{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_51655/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_51655","id":"gutenberg_51655","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51655","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Religious","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Jesus Christ -- Historicity","Jesus Christ -- Rationalistic interpretations"],"text":"THE HISTORICAL JESUS\n                         A SURVEY OF POSITIONS\n\n\n                                   BY\n                           JOHN M. ROBERTSON\n\n\n        [ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]\n\n                                London:\n                              WATTS & CO.,\n                 17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.\n                                  1916\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n\nPreamble                                                              xi\n\nChapter I.--THE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION\n\n    Presupposition in science. The Copernican theory. The reception of\n    Galileo, Harvey, and Darwin. Blinding effects of scholarship. The\n    theological record. Mutations of Christian opinion. Defence\n    of the belief in witchcraft. Leibnitz and Newton. Criticism\n    of the Pentateuch. Parvish, Astruc, Voltaire, Colenso, and the\n    professional scholars                                              1\n\nChapter II.--MODES OF CONSERVATIVE FALLACY\n\n    Persistence of the theological temper. Each abandoned position\n    first defended with the same fierceness. Saner forms of\n    conservatism. Persistence in presupposition. Canon Inge on Jesus\n    and Paul. The logical hiatus. Mill's precedent. His dithyrambic\n    mood and critical inadequacy. Disregard of the documentary\n    evidence. Need to face the real problem. The sociological\n    process. Mill's dictum contrasted with those of Newman and\n    Baur                                                               6\n\nChapter III.--ILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC\n\n    Mill's method and mind non-historical. \"The historic\n    sense.\" Dr. J. E. Carpenter's. The concept of \"sublimity.\" God\n    portraiture. Its limitations. The Gospel ethic. Significance of the\n    contradictions. The parable of the Good Samaritan. Incompetent\n    verdicts of theologians. The story of Lycurgus and\n    Alcander. Plutarch on forgiveness of enemies. Fanaticism of\n    Christian estimates of antiquity                                  18\n\nChapter IV.--THE METHOD OF BLUSTER\n\n    The historic problem. Its treatment by a Unitarian cleric. The\n    method of bluster. The real and the pretended character of the\n    Gospel according to Mark. Wellhausen's estimate. Actual features\n    of primitive and popular myth-lore. Biography in Plutarch. Mr.\n    McCabe on the Marcan residuum. The gospel figure. Doctrinal\n    determinants                                                      30\n\nChapter V.--SCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH\n\n    Collapse of the thesis of \"human characteristics.\" The myth\n    and the historicity of Herakles. The more considerate thesis\n    of Schmiedel: argument from \"derogatory\" episodes. Kalthoff on\n    the human characteristics in Ruth and Jonah. Confusion of the new\n    argument. Jesus introduced in Mark with divine characteristics. The\n    Unitarian blunder as to \"conventional\" and \"unconventional\"\n    hero-worship. Jewish and Pagan heroes and Gods alike put in\n    \"derogatory\" positions. Herakles, Dionysos, and Apollo. Need to\n    apply anthropological, mythological, and hierological as well as\n    N. T. scholarship. Grounds for a Christian myth of the Founder\n    as opposed by his family                                          44\n\nChapter VI.--THE VISIONARY EVANGEL\n\n    B. Weiss's \"Primitive Gospel.\" Its characteristics common to\n    Mark. The enigma of the evangel of the Twelve. That problem never\n    rightly realized by the exegetes. The allegorical explanations\n    to be withheld from the people. Complete deficit of historical\n    matter. The evangel of the Twelve a myth. Real origin in a rite,\n    not in an evangel. The last hypothesis: a political evangel that\n    could not be later avowed. Incompatibility of this view with the\n    Gospels. Composition of the record. Why the Primitive Gospel lacked\n    the Tragedy. Breakdown of the traditionary explanation. Orthodox\n    avowals of anomaly                                                51\n\nChapter VII.--THE ALLEGED CONSENSUS OF SCHOLARS\n\n    Resort to the myth-theory forced by the data. Unitarian attitude to\n    that. Appeal for acceptance of the \"consensus of scholars.\" No such\n    consensus ever attained. Dalman on his fellow-specialists. His own\n    presuppositions. Pretensions to solve historical problems through\n    philology. Distinction between pedantry and science. Candour of\n    Schmiedel. Inadequacy of his method. Resistance of scholarship\n    to scientific thought. Colenso and the Zulu and the orthodox\n    resistance. Attack on the New Testament scholars by Professor\n    Blass                                                              62\n\nChapter VIII.--CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS\n\n    Modifications of conservative attitude. Lack of good faith\n    or of comprehension. Samples of misrepresentation. The\n    Unitarian attitude. Treatment of myth-solutions: the Myth of\n    the Temptation. Dr. Thorburn's orthodox solution. Mythology\n    and psychology. Psychic determinants of resistance to new\n    views. Attitude to \"healing powers\" ascribed to Jesus. Force of\n    presupposition. Davidson's \"must.\"                                74\n\nChapter IX.--BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE\n\n    The attempt to find an \"impersonal\" test of the documentary\n    basis. Dr. Flinders Petrie on The Growth of the Gospels. Theory\n    of selection and compilation from logia. Acceptance of any\n    item as early. The argument of Blass as to possibility of real\n    predictions. Case of Savonarola. Nature of the problem. Political\n    anticipation versus prophecy. Investigation of the Savonarola\n    case. His earlier prophecies, conditional and absolute            82\n\nChapter X.--THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY\n\n    Comparison between Savonarola's prediction of the Sack of Rome\n    and the gospel prophecy of the Fall of Jerusalem. Normality\n    of Savonarola's vaticinations. Historical blunder of the Blass\n    school as to medieval warfare. Frequency of sacrilege in Christian\n    war. The Christian sack of Constantinople                         93\n\nChapter XI.--THE \"LOGIA\" THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEST\n\n    Blass on the gospel prophecy: analysis of the texts. Their\n    arbitrary handling by Blass. The \"Nucleus\" theory of\n    Dr. Petrie. Its arbitrary implications. Impersonal method\n    of selection not followed by impersonal inference from the\n    results. The logia theory much more compatible with the myth-theory\n    than with the tradition. Test cases                              104\n\nChapter XII.--FAILURE OF THE \"LOGIA\" THEORY\n\n    The scientific inference. Omission and invention of logia\n    necessarily to be inferred as well as selection. Implicit\n    abandonment of certain prophecies, and resulting incoherence\n    of the argument. Reversion to the fundamental issue between\n    supernaturalism and reason. Final futility of the attempt\n    to vindicate the documents. Possibilities as to currency\n    of written logia. Illustration from Islam. The mass of\n    incompatibilities in the Gospel Teaching. Possibilities of genuine\n    self-contradiction. Carlyle and Ruskin. Mohammed. The gospels not\n    thus explicable. Damaging implications of the logia theory. Variety\n    of \"Christs.\" Papias. Baruch and Enoch                           113\n\nChapter XIII.--RESURGENCE OF THE HISTORIC PROBLEM\n\n    The actually recovered logia of Oxyrhynchus. Their incompatibility\n    with Dr. Petrie's assumption of historic genuineness for\n    all. The real process of composition in Luke's gospel. Motives\n    for invention. The myth of the Seventy Disciples a sample and\n    test case. Inadequacy alike of the documentary theory and that\n    of scattered logia                                               123\n\nChapter XIV.--ORTHODOXY AND THE \"ORAL\" HYPOTHESIS\n\n    The \"oral\" hypothesis of the Rev. A. Wright. His approximations\n    to the \"liberal\" chronology as against the Blass school. His\n    candour. Hypothesis of fifty-two Lessons. Another \"selection\"\n    theory--selection from oral traditions locally cherished. Wide\n    departures of Mr. Wright from his theory. Unaccountableness of\n    apostolic information. The tradition as to baptism. Problem of\n    the duration of the Ministry, and of the one or four visits to\n    Jerusalem. The oral hypothesis, like the others, more compatible\n    with the myth-theory than with the tradition. Stand on the\n    Resurrection                                                     129\n\nChapter XV.--THE METHOD OF M. LOISY\n\n    M. Loisy and the \"liberal\" school. His attitude to the\n    myth-theory. His certitudes. Disclaims biography, and\n    produces one. His treatment of the legend. The problem of the\n    multitude of healings. Collapse of the assumption in the case\n    of Nazareth. Inconsistency of M. Loisy's method, and weakness\n    of his solutions. His acceptance of the Joseph legend. \"The\n    carpenter.\" Difficulty set up by Origen. The myth solution. \"The\n    son of Mary.\" Dilemma set up by later passages. Problem of the\n    Messianic declaration of Peter. Impossibility of the personality\n    set up by Petrine and anti-Petrine records                       141\n\nChapter XVI.--THE TRIAL CRUX\n\n    Lax treatment of the main problems by M. Loisy. Acceptance\n    of the non-historical as historical. The Purification of the\n    Temple. The Agony. Approximation to the true solution. The\n    priestly Trial. Virtual abandonment of the narrative by\n    M. Loisy. Illicit reconstruction. Successive retreats of the\n    \"liberal\" school. Surrender of (1) the Trial before Herod, (2)\n    the Johannine record, (3) the Trial before the priests. Stand on\n    the Trial before Pilate. Untenableness of that. The Roman Trial\n    admittedly a loose tradition. Impossible as recorded. A clear\n    solution supplied by the myth theory. Irreconcilable character\n    of the Triumphal entry and the unanimous hostility of the people\n    before Pilate. The Barabbas story admittedly unhistorical. Its\n    presence accounted for only by the myth-theory                   161\n\nChapter XVII.--THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY\n\n    The dilemma of the Evangel of the Twelve. M. Loisy on the\n    Teaching of Jesus as preparative for the cult. Destructive\n    effect of his admissions as to the teaching of Paul. His attitude\n    towards the myth-theory. Demanding definiteness, he rests in the\n    indefinite. His self-contradictions. His ascription of originality\n    to quoted teachings. Incompatibility of his Teacher and his\n    Messiah. The teaching as to divorce not that of one expecting\n    a new order. Its prior currency. Bases of the gospel ethic. The\n    Good Samaritan documentarily a late creation                     173\n\nChapter XVIII.--THE PAULINE PROBLEM\n\n    M. Loisy on the testimony of Paul. His misconception as to\n    its bearings on the myth-theory. Van Manen helped by his own\n    thesis to accept the historicity of Jesus. The myth-theory quite\n    independent of the dating of the Epistles. Importance of noting\n    that, early or late, they are interpolated. M. Loisy's treatment\n    of the documentary problem. Van Manen's strong case against the\n    Epistles. Need to revise the details of the chronology. Also\n    to orient the myth-theory aright. Inadequacy of the theories of\n    Kalthoff and Kautsky                                             185\n\nChapter XIX.--THE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION\n\n    Prospects of controversy. Slow advance of the \"liberal\"\n    view. Identity of the final positions of Strauss and\n    Loisy. Tentative beginnings of the myth-theory. Effects of\n    persecution and of Strauss's final dialectic. Schweitzer on\n    the evolution \"from Reimarus to Wrede.\" Bruno Bauer. Claims\n    for \"the German temperament.\" Need for a truly scientific\n    temper. Effects of Bauer's flaws of mood and method. Schweitzer's\n    amenity and candour. Demonstrates the shortsightedness of German\n    specialism. Schweitzer's ignorance concerning the myth-theory\n    in its later developments. His laxities in research. His own\n    thesis                                                           193\n\nChapter XX.--THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH-THEORY\n\n    The issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede. Each destroys one half\n    of the \"liberal\" case for historicity. Schweitzer confutes Wrede,\n    and then puts a still more untenable view. His acceptance of the\n    triumphal entry into Jerusalem as historical. His Jesus hailed\n    not as a Messiah but as Elias. Schweitzer's new view of the\n    Betrayal. Judas a revealer of his Master's private claim to be\n    Messiah. The multitude supposed to be thus cleared of the charge\n    of fickleness. Schweitzer's fallacy as to Messianic claims being\n    blasphemous. His service to criticism by clearing the ground. His\n    final ethical and sociological confusion. The fortunes of the\n    myth-theory in England. Early adumbrations. Difference in modern\n    spirit and method, resulting from establishment of anthropology as\n    a science. Lyell and Tylor. Schweitzer's scientific temper. The\n    myth-theory. The battleground of the future. Positions of Sir\n    J. G. Frazer. Countervailing declarations by supporters of the\n    myth-theory. The question one of science, not sentiment          201\n\nConclusion                                                           211\n\nIndex                                                                217\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREAMBLE\n\n\nThe problem of the historicity of the Jesus of the Gospels has been\ndiscussed by me in large sections of two bulky books, which in other\nsections deal with matters only indirectly connected with this, while\neven the sections directly devoted to the problem cover a good deal\nof mythological and anthropological ground which not many readers may\ncare to master. The \"myth theory\" developed in them, therefore, may\nnot be readily grasped even by open-minded readers; and the champions\nof tradition, of whatever school, have a happy hunting-ground for\ndesultory misrepresentation and mystification. It has been felt to be\nexpedient, therefore, by disinterested readers as well as by me, to\nput the problem in a clearer form and in a more concise compass. The\nprocess ought to involve some logical improvement, as the mythological\ninvestigation made in Christianity and Mythology had been carried out\nindependently of the anthropological inquiry made in Pagan Christs,\nand the theory evolved may well require unification. In particular,\nthe element of Jewish mythology calls for fuller development. And\nthe highly important developments of the myth theory by Professor\nDrews and Professor W. B. Smith have to be considered with a view\nto co-ordination.\n\nTo such a re-statement, however, certain preliminary steps are\nnecessary. The ground needs to be cleared (1) of \u00e0 priori notions\nas to the subject matter; (2) of mistaken opinions as to a supposed\n\"consensus of critics\"; and (3) of uncritical assumptions as to the\ncharacter of the Gospel narratives.\n\nWriters who have not gone very deeply into problems of normal history,\nhowever they may have specialized in the Biblical, are still wont to\nassert that the historicity of non-supernatural data in the Sacred\nBooks is on all fours with that of the subject matter of \"profane\"\nhistory. Indeed it is still common to hear it claimed that the\nResurrection is as well \"attested\" as the assassination of Julius\nC\u00e6sar, or even better. In exactly the same tone and spirit did the\ntraditionalists of a previous generation assert that the stoppage of\nthe sun and moon in the interest of Joshua was better attested than any\nequally ancient historical narrative. Those who have decided to abandon\nthe supernatural reduce the claim, of course, to the historicity of\nthe Trial and Crucifixion; but as to these they confidently repeat\nthe old formulas. Yet in point of fact they have made no such critical\nscrutiny of even these items as historians have long been used to make,\nwith destructive results, into many episodes of ancient history--for\ninstance, the battle of Thermopyl\u00e6 and the founding of the Spartan\nconstitution by Lycurgus. Men who affect to dismiss the myth theory\nas an ungrounded speculation are all the while taking for granted\nthe historicity of a record which is a mere tissue of incredibilities.\n\nIt has been justly remarked that serious risk of error is set up even\nby the long-current claim of naturalist critics to \"treat the Bible\nlike any other book.\" Even in their meaning the phrase should have run:\n\"like any other Sacred Book of antiquity\"; inasmuch as critical tests\nand methods are called for in the scrutiny of such books which do not\napply in the case of others. But inasmuch, further, as the Christian\nSacred Books form a problem by themselves, a kind of scrutiny which\nin the case of other books of cult-history might substantially reveal\nall the facts may here easily fail to do so.\n\nThe unsuspecting student, coming to a narrative in which supernatural\ndetails are mingled with \"natural,\" decides simply to reject the\nformer and take as history what is left. It is the method of the\namateur mythologists of ancient Greece, derided by Socrates, and\nchronically resuscitated in all ages by men seeking short cuts to\ncertitude where they have no right to any. If the narrative of the\nTrial and Crucifixion, thus handled, is found to be still incredible\nin point of time-arrangement, the adaptor meets the difficulty by\nreducing the time-arrangement to probability and presenting the twice\nredacted result as \"incontestable\" history. All this, as will be\nshown in the following pages, is merely a begging of the question. A\nscientific analysis points to a quite different solution, which the\nna\u00eff \"historical\" student has never considered.\n\nHe is still kept in countenance, it is true, by \"specialists\" of the\nhighest standing. The average \"liberal\" theologian still employs the\nexplanatory method of Toland; and anthropologists still offer him\nsupport. Thus Sir James Frazer, by far the most learned collector\nof mytho-anthropological lore in his age, positively refuses to\napply to the history of the Christian cult his own express rule of\nmythology--formulated before him [1] but independently reiterated\nby him--that \"all peoples have invented myths to explain why they\nobserved certain customs,\" and that a graphic myth to explain a rite\nis presumptively \"a simple transcript of a ceremony\"; which is the\nequivalent of the doctrine of Robertson Smith, that \"in almost every\ncase the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the\nmyth,\" and of the doctrine of K. O. M\u00fcller that \"the mythus sprang from\nthe worship, and not the worship from the mythus.\" What justification\nSir James can give for his refusal to act on his own principles is of\ncourse a matter for full and careful consideration. But at least the\nfact that he has to justify the refusal to apply in a most important\ncase one of the best-established generalizations of comparative\nmythology is not in this case a recommendation of the principle of\nauthority to scientific readers.\n\nGeneral phrases, then, as to how religions must have originated in\nthe personal impression made by a Founder are not only unscientific\npresuppositions but are flatly contradictory, in this connection, of\na rule scientifically reached in the disinterested study of ancient\nhierology in general.\n\nIt is a delusion, again, to suppose, as do some scholarly men,\nthat there is such a consensus of view among New Testament scholars\nas to put out of court any theory that cancels the traditionalist\nassumption of historicity which is the one position that most of\nthem have in common. As we shall see, the latest expert scholarship,\nprofessionally recognized as such, makes a clean sweep of their whole\nwork; but they themselves, by their insoluble divisions, had already\ndiscredited it. Any careful collection of their views will show that\nthe innumerable and vital divergences of principle and method of the\nvarious schools, and their constant and emphatic disparagement of\neach other's conclusions, point rather to the need for a radically\ndifferent theory and method. A theory, therefore, which cancels their\nconflicts by showing that all the data are reducible to order only when\ntheir primary assumption is abandoned, is entitled to the open-minded\nattention of men who profess loyalty to the spirit of science.\n\nThere is need, thirdly, to bring home even to many readers who profess\nsuch loyalty, the need for a really critical study of the Gospels. I\nhave been blamed by some critics because, having found that sixty\nyears' work on the documents by New Testament scholars yielded no clear\nlight on the problem of origins, I chose to approach that by way (1)\nof mythology, (2) of extra-evangelical literature and sect-history,\nand (3) of anthropology. The question of the order and composition\nof the Gospels, in the view of these critics, should be the first\nstage in the inquiry.\n\nNow, for the main purposes of the myth-theory, the results reached\nby such an investigator as Professor Schmiedel were quite sufficient;\nand though at many points textual questions had to be considered, it\nseemed really not worth while to discuss in detail the quasi-historical\nresults claimed by the exegetes. But it has become apparent that a\nnumber of readers who claim to be \"emancipated\" have let themselves\nbe put off with descriptions of the Gospel-history when they ought to\nhave read it attentively for themselves. A confident traditionalist,\ndealt with hereinafter, writes of the \"pretentious futilities into\nwhich we so readily drop when we talk about them [the Gospels] instead\nof reading them.\" The justice of the observation is unconsciously\nbut abundantly illustrated by himself; and he certainly proves the\nneed for inducing professed students to read with their eyes open.\n\nEarly in 1914 there was published a work on The Historical Christ,\nby Dr. F. C. Conybeare, in which, as against the myth hypothesis,\nwhich he vituperatively assailed, a simple perusal of the Gospel of\nMark (procurable, as he pointed out, for one penny) was confidently\nprescribed as the decisive antidote to all doubts of the historicity\nof the central figure. The positions put were the conventional ones\nof the \"liberal\" school. No note was taken of the later professional\ncriticism which, without accepting the myth-theory, shatters the\nwhole fabric of current historicity doctrine. But that is relatively\na small matter. In the course of his treatise, Dr. Conybeare asserted\nthree times over, with further embellishments, that in the Gospel of\nMark Jesus is \"presented quite naturally as the son of Joseph and his\nwife Mary, and we learn quite incidentally the names of his brothers\nand sisters.\" Dr. Conybeare's printers' proofs, he stated, had been\nread for him by Professor A. C. Clark. I saw, I think, fully twenty\nnewspaper notices of the book; and in not a single one was there any\nrecognition of the gross and thrice-repeated blunder above italicized,\nto modify the chorus of uncritical assent. A professed Rationalist\nrepeated and endorsed Dr. Conybeare's assertion. Needless to say,\nnot only did Dr. Conybeare not mention that Joseph is never named in\nMark, he never once alluded to the fact that in the same Gospel Mary\nis presented as not the mother of Jesus; and the brothers and sisters,\nby implication, as not his brothers and sisters.\n\nWhen aggressive scholars and confident reviewers thus alike reveal\nthat they have not read the Gospels with the amount of attention\nsupposed to be bestowed on them by an intelligent Sunday-school\nteacher, it is evidently inadvisable to take for granted any general\ncritical preparation even among rationalistic readers. Before men\ncan realize the need for a new theoretic interpretation of the whole,\nthey must be invited to note the vital incongruities (as apart from\nmiracle stories) in each Gospel singly, as the lay Freethinkers of\nan earlier generation did without pretending to be scholars.\n\nThose Rationalists are ill-advised who suppose that, in virtue of\nhaving listened to latter-day publicists who profess to extract a\nnon-supernatural \"religion\" from the supernaturalisms of the past, they\nhave reached a higher and truer standpoint than that of the men who\nmade sheer truth their standard and their ideal. Really scholarly and\nscrupulous advocates of theism are as zealous to expose the historical\ntruth as the men who put that first and foremost; it is the ethical\nsentimentalists who put the question of historic truth on one side. The\nfact that some men of scientific training in other fields join at times\nin such complacent constructions does not alter the fact that they\nare non-scientific. The personal equation even of a man of science\nis not science. On these as on other sides of the intellectual life,\n\"opinion of store is cause of want,\" as Bacon has it.\n\nSome of us who in our teens critically read the sacred books first and\nforemost to clear our minds on the general question of supernaturalism,\nand then proceeded to try, with the help of the documentary scholars,\nto trace the history of religion as matter of anthropology and\nsociology, had the experience of being told by Professor Huxley,\nwhose own work we had followed, that we were still at the standpoint\nof Voltaire. Later we had the edification of seeing Huxley expatiate\nupon topics which had long been stale for Secularist audiences,\nand laboriously impugn the story of the Flood and the miracle of\nthe Gadarene swine in discursive debate with Gladstone, even making\nscientific mistakes in the former connection.\n\nIn view of it all, it seems still a sound discipline to treat all\nopinions as for ever open to revision, and at the same time to doubt\nwhether the acceptance of any popular formula will place us in a\nposition to disparage unreservedly all our critical predecessors. If we\nfind reason to dismiss as inadequate the conclusions of many scholars\nof the past, orthodox and heterodox, we are not thereby entitled\nto speak of the best of them otherwise than as powerful minds and\nstrenuous toilers, hampered by some of their erroneous assumptions\nin the task of relieving their fellows of the burden of others.\n\nIt is precisely the habituation of the professional scholars to\nworking in a special groove that has so retarded the progress of New\nTestament criticism. The re-discussion of the historicity question\nthat has followed upon the modern exposition of the myth-theory\nhas involved the reiteration by the historicity school of a set\nof elementary claims from the long-discredited interpolation in\nJosephus and the pagan \"testimonies\" of Suetonius and Tacitus; and\nProfessor W. B. Smith has had to meet these with a detailed rebuttal\nsuch as used to be made--of course with less care and fullness--on\nthe ordinary English Secularist platform forty or even seventy years\nago. Less advanced scholars once more begin to recognize the nullity\nof the argument from the famous passage in the Annals of Tacitus,\n[2] which was clear to so many unpretending freethinkers in the\npast; and to other Gelehrten vom Fach it has to be again pointed out\nthat the impulsore Chresto of Suetonius, so far from testifying to\nthe presence of a Christian multitude at Rome under Nero--a thing\nso incompatible with their own records--is rather a datum for the\nmyth-theory, inasmuch as it posits a cult of a Chrestos or Christos\nout of all connection with the \"Christian\" movement.\n\nThe passage in Josephus was given up long ago by hundreds of orthodox\nscholars as a palpable interpolation, proved as such by the total\nsilence in regard to it of early Fathers who would have rejoiced to\ncite it if it had been in existence. The device of supposing it to\nbe a Christian modification of a different testimony by Josephus is\na resort of despair, which evades altogether the fact of the rupture\nof context made by the passage--a feature only less salient in the\nparagraph of Tacitus. But even if there were no reason to suspect\nthe latter item of being a late echo from Sulpicius Severus, who\nis assumed to have copied it, nothing can be proved from it for the\nhistoricity of the Gospel Jesus, inasmuch as it does but set forth from\na hostile standpoint the ordinary Christian account of the beginnings\nof the cult. Those who at this time of day found upon such data are\nfurther from an appreciation of the evidential problem than were\ntheir orthodox predecessors who debated the issue with Freethinkers\nhalf a century ago.\n\nI have thought it well, then, to precede a restatement of the\n\"myth-theory\" with a critical survey in which a number of preliminary\nquestions of scientific method and critical ethic are pressed upon\nthose who would deal with the main problem aright; and a certain\namount of controversy with other critical schools is indulged in\nby way of making plain the radical weakness of all the conventional\npositions. The negative criticism, certainly, will not establish in\nadvance the positive theory: that must meet the ordeal of criticism\nlike every other. But the preliminary discussion may at once serve to\nfree from waste polemic the constructive argument and guard readers\nagainst bringing to that a delusive light from false assumptions.\n\nA recent and more notorious exhibition of \"critical method\"\nby Dr. Conybeare has satisfied me that it is needless to offer\nany further systematic exposure of the nullity of his treatise,\nwith which I had dealt at some length in The Literary Guide. His\nmemorable attack upon the Foreign Secretary, and his still more\nmemorable retractation, may enable some of his laudatory reviewers\nto realize the kind of temper and the kind of scrutiny he brings to\nbear upon documents and theories that kindle his passions. All that\nwas relevant in his constructive process was really extracted, with\nmisconceptions and blunders and exaggerations, from the works of a\nfew scholars of standing who, however inconclusive their work might\nbe, set him a controversial example which he was unable to follow. In\ndealing with them, I have the relief of no longer dealing with him. As\nto the constructive argument from comparative mythology, anthropology,\nand hierology, attacked by him and others with apparently no grasp of\nthe principles of any of these sciences, objections may be best dealt\nwith incidentally where they arise in the restatement of the case.\n\nFor the rest, I can conceive that some will say the second year of the\nWorld War is no time for the discussion even of a great problem of\nreligious history. I answer that the War has actually been made the\npretext for endless religious discussions of the most futile kind,\nranging between medieval miracle-mongering and the lowest forms of\njournalistic charlatanism, with chronic debates on theism and on\nthe military value of faith and prayer. The newspaper discussions on\ntheism, in particular, reveal a degree of philosophic na\u00efvet\u00e9 on the\ntheistic side which seems to indicate that that view of the universe\nhas of late years been abandoned by most men capable of understanding\nthe logical problem. When dispute plays thus uselessly at the bidding\nof emotion there must be some seniors, or others withheld from war\nservice, who in workless hours would as lief face soberly an inquiry\nwhich digs towards the roots of the organized religion of Europe. If\nthe end of the search should be the conviction that that system took\nshape as naturally as any other cult of the ancient world, and that the\nsacrosanct records of its origin are but products of the mythopoeic\nfaculty of man, the time of war, with its soul-shaking challenge to\nthe sense of reality, may not be the most unfit for the experience.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE HISTORICAL JESUS\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION\n\n\nHe who would approach with an alert mind such a question as that of\nthe historic actuality of the Gospel Jesus would do well to weigh\na preliminary warning. Though after four hundred years of chronic\nscientific discovery all men are supposed to know the intellectual\ndanger of a confident and foregone rejection of new theories, it is\nscarcely likely that the vogue of such error is at an end. After all,\napart from the special experience in question, and from the general\neffect of the spread of \"science,\" the average psychosis of men is not\nprofoundly different from what it was in the two centuries which passed\nbefore the doctrines of Copernicus found general acceptance. Not many\nmodern novelties of thought can so reasonably be met with derision\nas was the proposition that the earth moves round the sun.\n\nLet the ingenuous reader try to make the supposition that he had\nbeen brought up in ignorance of that truth, and without any training\nin astronomy, and that in adolescence or mature years it had been\ncasually put to him as a non-authoritative suggestion. Would he have\nbeen quick to surmise that the paradox might be truth? Let him next\ntry to imagine that he had been educated by an eccentric guardian in\nthe Ptolemaic creed, which accounted so plausibly for so many solar\nand stellar phenomena, and that until middle life he had been kept\nunaware of the Copernican heresy. Can he be sure that, meeting it\nnot as an accredited doctrine but as a novel hypothesis, he would\nhave been prompt to recognize that it was the better solution? If he\ncan readily say Yes, I know not whether his confidence is enviable\nor otherwise. Reading in Sylvester's translation of the Divine\nWeeks of Du Bartas, which had such vogue in the days of James VI,\nthe confident derision and \"confutation\" of the heliocentric theory,\nI really cannot be sure that had I lived in those days I should have\ngone right where Bacon went wrong.\n\nTo a mere historical student, not conscious of any original insight\ninto the problems of nature, there ought to be something chastening\nin the recollection that every great advance in the human grasp\nof them has been hotly or hilariously denounced and derided;\nand that not merely by the average ignoramus, but by the mass of\nthe experts. It was not the peasants of Italy who refused to look\nthrough Galileo's telescope--they were not invited to; it was the\nacademics, deep in Aristotle. It was not the laity who distinguished\nthemselves by rejecting Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the\nblood; it was all the doctors above forty then living, if we can\nbelieve a professional saying. And it was not merely the humdrum\nBible-readers who scouted geology for generations, or who laughed\nconsumedly for decades over the announcement that Darwin made out\nmen to be \"descended from monkeys.\" That theory, as it happened,\nhad been unscientifically enough propounded long before Darwin; and,\nalbeit not grounded upon any such scientific research as served\nto establish the Darwinian theory in a generation, yet happened\nto be considerably nearer rationality than the Semitic myth which\nfigured for instructed Christendom as the absolute and divinely\nrevealed truth on the subject. A recollection of the hate and fury\nwith which geologists like Hugh Miller repelled the plain lesson of\ntheir own science when it was shown to clash with the sacred myth,\nand a memory of the roar of derision and disgust which met Darwin,\nshould set reasonable men on their guard when they find themselves\nfaced by propositions which can hardly seem more monstrous to this\ngeneration than those others did to our fathers and grandfathers.\n\nIt is difficult, again, without suggesting contempt of that\nscholarship which as concerning historical problems is the equivalent\nof experimental research in science, to insist aright upon the\nblinding tendency of pure scholarship in the face of a radically\ninnovating doctrine. Without scholarly survey no such doctrine can\nmaintain itself. Yet it is one of the commonest of experiences to\nfind the accredited scholars among the last to give an intelligent\nhearing to a new truth. Only for a very few was skill in the Ptolemaic\nastronomy a good preparation towards receiving the Copernican. The\nerrors of Copernicus--the inevitable errors of the pioneer--served\nfor generations to establish the Ptolemaists in theirs. And where\nreligious usage goes hand-in-hand with an error, not one man in a\nthousand can escape the clutch of the double habit.\n\nHence the special blackness of the theological record in the history of\nculture. In the present day the hideous memory of old crimes withholds\neven the clerical class as a whole from the desire to employ active\npersecution; but that abstention--forced in any case--cannot save\nthe class from the special snare of the belief in the possession of\nfixed and absolute truth. Since the day when Tyndale was burned for\ntranslating the Sacred Books, English Christians have passed through\na dozen phases of faith, from the crassest evangelicalism to the\nhaziest sentimentalism, and in all alike they have felt, mutatis\nmutandis, the same spontaneous aversion to the new doctrine that\ndisturbs the old. Who will say that the stern Tyndale, had he ever\nbeen in power, would not have made martyrs in his turn? The martyr\nLatimer had applauded the martyrdom of Anabaptists. The martyred\nCranmer had assented to martyrdoms in his day, though a man forgiving\nenough in respect of his own wrongs. And if the educated Christians\nof to-day have reached a level at which they can recognize as old\ndelusions not only the beliefs in relics and images and exorcisms,\nonce all sacrosanct, but the \"literal\" acceptance of Semitic and\nChristian myths and miracle-stories, to whom do they think they owe\nthe deliverance? To their accredited teachers? Not so.