THE PASSOVER PLOT is the outcome of an endeavour which has extended over forty years to discover the man Jesus Christ really was. The difficulties all the way have been formidable, and by no means confined to problems of research. By far the hardest part of the undertaking has been to free the mind from preconceived ideas and the effects of traditional Christian teaching. There had to be a readiness to entertain whatever might be revealed even if this meant differing from former judgements. Most books about him have been devotional, apologetic or polemical, and I wished mine to be none of these. What I aimed at was to shed all disposition to make use of Jesus and allow him from his own time to explain himself to me.
I was first charged with responsibility for the task now completed when I was a student at Glasgow University. We were visited by an eminent Scottish Professor of New Testament History and Literature, whom I, a Jewish boy, rather startled by my youthful arguments and familiarity with the ancient Christian authorities I had studied on my own initiative. Already at that time the person of Jesus greatly attracted me, and I wanted to find out what had been the convictions of his original Jewish followers who acknowledged him as the Messiah. I read widely both the Christian and Jewish interpretations, and it seemed to me that both were partly right and partly wrong. There was a mystery which called for further explanation. My enthusiasm impressed the Professor, and he invited me to his home in Edinburgh where we talked into the small hours. In the end I made him a promise, which I have only been able to honour long after his death.
Through the intervening years, however, I pursued my researches, exploring many aspects of the subject. I wrote a number of books as much for my own instruction as for the enlightenment of those who read them. Finally I found it necessary to make a fresh English translation of the Christian Scriptures accompanied by copious explanatory notes, published as The Authentic New Testament, the most consequential of all my literary labours.
I have frequently been urged by numerous readers to set down my convictions about Jesus. They were persuaded that, in my unusual position as a Jew who has devoted a lifetime to the sympathetic elucidation of Christian Origins and is not connected with any section of the Church, I ought to have seen things which have escaped the observation of those more directly involved. Some of these correspondents may merely have been curious, and others eager to obtain my endorsement of their own beliefs. But on the whole there has been certified to me from the letters I continually receive from many parts of the world that there is a widespread desire for a realistic rather than an idealised representation of Jesus. The traditional portraiture no longer satisfies: it is too baflling in its apparent contradiction of the terms of our earthly existence. The God-man of Christianity is increasingly incredible, yet it is not easy to break with centuries of authoritative instruction and devout faith, and there remains embedded deep in the sub-conscious a strong sense of the supernatural inherited from remote ages.
Jesus still counts for so much, and answers so much to human need, that we are anxious to believe that there must have been something special about him, something which eludes our rational grasp and keeps us in our thought of him hovering perilously on the brink of naked superstition. We find in him the symbol both of the martyrdom and the aspirations of man, and therefore we must cling to him as the embodiment of an assurance that our life has a meaning and a purpose. Quite apart from the intrusion into early Christianity of a pagan assessment of his worth in terms of deity, which historically we have to admit, no interpretation of Jesus can content us which does not show that our confidence has not been wholly misplaced. If he was not more than man, he was at the very least a most exceptional man, who placed his own indelible stamp on the story of human experience and achievement.
So this remarkable Jew continues to intrigue and agitate us, the more so perhaps as the old ties of a settled faith are loosened. ‘Tell me more about Jesus,’ says a well-known hymn. Yet many are now half afraid that the telling will destroy an illusion, that the man behind the myth will prove to be less alluring, less consoling and inspiring.
It has emerged from recent literature and broadcasts, and from my personal contacts, that it is not practicable to invest the theological Jesus with convincing historicity, for the theological figure continually conditions consideration of almost everything relating to the actual man. It is so much more familiar, and hard to shake off. There is an attitude of reverence, which projects itself in the transmutation of the character of Jesus, who, despite the evidence of the Gospels, is made out to be all love and compassion, in the treatment of his every word as divine wisdom, in the wish to explain away his mistakes and extenuate his faults. I recall my discomfort, while I was translating the New Testament, when a distinguished and pious Christian layman said to me, ‘If you can get round Jesus cursing the fig tree you will have done us a great service.’
