A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Evidences of Christianity by William Paley

W >> William Paley >> Evidences of Christianity





The examples here collected will be sufficient, I hope, to satisfy us
that the writers of the Christian history knew something of what they
were writing about. The argument is also strengthened by the following
considerations:

I. That these agreements appear not only in articles of public history,
but sometimes in minute, recondite, and very peculiar circumstances, in
which, of all others, a forger is most likely to have been found
tripping.

II. That the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place forty years
after the commencement of the Christian institution, produced such a
change in the state of the country, and the condition of the Jews, that
a writer who was unacquainted with the circumstances of the nation
before that event would find it difficult to avoid mistakes, in
endeavouring to give detailed accounts of transactions connected with
those circumstances, forasmuch as he could no longer have a living
exemplar to copy from.

III. That there appears, in the writers of the New Testament, a
knowledge of the affairs of those times which we do not find in authors
of later ages. In particular, "many of the Christian writers of the
second and third centuries, and of the following ages, had false notions
concerning the state of Judea between the nativity of Jesus and the
destruction of Jerusalem." (Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 960.) Therefore
they could not have composed our histories.

Amidst so many conformities we are not to wonder that we meet with some
difficulties. The principal of these I will put down, together with the
solutions which they have received. But in doing this I must be
contented with a brevity better suited to the limits of my volume than
to the nature of a controversial argument. For the historical proofs of
my assertions, and for the Greek criticisms upon which some of them are
founded, I refer the reader to the second volume of the first part of
Dr. Lardner's large work.

I. The taxing during which Jesus was born was "first made," as we read,
according to our translation, in Saint Luke, "whilst Cyrenius was
governor of Syria." (Chap. ii. ver. 2.) Now it turns out that Cyrenius
was not governor of Syria until twelve, or at the soonest, ten years
after the birth of Christ; and that a taxing census, or assessment, was
made in Judea, in the beginning of his government, The charge,
therefore, brought against the evangelist is, that, intending to refer
to this taxing, he has misplaced the date of it by an error of ten or
twelve years.

The answer to the accusation is founded in his using the word
"first:"--"And this taxing was first made:" for, according to the
mistake imputed to the evangelist, this word could have no signification
whatever; it could have had no place in his narrative; because, let it
relate to what it will, taxing, census, enrolment, or assessment, it
imports that the writer had more than one of those in contemplation. It
acquits him therefore of the charge: it is inconsistent with the
supposition of his knowing only of the taxing in the beginning of
Cyrenius's government. And if the evangelist knew (which this word
proves that he did) of some other taxing beside that, it is too much,
for the sake of convicting him of a mistake, to lay it down as certain
that he intended to refer to that.

The sentence in Saint Luke may be construed thus: "This was the first
assessment (or enrolment) of Cyrenius, governor of Syria;"* the words
"governor of Syria" being used after the name of Cyrenius as his
addition or title. And this title, belonging to him at the time of
writing the account, was naturally enough subjoined to his name, though
acquired after the transaction which the account describes. A modern
writer who was not very exact in the choice of his expressions, in
relating the affairs of the East Indies, might easily say that such a
thing was done by Governor Hastings; though, in truth, the thing had
been done by him before his advancement to the station from which he
received the name of governor. And this, as we contend, is precisely the
inaccuracy which has produced the difficulty in Saint Luke.

_________

* If the word which we render "first" be rendered "before," which it
has been strongly contended that the Greek idiom shows of, the whole
difficulty vanishes: for then the passage would be,--"Now this taxing
was made before Cyreulus was governor of Syria;" which corresponds with
the chronology. But I rather choose to argue, that however the word
"first" be rendered, to give it a meaning at all, it militates with the
objection. In this I think there can be no mistake.
_________


At any rate it appears from the form of the expression that he had two
taxings or enrolments in contemplation. And if Cyrenius had been sent
upon this business into Judea before he became governor of Syria
(against which supposition there is no proof, but rather external
evidence of an enrolment going on about this time under some person or
other +), then the census on all hands acknowledged to have been made by
him in the beginning of his government would form a second, so as to
occasion the other to be called the first.