\n\nNo false belief from which men have been delivered since the day of\nCopernicus has been dismissed without strenuous resistance from men\nof learning, and even from men of vigorous capacity. The belief in\nwitchcraft was championed by Bodin, one of the most powerful minds\nof his day; Glanvill, who sought to maintain it in England after the\nRestoration, was a man of philosophical culture and a member of the\nRoyal Society; and he had the countenance of the Platonist Henry\nMore and the chemist Boyle. So great a man as Leibnitz repulsed\nthe cosmology of Newton on the score that it expelled God from\nthe universe. It was not professional theologians who invented the\n\"higher criticism\" of the Pentateuch, any more than they introduced\ngeology. Samuel Parvish, the Guildford bookseller, who discovered in\nthe days of Walpole that Deuteronomy belonged to the seventh century\nB.C., is not recorded to have made any clerical converts; and Astruc,\nthe Parisian physician who began the discrimination between the\nJehovistic and Elohistic sources in Genesis in 1753, made no school in\nhis country or his time. Voltaire, no Hebraist, demonstrated clearly\nenough that the Pentateuchal tale of the tabernacle in the wilderness\nwas a fiction; but three toiling generations of German specialists\npassed the demonstration by, till a Zulu convert set the good Bishop\nColenso upon applying to the legend the simple tests of his secular\narithmetic. Then the experts began slowly to see the point.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nMODES OF CONSERVATIVE FALLACY\n\n\nTo all such reminders the present-day expert will reply, belike, that\nhe does not need them. He, profiting by the past, can commit no such\nerrors. And yet, however right the present members of the apostolic\nsuccession of truth-monopolists may be, there is an astonishing\nlikeness in their tone and temper over the last heresy to that of their\npredecessors, down to the twentieth generation. Anger and bluster,\nboasting and scolding, snarl and sneer, come no less spontaneously\nto the tongues of the professional defender of the present minimum of\ncreed than they did to those of the full-blooded breed of the ages of\nthe maximum, or of Calvin and Bonner. From the defence of the \"real\npresence\" of the God to that of the bare personal existence of the\nMan is a long descent; but there is a singular sameness in the manner\nof the controversy. As their expert ancestors proved successively\nthe absolute truth of the corporal presence in the wafer, or the\nhumanity of the Son against those who dubbed him merely divine, or\nhis divinity against those who pronounced him merely human, or the\ninerrancy of the Gospels against the blasphemers who pointed out\nthe contradictions, or the historic certainty of the miracles and\nthe Virgin Birth and the Resurrection and the Ascension against the\n\"materialists\" who put such Christian myths on a level with Pagan,\nso do the expert demonstrators of the bare historicity of the now\nundeified God establish by vituperation and derision, declamation\nand contempt, the supreme certainty of the minimum after all the\nsupernatural certainties are gone. Even as Swiss patriots undertook to\ndemonstrate \"somebody\" and \"something\" behind the legend of William\nTell when it had ceased to be possible to burn men at the stake for\nexposing the apple-myth, so do the descendants of the demonstrators\nof the real presence now go about to make clear the real existence.\n\nI speak, of course, of the ruck of the vindicators, not of the\nbelievers; and Professor Schmiedel and M. Loisy, I trust, will not\nsuspect me of classing them with men many of whom are as hostile to\nthem as to the thesis which those scholars seek by rational methods\nto confute. Professor Schmiedel has even avowed that a proof of\nthe non-historicity of the Gospel Jesus would not affect his inner\nreligious opinions; and such high detachment has been attained to\nby others. That civilized scholars credit, and might at a pinch\nmaintain in debate, the historicity of the Gospel Jesus as calmly as\nthey might the historicity of Lycurgus against its impugners, I am\nwell aware. And to such readers, if I have the honour to obtain any,\nI address not a warning but an appeal. There is an attitude towards\nthe problem which incurs no reproach on the score of tone and temper,\nand which will naturally recommend itself all the more to men of real\nculture, but which yet, I think, only illustrates in another way the\nimmense difficulty of all-round intellectual vigilance. Let me give\nan example in an extract from a rather noteworthy pronouncement upon\nthe question in hand:--\n\n\n    Of Paul's divine Master no biography can ever be written. We have\n    a vivid impression of an unique, effulgent personality. We have\n    a considerable body of sayings which must be genuine because\n    they are far too great to have been invented by His disciples,\n    and, for the rest, whatever royal robes and tributes of devotion\n    the Church of A.D. 70-100 thought most fitting for its king. The\n    Gospels are the creation of faith and love: faith and love hold\n    the key to their interpretation. (Canon Inge, art. \"St. Paul\"\n    in Quarterly Review, Jan., 1914, p. 45.)\n\n\nI am not here concerned to ask whether the closing words are the\nexpression of an orthodox belief; or what orthodoxy makes of the\nfurther proposition that \"With St. Paul it is quite different. He is a\nsaint without a luminous halo.\" The idea seems to be that concerning\nthe saint without a nimbus we can get at the historical truth,\nwhile in the other case we cannot--a proposition worth orthodox\nattention. But what concerns the open-minded investigator is the\nlogic of the words I have italicized. It is obvious that they proceed\n(1) on the assumption that what non-miraculous biography the Gospels\ngive is in the main absolutely trustworthy--that is to say, that the\naccounts of the disciples and the teaching are historical; and (2)\non the assumption that we are historically held to the traditional\nview that the Gospel sayings originated with the alleged Founder as\nthey purport. It is necessary to point out that this is not a licit\nhistorical induction. Even Canon Inge by implication admits that\nnot all the Gospel sayings have the quality which he regards as\ncertifying authenticity; and on no reasonable ground can he claim\nthat the others must have been \"invented by the disciples.\" The\nalternative is spurious. No one is in a position to deny that any\ngiven saying may have been invented by non-disciples. In point\nof fact, many professional theologians are agreed in tracing to\noutside sources some tolerably fine passages, such as the address to\nJerusalem (Mt. xxiii, 37; Lk. xiii, 34). The critics in question do\nnot ascribe that deliverance to inventive disciples; they infer it\nto have been a non-Christian document. Many other critics, again,\nnow pronounce the whole Sermon on the Mount--regarded by Baur as\nsignally genuine--a compilation from earlier Hebrew literature,\nBiblical and other. Which then are the \"great\" sayings that could not\nbe thus accounted for? Without specification there can be no rational\ndiscussion of the problem; and even the proposition about the exegetic\nfunction of \"faith and love\" affects to be in itself rational.\n\nThe plain truth would seem to be that Canon Inge has formed for himself\nno tenable critical position. He has merely reiterated the fallacy\nof Mill, who in his Three Essays on Religion (pp. 253-54) wrote:--\n\n\n    Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism,\n    Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his\n    precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct\n    benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that\n    Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and that\n    we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded\n    by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers\n    suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted\n    all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who\n    among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of\n    inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the\n    life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not\n    the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose\n    character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort;\n    still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more\n    evident than that the good which was in them was all derived,\n    as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher\n    source. What could be added and interpolated by a disciple we\n    may see in the mystical parts of St. John, matter imported from\n    Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists and put into the mouth of\n    the Saviour in long speeches about himself such as the other\n    Gospels contain not the slightest vestige of, though pretended\n    to have been delivered on occasions of the deepest interest and\n    when his principal followers were all present; most prominently\n    at the last supper. The East was full of men who could have stolen\n    (!) any quantity of this poor stuff, as the multitudinous Oriental\n    sects of Gnostics afterwards did. But about the life and sayings\n    of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with\n    profundity of insight which, if we abandon the idle expectation\n    of finding scientific precision where something very different\n    was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the\n    estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration,\n    in the very first rank of men of sublime genius of whom our\n    species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined\n    with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and\n    martyr to that mission, who ever existed on earth, religion [sic]\n    cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man\n    as the ideal representative and guide of humanity.... Add that,\n    to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility\n    that Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be--not God,\n    for he never made the smallest pretension to that character, and\n    would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphemous as\n    it seemed to the men who condemned him--but a man charged with a\n    special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind\n    to truth and virtue....\n\n\nEin historischer Kopf hatte er nicht, is a German economist's criticism\nof Mill which I fear will have to stand in other fields than that\nof economics. The man who wrote this unmeasured dithyramb can never\nhave read the Gospels and the Hebrew books with critical attention;\nand can never have reflected critically upon his own words in this\nconnection. The assumption that \"the fishermen of Galilee\" could not\nhave attained to thoughts which are expressly alleged to have been\nput forth by an untaught carpenter of Galilee is on the face of it a\nflight of thoughtless declamation. Had Mill ever critically read the\nOld Testament and the Apocrypha, he must have been aware that the main\nprecepts of the Sermon on the Mount, which are presumably among the\nunspecified objects of his panegyric, were all there beforehand. Had\nhe taken the trouble to investigate before writing, he could have\nfound in Hennell's Inquiry (1838), which popularized the old research\nof Schoettgen; in Nork's Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen (1839);\nand in Les Origines du Sermon de la Montagne by Hippolyte Rodrigues\n(1868), a copious demonstration of the Jewish currency of every moral\nidea in the Christian document, often in saner forms. And he ought\nto have known from his own reading that the doctrine of forgiveness\nfor injuries, which appears to be the main ground for the customary\npanegyric of the Sermon, was common to Greeks and Romans before the\nGospels were compiled. From the duty of giving alms freely--which\nis repeatedly laid down in the Old Testament--to that of the sin\nof concupiscence and the wrongness of divorce for trivial causes,\nevery moral idea in the Sermon had been formulated alike by Jews and\nGentiles beforehand. [3] And if it be argued that the compilation\nof such a set of precepts with a number of religious dicta (equally\ncurrent in non-Christian Jewry) is evidence of a special ethical or\nreligious gift in the compiler, the answer is that precisely the fact\nof such a compilation is the disproof of the assertion in the Gospels\nthat the whole was delivered as a sermon on a mountain. A sermon it\nnever was and never could be; and if the compiler was a man of unique\ncharacter and qualification he was not the Gospel Jesus but the very\ntype of which Mill denied the possibility!\n\nThat the Gospel ethic is non-original becomes more and more clear with\nevery extension of relevant research. The Testaments of the Twelve\nPatriarchs, written between 109 and 106 B.C. by a Quietist Pharisee,\nis found to yield not only origins or anticipations for pseudo-historic\ndata in the Gospels but patterns for its moral doctrine. Thus the\nnotion that the Twelve Apostles are to rule over the tribes in the\nMessianic kingdom is merely an adaptation of the teaching in the\nTestaments that the twelve sons of Jacob are so to rule. [4] There\ntoo appears for the first time in Jewish literature the formula\n\"on His right hand\"; [5] and a multitude of close textual parallels\nclearly testify to perusal of the book by the Gospel-framers and the\nepistle-makers. But above all is the Jewish book the original for the\ndoctrines of forgiveness and brotherly love. Whereas the Old Testament\nleaves standing the ethic of revenge alongside of the prescription to\nforgive one's enemy, the Testaments give out what a highly competent\nChristian editor pronounces to be \"the most remarkable statement\non the subject of forgiveness in all ancient literature. They show\na wonderful insight into the true psychology of the question. So\nperfect are the parallels in thought and diction between these\nverses [Test. Gad, vi, 3-7] and Luke xvii, 3; Matt. xviii, 15, 35,\nthat we must assume our Lord's acquaintance with them. The meaning\nof forgiveness in both cases is the highest and noblest known to\nus--namely, the restoring the offender to communion with us, which\nhe had forfeited through his offence.... We now see the importance\nof our text. It shows that pre-Christian Judaism possessed a noble\nsystem of ethics on the subject of forgiveness.\" [6]\n\nHere the tribute goes to a Pharisee; in another connection it redounds\nto the other butt of Christian disparagement, the Scribes. As our\neditor points out, the collocation of the commands to love God and\none's neighbour is even in Luke (x, 25-27) assigned not to Jesus but\nto a Scribe. But this too is found in the Testaments. \"That the two\ngreat commandments were already conjoined in the teaching of the\nScribes at the time of our Lord we may reasonably infer from our\ntext, [7] which was written 140 years earlier, and from the account\nin Luke.\" [8] And here too, a century before the Christian era,\nwe have a Jewish predication of the salvation of the Gentiles, [9]\nin the patronizing Jewish sense.\n\nIt is only for men partly hypnotized by sectarian creed that there\ncan be anything surprising in these anticipations. The notion that\nSacred Books contain the highest and rarest thought of their respective\nperiods is a delusion that any critical examination of probabilities\nwill destroy. Relatively high and rare thought does not find its\nway into Sacred Books; what these present is but the thought that\nis perceptible and acceptable to the majority, or a strong minority,\nof the better people; and it is never purified of grave imperfection,\nprecisely because these never are. Perfect ethic is the possession\nof the perfect people, an extremely rare species. The ethic of the\nTestaments, which is an obvious improvement on that of average Jewry,\nis in turn imperfect enough; even as that of the Gospels remains\nstamped with Jewish particularism, and is irretrievably blemished by\nthe grotesquely iniquitous doctrine of damnation for non-belief.\n\nSuch asseverations as Mill's, constantly repeated as they are by\neducated men, are simply expressions of failure to comprehend\nthe nature and the possibilities of life, of civilization, of\nhistory. The thesis is that in a world containing no one else capable\nof elevated thought, moral or religious, there suddenly appeared a\nmarvellously inspired teacher, who chose a dozen disciples incapable\nof comprehending his doctrine, and during the space of one or many\nyears--no one can settle whether one or two or three or four or ten or\ntwenty--went about alternately working miracles and delivering moral\nand religious sayings (including a doctrine of eternal hell-fire for\nthe unrepentant wicked, among whom were included all who refused\nto accept the new teaching); and that after the execution of the\nteacher on a charge of blasphemy or sedition the world found itself in\npossession of a supernormal moral and religious code, which constituted\nthe greatest \"moral reform\" in the world's history. The very conception\nis a chimera. In a world in which no one could independently think the\nteacher's moral thoughts there could be no acceptance of them. If the\ncode was pronounced good, it was so pronounced in terms of the moral\nnature and moral convictions of those who made the pronouncement. The\nvery propagandists of the creed after a few generations were found\nmeeting gainsayers with the formula anima naturaliter Christiana.\n\nChristianity made its way precisely because (1) it was a construction\nfrom current moral and religious material; and because (2) it\nadopted a system of economic organization already tested by Jews\nand Gentiles; and (3) because its doctrines were ascribed to a God,\nnot to a man. Anything like a moral renovation of the world it never\neffected; that conception is a chimera of chimeras. While Mill, the\namateur in matters of religious research, who \"scarcely ever read a\ntheological book,\" [10] ascribed to Christian morality a unique and\noriginal quality, Newman, the essentially religious man, deliberately\naffirmed with the Rationalists that \"There is little in the ethics of\nChristianity which the human mind may not reach by its natural powers,\nand which here or there ... has not in fact been anticipated.\" [11]\nAnd Baur, who gave his life and his whole powers to the problem\nwhich Mill assumed to dispose of by a dithyramb, put in a sentence\nthe historic truth which Mill so completely failed to grasp:--\n\n\n    How soon would everything true and important that was taught by\n    Christianity have been relegated to the order of the long-faded\n    sayings of the noble humanitarians and thinking sages of antiquity,\n    had not its teachings become words of eternal life in the mouth\n    of its Founder! [12]\n\n\nAnd a distinguished Scottish theologian and scholar has laid it\ndown that\n\n\n    there is probably not a single moral precept in the Christian\n    Scriptures which is not substantially also in the Chinese\n    classics. There is certainly not an important principle in Bishop\n    Butler's ethical teachings which had not been explicitly set\n    forth by Mencius in the fourth century B.C. The Chinese thinker\n    of that date had anticipated the entire moral theory of man's\n    constitution expounded so long afterwards by the most famous of\n    English moral philosophers. [13]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC\n\n\nStrictly speaking, the whole problem of the moral value and the\nhistorical effects of Christianity lies outside the present issue;\nbut we are forced to face it when the question of the truth of its\nhistoric basis is dismissed by a professed logician with a rhetorical\nthesis to the effect that \"religion cannot be said to have made a\nbad choice in pitching on\" the personality of which he is challenged\nto prove the historicity. Mill answers the challenge by begging the\nquestion; and where he was capable of such a course multitudes, lay\nand clerical, will long continue to be so. For Mill the problem was\nsomething extraneous to his whole way of thought. Broadly speaking,\nhe never handled a historical problem, properly so called. Other\ndefenders of the historicity of Jesus, in turn, charge a want of\nhistoric sense upon all who venture to put the hypothesis that the\nGospel Jesus is a mythical creation. The charge has been repeatedly\nmade by men who can make no pretence of having ever independently\nelucidated any historical problem; and in one notable case, that of\nDr. J. Estlin Carpenter, it is made by a scholar who has committed\nhimself to the assertion of the historicity of Krishna. Such resorts\nto blank asseveration in such matters are on all fours with the blank\nasseveration that the Gospel Jesus, in virtue of the teachings ascribed\nto him, is a figure too sublime for human invention.\n\nThe slightest reflection might obtrude the thought that it is precisely\nthe invented figure that can most easily be made quasi-sublime. Is it\npretended that Yahweh is not sublime? Is the Book of Job pretended\nto be historical? The Gospel Jesus is never shown to us save in a\nseries of statuesque presentments, healing, preaching, prophesying,\nblessing, denouncing, suffering; he is expressly detached from domestic\nrelationships; of his life apart from his Messianic career there is\nnot a vestige of trace that is not nakedly mythical; of his mental\nprocesses there is not an attempt at explanation save in glosses\noften palpably incompetent; and of his plan or purpose, his hopes or\nexpectations, no exegete has ever framed a non-theological theory that\nwill stand an hour's examination. Those who claim as an evidence of\nuniqueness the fact that he is never accused by the evangelists of\nany wrong act do but prove their unpreparedness to debate any of the\nproblems involved. A figure presented as divine, in a document that\naims at establishing a cult, is ipso facto denuded of errancy so far\nas the judgment of the framers of the picture can carry them. But\nall that the framers and redactors of the Gospels could achieve was\nto outline a figure answering to their standards of perfection, free\nof what they regarded as sin or error. Going to work in an age and\nan environment in which ascetic principles were commonly posited as\nagainst normal practice, they guard the God from every suggestion\nof carnal appetite; and the dialecticians of faith childishly ask\nus to contrast him with ancient Pagan deities whose legends are the\nunsifted survivals of savage folklore. As if any new Sacred Book in\nthe same age would not have proceeded on the same standards; and as\nif the religious Jewish literature of the age of Christian beginnings\nwere not as ascetic as the other. But inasmuch as the compilers of\nthe Gospels could not transcend the moral standard of their time,\nthey constantly obtrude its limitations and its blemishes. Had Mill\nattempted anything beyond his dithyramb, he would have been hard put\nto it to apply his ecstatic epithets to such teachings as these:--\n\n\n    Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.\n\n    Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall in no\n    wise pass away from the law [of Moses].\n\n    Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of\n    fire. [Compare Matt. xxiii, 17: \"Ye fools and blind\"; and Luke xii,\n    20: \"Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.\"]\n\n    Whosoever shall marry her [the woman divorced without good cause]\n    shall commit adultery.\n\n    Give to him that asketh thee.\n\n    Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth. Seek ye first\n    [God's] kingdom and his righteousness; and all these things\n    [that were to be disregarded] shall be added unto you.\n\n    Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing,\n    but inwardly are ravening wolves. [Compare the warning against\n    saying, Thou fool.]\n\n    Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city\n    of the Samaritans.\n\n    Whosoever shall not receive you, ... as ye go forth out of that\n    house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I\n    say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom\n    and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.\n\n    I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.\n\n    Think not that I come to send peace on the earth: I came not to\n    send peace, but a sword.... He that loveth father or mother more\n    than me is not worthy of me.\n\n    It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of\n    judgment than for you [Chorazin and Bethsaida; because of\n    non-acceptance of the teacher].... It shall be more tolerable\n    for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.\n\n    Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account\n    thereof in the day of judgment.\n\n    Therefore speak I to them in parables, because seeing they see not,\n    and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.\n\n    In the end of the world the angels shall ... sever the wicked\n    from the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire.\n\n    In vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the\n    precepts of men.\n\n    Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? [retort\n    for the employer who pays the same for a day's work and for\n    an hour's].\n\n    If ye have faith and doubt not ... even if ye shall say unto this\n    mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done.\n\n    And his lord commended the unrighteous steward because he had\n    done wisely.... And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends by\n    means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall fail,\n    they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.\n\n    I say unto you that unto everyone that hath shall be given; but\n    from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.\n\n    And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors.... So\n    also shall my heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not\n    everyone his brother from your hearts.\n\n\nWhen such a mass of unmanageable doctrines is forced on the\nnotice of the dithyrambists, there promptly begins a process of\nelimination--the method of Arnold, to which Mill would doubtless\nhave subscribed, denying as he did that Jesus ever claimed to be the\nSon of God. Whatever is not sweetly reasonable in the Gospels, said\nArnold, cannot be the word of Jesus; let us then pick and choose as we\nwill. And justly enough may it be argued that we have been listening to\ndifferent voices. It cannot be the same man who prohibited all anger,\nvetoing even the use of \"Thou fool,\" and then proceeded to vituperate\nScribes and Pharisees in the mass as sons of hell; to curse a barren\ntree; and to call the erring \"Ye fools and blind\"--any more than it\nwas the same man who said, \"I am meek and lowly in heart,\" and \"A\ngreater than Solomon is here,\" or annulled precepts of the law after\ndeclaring that not a jot or tittle of it should pass away. But with\nwhat semblance of critical righteousness shall it be pretended that in\na compilation thus palpably composite it was the teacher who said all\nthe right things and others who said all the wrong, when as a matter of\ndocumentary fact the better sayings can all be paralleled in older or\ncontemporary writings? That challenge is never so much as faced by the\ndithyrambists; to face it honestly would be the beginning of their end.\n\nSome seem prepared to stake all on such a teaching as the parable\nof the Good Samaritan, which actually teaches that a man of the\nreligiously despised race could humanely succour one of the despising\nrace when religious men of the same race passed him by. Is the\nparable then assimilated by those who stress it? Can they conceive\nthat a Samaritan could so act? If yes, why cannot they conceive\nthat a Samaritan, or another Jew than one, could put forth such a\ndoctrine? Here is a story of actual human-kindness, paralleled in a\nhundred tales and romances of later times, a story which, appealing\nas it does to every reader, may reasonably be believed to have been\nenacted a thousand times by simple human beings who never heard of\nthe Gospels. Yet we are asked to believe that only one Jewish or\nGentile mind in the age of Virgil was capable of drawing the moral\nthat the kindly and helpful soul is the true neighbour, and that the\ngood man will be neighbourly to all; so rebuking the tribalism of\nthe average Jew.\n\nWhen, fifteen years ago, I wrote of \"the moderate ethical height of\nthe parable of the Good Samaritan, which is partly precedented in Old\nTestament teaching [Deut. xxiii, 7--an interpolation; cp. the Book\nof Ruth],\" Dr. J. E. Carpenter indignantly replied: \"The field of\nGreek literature is open; will Mr. Robertson take the Good Samaritan\nand from Plato to Plotinus find his match?\" And the Rev. Thomas James\nThorburn, D.D., LL.D., in his later work Jesus the Christ: Historical\nor Mythical? (1912), wrote (p. 68):--\n\n\n    Dr. Estlin Carpenter has invited (we believe, in\n    vain!) Mr. Robertson to produce an equal to this same parable\n    out of the whole range of Greek literature, which undoubtedly\n    contains the choicest teaching of the ancient world.\n\n\nDr. Thorburn in his bibliography cited the first and second (1912)\neditions of Pagan Christs; he thoughtfully omitted, in launching his\n\"we believe, in vain!\", to ascertain whether there had been a second\nedition of Christianity and Mythology, in which any reply I might\nhave to make to Dr. Carpenter might naturally be expected to appear,\nthat critic having challenged the proposition as put in the first\nedition. A second edition had appeared, in 1910, and there I had duly\ngiven the simple answer which the two learned Doctors of Divinity,\nso conscious of knowing all Greek literature from Plato to Plotinus,\nwere unable to think of for themselves. The field of Greek literature,\nas Dr. Carpenter justly observes, is open; and it would have been\nfitting on his part to perambulate a little therein. The demanded\ninstance lay to the hand of unlearned people in so familiar an author\nas Plutarch--in the tale of Lycurgus and Alcander. As Dr. Thorburn\nand Dr. Carpenter, however, must be supposed to have been ignorant\nof that story, it may be well to tell it briefly here.\n\nLycurgus having greatly exasperated the rich citizens by proposing\nthe institution of frugal common meals, they made a tumult and stoned\nhim in the market-place, so that he had to run for sanctuary in a\ntemple. But one of his pursuers, a violent youth named Alcander, caught\nup with him, and, striking him with a club as he turned round, dashed\nout one of his eyes. Lycurgus then stood calmly facing the citizens,\nletting them see his bleeding face, and his eye destroyed. All who\nsaw him were filled with shame and remorse. They gave up Alcander\nto his mercy, and conducted Lycurgus in procession to his house to\nshow their sympathy. He thanked them and dismissed them, but kept\nAlcander with him. He did him no harm, and used no reproachful words,\nbut kept him as his servant, sending away all others. And Alcander,\ndwelling with Lycurgus, noting his serenity of temper and simplicity\nof life and his unwearying labours, became his warmest admirer, and\never after told his friends that Lycurgus was the best of men. In\none version of the tale Lycurgus gave back his freedom to Alcander\nin presence of the citizens, saying, You gave me a bad citizen;\nI give you back a good one.\n\nIf our Doctors of Divinity are unable to see that this represents\na rarer strain of goodness than the deed of the Good Samaritan,\nthey must be told that they are lacking in that very moral judgment\nupon which they plume themselves. Forever sitting in the chair of\njudgment, defaming all who dissent from them, they are ethically less\npercipient than the cultured laity. Thousands of kindly human beings,\nI repeat, have succoured wounded strangers, even those of hostile\nraces; and the tone held over the Gospel parable by some Christians\nis but the measure of their misconception of human nature. Their\nsectarian creed has bred in them a habit of aspersing all humanity,\nall character, save the Christian, thus stultifying the very lesson\nof their parable, the framer of which would fain have taught men to\ntranscend these very fanaticisms. They will not be \"neighbours\" to\nthe pagan to the extent of crediting him with their own appreciation\nof magnanimity and human-kindness; they cannot even discuss his\nclaim without seeking arrogantly to browbeat his favourers. Forever\nacclaiming the beauty of the command to forgive injuries, they cannot\neven debate without insolence where they know their sectarian claims\nare called in question. And I shall be agreeably disappointed if they\nproceed to handle the tale of Lycurgus and Alcander without seeking\nto demonstrate that somehow it falls below the level of the Gospels,\nwhere, as it happens, the endurance of violence and death by the\nGod-man is in effect presented as God-like. But for that matter,\neven the oft-cited saying \"Father, forgive them,\" occurs only in\nLuke of all the Gospels, and, being absent from two of the most\nancient codices, betrays itself as a late addition to the text. It\nmay be either Jewish or Gentile. For Plutarch, the Spartan tale is\nsomething edifying and gratifying, but he makes no parade of it as\na marvel; and in his essay Of Profiting by our Enemies he speaks of\nthe forgiveness of enemies as a thing not rarely to be met with:--\n\n\n    To forbear to be revenged of an enemy if opportunity and occasion\n    is offered, and to let him go when he is in thy hands, is a point\n    of great humanity and courtesy; but him that hath compassion of\n    him when he is fallen into adversity, succoureth him in distress,\n    at his request is ready to show goodwill to his children, and an\n    affection to sustain the state of his house and family being in\n    affliction, who doth not love for this kindness, nor praise the\n    goodness of his nature? (Holland's translation.)\n\n\nHad that passage appeared in a Gospel, how would not our Doctors of\nDivinity have exclaimed over the moral superiority of Christian ethic,\ndemonstrating that it alone appealed to the heart! In actual fact\nwe find them denying that such passages exist. The most disgraceful\ninstance known to me appears to implicate an Austrian theologian. In\nthe \"Editor's Forewords\" to the Early English Text Society's volume\nof Queen Elizabeth's Englishings there is a note on Plutarch's De\nCuriositate, \u00e0propos of Elizabeth's translation of that essay:--\n\n\n    In De Curiositate, as well as in his other writings, Plutarch\n    proves himself to be a true Stoic philosopher, to possess\n    first-rate moral principles and great fear of God.... His\n    religious views sometimes remind us, like those of Seneca,\n    of Christian teaching; but here there is always one important\n    omission--viz., the commendation of charity or brotherly love; of\n    this Christian virtue the stoic, so virtuous in his own relations,\n    knows absolutely nothing.\n\n\nAt the close of the \"Forewords\" the Editor, Miss Caroline Pemberton,\nmentions that \"The comments on the writings of Boethius and Plutarch\nare by Dr. J. Schenk, of Meran, Tyrol.\" To Dr. Schenk, then, must\napparently be credited the high-water mark in Christian false-witness\nagainst paganism. Either he did or he did not know that Plutarch in\nother writings had given full expression to the ethic of brotherly\nlove. If he did not know, he was not only framing a wanton libel\nin sheer ignorance but giving a particularly deadly proof of his\nown destitution of the very virtue he was so unctuously denying\nto the pagan. A man devoid not merely of charity but of decent\nconcern for simple justice poses as a moral teacher in virtue of his\nChristianism; even as the professional encomiasts of the parable of\nthe Good Samaritan demonstrate their own blindness to its meaning,\nplaying the Levite to the Pagan.\n\nPlutarch, so much better a man than his Christian critic, was in turn\nno innovator in ethics. As every student knows, such doctrines as those\nabove cited from him are far older than the Christian religion. Five\ncenturies before the Christian era Confucius put the law of reciprocity\nin the sane form of the precept that we should not do unto others\nwhat we would not that they should do unto us. Are we to suppose that\nthe rule had been left to Confucius to invent? Christians who cannot\nconform to it are not ashamed to disparage the precept of Confucius as\na \"negative\" teaching, implying that there is a higher moral strain in\ntheir formula which prescribes the doing to others what we would wish\nthem to do to us. There, if any difference of code be really intended,\nwe are urged to confer benefits in order to have them returned. If\nno difference is intended, the disparagement is mere deceit. In\nthe ancient Hindu epic, the Mah\u00e2bh\u00e2rata, it is declared that \"The\nGods regard with delight the man who ... when struck does not strike\nagain,\" and that \"The good, when they promote the welfare of others,\nexpect no reciprocity.\" How long are we to listen to the childish\nclaim that moral maxims which in India were delivered millenniums\nago by forgotten men were framable in Seneca's day only in Syria,\nand there only by one \"unique and effulgent\" personality, whose mere\nteaching lifted humanity to new heights? Had no nameless man or woman\nin Greece ever urged the beauty of non-retaliation before Plato?\n\nIf clerics cannot rise above the old disingenuous sectarian spirit,\nit is time at least that laymen should. The more historic comprehension\na man has of the ancient world, of Plutarch's world, with all its sins\nand delusions, the less can he harbour the notion of the moral miracle\ninvolved in the thesis of the unique teacher, suddenly revealing to an\namazed humanity heights of moral aspiration before undreamt of. And\nany considerate scrutiny of the logia of the Gospels will inevitably\nforce the open-minded student to recognize multiplicity of thought and\nideal, and compel him to seek some explanation. An effort to detach\na possible personality by the elimination of impossible adjuncts is\nthe next natural step.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE METHOD OF BLUSTER\n\n\nFor anyone who will soberly and faithfully face the facts there must\nsooner or later arise the problem, Is there any unifying personality\nbehind this medley of many sets of doctrines, many voices, many\nschools? Even if it were possible to piece together from it a coherent\nbody of either ethical or religious thought, and jettison the rest,\nis there any reason to believe that the selected matter belongs to the\nGospel Teacher with the Twelve Disciples, crucified on the morning\nafter the Passover under Pontius Pilate? When the crowning doctrine\nof sacrament and sacrifice is seen to be but the consummation of a\nreligious lore beginning in prehistoric and systematic human sacrifice,\nand traceable in a score of ancient cults, is it possible to claim that\nthe palpably dramatic record of Last Supper, Agony, Betrayal, Trial,\nand Crucifixion is a historic record of a strange coincidence between\ncult practice and biography? And if that goes, what is left? If,\nsays Loisy, the condemnation of Jesus as pretended Messiah by Pilate\n\"could be put in doubt, one would have no motive for affirming the\nexistence of Christ.