Any person possessed of the two histories, as I am, may easily satisfy himself that the Greek is the genuine work, and the Hebrew copy the production of another person, and entitled to no credit whatever. For the evidence of this I must refer you to Mr. Basnage. * It is necessary also to the proper discussion of the evidences of Christianity, that the Jews should be well acquainted with the New Testament, which Mr. Levi is not. He even says, he "does not find it recorded that Jesus prophesied in the name of God,"† and asserts, that "he preached himself as the light of the world;"whereas nothing can be more evident than that Jesus uniformly asserted his mission from God, and appealed to the miracles which God enabled him to perform; disclaiming all wisdom and power of his own: John v. 19: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself:" ver. 30: "I can of mine ownself do nothing :" vers. 36, 37: "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me ; and the Father himself, who hath sent me, hath borne witness of me:" ver. 43: "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not.' This and more to the same purpose, is all contained in one single chapter. He likewise says, (John xiv. 10,) "The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Such is the uniform language of Jesus, who, Mr. Levi says, did not speak in the name of God. Mr. Levi says, that "the professors of Christianity ought to be unanimous before they attempt to convert the Jews," § and particularly that we ought first to be agreed among ourselves whether Jesus be God. Besides what I have advanced on this subject in my former Letters, || I shall now * Mr. Levi says, (p. 61, Note,) that Mr. Basnage, "in his great zeal to decry this work, has fallen into a most egregious blunder;" observing, that he first says that it was the production of the eleventh century, and then that it was known to Saadias in the tenth century. But this is a misrepresentation of Mr. Basnage, who, after giving his opinion concerning the real age of this work, viz. that it was the production of the eleventh century, says it did not make its appearance before the twelfth, and that the most that can be said is, that it may seem to be referred to by two writers in the tenth century, but that "those two testimonies are very obscure and doubtful." Liv. ix. Ch. vi. XIII. p. 159, of the last edition. Could a work of this kind have remained unknown, and unquoted by any writer, Jew or Christian, a thousand years, when so much account has been made of it since? It is absolutely incredible. Dr. Lardner supposes this work to have been written in the beginning of the tenth century. Testimonies, I. p. 213. (P.) Works, VII. pp. 164, 165. See Mr. Levi's Second Letter, pp. 31-33. + Letter, p. 22. (P.) Ibid. p. 72. (P.) Ibid. p. 23. (P.) observe, that it is as much your business to determine what the tenets of Christianity are, as it is ours. You see a person pretending to come to you from the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to do such things as no man could do but by the immediate power of God. Is it not then your business to inquire whether he really comes from God, or not? If your ancestors had given no attention to a claim of this kind, they would have rejected even Moses. Do you, then, consider what Jesus taught, and what he did, and judge for yourselves, whether what he delivered was worthy of God, and whether the miracles were performed by the finger of God, or not. If we who profess Christianity should all agree what its tenets are, it would not, it ought not to satisfy you. We might make too favourable a report concerning it, and such as you would not abide by. Why then do you wait for our agreement, when, if we did agree, that circumstance would not weigh with you at all? LETTER II. Of the Miraculous Conception of Jesus and of Contradictions in the Gospel History. MR. LEVI says, I cannot be a Christian, because "I do not believe the miraculous conception of Jesus." But I imagine it is sufficient to denominate a person a Christian, that he believes the divine mission of Jesus, whether he believe any thing else concerning him, or not. He says that, in order to disbelieve this, I must suppose some parts of our present Gospels to be spurious; and then, he says, "how are we sure that the remainder is authentic?" I cannot here repeat all that I have written on this subject in the fourth volume of my " History of Early Opinions concerning Christ," but must content myself with referring you to that work. I shall only observe on this occasion, that I consider the evangelists as mere historians, (indeed, they do not pretend to any thing more,) faithful relaters of what they believed to be true. But no histories are received on the mere faith of the writers, but properly on the testimony of the age in which they wrote, which would not have received their accounts, and have handed them down to posterity as true, if they had not been known to be so, at least in the main. * Letter, p. 9. (P.) See supra, p. 251, Note ‡. + Letter, p. 82. (P.) Now the great and leading facts in the Gospel history, the account of the doctrines, the miracles, the death and resurrection of Christ, are so handed down to us. They were believed by Christians in all ages, and from the earliest times. But this is not the case with the account of the miraculous conception. The Christians of your nation (I believe the great body of them, though with some exceptions) never did believe it; and a very learned and highly respected person. among the Jewish Christians, I mean Symmachus, who translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, wrote a treatise, in a very early period, to refute the story. It was also disbelieved by all the early Gnostics, with whose opinions it would have accorded remarkably well. The miraculous conception, therefore, cannot be said to have the testimony of the age in which it was promulgated; and as the Jews, being natives of the country, had the best opportunity of informing themselves concerning it, their testimony, which is against it, is entitled to the greatest credit. The Gospel