| 41. This narrative also mythical | ||||
THUS here again we must acknowledge the influence of the legend; but as the main part of the incident is thoroughly natural, we might in this instance prefer the middle course, and after disengaging the mythical, seek to preserve a residue of history. We might suppose that the parents of Jesus really took their son to Jerusalem in his early youth, and that after having lost sight of him, (probably before their departure,) they found him in the temple where, eager for instruction, he sat at the feet of the rabbis. When called to account, he declared that his favourite abode was in the house of God; a sentiment which rejoiced his parents, and won the approbation of the bystanders. The rest of the story we might suppose to have been added by the aggrandizing legend, after Jesus was acknowledged as the Messiah. Here all the difficulties in our narrative, the idea of the boy sitting in the midst of the doctors, his claiming God as his father in a special sense, and the departure of the parents without their sou, would be rejected; but the journey of Jesus when twelve years old, the eagerness for knowledge then manifested by him, and his attachment to the temple, are retained. | ||||
To these particulars there is nothing to object negatively, for they contain nothing improbable in itself; but their historical truth must become doubtful if we can show, positively, a strong interest of the legend, out of which the entire narrative, and especially these intrinsically not improbable particulars, might have arisen. | ||||
That in the case of great men who in their riper age have been distinguished by mental superiority, the very first presaging {P.198} movements of their mind are eagerly gleaned, and if they are not to be ascertained historically, are invented under the guidance of probability, is well known. In the Hebrew history and legend especially, we find manifold proofs of this tendency. Thus of Samuel it is said in the Old Testament itself, that even as a boy he received a divine revelation and the gift of prophecy (1 Sam. iii), and with respect to Moses, on whose boyish years the Old Testament narrative is silent, a subsequent tradition, followed by Josephus and Philo, had .striking proofs to relate of his early development. As in the narrative before us Jesus shews himself wise beyond his years; so this tradition attributes a like precocity to Moses; as Jesus turning away from the idle tumult of the city in all the excitement of festival tune, finds his favourite entertainment in the temple among the doctors; so the boy Moses was not attracted by childish sports, but by serious occupation, and very early it was necessary to give him tutors, whom, however, like Jesus in his twelfth year, he quickly surpassed, f | ||||
According to Jewish custom and opinion, the twelfth year formed an epoch in development to which especial proofs of awakening genius were the rather attached, because in the twelfth year, as with us in the fourteenth, the boy was regarded as having outgrown the period of childhood. Accordingly it was believed of Moses, that in his twelfth year he left the house of his father, to become an independent organ of the divine revelations. The Old Testament leaves it uncertain how early the gift of prophecy was imparted to Samuel, but he was said by a later tradition to have prophesied from his twelfth year: and in like manner the wise judgments of Solomon and Daniel (1 Kings iii.23ff.) were supposed to have been given when they were only twelve. | ||||
It in the case of these Old Testament heroes, the spirit that impelled them manifested itself according to common opinion so early as in their twelfth year, it was argued that it could not have remained longer concealed in Jesus; and if Samuel and David showed themselves at that age in their later capacity of divinely inspired seers, Solomon in that of a wise ruler, so Jesus at the corresponding period in his life must have shown himself in the character to which he subsequently established his claim, that namely, of the Son of God and Teacher of Mankind. It is, in fact, the obvious aim of Luke to pass over no epoch in the early life of Jesus, without surrounding him with divine radiance, with significant prognostics of the future; in this style he treats his birth, mentions the circumcision at least emphatically, but above all avails himself of the presentation in the temple. There yet remained according to Jewish manners one epoch, the twelfth year, -with the first journey to the Passover; how could he do otherwise than, following the legend, adorn this point in the development of Jesus as we find that he has done in his narrative? and how could we do otherwise than regard his narrative as a legendary embellishment of this period in the life of Jesus, from which we learn nothing of his real development, but merely something of the exalted notions which were entertained in the primitive Church of the early ripened mind of Jesus? | ||||
{P.199} But how this story can be numbered among myths is found by some altogether inconceivable. It bears, thinks Heydenreich, a thoroughly historical character (this is the very point to be proved) and the stamp of the highest simplicity (like every popular legend in its original form); it contains no tincture of the miraculous, wherein the primary characteristic of a myth (but not of every myth) is held to consist; it is so remote from all embellishment that there is not the slightest detail of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors (the legend was satisfied with the dramatic trait, sitting in the midst of the doctors: as a dictum, v. 49. was alone important, and towards this the narrator hastens without delay); indeed, even the conversation between Jesus and his mother is only given in a fragmentary aphoristic manner (there is no trace of an omission); finally, the inventor of a legend would have made Jesus speak differently to his mother, instead of putting into his mouth words which might be construed into irreverence and indifference. | ||||
In this last observation Heydenreich agrees with Schleiermacher, who finds in the behaviour of Jesus to his mother, liable as it is to be misinterpreted, a sure guarantee that the whole history was not invented to supply something remarkable concerning Jesus, in connection with the period at which the holy things of the temple and the law were first opened to him. | ||||
In combating the assertion, that an inventor would scarcely have attributed to Jesus so much apparent harshness towards his mother, we need not appeal to the apocryphal Evangelium Thomae, which {P.200} makes the boy Jesus say to his foster-father Joseph: insipientissime fecisti; for even in the legend or history of the canonical Gospels, corresponding traits are to be found. In the narrative of the wedding at Cana, we find this rough address to his mother: "woman, what concern is that to you and to me?" (John ii. 4); and in the account of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the striking circumstance that he apparently wishes to take no notice of his relatives (Matt. xii. 46). If these are real incidents, then the legend had an historical precedent to warrant the introduction of a similar feature, even into the early youth of Jesus; if, on the other hand, they are only legends, they are the most vivid proofs that an inducement was not wanting for the invention of such features. Where this inducement lay, it is easy to see. The figure of Jesus would stand in the higher relief from the obscure background of his contracted family relations, if it were often seen that his parents were unable to comprehend his elevated mind, and if even he himself sometimes made them feel his superiority-so far as this could happen without detriment to his filial obedience, which, it should be observed, our narrative expressly preserves. | ||||