\" [14] And it can!\n\nSome, assuming to settle the problem by rhetoric, in effect stand\nfor a \"personality\" without any pretence of establishing what the\n\"personality\" taught. And this inexpensive device will doubtless\nlong continue to be practised by the large class who insist upon\nsolving all such problems by instinct. An example of that procedure\nis afforded by an article headed \"A Barren Controversy,\" by the\nRev. Frederick Sinclair, in a magazine entitled Fellowship, the\norgan of the Free Religious Fellowship, Melbourne, issue of March,\n1915. The controversy is certainly barren enough as Mr. Sinclair\nconducts it. His religious temper is of a familiar type. \"It is a\nhard task to prove the obvious,\" he begins; \"and no obligation is\nlaid on us to examine and refute the evidences alleged in support of\nthis or that cock-and-bull theory.\" We can imagine how the reverend\ncritic would have shone in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century,\ndisposing of the Copernican theory, which so presumptuously assailed\n\"the obvious.\" True to his principles, he does not hamper himself\nby meeting arguments or evidence. \"Mythical theories about Christ\nhave about as much scientific value and importance as the theories\nof the Baconians about Shakespeare. They ... are products ... of\nthat perverted credulity which will swallow anything, so long as\nit is not orthodox; and they are best met by the method of satire\nadopted by Whately in his 'Historic Doubts' on Napoleon.\" And yet\nour expert renounces that admirable instrument in favour of the\nsimpler procedure vulgarly known as \"bluff.\" He is in reality a good\nexample of the psychosis of the very Baconism which he contemns,\nand which he would probably be quite unable to confute. An \u00e6sthetic\nimpression of \"reality\" derived from a hypnotized perusal of Mark,\nand a feeling that only one man could deliver such oracles, are the\nbeginning and end of his dialectic and scholarly stock-in-trade;\neven as a consciousness that Bacon must be the author of the Plays,\nand that the actor Shakespeare could not have written them, is the\nbeginning and end of the ignorant polemic of the Baconists.\n\nTo do him justice, it should be noted that Mr. Sinclair warns\nhis readers both before and after his case that his handling of\nthe theme and their preparation for estimating it leave a great\ndeal to be desired by those who care to see applied \"the method of\ncareful criticism.\" Still, he is satisfied that it is \"adequate to\nthe particular question we have been considering.\" And this is how\nMr. Sinclair has considered:--\n\n\n    Anyone who will pay this controversy the compliment of a few hours'\n    consideration is advised to bring his own judgment to bear on it\n    in the following way: Let him begin by taking a copy of St. Mark's\n    Gospel, which is the earliest of the four, in either of the English\n    versions, and read it through, pencil in hand, striking out all\n    the miraculous or quasi-miraculous stories. Then, gathering up\n    what remains, let him read it, first as a whole, then singly,\n    episode by episode, always keeping the eye of the imagination open,\n    dismissing as far as possible any prepossessions, and letting the\n    author make his own impression, without the interfering offices\n    of critic or commentator. Having done this, let the reader ask\n    of himself of each story: Is this a story which seems to belong\n    to actual life, to be told of a real human being, with distinct\n    individuality, or is it rather a literary invention, designed\n    to add something to a conventional figure? Does the narrative\n    move with the freedom and variety of life, or does it fit into\n    a conventional, symmetrical design? Does the writer's style and\n    method arouse the suspicion of literary artifice? Must one say\n    of this or that story that its reality is the reality of life,\n    or of an art which cunningly counterfeits life?\n\n\nThe open-minded reader, I trust, will hardly need to be told that\nwhat is here done is to set a false problem and ignore the real\nissue. Mr. Sinclair either cannot understand that issue or elects\nto evade it. Probably the former is the explanation. No critic of\nthe Gospels, so far as I remember, ever suggested that any of them\n\"cunningly counterfeits life\"; and certainly no one ever pretended\nthat Mark [15] exhibits a \"conventional, symmetrical design,\" though\nWilke argued that it \"freely moulded the traditional historical\nmaterial in pursuance of literary aims,\" and B. Weiss praises its\nliterary colouring. It is a heap of unreal incident, fortuitously\ncollocated, [16] and showing nothing approaching to symmetrical\ndesign. \"Conventional\" raises another question; in this as in all\nthe Gospels there is plenty of convention.\n\nLet us but follow for a little the simple method of selection\nprescribed by Mr. Sinclair, and see what we get. What we are to make of\nMark i, 1-9, is far from clear. It sets forth the advent of John as the\nfulfilment of a prophecy--i.e., a miracle; and it describes his mission\nin the baldest conceivable summary, save for the sentence: \"And John\nwas clothed with camel's hair, and had a leathern girdle about his\nloins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.\" Is this \"convention\" or\n\"reality\"? I am not inclined to call it \"literary artifice,\" unless we\nare to apply that description to the beginning of the average nursery\ntale, as perhaps we should. What must strike the inquiring reader is\nthat if we were to have a touch of \"reality\" about the Baptist we\nshould be told something about his inner history, his antecedents,\nand what he preached. What we are told is that \"he preached, saying,\nThere cometh after me he that is mightier than I.... I baptized you\nwith water; but he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit.\"\n\nIf this part of the narrative has not been \"struck out\" by\nMr. Sinclair's neophytes as plainly belonging to the miraculous,\nthe next five verses presumably must be. The non-miraculous narrative\nbegins at v. 14:--\n\n\n    Now, after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee,\n    preaching the Gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled,\n    and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the\n    Gospel [not a word of which has been communicated].\n\n    And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew\n    the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were\n    fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will\n    make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they left the\n    nets, and followed him. And going on a little further, he saw\n    James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who also were\n    in the boat mending the nets. And straightway he called them;\n    and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired\n    servants, and went after him.\n\n\nThis \"episode,\" for Mr. Sinclair, \"seems to belong to real life,\nto be told of a real human being with distinct individuality.\" For\ncritical readers it is a primitive \"conventional\" narrative, told by a\nwriter who has absolutely no historic knowledge to communicate. Of the\npreaching of the Saviour he has no more to tell than of the preaching\nof the Baptist. Both are as purely \"conventional,\" so far, as an\narchaic statue of Hermes. Of \"the freedom and variety of life\" there\nis not a trace; Mr. Sinclair, who professes to find these qualities,\nis talking in the manner of a showman at a fair. The important process\nof making disciples resolves itself into a fairy tale: \"Come and I\nwill make you fishers of men; and they came.\" A measure of \"literary\nartifice\" is perhaps to be assigned to the items of \"casting a net,\"\n\"mending the net,\" and \"left their father in the boat with the hired\nservants\"; [17] but it is the literary art of a thousand fairy tales,\nsavage and civilized, and stands for the method of a narrator who\nis dealing with purely conventional figures, not with characters\nconcerning which he has knowledge. The calling of the first disciples\nin the rejected Fourth Gospel has much more semblance of reality.\n\nIf the cautious reader is slow to see these plain facts on the pointing\nof one who is avowedly an unbeliever in the historic tradition, let him\nlisten to a scholar of the highest eminence, who, after proving himself\na master in Old Testament criticism, set himself to specialize on the\nNew. Says Wellhausen: \"The Gospel of Mark, in its entirety, lacks the\ncharacter of history.\" [18] And he makes good his judgment in detail:--\n\n\n    Names of persons are rare: even Jairus is not named in [codex]\n    D. Among the dramatis person\u00e6 it is only Jesus who distinctively\n    speaks and acts; the antagonists provoke him; the disciples are\n    only figures in the background. But of what he lived by, how he\n    dwelt, ate, and drank, bore himself with his companions, nothing\n    is vouchsafed. It is told that he taught in the synagogue on the\n    Sabbath, but no notion is given of the how; we get only something\n    of what he said outside the synagogue, usually through a special\n    incident which elicits it. The normal things are never related,\n    only the extraordinary.... The scantiness of the tradition is\n    remarkable. [19]\n\n    The local connection of the events, the itinerary, leaves as\n    much to be desired as the chronological; seldom is the transit\n    indicated in the change of scene. Single incidents are often\n    set forth in a lively way, and this without any unreal or merely\n    rhetorical devices, but they are only anecdotally related, rari\n    nantes in gurgite vasto. They do not amount to material for a life\n    of Jesus. And one never gets the impression that an attempt had\n    been made among those who had eaten and drunk with him to give\n    others a notion of his personality. [20]\n\n\nWellhausen, it is true, finds suggestions of a real and commanding\npersonality; but they are very scanty, the only concrete detail\nbeing the watching the people as they drop their offerings into\nthe collecting-chest! \"Passionate moral sensibility distinguishes\nhim. He gives way to divine feeling in anger against the oppressors\nof the people and in sympathy with the lowly.\" But here too there\nis qualification:--\n\n\n    But in Mark this motive for miracles seldom comes out. They are\n    meant to be mainly displays of the Messiah's power. Mark does\n    not write de vita et moribus Jesu: he has not the aim of making\n    his person distinguishable, or even intelligible. It is lost for\n    him in the divine vocation; he means to show that Jesus is the\n    Christ. [21]\n\n\nThen we have a significant balancing between the perception that Mark\nis not history, and that, after all, it is practically all there is:--\n\n\n    Already the oral tradition which he found had been condensed\n    under the influence of the standpoint from which he set out. He\n    is silent on this and that which he can omit as being known to\n    his readers--for instance, the names of the parents of Jesus\n    (!). Nevertheless, he has left little that is properly historical\n    for his successors to glean after him; and what they know in\n    addition is of doubtful worth....\n\n    Why is not something more, and something more trustworthy,\n    reported of the intercourse of the Master with his disciples? It\n    would rather seem that the narrative tradition in Mark did not\n    come directly from the intimates of Jesus. It has on the whole\n    a somewhat rude and demotic cast, as if it had previously by a\n    long circulation in the mouth of the people come to the rough\n    and drastic style in which it lies before us.... Mark took up\n    what the tradition carried to him.\n\n\nSuch is the outcome of a close examination by an original scholar who\ntakes for granted the historicity of Jesus. It is a poor support to\na pretence of finding a lifelike narrative.\n\nIf the reader under Mr. Sinclair's tutelage will at this point vary his\nstudy somewhat (at the cost of a few extra hours) by reading samples\nof quite primitive folk-lore--say the Hottentot Fables and Tales\ncollected by Dr. Bleek, in which the characters are mostly, but not\nalways, animals; or some of the fairy tales in Gill's Myths and Songs\nof the South Pacific--and then proceed to the tale of Tom Tit Tot,\nas given by Mr. Edward Clodd in the dialect of East Anglia, he will\nperhaps begin to realize that unsophisticated narrators not only can\nbut frequently do give certain touches of quasi-reality to \"episodes\"\nwhich no civilized reader can suppose to have been real. In particular\nhe will find in the vivacious Tom Tit Tot an amount of \"the freedom and\nvariety of life\" in comparison with which the archaic stiffness and\nbareness of the Gospel narrative is as dumb-show beside drama. And\nif he will next pay some attention to the narrative of Homer, in\nwhich Zeus and H\u00ear\u00ea are so much more life-like than a multitude of\nthe human personages of the epic, and then turn to see how Plutarch\nwrites professed biography, some of it absolutely mythical, but all\nof it on a documentary basis of some kind, he will perhaps begin\nto suspect that Mr. Sinclair has not even perceived the nature of\nthe problem on which he pronounces, and so is not in a position to\n\"consider\" it at all. Plutarch is nearly as circumstantial about\nTheseus and Herakles and Romulus as about Solon. But when he has real\nbiographical material to go upon as to real personages he gives us a\n\"freedom and variety of life\" which is as far as the poles asunder\nfrom the hieratic figures of the Christian Gospel. Take his Fabius\nMaximus. After the pedigree, with its due touch of myth, we read:--\n\n\n    His own personal nickname was Verrucosus, because he had a little\n    wart growing on his upper lip. The name of Ovicula, signifying\n    sheep, was also given him while yet a child, because of his slow\n    and gentle disposition. He was quiet and silent, very cautious in\n    taking part in children's games, and learned his lessons slowly\n    and with difficulty, which, combined with his easy obliging ways\n    with his comrades, made those who did not know him think that he\n    was dull and stupid. Few there were who could discern, hidden in\n    the depths of his soul, his glorious and lion-like character.\n\n\nThis is biography, accurate or otherwise. Take again the Life of\nPericles, where after the brief account of parentage, with the item\nof the mother's dream, we get this:--\n\n\n    His body was symmetrical, but his head was long out of all\n    proportion; for which reason in nearly all his statues he is\n    represented wearing a helmet; as the sculptors did not wish,\n    I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish.... Most writers\n    tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name they say\n    should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle,\n    however, says that he studied under Pythocleides. This Damon,\n    it seems, was a sophist of the highest order....\n\n\nThe \"biographer\" who so satisfies Mr. Sinclair's sense of actuality has\nnot one word of this kind to say of the youth, upbringing, birthplace,\nor appearance of the Teacher, who for him was either God or Supreme\nMan. Seeking for the alleged \"freedom and variety of life\" in the\nnarrative, we go on to read:--\n\n\n    And they go into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he\n    entered into the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished\n    at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not\n    as the scribes. And straightway there was in their synagogue a\n    man with an unclean spirit--\n\n\nand straightway we are back in the miraculous. Mr. Joseph McCabe, who\nin his excellent book on the Sources of the Morality of the Gospels\navows that he holds by the belief in a historical Jesus, though unable\nto assign to him with confidence any one utterance in the record,\nfatally anticipates Mr. Sinclair by remarking that \"If the inquirer\nwill try the simple and interesting experiment of eliminating from the\nGospel of Mark all the episodes which essentially involve miracle,\nhe will find the remainder of the narrative amazingly paltry.\" To\nwhich verdict does the independent reader begin to incline? Thus the\n\"episodes\" continue, after three paragraphs of the miraculous:--\n\n\n    And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up and went\n    out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed. And Simon\n    and they that were with him followed after him; and they found him,\n    and say unto him, All are seeking thee. And he saith unto them, Let\n    us go elsewhere into the next towns, that I may preach there also;\n    for to this end came I forth. And he went into their synagogues\n    throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out devils.\n\n\nIt would seem sufficient to say that Mr. Sinclair, with his \"freedom\nand variety of life,\" is incapable of critical reflection upon what he\nreads. In the opening chapter we have not a single touch of actuality;\nthe three meaningless and valueless touches of detail (\"a great\nwhile before day\" is the third) serve only to reveal the absolute\ndeficit of biographical knowledge. We have reiterated statements that\nthere was teaching, and not a syllable of what was taught. The only\nutterances recorded in the chapter are parts of the miracle-episodes,\nwhich we are supposed to ignore. Let us then consider the critic's\nfurther asseveration:--\n\n\n    It will be observed that certain distinct traits appear in\n    the central figure, and that these traits are not merely those\n    of the conventional religious hero, but the more simple human\n    touches of anger, pity, indignation, despondency, exultation;\n    these scattered touches, each so vivid, fuse into a natural and\n    intelligible whole. The Jesus of Mark is a real man, who moves\n    and speaks and feels like a man (!)--\"a creature not too bright\n    or good for human nature's daily food\"--\n\n\na notable variation from the more familiar thesis of the \"sublime\" and\n\"unique\" figure of current polemic. Looking for the alleged details,\nwe find Jesus calling the fifth disciple: \"He saith unto him, Follow\nme. And he arose and followed him\"--another touch of \"freedom and\nvariety.\" Then, after a series of Messianic utterances, including\na pronouncement against Sabbatarianism of the extremer sort, comes\nthe story of the healing of the withered hand, with its indignant\nallocution to \"them\" in the synagogue: \"Is it lawful on the sabbath\nday to do good, or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?\" Here, in a\nmiracle story, we have an intelligible protest against Sabbatarianism:\nis it the protest or the indignation that vouches for the actuality\nof the protesting figure? Nay, if we are to elide the miraculous,\nhow are we to let the allocution stand?\n\nThese protests against Sabbatarianism, as it happens, are the\nfirst approximations to actuality in the document; and as such they\nraise questions of which the \"instinctive\" school appear to have\nno glimpse, but which we shall later have to consider closely. In\nthe present connection, it may suffice to ask the question: Was\nanti-Sabbatarianism, or was it not, the first concrete issue raised by\nthe alleged Teacher? In the case put, is it likely to have been? Were\nthe miraculous healing of disease, and the necessity of feeding the\ndisciples, with the corollary that the Son of Man was Lord of the\nSabbath, salient features in a popular gospel of repentance in view of\nthe coming of the Kingdom of God? If so, it is in flat negation of the\ninsistence on the maintenance of the law in the Sermon on the Mount\n(Mt. v, 17-20), which thus becomes for us a later imposition on the\ncultus of a purely Judaic principle, in antagonism to the other. That\nis to say, a movement which began with anti-Sabbatarianism was after a\ntime joined or directed by Sabbatarian Judaists, for whom the complete\napparatus of the law was vital. If, on the other hand, recognizing\nthat anti-Sabbatarianism, in the terms of the case, was not likely to\nbe a primary element in the new teaching, that its first obtrusion in\nthe alleged earliest Gospel is in an expressly Messianic deliverance,\nand its second in a miracle-story, we proceed to \"strike out\" both\nitems upon Mr. Sinclair's ostensible principles, we are deprived of\nthe first touch of \"indignation\" and \"anger\" which would otherwise\nserve to support his very simple thesis.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nSCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH\n\n\nFrom this point onwards, every step in the investigation will be found\nto convict the Unitarian thesis of absolute nullity. It is indeed,\non the face of it, an ignorant pronouncement. The characteristics\nof \"anger, pity, indignation, despondency, exultation,\" are all\npresent in the myth of Herakles, of whom Diodorus Siculus, expressly\ndistinguishing between mythology and history, declares (i, 2) that\n\"by the confession of all, during his whole life he freely undertook\ngreat and continual labours and dangers, in order that by doing\ngood to the race of men he might win immortal fame.\" Herakles was,\nin fact, a Saviour who \"went about doing good.\" [22] The historicity\nof Herakles is not on that score accepted by instructed men; though I\nhave known divinity students no less contemptuous over the description\nof the cognate Samson saga as a sun myth than is Mr. Sinclair over\nthe denial of the historicity of Jesus.\n\nSo common a feature of a hundred myths, indeed, is the set of\ncharacteristics founded on, that we may at once come to the basis\nof his argument, a blundering reiteration of the famous thesis of\nProfessor Schmiedel, who is the sole source of Mr. Sinclair's latent\nerudition. \"The line of inquiry here suggested,\" he explains, \"has\nbeen worked out in a pamphlet of Schmiedel, which will be found in\nthe Fellowship library.\" But the dialectic which broadly avails for\nthe Bible class will not serve their instructor here. The essence\nof the argument which Professor Schmiedel urges with scholarlike\nsobriety is thus put by Mr. Sinclair with the extravagance natural\nto his species:--\n\n\n    Many [compare Schmiedel!] of the stories represent him [Jesus] in a\n    light which, from the point of view of conventional hero-worship,\n    is even derogatory; his friends come to seize him as a madman;\n    he is estranged from his own mother; he can do no mighty work in\n    the unsympathetic atmosphere of his own native place.\n\n\nThe traditionalist is here unconsciously substituting a new and\ndifferent argument for the first. Hitherto the thesis has been\nthat of the \"vividness\" of the record, the \"human touches,\" the\n\"speaking and feeling like a real man,\" the \"freedom and variety of\nlife.\" Apparently he has had a shadow of misgiving over these simple\ncriteria. If, indeed, he had given an hour to the perusal of Albert\nKalthoff's Rise of Christianity, instead of proceeding to vilipend a\nliterature of which he had read nothing, he would have learned that\nhis preliminary thesis is there anticipated and demolished. Kalthoff\nmeets it by the simple observation that the books of Ruth and Jonah\nsupply \"human touches\" and \"freedom and variety of life\" to a far\ngreater degree than does the Gospel story considered as a life of\nJesus; though practically all scholars are now agreed that both of\nthe former books are deliberately planned fictions, or early \"novels\nwith a purpose.\" Ruth is skilfully framed to contend against the\nJewish bigotry of race; and Jonah to substitute a humane ideal for\nthe ferocious one embalmed in so much of the sacred literature. Yet\nso \"vividly\" are the central personages portrayed that down till the\nother day all the generations of Christendom, educated and uneducated\nalike, accepted them unquestioningly as real records, whatever might\nbe thought by the judicious few of the miracle element in Jonah.\n\nIt is thus ostensibly quite expedient to substitute for the simple\nthesis of \"vividness\" in regard to the second Gospel the quite\ndifferent argument that some of the details exclude the notion that\n\"the author\" regarded Jesus as a supernatural person. But this thesis\ninstantly involves the defence in fresh trouble, besides breaking down\nutterly on its own merits. In the early chapters of Mark, Jesus is\nemphatically presented as a supernormal person--the deity's \"beloved\nSon,\" \"the Holy One of God,\" who has the divine power of forgiving\nsins, is \"lord even of the sabbath,\" and is hailed by the defeated\nspirits of evil as \"the Son of God,\" and the \"Son of the Most High\nGod.\" Either the conception of Jesus in Mark vi is compatible with all\nthis or it is not. If not, the case collapses, for the \"derogatory\"\nepisode must be at once branded as an interpolation. And if it\nbe argued that even as an interpolation it testifies at once to a\nnon-supernaturalist view of the Founder's function and a real knowledge\nof his life and actions, we have only to give a list of more or less\nmythical names in rebuttal. To claim that the episode in Mark vi, 1-6,\nis \"derogatory from the point of view of conventional hero-worship,\"\nand therefore presumptively historical, is to ignore alike Jewish and\nGentile hero-worship. In the Old Testament Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob,\nJudah, Moses, Aaron, Samson, David, and Solomon are all successively\nplaced in \"derogatory\" positions; and the Pagan hero-worshippers of\nantiquity are equally with the Jewish recalcitrant to Mr. Sinclair's\nconviction of what they ought to do.\n\nProfessor Schmiedel is aware, though Mr. Sinclair apparently is\nnot, that Herakles in the myth is repeatedly placed in \"derogatory\"\npositions, and is not only seized as a madman but actually driven\nmad. The reader who will further extend Mr. Sinclair's brief curriculum\nto a perusal of the Bacch\u00e6 of Euripides will find that the God,\nwho in another story is temporarily driven mad by Juno, is there\nsubjected to even greater indignities than those so triumphantly\nspecified by our hierologist. Herakles and Dionysos, we may be told,\nwere only demigods, not Gods. But Professor Schmiedel's thesis is that\nfor the writer of Mark or of his original document Jesus was only a\nholy man. On the other hand--to say nothing of the myths of Zeus and\nH\u00ear\u00ea, Ar\u00eas and Aphrodit\u00ea, Hephaistos and Poseidon--Apollo, certainly\na God for the framers of his myth, is there actually represented\nas being banished from heaven and living in a state of servitude to\nAdmetus for nine years. A God, then, could be conceived in civilized\nantiquity as undergoing many and serious indignities. These simple\n\u00e0 priori arguments are apt to miscarry even in the hands of careful\nand scrupulous scholars like Professor Schmiedel, who have failed to\nrealize that no amount of textual scholarship can suffice to settle\nproblems which in their very nature involve fundamental issues of\nanthropology, mythology, and hierology. As Professor Schmiedel is never\nguilty of browbeating, I make no disparagement of his solid work on the\nscore that he has not taken account of these fields in his argument;\nbut when his untenable thesis is brandished by men who have neither his\nform of scholarship nor any other, it is apt to incur summary handling.\n\nElsewhere I have examined Professor Schmiedel's thesis in detail. [23]\nHere it may suffice to point out (1) as aforesaid, that the argument\nfrom derogatory treatment is not in the least a proof that in an\nancient narrative a personage is not regarded as superhuman; (2) that\na suffering Messiah was expressly formulated in Jewish literature\nin the pre-Christian period; [24] and (3) that there are extremely\nstrong grounds for inferring purposive invention--of that na\u00eff kind\nwhich marks the whole mass of early hierology--in the very episodes\nupon which he founds. The first concrete details of the Founder's\npropaganda in Mark, as we have seen, exhibit him as clashing with\nthe Judaic environment. In later episodes he clashes with it yet\nfurther. The \"derogatory\" episodes exhibit him as clashing with his\npersonal environment, his family and kin, concerning whom there has\nbeen no mention whatever at the outset, where we should expect to find\nit. All this is in line with the anti-Judaic element of the Gospel. If\nat early stages in the larger Jesuine movement there were reasons\nwhy the Founder should be represented as detaching himself from the\nMosaic law; as being misunderstood and deserted by his disciples; and\nas disparaging even the listening Jewish multitude (concerning whom\nMark, iv, 10 sq., makes him say that \"unto them that are without,\nall things are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not\nperceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest haply they\nshould turn again, and it should be forgiven them\"), is there anything\nunlikely in his being inventively represented as meeting antipathetic\ntreatment from his family? [25] At a time when so-called \"brothers of\nthe Lord\" ostensibly claimed authority in the Jud\u00e6o-Gentile community,\nan invented tale of original domestic hostility to the Teacher would\nbe as likely as the presence of authorities so styled is unlikely\non the assumption that the story in Mark was all along current. The\nvery fact that allusions to the family of the Lord suddenly appear in\na record which had introduced him as a heavenly messenger, without\nmention of home or kindred or preparation, tells wholly against the\noriginality of the later details, which in the case of the naming of\n\"the carpenter\" and his mother have a polemic purpose. [26]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE VISIONARY EVANGEL\n\n\nAll this applies, of course, to the \"Primitive Gospel\" held to\nunderlie all of the synoptics, Mark included--a datum which reduces\nto comparative unimportance the question of priority among these. As\ncollected by the school of Bernhard Weiss, [27] the primitive Gospel,\nlike Mark, set out with a non-historical introduction of the Messiah\nto be baptized by John. It then gives the temptation myth in full;\nand immediately afterwards the Teacher is made to address to disciples\n(who have not previously been mentioned or in any way accounted for)\nthe Sermon on the Mount, with variations, and without any mount. In\nthis place we have the uncompromising insistence on the Mosaic law;\nand soon, after some miracles of healing and some Messianic discourses,\nincluding the liturgical \"Come unto me all ye that labour,\" we have\nthe Sabbatarian question raised on the miracle of the healing of the\nman with the dropsy, but without the argument from the Davidic eating\nof the shewbread. [28]\n\nThere is no more of the colour of history here than in Mark: so\nobviously is it wanting in both that the really considerate exegetes\nare driven to explain that history was not the object in either\nwriting. In both \"the twelve\" are suddenly sent--in the case of Mark,\nafter a list of twelve had been inserted without any reference to\nthe first specified five; in the reconstructed \"primitive\" document\nwithout any list whatever--to preach the blank gospel, \"The kingdom of\nGod is at hand,\" with menaces for the non-recipient, the allocutions\nto Chorazin and Bethsaida being here made part of the instructions\nto the apostles.\n\nWhat, then, are the disciples supposed to have preached? What had\nthe Teacher preached as an evangel of \"the Kingdom\"? The record has\nexpressly represented that his parables were incomprehensible to his\nown disciples; and when they ask for an explanation they are told\nthat the parables are expressly meant to be unintelligible, but that\nto them an explanation is vouchsafed. It is to the effect that \"the\nseed is the word.\" What word? The \"Kingdom\"? The mystic allegories\non that head are avowedly not for the multitude: they could not have\nbeen. Yet those allegories are the sole explanations ever afforded in\nthe Gospels of the formula of \"the Kingdom\" which was to be the purport\nof the evangel of the apostles to the multitude. They themselves had\nfailed to understand the parables; and they were forbidden to convey\nthe explanation. What, then, had they to convey?\n\nAnd that issue raises another. Why were there disciples at\nall? Disciples are understood to be prepared as participants in\nor propagandists of somebody's teaching--a lore either exoteric\nor esoteric. But no intelligible view has ever been given of the\npurpose of the Gospel Jesus in creating his group of Twelve. If we\nask what he taught them, the only answer given by the documents is:\n(1) Casting out devils; (2) The meaning of parables which were meant\nto be unintelligible to the people: that is, either sheer thaumaturgy\nor a teaching which was never to be passed on. On the economic life\nof the group not one gleam of light is cast. Judas carried a \"bag,\"\nbut as to whence came its contents there is no hint. The whole concept\nhangs in the air, a baseless dream. The myth-makers have not even\ntried to make it plausible.\n\nThe problems thus raised are not only not faced by the orthodox\nexegetes; they are not seen by them. They take the most laudable\npains to ascertain what the primitive Gospel was like, and, having\nsettled it to the satisfaction of a certain number, they rest from\ntheir labours. Yet we are only at the beginning of the main, the\nhistoric problem, from which Baur recalled Strauss to the documentary,\nwith the virtual promise that its solution would clear up the other.\n\nA \"higher\" criticism than that so-called, it is clear, must set about\nthe task; and its first conclusion, I suggest, must be that there\nnever was any Christian evangel by the Christ and the Twelve. These\nallegories of the Kingdom are framed to conceal the fact that the\ngospel-makers had no evangel to describe; though it may be claimed\nas a proof of their forensic simplicity that they actually represent\nthe Founder as vetoing all popular explanation of the very formula\nwhich they say he sent his disciples to preach to the populace. An\nidea of the Kingdom of God, it may be argued, was already current\namong the Jews: the documents assert that that was the theme of the\nBaptist. Precisely, but was the evangel of Jesus then simply the\nevangel of John, which it was to supersede? And was the evangel of\nJohn only the old evangel, preached by Pharisees and others from\nthe time of the Maccabees onwards? [29] Whatever it was, what is\nthe meaning of the repeated Gospel declaration that the nature of\nthe Kingdom must not be explained to the people? There is only one\ninference. The story of the sending forth of the twelve is as plainly\nmythical as is Luke's story of the sending forth of the seventy,\nwhich even the orthodox exegetes abandon as a \"symmetrical\" myth;\nthough they retain the allocution embodied in it. What is in theory\nthe supreme episode in the early propaganda of the cult is found to\nhave neither historical content nor moral significance. Not only\nis there not a word of explanation of the formula of the evangel,\nthere is not a word of description of the apostles' experience,\nbut simply the usual negation of knowledge:--\n\n\n    And the disciples returned and told him all that they had done,\n    saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy\n    name. And he said, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven;\n    behold I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions\n    and over all the power of the enemy; notwithstanding, in this\n    rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you, but rejoice\n    because your names are written in heaven.... (Luke x, 17-20, with\n    \"the disciples\" for \"the seventy\").\n\n\nAnd this is history, or what the early Christian leaders thought fit\nto put in place of history, for Christian edification. The disciples,\nbe it observed, had exorcized in the name of Jesus where Jesus had\nnever been, a detail accepted by the faithful unsuspectingly, and\ntemporized over no less unsuspectingly by the \"liberal\" school, but\nserving for the critical student to raise the question: Was there,\nthen, an older cult of a Jesus-God in Palestine? Leaving that problem\nfor the present, we can but note that the report in effect tells\nthat there was no evangel to preach. To any reflecting mind, it is\nthe utterance of men who had nothing to relate, but are inserting an\nempty framework, wholly mythical, in a void past. Themselves ruled by\nthe crudest superstition, they do but make the Divine Teacher talk on\ntheir own level, babbling of Satan falling from heaven, and of treading\non serpents. All the labours of the generations of laborious scholars\nwho have striven to get to the foundations of their documents have\nresulted in a pastiche which only the more clearly reveals the total\nabsence of a historic basis such as the Gospels more circumstantially\nsuggest. In the end we have neither history nor biography, but an\nabsolutely enigmatic evangel, set in a miscellany of miracles and of\ndiscourses which are but devices to disguise the fact that there had\nbeen no original evangel to preach. If the early church had any creed,\nit was not this. It originated in a rite, not in an evangel.\n\nOne hypothesis might, indeed, be hazarded to save the possibility of\nan actual evangel by the Founder. If, taking him to be historical,\nwe assume him to have preached a political doctrine subversive\nof the Roman rule, and to have thereby met his death, we could\nunderstand that, in a later period in which the writers connected\nwith the movement were much concerned to conciliate the Romans, it\nmight have been felt expedient, and indeed imperative, to suppress\nthe facts. They would not specify the evangel, because they dared\nnot. On this view the Founder was a Messiah of the ordinary Jewish\ntype, aiming at the restoration of the Jewish State. But such a Jesus\nwould not be the \"Jesus of the Gospels\" at all. He would merely be\na personage of the same (common) name, who in no way answered to\nthe Gospel figure, but had been wholly denaturalized to make him a\ncult-centre. On this hypothesis there has been no escape from the\n\"myth-theory,\" but merely a restatement of it. A Jesus put to death\nby the Romans as a rebel Mahdi refuses to compose with the Teacher\nwho sends out his apostles to preach his evangel; who proclaims,\nif anything, a purely spiritual kingdom; and who is put to death as\nseeking to subvert the Jewish faith, the Roman governor giving only\na passive and reluctant assent. On the political hypothesis, as on\nthe myth-theory here put, the whole Gospel narrative of the Tragedy\nwhich establishes the cult remains mythical. We have but to proceed,\nthen, with the analysis which reveals the manner of its composition\nand of its inclusion in the record.