used by your countrymen was that of Matthew, without the two first chapters, which contain the account of the miraculous conception. It may be presumed, therefore, that they saw sufficient reason for rejecting those chapters, as, in their opinion, not written by Matthew; and if so extraordinary a story had been true, it cannot be imagined that either he, or Mark, or John, would have omitted it. As to the account of Luke, whether it was written by him or not, I have shewn that it abounds with the most manifest improbabilities. As to the disbelief of the miraculous conception drawing after it the disbelief of the whole Gospel history, judge from fact, and not from imagination. Was this the case with the Ebionites, and, among them, of Symmachus? To say nothing of myself, can it be shewn to have been the case with any other person who has thought as I do with respect to this subject? The greater probability is, that persons finding themselves unable to believe this story, and not seeing how to separate the belief of it from that of the rest of the history, may be led to reject the whole. This, indeed, is, in some measure, your own case. Mr. Levi's view in urging me with this story, is sufficiently conspicuous. If I should admit the truth of it, he would immediately say, as all your countrymen have done, that there was an end of the argument between us; because Jesus, not being descended in the usual course of generation from the male line of David, could not be your Messiah. On the other hand, if the story be rejected, he will reject the whole Gospel history, of which, he says, it is a part. That the story of the miraculous conception should be started, and gain credit, in a very early period, I do not much wonder at, considering how willing the Christians were to think as highly as possible of their master, with the meanness of whose birth and parentage, as well as the circumstances of his death, they were continually reproached. * One of the contradictions that Mr. Levi observes in the Gospel history, is, that, according to Matthew, Jesus was descended from Nathan, but according to Luke from Solomon. As I reject the introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, as not written by him, I am not concerned with this contradiction. There is another, however, on which he lays much stress; which is, that according to Mark, Jesus cursed the fig-tree the day after his arrival at Jerusalem, whereas, according to Matthew, it was on the day of his arrival. † But would Mr. Levi, or any reasonable man, reject, as of no value, any other two historians, for so trifling a variation as this? If we do, we must reject all history, and even the books of Kings and Chronicles. For in them there are greater differences than this. On the contrary, the surest marks of authenticity in histories, the circumstances that entitle them to the fullest credit, are their agreement in things of great consequence, to which the writers could not but attend, and their differing in things of small consequence, to which they would naturally give less attention. This shews that they did not write in concert, but that they are proper independent evidences of the facts they relate. Had one of the evangelists said that Jesus drove the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and another of them asserted that he did no such thing, it would have been more to Mr. Levi's purpose. But even such a difference as this would not invalidate the whole of the Gospel history. LETTER III. Of the Miracles of Jesus as a Proof of his divine Mission, and of Mr. Levi's Objections to some of them. WHAT surprises me most in Mr. Levi, is his professing to pay so little regard to the miracles of Jesus. * Letter, p. 81. (P.) Whether," ↑ Ibid. p. 80. (P.) he says, "it was by the art of deception, or supernatural power, it is not my business to inquire."* But, certainly, nothing can be of more importance than to inquire whether miracles are real or pretended. Because a change in the constitution of nature can only be made by the author of nature, or with his permission; and if one real miracle might be permitted for the purpose of deception, any other, or all of them, might. If the Divine Being could either by his own immediate power, or the agency of any superior spirit, enable Jesus to heal the sick, to feed the multitudes, to change water into wine, to still a tempest, to walk on the sea, and to raise the dead; and if, after a public execution, (which rendered his death unquestionable,) God should raise him from the dead, and take him up into heaven, (by belief of which, thousands and ten thousands, millions and thousands of millions, were deceived,) he might have permitted all the miracles recorded in the books of Moses, and for the same purpose of deception. As, therefore, you justly, and with indignation, reject the latter supposition, you ought also to reject the former. And if the miracles recorded in the New Testament be true, the Christian doctrine is of God. It behoves you, therefore, seriously to inquire whether they be true or not. Mr. Levi says, that "miracles only were not sufficient to establish a firm belief in the divine mission of Moses."† But, after considering what he urges on the subject, I cannot find any thing more than miracles to have been necessary. Indeed there cannot be any other criterion of divine interposition besides miracles. He says, "It was God speaking with Moses face to face, in the presence of six hundred thousand men, besides women and children."‡ But what was this besides a miracle? If there had been nothing extraordinary in the transaction, nothing more than what might have happened to any other man, would your ancestors have believed in him? Let us consider what Moses himself says, in the very passage quoted by Mr. Levi, Exod. xix. 9: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever;" referring, no doubt, to the delivery of the ten commandments in the hearing of all the people, in a distinct, articulate voice, from Mount Sinai. This was, indeed, a Letter, p. 22. (P.) + Ibid. p. 71. (P.) Ibid. p. 68. (P.) See Mr. Levi's Second Letter, pp. 34-36. |