Arthur Drews

“ As long as theologians continue to praise the moral maxims of Jesus in this way at the expense of non-Christian ethics, we must decline to regard their efforts as impartial, in spite of that claim of “honourableness” which they repeat so pitifully, and however proudly they may wrap themselves in the mantle of their scientific infallibility. We do not question their subjective honour, but we do question their ability, in their atmosphere of theological hypnotism, to see things as they really are. ”

“ Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David (Isaiah lv, 1-3) . In this sense Jesus sends away the rich young man who cannot bring himself to abandon his wealth for the sake of the kingdom of heaven: “Verily, I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven......It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew xix, 23) . ”

“ Can they really have supposed that the words of Jesus were a refutation of the Sadducaean view that there was no resurrection of the dead? That God is the God of the living does not prove that life is not extinguished at death. And what the object is of bringing in the patriarchs it is impossible to say. When, moreover, Jesus accuses the Sadducees of ignorance of the law, he clearly forgets that precisely according to the law the woman never ceases to be the wife of her first dead husband, however many husbands she may subsequently wed. ”

“ In this respect, therefore, the “love” which Jesus demands is merely the Old Testament love of one's neighbour.
In Matthew v, 43, however, it is said: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” Here the love of one's neighbour seems to be elevated into a command to love one's enemies. ”

“ Take such a saying as that in Matthew x, 35: “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,” and compare it with Micah vii, 6: “For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-inlaw against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.” ”

“ We are, of course, dealing with a “spiritualised and intimate Judaism,” a philosophy of life and deity that had, among the dispersed Jews, been permeated by the finer thought and feeling of the Greek spirit. Anyone who doubts the possibility of this must have in mind only the description of Judaism in the pages of the gospels themselves, and take it to be an historical fact that Judaism was in the time of Jesus as fossilised and spiritless as it is described in the gospels. ”

“ According to Acts, the first Christian sermon was not a repetition of the teaching of Jesus, but a discourse about Jesus, as we learn in the instances of Peter, Stephen, Philip, and Apollo. [5] If they really believed that these sayings belonged to an historical Jesus, why have they not been more carefully preserved? How was it possible for this collection of sayings to be lost? One would think that so valuable a thing as the words of their Lord and master would have been guarded by the community as a sacred treasure, copied innumerable times, and handed on from one generation to another. ”

“ They could not, it is true, have transferred these finer flowers of Judaism to their own garden if they had not been personally disposed to this religious intimacy. But that one single personality gave them this spirit, as theologians say, it is just as superfluous to suppose as in similar cases of the rise of a pietistic and mystic fervour among the laity by the side of the official teaching of the sect. These first Christians had not to seek the pearls—the true and eternal—in the wilderness of official knowledge of the law, as they had never expressly looked there for them. ”

“ Come unto me, ye that desire me, and sate yourselves with my fruits. For the thought of me is better than sweet honey, and the possession of me better than virgin honey. They that eat me shall ever hunger after me, and they that drink me shall ever thirst after me. ”

“ The maxim that merely to look upon another's wife is equal to adultery (Matthew v, 28) is covered by Job xxxi, 1, and Ecclus. ix, 5 and 8, and similar strict maxims in the Talmud, such as: “Whoever regards even the little finger of a woman has already violated matrimony in his heart” (Bereschit, 24 and 24a) . When Jesus insists on purity and goodness of heart before a man approaches the altar to offer sacrifice (Matthew v, 23) , he is merely following Isaiah and the other prophets who place piety of heart above the external piety of sacrifices and good works. ”

“ The Talmud by no means restricts this love of one's enemies to members of one's own people. As man is bidden to pray to God for sinners (Sohar to Genesis, fol. 67) , so God says to Moses: “Israelite or Gentile, man or woman, slave or free, all are alike for you” (Jalkut, c. 20b) . In accordance with this, and in agreement with Levit. xix, 9, the Talmud commands them not to prevent the Gentile poor from gleaning in the fields (Gittin, c. 5) , and repeatedly represents Abraham the Israelite as a model of tolerance. ”

