In the next place we hear Pilate pronouncing Jesus guiltless; but, forthwith, he hands him over to the Jews to be killed. Does this read like history? Did ever a Roman court witness such a trial? To pronounce a man innocent and then to say to his prosecutors: "If you wish to kill him, you may do so," is extraordinary conduct. Then, proceeding, Pilate takes water and ostentatiously washes his hands, a proceeding introduced by a Greek or Latin scribe, who wished, in all probability, to throw the blame of the crucifixion entirely upon the Jews. Pilate, representing the Gentile world, washes his hands of the responsibility for the death of Jesus, while the Jews are made to say, "His blood be upon us and our children."

Imagine the clamoring, howling Jews, trampling on one another, gesticulating furiously, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth, and spitting in one another's face as they shout, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" A very powerful stage setting, to be sure--but it is impossible to imagine that such disorder, such anarchy could be permitted in any court of justice. But think once more of those terrible words placed in the mouths of the Jews, "His blood be upon us and our children." Think of a people openly cursing themselves and asking the whole Christian world to persecute them forever--"His blood be upon _us and our children_."

Next, the composers of the gospels conduct us to the Garden of Gethsemane, that we may see there the hero of the play in his agony, fighting the great battle of his life alone, with neither help nor sympathy from his distracted followers. He is shown to us there, on his knees, crying tears of blood--sobbing and groaning under the shadow of an almost crushing fear. Tremblingly he prays, "Let this cup pass from me--if it be possible;" and then, yielding to the terror crowding in upon him, he sighs in the hearing of all the ages, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," precisely the excuse given by everybody for not doing what they would do if they could. Now, we ask in all seriousness, is it likely that a God who had come down from heaven purposely to drink that cup and to be the martyr-Savior of humanity--would seek to be spared the fate for which he was ordained from all eternity?

The objection that Jesus' hesitation on the eve of the crucifixion, as well as his cry of despair on the cross, were meant to show that he was as human as he was divine, does not solve the difficulty. In that event Jesus, then, was merely acting--feigning a fear which he did not feel, and pretending to dread a death which he knew could not hurt him. If, however, Jesus really felt alarmed at the approach of death, how much braver, then, were many of his followers who afterwards faced dangers and tortures far more cruel than his own! We honestly think that to have put in Jesus' mouth the words above quoted, and also to have represented him as closing his public career with a shriek on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was tantamount to an admission by the writers that they were dealing with a symbolic Christ, an ideal figure, the hero of a play, and not a historical character.

It is highly dramatic, to be sure, to see the sun darkened, to feel the whole earth quaking, to behold the graves ripped open and the dead reappear in their shrouds--to hear the hero himself tearing his own heart with that cry of shuddering anguish, "My God! my God!"--but it is not history. If such a man as Jesus really lived, then his biographers have only given us a caricature of him. However beautiful some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and whatever the source they may have been borrowed from, they are not enough to prove his historicity. But even as the Ten Commandments do not prove Moses to have been a historical personage or the author of the books and deeds attributed to him, neither do the parables and miracles of Jesus prove him to have once visited this earth as a god, or to have even existed