleiderer does not descend so much into detail, but groups his parallels together under general heads, such as Christ as Son of God, as miraculous Saviour, as victor over Satan, as King of kings, etc. With regard to these more recent works, the same criticism applies as in the case of Seydel. Many of the suggested parallels, when closely examined, prove much less striking than appeared at first sight; and even where the resemblance is closest, a much more natural explanation can usually be given of the feature in question on the Christian side than the adaptation of Buddhist material. And due consideration should here be given to the fact to which Oldenberg has called attention (ThLZ [Note: hLZ Theol. Literaturzeitung.] , 1905, No. 3), that the Buddhist literature which is drawn upon to supply these parallels to Christianity is so extensive, so infinitely rich in legendary lore, that the wonder would rather be if we did not find occasional points of resemblance between the Buddhist narratives and those parts of the NT which deal with a similar sphere of life. Finally, while we must admit in the abstract the possibility of Buddhist influence upon Western culture, the fact remains that we have no historical evidence of the spread of Buddhist ideas to the regions in which Christianity had its origin till a much later time. Clement of Alexandria is the first who mentions Buddha by name. In this connexion we may quote the words of Max Müller (India, what it can teaeh us? p. 279):
‘That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity cannot be denied, and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before Christianity. I go even further, and should feel extremely grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. I have been looking for such channels all my life, but hitherto I have found none. What I have found is that for some of the most startling coincidences there are historical antecedents on both sides, and if we once know these antecedents, the coincidences become far less startling. If I do find, in certain Buddhist works, doctrines identically the same as in Christianity, so far from being frightened, I feel delighted, for surely truth is not the less true because it is believed by the majority of the human race.’
iii. Christianity and Judaism.—When we come to consider the relation of Christianity to Judaism, we feel that the case is very different from what it was in the above instances. There the possibility of contact between Christianity and those influences to which its indebtedness was alleged was remote. Here we are in the line of direct historical connexion. The roots of Christianity go deep down into Jewish soil. Christ was a Jew by birth and education. His whole thought and teaching were cast in Jewish moulds. The very title He bears—the Christ—is meaningless apart from the background of Jewish history in which it had its origin. If we claim originality for Him, we recognize that originality does not mean an entirely new start, the severance of all the links which bind the new Teacher to the religious development of the nation to which He belongs. Such originality is an idle figment of the imagination. It never has existed; it never can exist. If the original teacher is to be a teacher at all, if he is to exercise any influence upon the men he addresses, then he must live in close contact with them and link on his doctrine to the beliefs and hopes which they cherish. So it was with Christ. He may be the world’s Teacher, but He spoke first of all to His fellow-countrymen in Galilee and Judaea, and He used the modes of thought and speech familiar to them. He preached in their synagogues and taught in their streets like the Rabbis of His own day. That there was a certain novelty in His manner of preaching is proved by the astonishment with which the people listened to it (Mark 1:22; Mark 6:2). But was the content essentially different from that of the preachers of His own day, or that of the prophets of old? Had He any new doctrine to communicate? Or was He, as has been alleged by modern Jewish scholars, merely a teacher who gave expression to the best Jewish thought of His time?
We proceed to consider more closely some of the different elements in the Jewish religion to which Christ’s indebtedness is alleged to be so great as to detract from His originality.
(1) The Old Testament.—There can be no question as to Christ’s obligations to the OT. How much He was influenced by it in His personal life is shown by the frequency of His quotations from it. He seems to live in it. Parallels from it suggest themselves at every turn. In critical moments of His life His thoughts find natural expression in OT quotation. So it was at the temptation (Matthew 4:4; Matthew 4:7; Matthew 4:10), at the cleansing of the Temple (Mark 11:17), even when He hung upon the cross (Mark 15:34). He recognized its authority in religious matters. He appealed to it in defence of His own conduct (Mark 2:25 f.). He quoted it in condemnation of the Pharisees (Mark 7:6; Mark 7:13), and in refutation of the Sadducees (Mark 12:24 f.). He claimed that He came not to destroy, but to fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). And when He was asked by the rich young man what he must do to inherit eternal life, instead of imparting to him any new doctrine, He simply referred him to the commandments (Mark 10:19).
In view of the attitude Christ thus takes up to the OT, and of His avowed intention of fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, we should expect to find great affinity between His doctrine and that of the OT. Is this affinity so great as to detract from our Lord’s originality? It is alleged by some that it is. Nay, it has been questioned, indeed, not only whether Jesus has made any new contribution to the religious and moral teaching of the OT, but whether He even desired to do so (so B. Weiss, Leben Jesu, i. 274). There is hardly a feature in the teaching of Christ, it is maintained, to which there is not a parallel in the OT. The constant theme of His preaching, the Kingdom of God, is so manifestly not novel, that He assumes familiarity with it on the part of His hearers, and never even explains what He means by it. His work as a Prophet, sent to announce the coming of this Kingdom and to call men to repentance, was evidently nothing novel. The very words by which the preaching of Christ is introduced by Mk. (Mark 1:15) are practically the same as Mt. uses to describe the appearance of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:2). The God whom Christ reveals is no new God, but the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob (Mark 12:26), the God of Israel (Matthew 15:31, Mark 12:29). The Fatherhood of God, upon which so much emphasis is laid as the most fundamental and distinctively characteristic doctrine of Christianity, is taught in the OT. The trust in this Father which Christ seeks to inspire already finds most beautiful expression in the Psalms. The new commandment of love which Christ inculcates is so far from being new, that He Himself formulates it on occasion in language borrowed from the OT (Mark 12:31). Not even the widening of the circle of those whom we are required to love, so as to make it embrace our enemy as well as our neighbour, goes beyond the teaching of the OT (Exodus 23:4 f., Proverbs 20:22; Proverbs 24:29; Proverbs 25:21 f.). How, it is asked, can originality be claimed for the teaching of Christ, when He Himself takes His stand upon the OT and recognizes its authority; when He claims to reveal no other God than the God of the OT, and to continue the work of the Law and the Prophets; when we find that even those which are regarded as the most characteristic doctrines of Christianity have been forestalled in the OT?
To this it may be replied, that while it is true that Christ generally recognizes the authority of the OT, and appeals to it at times quite in the manner of the scribes, still His attitude towards it is one of freedom and independence. He discriminates between the various parts of it, and leaves aside much that does not appeal to Him. In spite of what He says in the Sermon on the Mount about fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, He does not hesitate in that same sermon to set up His own authority in opposition to the teaching of the Law. He freely criticises the Mosaic law of divorce (Mark 10:2 ff.), and on the question of Sabbath observance not only exercises a freedom which scandalized His contemporaries, but claims to be invested with authority on the question (Mark 2:28). By His doctrine that that only could defile a man which affected his heart, He brushes aside the whole Levitical legislation as to cleanness, and raises the question from the region of the physical to that of the ethical.
It is true, indeed, that most of the elements of Christian doctrine may be found scattered throughout the OT. But they are found side by side with much else which Christ has rejected, and which, in juxtaposition with them, prevents them from having the significance they acquire in Christianity. That God is represented at times in the OT as a Father, e.g., is perfectly true. But the distinguishing feature in Christ’s designation of Him as such, as compared with that of the OT, is that with Christ Father is the characteristic title for God, and He is never represented under any aspect that is inconsistent with His Fatherhood; whereas in the OT Father is only one, and not even the prevailing one, among various other titles for God, and God is represented at times under very different aspects. It is the same with the various other elements of Christian doctrine that have been found in the OT. They receive a new meaning from the place Christ gives them, the importance He assigns to them, and the consistency with which He insists on them. That God looks not upon the outward conduct but upon the heart, was a truth known to the OT writers no less than to Christ; but it is Christ who first consistently follows it out to its logical conclusions. That we should love our enemies is a doctrine that had been taught even in the OT; yet how much there is in the OT that breathes an entirely different spirit! When we put, not isolated utterances of Christ and of the OT, but the doctrine of Christ as a whole and the OT as a whole, side by side, then, in spite of the fact that we can trace the roots of Christianity down into Jewish soil and can find OT forecasts of much that appears in the teaching of Christ, the conviction is forced upon us that this doctrine of Christ as a whole, by the consistently lofty spirituality of its tone, by the inner coherence and harmony of its various parts in spite of the unsystematic form in which it was delivered, by its indifference to much which held a high place in the Jewish religion, is a new creation as compared with the OT upon which it is based. We feel too that only a mind of the highest originality could have evolved out of a religion in which there was much that was imperfect and unspiritual, a system so pure and lofty as that which we have in the Christian religion.
