Collected Essays Part 22

Thus, the hypothesis, to which Mr. Gladstone so fondly clings, finds no support in the provisions of the "Law of Moses" as that law is defined in the Pentateuch; while it is wholly inconsistent with the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, to which Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight. In my judgment, it is directly contrary to everything which profane history tells us about the const.i.tution and the population of the city of Gadara; and it commits those who accept it to a story which, if it were true, would implicate the founder of Christianity in an illegal and inequitable act.

Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following Mr.

Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to extricate himself from the maze of historical and exegetical difficulties in which he is entangled. I content myself with a.s.suring those who, with my paper (not Mr. Gladstone's version of my arguments) in hand, consult the original authorities, that they will find full justification for every statement I have made. But in order to dispose those who cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the following examination, which shall be as brief as I can make it, of the seven propositions in which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary of my "errors."

When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Holy See declared that certain propositions contained in the work of Bishop Jansen were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal replied that, while they were ready to defer to the Papal authority about questions of faith and morals, they must be permitted to judge about questions of fact for themselves; and that, really, the condemned propositions were not to be found in Jansen's writings. As everybody knows, His Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this, surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of Lord Peter in the "Tale of a Tub." It is, therefore, not without some apprehension of meeting with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea against Mr. Gladstone's Bull. The seven propositions declared to be false and condemnable, in that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly compares with the authoritative style of the Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may not be true. But they are not to be found in anything I have written. And some of them diametrically contravene that which I have written. I proceed to prove my a.s.sertions.

PROP. 1. _Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomoerium, but as a rural district_.

In my judgment, this statement is devoid of foundation. In my paper on "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine" I point out, at some length, that, "in accordance with the ancient h.e.l.lenic practice," each city of the Decapolis must have been "surrounded by a certain amount of territory amenable to its jurisdiction": and, to enforce this conclusion, I quote what Josephus says about the "villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos." As I understand the term _pomerium_ or _pomoerium_,[113]

it means the s.p.a.ce which, according to Roman custom, was kept free from buildings, immediately within and without the walls of a city; and which defined the range of the _auspicia urbana_. The conception of a _pomoerium_ as a "vicinage attached to" a city, appears to be something quite novel and original. But then, to be sure, I do not know how many senses Mr. Gladstone may attach to the word "vicinage."

Whether Gadara had a _pomoerium_, in the proper technical sense, or not, is a point on which I offer no opinion. But that the city had a very considerable "rural district" attached to it and notwithstanding its distinctness, amenable to the jurisdiction of the Gentile munic.i.p.al authorities, is one of the main points of my case.

PROP. 2. _He more fatally confounds the local civil government and its following, including, perhaps, the whole wealthy cla.s.s and those attached to it, with the ethnical character of a general population._

Having survived confusion No. 1, which turns out not to be on my side, I am now confronted in No. 2 with a "more fatal" error--and so it is, if there be degrees of fatality; but, again, it is Mr. Gladstone's and not mine. It would appear, from this proposition (about the grammatical interpretation of which, however, I admit there are difficulties), that Mr. Gladstone holds that the "local civil government and its following among the wealthy," were ethnically different from the "general population." On p. 348, he further admits that the "wealthy and the local governing power" were friendly to the Romans. Are we then to suppose that it was the persons of Jewish "ethnical character" who favoured the Romans, while those of Gentile "ethnical character" were opposed to them? But, if that supposition is absurd, the only alternative is that the local civil government was ethnically Gentile. This is exactly my contention.

At pp. 379 to 391 of the essay on "The Keepers of the Herd of Swine" I have fully discussed the question of the ethnical character of the general population. I have shown that, according to Josephus, who surely ought to have known, Gadara was as much a Gentile city as Ptolemais; I have proved that he includes Gadara amongst the cities "that rose up against the Jews that were amongst them," which is a pretty definite expression of his belief that the "ethnical character of the general population" was Gentile. There is no question here of Jews of the Roman party fighting with Jews of the Zealot party, as Mr.

Gladstone suggests. It is the non-Jewish and anti-Jewish general population which rises up against the Jews who had settled "among them."