The only way in which we can hope to know the real Jesus is by first becoming conscious of him as a man of his own time, country and people, which necessitates an intimate acquaintance with all three. We have resolutely to refuse to detach him from his setting, and let the influences which played upon him play upon us. We have to mark the traits in him which were personal, individual, whether pleasing or unpleasing, which convey to us the attributes and idiosyncrasies of a creature of flesh and blood. Only when this Galilean Jew has made an impact upon us in the cruder aspects of his mortality are we entitled to begin to cultivate him and estimate his worth, allowing him to communicate to us the imaginations of his mind and the motivation of his actions. If, then, we perceive in him some spark of genius, some quality of greatness and nobility of soul, we shall not incline to exaggerate or convert him impossibly into a paragon of all the virtues. Such a man could have his godlike moments, but could never be consistently a reflection of the Divine except for those whose notion of deity would permit the gods to share our human frailties.
The modern dilemma of Christianity is patent and stems from a creed which down the centuries has so insisted on seeing God in Jesus Christ that it is in danger, as is now evident, of being unable to apprehend the existence of God without him. Far too many Christians do not know God in any other way than through Jesus. Take away the deity of Jesus and their faith in God is imperilled or destroyed. The New Testament is not entirely to he blamed for this. The major fault lies with those who have pandered to the ignorance and superstition of the people in giving them a God created in the image of man. Yet Jesus and his own nation, differently taught, could love and worship God without recourse to incarnation.
I have often asked my Christian friends, ‘Is it not enough if you believe in the One God, Lord of all spirits, and accept Jesus as his messianic messenger?’ But it seemed that the messiahship of Jesus in their view had only to do with the Jews, and meant nothing in their experience. Many were not even aware that Christ was simply a Greek translation of the Hebrew title Messiah (the Anointed One), and supposed that it had to do with the heavenly nature of the Second Person of the Trinity. It took me a long time to appreciate that when we talked of God we were not speaking the same language, and that there was a serious problem of communication. Finally it dawned on me, and I have in honesty to say this, that Christianity was still much too close to the paganism over which it had scored a technical victory to be happy with a faith in God as pure Spirit. There had never been hithe Church a complete conversion from heathenism. We might be living in the second half of the twentieth century, but the Gentile need remained for a human embodiment of deity. God had still to be grasped through a physical kinship with man and his earthly concerns, and there yet lingered the sense of the efficacy of the substitutionary and propitiatory sacrifice of a choice victim. As a consequence, where there has been emancipation from this ancient heritage this has tended to produce not a purer religion but the natural reaction of atheism. The Church must be held to be a major cause of promoting what it wholeheartedly condemns.
However, it is not my intention to embark on a theological treatise, only to draw attention to what is the most powerful influence which bars the way to the truth about Jesus. No doubt much could stem from a re-exposition of religion in a modern idiom, which reconciled and reunited Christians and Jews, and moved on towards the realisation of the age-old vision of the Brotherhood of Man and the Kingdom of God on earth of which Jesus was such an electrifying exponent. But if this is to be effected there will be a great deal to unlearn and to relearn.
I have had to indicate my consciousness of the gulf to be bridged, because this has affected the manner in which my subject has been presented. I have been most anxious to avoid being too academic, so that the book may be read without difficulty by the non-specialist. But I have had to take account of the fact that there is much ignorance about conditions in Palestine at the time of Jesus and about how Christianity originated. Few people are informed about the character of the Gospel records, how they came into being, and what credence is to be placed in their testimony. If they depend entirely on the New Testament they cannot form a correct judgement of Jesus. They must be put in a position where they are able to test the validity of what they find there by bringing to bear a multiplicity of factors of which they may not previously have been aware.
I have therefore divided the book into two parts, which are complementary but differ considerably in style and content. Part One is an imaginative reconstruction of the personality, aims and activities of Jesus. This part is biographical, but does not include everything reported about him, and is not offered as a ‘life’ of Jesus. It does, however, face some of the greatest difficulties which are contained in certain features of his life, especially the birth and resurrection stories.