_________

+ Josephus (Antiq. xvii. c. 2, sect. 6.) has this remarkable message:
"When therefore the whole Jewish nation took an oath to be faithful to
Caesar, and the interests of the king." This transaction corresponds in
the course of the history with the time of Christ's birth. What is
called a census, and which we render taxing, was delivering upon oath an
account of their property. This might be accompanied with an oath of
fidelity, or might be mistaken by Josephus for it.
_________


II. Another chronological objection arises upon a date assigned in the
beginning of the third chapter of Saint Luke. (Lardner, part i. vol. ii.
p. 768.) "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
Caesar,--Jesus began to be about thirty years of age:" for, supposing
Jesus to have been born as Saint Matthew and Saint Luke also himself
relate, in the time of Herod, he must, according to the dates given in
Josephus and by the Roman historians, have been at least thirty-one
years of age in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. If he was born, as Saint
Matthew's narrative intimates, one or two years before Herod's death, he
would have been thirty-two or thirty-three years old at that time.

This is the difficulty: the solution turns upon an alteration in the
construction of the Greek. Saint Luke's words in the original are
allowed, by the general opinion of learned men, to signify, not "that
Jesus began to be about thirty years of age," but "that he was about
thirty years of age when he began his ministry." This construction being
admitted, the adverb "about" gives us all the latitude we want, and more
especially when applied, as it is in the present instance, to a decimal
number; for such numbers, even without this qualifying addition, are
often used in a laxer sense than is here contended for.*

_________

* Livy, speaking of the peace which the conduct of Romulus had procured to
the state, during the whole reign of his successor (Numa), has these
words: "Ab illo enim profectis viribus datis tautum valuit, ut, in
quaaraginta deiade annos, tutam proem haberet:" yet afterwards in the
same chapter, "Romulus," he says, "septera et triginta regnavit annos.
Numa tres et quadraginta." (Liv. Hist. c. i. sect. 16.)
_________


III. Acts v. 36. "For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting
himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred,
joined themselves: who were slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were
scattered and brought to nought."

Josephus has preserved the account of an impostor of the name of
Theudas, who created some disturbances, and was slain; but according to
the date assigned to this man's appearance (in which, however, it is
very possible that Josephus may have been mistaken), (Michaelis's
Introduction to the New Testament [Marsh's translation], vol. i. p. 61.)
it must have been, at the least, seven years after Gamaliel's speech, of
which this text is a part, was delivered. It has been replied to the
objection, (Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 92.) that there might be two
impostors of this name: and it has been observed, in order to give a
general probability to the solution, that the same thing appears to have
happened in other instances of the same kind. It is proved from
Josephus, that there were not fewer than four persons of the name of
Simon within forty years, and not fewer than three of the name of Judas
within ten years, who were all leaders of insurrections: and it is
likewise recorded by this historian, that upon the death of Herod the
Great (which agrees very well with the time of the commotion referred to
by Gamaliel, and with his manner of stating that time, "before these
days") there were innumerable disturbances in Judea. (Antiq. 1. 17, c.
12. sect. 4.) Archbishop Usher was of opinion, that one of the three
Judases above mentioned was Gamaliel's Theudas; (Annals, p. 797.) and
that with a less variation of the name than we actually find in the
Gospel, where one of the twelve apostles is called, by Luke, Judas; and
by Mark, Thaddeus. (Luke vi. 16. Mark iii. 18.) Origen, however he came
at his information, appears to have believed that there was an impostor
of the name of Theudas before the nativity of Christ. (Orig. cont Cels.
p. 44.)

IV. Matt. xxiii. 34. "Wherefore, behold I send unto you prophets, and
wise men, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and
some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them
from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed
upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of
Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the
altar."

There is a Zacharias whose death is related in the second book of
Chronicles,* in a manner which perfectly supports our Saviour's
allusion. But this Zacharias was the son of Jehoiada.

_________

* "And the Spirit of God came upon Zacharias, the son of Jehoiada the
priest, which stood above the people, and mid unto them, Thus saith God,
Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord that ye cannot prosper?
Because ye hive forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. And they
conspired against him, and stoned him with stones, at the commandment of
the king, in the court of the house of the Lord." 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, 21.
_________


There is also Zacharias the prophet; who was the son of Barachiah, and
is so described in the superscription of his prophecy, but of whose
death we have no account.