PROP. 3. _His one item of direct evidence as to the Gentile character of the city refers only to the former and not to the latter_.

More fatal still. But, once more, not to me. I adduce not one, but a variety of "items" in proof of the non-Judaic character of the population of Gadara: the evidence of history; that of the coinage of the city; the direct testimony of Josephus, just cited--to mention no others. I repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected with them--the "cla.s.ses" and the "hangers on" of Mr. Gladstone's well-known taxonomy--were, as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles; if the "civil government" of the city was in their hands, as the coinage proves it was; what becomes of Mr. Gladstone's original proposition in "The Impregnable Rock of Scripture" that "the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the population of the neighbourhood," were "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law"? And what is the importance of estimating the precise proportion of Hebrews who may have resided, either in the city of Gadara or in its independent territory, when, as Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful to say "seems"), the government, and consequently the law, which ruled in that territory and defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not Judaic? But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared to maintain that the Gentile "local civil government" of a city of the Decapolis administered Jewish law; and showed their respect for it, more particularly, by stamping their coinage with effigies of the Emperors.

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone has given away his case.

PROP. 4. _He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and a.s.sumes that those who took the side of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not be subject to the Mosaic Law_.

It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of life; once more, a "fatal error." But Mr. Gladstone has forgotten an excellent rule of controversy; say what is true, of course, but mind that it is decently probable. Now it is not decently probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one who has read Josephus, or any other historian of the Jewish war, should be unaware that there were Jews (of whom Josephus himself was one) who "Romanised" and, more or less openly, opposed the war party. But, however that may be, I a.s.sert that Mr. Gladstone neither has produced, nor can produce, a pa.s.sage of my writing which affords the slightest foundation for this particular article of his indictment.

PROP. 5. _His examination of the text of Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and erroneous._

Easy to say, hard to prove. So long as the authorities whom I have cited are on my side, I do not know why this singularly temperate and convincing dictum should trouble me. I have yet to become acquainted with Mr. Gladstone's claims to speak with an authority equal to that of scholars of the rank of Schurer, whose obviously just and necessary emendations he so unceremoniously pooh-poohs.

PROP. 6. _Finally, he sets aside, on grounds not critical or historical, but partly subjective, the primary historical testimony on the subject, namely, that of the three Synoptic Evangelists, who write as contemporaries and deal directly with the subject, neither of which is done by any other authority_.

Really this is too much! The fact is, as anybody can see who will turn to my article of February 1889 [VII. _supra_], out of which all this discussion has arisen, that the arguments upon which I rest the strength of my case touching the swine-miracle, are exactly "historical" and "critical." Expressly, and in words that cannot be misunderstood, I refuse to rest on what Mr. Gladstone calls "subjective" evidence. I abstain from denying the possibility of the Gadarene occurrence, and I even go so far as to speak of some physical a.n.a.logies to possession. In fact, my quondam opponent, Dr. Wace, shrewdly, but quite fairly, made the most of these admissions; and stated that I had removed the only "consideration which would have been a serious obstacle" in the way of his belief in the Gadarene story.[114]

So far from setting aside the authority of the synoptics on "subjective" grounds, I have taken a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief in the story is based upon what appears to me to be evident; firstly, that the accounts of the three synoptic Gospels are not independent, but are founded upon a common source; secondly, that, even if the story of the common tradition proceeded from a contemporary, it would still be worthy of very little credit, seeing the manner in which the legends about mediaeval miracles have been propounded by contemporaries. And in ill.u.s.tration of this position I wrote a special essay about the miracles reported by Eginhard.[115]

In truth, one need go no further than Mr. Gladstone's sixth proposition to be convinced that contemporary testimony, even of well-known and distinguished persons, may be but a very frail reed for the support of the historian, when theological prepossession blinds the witness.[116]

PROP. 7. _And he treats the entire question, in the narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testimony, as if it were capable of a solution so clear and summary as to warrant the use of the extremest weapons of controversy against those who presume to differ from him._

The six heretical propositions which have gone before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to enable me to prove, without any difficulty, that, whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I cannot undertake to contradict that which I do not understand.