(2) Later Judaism.—But it is not to the OT alone that Christ’s indebtedness is alleged. There are later developments of Judaism which are said to have exercised marked influence upon Him. It has been the custom to regard Christ’s position as one of pure antagonism to the prevailing religious tendencies of His time, and to represent Him as standing in such irreconcilable opposition to the teaching of the Rabbinical schools that there can be no question of His being influenced by them, save in the way of being repelled. But in spite of the attitude of opposition that Christ took up to the religious authorities of His day, there was, it is alleged, much affinity between them. Like the Rabbis, He preached in the synagogues and taught in the market-places. Like them, He gathered a group of disciples round Him who called Him Master, and whom He sought specially to instruct. His manner of teaching is modelled on theirs. He delights in aphorism. He makes frequent use of illustration and example. It is from them that He has derived the parabolic method of instruction which is so characteristic a feature of His teaching. But not merely the form of His teaching, the matter also is in many cases similar to that of the Rabbis.
Many striking parallels to Christ’s sayings have been found in Rabbinical literature. Hillel summed up the whole Law in the words, ‘What thou wouldst not have done to thee, do not that to others.’ He bade men not Judge their neighbour till they came into his place. ‘Raise not thyself above others.’ ‘If thou art where no men are, show thyself a man.’ ‘Be among the pupils of Aaron, who loved peace and pursued peace, who loved all creatures and guided them to the Law.’ ‘Be not as servants who minister to their masters upon condition of receiving a reward.’ ‘Do God’s will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will.’ ‘Let your neighbour’s, honour be as dear to yon as your own,’ Such are some of the more striking sayings of the Jewish Rabbis, which seem to breathe as pure a religious spirit as the teaching of Christ. Even the prayer which Christ taught His disciples, we are told, is but a shortened form of some of the older prayers of the Jewish Liturgy. It is true that in a great many cases the Rabbinical literature in which we find these parallels to the sayings of Christ dates from the 2nd cent. a.d.; and Christian apologists have endeavoured to make the most of the fact, suggesting that if there is any borrowing, the indebtedness cannot rest on the side of Christ. But that argument would be valid only if it were shown that there was any possibility of the literature in question having been influenced by Christian thought. But there is no such possibility. The Christian and the Jewish litenature, as Renan (Life of Jesus, ch. v.) says, had scarcely any influence on one another before the 13th century. Though these parallels are from a literature which was compiled at a date later than the appearance of Christ, they are themselves older than Christ, and represent a purely Jewish development of thought.
One may dismiss this evidence against the originality of Christ in the words of Wellhausen (IJG [Note: JG Israelitische und Jüdische Geschichte.] 2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] ), ‘Jewish scholars think that all that Jesus said is found in the Talmud. Yes, all, and a good deal more. ΙΙλέον ἥμισυ παντός. The originality of Jesus consists in this, that He had the feeling for what was true and eternal amid a chaotic mass of rubbish, and that He enunciated it with the greatest emphasis.’ No doubt there are occasional parallels to the words of Christ to be found in the Talmud, but there is a vast amount in the Talmud to which no parallel can be found in the preaching of Christ, for it falls lamentably short of the lofty spiritual tone which characterizes every utterance of the Saviour. Even if it be the case that we can find something corresponding to every elause of the Lord’s Prayer in the Jewish Liturgy, it might still be maintained that there was originality in selecting precisely these petitions and bringing them together in such a brief and simple prayer. But indeed we are not much concerned to defend the originality of the Lord’s Prayer. Christ’s object was not to teach His disciples some new form of prayer, but to give expression to the deepest longings of the human heart; and it would be strange if these cravings had not already found utterance in some measure in the prayers of His fellow-countrymen. When we turn to the parallels which have been traced between sayings of Christ and quotations from the Jewish Rabbis, it will be found, on examination, that in many cases they are not so striking as they appear at first sight. For instance, the saying of Hillel which has been often quoted as an anticipation of the Golden Rule of Christ really falls far short of it. Hillel merely warns us against doing to others what we would not that they should do to us. One might conform to that maxim on grounds of selfishness. At best it requires only that we do no evil. But Christ’s maxim is positive. It insists not merely that we do no evil, but that we do good, and can be carried out only by one who has his heart full of love for his brother. And, further, with regard to the parallels that are drawn between the sayings of Christ and the words of the Rabbis, we must ask what place the quotations occupy in the respective writings from which they are taken. Quotations from the Talmud which have a striking resemblance to some words of Christ may prove, when we consider the context in which they occur, to bear a different meaning from what they assume when put into juxtaposition with similar words of Christ, or may lose a great deal of the impressiveness which attaches to them when regarded as isolated utterances. Upon the whole, we conclude that little weight is to be placed upon the occasional parallels which have been found in the words of the Jewish Rabbis to sayings of Christ. The general spirit of the Rabbinical teaching is very different from Christ’s. When sayings are found which seem to approach to the teaching of Christ, they are rather to be regarded as isolated utterances which rise for the moment above the general level of Rabbinical theology.
There is another branch of late Jewish literature which, it is alleged, has had a marked influence upon Christ, and from which He is said to have derived many of His leading ideas, viz. the series of Messianic-Apocalyptic writings in which the hopes and aspirations of later Judaism found expression.
There are numerous points of contact between the teaching of Christ and the literature in question. His eschatology, e.g., is said to be almost entirely drawn from this source. Certainly the expectation of His second coming was a novel idea, as it presupposed a want of success on His first appearance which had not been anticipated by any of the later Apocalyptic writers. But otherwise, for the most part, He simply accepts the general eschatological programme which they had outlined. The sharp contrast in which the present age (ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος, Luke 16:8; Luke 20:34, Matthew 12:32; ὁ καιρὸς οὗτος, Luke 18:30) and the future (ὁ αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων, Matthew 12:32; ὁ αἰὼν ὁ ἐρχόμενος, Luke 18:30) are set to one another, the inauguration of the new era by the miraculous intervention of God, who is to bring in the Kingdom of God with power, the belief that the Kingdom thus to be set up is to come down from heaven, whence also is to come the agent to whom is entrusted its establishment, the series of dire calamities which are to herald the approach of the new era, the great judgment scene and resurrection of the dead with which it is to be ushered in,—all these familiar features of Christ’s eschatology are to be found in the writings referred to. In painting the blessedness of heaven and the torments of hell, Christ uses the colours which the Apocalyptic writers have prepared,—Abraham’s bosom, the great banquet, eating bread and drinking wine in the Kingdom of God, the furnace of fire and the outer darkness. Again, the Messianic hope whieh Christ cherished was largely influenced by the expectation which had found expression in the Apocalyptic literature. There was much, indeed, that was sensuous in the expe tation of those writers which could not appeal to Christ, and which He put aside. But under their hands the Messianic hope of the OT writers had undergone a transformation which prepared the way for the more spiritual conception of Christianity. They had widened its scope so as to make it embrace not only the nation but the world; they had detached it from earthly political ideas, and raised it to the realm of the supermundane; they had deepened and developed that tendency to individualism whieh had begun to show itself in the later writings of the OT. In these respects they had prepared the way for Christ, and in much of His teaching He was in sympathy with the aims, and did but develop the doctrines, of the Apocalyptic writers of later Judaism.