\n\nIt is admitted by the reconstructors that the primitive Gospel had\nno conclusion, telling nothing of Last Supper, Agony, Betrayal,\nCrucifixion, or Resurrection. It did not even name Judas as the\nbetrayer. And they explain that it was because of lacking these\ndetails that it passed out of use, superseded by the Gospels which\ngave them. As if the conclusion, were it compiled in the same fashion,\ncould not have been added to the original document, which ex hypothesi\nhad the prestige of priority. Why the composer of the original did not\nadd the required chapters is a question to which we get only the most\nfutile answers, as is natural when the exegetes have not critically\nscrutinized the later matter. Thus even Mr. Jolley is content to say:--\n\n\n    The omission of any account of the Passion or Resurrection is\n    natural enough in a writing primarily intended for the Christians\n    of Jud\u00e6a, some of them witnesses of the Crucifixion, and all,\n    probably, familiar with the incidents of the Saviour's Jud\u00e6an\n    ministry, as well as with the events preceding and following\n    the Passion, especially when we remember that the author had no\n    intention (!) of writing a biography. [30]\n\n\nHere the alleged fact that only some had seen the Crucifixion,\nwhile all knew all about the ministry, is given as a reason why the\nministry should be described and the Crucifixion left undescribed\nand unmentioned!\n\nThe problem thus impossibly disposed of is really of capital\nimportance. Any complete solution must remain hypothetical in the\nnature of the case; but at least we are bound to recognize that\nthe Primitive Gospel may have had a different conclusion, as it may\nfurther have contained matter not preserved in the synoptics. That\nmight well be a sufficient ground for its abandonment by the Christian\ncommunity; and some such suspicion simply cannot be excluded, though\nit cannot be proved. But whatever we may surmise as to what may have\nbeen in the original document, we can offer a decisive reason why the\nexisting conclusion should not have been part of it. That conclusion\nis primarily extraneous to any gospel, and is not originally a piece\nof narrative at all.\n\nBernhard Weiss ascribes to Mark the original narrative of the closing\nevents, making Matthew a simple copyist--a matter of no ultimate\nimportance, seeing that it is the same impossible and unhistorical\nnarrative in both documents. Like all the other professional exegetes,\nBernhard Weiss and his school have failed to discern that the document\nreveals not only that it is not an original narrative at all, but that\nit could not possibly be a narrative. \"It was only in the history\nof the passion,\" writes Weiss, \"that Mark could give a somewhat\nconnected account partly of what he himself had seen and partly of\nwhat he gathered from those who witnessed the crucifixion.\" [31]\nWhether \"passion\" here includes the Agony in the Garden is not clear:\nas it is expressly distinguished from the crucifixion, which Mark\nby implication had not seen, the meaning remains obscure. Like the\nordinary traditionalists, Weiss assumes that \"after Peter's death Mark\nbegan to note down his recollections of what the Apostle had told him\nof the acts and discourses of Jesus.\" Supposing this to include the\nrecord of the night of the Betrayal, what were Mark's possible sources\nfor the description of the Agony, with its prayers, its entrances and\nexits, when the only disciples present are alleged to have been asleep?\n\nIt is the inconceivable omission of the exegetes to face such problems\nthat forces us finally to insist on their serious inadequacy in this\nregard. They laboriously conduct an investigation up to the point at\nwhich it leaves us, more certainly than ever, facing the incredible,\nand there they leave it. Their work is done. That the story of the\nLast Night was never framed as a narrative, but is primarily a drama,\nwhich the Gospel simply transcribes, is manifest in every section,\nand is definitely proved by the verses (Mk. xiv, 41-42) in which,\nwithout an intervening exit, Jesus says: \"Sleep on now, and take\nyour rest.... Arise, let us be going.\" The moment the document is\nrealized to be a transcript of a drama it becomes clear that the\n\"Sleep on now, and take your rest\" should be inserted before the\notherwise speechless exit in verse 40, where the text says that\n\"they wist not what to answer him.\" Two divergent speeches have by\nan oversight in transcription been fused into one.\n\nThat the story of the tragedy is a separate composition has been\npartly perceived by critics of different schools without drawing any\nelucidating inference. Wellhausen pronounces that the Passion cannot\nbe excepted from the verdict that Mark as a whole lacks the character\nof history. \"Nothing is motived and explained by preliminaries.\" [32]\nBut \"we learn as much about the week in Jerusalem as about the year in\nGalilee.\" [33] And the Rev. Mr. Wright gets further, though following\na wrong track:--\n\n\n    The very fact that S. Mark devotes six chapters out of sixteen\n    to events which took place in the precincts of Jerusalem makes\n    me suspicious. Important though the passion was, it seems to\n    be narrated at undue length. The proportions of the history are\n    destroyed. [34]\n\n\nPrecisely. The story of the events in Jerusalem is no proper part\neither of a primary document or of the first or second Gospel. In its\ndetail it has no congruity with the scanty and incoherent narrative\nof Mark. It is of another provenance, although, as Wellhausen notes,\nquite as unhistorical as the rest. The non-historicity of the entire\naction is as plain as in the case of any episode in the Gospels. Judas\nis paid to betray a man who could easily have been arrested without\nany process of betrayal; and the conducting of the trial immediately\nupon the arrest, throughout the night, the very witnesses being\n\"sought for\" in the darkness, is plain fiction, explicable only by\nthe dramatic obligation to continuous action.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE ALLEGED CONSENSUS OF SCHOLARS\n\n\nSuch is the historical impasse at which open-minded students find\nthemselves when they would finally frame a reasoned conception of\nthe origin of the Christian religion. The documentary analysis having\nyielded results which absolutely repel the accepted tradition, however\ndenuded of supernaturalism, we are driven to seek a solution which\nshall be compatible with the data. And some of us, after spending\nmany years in shaping a sequence which should retain the figure of\nthe Founder and his twelve disciples, have found ourselves forced\nstep by step to the conclusion that these are all alike products\nof myth, intelligible and explicable only as such. And when, in\nabsolute loyalty to all the clues, with no foregone conclusions to\nsupport--unless the rejection of supernaturalism be counted such--we\ntentatively frame for ourselves a hypothesis of a remote origin in\na sacramental cult of human sacrifice, with a probable Jesus-God\nfor its centre in Palestine, we are not surprised at being met by\nthe kind of explosion that has met every step in the disintegration\nof traditional beliefs from Copernicus to Darwin. The compendious\nMr. Sinclair, who makes no pretension to have read any of the works\nsetting forth the new theories, thus describes them:--\n\n\n    The arguments of Baconians and mythomaniacs are alike made up of\n    the merest blunders as to fact and the sheerest misunderstanding\n    of the meaning of facts. Grotesque etymologies, [35] arbitrary\n    and tasteless emendations of texts, forced parallels, unrestrained\n    license of conjecture, the setting of conjecture above reasonably\n    established fact, chains of argument in which every link is of\n    straw, appeals to anti-theological bias and to the miserable\n    egotism which sees heroes with the eyes of the valet--these are\n    some of the formidable \"evidences\" in deference to which we are\n    asked to reverse the verdicts of tradition, scholarship, and common\n    sense. They have never imposed on anyone fairly conversant with\n    the facts. Those who have not such knowledge may either simply\n    appeal to the authority of scholars, OR, BETTER STILL, SUPPORT that\n    authority by exercizing their own IMAGINATION AND COMMON SENSE.\n\n\nThat tirade has seemed to me worth preserving. It is perhaps a monition\nto scholars, whose function is something higher than vituperation, to\nnote how their inadequacies are sought to be eked out by zeal without\neither scholarship or judgment, and, finally, without intellectual\nsincerity. The publicist who alternately tells the unread that they\nought to accept the verdict of scholars, and that it is \"better still\"\nto \"support\" that verdict by unaided \"imagination and common sense,\"\nhas given us once for all his moral measure.\n\nDismissing him as having served his turn in illustrating\ncompendiously the temper which survives in Unitarian as in Trinitarian\ntraditionalism, we may conclude this preliminary survey with a comment\non the proposition that we should take the \"verdict of scholars.\" It\nhas been put by men, themselves scholars in other fields, whom to\nbracket with Mr. Sinclair would be an impertinence. But I have always\nbeen puzzled by their attitude. They proceed upon three assumptions,\nwhich are all alike delusions. The first is that there is a consensus\nof scholars on the details of this problem. The second is that the\nprofessional scholars have a command of a quite recondite knowledge as\nregards the central issue. The third is that there is such a thing as\nprofessional expertise in the diagnosis of Gods, Demigods, and real\nFounders in religious history. Once more, the nature of the problem\nhas not been realized.\n\nLet us take first the case of a real scholar in the strictest sense of\nthe term, Professor Gustaf Dalman, of Leipzig, author of \"The Words\nof Jesus, considered in the light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings\nand the Aramaic Language.\" [36] To me, Professor Dalman appears to be\nan expert of high competence, alike in Hebrew and Aramaic--a double\nqualification possessed by very few of those to whose \"verdict\" we\nare told to bow. By his account few previous experts in the same field\nhave escaped bad miscarriages, as a handful of excerpts will show:--\n\n\n    M. Friedmann, Onkelos und Akylas, 1896, still holds fast to the\n    traditional opinion that even Ezra had an Aramaic version of the\n    Tora. In this he is mistaken.\n\n    H. Laible, in Dalman-Laible's Jesus Christ in the Talmud, etc.,\n    incorrectly refers it [the phrase \"bastard of a wedded wife\"] to\n    Jesus. The discussion treats merely of the definition of the term\n    \"bastard.\"\n\n    Adequate proof for all three parts of this assertion [A. Neubauer's\n    as to the use of Aramaic in parts of Palestine] is awanting.\n\n    F. Blass ... characterizes as Aramaisms idioms which in some cases\n    are equally good Hebraisms, and in others are pure Hebraisms and\n    not Aramaisms at all.\n\n    P. W. Schmiedel ... does not succeed in reaching any really\n    tenable separation of Aramaisms and Hebraisms.\n\n    Resch entirely abandons the region of what is linguistically\n    admissible.... And the statement of the same writer that this\n    ... \"belongs very specially to the epic style of narration in\n    the Old Testament\" is incomprehensible.\n\n    The idioms discussed above ... show at once the incorrectness of\n    Schmiedel's contention that the narrative style of the Gospels\n    and the Acts is the best witness of the Greek that was spoken\n    among the Jews. The fact is that the narrative sections of the\n    Synoptists have more Hebrew features than the discourses of Jesus\n    communicated by them.\n\n    Such a book as W\u00fcnsche's Neue Beitr\u00e4ge, by reason of quite\n    superficial and inaccurate assertions and faulty translations,\n    must even be characterized as directly misleading and confusing.\n\n    The want of due precaution in the use made of [the Jerusalem\n    Targums of the Pentateuch] by J. T. Marshall is one of the things\n    which were bound to render his efforts to reproduce the \"Aramaic\n    Gospel\" a failure.\n\n    Harnack supposes it to be an ancient Jewish conception that\n    \"everything of genuine value which successively appears upon earth\n    has its existence in heaven--i.e., it exists with God--meaning in\n    the cognition of God, and therefore really.\" But this idea must be\n    pronounced thoroughly un-Jewish, at all events un-Palestinian,\n    although the medieval Kabbala certainly harbours notions of\n    this sort.\n\n    Holtzmann ... thereby evinces merely his own ignorance of Jewish\n    legal processes.\n\n    Especially must his [R. H. Charles's] attempts at retranslation\n    [of the Assumptio Mosis] be pronounced almost throughout a failure.\n\n    [Even in the pertinent observations of Wellhausen and Nestle]\n    we feel the absence of a careful separation of Hebrew and Aramaic\n    possibilities.... He [Wellhausen] must be reminded that the Jewish\n    literature to this day is still mainly composed in Hebrew.\n\n\nThese may suffice to illustrate the point. Few of the other experts\nescape Dalman's Ithuriel spear; and as he frankly confesses past\nblunders of his own, it is not to be doubted that some of the others\nhave returned his thrusts. [37] Supposing then that this body of\nexperts, so many of them deep in Aramaic, so opposed to each other\non so many issues clearly within the field of their special studies,\nwere to unite in affirming the historicity of the Gospel Jesus,\nwhat would their consensus signify? Simply that they were agreed in\naffirming the unknown, the improbable, and the unprovable, while they\ndisputed over the known. Their special studies do not give them the\nslightest special authority to pronounce upon such an issue. It is\none of historic inference upon a mass of data which they among them\nhave made common property so far as it was not so already, in the main\ndocuments and in previous literature. Dalman, who takes for granted\nthe historicity of Jesus and apparently of the tradition in general,\npronounces (p. 9) that\n\n\n    the actual discourses of Jesus in no way give the impression that\n    He had grown up in rural solitude and seclusion. It is true only\n    that He, like the Galileans generally in that region, would have\n    little contact with literary erudition.\n\n\nIf Professor Dalman cannot see that the proposition in the first\nsentence is extremely disturbing to the traditional belief in its\nUnitarian form, and that the second is a mere petitio principii which\ncannot save the situation, other people can see it. His scholarship\ngives him no \"eminent domain\" over logic; and it does not require a\nknowledge of Aramaic to detect the weakness of his reasoning. Fifty\nexperts in Aramaic carry no weight for a thinking man on such a\nnon-linguistic issue; and he who defers to them as if they did is\nbut throwing away his birthright. When again Dalman writes (p. 60)\nthat \"Peter must have appeared (Acts x, 24) from a very early date\nas a preacher in the Greek language,\" he again raises an insoluble\nproblem for the traditionalists of all schools, and his scholarly\nstatus is quite irrelevant to that.\n\nWhen, yet again, he writes (p. 71) that \"what is firmly established is\nonly the fact that Jesus spoke in Aramaic to the Jews,\" his mastery\nof Aramaic has nothing to do with the case. He is merely taking for\ngranted the historicity of the main tradition; and until he faces the\nproblems he has ignored (having, as he may fairly claim, been occupied\nwith others), and repelled the criticisms which that tradition incurs,\nhis vote on the unconsidered issue has no more value to a rational\njudgment than any other. I have seldom read a scholarly treatise more\nsatisfying than his within its special field, or more provocative of\nastonishment at the extent to which specialism can close men's eyes\nto the problems which overlap or underlie theirs.\n\nAnd that is the consideration that has to be realized by those\nwho talk of scholarship (meaning simply what is called New\nTestament scholarship) settling a historical problem which turns\nupon anthropology, mythology, hierology, psychology, and literary\nand historical science in general. On these sides the scholars in\nquestion, \"Wir Gelehrten vom Fach,\" as the German specialists call\nthemselves in the German manner, are not experts at all, not even\namateurs, inasmuch as they have never even realized that those other\nsciences are involved. They have fallen into the r\u00f4le of the pedant,\nproperly so-called, who presumes to regulate life by inapplicable\nknowledge. And even those who are wholly free of this presumptuous\npedantry, the sober, courteous, and sane scholars like Professor\nSchmiedel, whose candour enables him to contribute a preface to\nsuch a book as Professor W. B. Smith's Der vorchristliche Jesus,\nto whose thesis he does not assent--even these, as we have seen,\ncan fail to realize the scope of the problem to the discussion of\nwhich they have contributed.\n\nProfessor Schmiedel's careful argument from \"derogatory\" episodes\nin the gospel of Mark, be it repeated, is not merely inconclusive;\nit elicits a rebuttal which turns it into a defeat. Inadequate even\non the textual side, it is wholly fallacious on the hierological\nand the mythological; and no more than the ordinary conservative\npolemic does it recognize the sociological problem involved. For\nthose who seek to study history comprehensively and comprehendingly,\nthe residuum of the conservative case is a blank incredibility. Even\nDalman, after the closest linguistic and literary analysis, has\nleft the meaning of \"the Kingdom of God\" a conundrum; [38] and the\nconservative case finally consists in asserting that Christianity\nas a public movement arose in the simple announcement of that\nconundrum--the mere utterance of the formula--throughout Palestine\nby a body of twelve apostles, who for the rest \"cast out devils,\"\nas instructed by their Teacher. The \"scholarship\" which contentedly\nrests facing that vacuous conception is a scholarship not qualified\nfinally to handle a great historical problem as such. It conducts\nitself exactly as did Biblical scholarship so long in face of the\nrevelations of geology, and as did Hebrew scholarship so long over\nthe problem of the Tabernacle in the wilderness.\n\nDeeply learned men, in the latter case, went on for generations\nsolemnly re-writing history in the terms of the re-arranged documents,\nwhen all the while the history was historic myth--perceptible as such\nto a Zulu who had lived in a desert. And when the Zulu's teacher proved\nthe case by simple arithmetic, he met at the hands alike of pedants\nand of pietists a volley of malignant vituperation, the \"religious\"\nexpert Maurice excelling many of the most orthodox in the virulence of\nhis scorn; while the pontifical Arnold, from the Olympian height of his\namateurism, severely lectured Colenso for not having written in Latin.\n\nUntil the scholars and the amateurs alike renounce their own\npresumption, their thrice stultified airs of finality, their estimate\nof their prejudice and their personal equation as a revelation from\nwithin, and their sacerdotal conviction that their science is the\nscience of every case, they will have to be unkindly reminded that they\nare but blunderers like other men, that in their own specialties they\nconvict each other of errors without number, and that the only path\nto truth is that of the eternal free play and clash of all manner of\ncriticism. It is an exceptionally candid orthodox scholar who writes:\n\"It is a law of the human mind that combating error is the best way to\nadvance knowledge. They who have never joined in controversy have no\nfirm grasp of truth. Hateful and unchristian as theological disputes\nare apt to become, they have this merit, that they open our eyes.\" [39]\nLet the conservative disputants then be content to put their theses\nand their arguments like other men, to meet argument with argument\nwhen they can, and to hold their peace when they have nothing better\nto add than boasts and declamation.\n\nBefore the end of the nineteenth century the very school which we\nare asked to regard as endowed with quasi-papal powers in matters of\nhistorical criticism was declared by one of its leading representatives\nin Germany to have been on a wrong track for fifty years. In the\nwords of Professor Blass:--\n\n\n    Professor Harnack, in his most recent publication, even while\n    stating that now the tide has turned, and that theology, after\n    having strayed in the darkness and led others into darkness (see\n    Matt. xv, 14) for about fifty years, has now got a better insight\n    into things, and has come to a truer appreciation of the real\n    trustworthiness of tradition, still puts Mark's gospel between 65\n    and 70 A.D., Matthew's between 70 and 75, but Luke's much later,\n    about 78-93. [40]\n\n\nAnd Blass, who dates Luke 56 or 60, goes on:--\n\n\n    Has that confessedly untrustworthy guide of laymen, scientific\n    theology, after so many errors committed during fifty years,\n    now of a sudden become a trustworthy one? Or have we good reason\n    to mistrust it as much, or even more than we had before? In\n    ordinary life no sane person would follow a guide who confessed\n    to having grossly misled him during the whole former part of\n    the journey. Evidently that guide was either utterly ignorant\n    of the way, or he had some views and aims of his own, of which\n    the traveller was unaware, and he cannot be assumed now to have\n    acquired a full knowledge, or to have laid those views and aims\n    wholly aside.\n\n\nThus does one Gelehrter vom Fach estimate the pretensions of\na whole sanhedrim of another Fach. Blass is a philologist;\nand incidentally we have seen how another philologist, Dalman,\nhandles him in that capacity. Elsewhere, after another fling at the\ntheological scholars--with a salvo of praise to Harnack for his Lukas\nder Arzt--and a comment on the fashion in which every German critic\nswears by his master, he avows that \"we classical philologists ... have\nseen similar follies among ourselves in fair number.\" [41] It is most\ntrue; and the philologists are as much divided as the theologians.\n\nOf course, it is not by philology that Blass has reached the standpoint\nfrom which he can contemn the professional theologians. He is really\non the same ground as they, making the same primary assumptions of\nhistoricity: the only difference is that while they, following the\nsame historical tradition, yet scruple to accept prophecies as having\nbeen actually made at the time assigned to them, and feel bound to date\nthe prophecy after the event, the consistent philologist recognizes no\nsuch obligation in the present instance, and puts a rather adroit but\nvery unscholarly argument on the subject, with which we shall have to\ndeal later. But for those to whom the exact dating of the Gospels is a\nsubsidiary problem, his argument has only a subsidiary interest; and\nthe fact that he unquestioningly agrees with his flouted theological\ncolleagues in accepting the historicity of Jesus gives no importance\nto their consensus.\n\nIf, as he says, they are in the mass utterly untrustworthy guides on\nany historical issue (an extravagance to which, as a layman, I do\nnot subscribe), their agreement can be of no value to him where he\nand they coincide. After telling Harnack that men who have confessedly\nbeen astray for fifty years have no right to expect to be listened to,\nhe makes much of Harnack's support as to the historicity of the Acts--a\ncourse which will not impose upon thoughtful readers. All the while,\nof course, Professor Blass is simply applying a revised historical\ncriticism to a single issue or set of issues, and even if he chance\nto be right on these he has set up no new historical method. No more\nthan the others has he recognized the central historical problem;\nand he must be well aware that that reversion to tradition announced\nby Harnack, and at this point acquiesced in by him, cannot for a\nmoment be maintained as a general critical principle in regard to\nthe New Testament any more than in regard to the Old. All that he can\nclaim is that many theologians have confessedly blundered seriously\non historical problems. But that is quite enough to justify us in\nadmonishing the mere middlemen and the experts alike to change the\ntone of absurd assurance with which they meet further innovations of\nhistorical theory.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nCONSERVATIVE POSITIONS\n\n\nIt is only just to confess that the conservatives are already\nlearning to employ some prudential expedients. Met by the\nchallenge to their own nakedly untenable positions, and offered a\nconstructive hypothesis, diversely elaborated from various quarters,\nthey mostly evade the discussion at nearly every point where\nthe impossible tradition is concretely confronted by a thinkable\nsubstitute, and spend themselves over the remoter issues of universal\nmythology. Habitually misrepresenting every argument from comparative\nmythology as an assertion of a historical sequence in the compared\ndata, they expatiate over questions of etymology, and are loud in\ntheir outcry over a suggestion that a given historical sequence may\nbe surmised from data more or less obscure. But to the question how\nthe evangel could possibly have begun as the record represents, or\nhow the consummation could possibly have taken place as described,\nthey either attempt no answer whatever or offer answers which are worse\nthan evasions. One professional disputant, dealing with the proposition\nthat such a judicial and police procedure as the systematic search\nfor witnesses described in the Gospel story of the Trial could not\ntake place by night, \"when an Eastern city is as a city of the dead,\"\ndid not scruple to say that the thesis amounted to saying that in an\nEastern city nothing could happen by night. This controversialist is\nan instructor of youth, and claims to be an instructed scholar. And\nhis is the only answer that I have seen to the challenge with which\nit professes to deal. Loisy agrees that the challenge cannot be met.\n\nTo the hypothesis that there was a pre-Christian cult of a Jesus-God,\nthe traditionalist--above all, the Unitarian, who seems to feel\nthe pinch here most acutely--retorts with a volley of indignant\ncontempt. He can see no sign of any such cult. In the mind's eye he\ncan see, as a historic process, twelve Apostles creating a Christian\ncommunity by simply crying aloud that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,\nexcommunicating for the after life those who will not listen, and all\nthe while assiduously casting out devils. His records baldly tell him\nthat this happened; and \"we believe in baptism because we have seen\nit done.\" But whereas, in the nature of the case, the reconstruction\nof the real historic process must be by tentative inference from a\nvariety of data which for the most part the records as a matter of\ncourse obscured, he makes loud play with the simple fact that the\nrecords lack the required clear mention, and brands as \"unsupported\nconjecture\" the theorem offered in place of the plain untruth with\nwhich he has so long been satisfied.\n\nIn his own sifted and \"primitive\" records we have the narration of\nthe carrying of the Divine Man to a height (\"pinnacle of the temple\"\nonly in the supposed primitive Gospel) by Satan for purposes of\ntemptation. For a mythologist this myth easily falls into line as a\nvariant of the series of Pan and the young Zeus at the altar on the\nmountain top, Pan and Apollo competing on the top of Mount Tmolus,\nApollo and Marsyas, all deriving from the Babylonian figures of the\nGoat-God (Capricorn) and the Sun-God on the Mountain of the World,\nrepresenting the starting of the sun on his yearly course. That\nassignment explains at once the Pagan myths and the Christian,\nwhich is thus shown to have borrowed from the myth material of\nthe Greco-Oriental world in an early documentary stage. Challenged\nto evade that solution, he mentions only the Pan-Zeus story, says\nnothing of the series of variants or of the Babylonian original,\nand replies that he is\n\n\n    unable to trace any real and fundamental connection between the\n    stories. In the Buddhist narrative [which had been cited as an\n    analogue [42]] the \"temptation\" to satisfy the cravings of hunger,\n    the promptings of ambition, and the doubts as to the overruling\n    Providence of God, are all wanting. In the Roman story, too, Pan,\n    as representing in satyr-form the lower and animal propensities\n    of man, is a very different being to the Hebrew Satan; moreover,\n    there is no tempting of Jupiter, as there is of Jesus. Jupiter,\n    likewise, is wholly a god; Jesus is a sorely bested Man, although\n    divine. There is, in short, not the least affinity between any\n    of these narratives beyond the general idea of trial. [43]\n\n\nAnd this figures as a refutation. For our traditionalist, comparative\nmythology does not and cannot exist; for him there can be no\nfundamental connection between any two nominal myths unless they are\nabsolutely identical in all their details; and the goat-footed Pan and\nthe goat-footed Satan (certainly descended from the Goat-God Azazel)\nare merely \"very different beings,\" though Satan for the later Jews\nand Jesuists actually corresponded to Pan (who is not a mere satyr\nfor the Greeks) not only in being the spirit of concupiscence [44]\nbut in being \"the God of this world,\" as the Gospel myth in effect\nshows him to be. And this exhibition of ignorance of every principle of\nmythology passes for \"scholarship,\" and will be duly so certificated\nby Sir William Robertson Nicoll, who undertakes to preside in that\ndepartment, as in politics, with about equal qualifications.\n\nBy way of constructive solution of the problem we have from the\napologist this:--\n\n\n    If a conjecture may be hazarded here, we should be inclined to\n    say that the Christian narrative largely presents, in picturesque\n    and symbolic form, the subjective experiences and doubts of\n    Jesus--whether these were of internal origin merely, or were\n    suggested externally by some malignant spiritual being--as to His\n    capacities and power for the great work which He had undertaken.\n\n\nThe thoroughly orthodox, it would appear, must still be catered for,\nalbeit only by the concession of the possibility of \"some\" malignant\nspiritual being, which seems a gratuitous slight to the canonical\nSatan, whose moral dignity had immediately before been acclaimed. But,\nafter expressly insisting on the elements of \"temptation\" and\n\"ambition\" in the story, with the apparent implication that the young\nTeacher may have had a passing ambition to become a world conqueror,\nour exegete, in conclusion, collapses to the position of the German\nexegetes who, the other day, were still debating on the spiritual\ninterpretation of what they could not perceive to be a pure myth\nof art.\n\nAt this stage of enlightenment we hear allusions to \"psychology,\"\nthough I have not yet met with any explicit pretence that the\ntraditionalist scholars know anything about psychology that is not\nknown to the rest of us. In any case, the suggestion may be hazarded\nthat the first researches they make into psychology might usefully\nbe directed to their own, which is a distressing illustration of the\nsurvival of the intellectual methods of the ancient apologists for\nthe Vedas and for the mythology of the Greeks.\n\nA severe scrutiny of psychic processes is indeed highly necessary in\nthis as in so many other disputes in which the affections wrestle with\nthe reason. Such a process of analysis gives us the real causation\nof the testimony borne by Mill, which is so widely typical. For\nnon-religious as for religious minds the conception they form of the\nGospel Jesus is commonly a resultant of a few dominant impressions,\nvarying in each case but all cognate. Jesus is figured first to the\nrecipient spirit as a blessed babe in the arms of an idealized mother,\nand last as dying on the cross, cruelly tortured for no crime--the\nsupreme example of the martyred philanthropist. In the interim he\nfigures as commanding his dull disciples to \"Suffer little children to\ncome unto me,\" and as \"going about doing good,\" all the while preaching\nforgiveness and brotherly love. No knowledge of the impossibility of\nmost of the particularized cures will withhold even instructed men\nfrom soothing their sensibilities by crediting the favourite figure\nwith some vague \"healing power\" and talking of the possibilities of\n\"faith healing,\" even as they loosely accredit some elevating quality,\nsome practical purport, to the visionary evangel, so absolutely\nmythical that the Gospel writers can tell us not a word of its matter.\n\nEven Professor Schmiedel, expressly applying the tests of naturalism,\nnegates those tests at the outset by taking for granted the Teacher's\npossession of unquantified \"psychic\" healing powers, though the\nnarratives twenty times tell of cures which cannot possibly be\ndescribed as cases of faith-healing. [45] If for the sane inquirer\nthe absolute miracle stories are false, and these stories are false,\nby what right does he allot evidential value to wholesale allegations\nof multitudinous cures from the same sources? By the sole right\nof his predilections. The measure which he metes to the thousand\nprodigies in Livy is never meted to those of the Gospels. For him,\nthese are different things, being seen in another atmosphere.\n\nIn men concerned to be intellectually law-abiding, these dialectic\ndivagations are decently veiled; by others they are passionately\nflaunted. No recollection of the anger of Plato at those who denied\nthat the Sun and Planets were divine and blessed beings can withhold\ncertain professed scholars from the same angry folly in a similar\npredicament. But even where theological animus has been in a manner\ndisciplined by the long professional battle over documentary problems,\nthe sheer lack of logical challenge on fundamental issues has left\nall the disputants alike, down till the other day, taking for granted\ndata to which they had no critical right.\n\nThroughout the whole debate, even in the case of scholars who profess\nto be loyal to induction, we find that there is a presupposition\nupon which induction has no effect. Bernhard Weiss, quoting from\nHoltzmann the profoundly subversive proposition that \"Christianity\nhas been 'book-learning' from the beginning,\" in reply \"can only say,\nGod be praised that it is not so.\" Yet the real effect of his own\nresearch is to show us much--to show that there was no oral evangel,\nthat the formula of \"the kingdom of heaven\" is but a phrase to fill\na blank. Even candid inquirers who see the difficulty, like Samuel\nDavidson, leave it unsolved. Says Davidson:--\n\n\n    When we try to form a correct view of Jesus's utterances\n    regarding this Kingdom of God, we find they have much vagueness\n    and ambiguity. Their differences also in the Synoptic Gospels\n    and the fourth are so apparent that the latter must be left\n    out of account in any attempt to get a proper sketch of Jesus's\n    hopes. His apostles and other early reporters misunderstood some\n    of His sayings, making them crasser. Oral tradition marred their\n    original form. This is specially the case with respect to the\n    enthusiastic hopes about the kingdom He looked for. But as the\n    ideal did not become actual we must rest in the great fact that\n    the Christianity He introduced was the nucleus of a perfect system\n    adapted to universal humanity. [46]\n\n\n\"We must\" do no such thing. We \"must\" draw a licit inference. The\nalleged great fact is morally a chimera, and historically a\nhallucination. To admit that all the evidence collapses, and then\nto posit the visionary gospel with a \"must,\" is to abandon critical\nprinciple. The \"must\" is simply the eternal presupposition. And the\nchoice of the sincere student \"must\" be between that negation of\nscience and a fresh scientific search, from which the presupposition,\nas such, is excluded. If it can reappear as a licit conclusion,\nso be it. But it has never yet so arisen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nBLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE\n\n\nA very interesting attempt to bring the synoptic problem to a new\ncritical test has latterly been made by Dr. Flinders Petrie in his\nwork, The Growth of the Gospels as shown by Structural Criticism\n(1910). His starting point is the likelihood that logia, analogous\nto the non-canonical fragments discovered in recent years, were the\noriginal material from which the Gospels were built up. The hypothesis\nis prima facie quite legitimate, there being nothing to repel it. As he\ncontends, there is now evidence that writing was in much more common\nuse in some periods of antiquity than scholars had formerly supposed;\nand scraps of writing by non-scholarly persons, he argues, may have\nbeen widely current in the environment with which we are concerned. All\nthe while he is founding on data from the Egypt of the third century\nfor a Palestinian environment of the first; and he is obliged to stress\nthe point that Matthew the tax-gatherer was a \"professional scribe,\"\nwhile his argument runs that Matthew used the detached jottings of\nother people, not his own. But let us follow out his thesis:--\n\n\n    We cannot doubt [writes Dr. Petrie] that such was the course\n    of growth when we look at the logia. Those collections of brief\n    sayings could hardly have come into existence if full narratives\n    and sufficient standards of information in the Gospels were already\n    circulating. They belong essentially to a preparatory age, when\n    records were in course of compilation. But, once written out,\n    they naturally survived side by side with the Gospels, which had\n    only used a portion of their material. [47]\n\n\nIt is not quite clear whether Dr. Petrie meant here to claim not only\nthat the so-called Logia Iesou published in 1897 and 1904 are anterior\nto and independent of the Gospels (though found only in third-century\nMSS.), but that they are on the same footing of credibility with the\nGospels. This, however, seems inevitably to follow from his position,\nthough it appears to suggest to him no difficulty about the general\nhistoricity of the Gospel story, which he too takes for granted. Let\nus then note the problems raised.