I have little doubt but that the first Zacharias was the person spoken
of by our Saviour; and that the name of the father has been since added
or changed, by some one who took it from the title of the prophecy,
which happened to be better known to him than the history in the
Chronicles.

There is likewise a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, related by Josephus to
have been slain in the temple a few years before the destruction of
Jerusalem. It has been insinuated that the words put into our Saviour's
mouth contain a reference to this transaction, and were composed by some
writer who either confounded the time of the transaction with our
Saviour's age, or inadvertently overlooked the anachronism.

Now, suppose it to have been so; suppose these words to have been
suggested by the transaction related in Josephus, and to have been
falsely ascribed to Christ; and observe what extraordinary coincidences
(accidentally as it must in that case have been) attend the forger's
mistake.

First, that we have a Zacharias in the book of Chronicles, whose death,
and the manner of it, corresponds with the allusion.

Secondly, that although the name of this person's father be erroneously
put down in the Gospel, yet we have a way of accounting for the error by
showing another Zacharias in the Jewish Scriptures much better known
than the former, whose patronymic was actually that which appears in the
text.

Every one who thinks upon the subject will find these to be
circumstances which could not have met together in a mistake which did
not proceed from the circumstances themselves.

I have noticed, I think, all the difficulties of this kind. They are
few: some of them admit of a clear, others of a probable solution. The
reader will compare them with the number, the variety, the closeness,
and the satisfactoriness, of the instances which are to be set against
them; and he will remember the scantiness, in many cases, of our
intelligence, and that difficulties always attend imperfect information.





CHAPTER VII.

UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES.

Between the letters which bear the name of Saint Paul in our collection
and his history in the Acts of the Apostles there exist many notes of
correspondency. The simple perusal of the writings is sufficient to
prove that neither the history was taken from the letters, nor the
letters from the history. And the undesignedness of the agreements
(which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness,
their obliquity, the suitableness of the circumstances in which they
consist to the places in which those circumstances occur, and the
circuitous references by which they are traced out) demonstrates that
they have not been produced by meditation, or by any fraudulent
contrivance. But coincidences, from which these causes are excluded, and
which are too close and numerous to be accounted for by accidental
concurrences of fiction, must necessarily have truth for their
foundation. This argument appeared to my mind of so much value
(especially for its assuming nothing beside the existence of the books),
that I have pursued it through Saint Paul's thirteen epistles, in a work
published by me four years ago, under the title of Horae Paulinae. I am
sensible how feebly any argument which depends upon an induction of
particulars is represented without examples. On which account I wished
to have abridged my own volume, in the manner in which I have treated
Dr. Lardner's in the preceding chapter. But, upon making the attempt, I
did not find it in my power to render the articles intelligible by fewer
words than I have there used. I must be content, therefore, to refer the
reader to the work itself. And I would particularly invite his attention
to the observations which are made in it upon the first three epistles.
I persuade myself that he will find the proofs, both of agreement, and
undesignedness, supplied by these epistles, sufficient to support the
conclusion which is there maintained, in favour both of the genuineness
of the writings and the truth of the narrative.

It remains only, in this place, to point out how the argument bears upon
the general question of the Christian history.

First, Saint Paul in these letters affirms, in unequivocal terms, his
own performance of miracles, and, what ought particularly to be
remembered, "That miracles were the signs of an Apostle." (Rom. xv. 18,
19. 2 Cor. xii. 12.) If this testimony come from Saint Paul's own hand,
it is invaluable. And that it does so, the argument before us fixes in
my mind a firm assurance.

Secondly, it shows that the series of action represented in the epistles
of Saint Paul was real; which alone lays a foundation for the
proposition which forms the subject of the first part of our present
work, viz. that the original witnesses of the Christian history devoted
themselves to lives of toil, suffering, and danger, in consequence of
their belief of the truth of that history, and for the sake of
communicating the knowledge of it to others.

