Christ in Art. Ernest Renan

      Christ Militant, c. 520. Mosaic.

      Museo Arcivescovile e Cappella di San Andrea, Ravenna.

      Hugo Van der Goes, The Crucifixion, c. 1470.

      Oil on panel.

      Museo Correr, Venice.

      Head of Christ and the Lentulus Letter, late 15th or early 16th century.

      Oil on wood, 38.5 × 27.3 cm.

      Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht.

      Matthias Grünewald, Resurrection, from the Isenheim Altarpiece (detail), 1512–1516.

      Musée Unterlinden, Colmar.

      We are tempted to believe that John, in his old age, having read the evangelical narrations which were in circulation, remarked, on the one hand, various inaccuracies, and on the other hand was wounded at seeing that there had not been accorded to him a sufficiently prominent place in the history of Christ. Then he began to dictate many things which he knew better than the rest with the intention of showing that in a great number of cases in which mention had been made of Peter only, he had figured with and before him. Already in the lifetime of Jesus, this slight feeling of jealousy had betrayed itself between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. Since the death of James, his brother, John was the sole possessor of the affectionate memories of which these two disciples, by the confession of all, were the depositaries. Hence his perpetual care to keep in mind that he is the last surviving eyewitness, and the pleasure that he takes in relating circumstances with which he alone could be acquainted. Hence so many little traits of precision which seem like the scholiast of an annotator: “It was the sixth hour” “it was night” “the servant’s name was Malchus” “they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold” “now the coat was without seam”. Hence, finally, the disorder of the compilation, the irregularity of the progress, the disconnection of the first chapters were regulated. There are so many inexplicable things on the supposition that this gospel was only a theological thesis without any historical value, and which, on the contrary, are perfectly comprehensible, if we see in them, according to the tradition, the memories of an old man, sometimes of marvellous freshness, sometimes having suffered strange mutations.

      A capital distinction, indeed, must be made in the gospel of John. On the one hand, this gospel presents to us a picture of the life of Jesus which differs considerably from that of the synoptics. On the other, he puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses, the tone, the style, the manner, the doctrines of which have nothing in common with the logia reported by the synoptics. Under this second relation the difference is so great that we must make a decided choice. If Jesus spoke as Matthew has it, he could not have spoken as John has it. Between the two authorities, no critic has hesitated, none will levitate. A thousand miles from the simple, disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptic, the gospel of John discovers continually the preoccupations of the apologist, the afterthoughts of the sectary, the intention of proving a thesis and of convincing adversaries. Not by pretentious, heavy, badly-written tirades, saying little to the moral sense, did Jesus found his divine work. Even if Papias had not told us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the naturalness, the ineffable truth, the peerless charm of the synoptic discourses, their thoroughly Hebraic manner, the analogies which they present to the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the same period, their perfect harmony with Galilean nature, all these characters, if we compare them with the obscure Gnosticism and the distorted metaphysics which fill the discourses of John, speak loudly enough. This does not mean that there are not in the discourses of John wonderful flashes of light, touches which come really from Jesus. But the mystic tone of these discourses corresponds in no wise to the character of the eloquence of Jesus such as we imagine it from the synoptic. A new spirit has come; Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is ended; the hope of the speedy coming of Christ grows dim; we are entering into the acridities of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and if the son of Zebedee had really written these pages, he certainly had quite forgotten the writings of Lake Galilee and the charming conversations he had heard on the edges.

      A circumstance, moreover, which fully proves that the discourses reported by the fourth gospel are not historic, but compositions intended to cover with the authority of Jesus, certain doctrines dear to the compiler, is their perfect harmony with the intellectual state of Asia Minor, at the time they were written. Asia Minor was then the theatre of a singular movement of syncretical philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism were already in existence. John appears to have drunk from these foreign fountains. It may be that after the crises of the year 68 (the year the Book of Revelation is thought to have been written) and the year 70 (the fall of Jerusalem), the old apostle, with his ardent and mobile soul, disabused the belief in the speedy appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, inclined towards the ideas which he found about him, a man who readily mixed certain Christian doctrines. In attributing these new ideas to Jesus, he followed a very natural inclination. Our memories are transformed with all the rest; the idea of a person whom we have known changes with us. Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could not but attribute to him what he had come to take for truth.

      And now finally, we will add that probably John himself had small part in this, that this change was made around him rather than by him. We are sometimes tempted to believe those precious words, coming from the apostle, were employed by his disciples in a sense very different from the primitive evangelical spirit. Indeed, certain portions of the fourth gospel have been added afterwards; such as the entire twenty-first chapter, in which the author seems to have intended to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the objections which might be, or which had already been, drawn from the death of John himself (v. 21–23). Several other passages bear traces of erasures and corrections.

      It is impossible, at this distance, to possess the key of all these singular problems, and many surprises would be in reserve for us, could we penetrate into the secrets of this mysterious school of Ephesus, which more than once appears to have taken delight in obscure paths. But a decisive test is this. Every person who sits down to write the life of Jesus without a rigid theory as to the relative value of the gospels, allowing himself to be guided entirely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in a multitude of cases to prefer the narrative of John to that of the synoptic. The last months of the life of Jesus in particular are explained only by John; many features of the Passion, that are unintelligible in other sources, assume in the relation of the fourth gospel, probability and possibility. On the contrary, I dare any person to compose a consistent life of Jesus, if he makes account of the discourses which John attributes to Jesus. This style of extolling himself and demonstrating himself incessantly, this perpetual argumentation, this scenic representation without simplicity, this long moralising at the end of each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal, are unendurable to a man of taste by the side of the delicious sayings of the synoptic. We have here, evidently, artificial pieces which represent the teachings of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato renders the conversation of Socrates. They are in some way variations of a musician improvising on his own account upon a given theme. The theme may be not without some authenticity, but in the execution, the artist gives his fantasy full play. We feel the factitious procedure, the rhetoric and the gloss.

      Besides, the vocabulary of Jesus is not found in the fragments of which we are speaking. The expression “kingdom of God,” which was so familiar to the master, is seen only once. On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth gospel present the most complete analogy to that of the epistles of St. John. We see that in writing his discourses the author followed, not his memories, but the rather monotonous movement of his own thought. An entire new mystic language was unfolded, a language of which the synoptic had not the least idea (“world,” “truth,” “life,” “light,” “darkness,” etc.). Had Jesus never spoken in this style, which has in it nothing Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic, if I may so express myself, how could a single one of his listeners have kept the secret