According to Paul de Regia [1] Jesus was born out of wedlock. Joseph, however, gave shelter and protection to the mother. De Regia dwells on the beauty of the child. "His eyes were not exceptionally large, but were well-opened, and were shaded by long, silky, dark-brown eyelashes, and rather deep-set. They were of a blue-grey colour, which changed with changing emotions, taking on various shades, especially blue and brownish-grey."
He and His disciples were Essenes, as was also the Baptist. That implies that He was no longer a Jew in the strict sense. His preaching dealt with the rights of man, and put forward socialistic and communistic demands: His religion in the pure consciousness of communion with God. With eschatology He had nothing whatever to do, it was first interpolated into His teaching by Matthew.
The miracles are all to be explained by suggestion and hypnotism. At the marriage at Cana, Jesus noticed that the guests were taking too much and therefore secretly bade the servants pour out water instead of wine while He Himself said, "Drink, this is better wine." In this way He succeeded in suggesting to a part of the company that they were really drinking wine. The feeding of the multitude is explained by striking out a couple of noughts from the numbers; the raising of Lazarus by supposing it a case of premature burial. Jesus Himself when taken down from the cross was not dead, and the Essenes succeeded in re-animating Him. His work is inspired with hatred against Catholicism, but with a real reverence for Jesus.
Another mere variant of the plan of Venturini is the fictitious Life of Jesus of Pierre Nahor. [2] The sentimental descriptions of nature and the long dialogues characteristic of the Lives of Jesus of a hundred years ago are here again in full force. After John had already begun to preach in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, Jesus, in company with a distinguished Brahmin who possessed property at Nazareth and had an influential following in Jerusalem, made a journey to Egypt and was there indoctrinated into all kinds of Egyptian, Essene, and Indian philosophy, thus giving the author,
- ↑ Jesus von Nazareth. Described from the Scientific, Historical, and Social Point of View. Translated from the French (into German) by A. Just. Leipzig, 1894. The author, whose real name is P. A. Desjardin, is a practising physician. De Regla, too, makes the Fourth Gospel the basis of his narrative.
- ↑ Pierre Nahor (Emilie Lerou), Jesus. Translated from the French by Walter Bloch. Berlin, 1905. Its motto is: The figure of Jesus belongs, like all mysterious, heroic, or mythical figures, to legend and poetry. In the introduction we find the statement, "This book is a confession of faith." The narrative is based on the Fourth Gospel.