Thirdly, it proves that Luke, or whoever was the author of the Acts of
the Apostles (for the argument does not depend upon the name of the
author, though I know no reason for questioning it), was well acquainted
with Saint Paul's history; and that he probably was, what he professes
himself to be, a companion of Saint Paul's travels; which, if true,
establishes, in a considerable degree, the credit even of his Gospel,
because it shows that the writer, from his time, situation, and
connexions, possessed opportunities of informing himself truly
concerning the transactions which he relates. I have little difficulty
in applying to the Gospel of Saint Luke what is proved concerning the
Acts of the Apostles, considering them as two parts of the same history;
for though there are instances of second parts being forgeries, I know
none where the second part is genuine, and the first not so.

I will only observe, as a sequel of the argument, though not noticed in
my work, the remarkable similitude between the style of Saint John's
Gospel and of Saint John's Epistle. The style of Saint John's is not at
all the style of Saint Paul's Epistles, though both are very singular;
nor is it the style of Saint James's or of Saint Peter's Epistles: but
it bears a resemblance to the style of the Gospel inscribed with Saint
John's name, so far as that resemblance can be expected to appear, which
is not in simple narrative, so much as in reflections, and in the
representation of discourses. Writings so circumstanced prove
themselves, and one another, to be genuine. This correspondency is the
more valuable, as the epistle itself asserts, in Saint John's manner,
indeed, but in terms sufficiently explicit, the writer's personal
knowledge of Christ's history: "That which was from the beginning, which
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life; that which we
have seen and heard, declare we unto you." (Ch. i. ver. 1--3.)Who would
not desire, who perceives not the value of an account delivered by a
writer so well informed as this?





CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE HISTORY OF THE RESURRECTION.

The history of the resurrection of Christ is a part of the evidence of
Christianity: but I do not know whether the proper strength of this
passage of the Christian history, or wherein its peculiar value, as a
head of evidence, consists, be generally understood. It is not that, as
a miracle, the resurrection ought to be accounted a more decisive
proof of supernatural agency than other miracles are; it is not that, as
it stands in the Gospels, it is better attested than some others; it is
not, for either of these reasons, that more weight belongs to it than to
other miracles, but for the following, viz., That it is completely
certain that the apostles of Christ, and the first teachers of
Christianity, asserted the fact. And this would have been certain, if
the four Gospels had been lost, or never written. Every piece of
Scripture recognizes the resurrection. Every epistle of every apostle,
every author contemporary with the apostles, of the age immediately
succeeding the apostles, every writing from that age to the present
genuine or spurious, on the side of Christianity or against it, concur
in representing the resurrection of Christ as an article of his history,
received without doubt or disagreement by all who called themselves
Christians, as alleged from the beginning by the propagators of the
institution, and alleged as the centre of their testimony. Nothing, I
apprehend, which a man does not himself see or hear can be more certain
to him than this point. I do not mean that nothing can be more certain
than that Christ rose from the dead; but that nothing can be more
certain than that his apostles, and the first teachers of Christianity,
gave out that he did so. In the other parts of the Gospel narrative, a
question may be made, whether the things related of Christ be the very
things which the apostles and first teachers of the religion delivered
concerning him? And this question depends a good deal upon the evidence
we possess of the genuineness, or rather perhaps of the antiquity,
credit, and reception of the books. On the subject of the resurrection,
no such discussion is necessary, because no such doubt can be
entertained. The only points which can enter into our consideration are,
whether the apostles knowingly published a falsehood, or whether they
were themselves deceived; whether either of these suppositions be
possible. The first, I think, is pretty generally given up. The nature
of the undertaking, and of the men; the extreme unlikelihood that such
men should engage in such a measure as a scheme; their personal toils,
and dangers and sufferings in the cause; their appropriation of their
whole time to the object; the warm and seemingly unaffected zeal and
earnestness with which they profess their sincerity exempt
their memory from the suspicion of imposture. The solution more
deserving of notice is that which would resolve the conduct of the
apostles into enthusiasm; which would class the evidence of Christ's
resurrection with the numerous stories that are extant of the
apparitions of dead men. There are circumstances in the narrative, as it
is preserved in our histories, which destroy this comparison entirely.
It was not one person but many, who saw him; they saw him not only
separately but together, not only by night but by day, not at a distance
but near, not once but several times; they not only saw him, but touched
him, conversed with him, ate with him, examined his person to satisfy
their doubts. These particulars are decisive: but they stand, I do
admit, upon the credit of our records. I would answer, therefore, the
insinuation of enthusiasm, by a circumstance which arises out of the
nature of the thing; and the reality of which must be confessed by all
who allow, what I believe is not denied, that the resurrection of
Christ, whether true or false, was asserted by his disciples from the
beginning; and that circumstance is, the non-production of the dead
body. It is related in the history, what indeed the story of the
resurrection necessarily implies, that the corpse was missing out of the
sepulchre: it is related also in the history, that the Jews reported
that the followers of Christ had stolen it away.* And this account,
though loaded with great improbabilities, such as the situation of the
disciples, their fears for their own safety at the time, the
unlikelihood of their expecting to succeed, the difficulty of actual
success,+ and the inevitable consequence of detection and failure, was,
nevertheless, the most credible account that could be given of the
matter. But it proceeds entirely upon the supposition of fraud, as all
the old objections did. What account can be given of the body, upon the
supposition of enthusiasm? It is impossible our Lord's followers could
believe that he was risen from the dead, if his corpse was lying before
them. No enthusiasm ever reached to such a pitch of extravagancy as
that: a spirit may be an illusion; a body is a real thing, an object of
sense, in which there can be no mistake. All accounts of spectres leave
the body in the grave. And although the body of Christ might be removed
by fraud, and for the purposes of fraud, yet without any such intention,
and by sincere but deluded men (which is the representation of the
apostolic character we are now examining), no such attempt could be
made. The presence and the absence of the dead body are alike
inconsistent with the hypothesis of enthusiasm: for if present, it must
have cured their enthusiasm at once; if absent, fraud, not enthusiasm,
must have carried it away.

