Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (793 page)

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Authors: George Eliot

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ivni,ai,.8. 61. t 1, S. 276 f.
MIRACLES-KESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man? It is said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so ? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.
The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression : but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so ? That it was riot because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the evangelist (v. 5). What then ? Liicke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Pera;a, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake ot Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher call as a teacher. But he might here have very well done the one, and ^not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium ot a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. NowTHE LIFE OF JESUS.
another motive is clearly indicated, as Olsliausen lias remarked, in the declaration of Jesus, v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure.Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself.Tholuck and Olsliausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples ;* since,
 
according to expressions, such as ‘tva So^aoBTj b vlbg ~. 6. (y. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lucke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;! and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.^The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, pre-occupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,§ from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth evangelist is unhistorical.
The alleged conduct of the disciples also, v. 12 £, is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus, he sleeps, I will awake him, KSKoi^-ai, efynviou avrov, thiuk that he referred to a natural sleep ? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (KOIJUTJCK?) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech. ||
* Tholuck, S. 202 ; Olshausen, 2, 8. 260.
 
+ Ut sup. J Andachtsbuch, 1, S. 292
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MIEACLES----KESUSC1TATIONS OF THE DEAD.The observation of the Jews, v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death ? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee ; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,* especially as we are expressly told that the fame of them went abroad into all that land, throughout all Judcea, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them .refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.
A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus, v. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lucke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so th’at the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of. these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have token place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus iaTHE LIFE OF JESUS.
that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.* But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting.He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition ?If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel.While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son.Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation.But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later.This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a later hand.t But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding, v. 41; and to this opinion Lucke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.^: Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is oar security that it is so only with these ?--In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers-in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,-the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions^
As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three evangelists; the two * This argument applies also to Da Wette, who, while acknowledging that such an idea would be unsuitable in the mouth of Jesus, supposes nevertheless that it was really in *” ‘ -J 4- in-fu-rtti^cli. uber einige wahrscheinliche Interpolation^!} im Evangelium • •
 
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i.,fl9s. 310.
MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.others are each related by one evangelist only:* and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.
That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;-especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,-is a difficulty in more than one respect, f Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but lie had, as early as iii. 7. or 20. leaped from Luke vi. 12. (17.) to Matt. xii. 15; and only at iv. 35. (21 ff.) returns to Luke viii. 22. (16 ff.); thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel ? Even apart trom the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples, [tadrj-al luavol • the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus ;J lastly, the fame ot the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Sehlciermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the iiehcst harvest,-to Capernaum arid Jerusalem; events which, like ie resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so •easily become common property. But first, this conception of the C:«o is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most im<*»e Quell’80’ r>‘
 
* C°mp’ s,l’hk’iermacher. aber deQ Lukas, S. 103 ff.
 
} Saunier, tiberTHE LIFE OF JESUS.

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