The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
authors, and to seek for truth by human skill and study, and who lose in their knowledge the simplicity of their faith, reproach St. Luke with contradicting the other evangelists, and in being mistaken in what he advances on the subject of our Lord's birth. The author of the "Analysis of the Christian Religion" thus rashly expresses himself on the subject (p. 23):
"St. Luke says that Cyrenius was the governor of Syria, when Augustus ordered the numbering of all the people of the empire. We will show how many decided falsehoods are contained in these few words. First, Tacitus and Suetonius, the most precise of historians, say not a single word of the pretended numbering of the whole empire, which certainly would have been a very singular event, since there never had been one under any emperor—at least, no author mentions such a case. Secondly, Cyrenius did not arrive in Syria till ten years after the time fixed by St. Luke; it was then governed by Quintilius Varus, as Tertullian relates, and as is confirmed by medals."
We contend that in fact there never was a numbering of the whole Roman empire, but only a census of Roman citizens, according to usage; although it is possible that the copyists may have written "numbering" for "census." With regard to Cyrenius, whom the copyists have made Cirinus, it is certain that he was not governor of Syria at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, the governor being Quintilius Varus; but it is very probable that Quintilius might send into Judæa this same Cyrenius, who ten years after succeeded him in the government of Syria. We cannot dissemble, however, that this explanation still leaves some difficulties.
In the first place, the census made under Augustus does not correspond in time with the birth of Jesus Christ. Secondly, the Jews were not comprised in that census. Joseph and his wife were not Roman citizens. Mary, therefore, it is said, being under no necessity, was not likely to go from Nazareth, which is at the extremity of Judæa, within a few miles of Mount Tabor, in the midst of the desert, to lie in at Bethlehem, which is eighty miles from Nazareth.
But it might easily happen that Cirinus, or Cyrenius, having been sent to Jerusalem by Quintilius Varus to impose a poll-tax, Joseph and Mary were summoned by the magistrate of Bethlehem to go and pay the tax in the town of Bethlehem, the place of their birth. In this there is nothing contradictory. The critics may endeavor to weaken this solution by representing that it was Herod only who imposed taxes; that the Romans at that time levied nothing on Judæa; that Augustus left Herod completely his own master for the tribute which that Idumean paid to the empire. But, in an emergency, it is not impossible to make some arrangement with a tributary prince, and send him an intendant to establish in concert with him the new tax.
We will not here say, like so many others, that copyists have committed many errors, and that in the version we possess there are to be found more than ten thousand; we had rather say with the doctors of the Church and the most enlightened persons, that the Gospels were given us only to teach us to live holily, and not to criticise learnedly.
These pretended contradictions produced a dreadful impression on the much lamented John Meslier, rector of Etrepigni and But in Champagne. This truly virtuous and charitable, but at the same time melancholy, man, being possessed of scarcely any other books than the Bible and some of the fathers, read them with a studiousness of attention that became fatal to him. Although bound by the duties of his office to inculcate docility upon his flock, he was not sufficiently docile himself. He saw apparent contradictions, and shut his eyes to the means suggested for reconciling them. He imagined that he perceived the most frightful contradictions between Jesus being born a Jew and afterwards being recognized as God; in regard to that God known from the first as the son of Joseph the carpenter and the brother of James, yet descended from an empyrean which does not exist, to destroy sin upon earth that is still covered with crimes; in regard to that God, the son of a common artisan and a descendant of David on the side of his father, who was not in fact his father; between the creator of all worlds, and the descendant of the adulterous Bathsheba, the prurient Ruth, the incestuous Tamar, the prostitute of Jericho, the wife of Abraham, so suspiciously attractive to a king of Egypt, and again at the age of ninety years to a king of Gerar.
Meslier expatiates with an impiety absolutely monstrous on these pretended contradictions, as they struck him, for which, however, he might easily have found an explanation, had he possessed only a small portion of docility. At length his gloom so grew upon him in his solitude that he actually became horror-stricken at that holy religion which it was his duty to preach and love; and, listening only to his seduced and wandering reason, he abjured Christianity by a will written in his own hand, of which he left three copies behind him at his death, which took place in 1732. The copy of this will has been often printed, and exhibits, in truth, a most cruel stumbling-block. A clergyman, who at the point of death, asks pardon of God and his parishioners for having taught the doctrines of Christianity; a charitable clergyman, who holds Christianity in execration because many who profess it are depraved; who is shocked at the pomp and pride of Rome, and exasperated by the difficulties of the sacred volume; a clergyman who speaks of Christianity like Porphyry, Jamblichus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Julian! And this just as he is to make his appearance before God! How fatal a case for him, and for all who may be led astray by his example!
In a similar manner the unfortunate preacher Antony, misled by the apparent contradictions which he imagined he saw between the new and the old law, between the cultivated olive and the wild olive, wretchedly abandoned the Christian religion for the Jewish; and, more courageous than John Meslier, preferred death to recantation.
It is evident from the will of John Meslier that the apparent contradictions of the gospel were the principal cause of unsettling the mind of that unfortunate pastor, who was, in other respects, a man of the strictest virtue, and whom it is impossible to think of without compassion. Meslier is deeply impressed by the two genealogies, which seem in direct opposition; he had not seen the method of reconciling them; he feels agitated and provoked to see that St. Matthew makes the father and mother of the child travel into Egypt, after having received the homage of the three eastern magi or kings, and while old King Herod, under the apprehension of being dethroned by an infant just born at Bethlehem, causes the slaughter of all the infants in the country, in order to prevent such a revolution. He is astonished that neither St. Luke, nor St. Mark, nor St. John make any mention of this massacre. He is confounded at observing that St. Luke makes Joseph, and the blessed Virgin Mary, and Jesus our Saviour, remain at Bethlehem, after which they withdraw to Nazareth. He should have seen that the Holy Father might at first go into Egypt, and some time afterwards to Nazareth, which was their country.
If St. Matthew alone makes mention of the three magi, and of the star which guided them to Bethlehem from the remote climes of the East, and of the massacre of the children; if the other evangelists take no notice of these events, they do not contradict St. Matthew; silence is not contradiction.
If the three first evangelists—St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke—make Jesus Christ to have lived but three months from his baptism in Galilee till his crucifixion at Jerusalem; and if St. John extends that time to three years and three months, it is easy to approximate St. John to the other evangelists, as he does not expressly state that Jesus Christ preached in Galilee for three years and three months, but only leaves it to be inferred from his narrative. Should a man renounce his religion upon simple inferences, upon points of controversy, upon difficulties in chronology?
It is impossible, says Meslier, to harmonize St. Mark and St. Luke; since the first says that Jesus, when he left the wilderness, went to Capernaum, and the second that he went to Nazareth. St. John says that Andrew was the first who became a follower of Jesus Christ; the three other evangelists say that it was Simon Peter.
He pretends, also, that they contradict each other with respect to the day when Jesus celebrated the Passover, the hour and place of His execution, the time of His appearance and resurrection. He is convinced that books which contradict each other cannot be inspired by the Holy Spirit; but it is not an article of faith to believe that the Holy Spirit inspired every syllable; it did not guide the hand of the copyist; it permitted the operation of secondary causes; it was sufficient that it condescended to reveal the principal mysteries, and that in the course of time it instituted a church for explaining them. All those contradictions, with which the gospels have been so often and so bitterly reproached, are explained by sagacious commentators; far from being injurious, they