_________

* "And this saying," Saint Matthew writes, "is commonly reported amongst
the Jews until this day" (chap. xxviii. 15). The evangelist may be
thought good authority as to this point, even by those who do not admit
his evidence in every other point: and this point is sufficient to prove
that the body was missing. It has been rightly, I think, observed by Dr.
Townshend (Dis. upon the Res. p. 126), that the story of the guards
carried collusion upon the face of it:--"His disciples came by night,
and stole him away while we slept." Men in their circumstances would not
have made such an acknowledgment of their negligence without previous
assurances of protection and impunity.

+ "Especially at the full moon, the city full of people, many probably
passing the whole night, as Jesus and his disciples had done, in the
open air, the sepulchre so near the city as to be now enclosed within
the walls." Priestley on the Resurr. p. 24.
_________


But further, if we admit, upon the concurrent testimony of all the
histories, so much of the account as states that the religion of Jesus
was set up at Jerusalem, and set up with asserting, in the very place in
which he had been buried, and a few days after he had been buried, his
resurrection out of the grave, it is evident that, if his body could
have been found, the Jews would have produced it, as the shortest and
completest answer possible to the whole story. The attempt of the
apostles could not have survived this refutation a moment. If we also
admit, upon the authority of Saint Matthew, that the Jews were
advertised of the expectation of Christ's followers, and that they had
taken due precaution in consequence of this notice, and that the body
was in marked and public custody, the observation receives more force
still. For notwithstanding their precaution and although thus prepared
and forewarned; when the story of the resurrection of Christ came forth,
as it immediately did; when it was publicly asserted by his disciples,
and made the ground and basis of their preaching in his name, and
collecting followers to his religion, the Jews had not the body to
produce; but were obliged to meet the testimony of the apostles by an
answer not containing indeed any impossibility in itself, but absolutely
inconsistent with the supposition of their integrity; that is, in other
words, inconsistent with the supposition which would resolve their
conduct into enthusiasm.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841"

F. Marion Crawford - "Doctor Claudius, A True Story"

Elizabeth Bibesco - "Balloons"

Samuel Smiles - "Thrift"

Obituary: Donald Westlake
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Theatre review: Three Women, Jermyn Street, London
Obituary: Prolific crime novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and man of many pseudonyms

Obama to feature in Marvel comic

We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds