When, then, we take pen in hand to review part of  the history of this great strife between Christian and Jew in days gone by, we do so because we have greater faith in present-day humanity than in the inhumanity of the past.. Let us agree to seek an explanation, to confer together, to sink our pride in our own opinion, and discover why we are enemies, one of another, in things theological, while we are friends perchance in things scientific and philosophic. 

But this book is not intended for the man whose "Christianity" is greater than his humanity, nor for him whose "Judaism" is stronger than his love of humankind; it is not meant for the theologian who loves his preconceptions more than truth, or for the fanatic who thinks he is the only chosen of God. It is a book for men and women who have experience of life and human nature, who have the courage to face things as they are; who know that on the one hand the Churches of to-day, no matter how they strive carefully to disguise the fact, are confronted by the gravest possible difficulties as to doctrine, while many of the clergy, owing to a total lack of wise guidance by those in authority, are becoming a law unto themselves, or, because of the terrorism of ecclesiastical laymen, are forced to be hypocrites in the pulpit; and, on the other hand, that Judaism cannot continue in its traditional mould without doing the utmost violence to its intelligence. 

Traditional theology, traditional history, traditional views in general are being questioned on all hands, and there is an. ever-growing conviction that the consciousness and conscience of a Church, whether that Church be the Congregation of Christendom or the Dispersion of  Israel, evolve from century to century; that religion is not an exception to the law which is seen to be operative in every department of nature and human activity; and that, therefore, it is incumbent upon all who have the best interests of religion at heart "to maintain the right and duty of [any] Church to restate her belief from time to time, as required by the progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit," as one of the objects of the Churchmen's Union declares. 

To-day, in thinking and progressive Christendom, we have before us the spectacle of the mind and heart of the earnest seeker after truth torn and lacerated by the contradictions and manifest absurdities of much in the tradition of the Faith. The only relief from this most painful state of affairs is to be found in the courageous recognition, that in the early days the marvelous mysteries of the inner life and the inner nature of man were objectivized and historicized by those who either did not understand their true spiritual import, or who deliberately used this method for the instruction of the many who were unable to grasp in their proper terms the spiritual verities of man in his perfectioning. To this we will return at the end of our present enquiry and endeavour to show how even Jew and Christian can learn to understand and respect each other even on the ground of religion. 

And, indeed, the time is very opportune, for some of the preliminary conditions for a better understanding are being prepared. To-day there is being given to the world for the first time what purports to be "a faithful record of the multifarious activity" of the Jewish people. The Israelite has been a mystery to the Christian, a mystery to humanity, from generation to generation; he has lived in our midst, and we have not known him, nay, we have been content to believe anything of him, while he for the most part has been inarticulate as to himself, his hopes, and his fears. The Jewish Encyclopaedia is to remedy this evil, for it sets before itself the endeavour "to give, in systematized, comprehensive, and yet succinct form, a full and accurate account of the history and literature, the social and intellectual life of the Jewish people, of their ethical and religious views, their customs, rites, and traditions in all ages and in all lands." 

Such a work is an undertaking of the most profound interest and importance, and we look forward to its publication with the liveliest anticipation, asking ourselves the questions: What will the Jew in this comprehensive Encyclopaedia have to tell us of Christianity? How will he treat the traditions of his fathers concerning Jesus? To-day we can no longer burn or torture him or confiscate his goods. His account of himself, moreover, is to be given by the best intelligence in him. What, then, will he say concerning Jesus and the long centuries of bitter strife between the Christians and his own people? 

From the three volumes which have so far appeared it is not possible to answer this question; but that it is the question of all questions in Jewish affairs that demands a wise answer, will be seen from our present  enquiry. To ignore it, or merely to confine it to vague generalities, is of no advantage to the world. 

Three of its twelve volumes only have so far appeared. (New York: Funk & Wagnalls; 1901, in progress.) 

Though the East of Europe is not yet quite powerless in this respect. 

As the New Testament was added to the Old Covenant Bible by the Church Fathers, and formed the basis of their exegesis, so was the Talmud added to the Torah by the Rabbis, and formed the special study of later Jewry. The Talmud covers the whole period of the early Christian centuries. What has the Talmud to say of Christianity? For as the editors of the Encyclopaedia well say: 

"The Talmud is a world of its own, awaiting the attention of the modern reader. In its encyclopaedic compass it comprises all the variety of thought and opinions, of doctrine and science, accumulated by the Jewish people in the course of more than seven centuries, and formulated for the most part by their teachers. Full of the loftiest spiritual truths and of fantastic imagery, of close and learned legal disquisitions and of extravagant exegesis, of earnest doctrine and of minute casuistry, of accurate knowledge and of popular conceptions, it invites the world of to-day to a closer acquaintance with its voluminous contents." 

To-day it is becoming a canon of historical research that the study of ancient history can hardly ever reward us by the attainment of incontrovertible fact; it can at best only tell us what the opinions of certain writers were about the facts of which we are in search. Many years of study of Christian origins have convinced some of us that it is impossible to be absolutely certain historically of any objective fact relating to the life of Jesus as handed on by tradition. We can only say that this or that seems more likely to have occurred;  and here again our preference, if we trace it deep enough, will be found to depend entirely on subjective considerations. Canonical Christianity gradually evolved the mind-bewildering dogma that Jesus was in deed and truth very God of very God, unique and miraculous in every possible respect; and the Church for some seventeen or eighteen centuries has boldly thrown down this challenge to the intellect and experience of humanity. Strong in the strength of her faith in miracle she has triumphed in her theology, and imposed it on the West even until the present day; but at last she has herself developed an intellect which can no longer fully believe in this. A new spirit is at work in her children, who are busily trying to convince their mother that she has been mistaken in many things, and has often misunderstood the wisdom of the Master. 

