The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus.
301
Ernest Renan
§ 29. Now follow long discourses which possess a certain beauty, but which, there can be no doubt, contain nothing traditional. These are fragments of theology and rhetoric, having no analogy to the discourses of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels, and to which we must not attribute any more historical reality than to the discourses which Plato puts into the mouth of his master at the moment of dying. Nothing must be concluded hence as to the value of the context. The discourses inserted by Sallust and Titus Livy in their histories are assuredly fictions; but are we to conclude from this that the basis of these histories is fictitious ) It is probable, moreover, that in these homilies attributed to Jesus there is one feature which is of historic value, Thus, the promise of the Holy Spirit (xiv. 16 et seq. 26; xv. 26; xvi. 7, 13), which Mark and Matthew do not give in a direct form, are found in Luke (xxiv. 49), and correspond with a statement in Acts (ii.) which must have had some reality. In any case, this idea of a spirit which Jesus will send from the bosom of his Father, when he shall have quitted the earth, is another instance of agreement with Luke (Acts i. and ii.). The idea of the Holy Spirit concerned as Mediator (Paraclete) is also found, especially in Luke (xii. 11, 12; comp. Matthew x. 20; Mark xiii. 11). The scheme of the Ascension, explained by Luke, finds its obscure germ in our author (xvi. 7). § 30. After the Supper our evangelist, like the synoptics, conducts Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane (chap. xviii.). The topography of v. 1 is exact. Τõνχέδρον may be an inadvertence of the copyist, or, if we might say so, of the editor, of him who prepared the narrative for the public. The same error is to be found in the Septuagint (2 Sam. xv. 23). The Codex Sinaïticus bears τοῦχέδρου. The true reading τοῦχέδρόυ would appear strange to people who did not know Greek. I have elsewhere already explained the omission of the agony at this particular moment, an omission in which I see an argument in favour of the account of the fourth Gospel. The arrest of Jesus is also much better told. The incident of the kissing of Judas, so touching, so beautiful, but which has a legendary odour, is passed over in silence. Jesus names himself and frees himself. This is, indeed, a very useless miracle (v. 6); but the incident of Jesus requesting of them to let the disciples go away which acompanied it (v. 8) is plausible. It is quite possible that the latter may have been at first arrested with their master. Faithful to his habits of precision—whether real or apparent—our author knew the names of the two persons who were for the moment engaged in a struggle, from which resulted a slight effusion of blood. But here follows the proof the most sensible which our author possesses on the Passion—evidence much more original than that of the other evangelists. He alone causes Jesus to be conducted to Annas or Hanan, the father-in-law of Kaïaphas. Josephus confirms the correctness of this account, and Luke seems here again to gather a sort of echo of our Gospel. Hanan had for a long time been deposed from the Pontificate; but, during the remainder of his long life, he in reality retained the power, which he exercised under the names of his son and sons-in-law, who
219
www.servantofmessiah.org