\n\nA main feature of Dr. Petrie's inquiry is that, following Professor\nBlass, he insists on making the predictions of the fall of Jerusalem\npart of the early documentary matter collected in the \"Nucleus\" which\nfor him is the equivalent of Weiss's Primitive Gospel. The argument of\nBlass [48] is drawn from the case of Savonarola, who in 1496 predicted\nthat Rome would be sacked, and that horses would be stabled in the\nchurches, as actually happened in the year 1527. If such a prophecy\ncould be made and fulfilled in one case, urges Blass, it might be\nin another; hence there can be no rigorous application of the canon,\nOmne vaticinium post eventum, which has been relied on by the modern\nschool of critical theologians. Dr. Petrie appears to have made no\ninvestigation of his own, being content to quote and support Blass;\nand the point is well worth critical consideration.\n\nLet us premise that scientific criticism, which has no concern with\nUnitarian predilections, stands quite impartially towards the question\nof Gospel dates. The modern tendency to carry down those dates, either\nfor the whole or for any parts of the Gospels, towards or into the\nsecond century, is originally part of the general \"liberal\" inclination\nto put a Man in place of a God, though some believers in the God\nacquiesce as to the lateness of the act of writing. Those who have\ncarried on the movement have always presupposed the general historicity\nof the Teacher, and have been concerned, however unconsciously, to find\na historical solution which saved that presupposition. The rational\ncritic, making only the naturalist presupposition, is committed to\nno set of documentary dates. And he is not at all committed to the\ndenial that an inductive historic prediction, as distinguished from\na supernaturalist prophecy, may be made and fulfilled. Many have\nbeen. Much has been said of the \"marvellous prescience\" of Burke in\npredicting that the anarchy of the French Revolution would end in\na tyranny. He was in fact merely inferring, as he well might, that\nwhat had happened in the history of ancient Rome and in the history\nof England would happen in France. By a similar historical method\nseveral French and other writers in the eighteenth century reached\nthe forecast of the revolt of the American colonies from Britain\nwithout getting any credit for divine inspiration. And so, perhaps,\nmight Savonarola at the end of the fifteenth century predict a sack\nof Rome, and a Jew in the first century a sack of Jerusalem.\n\nBut let us see what Savonarola actually did. He was, so to speak, a\nprofessional prophet, and while he predicted not only a sack of Rome\nbut his own death by violence, he also, by the admission of sympathetic\nbiographers, put forth many vaticinations of an entirely fantastic\ncharacter. Here again he might very well have a Jewish prototype. For\nus the first question is, What did he actually predict in history,\nand how and why did he predict it? In 1494 he seems to have predicted\nthe French invasion which took place in that year. Villari asserts\nthat he did so in the sermons he preached in Lent, but admits that\n\"it is impossible to ascertain the precise nature\" of the sermons in\nquestion. [49] Father Lucas goes further, and points out that there\nis no trace in them of the alleged prophecy [50] which Savonarola\nin his Compendium Revelationum (1495) claims to have made but does\nnot date. Villari further admits that the sermons of that year are\nso badly reported\n\n\n    as to have lost almost every characteristic of Savonarola's\n    style. Their reporter, unable to keep pace with the preacher's\n    words, only jotted down rough and fragmentary notes. These were\n    afterwards translated into barbarous dog-Latin--by way of giving\n    them a more literary form--and published in Venice. For this\n    reason Qu\u00e9tif and some other writers entertained doubts of their\n    authenticity. [51]\n\n\nVillari nevertheless is satisfied of it on internal grounds, and we may\naccept his estimate. The main allegation is that in 1494 Savonarola,\nwho had for years been preaching that national sin would elicit\ndivine chastisement,\n\n\n    in those Lenten discourses, and also in some others, foretold the\n    coming of a new Cyrus, who would march through Italy in triumph,\n    without encountering any obstacles, and without breaking a single\n    lance. We find numerous records of these predictions, and the\n    terrors excited by them, in the historians and biographers of\n    the period; and Fra Benedetto reports his master's words in the\n    following verses [thus literally translated]:--\n\n\n        Soon shalt thou see each tyrant overthrown,\n        And all Italy shalt thou see vanquished,\n        To her shame, disgrace, and harm.\n        Thou, Rome, shalt soon be captured:\n        I see the blade of wrath come upon thee;\n        The time is short, each day flies past:\n\n        My Lord will renovate the Church,\n        And convert every barbarian people.\n        There will be but one fold and one shepherd.\n        But first Italy will have to mourn,\n        And so much of her blood will be shed\n        That her people shall everywhere be thinned.\n\n\nHere there is obvious confusion, apart from the fact that the predicted\nregeneration and unification of the church never took place. The\ninvader is to do no fighting, and yet so much blood will be shed\nthat everywhere the people of Italy will be thinned. Are we, then,\nto believe that the \"Cyrus\" prediction was made at the same time? Is\nthere not ground for suspicion that it was interpolated post eventum,\nin the Latin report? The only alternative solution seems to be that\nVillari or the Italian compiler has mixed prophecies of different\nyears. In his sermon of November 1, 1494, Savonarola speaks of the\nFrench invasion as the \"scourge\" he had predicted [52]--an odd way of\nspeaking of one promised before as \"the Lord's anointed,\" even though\nthe French host is said to be \"led by the Lord.\" In any case his own\nclaim to have predicted of \"Cyrus\" is unsupported by evidence, and,\neven if accepted, does not involve a date earlier than 1493-4. [53]\n\nTo predict the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France in Lent\nof 1494, or even late in 1493, was easy enough. [54] The invasion had\nbeen fully prepared, and was expected, even as was the Armada in the\nEngland of 1588. Savonarola was very likely to have inside knowledge of\nthe scheme, and the Pope positively charged him with having helped to\nengineer it. Florence in effect received Charles as a friend. There\nhad been, further, abundant discussion of the expedition both in\nFrance and Italy long before it set out. Guicciardini tells that wise\nFrenchmen were very apprehensive about it, and that Ferdinand of Naples\nreckoned that it must fail. Fail it finally did. Savonarola might\neven predict that the invader would not be resisted, for there was no\nforce ready in Italy to repel that led by Charles, with its great train\nof artillery. It is an extreme oversight of Villari's to allege [55]\nthat in the autumn, \"unexpectedly as a thunderclap from a clear sky,\ncame the news that a flood of foreign soldiery was pouring down from\nthe Alps to the conquest of Italy.... All felt taken unawares.\" This\nassertion is completely exploded by the record of Guicciardini, and\nno historian will now endorse it. Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan,\nhad incited Charles to the invasion; the preparations had been open\nand extensive; and they had been abundantly discussed both in France\nand Italy. [56] The statement that \"the Friar alone had foreseen the\nfuture\" is absolute myth.\n\nThe fact remains that the invasion was not resisted, and that Rome\nwas \"captured\" in the sense of being entered by Charles, who did no\nmilitary damage and marched out again. But when Charles proceeded to\nwithdraw from Italy, having effected nothing, a battle was fought\nand won by him. It was two years later that Savonarola, acting on\nhis standing doctrine that sin in high places must elicit divine\nvengeance, resumed his predictions of disaster to Rome, whose Pope\nwas his enemy. As it happened, 1496 was again a year of expected\ninvasions. Charles, now the ally of Florence, was announced to be\npreparing for a second inroad, and the apprehensive Sforza invited and\nfurthered the intervention of the emperor Maximilian as he had before\ninvited Charles. Predictions were again to be expected; at Bologna\nat least one was actually made; and the prophet, one Raffaele da\nFirenzuola, was tortured and banished. [57] Charles gave up his plan,\nbut Maximilian came, albeit with a small force, and was welcomed by\nthe Pisans.\n\nIt was before the coming of Maximilian [58] that Savonarola resumed\nhis prophecy of the coming scourge in a series of sermons, in one of\nwhich he announces that Italy will be overwhelmed because she is full\nof sanguinary deeds; that Rome will be besieged and trampled down;\nand that because her churches have been full of harlots they will be\nmade \"stables for horses and swine, the which will be less displeasing\nto God than seeing them made haunts of prostitutes.... Then, O Italy,\ntrouble after trouble shall befall thee; troubles of war after famine,\ntroubles of pestilence after war.\" Again, in another sermon: \"There\nwill not be enough men left to bury the dead; nor means enough to dig\ngraves.... The dead will be heaped in carts and on horses; they will\nbe piled up and burnt.... And the people shall be so thinned that few\nshall remain.\" [59] At the same time he repeatedly predicted his own\ndeath by violence.\n\nOn the latter head he had abundant reason for his forecast. On the\nformer it is very certain that he was not thinking of something\nthat was not to happen for thirty years. Again and again he assured\nhis hearers and his correspondents that his predictions were to be\nfulfilled \"in our time.\" Towards the end of 1496 he described himself\nas \"The servant of Christ Jesus, sent by him to the city of Florence to\nannounce the great scourge which is to come upon Italy, and especially\nupon Rome, and which is to extend itself over all the world in our\ndays and quickly.\" [60] In 1497, in a letter to Lodovico Pittorio,\nchancellor to d'Este, after speaking of the Lord's prediction of the\nfall of Jerusalem, he writes: \"Great tribulations are always [i.e. in\nthe Scriptures] predicted many years before they come. Yet I do not\nsay that the tribulations which I have foretold will be so long in\ncoming; nay, they will come soon; indeed I say that the tribulation\nhas already commenced.\" [61]\n\nYet again, in 1498, he claims in a sermon that \"a part has come to\npass,\" noting that \"in Rome one has lost a son\"--a reference to the\nmurder of the Duke of Gandia, son of the Pope; and adding that \"you\nhave seen who has died here, and I could tell you, an I would, who\nis in hell\"--supposed to be a reference to Bernardo del Nero. [62]\nAll this was in terms of Savonarola's theological and Biblical\nconception of things, the ruling political philosophy of his age,\nas of many before. Wickedness and injustice, fraud and oppression,\nwere dominant in high places, and God must of necessity punish, in\nthe fashion in which he was constantly described as doing so in the\nSacred Books, from the Deluge downwards. In Savonarola's view the\ncup of Rome's abominations was full, and punishment had been earned\nby the men then living, in particular by Pope Alexander.\n\nWithin two years Savonarola had been put to death, after many tortures;\nand Alexander died in 1503 (not by poison, as the tradition goes)\nwithout having seen the predicted desolation. It was under the more\nrespectable of the two Medicean Popes that Rome was twice sacked in\n1527 by the forces of Charles V; and though there had been infinite\nslaughter and pestilence in Italy, the regeneration and reunion of\nChristendom predicted by Savonarola did not follow. When no reform\nwhatever had followed on the French invasion he had explained that his\nprediction in that case was subject to conditions. Yet he announced\nthat his prophecy of the conversion of the Turks was unconditional,\ndeclaring at the close of the Compendium Revelationum that it would\nbe fulfilled in fifteen years, and assuring his hearers in 1495 that\nsome of them would live to see the fulfilment. [63]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE SAVONAROLA FALLACY\n\n\nOur business, of course, is not to expose the prophetic miscarriages\nof Savonarola, but simply to make clear what manner of thing his\nprophesying was. [64] It was an instance of a kind of vaticination\nas old as Troy and Jerusalem, which had gone on in Christendom for\ncenturies. Long before his day religious men had predicted wars,\npestilences, famines, and the conversion of the Turks. [65] The wars\nand plagues and famines were very safe prognostications: they came\nin every decade. And when we come to his alleged prediction of the\nsack of Rome we realize immediately, not only that the one detail of\ncoincidence is wholly fortuitous, but that, like his predecessors,\nhe was simply predicting a return of common evils already experienced\na hundred times. [66]\n\nThe argument of Blass and others on this topic, confidently accepted\nand endorsed by Dr. Petrie, works out as sheer mystification. They\nlay special stress on the fact that in the sack of 1527 horses were\nstabled in the churches. It is likely enough: the same thing has been\ndone a thousand times in the wars of Christendom. But the argument\nhas been very negligently conducted. In the first place, though he\ntells of infinitely worse things, such as the wholesale violation\nof women, including nuns, the historian Guicciardini does not give\nthe detail about the horses. That occurs in the document Il Sacco di\nRoma, ascribed latterly to his brother Luigi, which was first printed\nin 1664. Still, let us assume that the printing was faithful. If an\ninterpolator had meant to vindicate Savonarola he would presumably\nhave noted that the prophet specified not only horses but pigs,\nwhereas the narrative says nothing of the latter. We are thus left\nwith the item of the stabling of horses in the churches.\n\nHere we have to note that as regards the main event Savonarola is\npredicting a thing that had repeatedly happened in Catholic times, and\nthat as regards the minor details he is speaking with his eye on Jewish\nhistory. It was not the mere presence of horses and pigs in churches\nthat he meant to stress, but the defilement that they brought. In\nthe case of the Jewish Temple the \"abomination of desolation\" had\nbeen understood to include the defiling of the altar with swine's\nflesh. [67] This, in all likelihood, was the origin of Savonarola's\nprediction as to the bringing of pigs into the sanctuary at Rome,\nwhich, as we have seen, was not fulfilled.\n\nBut there was nothing new about a Catholic sack of Rome. The city had\nbeen hideously sacked and in large part destroyed under Gregory VII\n(1084) by Robert Guiscard, the Pope's ally, after having been captured\nwithout sacking by the German Emperor. It just missed being sacked by\nFrederick II in 1239. In 1413 it was captured by Ladislaus of Naples,\nwho gave all Florentine property in the city to pillage. No question\nof heresy arose in these episodes; nor did the forces of the Church\nitself blench at either sack or sacrilege. Faenza was foully sacked in\n1376 by Hawkwood, called in for its defence by the bishop of Ostia;\nand in 1377 the same condottiere massacred the population of Cesena\nunder the express and continuous orders of Robert, Cardinal of Geneva,\nthe papal legate, afterwards the \"anti-pope\" Clement VII. No more\nbestial massacre took place in the pandemonium of the fourteenth\ncentury; and the sacking of the churches and the violation of the\nnuns was on the scale of the bloodshed. [68] In view of the endless\natrocities of the wars of the Church and of Christendom there is a\ncertain ripe absurdity about the exegetical comments on the subject\nof the sack of Rome in 1527. Says Blass:--\n\n\n    Especially remarkable is this, that he [Savonarola] extends the\n    devastation to the churches of Rome, which in any ordinary capture\n    (!) by a Catholic army would have been spared, but in this case\n    were not at all respected, because a great part of the conquering\n    army consisted of German Lutherans, for whom the Roman Catholic\n    churches were rather objects of hatred and contempt than of\n    veneration. Now Lutheranism did not exist in 1496. [69]\n\n\nAnd Dr. Petrie adds: \"Such a detail seemed excessively unlikely before\nthe rise of Lutheranism; yet it came to pass.\" [70] It is interesting\nto realize the notions held by scholars of such standing in regard\nto European history after a century signalized by so much historic\nresearch; and to find that such an ignorant proposition as that just\ncited should for Dr. Petrie \"explode the dogma\" that really fulfilled\nprophecies [71] have been framed post eventum.\n\nFor centuries before Luther the desecration of churches was a regular\nfeature in every Christian war of any extent. It is arguable, perhaps,\nthat in the sack of Rome the German troops might have made a special\ndisplay of that mania for ordure as an instrument of war of which we\nhave had such circumstantial accounts from Belgium of late, and of\nwhich similar details have been preserved in the domestic history\nof Paris since 1870. [72] But the stabling of horses in churches\nwas a familiar act of warfare, often explicable by the simple fact\nthat the horses of an army could not otherwise be accommodated. The\nclerical chroniclers mention such things when they can tell a tale\nof the divine vengeance. Thus Spelman tells how \"Richard, Robert,\nand Anesgot, sons of William Sorenge, in the time of William Duke\nof Normandy, wasting the country about Say, invaded the church of\nSt. Gervase, lodging their soldiers there, and making it a stable\nfor their horses. God deferred not the revenge.\" [73] In 1098 \"the\nEarl of Shrewsbury made a dog-kennel of the church of St. Fridank,\nlaying his hounds in it for the night-time; but in the morning he\nfound them mad.\" [74] The putting of cattle in churches was sometimes a\nnecessity of defensive warfare. In 1358, according to Jean de Venette,\nmany unfortified villages in France made citadels of their churches to\ndefend themselves from brigands; [75] and in such cases the animals\nwould be taken indoors. Fine churches, on the other hand, were often\nburned in the wars of that period. [76] And when the Turks invaded\nFriuli in 1477 and 1478, burning and ravaging, [77] they were likely\nenough to have stabled their horses in churches. It was probably of\nthe Turks that Savonarola was thinking, predicting as he so constantly\ndid their speedy conversion to Christianity.\n\nLutheranism can have had very little to do with the matter: the\nbrutality of the German Landsknechts was notorious long before Luther\nwas heard of. But there was nothing specially German in the matter\neither. The Italian condottieri in general were \"full of contempt for\nall sacred things.\" [78] It is instructive to note that Savonarola\npredicts nothing of the wholesale violation of nuns and other women\nwhich was to take place at Rome as it had done in a hundred other\nsacks of cities: he must have known that these things happened;\nbut the thing that appealed to his imagination was the theological\npollution resulting from putting horses and pigs in churches. He was\nnot predicting: he was remembering. Long before his time, besides,\nChurch Councils had to pass edicts against the use of churches as\nbarns in time of peace.\n\nIt will be remembered that his main items are slaughters, famines,\nand pestilences. There was famine and pestilence in Florence when he\nwas prophesying in 1496; there was more in 1497; [79] and a terrible\npestilence had visited Venice during the Turkish invasions of 1477 and\n1478. The preacher's description of a plague in a city is an account\nof what had happened a dozen times in the history of Florence, before\nand after the Plague which figures in the forefront of Boccaccio's\nDecameron. Preaching from the text of Amos, he arraigns Italy and Rome\nas Amos arraigns Israel and Judah; and his menaces are the menaces\nof the Hebrew prophet, immeasurable slaughters, famine, pestilence,\nand captivity, with the old corollary of regeneration and restoration,\nin the case of Italy and the Church as in the case of Israel. And his\nadded detail of church desecration is at once a Biblical idea and a\nfamiliar item from Christian history.\n\nIn the historic crusade against the Albigenses in 1209, when B\u00e9ziers\nwas captured and every human being therein slain, seven thousand were,\nby the famous order of the Papal Legate, [80] put to the sword in\nthe great church of St. Mary Magdalene, to which they had fled for\nsanctuary; and the whole city, with its churches, was burned to the\nground. During the Hundred Years' War between England and France,\nsays a social historian, a cleric--\n\n\n    in the rural districts of France the passage of the ravagers was\n    traced by blackened ruins, by desecrated churches, by devastated\n    fields, by the mutilated bodies of women and children.... Strange\n    forms of disease which the chroniclers of those times sum up\n    in the names of \"black death,\" or plague, were born of hunger\n    and overleapt the highest barriers ... and ran riot within the\n    overcrowded cities. [81]\n\n\nIn the wars of Burgundy and France in the fifteenth century Catholics\nhabitually plundered Catholic churches. At the siege of Saint-Denis\nin 1411 \"the Germans, the Bretons, and the Gascons promised themselves\nthe pillage of the church and the treasures of the abbey.\" [82] Later\n\"the English, the Picards, and the Parisians ... entered the monastery\n... pillaged the apartments of the inmates, and carried away the cups,\nthe utensils, all the furniture.\" [83] At Soissons, in 1414,\n\n\n    the Germans, the Bretons, and the Gascons were as so many\n    wild beasts. The Comte d'Armagnac himself could not restrain\n    them. After having pillaged the houses they set upon the convents\n    and the churches, where the women had taken refuge. They could\n    not escape the brutality of the men of war; the holy ornaments,\n    the reliquaries, all was seized without respect; the hostia,\n    the bones of the martyr, trodden under foot. Never had an army\n    of Christians, commanded by such great seignors and formed of so\n    many noble chevaliers, committed such horrors within the memory\n    of man. [84]\n\n\nThe historian is quite mistaken; the same horrors had been many times\nenacted, and even on a greater scale. At the sack of Constantinople\nby the Christian crusaders in 1204,\n\n\n    the three Western bishops had strictly charged the crusaders to\n    respect the churches and the persons of the clergy, the monks, and\n    the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the frantic excitement\n    of victory all restraint was flung aside, and the warriors of the\n    cross abandoned themselves with ferocious greed to their insatiable\n    and filthy lewdness. With disgusting gestures and in shameless\n    attire an abandoned woman screamed out a drunken song from the\n    patriarchal chair in the church of Sancta Sophia.... Wretches blind\n    with fury drained off draughts of wine from the vessels of the\n    altar; the table of oblation, famed for its exquisite and costly\n    workmanship, was shattered; the splendid pulpit with its silver\n    ornaments utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the\n    churches [85] to bear away the sacred treasures; if they fell\n    they were lashed and goaded till their blood streamed upon the\n    pavement. While the savages were employed upon these appropriate\n    tasks, the more devout were busy in ransacking the receptacles of\n    holy relics and laying up a goodly store of wonder-working bones\n    or teeth to be carried away to the churches of the great cities\n    on the Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. [86]\n\n\nSavonarola was simply predicting for Rome, perhaps with his eye\non the Turks, such a fate as befell Constantinople at Christian\nhands, regarding both as acts of divine vengeance, and expecting the\ncapture of Rome to come soon. He pointed to the French invasion--he\nwell might--as showing what was likely to happen. [87] The practice\nof church desecration had never ceased in Christendom for a single\ngeneration. In 1315 Edward Bruce, in his raid in Ireland, is reported\nto have burned churches and abbeys with all the people in them,\nand to have wrecked and defaced other churches, with their tombs and\nmonuments. During the centuries between the battle of Bannockburn and\nthe union of the English and Scottish crowns, churches, cathedrals,\nor abbeys were plundered or burned on both sides in nearly every\ngreat border raid. Frenchmen and Burgundians wrecked each other's\nchurches. In his thirteenth chapter Philip de Commines tells \"Of the\nstorming, taking, and plundering the city of Li\u00e8ge; together with the\nruin and destruction of the very churches.\" The Duke of Burgundy set\na battalion of his guards to defend them, and killed one soldier of\nthose who tried to enter; but later the soldiers forced an entrance,\nand all were completely plundered. \"I myself,\" says Commines, \"was\nin none but the great church, but I was told so, and saw the marks\nof it, for which a long time after the Pope excommunicated all such\nas had any goods belonging to the churches in that city unless they\nrestored them; and the duke appointed certain officers to go up and\ndown his country to see the Pope's sentence put in execution.\" [88]\nAs late as 1524, in the course of the campaign of Henry VIII in France,\ntwo churches were held and defended as fortresses on the French side,\nand captured by the invaders; [89] and in 1487 Perugia \"became a\nbeleaguered fortress under the absolute despotism of the Baglioni,\nwho used even the cathedrals as barracks.\" [90] Savonarola could not\nhave missed hearing of that.\n\nIf there was anything astonishing for Italians in the desecration of\nchurches at the sack of Rome, they must have had short memories. The\nconspiracy of the Pazzi in 1478, in which Giuliano de' Medici was slain\nduring high mass in the cathedral church of Florence, had been backed\nby the Pope; and the sacrilege of the planned deed was reckoned so\nhorrible that one of the first appointed assassins, who blenched at it,\nhad to be replaced by priests, who had transcended such scruples. [91]\nOn the capture of Brescia by the French under Gaston de Foix in 1512,\n\"things sacred and profane, the goods, the honour, and the life of the\ninhabitants were for seven days delivered up to the greed, the lust,\nand the cruelty of the soldier,\" only the nuns being spared. [92]\nIn 1526 the Milanese told the Constable Bourbon, the general of\ntheir ally:--\n\n\n    Frederick Barbarossa anciently desolated this city; his vengeance\n    spared neither the inhabitants, nor the edifices, nor the\n    walls; but that was nothing in comparison with the evils we now\n    suffer. The barbarism of an enemy is less insupportable than the\n    unjust cruelty of a friend ... our miseries have endured more\n    than a month; they increase every hour; and, like the damned,\n    we suffer, without hope, evils which before this time of calamity\n    we believed to be beyond human endurance. [93]\n\n\nGuicciardini testifies that the Spaniards of the emperor's forces\nhad been more cruel than the Germans, [94] violating the women and\nreducing to rags the men of their own allies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE LOGIA THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEXT\n\n\nSo much for the \"especially remarkable\" fact that churches were\ndesecrated in the sack of Rome in 1527, and that Savonarola should\nin 1496 have predicted such things for his own day. We have seen\nthat his prediction was not a forecast of the event, that he had no\nidea of the causation of the ultimate sack of Rome, that he really\nprophesied an early event, and that he was simply announcing speedy\ndivine vengeance after the manner of the Hebrew and many previous\nChristian prophets. What ground for argument, then, does his case\nfurnish for an inference as to the date of the quasi-prophecy of the\nfall of Jerusalem in the third Gospel? Blass, despite his \"especially\nremarkable\" argument, puts his case pretty low:--\n\n\n    Accidentally, you will say, the event [in 1527] corresponded with\n    the prophecy. But that is not my point, whether it was accidental,\n    or the prophet had really foreseen the event; for in the case of\n    the prophecies recorded by Luke you may raise the same controversy\n    if you like. [95]\n\n\nWhat then were the manner and the matter of the prophecy in Luke? The\nMessiah expressly grounds his prediction upon the non-acceptance by\nJerusalem of him and his mission:--\n\n\n    If thou [Jerusalem] hadst only known in this day the things which\n    belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the\n    days shall come upon thee when thine enemies shall cast up a bank\n    about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,\n    and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee;\n    and they shall not leave in thee one stone on another (Luke xix,\n    42-44).\n\n    But when ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that\n    her desolation is at hand. Then let them that are in Jud\u00e6a flee\n    unto the mountains.... For these are days of vengeance, that all\n    things which are written may be fulfilled.... And they shall fall\n    by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive into all the\n    nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,\n    until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall\n    be signs in sun and moon and stars.... And then shall they see\n    the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But\n    when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up\n    your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh (id. xxi, 20-28).\n\n\n\"I do not think,\" says Blass, \"that either the former or the latter\nof these foretellings is very distinct, since there are neither names\ngiven nor peculiar circumstances indicated; only the common order of\nevents is described....\" That will certainly not hold in respect of\nthe \"shall not leave in thee one stone on another,\" or the \"cast up\na bank about thee,\" which is a distinct specification of the Roman\nsiege method of 70.\n\nBut let us follow up the implication, which is that a Jewish\nvaticinator, mindful of Daniel, might about the year 30 so predict\nthe events of the year 70, and a world of other events which never\nhappened, without astonishing us more than does Savonarola.\n\nAs we shall see, not only the circumstantial details but the remainder\nof the prediction completely exclude the idea of fortuitous real\nvaticination, even if it be argued that prophecies of quite visionary\nprodigies may conceivably have been made at any date. As to the\nprophecy of the fall of the temple, which is common to the three\nsynoptics, the Professor leaves it \"out of the present discussion,\"\nseeing that the liberal theologians are willing to let it stand as a\nprophecy ante eventum. Certainly he may well contemn such a critical\nmethod. The prophecy as to the temple, and that in Matthew (xxiv,\n3-31) and Mark (xiii, 3-27) as to the sequence of war, persecution,\ndissension, false prophets, evangelization of the whole world, the\nabomination of desolation in the holy place, false Christs (twice\nspecified), signs and wonders, and the final cosmic catastrophe--all\nthis is certainly on all fours, critically considered, with the\npresages in Luke. But how shall rational criticism be induced to take\nthe whole mass of quasi-vaticination as the utterance of a wandering\nthaumaturg of the year 30? It is idle for Professor Blass to explain\nto us that when Luke makes Jesus say \"Jerusalem shall be trodden down\nof the Gentiles,\" with mere reminiscence of the Septuagint Daniel, and\nMatthew and Mark make him speak with exact reference to Sept. Dan. ix,\nend, they are citing independently from their original. Their original\nmay just have been the cited passage in Daniel, with no intervening\ndocument. \"It is self-evident,\" says the Professor, [96] \"that the\nreal speech of Christ must have been longer than we read it now in\nany Gospel.\" That thesis cannot be self-evident of which the subject\ninvites and admits a wholly different explanation; and the \"must\"\nis a sample of the Professor's critical ethic.\n\nSimilarly Dr. Petrie assumes that there were any number of logia\ncurrent, all genuine, and that the gospel-makers simply cite from\nthem wherever they are found appropriate to the circumstances of\nthe moment. \"These episodes, thus brought into prominence by the\nconditions of the time, were therefore incorporated in the Nucleus,\nor in the gospels which grew upon that.\" [97] It now behoves us to\nconsider that interesting development of traditionalist theory.\n\nThe Nucleus, be it explained, is Dr. Petrie's substitute for the\nPrimitive Gospel of the school of B. Weiss, and is constructed\nby the simple and certainly quite objective process of selecting\n\"everything that is common to all three synoptics in a parallel\ntext\"--that is, occurring in all three in the same order. This is\nthe \"structural\" test, and it yields a document which does not, like\nthe Weiss selection, end before the Last Supper, but goes on to the\nResurrection. But this Nucleus, be it noted, was practically complete\nalmost immediately after the Founder's death. The close \"suggests\na document drawn up within a few months of the final events.\" [98]\nHow, then, Dr. Petrie can speak of logia incorporated in the Nucleus\nin respect of the conditions of the time, is not very clear. By\nhis account the prevalent Christian idea about the year 30, during\nthe Ministry, \"was the proper understanding of the law, which was\nnot yet abrogated in any particular.\" At this stage, accordingly,\nthe Sermon on the Mount would be the prominent logion. \"And when\nwe notice how the fulfilling of the law is the main theme of the\nnucleus, and how little [even] of the completed Gospels refer to\nthe Gentile problems, we must see how devoid of historic sense is\nthe anachronism of supposing the main body of the Gospels to have\noriginated as late as the Gentile period\" [99] [i.e. 60-70!]. But\nin 40-50, with the spread of the Church, as set forth in the Acts,\n\"the Samaritans were welcomed, and Gentile proselytes such as the\ncenturion Cornelius\"; whereupon the suitable logia would be added to\nthe Gospels current. Then in 50-60, when the Gentiles began to enter\nin decisive numbers, there was \"a special meaning in the parable\nof the Prodigal Son, and in the subjection to kings and rulers\";\nhence further embodiments. Then, after the fall of Jerusalem in 70,\n\"Christianity lost its sense of any tie to Judaism.\"\n\nIt will be admitted that this is a stirring change from the run of\nNew Testament criticism of the past seventy years. That criticism\nmore or less unconsciously recognized the problem set up by the\nentire ignorance of gospel teaching revealed in the Pauline and other\nepistles. Dr. Petrie, following Professor Blass in an unhesitating\nacceptance of the narrative of the Acts, simply ignores the Pauline\nproblem altogether. He boldly credits the Church with a Gospel before\nPaul's conversion, and, like other traditionalists, supplies Paul,\nthe gospel-less, with a physician, Luke, who had collected from the\nscattered mass of logia more gospel than anybody else!\n\nThus has the pendulum swung back to the furthest extreme from that at\nwhich men carried down the Gospel dates to accommodate the data. As\nto chronology, Dr. Petrie is practically at the orthodox standpoint\nof Professor Salmon. [100] An objective and ostensibly scientific\nmethod, involving no element of personal bias or preference, is\nemployed to make a selection from the Gospels which shall present as\nit were mathematically or statistically the earliest elements in the\nsynoptics. On that selection, however, there is brought to bear no\nfurther critical principle whatever. It is assumed that it must all\ncome from the traditional founder, a mass of whose utterances must\nhave been committed by auditors to writing as they were delivered\n(the power to write being held to be common in Galilee and Judea in\nthe first century because it was common in Egypt in the third); and a\nnucleus collection of these separate documents must have been made soon\nafter the crucifixion, and there and then wound up. At any rate, such\na collection is yielded by selecting the groups or blocks of matter\nwhich occur in all three synoptics in the same order; and this must\nhave been made about the year 30, because it is mainly occupied with\nthe problems of the law, and very little with \"the Gentile problems\"\nwhich so soon began to come to the front. The history of the Acts is\nhere taken as unassailable ground, like the main Gospel record.\n\nTwo comments here at once suggest themselves. Dr. Petrie's line of\nconstruction might with perfect congruity be employed to yield evidence\nthat the assumed original Teacher was mainly concerned with problems\nof the law; and (2) the inferred multitude of original floating dicta\nmay with immense gain in plausibility be transmuted into a series\nof interpolations made by different hands long after the supposed\nFounder's death. For what critical right has Dr. Petrie to subsume\na store of floating Jesuine dicta which supplied the Church, in its\nchanging circumstances, for three or four decades, with suitable\nparables and teachings to meet every new problem? If you profess to\nseek a strictly impersonal principle of selection, why not apply a\nstrictly impersonal principle of inference from the result?\n\nObviously the additional logia are far more likely to have been\ninvented than found. Such a chronic windfall of papyri is a\nsufficiently fantastic hypothesis on the face of it, in no way\njustifiable from the recent discovery of a few enigmatic scraps\nthat had not been embodied, and suggest no community of thought with\nthose embodied. But even if we allow the probable existence of many\nfloating leaves, where is the likelihood that their sayings all came\nfrom the same Teacher? In the terms of the hypothesis, he occupied\nhimself mainly with the law (unless the lost logia outbulk the saved),\nwhile at the same time he duly provided for the Samaritans and the\nGentiles! His disciples and apostles, nonetheless, paid no attention\nto these latter provisions until they found that such provisions were\nreally necessary to accommodate the thronging converts! All this is\nvery awkwardly suggestive of the Moslem saying that the Khalif Omar\n\"was many a time of a certain opinion, and the Koran was revealed\naccordingly.