It is because of this stupendous claim on behalf of a claim which has perhaps astonished none more than Himself, that the Church has brought upon herself a scrutiny into the history of her origins that it is totally unable to bear. Every single assertion about her great Teacher is scrutinized with a minuteness that is not demanded in the case of any other historical problem, and the lay student who follows the researches of specialists meets with so many contradictions in the analysis of the traditional data, and is brought face to face with so many warring opinions, that he is in despair of arriving at any patent historic certainty on any single point in the Evangelical record. Nevertheless he is confronted by the unavoidable fact that a great religion came to birth; and, if he be not an out and out five-sense rationalist, his only relief lies in the belief that the secret of this birth must have been hidden in a psychic womb, and the real history of the movement must therefore be sought in some great drama that was enacted in the unseen world. 

But the interest in the problem is by no means lessened because of the historical uncertainty; on the contrary it is a thousand-fold increased. The subject can never be made solely a matter of dry historical research; it will always be involved in the most profoundly instructive psychological phenomena, and that too not only in the study of the minds of the ancient writers, but also in the appreciation of the preconceptions of their modern critics. Hence it is that any book dealing with the question of Christian origins is before all others a human document from which, no matter what view a man may take, there is always something to be learned of our complex human nature. 

And with regard to our present enquiry, what can be of greater interest than to observe how that from the same facts, whatever those facts may have been, on the one hand, under the expansive influence of love, wonder, credulity, and intense religious enthusiasm, there was evolved the story of God Himself uniquely incarnate in man; while on the other, from feelings of annoyance, of surprise, and disbelief, and, later, of hate, bred of an equal enthusiasm for religion, there was built up the story of a deceiver of Israel? Here we see evolved, generation by generation, and side by side, absolutely contradictory representations purporting to be the accounts of the doings and sayings of one and the same person.

The philosophic mind can thus derive much food for reflexion by a comparison of the Christian and Jewish traditions concerning Jesus, and his studies will lead him to understand how that a thing which may be perfectly true psychically or spiritually, and of great help to the religious life, can, when taken out of its proper sphere, and aggressively asserted as a purely physical and historical fact, be turned into a subject of grossest material controversy. Thus it may be that we shall be able to estimate, at their just values, some things which cannot but appear extremely shocking to conventional religious minds, and be able to understand how what was regarded by the one side as a saving truth, could be regarded by the other as a mischievous error; how what was declared by the Christians to be the highest honour, could be regarded by the Jew as a proof of dishonour; how what was believed in by the former as the historic facts of a unique divine revelation, could be treated disparagingly, or with mockery and even humour, by those who held to the tradition of what they believed to have been equally a unique revelation of the Divine.

But it is not the doctrinal quarrels which chiefly interest us in studying these traditions of Jewry. What, in our opinion, is of far greater interest is that the Jewish traditions, in spite of some gross contradictions, in the main assign a date to Jesus which widely differs from that of Christian tradition. The main object of this enquiry is to state this problem, to show that in moderate probability for many centuries this was the Jewish tradition as to the date of Jesus, not to attack or defend it. Moreover, we have taken up this subject  not only on general grounds of interest, but also for a special reason. 

For this problem, though not as yet even heard of by the general public, is, nevertheless, of great interest to many students of Theosophy, and, therefore, it seems to press, not for solution—for of that there are no immediate hopes—but for a more satisfactory definition than has been as yet accorded to it. 

The problem, then, we are about to attempt more clearly to define is not a metaphysical riddle, not a spiritual enigma, not some moral puzzle (though all of these factors may be made to inhere in it), but a problem of physical fact, well within the middle distance of what is called the historic period. It is none the less on this account of immense importance and interest generally, and especially to thoughtful students of "origins," for it raises no less a question than that of an error in the date of the life of the Founder of Christianity; and that, too, not by the comparatively narrow margin of some seven or eight years (as many have already argued on the sole basis of generally accepted traditional data ), but by no less a difference than the (in such a connection) enormous time-gulf of a full century. Briefly, the problem may be popularly summed up in the startling and apparently ludicrous question: Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? 

Now, had all such questioning been confined to a small circle of first-hand investigators of the hidden side of things, or, if we may say so, of the noumena of things historic underlying the blurred records of phenomena handed down to us by tradition, there would be no immediate necessity for the present enquiry;  but of late years very positive statements on this matter, based on such methods of research, have been printed and circulated among those interested in such questions; and what, in the opinion of the writer, makes the matter even more pressing, is that these statements are being readily accepted by ever-growing numbers. Now, it goes without saying, that the majority of those who have accepted such statements have done so either for subjective reasons satisfactory to themselves, or from some inner feeling or impression which they have not been at pains to analyse. The state of affairs, then, seems clearly to demand, that as they have heard a little of the matter, they should now hear more, and that the question should be taken out of the primitive crudeness of a choice between two sets of mutually contradictory assertions, and advanced a stage into the subtler regions of critical research. As far as the vast majority of the general public who may chance to stumble on the amazing question which heads our enquiry, is concerned, it is only to be expected that they will answer it offhand not only with an angry No, but with the further reflection that the very formulating of such a query betokens the vagaries of a seriously disordered mind; indeed, at the outset of our investigations we were also ourselves decidedly of the opinion that no mind trained in historic research, even the most cautious, would hesitate for a moment to sum up the probabilities of the accessible evidence as pointing to a distinct negative. But when all is said and done, we find ourselves in a position of doubt between, on the one hand, the seeming impossibility of impugning the genuineness of the Pilate date, and on the other, an uncomfortable feeling that the nature of the inconsistencies of the Hebrew tradition rather strengthens than diminishes the possibility that there may be something after all in what appears to be its most insistent factor—namely, that Jesus lived in the days of Jannai.

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