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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



without hands," may have been represented as 

 the voice of one come to attack the existing in- 

 stitutions — to " destroy the law and the prophets." 

 We have a most important commentary on this 

 in the parallel accusation of Stephen a few months 

 later : " We have heard him say, that this 

 Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and 

 shall change the customs which Moses delivered 

 us." But, according to another view, the same 

 reported utterance — especially in the modified 

 form of Matthew, " I am able to destroy the tem- 

 ple of God " — may have been intended as a charge 

 of arrogating superhuman power. So his origi- 

 nal auditors felt it. " Forty-and-six years was 

 this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it 

 again in three days ? " The two charges, it will 

 be observed, though very distinct, are not incon- 

 sistent. May he not have been charged both with 

 attempting to change the national institutions 

 and with pietensions to miraculous power? The 

 difficulty in this supposition is that we have been 

 seeking in these charges for the one crime upon 

 which Jesus was finally condemned. But, if we 

 look more narrowly at the supposed difficulty, 

 we may find what we have been seeking. Jesus 

 was finally condemned for " blasphemy," because 

 he made himself the Messiah and the Son of 

 God, making thus higher personal claims than 

 even the witnesses against him had suggested. 

 That was the crime, therefore, toward which one 

 of the intended accusations — that as to superhu- 

 man power — may be held to have pointed. But 

 what of the other ? The unexpected but satis- 

 factory answer is, that it fell under precisely the 

 same legal category, or nomen juris — that of 

 blasphemy. This might be suggested to us by 

 the witnesses against Stephen, who describe as 

 " blasphemous words " the deliberate utterances 

 of the deacon as to the passing away of the holy 

 place and the law. But I believe that it will be 

 found there is no Hebrew category of crime under 

 which the attempt to supersede the old institu- 

 tions could so naturally come as that denoted by 

 the term blasphemy. The witnesses, therefore, 

 may have had this somewhat in view from the 

 beginning, as the judges almost certainly had ; 

 and it is not too soon to devote a few sentencs 

 to the question what so important a legal word 

 means. 



Blasphemy is not profanity — it is profanity 

 which, as the name imports, strikes directly 

 against God. 1 This is the original sense of the 

 word, and it is that to which we have returned in 



1 The Hebrew words seem to carry the same implica- 

 tion of verbal offense and insult. 



modern days. But throughout the countries of 

 Europe, ruled by civil and canon law, blasphemy 

 has long since taken on a secondary and con- 

 structive meaning. It stands in their law-books 

 at the head of the enumeration of crimes as 

 " treason against the Deity," taking precedence 

 even of treason against the state. And this 

 critnen Icesce majestatis divince, like the crime of 

 treason against earthly rulers, has often, under 

 the head of constructive treason, taken great 

 and dangerous latitude. 1 Now, whether it is a 

 necessary thing for ordinary nations and juris- 

 prudences to have in their statute-book such a 

 crime as treason against God at all, we need not 

 inquire. One thing is certain : in the Hebrew 

 commonwealth and under Hebrew law it was 

 necessary. For that commonwealth was the one 

 pure theocracy, and all its priests, prophets, 

 judges, and kings, were the mere courtiers and 

 ministers of the invisible King, whose word was 

 Israel's constitution and law. In such a consti- 

 tution blasphemy, or the verbal renunciation of 

 God, was in the proper sense high-treason ; and 

 any attempt to subvert the great institutions of 

 his government was constructive treason. Now, 

 neither the crime of the "false prophet" of the 

 true God, nor that of " the idolater " or seducer 

 to the worship of strange gods, seems to have 

 attained to the generality and eminence of the 

 name of blasphemy in Jewish law. That the 

 word was used in the age of Caiaphas to designate 

 alleged attempts against the Divine system of re- 

 ligion is certain. That it had become the proper 

 nomen juris for all such constructive treasons I 

 have not seen conclusively proved ; but it seems 

 highly probable. 



We cannot, therefore, hold, as has sometimes 

 been done, that these witnesses brought forward 

 a special and isolated charge with regard to the 

 temple, and that on the failure of it the council 

 passed unfairly to other and disconnected counts. 

 The special charge was at least in the line of the 

 whole procedure contemplated. 2 For, unless we 

 are to become wholly unhistorical in our legal 

 criticism, we must believe that the general course 

 of this night's proceedings was prearranged by 

 the leading members of the Sanhedrim, and that 

 they and not the witnesses really conducted the 

 prosecution. The evidence is overwhelming 3 



1 The canon law definition of blasphemy puts its origi- 

 nal meaning' last, and puts first that it is ascribing to God 

 "quod Illi non convenit." 



a Exactly as the charge against Stephen was in the line 

 of his subsequent and sudden condemnation. 



3 John vii. 25, 80, 45 ; viii. 40 ; ix. 22 : xi. 47, 5T. Matt. 

 xxi. 23, 46. Luke xx. 20. Matt. xxvi. 3, et seq. 