\" [101] It would indeed have been a remarkable experience\nfor the evangelist to discover the logion (Mt. xvi, 17-19) as to the\nfounding of the Church on the rock of Peter when a Petrine claim had\nto be substantiated. To the eye of Dr. Rendel Harris, an orthodox but\na candid scholar, the \"rock\" text suggests an adaptation of a passage\nin the Odes of Solomon in which God's \"rock\" is the foundation not\nof the Church but of the Kingdom. [102] Such probabilities Dr. Petrie\nnever considers.\n\nLet us see how Dr. Petrie's method explains Matthew x, 5: \"Go not\ninto any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the\nSamaritans.\" It occurs only in Matthew: Luke gives the parable of\nthe Good Samaritan, with its flings at the lawyer and at the Jews\nin general; and in John the Founder makes Samaritan converts. The\nanti-Gentile text Dr. Petrie never discusses! Yet his method does not\npermit him to exclude it. It belongs to his \"sixth class,\" of \"sayings\nand episodes which only occur in one Gospel. These classes are almost\nentirely in Matthew and Luke, and are the accretions which were added\nafter the Gospels had finally parted company.\" [103] So that after the\nGentile period had set in, Matthew, the one \"professional scribe among\nthe apostles,\" somehow found a logion Iesou which suited the need\nof the Church to exclude Samaritans and Gentiles, while Luke found\nanother which suited the need to welcome them. And yet, in respect\nof its very purport, the anti-Gentile and anti-Samaritan teaching\nought, if genuine, to belong, on Dr. Petrie's general principle,\nto the earliest collection of all. Such is the dilemma to which we\nare led by the strictly statistical method of selection, conducted\nwithout any higher light.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nFAILURE OF THE LOGIA THEORY\n\n\nTo the open-minded reader it must be already plain that, unless we\nare to be led into mere chaos, there must at once be added to the\nstatistical test either the proviso that given sayings may for the\npurposes of certain sections of the Church have been left out in\ncertain Gospels, or that for the purposes of certain sections they\nmay have been invented. And the moment such a concession is made,\nthe primary assumption of necessary authenticity is destroyed. If\nthe anti-Samaritan precept is the utterance of the Founder, the\npro-Samaritan parable is not; or else the Founder was literally all\nthings to all men. If either could be foisted on a gospel, anything\ncould be; and the futile historical argument to save the prediction\nof the fall of Jerusalem--an argument proceeding, as we have seen, on\na quite uncritical view of one uninvestigated and loosely described\ncase--becomes doubly irrelevant. Dr. Petrie's Nucleus of triple\ntradition contains the prophecy:--\n\n\n    The Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto\n    the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver\n    him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him;\n    and the third day he shall rise again.\n\n\nIs that to be salved as historical, on the pretext that Blass has\nby the case of Savonarola \"exploded the dogma\" of omne vaticinium\npost eventum, or is to be salved by the plea that Savonarola, like\nLincoln, predicted his own death at the hands of his enemies? And if\nprudence perforce abandons that course, why was the vaguer prophecy\nabout Jerusalem sought to be salved at all? Why was not the miracle\nprediction included in the Savonarola argument? Considered as a whole,\nthe other is not at all a bare prediction of the sacking of a city,\nfortuitously fulfilled forty years after utterance: it is a Messianic\njudgment, carrying a whole eschatology bound up with it. [104] And\nthe fact that different gospels give it differently is not to be\nrationally explained by Professor Blass's device of saying that Jesus\nmust have said a great deal more still, and that Luke selected what\nwould appeal to Gentiles, while Matthew and Mark omitted what would\ngive pain to Jews. This conception of evangelists playing fast and\nloose with the known divine oracles to suit men's susceptibilities\nought to be disturbing to any believer's moral sense; while that of\na set of propagandists inventing oracles to suit their own religious\naim puts the Gospel-makers in a line with the whole succession of\nJewish and early Christian framers of supposititious documents,\nas men of their age, well-meaning, narrow, deluded, devoted.\n\nWe have come back to the fundamental issue between authoritarian\nsupernaturalism and free reason. If the prediction of the betrayal,\nthe trial, the scourging, the mocking, the crucifixion, and the\nresurrection is to stand, there need be no more discussion over\nmiracles or anything else. \"It is written,\" and there an end. Biblical\ncriticism has once more become blasphemy. If reason is to have any\naccess to the matter, the prediction must fall as a fiction; and if the\n\"exploded\" argument from Savonarola is to be revived, it will have\nto be restricted to the case of the prediction to which it was so\nprudentially applied. But if one hopeless prophecy is to be dropped\nas post eventum, it is mere irrelevance to debate over another which\nis only in one selected and isolated aspect less hopeless, while as\na whole it is equally so.\n\nSavonarola's prediction of the fall of Rome was one of many, motived\nby religion and invited by the absolute fact of previous invasions,\nof which the last had occurred only two years before. The one concrete\ndetail in which it was \"fulfilled\" was simply a specification of a\ncommon feature in the warfare of the age. Another invasion of Italy\nwas believed to be imminent, and actually took place in the year\nof the prophecy, without fulfilling that in any detail. The Gospel\nprophecy is Messianic, devoid of political motivation, accompanied\nby a whole apparatus of Christian eschatology, and backed by other\npredictions of pure miracle. The details of the siege and the sequel\nare as plainly supplied after the event as those of the betrayal,\nthe mockery, the scourging, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. To\nhold by one set of predictions and abandon the other is mere critical\ntrifling. Even orthodox critics give up the early chapters of Luke\nas late accretions. What kind of credit is it that is to be saved by\nmaking him the faithful chronicler of a real prophecy?\n\nThe prediction of the fall of the temple, which is in the Nucleus\nas being common in matter and order to all three synoptics, is\nin no better case. On Dr. Petrie's principle, it is one of the\nearliest accepted sayings--that is, it was embodied when the Jesuist\nmovement was pre-occupied over the law, and yet it did not disturb\nthat pre-occupation. On his theory, it should not have appeared in\nthe Nucleus at all, or in any Gospel until the occasion arose. Thus\nincompatible with Dr. Petrie's own theory, it is equally incompatible\nwith any critical principle. This is a concrete Messianic prophecy, not\nto be salved by any juggling with mere historiography. In the terms of\nthe case, it was made at a time when there was no politically visible\nreason for making it, [105] and is not in the least to be explained as\nwere the vaticinations of Savonarola. On the principles of Professor\nBlass, it ought to have been far too \"painful\" for preservation by\nmen adhering to the Jewish law.\n\nIt is quite thinkable, of course, that the compilers of the Gospels\nmay have found such quasi-predictions already committed to writing,\nand merely embodied them. But that admission only carries us back to\nthe problem of authenticity. If any current \"scrap of paper\" concerning\n\"Jesus\" or \"the Lord\" could thus secure canonicity, what trust is\nto be put in the canon? It is recorded in the history of Islam that\nAbu Daoud, who collected some half-a-million traditions concerning\nMohammed, rejected all but 4,800, which included \"the authentic, those\nwhich seem to be authentic, and those which are nearly so.\" [106]\nThis again, it may be argued, proves that false traditions do not\nnegate the historicity of the personage they concern. And that is\nclearly true. There may conceivably have been a Teacher in whose\nmouth many invented sayings were put even in his lifetime. But when we\nthus come to the historicity problem, there is simply no such basis\nin the Gospels as we have in the life of the confessedly \"Illiterate\nProphet.\" The Gospel life begins and ends in miracle, and it yields\nno intelligible evangel apart from that ostensibly founded on the\nsacrificial death--the death, that is, of the God.\n\nApart from the sacramental rite, the whole body of the Teaching is\nbut a mass of incompatibilities, telling of a dozen standpoints,\nlegalism and anti-legalism, Judaism and Gentilism, Davidism and\nnon-Davidism, asceticism and the contrary, a meek Messiah and one\nclaiming to be greater than Solomon, a Teacher vetoing invective and\none freely indulging in it, a popular and unexplained Gospel for the\nmasses who are declared to be purposely excluded from comprehension\nof that very Gospel, whereof the esoteric explanations yield nothing\nthat could apply to the alleged propaganda.\n\nEven self-contradictions, it may be argued, do not negate the\nauthenticity of a teaching. Carlyle and Buskin abound in them;\nwho escapes them? Many passages in the Koran are contradicted or\nabrogated by others, 225 verses being cancelled by later ones. [107]\nHere indeed there is plain ground for critical doubt; and some of us\nmust emphatically decline to accept Muir's verdict, endorsing Von\nHammer's, that \"we may upon the strongest presumption affirm that\nevery verse in the Koran is the genuine and unaltered composition of\nMohammed himself.\" [108] But even if we are satisfied that Mohammed\nin his long life deliberately modified his doctrine, there is no room\nfor such an explanation in the case of a teacher who is never once\nsaid to avow modification, and whose whole teaching career ostensibly\ncovers but a year in the synoptic record.\n\nAs the tradition stands, whether read with Unitarian or with\nTrinitarian assumptions, it is a mere mosaic of enigma and\ncontradiction. If the Teacher never called himself the Son of\nGod in a miraculous sense, how came the men for whom his word was\nlaw, and who in the terms of the thesis knew his life history and\nparentage if any one did, to call him so? In Dr. Petrie's Nucleus,\nthe triple tradition, the Founder does assure his disciples that\n\"in the regeneration\" he will sit in the throne of glory, and they\non twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes. What room is there for\nGentilism here? And if downright miracle and miraculous prediction\nalike be given up as unhistorical, on what grounds can we give credence\nto this as a really delivered oracle?\n\nOn the other hand, no fundamental difficulty remains when we recognize\nthat the whole Gospel record is the composite result of a process of\nmaking a life history for a God. The command of the Messiah to Peter\nto keep silence as to his Messianic character is quite intelligible\nas providing at once the claim by Jesus and an explanation of the\nfact that no such Messianic movement was historically recorded. The\nblank enigma of the early \"popular\" evangel is solved when we realize\nthat there had been no such evangel; that the cult had really grown\nout of the ancient sacramental rite; that the growing movement had to\nevolve a quasi-biography when the God of the rite was to be developed\ninto a Messiah; and that the Judaism of the old Messianic idea had\nto be transmuted into universalism when the cult came to a Gentile\ngrowth. All the contradictory texts fall (more or less clearly) into\ntheir orders as survivals of the divergent sects formed by the changing\nsituation--or, let us say, of those changing needs of the widening cult\nwhich Dr. Petrie so arbitrarily makes a ground for the mere selection\nof dicta from a floating mass of written notes, but which may so much\nmore rationally be taken as grounds for producing the required oracle.\n\nThat there were such scattered and floating oracles, indeed, we are not\ncritically entitled to deny. The Jud\u00e6o-Greek world was indeed familiar\nwith oracles of \"the Lord.\" The Gospel Jesus is made to predict that\nthere would come after him many saying \"I am Christ\"; and while the\ntraditionalist must accept this as true prediction, the historian must\npronounce that various \"Christs\" or quasi-Christs did come. We have\nsome of their names and their brief secular history. [109] Each of\nthese men would be \"the Lord\" for his followers; and some of them,\nsurely, propounded some teaching. The Gospel ethic of reciprocity,\nwe know, was put in a saner form by Hillel; did he get it from the\nJesuists? Christian scholars do not claim as much. [110] There is no\nMessianic item in the Gospels, apart from the lore of the sacrament,\nwhich may not have been in the legend of any \"Christ.\" As it happens,\nthe best authenticated saying of \"the Lord\" is one which no Christian\nnow accepts--the fantastic millenarian prediction given by Papias,\nwho had it from \"the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord,\"\nand textually quoted by Iren\u00e6us, who is practically corroborated by\nEusebius. The latter, it is true, pronounces Papias very limited in\nhis comprehension; [111] but has not the same thing been said many\ntimes of the disciples by believers in the gospel Jesus?\n\nThe logion preserved from Papias, we know, is in the Apocalypse of\nBaruch, which imitated the Book of Enoch, both of which are full\nof oracles of \"the Lord.\" But this only proves that oracles passing\ncurrent in other quarters and of another source could pass current\nwith devout Jesuists as oracles of Jesus. The Apocalypse of Baruch is\npronounced by Canon Charles, who has so ably edited that and other\nremains of Jewish literature of the same age, a \"beautiful\" book,\n\"almost the last noble utterance of Judaism before it plunged in the\ndark and oppressive years that followed the destruction of Jerusalem\";\na book written when \"breathing thought and burning word had still\ntheir home in Palestine, and the hand of the Jewish artist was still\nmaster of its ancient cunning.\" [112] It was admittedly long more\nwidely current in Christian than in Jewish circles, and fell into\ndiscredit only when it was felt to contain \"an implicit polemic\nagainst Christianity.\" It is to its early Christian vogue that we\nowe its preservation in a Syriac translation made from the Greek:\n\"of the Hebrew original every line has perished, save a few still\nsurviving in rabbinic writings.\"\n\nWho can say how many other such Jewish books may not have furnished\nitems for the compilers of the Gospels? The Sermon on the Mount\nwe know is a Judaic compilation; and the \"Slavonic Enoch\" contains\nsets of beatitudes closely analogous to those of the Sermon. To the\ntraditionalist these things are matters of profound perplexity; for\nthe rational critic they are evidences for the naturalist conception\nof the rise of Christianity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nRESURGENCE OF THE HISTORICAL PROBLEM\n\n\nWhen the \"selection\" theory is applied to the logia actually recovered\nat Oxyrhynchus it conspicuously fails to square these with the\ntraditionalist assumption. On Dr. Petrie's principle they were left\nout of the Nucleus and Gospels alike because they met no need of the\nChristian organization. That is to say, oracles of the Son of God\nwere simply ignored by the apostles and the organizers because they\ndid not serve any useful purpose. Independent criticism finds in them\nplain marks of Judaism, of Gnosticism, of Christian heresy, and of a\nChristism irreconcilable with the Gospel record. [113] Logion iv, iii,\na, runs: \"I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh I was seen\nof them; and I found all drunken, and none found I athirst among them\"\n[sc. for the word]--the saying of a retrospective Christ, no longer\nin the flesh, such as we find in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and the\nOdes Of Solomon. [114] On the traditionalist view this at least must\nbe tolerably late; what then does the \"selection\" argument gain from\nthe recovered papyri?\n\nBut it fares no better when confronted with the opening chapters\nof Luke. For the Blass school these are to be dated 50-60. Already\nLuke's \"many\" [115] had drawn up their narratives; and these, we\nare to suppose, included the miracle story of the birth of John,\nthe Annunciation, the kinship and intercourse of Elizabeth and Mary,\nthe preparation of John \"in the desert,\" a different account of the\nbirth at Bethlehem, the appearance of the Divine Child in the Temple,\nand all the rest of it; but no mention of the flight into Egypt. We are\nasked to believe that all these added narratives were current among\nthe faithful \"from the first,\" but that Mark and Matthew did not see\nfit to include them in their Gospels, though Matthew saw reason to\ntell of the flight into Egypt, and Luke to suppress it. Whatever may\nbe the outcome of the \"liberal\" method of handling the Gospels, it\nis safe to say that this will never appease the critical spirit. The\n\"gospel of the Infancy\" thus embodied in Luke is visibly cognate with\nthe \"apocryphal\" gospels which were never allowed into the canon,\nbut were more or less popular in the Church. A compromise between\ntraditionalism and the statistical method may set up the position that\nthe stories were current from the first, although all fictitious;\nbut this involves the awkward consequence that the whole atmosphere\n\"from the first\" is one of unrestrained invention. Would the inventors\nof all these myths have any scruple about putting in the mouth of \"the\nLord\" any medley of teachings collected from the present and the past?\n\nLuke inserts the episode of the mission of the seventy, with the\nusual lack of time measurement, between the mission of the twelve and\nthe decisive visit to Jerusalem. In this narrative, the twelve bring\nback no message, merely reporting \"what things they had done.\" Their\nmission is in effect made of no account: we read of more miracles,\npredictions of the approaching tragedy, the Transfiguration, and a\nseries of episodes disparaging the disciples; and then we come upon\nthe mission of the seventy, who are \"sent two and two before his face\ninto every city and place whither he himself was about to come.\" To the\nseventy is now ascribed the joyful report which the Weiss school calmly\nassign to the Primitive Gospel, and ascribe to the returning twelve,\nthough Matthew and Mark have no mention of it. Thus Luke is in effect\nrepresented as connecting with a new mission story a result which he\nfound connected in the primitive story with the mission of the twelve,\nwhile Matthew and Mark had seen fit to suppress the result altogether.\n\nWhat gain in credibility, then, is effected by substituting the\n\"selection\" theory for one in which the third evangelist is implicitly\nrepresented as a framer of fiction? For Dr. Petrie, the story of the\nseventy is a logion ignored by the first two Gospel-makers, presumably\nas serving no purpose, albeit one of the most important items in the\nhistory. What kind of narrators, then, were the men who passed it\nover? The alternatives are equally destructive to credence: on either\nview we are dealing with men who would invent anything or suppress\nanything. And yet the subject of the missions lies at the core of the\nhistorical problem. To the eye of rational criticism it is an evolving\nlegend. If we take Mark as the first selector or collector, we have\nthe twelve sent forth \"by two and two\" without money or supplies; with\nauthority over unclean spirits; and with no specified message whatever,\nthough the twelve are to make a solemn and minatory testimony against\nthose who refuse to hear them. \"And they went out, and preached that\nmen should repent. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with\noil many that were sick, and healed them.\" They make no report.\n\nIn Matthew, similarly, the twelve are empowered to cast out spirits\nand heal diseases, and are \"sent forth\" with a peremptory veto on\nany visit to Samaritans or Gentiles, to \"preach, saying, The kingdom\nof heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the\nlepers, cast out devils: freely ye received, freely give.\" As in Mark,\nthey are to go unfurnished; and are to withhold their peace from the\nunworthy, testifying as aforesaid. Then ensues a long discourse, with\nno explanation of the kingdom of heaven, though the missioners are to\n\"proclaim upon the housetops\" what they \"hear in the ear.\" Then, \"when\nJesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed\nthence to teach and preach in their cities.\" Of the mission there is\nnot another word: the disciples are not even mentioned as returning.\n\nUpon this kind of basis Luke erects a new structure. The twelve\nare sent forth to exorcise, heal, and preach, unfurnished; and as\nbefore they are to give testimony against those who will not receive\nthem. \"And they departed, and went throughout the villages, preaching\nthe Gospel, and healing everywhere.\" \"And the apostles, when they\nwere returned, declared unto him what things they had done.\" The\nstory is not suppressed, and it is supplied with a conclusion; but\nit is on the mission of the seventy that stress is visibly laid:\nthey \"return with joy,\" and are told to rejoice that their names are\nwritten in heaven. \"In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit\";\nand after the discourse on the Father and the Son [116] the disciples\nare \"privately\" told that many prophets and kings had desired in vain\nto see and hear what they had seen and heard.\n\nIn face of all this the methods of the Bernhard Weiss school and the\nselection theory are alike invalid. They furnish no explanation. The\nthird Gospel is simply substituting a mission to the Gentiles for a\nmission to the Jews, under cover of a story of a preparatory mission\nto all the places that were to be visited by the Teacher on his way to\nhis death at Jerusalem. The seventy--in some MSS. seventy-two--stand\nfor the seventy or seventy-two peoples into whom, by Jewish tradition,\nmankind was divided. The notion that a genuine logion of this kind was\nall along lying ready to be used is surely fantastic. It is a planned\nmyth, eking out the main myth. It yields only the same Gospel of one\nphrase, not meant to be understood by the hearers. But it carries in\nsymbol a provision for the Gentiles; and immediately upon it there\nfollows the story of the Good Samaritan, demonstrating that the real\ntie among men is not nationality but humanity, and impeaching the\nfanaticism and hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders.\n\nFacing once more the sharp antithesis between this and the strictly\nJudaic command in Matthew, we dismiss as a futility the notion that\nthe same teacher delivered both about the same time, and that the\npro-Gentile compiler merely \"selected\" one and dropped the other. The\ntwo sayings are framed for two schools or two sects; and it is idle\nto see history in either. If the deified Teacher had delivered the\nfirst, the second would have been a daring blasphemy. They are alike\nbut men's counsels ascribed to \"the Lord.\" To this conclusion we are\nalways driven. The starting-point of the diverging sects must be looked\nfor in something else than a body of oracular teaching of any kind.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nORTHODOXY AND THE \"ORAL\" HYPOTHESIS\n\n\nThe diverging schools of documentary \"construction\" being thus\nalike unable to yield a coherent notion either of the process of\nGospel-making or of the beginnings of the cultus, it is not surprising\nto find yet a third school of scholarly interpretation undertaking to\ndo better, and to build on an \"oral\" basis where others have vainly\nbuilt on documents. This theory, long ago predominant in Germany,\n[117] is latterly represented in England by the Rev. Arthur Wright,\nauthor of The Composition of the Gospels, a Synopsis of the Gospels,\nand Some New Testament Problems.\n\nWriting before the appearance of Dr. Petrie's treatise, Mr. Wright did\nnot contemplate that development of the later school which gives the\nearliest possible dates for the Gospels; but we may feel sure that\nhe would give it small quarter. Himself essentially orthodox, and\nmaking without question all the primary assumptions of historicity,\nhe dates the Epistle of James before the year 50, Paul's Epistles to\nthe Thessalonians in the year 52; Mark about 70; Matthew \"not much\"\nlater; Luke in 80; and John later still. [118] He is not tied to the\nsynoptics: when they become unmanageable he vigorously rectifies them\nby the aid of the Fourth Gospel. But on his own lines he is so candid\nthat he can always be read with pleasure; and his arguments are well\nworth consideration.\n\nMr. Wright's theory, in brief, is that the Gospels, one and all,\nrepresent the late consignment to paper of matter preserved from the\nfirst in the Christian catechetical schools, given by the apostles\nand preserved by their pupils in the Rabbinical fashion. As Matthew\ndivides plausibly into fifty-one lessons, and Mark in the Westcott and\nHort text into forty-eight paragraphs, it is suggested that the plan in\nboth cases had been to attain to a set of fifty-one or fifty-two; and\n\n\n    If there really was an attempt to provide every Sunday with\n    a Gospel of its own, we shall understand why the formation of\n    Gospel sections proceeded rapidly at first and then ceased; we\n    shall understand why all our Gospels are so short and contain so\n    little which is not essential; we shall understand how S. Mark's\n    order became fixed. [119]\n\n\nThis plausible but dangerous detail, however, is not insisted on;\nwhat is essential is the datum of long oral tradition. Orthodox\nas he is, too, Mr. Wright holds that Luke i; ii; iii, 23-38, \"are\ncomparatively late additions, which never formed part of the primitive\noral teaching.\" [120] Thus he can summarily get rid of a number of\nincredibilities which the other schools more prudently leave to be\nexcised by the reader as he sees fit. But we shall find him making\na stout fight for many others.\n\nOn the \"oral\" theory every Church had its own tradition, [121]\n\"differing both in contents and wording from that of other\nChurches, and in particular exhibiting much mixture and many\nsayings of Christ which are not in our Gospels at all\" [122]--an\ninteresting approximation, in effect, to the theory of scattered\nleaflets. Thus is to be accounted for the endless variety in Gospel\nphrasing and detail. For Mr. Wright, further, it is inconceivable\nthat any evangelist left out anything he knew of. \"The common idea\"\n(before Dr. Petrie) \"that they picked and selected what was specially\nadapted to their readers, I most confidently reject.\" [123] Matthew\nwould gladly have given the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Luke the\nstory of the Syrophoenician woman, which would so well have suited\nhis purpose. [124] \"He did not give it because he had never heard of\nit.\" Thus, in brief, Mr. Wright posits much teaching lost even from\nthe oral tradition, as Dr. Petrie posits many lost leaflets.\n\nBut Mr. Wright's conception of the oral tradition, upon scrutiny,\nbecomes disquieting to the critical sense. In one place, discussing\nLuther's estimate of the Epistle of James as an epistle of straw, he\nremarks--with a great deal more truth, I fancy, than he dreams of--that\nJames's Epistle \"is Christianity in swaddling-clothes.\" [125] Again,\nthe opening verses of John's Gospel \"reveal a depth of knowledge\nto which S. James never attained. Not that S. James would have\ncontradicted them or doubted their truth. But it is one thing to\nsee truth when it is set before you; it is another to set it forth\nyourself. There is such a thing as latent knowledge.\" [126] Yet on\nthe same page with the swaddling-clothes passage Mr. Wright has said,\nwith regard to Mark's omission of the words, \"Come unto me all ye\nthat labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest\":--\n\n\n    Was it humility that made him deliberately omit them as too good\n    for so insignificant a creature as himself to record? Or was it a\n    conscious or unconscious feeling that they were unsuited to his\n    readers? A man with such preposterous humility was ill-equipped\n    for the work of an evangelist. Readers so unchristian would not\n    value a Gospel.\n\n\nWhat now becomes of the two presentments of James and John? Both must\npresumably have known most that was to be known, ex hypothesi. Yet\nJames has not a word of specifically Christian doctrine, and, save\nin two sentences, one of which has every appearance of interpolation,\nwhile the other is only less suspicious, no mention of Jesus. John, on\nthe other hand, as an apostle (whether or not the beloved one), must\non the theory have heard many of the sayings given in the synoptics,\nwhich he does not report. Why does he not? Had he never heard of the\n\"Come unto me\" allocution? Could he conceivably have put it aside\nfrom a preposterous humility? If he had not heard that, had he not\nheard the Sermon on the Mount, or any of the parable-solutions given\nin the synoptics as specially addressed to the twelve disciples? Can\nMr. Wright, holding by the central tradition of Jesus and the twelve,\nbelieve that John had heard none of the teachings which he does not\nrepeat? If, on the other hand, he admits wholesale suppression in\nJohn's case, what becomes of the argument above cited?\n\nIt matters little that Mr. Wright credits John with evolving the\nLogos doctrine out of his own profound meditation, and with having\n\"remoulded\" the sayings of Jesus which he does give. That is a standing\ndevice of exegesis, Unitarian and Trinitarian alike; and by his account\nthe general oral tradition did the same thing indefinitely. But all\nthe while Mr. Wright is going a great deal further. He alternately\ninsists that every evangelist told all he knew, and assumes that the\ntwo evangelists who are alleged to have been apostles did not. If,\nhe writes--\n\n\n    If, as becomes increasingly probable, a Johannine course of\n    teaching was extant in comparatively early times, it is not\n    strange that, as S. John dealt chiefly with the Jud\u00e6an ministry,\n    S. Peter should have refused to intrude into his brother Apostle's\n    domain. They may have agreed at the outset to divide the work\n    thus between them.\n\n\nIt is impossible to reconcile this with Mr. Wright's theory of the\ninclusiveness of the evangelists. Why should not Mark do what Matthew\nand John did in the terms of the case?\n\nOf course this is not the true critical solution; the immediate\nquestion is the consistency of Mr. Wright's critical principles. To\nthe eye of unbiassed criticism the \"Come unto me\" logion is not a\npossible oracle at all; it is an unintelligently inserted liturgical\nformula from the mysteries, misplaced and meaningless as a public\nteaching. [127] As regards the fair historical inference from the\nwide difference between the synoptic Gospels and the fourth, it is\nnot possible to accept any of Mr. Wright's solutions, tried by his\nown tests. To suggest that John had not \"heard\" of the Virgin Birth\nstory is for him impossible, unless he post-dates that as he does the\nbirth-stories in Luke. If he follows that course, what can he make of\nthe 13th chapter of John, a palpable interpolation or substitution\nbetween the 12th and the 14th, which form a sequence that the 13th\nabsolutely breaks? [128] If that interpolation be admitted, what\nexactly is left to fight for?\n\nIn any case, the implication that Matthew, the apostle, \"had not heard\nof\" what John declares to be the first miracle, or of the raising\nof Lazarus, is as destructive of every traditionalist assumption as\nis the implication that John the Apostle had not heard of the Sermon\non the Mount, or of the parables of the mystery of the kingdom. Mark\nand Luke expressly declare that John was present at the raising of\nJairus' daughter; and the fourth Gospel makes no mention of it. It\nwas perhaps to meet cruces of this kind that Mr. Wright makes John\nand Peter \"divide between them\" the portions of the ministry; but\nsuch a device simply destroys, as we have seen, another main part of\nhis case. Mr. Wright may well reject the thesis of Mr. Halcombe, who,\nseverely condemning \"modern criticism,\" produces a modern criticism of\nhis own, which makes John's Gospel the first--another of the hopeless\ndevices of traditionalist critics to escape from the imbroglio of the\ntradition. Mr. Halcombe gravely reasons that the best Gospel came\nfirst; and Mr. Wright pronounces that \"such a plan of composition\nseems unworthy of God and incredible in man.\" [129] But his own theory\npresents only a different set of incredibilities. He accepts without\na misgiving the most staggering anomalies. \"If it were not for a\nsingle incidental statement in S. John\" (iv, 1, 2), he writes, \"we\nshould have concluded confidently that the sacrament of holy baptism\nwas first instituted after the Resurrection.\" John's statement is in\nfact the sole intimation that Jesus or the disciples ever baptized\nat all; and it is either a designed or redacted equivoque or a flat\ncontradiction in terms:--\n\n\n    When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that\n    Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although\n    Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left Jud\u00e6a,\n    and departed again into Galilee.\n\n\nThe exegesis which can take this for a historical datum, and compose\nit with the theory of an oral tradition in which baptism either by\nJesus or by his disciples never appears, is really outside serious\ndiscussion. The proposition that, given the main tradition, either\nJesus or the disciples baptized freely, and that yet neither Matthew,\nMark, nor Luke ever heard of it, is a mere flouting of the critical\nreason to which it professes to appeal. And there is no alternative\nsave an honest confession that the record is incredible. The whole\nChristian tradition of baptism breaks down on examination, as does\nthe record of the acceptance of the higher mission of Jesus by John,\nfollowed by statements affirming the continuance of John's movement\nand teaching alongside of the Jesuine. Mr. Wright is severe on the\northodox harmonists in general. \"If I am right,\" he remarks, \"the\nexhausting labours and tortuous explanations of the harmonists,\nin their endeavour to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, have\nbeen wasted.\" [130] That is exactly what the attentive reader must\nregretfully say of Mr. Wright's own reconstructions.\n\nHis handling of the problems of the date of the crucifixion and the\nduration of the Ministry is a warning to every student who desires\nto be loyal to critical principle. By his final admission, no one\ncan tell whether the Ministry lasted one, two, three, four, ten, or\ntwenty years. He frankly rejects Sir William Ramsay's attempt to salve\nas history Luke's story of the census. The alleged procedure, he sees,\nis simply impossible--\"S. Luke evidently has somewhat misunderstood the\nsituation\"--and he solves the problem by throwing over Luke's opening\nchapters as late accretions. But the question of the duration of the\nMinistry, which is bound up with that of the date of the crucifixion,\nand thus lies at the very centre of the whole historic problem, he\nis content to leave as insoluble, yet without a misgiving as to the\nhistoricity of the record.\n\nJohn makes Jesus go four times to Jerusalem; while in the synoptics we\nnote \"the extraordinary fact that they do not bring Christ to Jerusalem\nuntil He entered it to be crucified.\" [131] John puts the cleansing\nof the temple at the beginning of the Ministry, and the synoptics\nplace it at the close. Orthodox exegesis then assumes two cleansings,\nbut \"such a repetition is, to say the least, highly improbable,\"\nfor Mr. Wright. \"What end would such a repetition serve? And if\nrepeated, why should not S. Mark or S. John have told us so?\" [132]\nWhy, indeed! So Mr. Wright suggests that the synoptics may have\ntelescoped several years into one. \"Events in real life move much\nmore slowly.\" [133] They certainly do!\n\nYet, on the other hand, \"the one-year ministry would solve many\ndifficulties. It is the only scheme which reconciles S. Luke,\nS. Matthew, and S. John. Not improbably it is true: the more I\nconsider it, the more attractive it appears.\" [134] Such, evidently,\nwas the view of the Christian and other Gnostics. But Iren\u00e6us, the\nfirst Father to handle the problem, declared for a ministry of about\ntwenty years, founding not only on the quotation in John, \"Thou art\nnot yet fifty years old,\" but on the fact that \"all the elders who had\nknown John the disciple of the Lord in Asia witness that he gave them\nthis tradition.\" [135] On the other hand, in Mr. Wright's opinion,\n\"ten years is the utmost length to which we can stretch the ministry\nwithout throwing overboard S. Luke's chronology altogether.\" [136]\nYet Bishop Westcott declared concerning the record of Iren\u00e6us that,\n\"however strange it may appear, some such view is not inconsistent\nwith the only fixed historical dates which we have with regard to the\nLord's life, the date of His birth, His baptism, and the banishment\nof Pilate.\" Thus turns the kaleidoscope of the tradition of which\nHarnack has latterly affirmed the \"essential rightness, with a few\nimportant exceptions.\"\n\nIt is hardly necessary to point out that the \"oral\" hypothesis, like\nthe \"documentary\" and that of scattered logia, is more compatible\nwith the negative than with the affirmative answer on the question\nof historicity. Contradictions and anomalies irreconcilable with\nthe assumption of a real historical process present not difficulty\nbut confirmation to the theory of a fictitious production, whether\ndocumentary or oral, to establish a transforming cult, supplying a\nquasi-historical basis where none such existed. Contradictory episodes\nand dicta stand for diverging sects and movements. Save for incidental\nconcessions, all the traditionist schools alike ignore the grounds\nfor inferring a long-continued modification of the Gospels at many\nhands; though, when Celsus late in the second century alleged the\ncommon practice of interpolation, Origen could only explain that it\nwas the work of heretics. Such a procedure is for the rational critic\nonly the natural continuance of the method of formation.