CHAPTER VII

THE INVENTION OF SUCH A CHARACTER

IMPOSSIBLE

I. The invention by human beings of such a character as Jesus Christ would have been impossible.

Infidelity boldly charges that Jesus Christ was a fictitious character; and, therefore, for the purpose of determining the value of the evidence to support the charge on the one hand and to refute it on the other, let us imagine that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with minds unaided by inspiration and unguided by truth, simply entered into a conspiracy to manufacture the character and write the life of the Messiah, the Son of God.

They had two things to aid them in this sacrilegious conspiracy:

(1) Their natural abilities plus their education. (2) The descriptions of the Messiah as contained in the Old Testament.

Of the natural abilities of the men, nothing is known except what is revealed in their writings, and the same is true of their education. Nothing more than mediocre ability is shown, and none of

the four Gospels would indicate that the writer was a man of extensive learning.

Some familiarity with the prophecies relating to Christ is shown by Matthew, Luke, and John, but not much by Mark. Either direct or vague allusions to these prophecies are made by John thirty-six times, by Matthew twenty-seven times, by Luke nineteen times, and by Mark only four times.

Of these prophecies, I observe that many of them are so veiled and vague as to their meaning that no intelligent person attempting to fabricate a purely fictitious life of the Messiah would have thought of them as having the remotest connection with the subject. Indeed, most of these references to the prophecies are so vague that it requires an exercise of the imagination of zealous theologians to see any connection between them at all.

Assuming, then, that Christ is a fictitious person, one fact is established by these four writers with certainty, and that is that they desired to present the claims of the Messiah to the Jews alone. There is not the slightest intimation in any of the four books that the writer ever conceived the idea that the mission of the Messiah was to any persons outside of the Jews; and the prophecies concerning the Messiah, which constituted the only source from which

they could have drawn the picture and made it pleasing to the Jews, clearly sanctioned that idea. Indeed, according to the record, the boldest of all the apostles, Simon Peter, had to be convinced by a miracle that the Gentiles had any claim to the salvation provided by Christ, notwithstanding the fact that this same Christ, in his last message delivered just before the ascension to heaven, had commanded his disciples to go "into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark xvi. 15.)

The very commission that Christ gave to his twelve disciples prohibited all communication with the Gentiles.

"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matt. x. 5, 6.)

There can be no doubt about the fact that the Jewish conception of the Messiah was that he was to be an earthly king of the Jews, and the prophecies concerning him seem to encourage this view. All the disciples had the same conception of Christ up to the time he made himself known to them after his resurrection. They abandoned him when he died; and even the empty tomb did not convince

them, because it is said that after viewing the empty sepulcher they still "knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home." (John xx. 9, 10.) Even when two of them told the others they had seen him, they did not believe.

"And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them." (Mark xvi. 13.)

Even after his resurrection they still thought he was to be an earthly king.

"When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts i. 6.)

It is inconceivable that Jewish writers, drawing from Jewish prophecies for their information upon which to build the character of the Messiah they were to present to the Jews, should have painted the picture in a form not only unacceptable, but utterly detestable to the Jews.

The four books bear internal evidence that they were not written by the same person and that each book was composed by a different author. It is hardly possible that four persons, without any concert of action, could have painted the portrait of the

Messiah in colors so nearly alike; and, on the other hand, it is equally clear that four persons acting in concert would have produced greater harmony in describing events than is shown in the four Gospels. A forgery is always done with great accuracy as to details.

In order to copy the picture of the Messiah as portrayed in the prophecies found in the Old Testament, which prophecies constituted the only guide for authors seeking to manufacture a fictitious life and history of the Christ, the authors would have been compelled to make the picture attractive to the Jews. He was to be a prophet like unto Moses (Deut. xviii. 15-19), a king possessing an everlasting kingdom (Dan. vii. 14), a leader and commander of the people (Isa. lv. 4), and a great high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps. cx. 4.)

The writers of the four Gospels evidently had the idea that the Messiah was to come to the Jews alone, but the very fact that they did not paint the portrait in a manner pleasing to the Jews shows beyond all question that they were not writing a fictitious history.

By examining the four books together we find that the first three, generally called the Synoptic, simply record the acts and sayings of Jesus without