What is the "entire question" which "arises" in a "narrowed form" upon "secular testimony"? After much guessing, I am fain to give up the conundrum. The "question" may be the owners.h.i.+p of the pigs; or the ethnological character of the Gadarenes; or the propriety of meddling with other people's property without legal warrant. And each of these questions might be so "narrowed" when it arose on "secular testimony"

that I should not know where I was. So I am silent on this part of the proposition.

But I do dimly discern, in the latter moiety of this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of "the extremest weapons of controversy" which is attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by the maxim of a great statesman, "Do ut des." If Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such weapons of defence, he would do well to abstain from them in attack. He should not frame charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are erroneous, in language of carefully calculated offensiveness ("Impregnable Rock," pp. 269-70); he should not a.s.sume that persons with whom he disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said or known about a grave question ("Impregnable Rock," p. 273); he should not qualify the results of careful thought as "hand-over-head reasoning" ("Impregnable Rock," p. 274); he should not, as in the extraordinary propositions which I have just a.n.a.lysed, make a.s.sertions respecting his opponent's position and arguments which are contradicted by the plainest facts.

Persons who, like myself, have spent their lives outside the political world, yet take a mild and philosophical concern in what goes on in it, often find it difficult to understand what our neighbours call the psychological moment of this or that party leader, and are, occasionally, loth to believe in the seeming conditions of certain kinds of success. And when some chieftain, famous in political warfare, adventures into the region of letters or of science, in full confidence that the methods which have brought fame and honour in his own province will answer there, he is apt to forget that he will be judged by these people, on whom rhetorical artifices have long ceased to take effect; and to whom mere dexterity in putting together cleverly ambiguous phrases, and even the great art of offensive misrepresentation, are unspeakably wearisome. And, if that weariness finds its expression in sarcasm, the offender really has no right to cry out. a.s.suredly ridicule is no test of truth, but it is the righteous meed of some kinds of error. Nor ought the attempt to confound the expression of a revolted sense of fair dealing with arrogant impatience of contradiction, to restrain those to whom "the extreme weapons of controversy" come handy from using them. The function of police in the intellectual, if not in the civil, economy may sometimes be legitimately discharged by volunteers.

Some time ago in one of the many criticisms with which I am favoured, I met with the remark that, at our time of life, Mr. Gladstone and I might be better occupied than in fighting over the Gadarene pigs. And, if these too famous swine were the only parties to the suit, I, for my part, should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But, under the beneficent rule of the Court of Chancery, in former times, it was not uncommon, that a quarrel about a few perches of worthless land, ended in the ruin of ancient families and the engulfing of great estates; and I think that our admonisher failed to observe the a.n.a.logy--to note the momentous consequences of the judgment which may be awarded in the present apparently insignificant action _in re_ the swineherds of Gadara.

The immediate effect of such judgment will be the decision of the question, whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century, as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it, as degrading falsity. The reverend Princ.i.p.al of King's College has delivered his judgment in perfectly clear and candid terms. Two years since, Dr. Wace said that he believed the story as it stands; and consequently he holds, as a part of divine revelation, that the spiritual world comprises devils, who, under certain circ.u.mstances, may enter men and be transferred from them to four-footed beasts. For the distinguished Anglican Divine and Biblical scholar, that is part and parcel of the teachings respecting the spiritual world which we owe to the founder of Christianity. It is an inseparable part of that Christian orthodoxy which, if a man rejects, he is to be considered and called an "infidel." According to the ordinary rules of interpretation of language, Mr. Gladstone must hold the same view.

If antiquity and universality are valid tests of the truth of any belief, no doubt this is one of the beliefs so certified. There are no known savages, nor people sunk in the ignorance of partial civilisation, who do not hold them. The great majority of Christians have held them and still hold them. Moreover the oldest records we possess of the early conceptions of mankind in Egypt and in Mesopotamia prove that exactly such demonology, as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the substratum, and, among the early Accadians, apparently the greater part, of their supposed knowledge of the spiritual world. M. Lenormant's profoundly interesting work on Babylonian magic and the magical texts given in the Appendix to Professor Sayce's "Hibbert Lectures" leave no doubt on this head. They prove that the doctrine of possession, and even the particular case of pig, possession,[117] were firmly believed in by the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians before the tribes of Israel invaded Palestine. And it is evident that these beliefs, from some time after the exile and probably much earlier, completely interpenetrated the Jewish mind, and thus became inseparably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic Gospels.

Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance of the doctrines of the oldest heathen demonology as part of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, there lies the question of the credibility of the Gospels, and of their claim to act as our instructors, outside that ethical province in which they appeal to the consciousness of all thoughtful men. And still, behind this problem, there lies another--how far do these ancient records give a sure foundation to the prodigious fabric of Christian dogma, which has been built upon them by the continuous labours of speculative theologians, during eighteen centuries?

I submit that there are few questions before the men of the rising generation, on the answer to which the future hangs more fatally, than this. We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the twentieth century shall see a recrudescence of the superst.i.tions of mediaeval papistry, or whether it shall witness the severance of the living body of the ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the carcase, foul with savage superst.i.tions and cankered with false philosophy, to which the theologians have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of the Gadarene tale.

The gravity of the problems ultimately involved in the discussion of the legend of Gadara will, I hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the subject, to which I should not have been moved by merely personal considerations.

With respect to the diluvial invective which overflowed thirty-three pages of the "Nineteenth Century" last January, I doubt not that it has a catastrophic importance in the estimation of its author. I, on the other hand, may be permitted to regard it as a mere spate; noisy and threatening while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it was over. Without my help, it will be judged by every instructed and clear-headed reader; and that is fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I have cogent reasons for withholding it.

In an article characterised by the same qualities of thought and diction, ent.i.tled "A Great Lesson," which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged the whole body of men of science, interested in the question, with having conspired to ignore certain criticisms of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of coral reefs; and, secondly, he a.s.serted that some person unnamed had "actually induced" Mr. John Murray to delay the publication of his views on that subject "for two years."

It was easy for me and for others to prove that the first statement was not only, to use the Duke of Argyll's favourite expression, "contrary to fact," but that it was without any foundation whatever.

The second statement rested on the Duke of Argyll's personal authority. All I could do was to demand the production of the evidence for it. Up to the present time, so far as I know, that evidence has not made its appearance; nor has there been any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous charge.

Under these circ.u.mstances most people will understand why the Duke of Argyll may feel quite secure of having the battle all to himself, whenever it pleases him to attack me.

[See the note at the end of "Hasisadra's Adventure" (vol iv. p. 283).

The discussion on coral reefs, at the meeting of the British a.s.sociation this year, proves that Mr. Darwin's views are defended now, as strongly as in 1891, by highly competent authorities. October 25, 1893.]

FOOTNOTES:

[107] _Nineteenth Century_, February 1891, pp. 339-40.

[108] Neither is it of any consequence whether the locality of the supposed miracle was Gadara, or Gerasa, or Gergesa. But I may say that I was well acquainted with Origen's opinion respecting Gergesa. It is fully discussed and rejected in Riehm's _Handworterbuch_. In Kitto's _Biblical Cyclopaedia_ (ii. p. 51) Professor Porter remarks that Origen merely "_conjectures_" that Gergesa was indicated: and he adds, "Now, in a question of this kind conjectures cannot be admitted. We must implicitly follow the most ancient and creditable testimony, which clearly p.r.o.nounces in favour of Gadarenhon. This reading is adopted by Tischendorf, Alford, and Tregelles."

[109] I may call attention, in pa.s.sing, to the fact that this authority, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of "Gadara," in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of the place consisted "predominantly of heathens"), and that he scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews.

[110] The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are concerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this a.s.sertion.

[111] Even Leviticus xi. 26, cited without reference to the context, will not serve the purpose; because the swine _is_ "cloven-footed" (Lev. xi. 7).

[112] 1st Gospel: "And the devils _besought him_, saying, If Thou cast us out send us away _into_ the herd of swine." 2d Gospel: "They _besought him_, saying, Send us _into_ the swine." 3d Gospel: "They _intreated him_ that he would give them leave to enter _into_ them."

[113] See Marquardt, _Romische Staatsverwaltung_, Bd. III.

p. 408.

[114] _Nineteenth Century_, March 1889 (p. 362).