The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

We may therefore lay down the following rule: the more strictly the malady was confined to mental derangement, on which the word of Jesus might have an immediate moral influence, or in a comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the more possible was it for Jesus by his word λόγῳ (Matt. viii. 16), and instantly παραχρῆμα (Luke xiii. 13), to put an end to such states: on the other hand, the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a bodily disease, the more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able to relieve it in a purely psychological manner and at the first moment. From this rule results a second: namely, that to any extensive psychological influence on the part of Jesus the full recognition of his dignity as a prophet was requisite; whence it follows that at times and in districts where he had long had that reputation, he could effect more in this way than where he had it not.

If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall find that the first, viz., that of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, is not, so soon as we cease to consider the Evangelist’s narrative of it circumstantially correct, altogether destitute of probability. It is true that the words attributed to the demon seem to imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus; but this may be probably accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread fame of Jesus in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, had impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that Jesus was the Messiah, as the Evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet: a belief that would give effect to his words. As regards the state of this demoniac we are only told of his fixed idea (that he was possessed), and of his attacks of convulsions; his malady may therefore have been of the less rooted kind, and accessible to psychological influence. The cure of the Gadarenes is attended with more difficulty in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively little known on the eastern shore; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs is described as so violent and deep-seated a mania, that a word from Jesus [436]could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural explanation of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the narrative as having any foundation in fact, we must suppose that the description of the demoniac’s state, as well as other particulars, has been exaggerated by the legend.

The same judgment must be passed in relation to the cure of the boy who was lunatic, since an epilepsy which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the attacks of which were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the system for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years’ duration, which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that speech or an erect carriage was not permitted,90—that these afflictions should disappear at a word, no one who is not committed to dogmatical opinions can persuade himself. Lastly, least of all is it to be conceived, that even without the imposing influence of his presence, the miracle-worker could effect a cure at a distance, as Jesus is said to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish woman.

Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission, that Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal insanity or nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendancy of his manner and words (if indeed Venturini91 and Kaiser92 are not right in their conjecture, that patients of this class often believed themselves to be cured, when in fact the crisis only of their disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus; and that the Evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned nothing further of them, and thus knew nothing of their probable relapse). But while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in this field the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier cases, which alone could be cured psychologically, with the most difficult and complicated, to which such a treatment was totally inapplicable.93 Is the refusal of a sign on the part of Jesus reconcilable with such a manifestation of power as we have above defined,—or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically, but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be denied in order to make that refusal comprehensible? We will not here put this alternative otherwise than as a question.

If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that it does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission has not seldom been turned to the advantage of the Apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment.94 If however this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the Apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to [437]liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John’s adored master, from whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair’s breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporaries and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that the Apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel?

That he passed over them because the other Evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction,—we have seen, in our examination of the cures of demoniacs, that in many a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel.