HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 35, 27 December 1873, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

By the Abbe J. E. lUkbis.

(Translat ed from the French for the New Zbaianj) TABtttT.) JO.-HISTOBXCAL PBOO M 0* TH. kKAMTT OP TH* JoTONET TO _, . Bethxbhem. , * xt «n«c consideration*, borrowed from universal liinfomr A.« m SSI f?- d 3e ,V sh law * a * pee then in establishing the auXvolell e^T e l ° f JoBf P h . and M "J Bethlehem. But thfc is only oneside of the demonstration. As M. de V-eu6 iudioiouslv the tradition Not only v its history, like that of the other sacred places, established by mean* of incontestable facts, from ffie enoch of before oar mind, tlw oOcht petition «<ldtS by St jSn £ ported intoJudeaby^vVa^nTnd Sf o ?™^ to Christianity at the age of thirty W™h™ iI " * an eye-witness, bnt a witness who bavin* lileJin „„* m- s^'f" 0 * ° D J bracins ihe faith hnri f«,,*./i i,- """up lived in unbeliof before embeli.Ttag.i.nd ended by apoetney. SfcJmA. fa "SS, f". T° have been determined by uneicem^rShll ' c cx Pre9BeßP re9BeB J»m«elf, must words : « And Thou, BetWeVem Ephmta art a IH?L "" S" Kolity of tlm birth conftmtaj the anterior prapWe T, tahh eve. a demonstration sf the divinity of PKi.i.t;o n ' ri , . y ; ' up in pagani m. But in the year lfli *t n • m!-' .. orou 5 nT oSysevUv vea^had elapsed^The'deatlf of^S'SSS. 7o SKri^ m « H-"'^ 1 ' th 6 Christians coiUd ft to be adSd hi n BllbjeC ' a ""^Pttftw" legend, and have eaatod Lh«?,rS%hfn P -n7n 7 he V oatem P^arj generation, would be no less RoSa'a H f TS^l' *" °" P ?T' P«»»W^yof plncing in Napoleon I CftP ' f ° r eXara P le - the birth place of 31.— Trxphon 1 the Jew. Our modern rationalUJß do not recoiled before these evident imposibihtie, 'Such a leaend, they say. was aWnt from fie primitive text which has furnished the rou^h draft of the present Gospel of Matthew and Mark. It; was to meet ofWepwitod. objections fiiar it was aided to the beguimi.g of the aogpd of ifatthew." (2) Well ! Explain to us then, by what prodigy of inexplicable power, the Christians s'mtupintlieeatitoombi, given over to lions in the ampifheatre im! pmoned in nil the dungeons of Rome, could possibly h*ve succeeded in addmg thin- legend to the official texts of the registers of Quiriniw preserved in the imperial archives. Inform us how the forner could have cancelled the traces of his falsification; how he could have substituted apocryphal rolls for the tree ones j how he eouM, under Antoninus, find a K ain the seal of Augustus ; Low, forty vea^s after the ram of Jerusalem he could find the seal of Herod, to affix boh one awi the other to the documents of his posthnmous forging. Tl le registors of Qumnus were not «• those little boots which the Christians lent amongst each other, and m which each one transcribed, on the margm of his copy the words the proverbs, 1,0 found elsewhere, that touched him. ' (3) What mean theseevolu.ions of a puerile commentary, in presence ofhistor.o realities? Who will be found so credulous as to believe that the Ro,na D colonies in Pal*fi ie . remaining- faithful to the worship of the Gods of the Etapire, interested-mainlf through their khl for the divinity of CW-in suppressing Christianity in iN rue, would hare become the echo of a Christian legend, when the no t m question concorned a contemporary fact, and a locality in which t-iey were residing! Hue 13 not all. The same «tt Tn«tin i« fI,A e,lebrated co^ferenc-e he held at. Eome J& aTc^oHh Si' has left us the au hentio report, under the title of "Dialogue with X^phon , " returns to th» 9 leading fact : "When Jesus Christmas bo n at BeUilehem, he says Herod the King was informed of it by the Magi coming out of Arabia. He resolved to put the child to dta;lu.

But Joseph, by the order of God, look Jesus, with Mary his Mother < and fled into Egypt." (4) . It is thus St Justin spoke. What objection * will his interlocutor bring forward T . Listen to tho reply of the Jew : - Could not God have easily caused the death of Herod ? (5)- This is * the only argument which a Jew, Tryphon, himself perfectly conversant r with Gospel history, from the events of which he was separated only by an interval of eighty years, finds to oppose- to this recital:' But if ! Jesus Christ had not been born in Bethlehem ; ifHerod had never thought of putting the children of Bethlehem to death; it Joseph' ami Mafy had never gone into Egypt; if all these facts had bee* a Christian legend, without reality,withoutnotoriety,withoutfound*tionin'hist6ry ( Tryphon would not have failed to say bo. He would have declared, like our rationalists that this fabtewas "absent from the primitive text which furnished the rongh draft of the present Gospel.? Instead of this peremptory answer/.Tryplion reasons like a Jew, who, though convinced of tha reality of the 'facts, was still unwilling to* admit their consequences You say that Jesus Christ was the Son of God ; he replies : In order to save His Son, God might easily have caused the death of Herod. To do ' so would have been only natural. Tho fact of Joseph's being forced to take the child with Mary into Egypt, proves that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, and that God did not take that interest in his life ' which he would certainly have attached to that of His own Son. In order that Tryphoa, the Jevr, should hold such a discourse as this it * is clear that the* notoriety of the Gospel facts must hays been admitted • by all the Hebrews. Would it have been possible for a Christian " " legend" to effect this miracle of establishing itself universally in the • minds' of the deadliest of its enemies ? CONCLUSION. 32. 'After these proofs, amounting to evidence, it would be superfluous to insist oh further testimonies. What can be said, for instance, -> of Celsus the Philosopher, who reproaches Je6us Christ with being born at Bethlehem. " A glorious thing indeed, for a God," he says " to have made himself a citizen of the most wretched little borough in the world !" 5. Celsus 1 spoke thus 1 ; he 1 lived in tde time of It Jdstin ; he detested the name of Jesus Christ, quite as much as do our modern rationalists, and his polemics were more serious than theirs. He had, besides, the advantage over them of living at the very time when, according to our savant, the legend would have been added ta • the primitive text which has furnished the rough draft of the present • Gospels. Celsus had no suspicion that an addition had been made. The addition, then, is a dream.- That 1 which neither CeJsus the • Philosopher, nor,Tryphon the Jew, nor- Justin the disciple of Plato saw, in the year 103- of the> Christian era, the rationalism of the nineteenth 1 century will have had the glory of inventing, by a miraclo of retrospective perspicacity. 1 *' ¥«£ C °? t c e A- Me i chior <*• Vogue, " Lea Egliseß do la. Terre Sainte, in 4* - ISBO, pagfe 60, note. 3. Tie de Jesus, page, 20, note. 3. Ibid, iutrod VI., col. 713. 5.- id., ibid. *