“ But it is not a new spirit in the creative sense, since all that it contains of moral value has been derived from the great fund of Jewish proverbial wisdom, not produced by itself. They are the ideals of men who, no one knows how long before, had brooded over the writings of the prophets, especially Isaiah, lit the fire of the inner religious world from the plain and penetrating piety of the psalms and proverbs, absorbed their spirit, and never ceased to remain in continuous contact with the “everliving in the Scriptures.” ”

“ In Matthew xxii, 40, Jesus adds: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Further, we read in Tobias iv, 16: “What thou dost not wish any man to do unto thee do thou not unto another”; and we find the saying in the same negative form in the Talmud: “A heathen came to Hillel and said to him: I will embrace Judaism on condition that thou teachest me the whole doctrine during the time that I stand on one leg. And Hillel said: What thou dost not like do not to thy neighbour ”

“ But whether this was the life of a single individual, or a number of individuals in different circumstances contributed to the “sayings of the Lord” in the gospels—whether this single personality was the Jesus of the gospels or some prominent rabbi—is the great point in question.
The many irreconcilable contradictions that we find in the sayings of Jesus rather suggest that several persons, not one only, are behind them. And if they really belonged to one single personality, they could be traced to Jesus only in so far as he was known to us from other sources ”

“ No one has ever questioned that the words of Jesus in the gospels have a thoroughly personal and individual colouring, that they convey an impression of definite historical situations, and that they reflect the feelings and thoughts of a personal inner life. ”

“ Children were, as the Talmud shows, greatly cherished among the Jews, and the love of them is deep-rooted in the Jewish character. “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,” says the psalmist (viii, 2) , “hast thou ordained strength [praise] ”; and Jesus repeats this to the high-priests and their followers, when they are indignant at the cry with which the children greet him in the temple (Matthew xxi, 15) . In the same psalm it is said (4 and 5) : “What is man that thou art mindful of him? ”

“ The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide; neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities... Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the reply of Jesus contains so obvious a fallacy that at the most we could only understand the behaviour of the Pharisees as a reluctance to have anything further to do with a man who answered in such a way. ”

“ The saying, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew vii, 1) , runs in the Talmud: “Judge everyone as favourably as possible” (Abot, i, 6) , and “Judge not thy neighbour until thou hast stood in his place” (Abot, ii, 4) , and “With the measure with which a man measures shall it be meted unto him” (Sota, 86) . The saying about the beam and the mote (Matthew vii, 4) is found word for word in the Talmud (Baba bathra, 15) , and runs, in the mouth of the Rabbi Nathan: “The fault from which thou art not free blame not in another” (Baba mezia, 59) . ”

“ It is true that they cannot deny that, even if they succeeded in entirely and confidently reconstructing this tradition, of which there is as yet no question, we should still have only a book with a certain literary form or composition, arranged on the lines of literary composition. “By means of the sayings-source we do not at once reach Jesus, but the community. ”

“ We may add that, when religious education and the Church do all they can to impress on the people this false view of the ethic of Jesus, they rely not only on the thoughtlessness of the masses, but on the fact that very few know anything about Greek or Hindoo philosophy and religion.↑ See also Nork, Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentl. ”

“ Schabboth, 31a.↑ “Jesus by no means ‘discovered’ altruism in ethics. Hellenistic moralists urged altruism long before the birth of Jesus. If the ethic of Jesus seems particularly altruistic, this is due, apart from theological suggestion, to the fact that the altruistic maxims of Jesus may seem less restricted and more impressive than in the case of the Greeks, because the scientific capacity, and therefore the scientific control of a new ethic, were slighter in the case of the Jews and Jesus than among the Greeks and their leading thinkers” (Schneider, p. 476) . ”

“ Such an assumption is a sheer petitio principii, and runs counter to the familiar experience that, when the religious leaders of a people lapse into formalism, the stream of inner religious life runs freely in other channels, and may produce new and remarkable phenomena. ”