\n\nOver the point upon which Mr. Wright most completely diverges from\nthe various Unitarian schools--his acceptance of the Fourth Gospel\nas essentially historical--we need not here concern ourselves. Those\nwho can accept the Fourth and the Synoptics cannot be supposed to\nadmit the application of criticism to fundamentals at all, however\ncritically they may handle secondary issues. And they have their\ndefence. The liberalizers who see that the Fourth as a whole is a work\nof invention, making free play with previous material, and yet cannot\nconceive that the synoptics had beforehand followed a similar method,\ncan make no claim to critical consistency. They merely realize that\nthe Fourth and the Synoptics cannot all be records of a real Life and\nTeaching, and they decide to reject the last rather than the prior\ndocuments. The argument from \"vividness\" and lifelike detail simply\ngoes by the board. In the fourth Gospel there are many more lifelike\ndetails than in the second; but that is not allowed to count.\n\nFor the rational inquirer, however, the fact remains that the\ndismissal of the fourth Gospel is a beginning of historical as\ndistinct from documentary discrimination; and it is to those who have\nmade such a beginning that a further critical argument falls to be\naddressed. Mr. Wright, facing a chaos of doctrinal contradictions and\nchronological divergences, falls back trustingly on the reflection\nthat \"after all we are not saved by the Gospels, but by Christ.\" He\nhas no misgiving as to the evangelists being inspired. \"Inspiration\nquickens their spiritual perception, but does not altogether preserve\nthem from errors of fact\": e.g. Mt. i, 9, 11; Mk. iii, 26; Lk. ii, 2;\nJohn xii, 3; Acts v, 36; vii, 16. [137] Perhaps Mr. Wright would grant\nsome dozens more of errors of fact if pressed; but his faith would not\nbe modified unless he should be shaken on the resurrection. \"History\nas well as criticism leaves us no room to question this. On so sure\na foundation is our most holy faith erected.\" [138] For Mr. Wright\nthat is supremely certain which a myriad Christian scholars now find\nincredible. And we can but take our leave of him with the question of\nthe Jew of Celsus, \"Did Jesus come into the world for this purpose,\nthat we should not believe in him?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nTHE METHOD OF M. LOISY\n\n\nTurning away, so to speak, to the Gentiles, we concentrate our case\nin countering that of the \"emancipated\" defenders of the historicity\nof the Founder, as put by M. Loisy, the equal of any of the German or\nEnglish professionals in scholarly competence, and the superior of\nsome of them in candour. Precisely because Catholicism yields least\npreparation for the work of critical science, one who slowly makes his\nway out of it into the \"liberal\" position is reasonably to be credited\nwith a special capacity for the task. And he is on the whole the most\nuseful theorist for the purposes of the \"liberal\" school, inasmuch\nas he is prepared to give up many documentary items to which others\nneedlessly cling. Nonetheless, M. Loisy is a confident champion of the\nhistoricity of the gospel Jesus. He does not indeed combine his summary\npresentment of his case with a discussion of the myth theory--that\nhe is content to put aside in mass with the epithet \"superficial\";\nbut he puts his own construction all the more unreservedly.\n\nIt is interesting to note his certitudes. No one of his school,\nperhaps, has more frequently claimed indubitability on points of\ninference. For instance:--\n\n\n    The advent of Jesus in the time of the procurator Pontius Pilate\n    is a fact as certain as a thousand other facts on the subject\n    of which no one dreams of raising the slightest suspicion; it is\n    not doubtful that he announced the speedy coming of the kingdom\n    of God ... since that idea ... which is the fundamental idea of\n    the preaching of Christ in the synoptics, was incontestably that\n    of his first disciples and Paul....\n\n    Great as are the real obscurities of the evangelical history,\n    they are less numerous than they seem, and without doubt also\n    less considerable on the important points.\n\n    Paul ... does not say that Jesus predicted his death and\n    resurrection. He does not even say what was the ground for his\n    execution; but it does not seem doubtful that this ground was\n    precisely the announcement of that kingdom of God which the\n    apostles and Paul himself preached.\n\n    Paul and the other apostles practised exorcisms in the name of\n    Jesus on certain patients. It is told that Jesus had done the\n    same, and without doubt he had really done it, with still more\n    assurance and more success than his disciples.\n\n    He [Jesus] without doubt never frequented the schools of the\n    rabbins.\n\n    His family was certainly pious.\n\n    One fact is certain, that a seizure was concerted of which he\n    [Judas] was the principal agent.\n\n    It was without doubt arranged [at the house of the high priest\n    at earliest daylight] that they should content themselves with\n    denouncing the Galilean prophet to the Roman authority.\n\n    Without doubt he [Jesus] expected to his last moment the succour\n    which only death could bring him.\n\n    It was Peter, it would seem, who first obtained the proof and\n    the definitive certainty [of the resurrection] that faith called\n    for. One day, at dawn, fishing on the lake of Tiberias, he saw\n    Jesus. Already, without doubt, he had assembled around him the\n    other disciples. [139]\n\n\nIt is enviable to be so sans doute on so many points in a narrative\nof which so much has had to be abandoned as myth. The odd thing is\nthat with all these certitudes M. Loisy introduces his book with\nthe declaration, \"We must [il faut] now renounce writing the life\nof Jesus. All the critics agree in recognizing that the materials\nare insufficient for such an enterprise.\" [140] And then, after\nan introduction in which he contests the view that nothing can be\nwritten with certainty, he gives us a Life of Jesus which is simply\nRenan revised!\n\nIt is certainly brief; but that is because he is content to say only\nwhat he thinks there is to say, whereas his predecessors were at\nmore or less pains to embed the thin thread of biography in a large\nmat of non-biographical material. M. Loisy seems to have become a\nlittle confused in the process of prefixing a critical introduction\nto three chapters of the former introduction to his commentary on the\nsynoptics. \"The present little book,\" he writes, \"does not pretend\nto be that history which it is impossible to recover.\" Naturally\nnot. But it proffers a Life of Jesus all the same.\n\nM. Loisy is quite satisfied that there was a Jesus of Nazareth,\nson of Joseph, a \"worker in wood, carpenter, furniture maker,\nwheelwright.\" [141] \"And Jesus followed originally the same\nprofession.\" When he began his preaching of the speedy coming of\nthe heavenly kingdom, \"his mother Mary was a widow, with numerous\nchildren. It is not certain that Jesus was the eldest....\" \"It was\nprobably John the Baptist who, unknowingly, awoke the vocation of\nthe young carpenter of Nazareth. The crisis which traversed Jud\u00e6a\nhad evoked a prophet.... This preaching of terror made a great\nimpression.... John was usually on the Jordan, baptizing in the\nriver those touched by his burning words. Jesus was drawn like many\nothers.... He was baptized, and remained some time in the desert.\"\n\nAnd so it goes on. \"What appears most probable\" is that Jesus had\nalready \"passed some time in solitude. A time of reflection and of\npreparation was indispensable between the life of the carpenter and the\nmanifestation of the preacher of the evangel. Pushed to the desert by\nthe sentiment of his vocation, Jesus was bound (devait) to be pursued\nby a more and more clear consciousness of that vocation.\" Thus M. Loisy\ncan after all expand his sources. It was after the imprisonment of the\nBaptist that Jesus felt he \"was to replace him, and by the better title\nbecause he felt himself predestined to become the human chief of the\nKingdom, there to fill the function of Messiah.\" But \"almost in spite\nof himself\" he worked miracles. From his first stay at Capernaum the\nsick were brought to him to heal; and, fearing that the thaumaturg\nmight hurt the preacher of the Kingdom, he left the place, only to\nbe followed up and forced to make cures. \"He operated with a peculiar\nefficacy on the category of patients supposed to be specially possessed\nby the demon.... He spoke to them with authority, and calm returned,\nat least for a time, to those troubled and unquiet souls.\" As to the\ngreater cures, M. Loisy observes that \"perhaps\" there was ascribed to\nthe healer the revivification of a dead maiden. On the instantaneous\ncures of lepers and the blind he naturally says nothing whatever.\n\nThe dilemma of M. Loisy here recalls that of Professor Schmiedel over\nthe same problem. The latter, claiming that it would be \"difficult to\ndeny\" healing powers to Jesus, in view of the testimonies, is fain to\nargue that the Healer's personal claim (Mt. xi, 5; Lk. vii, 22; not\nin Mk.) to have healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, the lepers, and\nraised the dead, meant only a spiritual ministration, inasmuch as the\nclaim concludes: \"the poor also have the Gospel preached to them.\" On\nthis view the assumed healing power really counts for nothing; and\nthe last clause, which Schmiedel contends would be an anti-climax\nif the healings were real, becomes absolutely an anti-climax of\nthe most hopeless kind. One day men will dismiss such confusions\nby noting that the theory of spiritual healing, an attempt to evade\nthe mass of miracle, is only miracle-mongering of another kind. Are\nwe to take it that regeneration of the morally dead, deaf, blind,\nand leprous is to be effected wholesale by a little preaching? Did\nthe Christian community then consist wholly or mainly of these?\n\nM. Loisy in turn blenches at a claim in which \"raising the dead\"\nfigures as a customary thing, with cures of leprosy and blindness;\nand he too falls back on the \"spiritual\" interpretation, [142] failing\nto note the flat fallacy of making the preaching to the poor at once\na contrast and a climax to the spiritual healings, which also, on\nthe hypothesis, are precisely matters of preaching. The Teacher is\nmade to say: \"I raise the spiritually dead, and cure the spiritually\nleprous, deaf, and blind, by preaching to them: to the poor I just\npreach.\" Schmiedel does not see that the preaching of the Gospel to\nthe poor is added as the one thing that could be said to be done for\nthem, who would otherwise have had no benefit; and that on his own\nview he ought to treat this as a late addition. On the contrary, he\ninsists that the \"evangelists\" could not have thought of adding it;\nand that it makes an excellent climax if we take the healings to be\npurely spiritual.\n\nThe rational argument would be, of course, that the first writer did\nmake the Lord talk figuratively; and that a later redactor, taking\nthe words literally, added the item of the poor, which he could not\nhave done if he took them figuratively. But the irreducible fallacy is\nthe assumption that as a figurative claim the speech is historic, one\norder of miracle being held allowable when another is not. Schmiedel\nhas exemplified his own saying that \"with very few exceptions all\ncritics fall into the very grave error of immediately accepting a\nthing as true as soon as they have found themselves able to trace\nit to a 'source'.\" [143] It does not in the least follow that by\nsubstituting spiritual for physical miracle we acquire a right to\nclaim historicity. And by the claim we simply cancel the \"fame\"\nof the records.\n\nM. Loisy, committing himself to some acts of healing where Schmiedel,\nafter accepting the general claim, commits himself to none, balances\nvaguely between acts of faith-healing so-called and cures of sheer\ninsanity, and accepts the tradition of\n\n\n    an unfruitful point at Nazareth. [144] \"A prophet is not without\n    honour, save in his own country and among his own kin, and in\n    his own house,\" Jesus had said before the disdainful astonishment\n    of his fellow-citizens and the incredulity of his family; and he\n    could work no miracle in that place.\n\n\nM. Loisy, it will be observed, here assumes that we are dealing with\nreal cures, and tacitly rejects the qualifying clauses in Mark vi,\n5, and Matthew xiii, 58, as he well may. They are indeed stamped\nwith manipulation. \"He could there do no mighty work save that he\nlaid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them,\" says the first;\n\"he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief,\" says\nthe other. Such passages raise in an acute form the question how any\nstatement in the Gospels can reasonably be taken as historical. What\nwere the alleged mighty works done elsewhere save acts of healing the\nsick? And how many cases for such healing would naturally be presented\nby one small hamlet? If, again, all the healings were spiritual,\nwhat are we left with beyond the truism that sinners who did not\nbelieve were unbelieving?\n\nAs the modifications produce pure counter-sense, it is critically\npermissible to surmise that they were lacking in the first copies,\nand were inserted merely to guard against profane cavils. But as the\nwhole episode is found only in Matthew and Mark, it cannot figure\nin Dr. Petrie's Nucleus; and for similar reasons it is absent from\nthe Primitive Gospel of the school of Bernhard Weiss. M. Loisy,\nrecognizing that it is the kind of item that Luke would avoid for\ntactical reasons, is loyal enough to accept it as historical without\nthe modifying words, and seeks no better explanation than that given\nin the cited words of Jesus.\n\nFor those who aim at a rational comprehension of the documents,\nthe critical induction is that the story was inserted for a reason;\nand the explanation which satisfies M. Loisy is so ill-considered\nthat it only emphasizes the need. A prophet is likely to be looked\nat askance by his own people: yes, if he be an unimpressive one;\nbut upon what critical principles is M. Loisy entitled to assume,\nas he constantly does, that the historic Jesus made a profound\nand ineffaceable impression upon all who came in contact with him,\nfrom the moment of his call to his disciples, and that nevertheless\nhe had not made the slightest impression of superiority upon his own\nkinsmen and fellow-villagers, up to the age of thirty? How can such\npropositions cohere? Jesus has only to leave Nazareth and to command\nmen to follow him, in order to be reverently recognized as a Superman:\nfor M. Loisy, it is his mere personality that creates the faith which,\nafter his death, makes his adherents proclaim him as a re-arisen\nGod. Is this the kind of personality that in an eastern village would\nbe known merely as that of \"the carpenter,\" or the carpenter's son?\n\nM. Loisy, it is true, claims that Jesus had needed a period of solitude\nand meditation in the desert to make him a teacher, thus partly\nimplying that before that experience the destined prophet might not be\nrecognizable as such. But is it a historic proposition that the short\ntime of solitude had worked a complete transformation? Was a quite\nnormal or commonplace personality capable of such a transfiguration\nin a natural sense? That the critic had not even asked himself the\nquestion is made plain by his complete failure to raise the cognate\nquestion in regard to the marvellous healing powers with which he\nunhesitatingly credits the teacher, on the strength of the wholly\nsupernaturalist testimony of the Gospels. These powers, according\nto M. Loisy, were also the instantaneous result of the short period\nof solitude in the desert. What pretensions can such a theory make\nto be in conformity with historical principles? Cannot M. Loisy see\nthat he has only been miracle-mongering with a difference?\n\nIt is bad enough that we should be asked to take for granted, on the\nstrength of a typically Eastern record of wholesale thaumaturgy, a\nreal \"natural\" gift for healing a variety of nervous disorders. But\na natural gift of such a kind at least presupposes some process of\ndevelopment. M. Loisy obliviously asks us to believe that all of a\nsudden a man who had throughout his life shown no abnormal powers\nor qualities whatever, began to exercise them upon the largest scale\nalmost immediately after he had left his native village. Now, whatever\nview be taken of the cynical formula that a prophet has no honour in\nhis own village, it is idle to ask us to believe that a great healer\nhas none. The local healer of any sort has an easy opening; and the\nredacted Gospels indicate uneasy recognition of the plain truth that\nJesus needed only to heal the sick at Nazareth as elsewhere to conquer\nunbelief. It was precisely the cures that, in the Gospel story, had\nwon him fame in the surrounding country. M. Loisy has merely burked\nthe problem.\n\nA little later he takes as historical the \"terrible invectives\"\npronounced against Capernaum and the neighbouring cities, which he\nattempts to explain. After all, the multitude had not gone beyond a\n\"benevolent curiosity, quite ready to transform itself into an ironical\nincredulity. They had seen the miracles; they awaited meantime the\nkingdom, without otherwise preparing for it; and as the kingdom did\nnot come they inclined less and less to believe in it.\" So they were\ndoomed to a terrible judgment for their faithlessness. But why then was\nnothing said of the wholly unbelieving Nazareth? [145] If the towns\nwhich would not receive the disciples were to be testified against,\nwhat should be the fate of the hostile birthplace?\n\nBefore such problems, the method of \"liberal\" accommodation here as\nalways breaks down. To the eye of the evolutionist there is no great\nmystery. The avowal that the Founder either could not or did not\nwork wonders at Nazareth might serve any one of several conceivable\npurposes. It might meet the cavils of those who in a later day found\nand said that nothing was known at Nazareth of a wonder-working Jesus\nwho had dwelt there; even as the often-repeated story of the command\nto healed persons to keep silence could avail to turn the attacks of\ninvestigating doubters in regard to the miraculous cures. Or it might\nserve either to impugn the pretensions of those who at one stage of the\nmovement called themselves \"Nazarenes\" in the sense of followers of the\nman of Nazareth, or to include the birthplace with the family and the\ndisciples in that disparagement of the Jewish surroundings which would\narise step for step with the spread of the Gentile movement. Any of\nthese explanations is reasonable beside the thesis that a man gifted\nwith marvellous healing powers, suddenly developed without any previous\nsign of them, could either find no one in his own village to let him\ntry them, or to recognize them even when applied there, while the\ncountry round about, ex hypothesi, was ringing with his fame. And\nthe criticism which puts us off with such solutions is really not\nwell entitled to impute \"superficiality\" to those who reject it.\n\nThe whole \"carpenter\" story, in which M. Loisy sees no difficulty, is\none of the weakest of the Gospel attempts at circumstantiality. A trade\nor calling for the Messiah, as a true Jew, was perhaps as requisite\nin the eyes of some Jews as either a Davidic descent or an argument\nto prove that Davidic descent was for the Messiah unnecessary--both of\nwhich requirements the Gospels meet. Every good Jew, we are told, was\nrequired to have a handicraft or profession. A \"Ben-Joseph,\" again,\nwas called-for to meet the requirement, common among the Samaritans\nbut not confined to them, of a Messiah so named. [146] But how came\nit that \"the carpenter\" of Mark is only \"the carpenter's son\" in\nMatthew? We can conceive the Gentilizing Luke putting both statements\naside as ill-suited to his purpose, his Jesus being a God competing\nwith Gentile Gods; but if there really was an early knowledge that\nJesus was a carpenter, why should Matthew minimize it? And how came\nit that Origen [147] knew of no Gospel \"current in the churches\"\nin which Jesus was described as a carpenter?\n\nIn this matter, as about the Infancy generally, the apocryphal gospels\nare as rich in detail as the canonical are poor. Again and again\ndoes Joseph figure in them as a working carpenter, or plough-maker,\nor house-builder. [148] The words of Origen might imply that it was\nfrom some such source that Celsus drew his statement that Jesus was\na carpenter; and yet none of the preserved apocrypha speaks of Jesus\nas working at carpentry save by way of such miracles as that of the\nelongation of the piece of wood. Having regard to the mythical aspect\nof the whole, we suggest an easily misinterpreted Gnostic source\nfor the basis. For some schools of the Gnostics, the Jewish God\nwas the Demiourgos, the Artisan or Creator, a subordinate being in\ntheir divine hierarchy. The word could mean an artisan of any kind;\nand architector, the term in the Latin version of Thomas, points to\na reflex of the idea of \"creator\" which attached to the Gnostic term.\n\nThat the doctrine of the Demiourgos was already current in Jewish\ncircles before the period commonly assigned to Christian Gnosticism\nhas been shown with much probability by Dr. S. Karppe. In a Talmudic\npassage given as cited by Rabbi Jochanan ben Saccai before the middle\nof the first century, C.E., there is denunciation of those who \"spare\nnot the glory of the Creator\"; and other passages interpret this\nin the sense of a heresy which \"diminishes God\" and \"sows division\nbetween Israel and his God.\" [149] Debate of this kind emerges with\nthe name of the Jud\u00e6o-Christian heretic Cerinthus. For him, Jesus,\nthough naturally born, was entered at his baptism by Christ, the son\nnot of the Jewish God, the Demiourgos, but of the Supreme God. [150]\nThere might well be, however, round Cerinthus, who retained Jewish\nleanings, Jews who held to the Jud\u00e6o-Christian primary position\nthat Jesus was the son of Yahweh. By some early Gnostics he could\nhardly fail to be so named. Could not then the Gnostic \"Son of the\nDemiourgos,\" the Artificer, become for more literal Christists \"son\nof the carpenter,\" even as the mystic seamless robe of Pagan myth\nbecame for some a garment which had to be cut in pieces to be divided?\n\nMet by such suggestions, M. Loisy tells us that we are superficial. But\nis he otherwise? Is he not simply evading his problem? Can he\nsee nothing strange in the sudden mention of the carpenter in a\n\"primary\" gospel which had set out with a divine personage and had\nnever mentioned his parents or upbringing? On the mythic theory the\napparition of the Messiah without antecedents is precisely what was to\nbe expected; if there was any clear Jewish expectation on the point,\nit was that he should come unlooked for, unheralded save, on one view,\nby \"Elias.\" [151] Thus the Gospel record fits into the myth theory\nfrom the outset, while on the assumption of historicity it is but a\nseries of enigmas.\n\nHolding by that assumption, M. Loisy is forced to violent measures to\nreconcile the isolated Marcan mention of \"the son of Mary and brother\nof James and Joses and Judas and Simon\" with the repeated mentions\nin the closing chapters of (1) \"Mary the mother of James the less\nand of Joses and Salome; who when he was in Galilee followed [Jesus]\nand ministered unto him\"; (2) \"Mary the mother of Joses\"; and (3)\n\"Mary the mother of James and Salome.\" In these closing chapters this\nMary the mother of James and Joses and Salome figures first as simply\none who followed and ministered to Jesus, then as the mother of Joses,\nthen as the mother of James and Salome, but never as the mother of\nJesus. By what right does M. Loisy extract his certitude from the\nprior text?\n\nHis simple course is to decide that Mary the mother of James and of\nJoses and of Salome in the closing chapters is not Mary the mother of\nJames and Joses and Judas and Simon in chapter vi. \"Certain Fathers,\"\nhe had noted in his great work on the Synoptics (citing in particular\nChrysostom), \"desirous of making the synoptics accord with John,\nidentify Mary the mother of James and Joses [in ch. xv] with the\nmother of Jesus; but it is evident that if the synoptics had thought\nof the mother of the Saviour they would not have thus designated\nher.\" [152] Precisely! And if the Gospel of Mark in its original form\nhad contained the passage in chapter vi, how could it possibly have\nspoken in chapter xv of a Mary the mother of James and Joses without\nindicating either that she was or was not the same Mary? Would it\nhave deliberately specified two Maries, each the mother of a James\nand a Joses, without a word of differentiation?\n\nTo the faithful critic there is only one course open. He is bound to\nconclude that the passage in chapter vi is a late interpolation, the\nwork of an inventor who had perhaps either accepted or anticipated\nthe Johannine record that Mary the mother of Jesus was present at\nthe crucifixion, but who did not--perhaps in his copy of Mark could\nnot--completely carry out his purpose by making the Mary at the\ncrucifixion the mother of the crucified Lord.\n\nWe are not here concerned with the exegesis of those Fathers who\ndesired to save the perpetual virginity of Mary; our business is\nsimply with the texts. And we can but say that if, with M. Loisy, we\nmake the Mary of chapter xv another Mary than her of chapter vi, we\nare bound on the same principle to find a third and a fourth Mary in\n\"the mother of Joses\" (xv, 47) and the \"mother of James and Salome\"\n(xvi, 1). [153] It will really not do. The mythological theory, which\ntraces the mourning Maries to an ancient liturgy of a God-sacrifice\nand finds the mother-Mary of chapter vi an alien element, may seem\nto M. Loisy superficial, but it meets a problem which he simply evades.\n\nThe only serious difficulties for M. Loisy, apparently, are the\nmiracles and the prophecies. On the latter he makes no use of the\nSavonarola argument; and in his smaller work he ignores the \"rock\"\ntext; but for him \"the scene of C\u00e6sarea Philippi, with the Messianic\nconfession of Peter, seems thoroughly historic\"; and on the other hand\nthe story of Peter's denial of his Master causes him no misgiving. For\na rational reader, the conception of the shamed Peter figuring\nsoon afterwards as the merciless judge and supernatural slayer of\nthe unhappy Ananias is extremely indigestible. The personage thus\nevolved is not only detestable but incredible. How could the coward\napostle figure primarily and continuously as a pillar of the Church\ndescribed? Harnack's method, as Professor Blass complains, [154]\ntreats the denigration of Peter as the result of the strife between\nthe Judaizing and the Gentilizing sections of the early Church; it\nis the natural hypothesis. Without it we are left to the detestable\nand impossible figure of the apostle who denies his Lord and has no\nmercy for a weak brother who merely keeps back part of a sum of money\nwhen professing freely to donate the whole. The critical reader will\nprefer to follow Harnack.\n\nBut if we give up the story of the Denial, how shall we retain\nthose which exalt and glorify the Judaizing apostle? If we give up\nMatthew's \"rock\" texts, with what consistency can we take as pure\nhistory the episode in Mark in which Peter, first of the twelve,\ndeclares \"Thou art the Christ,\" eliciting the charge to \"tell no\nman of him,\" followed by the prediction of death and resurrection,\nspoken \"openly\"? The episode in Mark passes into, and in Matthew\nis followed by, the fierce rebuke to the expostulating Peter, \"Get\nthee behind me, Satan, for thou mindest not the things of God, but\nthe things of men\"--a strange sequel to Matthew's \"Blessed art thou,\nSimon Bar-Jonah; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,\nbut my Father which is in Heaven.\"\n\nThis is one of the passages that force the conclusion either that\n\"Mark\" had before him the fuller record, in \"Matthew\" or elsewhere, and\nturned it from a Petrine to an anti-Petrine purpose, or that a redactor\ndid so. There is no escape from the evidence that we are dealing with\ntwo sharply conflicting constructions. The \"Blessed art thou\" passage\nand the \"Satan\" passage will not cohere. Which came first? Had \"Luke\"\neither before him? His \"Get thee behind me, Satan\" (iv, 8; A.V.),\naddressed to the devil in the Temptation, is ejected from the revised\ntext as being absent from most of the ancient codices; and its presence\nin the Alexandrine suggests an attempt to get in somewhere a saying\nwhich otherwise had no place in the third Gospel. The absence alike\nof the blessing and the aspersion on Peter sets up the surmise that\nboth are quite late, and that the insertion of one elicited the other.\n\nAgain and again we find in the Gospels such traces of a strife over\nPetrine pretensions. In the story of the Denial, which we have found\nso incompatible with the attitude ascribed to Peter in the Acts,\neveryone since Strauss has recognized a process of redaction and\ninterpolation. M. Loisy, saying nothing of the central problem,\navowedly finds in Mark \"a manipulation, deliberate and ill-managed,\nof a more simple statement.\" [155] This might have sufficed to put\nhim on his guard; but all he has to say, after reducing the confused\ndetails to the inferred \"simpler statement,\" is that \"if there is\nin any part of the second Gospel a personal recollection of Peter it\nis the story of the denial in the form in which Mark found it.\" [156]\nWhich makes sad havoc of the Peter-Mark tradition; for the story of the\ndenial betrays itself as a late anti-Petrine invention, as aforesaid.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHE TRIAL CRUX\n\n\nThus lax in his treatment of the subsidiary historical problems,\nM. Loisy is of necessity accommodating when he faces those which he\nrecognizes to be central. Over the story of the \"purification\" of\nthe temple--which Origen found at once unjustifiable and signally\nmiraculous, since it was inconceivable that so great a multitude\nshould have yielded to the mere attack of one man with a scourge of\nsmall cords--he has again no misgivings. He feels that some such story\nwas needed to motive the priestly action against Jesus. [157] In the\nstory of the astonishing sophism ascribed to Jesus on the subject of\nthe tribute to C\u00e6sar he sees only \"cleverness\" (habilet\u00e9); and yet\nhe accepts as historical--again by necessity of his thesis--Jesus's\nadmission that he claimed to be king of the Jews. In the story of\nthe betrayal he sees fit, docilely following Brandt, to allege \"a\nlittle confused fighting, some blows given and received\" over and\nabove the cutting off of the ear of Malchus, an imagined item which\nhe finds in none of the Gospels. Over the prayers of the Lord while\nthe disciples slept he had hesitated in his commentary; [158] falling\nback on the notable avowal that \"the sort of incoherence which results\nfrom describing a scene which passed while the witnesses [!] were\nasleep is without doubt to be explained by the origin and character\nof the narrative rather than by a negligence of the narrator.\" For\nonce, I unreservedly assent to the sans doute. Quite unwittingly,\nM. Loisy has put himself in line with our mythical theory, which\npostulates a drama as the origin of the narrative.\n\nAll the same, he accepts the narrative as history; and he sees\nnothing in the fusion of the two speeches: \"Sleep on.... It is\nenough.... Arise now,\"... though he rejects the proposal of Bleek,\nVolkmar, and Wellhausen to turn \"Sleep on\" into an interrogation,\n[159] and admits that the \"It is enough\" is an \"unclear and very\ninsufficient transition\" from \"Sleep on\" to \"Arise.\" Once more, which\nis the more superficial, this lame handling or the recognition of a\ntranscribed drama with two speeches combined because of the omission\nof an exit and an entrance, in what M. Loisy admits to be \"a highly\ndramatic mise en sc\u00e8ne\"?\n\nBut it is over the trial in the house of the high priest that M. Loisy\nmost astonishingly redacts the narrative. In his commentary he\nrecognizes that Matthew's story, in which the scribes and the elders\nare \"already gathered together\" in the dead of night when Jesus is\nbrought for trial, and the story of Mark, in which they \"come together\nwith\" the high priest, are equally incredible; and that the story of\nthe quest for witnesses in the night is still more so.\n\nOnce again we have a sans doute with which we can agree. \"The nocturnal\nprocedure, no doubt, did not take place.\" [160] Recognizing further\nthat a Jewish blasphemer was by the Levitical law to be stoned, not\ncrucified, he simply gives up the whole narrative as a product of\n\"the Christian tradition,\" bent on saddling the Jews rather than\nthe Romans with the responsibility of the crucifixion. [161] In his\nsmaller work he simply cuts the knot and alleges:--\n\n\n    \"As soon as the first daylight had come (d\u00e8s les premiers lueurs\n    du jour), a reunion was held at the house of (chez) the chief\n    priest,\" where it was without doubt [!] arranged that they should\n    content themselves with denouncing the Galilean prophet to the\n    Roman authority as a disturber and a false Messiah. But it was\n    necessary to arrange the terms of the accusation and distribute\n    the r\u00f4les, to get together and prepare the witnesses. These\n    measures were soon taken. As soon as morning had come (d\u00e8s le\n    matin) the priests brought their prisoner chained before the\n    tribunal of Pontius Pilate. [162]\n\n\nOne certainly cannot call this manipulation of the texts\n\"superficial.\" It is sheer deliberate dissolution and reconstruction\nof the narrative, by way of substituting something more plausible for\nthe incredible original, when all the while the credibility of the\noriginal is the thesis maintained. And yet even the reconstruction is\nso thoughtlessly managed that we get only a slightly less impossible\naccount. Only a scholar who never followed the details of a legal\nprocess could suggest that the task of hunting up witnesses and\narranging a procedure could be carried through between \"earliest dawn\"\nand \"morning.\" And for the headlong haste of such a procedure, only\nan hour or so after the arrest of the prisoner, no explanation is\neven suggested. A violent impossibility in the record, destructive\nof all faith in its historicity at this point, is sought to be\nsaved by a violent redaction which simply \"makes hay\" of the very\ndocuments founded on. And this illicit violence is resorted to\nbecause M. Loisy recognizes that if he is to retain a historical\nJesus at all he must bring the whole trial story into a historical\nshape. He certainly had cause to take drastic measures. Long ago it\nwas pointed out that by Jewish law a prisoner must not be condemned\nto death on the day of his trial: Judicia de capitalibus finiunt\neodem die si sint ad absolutionem; si vero sint ad damnationem,\nfiniuntur die sequente. [163] This might alone suffice to \"bring\ninto doubt\" the priestly trial; to say nothing of the modern Jewish\nprotest that a capital prosecution and execution on either the day\nafter or the day of the Passover, at the instance of the High Priest,\nwas unthinkable. [164] There were good reasons, then, for seeking to\nfound on the trial before Pilate.\n\nLet us now survey broadly the process of historical criticism thus\nfar. 1. At an early stage the reconstructors gave up as pure fiction\nthe third trial before Herod, which appears solely in Luke. They did\nnot ask what historical knowledge, or what sense of history, can have\nexisted in a community among which such an absolute invention found\nready currency. 2. The next step was to reject as \"unhistorical\"\nthe narrative of the fourth Gospel, in which Jesus (a) is examined\nby Annas the high priest, but in no sense tried; (b) is then sent\nbound to Caiaphas the high priest; (c) is immediately passed on from\nCaiaphas to Pilate, who examines him within doors while the priests\nremain outside, there being thus no Jewish witnesses; (d) tells\nPilate \"My kingdom is not of this world,\" and convinces him that\nhe is not punishable. Rejecting this account, as they well might,\nthe reconstructors failed to ask themselves what such an invention\nsignifies. 3. Next disappears the so-called historical narrative of the\ntrial before the high priest and chief priests in the synoptics. [165]\nThat in turn, taken on its merits, is found flagrantly incredible; and\nnow M. Loisy in effect puts it aside, reducing it to a fundamentally\ndifferent form.\n\nThree of the trial stories are thus in turn rejected as hopelessly\nunhistorical. And now we are invited to regard as \"incontestable\"\nthe fourth, the trial before Pilate as related in the synoptics; the\nJohannine version being dismissed as fiction. In the scientific sense\nof the word [166] the rejected stories have been classed as myths. And\nstill we are told that the \"myth-theory\" is outside discussion.\n\nYet, even in coming to the trial before Pilate, M. Loisy has to\nbegin by noting the improbability that the entire sanhedrim should\nhave attended it, as is alleged by the synoptics. \"In the minds of\nthe evangelists the sanhedrim represents the Jews, and it was the\nJews who caused the death of Jesus. Hence the general expressions\nwhich the redactors used the more willingly because they were very\nincompletely informed on the facts.\" [167] Still, the trial must stand\ngood. Judas goes the way of myth; but the unintelligible procedure\nof Pilate must be salved. With his general loyalty to the facts as\nhe sees them M. Loisy notes, with Brandt, that in the synoptics as\nin John there is no Jesuist eye-witness or auditor to report for the\nfaithful what took place. \"Here begin the gaps in the Passion-history,\"\nremarks Brandt. [168] \"Tradition could learn only by indirect ways the\ngeneral features of the interrogation and the principal incidents which\npassed between the morning of Friday and the hour of the crucifixion,\"\nsays Loisy. [169] The student really concerned to get at history\nis compelled to pronounce that the record thus avowed to be mainly\nguesswork is myth. Let us take the report as we have it in Mark:--\n\n\n    And straightway [after the condemnation by the priests] in the\n    morning the chief priests, with the elders and scribes and the\n    whole council, held a consultation, and bound Jesus and carried\n    him away, and delivered him up to Pilate. And Pilate asked him,\n    Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering saith unto him,\n    Thou sayest.... And Pilate again asked him, saying, Answerest\n    thou nothing? behold how many things they accuse thee of. But\n    Jesus no more answered anything; insomuch that Pilate marvelled.