One might admit the truth of most of what is thus said, without in any way detracting from the originality of Christ. It is no disparagement to that originality, as we have seen, to recognize that Christ stands in close and vital connexion with those who have preceded Him, and uses the modes of thought and speech which they have made familiar. Whether, indeed, the connexion between the Messianic views of Christ and those of later Judaism is as close as has been suggested, is a question upon which there is a difference of opinion. Baldensperger answers in the aflirmative, maintaining that we must no longer regard Judaism as the dark background against which Christianity stands out as something quite different, but rather as a preparatory stage on the way to Christianity. He lays special stress upon the transcendent character of its Messianism as an advance towards the spiri ualism of Christianity (Die messian.-apocalyp. Hoffnungen des Judenthums, 1903, p. 232). This view of the relation of Christianity to later Judaism has not been accepted by other authorities. Wellhausen finds in Christianity rather a protest against the prevailing tendency of Judaism (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, p. 98). So also Bousset (Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892), who has enumerated a number of points in which the teaching of Christ is in direct confliet with the spirit of later Judaism. In view of this difference of opinion, it is evident that no very strong case has been made out to prove Christ’s indebtedness to the later Jewish Apocalyptic writings. That He used the esehatological data and many of the modes of thought which are to be found in this literature, may be readily admitted. But beyond that, His general line of thought must have been little in sympathy with its spirit. There is a wide gulf between the transcendence of later Jewish Messianism, which is sometimes coarse and sensuous, and the spirituality of the Messianic hopes of Christ. Many of the most marked characteristies of later Judaism, as Bousset points out, its withdrawal of God from the world, its aseeticism, its world-weariness and lack of interest in the present and yearning for the future, are directly opposed to the spirit of the Saviour’s teaching. In view of these and other points of difference between the doctrine of Christ and the tendencies of later Judaism, it seems rash to attempt to trace the origin of Christianity to a system of doctrine to which, in spite of certain superficial points of resemblance, it stands in deep and radical opposition.
(3) Essenism.—Attempts have frequently been made to connect Christ with the Essenes, and to account for many of the characteristic features of His doctrine by deriving them from the practices of this sect. But no evidence has been brought forward to prove that Christ had any connexion with them. It is true He never refers to them, while He frequently denounces the Pharisees and Sadducees. But that fact may be easily explained by the smallness and retiring character of the sect. Ginsburg (Essenes, p. 24) argues that every Jew had to belong to one of the three parties, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, into which the Jews were divided at the time of Christ, and that Christ would naturally associate Himself with the Essenes as most congenial to His nature; but as his premises are quite unsupported, his conclusion has no weight whatever. The only valid ground upon which any plausible case may be made out in favour of the view that Christ had some connexion with the Essenes is, that there are several points in which His doctrine bears a considerable resemblance to theirs. Among these points of resemblance the following may be noted: prohibition of oaths, exaltation of poverty, simplicity of life, celibacy (Matthew 19:12), feeling of brotherhood issuing in mutual service. But most of these features merely represent the high moral tone which obtains on both of the sides thus compared, and no direct connexion is required to account for the resemblance. On the other hand, there are very marked features of difference which preclude any direct connexion of Christ with the Essenes. One of the most distinctive features of the sect was its withdrawal from the world and adoption of a monastic life. Contact with strangers was supposed to communicate defilement. The conduct of Christ presented a striking contrast. He mixed freely in the life of the people. He told His disciples not to hide their light under a bushel. And, so far from thinking that mere contact with strangers caused defilement, He did not shrink even from the touch of the woman who was a sinner, or hesitate to lay His hand upon a leper. In their asceticism the Essenes went to an extreme. ‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking.’ In their Sabbath observance they outdid the Pharisees. There was no point on which Christ gave such offence to the rigorists. The Essenes stood aloof from the Temple, and offered no sacrifice there. Christ repaired to Jerusalem to some of the great festivals, and taught daily in the Temple. The Essenes were scrupulous to a degree on the question of purity. They had washings innumerable. Christ paid no attention to such ceremonial observances, but esteemed only purity of heart. The differences which thus separate Christ from the Essenes are broad and deep. We cannot find any connexion between Him and a sect which, by its monastic tendency, its exaltation of ceremonial observances, its formal and precise rules, could have made little appeal to Him.
iv. The original element in Christianity.—When we turn from these attempts to disparage the originality of Christ, and proceed to consider wherein that originality consists, we find a great variety of opinions upon the subject. Some would place all the emphasis upon the Person of Christ; others lay weight upon His methods as a teacher; others think to find the original element in His doctrine, selecting now its universalism, now its individualism, now its practical moral tendency, now its lofty spirituality, as the characteristic feature of it; while others, again, contend that the specifically novel feature in the teaching of Christ is His announcement that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that God is about to intervene and bring in the Kingdom of God with power. We shall not confine ourselves to any one of these points of view, but proceed to indicate what appear to us some of the more important characteristics which go to make up the originality of Christ.
