The Man of GalileeHaygood, Atticus G. (Atticus Greene)
Religion
The Man of Galilee
Haygood, Atticus G. (Atticus Greene)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity; Jesus Christ -- Popular works
You know of Jesus from his words, above all from his life, that he was
incapable of prejudice; that no wretched or mean man of any class or
race could appeal to him in vain. You know that Jesus was as free from
all intolerance, from all caste feeling and race prejudice, as the
virgin snow is free from stain. But his disciples, these men who have
told us of him, were saturated and poisoned with these feelings; they
lived on the low plane of their race and time, and not above it. In
the “Acts of the Apostles” we see what that plane was; the Jew hated
Gentiles. Consider the history of Peter’s visit to Cornelius, and you
will see how deep and inveterate is the feeling that opened a gulf
between the Jews and other races. Consider what is meant by the sudden
outburst of rage at the word “Gentile” that day Paul spoke to the mob
in the temple-court, as he stood on the castle stairs. All history
illustrates this intense race prejudice. In this country, in the spring
of 1888, a Jew celebrated the funeral of his daughter because she had
married a Gentile.
Read the story of the Syrophenician woman, the parable of the good
Samaritan, his heavenly doctrines about loving our enemies, and then
think of these writers inventing Jesus and his doctrines.
See the false shame on their faces when they find Jesus talking with
the woman of Sychar by Jacob’s well, and ask whether men like these
lived in the same world with him!
Consider the attitude of Jesus toward fallen women. See how he bore
himself with the woman who washed his feet with her tears in Simon’s
house; see his tender respect for Magdalene; see him, his cheeks aflame
with shame and confusion, his eyes dewy with pity, as he made marks on
the ground with his finger that day they brought a sinful girl to him
and demanded judgment upon her.
These men who wrote of Jesus were as incapable of such sentiments and
conduct as they were incapable of building worlds. God pity us! as
incapable as we, his disciples of to-day, are, who, after all that
he has taught us and done for us, in our meanness and cowardice abide
still in heathenism, and scorn those whom Jesus did not scorn. We may
judge these evangelists by ourselves; they were as we are. They were
ashamed of him when he spoke respectfully and kindly to fallen women;
we would be ashamed of him now if he were again among us in the flesh,
bearing himself toward our outcasts as he did when he was in Galilee.
If possible, these evangelists were as incapable as we are of inventing
the character of Jesus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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