Jesus In India — Page 53
J e s u s i n I n d i a 53 boundaries, how could they have been compressed into a meager period of three years? Another difficulty about these Gospels is that the references they give of earlier books are mostly wrong; they could not even give Jesus’ genealogy correctly. From the Gospels, it appears that the evangelists were rather naive to the extent that they mistook Jesus for a ghost. From the earliest times these Gospels have been open to the charge that they have not been able to preserve the purity of their texts, particularly when there were other books too which were compiled as Gospels. There is no earthly reason why all the statements of those books should be rejected, and why all that is contained in the Gospels, generally so-called, should be admitted as true. We do not think that the other Gospels could contain such unfounded exaggerations as are to be found in the present four Gospels. It is surprising that while on the one hand, they say that Jesus was a righteous person and that his character was without blemish, on the other hand, charges are brought against him as are unworthy of a righteous person. For example, the Israelite prophets, in accordance with the teaching of the Torah, undoubtedly had hundreds of wives each at a time in order that they might thereby produce a whole generation of righteous people. But you will never have heard that any prophet had ever set such an example of permissiveness that he should allow a wanton and lascivious woman, a noted sinner of the city, to touch his body with her hands, to let her rub oil—her sin’s earnings—on his head and to stroke his feet with her hair; that he allowed all this to be done by an unchaste young woman, and didn’t so much as tell her to stop it. One is saved from giving way to suspicion, which naturally arises