1. Without doubt the fullest emphasis must be laid upon Christ’s personality. This is the most strikingly original feature in Christianity. We cannot separate the doctrine from the Person of Christ. He taught by His life no less than by His words, and it is His Person as much as His doctrine that has converted the world. There could be no more unsatisfactory method of attempting to estimate the originality of Christ than to single out various statements scattered throughout the Gospels which we believe to be unparalleled in any teaching that had gone before. ‘It is not difficult to set over against every article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of its originality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life that is new and creates the new’ (Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, English translation i. 73). When we approach the portrait of Christ presented in the Gospels, we at once feel that we are in the presence of One who is in the truest sense original. The moral grandeur of His character alone bears witness to the fact. It dwarfs the attainment of the greatest of human heroes, and leaves the ideals even of our noblest thinkers far behind. The very fact of its sinlessness stamps it with an originality that cannot be gainsaid. The perfect harmony that pervades the whole life, the holy peace which no trial or danger can disturb, the sublime faith, the noble optimism, the unquenchable love, the tender sympathy, the meek humility, the genial, kindly spirit which drew men to Him—these are a few of the features which go to make up that portrait which has produced such an impression on the heart of the world. We feel we are standing in the presence of One who has given in His own Person the perfect revelation of the Divine. One trait we may specially note as characteristic of that originality we are considering, viz. the tone of authority with which He ever acts and speaks. Meek and humble as He is, there is a certain majesty about Him that shines forth all the more forcibly because of the lowliness of the service to which He stoops. He sets up His own authority over against that of the Law: ‘Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time … but I say unto you’ (Matthew 5:21 f. etc.). He speaks of Himself as a greater than Jonah, a greater than Solomon (Matthew 12:41 f.). He claims to be able to reveal the Father as no other can (Matthew 11:27), for He stands in a relation of such intimacy to the Father that He can speak of the hidden mysteries of the Divine will as things into which He has Himself looked. Hence the ring of absolute certainty about the revelation He gives of God. Hence the tone of authority in which He announces the Divine will. Either He was the victim of the grossest self-delusion, or He stood in such a close relationship to God, and knew Himself, as the appointed Messiah, to be endowed with such authority as justified Him in speaking in a tone which in any other would be nothing short of blasphemy. There is nothing incompatible with this tone of authority, which marks the teaching of Christ, in the fact that much of His teaching, as we have seen, is closely related to the OT. In a sense His teaching may be said to be based upon the OT, in so far, viz., as in the OT He found the food which nourished His spiritual life. But it is out of the fulness of the spiritual life thus nourished that He draws His doctrine, and not directly from the OT. He speaks that He knows, and testifies that He has seen (John 3:11); and what of OT teaching is reproduced in His doctrine is so transmuted and ennobled, bears so unmistakably the impress of His own personality, that it may be fitly called original. We may apply to His relation to the OT the words of the poet, and say that He
‘made nobly his what he did mould;
What was another’s lead, became his gold.’
Closely akin to this tone of authority which Christ assumes in His preaching is another feature which contributes to the originality of His personality, viz. the feeling that with Him a new era has arrived in the history of the world. ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mark 1:15)—that is the new message of which Christ is the bearer. The hope which animated the prophets has become a reality to Him. He told His disciples that they were blessed in that their eyes had seen the things which many prophets and kings had desired to see (Luke 10:23 f.). His whole preaching rings with glad tidings that the long expected time has come. The period of waiting is past, the new era has begun. Already the Kingdom of God is in the midst of men (Luke 17:21). Even the tragic catastrophe to which His life is tending cannot shake His conviction that with Him the Messianic age has come. He longs for the baptism of suffering which He has to und
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Originality'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/o/originality.html. 1906-1918.
