And a Joseph of Arimathea may easily
have been a Roman citizen with a yacht that could visit Britain.
The same fallacy is employed with the same partisan motive in the case
of the Gospel of St. John; which critics say could not have been
written by one of the first few Christians because of its Greek
transcendentalism and its Platonic tone. I am no judge of the philology,
but every human being is a divinely appointed judge of the philosophy:
and the Platonic tone seems to me to prove nothing at all.
Palestine was not a secluded valley of barbarians; it was
an open province of a polyglot empire, overrun with all sorts
of people of all kinds of education. To take a rough parallel:
suppose some great prophet arose among the Boers in South Africa.
The prophet himself might be a simple or unlettered man.
But no one who knows the modern world would be surprised if one
of his closest followers were a Professor from Heidelberg or an
M.A. from Oxford.
All this is not urged here with any notion of proving that the tale
of the thorn is not a myth; as I have said, it probably is a myth.
It is urged with the much more important object of pointing
out the proper attitude towards such myths.. The proper attitude
is one of doubt and hope and of a kind of light mystery.
The tale is certainly not impossible; as it is certainly not certain.
And through all the ages since the Roman Empire men have fed their
healthy fancies and their historical imagination upon the very twilight
condition of such tales.
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