My interpretation is founded, securely as it seems to me, on the belief of Jesus that he was the expected Messiah of Israel. Any view of him which ignores or evades this definite and illuminating information is self-condemned—however attractive and enticing it may be—as alien not only to the evidence of the New Testament, and to the fact of a faith coming into existence which could be called Christian or Messianist, but also to the atmosphere prevailing in Palestine at the time which evoked the response Jesus made. Much has been written to illustrate what light this throws on the central figure of Christianity; but it is possible to see still more, because due to modern discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls we know more.
But what is known can only be applied constructively when we are uninhibited by a religious compulsion to assume that the records about Jesus were divinely inspired. We must hold that they rate no higher than what can be established as to their reliability. They do not pass the test very well, though they certainly incorporate a good deal which is of the utmost value. The authors had to write up their subject with rather meagre resources of documentation and living recollection. This was because of the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66 which resulted in the devastation of Palestine and Jerusalem and largely extinguished access to fuller information. Actually we are better placed now than they were. When the Gospels were composed, legend, special pleading, the new environment of Christianity after the war, and a changed view of the nature of Jesus, gave them a flavour of which we have to be fully conscious when we enlist their essential aid in the quest for the historical Jesus.
These matters, and others highly pertinent to the understanding of Jesus, are considered, together with the research material, in Part Two. Here will be found disquisitions on crucial issues with the latest information and some quite new arguments which the reader minded to go more deeply into the subject can explore at his leisure.
What I have wished to be appreciated is that this is not one of those books which appear from time to time offering some farfetched and highly fictitious account of Jesus which has no real roots in the knowledge in our possession. Where I have offered a theory which in the nature of things cannot be established I have plainly stated this.
I also desire to make clear that the image of Jesus which emerges does not, when honestly examined, detract from his greatness and uniqueness. Rather does it confirm, quite overwhelmingly, the earliest Christian conviction, that awareness of being the Messiah meant everything to Jesus. In affirmation of that office, that peculiar and incredibly difficult function, he directed his life, anticipated his execution, and envisaged his resurrection. This book reveals him as a master of his destiny, expecting events to conform to the requirements of prophetic intimations, contriving those events when necessary, contending with friends and foes to ensure that the predictions would be fulfilled. Such strength of will founded on faith, such concentration of purpose, such astuteness in planning, such psychological insight as we find him displaying, marks him out as a dominant and dynamic personality, with a capacity for action which matched the greatness of his vision. He could be tender and compassionate, but he was no milk-and-water Messiah. He accepted that authority had been conferred upon him by God, and he exercised it with profound effect, whether favourable or unfavourable, on those who came in contact with him.
The Passover Plot tells the story of his high adventure, perhaps the strangest human enterprise in all recorded history, boldly and circumstantially. Hence the deliberately dramatic title, which strikes the keynote of the whole extraordinary undertaking to which Jesus committed himself.
In certain places in this book, for the sake of clarity, I have employed my own translation of the Christian Scriptures, The Authentic New Testament, the accuracy of which is vouched for by eminent scholars. This is available in Britain and the Commonwealth in hardcover published by Dobson Books and in paperback by Panther Books, and in the United States in paperback only, as yet, by the New American Library of Literature (Mentor Books). Acknowledgment is accordingly made to these publishers.
I fully realise that my treatment of the subject may cause considerable debate and controversy. I cannot undertake to answer all comments whether in personal letters or in the Press; but I will welcome them, and if this is warranted I will do my best to reply in a further book. Where I have had to challenge traditional beliefs it has not been with any hostile intent, and I hope therefore that criticism will be temperate and confined to persuasion on the basis of evidence. If I have had an objective, other than patient seeking after truth, it has been to be of helpful service in providing people today with a more correct understanding of Christ, which they can live with and from which they can draw courage and inspiration, especially those in adversity and despondency. If it can be shown that to follow Jesus means to imbibe his spirit and seek his ends for mankind then these pages may have made a timely and constructive contribution to one of the most vital dialogues of this generation.
HUGH J. SCHONFIELD