\n\n\nTo this meagre record, in which a capital case is carried before\nthe governor without the slightest documentary preliminaries, and in\nwhich he begins to interrogate before a word has been said about the\nindictment, Matthew adds nothing save the story of Pilate's wife's\ndream, which the reconstructors are fain to dismiss; while Luke,\nwho sees fit to premise specific charges of anti-Roman sedition,\nfollows them up simply by Pilate's question and Jesus's assenting\nanswer; and then, quite unintelligibly, makes Pilate declare \"unto\nthe chief priests and the multitudes, I find no fault in this man.\"\n\nWhat can it mean? All the exegetes now agree that the \"Thou sayest\" of\nJesus has the force of \"I am.\" [170] By avowing that he called himself\nKing of the Jews he committed a very grave offence towards Rome, unless\nhe explained the title in a mystic sense; and the records exclude any\nsuch explanation. In Mark and Matthew the effect is the same: Pilate\nfinds no guilt, and proposes release; but yields to the multitude and\nthe priests. Could any serious student bring himself to regard this\nas history unless he presupposed the historicity of the crucifixion\nand was ready to let pass any semblance of motivation for it?\n\nOnce more we must affirm that the documents merely reveal entire\nignorance of any judicial procedure. Pilate finally puts to death a\nJewish prisoner at the request of the sanhedrim and the multitude on a\ncharge for which he finds no evidence. That Pilate should make light\nof a Jew's life is indeed easily to be believed: he is exhibited to\nus by Josephus as an entirely ruthless Roman; but both the synoptics\nand the fourth Gospel present him in an entirely different light;\nand no record or commentary makes it intelligible that the Roman\ngovernor should crucify a politically unoffending Jew for a purely\necclesiastical Jewish offence. The offence against Rome he is expressly\nrepresented as finding imaginary; and yet on the other hand the offence\nas avowed is very real. By the method of mere accommodation or partial\ncritical rationalism the ascription of the prosecution to the Jews is\naccounted for as the result of the later developed anti-Judaism of the\nChristians. But on that view what historical basis have we left? If\nthe later Christians could invent the trial and the Resurrection,\nwhat was to prevent their inventing the crucifixion? M. Loisy admits\nthat if the trial goes the historicity of Jesus goes with it; then\nthe crucifixion becomes myth. To say that this is impossible is to\nbeg the question: the myth theory offers the solution.\n\nGiven the datum of an original cult-sacrament which had grown out of\nan ancient ritual-sacrifice, the crucifixion is the first step towards\nthe establishment of a biography of Jesus. A trial and a condemnation,\nagain, are necessary preliminaries to that; and when we critically\nexamine these we find that they are patently unhistorical. Upon no\ntheory of historicity can their contradictions and impossibilities be\nexplained. Once we make the hypothesis, however, that the crucifixion\nis itself myth, the imbroglio becomes intelligible.\n\nWhat we do know historically is that the early Christists included\nJudaizers and Gentilizers; this is established by the sect-history,\napart from the Acts and the Epistles. For the Judaizers an execution\nby the Romans was necessary; for the Gentilizers, who were bound to\nguard against official Roman resentment, and whose hostility to the\nJews was progressive, a Jewish prosecution was equally necessary. In\nthe surviving mystery-play, predominantly a Gentile performance as\nit now stands in the Gospels, an impossible Jewish trial is followed\nby an equally impossible Roman trial, in which Jesus by doctrinal\nnecessity avows that he is King of the Jews, thereby salving his\nMessiahship; while, to keep the guilt on Jewish shoulders and\nto exclude the suspicion of anti-Roman bias, Pilate is made to\ndisclaim all responsibility. Such is, briefly, the outcome of the\nmyth theory. Upon what other theory can the documents be explained?\n\nUpon what other theory, again, can we explain the vast contrast between\nthe triumphal entry into Jerusalem a few days before and the absolute\nunanimity of the priest-led multitude in demanding the execution\nof Jesus against the wish of Pilate? The reconstructors accept both\nitems, with arbitrary modifications, as historical; though the story\nof the entry is preceded by a mythical item about the choice of the\nass-foal whereon never man had sat, [171] which is much more stressed\nand developed than the main point. We are asked to believe that Jesus\non his entry is enthusiastically acclaimed by a great multitude as\nSon of David and King of Israel; and that a few days later not a\nvoice is raised to save his life. Gentilizing Christians could easily\ncredit such things of the Jews. Can a historical student do so? For\nthe former it was enough that in the narrative the Messiahship of\nthe Lord had been publicly accepted; coherence was not required. But\nhistoricity means coherence.\n\nLast of all, the item of Barabbas, one of the elaborate irrelevancies\nwhich leap to the eye in a narrative so destitute of essentials,\nturns out to carry a curious corroboration to the myth-theory. This is\nnot the place to develop the probable kinship of the Barabbas of the\nGospels with the (misspelt) Karabbas [172] of Philo; but we may note\nthe probable reason for the introduction of the name into the myth. As\nthe story stands, it serves merely to heighten the guilt of the Jews,\nmaking them in mass save the life of a murderer rather than that of\nthe divine Saviour. The whole story is plainly unhistorical: \"neither\nthese details nor those which follow,\" remarks M. Loisy (after noting\nthe \"extremely vague indications under an appearance of precision\"\nin regard to the antecedents of Barabbas), \"seem discussible from\nthe point of view of history.\" [173] In point of fact, Pilate is made\nto release an ostensible ringleader of \"men who in the insurrection\n[unspecified] had committed murder,\" thus making his action doubly\ninconceivable. Why was such an item introduced at all?\n\nIt is not a case for very confident explanation; but when we note\nthat Barabbas means \"Son of the Father\"; that the Karabbas of Philo\nis treated as a mock-king; and that the reading \"Jesus Barabbas\" in\nMatt, xxvii, 16, 17, was long the accepted one in the ancient church,\n[174] we are strongly led to infer (1) that the formula \"Jesus the\nSon of the Father\" was well known among the first Christians as\nbeing connected with a popular rite--else how could such a strange\nperplexity be introduced into the text?--and (2) that the real reason\nfor introducing it was that those anti-Christians who knew of the name\nand rite in question used their knowledge against the faith. The way\nto rebut them was to present Jesus Barabbas not only as a murderer\nbut as the man actually released to the Jewish people instead of\nJesus the Christ, proposed to be released by Pilate.\n\nAgain, then, on the mythical theory, we find a meaning and a sane\nsolution where the historical theory can offer none. Sir James Frazer's\nhypothesis that the story of the triumphal entry may preserve a\ntradition of a mock-royal procession for a destined victim is only a\npartial solution; and his further hypothesis of a strangely ignored\ncoincidence between a Barabbas rite and the actual crucifixion of\nthe Christian \"Son of the Father\" is but a sacrifice of mythological\nprinciple to the assumption of historicity. The conception of Jesus\nas sacrificed lies at the core of early Christian cult-propaganda.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nTHE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY\n\n\nIt is the same, finally, with the story of the original evangel as\nwith the story of the tragedy; M. Loisy fails to come within sight\nof historicity in the one case as in the other. Having fallen back\non the thesis, so popularized by Renan, that faith in the necessary\nresurrection of the Messiah created the legend of the empty tomb and\nthe divine apparitions, he proceeds to formulate the Teaching which\nhad created the faith. The historic creed of Christianity is thus\nfigured as a pyramid poised on the apex of a hallucination; but we\nare assured that the hallucination resulted from the greatness of\nthe Personality of the slain Teacher.\n\nTaking no note of any other conception of a possible origination of\nthe cult, M. Loisy pronounces that to explain it we must hold that the\n\"group of adherents\" had before the crucifixion evolved a \"religious\nlife\" sufficiently deep to sustain the feeling that the death of\nthe Master was an accident, \"grave no doubt [!] and perturbing, but\nreparable\"; [175] and to explain this religious life he goes back\nto the Master's doctrine. And the moment he begins his exposition he\nvacillates anew over the old dilemma:--\n\n\n    Jesus pursued a work, not the propagation of a belief; he did\n    not explain theoretically the Kingdom of Heaven, he prepared its\n    coming by exhorting men to repent. Nevertheless even the work\n    of Jesus attaches itself to the idea of the celestial kingdom;\n    it defines itself in that idea, which presupposes, implies, or\n    involves with it other ideas. It is this combination of ideas\n    familiar to Christ that we must reconstruct with the help of\n    the Gospels.... The idea of the kingdom of God is, in a sense,\n    all the Gospel; but it is also all Judaism.... [176]\n\n\nExactly. Jesus, in effect, preached just what the Baptist is said\nto have preached; only without baptism. The monition to repent was\nsimply the monition of all the prophets and all the eschatologists;\nand it had not the attraction of baptism which the evangel of the\nBaptist was said to have. So that the Twelve, on the showing of\nM. Loisy, went through Jewry uttering only one familiar phrase--and\ncasting out devils--and dooming those who refused to hear them. And,\nby their own report, it was in casting out devils that they had\ntheir success. The simple name of Jesus, according to the Gospels,\navailed for that where he had never appeared in person. Yet, again,\nthe name is used by non-adherents for the same purpose (Mk. ix,\n38). And still M. Loisy confidently claims that there is no trace of\na pre-Christian Jesus cult in Palestine! [177]\n\nConcerning the nullity of the original evangel he is quite unwittingly\nexplicit when he is resisting the myth theory; albeit in the act of\ncontradicting himself:--\n\n\n    Paul, indeed, proclaims [se r\u00e9clame du] an immortal Christ, or\n    more exactly a Christ dead and re-arisen, not the Jesus preaching\n    the evangel in Galilee and at Jerusalem. But his attitude is easy\n    to explain.... He was aware of the circumstances of the death of\n    Christ, and of what was preached by his followers.... If he boasted\n    of having learned nothing from the old [sic] apostles, it was that,\n    in reality, he had never been at their school.... But he was able\n    [il lui arrive] also to affirm the conformity of his teaching\n    with theirs: that is what he did in the passage ... touching the\n    death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul converted had nothing to\n    demand of the first apostles of Jesus, because he knew already\n    what they had preached. [178]\n\n\nSo that the doctrine of an immortal or resurrected Christ was the\nsole doctrine of the Apostles. There was no other evangel. And this\ndoctrine, which had just been declared to be born of the personal\nimpression made by Jesus on his followers, is also the doctrine of\nPaul, who had never seen Jesus.\n\nThe primary evangel having thus simply disappeared, we revert to\nthe Jesuine Teaching (addressed in large part only to the disciples)\nwhich had formed among disciples and adherents such a \"religious life\"\nas served to develop the conviction that the Master could not really\ndie, and so prepared the foundation upon which Paul built historic\nChristianity. [179] We have seen how M. Loisy vacillates over the\nFounder's conception of the Kingdom of God in relation to his moral\nteaching. When it is a question of a myth theory, M. Loisy insists\nupon exactitude. \"In order that the thesis should be sustainable,\nit would be necessary that a well-defined myth should have existed in\nsome Jewish sect.\" [180] But there is no call for well-defined proofs\nor notions when it is a question of defending the tradition. For\nour critic, Jesus is first and foremost an intense believer in a\nmiraculous advent of that Kingdom which had come simply to mean \"the\nsovereignty of God.\" [181] Even this conception is of necessity vague\nto the last degree:--\n\n\n    The primitive nationalism subsisted at least in the framework\n    [cadre] and the exterior economy of the kingdom of God; it\n    maintained itself also in [jusque dans] the evangel of Jesus. At\n    the same time the kingdom of God is not a simple moral reform,\n    to safeguard the law of the celestial Sovereign and guarantee the\n    happiness of the faithful. The action of Yahweh ... governs the\n    entire universe.... [The cosmological tradition] developed the\n    idea of a definite triumph of light over darkness, of order over\n    chaos, a triumph which was to be the final victory of good over\n    evil.... The terrestrial kingdoms ... were to disappear, to give\n    place to the reign of Israel, which was the reign of the just,\n    the reign of God. In this great instauration of the divine order,\n    in this regeneration of the universe, the divine justice was to\n    manifest itself by the resurrection of all the true faithful. [182]\n\n\nThis transformation, then--the long current dream of Jewry--was to\nbe a vast miracle, and in that miracle Jesus believed he was to play\nthe part of the Messiah, the divine representative. That expectation\nsustained him till the moment of his death. [183] Nevertheless \"his\nidea of the reign of God was not a patriotic hallucination or the\ndream of an excited [exalt\u00e9] mystic. The reign of God is the reign of\njustice.\" [184] (As if the second sentence proved the first.) And yet,\nall the while: \"On the whole, the Gospel ethic is no more consistent\nthan the hope of the kingdom.... Considered in themselves, as the\nGospel makes them known to us, they are not mythic but mystic.\" [185]\n\nThus helped to a definite conception, we turn to the ethic, which we\nhave seen to be in the main a compilation from Jewish literature. This\nfact M. Loisy admits, only to deny that it has any significance:--\n\n\n    He opposes the voice of his conscience to the tradition of the\n    doctors. There lies precisely the originality of his teaching,\n    which, if one recomposed the materials piece by piece, could be\n    found scattered in the Biblical writings or in the sayings of the\n    rabbis. Like every man who speaks to men, Jesus takes his ideas\n    in the common treasure of his environment and his time; but as to\n    what he makes of it [pour le parti qu'il en tire] one does not\n    say that it proceeds from any one. This independence results,\n    probably, at once from his character and from the circumstances\n    of his education. [186]\n\n\nThus, as regards the Sermon on the Mount, the act of collecting a\nnumber of ethical precepts and maxims from the current literature and\nlore of one's people and curtly enouncing them, without development,\nis a proof of supreme moral originality, and is to be regarded as\nopposing the voice of one's conscience to tradition. Had the rabbis,\nthen, no conscience? Was their ethic a mere tradition, even when they\ngave out or originated the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount? Was\nHillel but a mouth-piece of the law? M. Loisy must in justice pardon us\nfor avowing that so far he has but duplicated a worn-out paralogism,\nand that he has evaded the plain documentary fact that the Sermon is\na literary compilation, [187] and not a discourse at all.\n\nAnd when we turn to specific teachings, his commentary does but compel\nus to ask how the teaching which he insists upon taking as genuinely\nuttered by the Teacher can be associated with the Messianist he has\nbeen describing. Accepting as genuine the story of the woman taken in\nadultery, now bracketed in the English Revised Version as being absent\nfrom the most ancient manuscripts, but presumably found in the lost\nGospel of the Hebrews, [188] he remarks that \"the elect of the kingdom\nmust not use marriage; they were to be as the angels in heaven\"; [189]\nand at the same time he describes the veto on divorce as \"a trait so\npersonal to the teaching of Christ, and so difficult to comprehend if\none denies all originality to that teaching.\" [190] That is to say,\nthe believer in the speedy end of all marriage relations, and the\nestablishment of a new and angelic life for all who survive, occupied\nhimself earnestly with the restriction or abolition of divorce!\n\nAt other junctures M. Loisy is ready to see how the doctrines of\nsections and movements in the later Christian Church were introduced\ninto the Gospels. He will not admit of such an explanation here. Does\nhe then see a supreme moral inspiration in the Montanists and\nother Christian sectaries who set their faces against the sexual\ninstinct? Has he forgotten the text in Malachi (ii, 14-16), vetoing\na heartless divorce? And has he never heard of the saying of Rabbi\nEliezer, echoed elsewhere in the Talmud, that the altar sheds tears\nover him who puts away his first wife? Is the moral originality of\nthe Gospel teaching to be established by merely ignoring all previous\nteaching to the same effect?\n\nBut it is hardly necessary thus to revert to the question of the\nethical originality of the Gospel teaching: the essential issue\nhere is the impossible combination presented to us by M. Loisy as\nhis historical Jesus. Without any sign of misgiving he offers us\nthe figure of a mystic awaiting the imminent end of the old order of\nthings and the substitution of a new and heavenly order, doubled with a\nmoralist deeply preoccupied over certain details of the vanishing life\nand a prescription for their regulation in the future in which they\nwere not to exist. M. Loisy is, indeed, liable to be censured by the\northodox and the \"liberals\" alike for his explicit avowal that \"It is\nvery superfluous to seek in the Gospel a doctrine of social economy,\nor even a program of moral conduct for individual existences which\nwere to go on according to the order of nature, in the indefinite\nsequence of humanity.\" [191] This seems to overlook the passage\n(Mt. xxv, 34-46) in which eternal life is promised to those who\nsuccour the distressed. Such a rule for conduct does seem to indicate\nsome regard for the continuance of life on the normal lines. It is,\nwe know, a simple adaptation from the ritual of the Egyptian Book of\nthe Dead, but it has had from many commentators even such praise for\n\"originality\" as M. Loisy has bestowed on the Teaching in general.\n\nSuch teaching is, in point of fact, quite undeserving of praise for\n\"spirituality,\" inasmuch as it in effect recommends benevolence as a\nway of securing eternal life. He who succours the distressed on the\nmotive so supplied is plainly a long way below the Good Samaritan or\nthe simple compassionate human being of everyday life. But this is\nreally the ground-note of all the Gospel ethic. The Beatitudes are\npromises of compensatory bliss; and, indeed, in a system which founds\nupon immortality there is no escape from this kind of motivation. The\nPagan appeal, made alternately to nobleness and to concern for good\nrepute among one's fellows, is clearly on the higher plane, and would\ntend to maintain, so far as mere moral appeal can, a nobler type of\nhuman being. It is not even clear, in the light of the general Judaism\nof the doctrine of the Kingdom, whether \"one of these my brethren\"\ncan mean more than \"one of the faith.\"\n\nBut however that may be, we have to note that for M. Loisy the\npromise of reward at the judgment for help given to the distressed\nis not a Jesuine utterance. It occurs only in Matthew; and we may\nreadily agree that, if such an allocution were really delivered by\nthe alleged Founder, it could not conceivably have been left to one\ncollector to preserve it. \"The redactor of the first Gospel,\" comments\nM. Loisy in his best critical vein, \"thought he ought to put this here\nto complete his collection of instructions concerning the parousia\nand the great judgment. It is ... a piece in which is developed,\nfrom the point of view of the last judgment, the word of the Lord:\n'He that receiveth you receiveth me.'\" So that a teaching which still\nmakes a great impression on the Christian consciousness is confessedly\nbut a development by an unknown hand of a bare Messianic phrase. \"It\nhas been visibly arranged to close the compilation of discourses and\nparables made here by the redactor of the first Gospel.\" [192]\n\nYet when we come to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which occurs\nonly in Luke, and which also cannot be conceived as being deliberately\nomitted by the previous evangelists if it had been uttered by\nthe Master, M. Loisy indulges in a very long discourse that reads\nlike a preserved sermon, only to conclude that \"the parable of the\nSamaritan thus offers itself as one of the most authentic testimonies\n[un t\u00e9moignage authentique entre tous] of the teaching of Jesus. It\nis clear that the evangelist has not invented it, but that he has\nfound it ready made, and that he has only given it a frame, in his\nfashion.\" [193] It is with a certain embarrassment over the spectacle\nof a good scholar's divagation that one proceeds to point to the\nabsolute non sequitur in M. Loisy's comment. Supposing we agree that\nthe evangelist found the parable ready made, wherein is this case\ndifferentiated from that of the passage in Matthew last noted? That\nis at least as likely to have been found ready made; yet it is not in\nthat case claimed by M. Loisy that the passage is therefore a record of\na real Jesuine utterance. He sees that it is a \"patch,\" a development.\n\nNow, the parable of the Good Samaritan is a plain documentary \"patch,\"\nan insertion without context, between the address of Jesus to the\ndisciples after that to the returned Seventy (whose mission M. Loisy\nhad somewhat nervously dismissed as the evangelist's \"figurative\nframe for the evangelizing of the pagans\" [194]) and the resumption:\n\"Now, as they went on their way....\" It is impossible to imagine a\nmore palpable insertion. First the mythic Seventy, the creation of\na Gentilizing Christian, make their report on the exact lines of the\nreport of the Twelve; then Jesus addresses them; then he \"rejoices in\nthe Holy Spirit.\" Then, \"turning to the disciples, he said privately,\nBlessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see....\" This last\nsuggests an earlier allocution to the Twelve which has had to be turned\ninto a \"private\" speech to them to distinguish it from the reply to the\nSeventy. [195] But however that may be, the natural sequel is verse 38,\n\"Now, as they went on their way....\" And it is between these points\nof natural connection that we get the parable episode beginning:\n\"And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him....\"\n\nWell may M. Loisy say that the episode is a thing \"found ready made\";\nit has certainly no place in the original document. But it was\n\"made\" by a later hand, and it was inserted either by him who made\nit or by him who \"found\" it. It is the work of a Gentilizer, aiming\nat Jewish priests and Levites, and in a less degree at the scribes,\nwhom he treats as comparatively open to instruction. It is part of\nthe Gentilizing propaganda which evolved the story of the mission of\nthe Seventy, and it is naturally inserted after that episode. But to\nadmit that to be a work of redaction and to call the parable a genuine\nJesuine utterance is only to give one more distressing illustration of\nthe common collapse of the simplest principles of documentary criticism\nunder the sway of conservative prepossession. M. Loisy retains the\nparable of the Good Samaritan as Jesuine simply because he feels\nthat to abandon it is to come near making an end of the claim for the\nmoral originality of the Gospels. It is probably from a Gentile hand,\nthough it may conceivably have come from an enlightened Jew.\n\nAnd so we find M. Loisy, with all his scholarly painstaking and his\nlaudable measure of candour, presenting us finally with an uncritical\nresult. His historical Jesus will not cohere. It is a blend of early\nJudaic eschatology with later ethical common sense, early Judaic\nhumanity and particularism with later Gentile universalism; even as\nthe Gospels are a mosaic of a dozen other diverging and conflicting\ntendencies, early and late. \"One can explain to oneself Jesus,\"\nexclaims M. Loisy; \"one cannot explain to oneself those who invented\nhim.\" [196] Let the reader judge for himself whether M. Loisy has\ngiven us any explanation; and whether, after our survey, there is\nany scientific difficulty in the conception of an imaginary personage\nproduced, like an ideal photograph resulting from a whole series of\nsuperimposed portraits, by the continued travail of generations of\nmen variously bent on picturing a Messiah for their hopes, a God for\ntheir salvation, and a Teacher for their lives.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nTHE PAULINE PROBLEM\n\n\nHow much M. Loisy is swayed by prepossession may be further gathered\nfrom his argumentation over the \"testimony of Paul\" in connection\nwith his criticism of the myth theory. Professor Drews, he remarks,\ndoes not follow those who contest the authenticity of the Epistles,\n\"though the interest of his thesis imperiously demands it\"; and again:\n\"Paul is a dangerous witness for the mythic hypothesis.\" [197]\n\nIt may be worth while for me here to note that a study of the Pauline\nepistles, on the view that \"the four\" were probably genuine in the\nmain, was a determining factor in my own resort to the mythical\nhypothesis. The critical situation created by realizing that Paul\npractically knew nothing of the Gospel narratives save the detachable\nitem of the resurrection was for me almost exactly analogous to that\ncreated by realizing that the Israel of the Book of Judges knew nothing\nof the Pentateuchal life in the wilderness. So far from being a witness\nagainst the myth theory, the Pauline literature was one of the first\nclear grounds for that theory. The school of Van Manen can realize,\nwhat M. Loisy cannot, that the spuriousness of the whole Pauline\nliterature, so far from being \"imperiously required\" by the myth\ntheory, sets up for that a certain complication. [198] As a matter of\nfact, Van Manen took exactly the converse view to that of M. Loisy:--\n\n\n    He was at bottom a man of conservative character, and it was only\n    with great reluctance that he found himself compelled to abandon\n    the Paul consecrated by tradition. But when, as a man of science,\n    he had once made this sacrifice to his convictions, his belief\n    in an historical Jesus received a fresh accession of strength;\n    now at length the existence of Jesus had become probable. If the\n    letters were written a century later than the time when Jesus\n    lived, then his deification in the Pauline letters ceases to be\n    so astonishing. [199]\n\n\nDecidedly M. Loisy had been somewhat superficial in his estimate\nof the tendencies of the argument over Paul. Now, the myth theory,\nas it happens, is neither made nor marred by any decision as to\nthe spuriousness of the Pauline letters. The crucial point is that,\nwhether early or late--and the dating of them as pseudepigrapha is a\ndifficult matter--the cardinal epistles have been interpolated. This\nbecame clear to me at an early stage in my studies, independently of\nany previous criticism. That the two passages, 1 Cor. xi, 23-28; xv,\n3-11, are interpolations, and that in the second case the interpolation\nhas been added to, are as clear results of pure documentary analysis\nas any in the whole field of the discussion. [200] And when M. Loisy\nascribes to Professor Drews an \"entirely gratuitous hypothesis of\ninterpolation,\" and implies that such hypotheses are set up because\nthe texts are \"extremely awkward for the mythic theory,\" [201] he is\nhimself misled by his parti pris. Whereas I came to my conclusions\n[202] as to interpolation while working towards the myth theory,\nexactly the same conclusions as mine, I afterwards found, had been\npreviously reached by at least one continental scholar [203] who had\nnot the mythic theory in view; and later by others [204] who equally\nstood aloof from it. M. Loisy would do well to ask himself whether\nit is not he who is uncritically swayed by his presuppositions,\nand whether the men to whom he imputes such bias are not the really\ndisinterested critics.\n\nIn regard to the text of 1 Cor. xv, 3 sq., he describes as surprising\nthe argument that the account of the appearance of Jesus to\n\"five hundred at once\" is shown to be late by its absence from the\nGospels. This very silence of the evangelists, he insists, \"renders\nunplausible [invraisemblable] the entirely gratuitous hypothesis\nof an interpolation.\" [205] One is driven to wonder what conception\nM. Loisy has formed of the manner of the compilation of the Gospels. On\nhis view, Paul had very early put in currency the record that the\nrisen Jesus had appeared to \"above five hundred brethren at once\";\nyet this record, so welcome to the Church, was never inserted in\nthe Gospels. Why not? In M. Loisy's opinion, one of them, at least,\nwas penned or redacted in the Pauline interest:--\n\n\n    One may without doubt ... affirm that the oldest of the synoptics,\n    the Gospel of Mark, was composed, in a certain measure, in favour\n    of Paul.... The same Gospel seems to have the conscious purpose\n    of lowering the Galilean disciples to the advantage of Paul and\n    his disciples. [206]\n\n\nAnd while M. Loisy justly rejects, as opposed to the internal evidence,\nthe claim that \"Luke\" is the intimate of Paul, and even denies that the\nthird Gospel is really Pauline in tendency, [207] he will hardly say\nthat it is anti-Pauline, or likely on that or any other score to repel\nan important item of testimony to the appearances of the risen Jesus,\nsupplied by such an authority as the Apostle to the Gentiles. He can\ngive no reason whatever, then, why the \"five hundred\" item should\nappear neither in Gospels nor Acts. It is in point of fact to be\ntaken as a very late interpolation indeed. And if M. Loisy, as in\nduty bound, would but note the sequence: \"then to the twelve; then\n... to above five hundred ... then to all the apostles,\" he might,\nas simple critic, see that there have been successive tamperings.\n\nAs to the genuineness and the dating of the epistles, it may be\nwell at this point to put the issue clearly. The general case of\nVan Manen is decidedly strong; and the entire absence from the Acts\nof any mention of any public epistle by Paul is all in Van Manen's\nfavour. The Epistle to the Romans is so far dissolved under criticism\nthat it might be classed as neither Pauline nor an epistle. [208]\nThat there are late literary elements in the rest of the cardinal\n\"four\" I have myself argued, [209] independently of the question of\nthe interpolations of quasi-history. For a free historical student\nthere can be no primary question of how the dating of the epistles\nwill affect the problem of the historicity of Jesus: the problem is\nto be scientifically solved on its merits. But while the school of Van\nManen fail to recognize interpolations in the epistles as they stand,\nand to revise their chronology in the light of that fact, they are\npostponing the critical settlement. That the rejection of all the\nPauline epistles as pseudepigraphic is not at all a counter stroke\nto the myth theory is shown by Mr. Whittaker's definite acceptance\nof both positions. Van Manen was premature on the historicity question.\n\nAssuredly there is much to be done before the myth theory can be\nreduced to a definitive scientific form. It is to be hoped that, free\nas it is from perverting commitments, it may be developed rather more\nrapidly than the \"liberal\" theory of the human Christ, which has been\non the stocks for over a hundred years without securing any higher\nmeasure of unanimity than exists among the Christian sects. But it\ncan have no rapid acceptance. Questions of myth analogies--always\nopen to the perverse handling of men who cannot or will not see that\nin mythology and anthropology claims of analogy are not claims of\nderivation--are apt to be obscure at best; and the establishment\nof the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus cult has been admitted\nfrom the outset to be difficult. And the sociological history of the\nrise of Christianity, to which the myth question is but preparatory,\nhas still to be written.\n\nIn this direction too there may be complications. Pastor Kalthoff's\nvery important treatise on The Rise of Christianity puts the theory\nthat the Church began as a communistic body; and Karl Kautsky, in\nhis Der Ursprung des Christenthums (1908), has vigorously developed\nthat conception. It has some strong grounds, and it is beset by very\nserious difficulties, which Kautsky, I think, has not met. When he\ndenies that there were Hellenistic experiments and propagandas which\nin a later period could have set some Christian enthusiasts upon\ninventing a communistic beginning for the Church, he seems to ignore\nhis own argument from the Epistle of James, and evidence which he could\nhave found in Kalthoff. But unless the communistic theory (adumbrated\nlong ago in De Quincey's rash thesis that the Essenes were the first\nChristians) is pressed as giving the whole origin of Christianity,\nit remains a part rather of the sociological problem than of the\nhierological inquiry. And I do not think that Kalthoff, had he lived,\nwould have so pressed it. He saw, I think, that there is a primary\nreligious factor and problem, and that the other is secondary. There\nwas a sacramental cult before there could be any communism. When the\norigin of the cult is made fairly clear the question of communism may\nbe settled. But the Acts is a very dubious basis for a historical\ntheory, and the Epistle of James tells rather of Ebionism than of\ncommunism. The history of the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, which for\nme was one of the points of reversion to a myth theory, seems to be\nthe true starting point for the history of the Church.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nTHE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION\n\n\nIn all things, finally, one must be prepared for a boundless operation\nof the spirit of controversy, which is as it were the atmosphere of\nintellectual progress, and, like the physical atmosphere, is traversed\nby much dust, many gusts, and many persistent currents. An infinite\nquantity of mere insolence and mere personal aspersion arises round\nevery problem that disturbs widespread prejudice: we have seen some\nof it even in a survey which aims solely at bringing out the main\narguments on our issue. And where a body of doctrine is related to\nan economic foundation, controversy is sure to be specially protracted.\n\nThis has already been abundantly seen in the development of the\n\"liberal\" view of the human Christ, of which M. Loisy may be taken\nas an advanced representative; while Professor Schmiedel may rank\nas an exponent too advanced to be otherwise than suspect for some\nof the school. It is instructive to realize that M. Loisy stands\nto-day very much where Strauss did eighty years ago. What was\nthen revolutionary heresy is now become a very respectable form of\nprofessional theology. Only in his old age did Strauss himself realize\nto what philosophical conclusions his critical method led; and on\nthe historicity question he seems to have made no serious advance at\nall. Challenged by Ullmann to say whether, on his theory, the Church\ncreated the Christ of the Gospels or he the Church, Strauss replied\nthat the alternative was false, and that both things had happened;\nthe Christ being created by the faith of the Church, which faith in\nturn was created by the person of the historical Jesus. From that\ngyratory position he never really departed; and that is the position\nof M. Loisy to-day.\n\nIf it has taken eighty years to yield only that amount of progress,\nthrough a whole library of laborious scholarly literature, there can\nbe no great weight left in the appeal to scholarly authority. The\nauthority of to-day is the heretic of our grandfathers' day. It is\nfor the radical innovator, on the other hand, to learn the lesson\nwhich was not duly learned by his predecessors, unless it be that\nin some cases they were merely silenced by orthodox hostility. While\nmany Freethinkers, probably, had come privately to the view of those\nintimates of Bolingbroke who are referred to by Voltaire as denying\nthe historicity of Jesus, the two writers who first gave European\nvogue to the proposition, Dupuis and Volney, staked everything on the\nastronomical elements of the cult, and on the chief myth-analogies\nwith Pagan religions. Their argument was both sound and important,\nso far as it went; but for lack of investigation on the Jewish side\nof the problem, and of the necessary analysis of the Gospels, they\nfailed to make any serious impression on the scholars, especially as so\nmany Freethinking critics, down to Reimarus and Voltaire, treated the\nhistoricity of Jesus as certain. [210] And when an anonymous German\nwriter in 1799 published a treatise on Revelation and Mythology in\nwhich, according to Strauss, he posited the whole life of Jesus as\npre-conceived in Jewish myth and speculation, he made no impression on\nan age busily and vainly occupied with the so-called \"rationalizing\"\nof myths and miracles by reducing them to natural events misunderstood.\n\nLater, another--or the same?--anonymous German, also cited by Strauss,\nin a review article condemned every attempt to find a historical basis\nfor the Gospel myths; but in both cases the anonymity sufficiently\ntold of the general resentment against any such view. And when\nStrauss himself, the first to handle the problem with an approach to\nscientific thoroughness, not only adhered to the central assumption\nof historicity, but argued confidently that the mythical dissolution\nof so many of the details made no difference to faith, it was natural\nthat interest in his undertaking should slacken. The fact that it\nhad ruined his career would perhaps count for still more. Freedom\nof academic discussion in Germany has never meant any minimizing of\npious malice; and Strauss all his life long had to bear his cross\nfor the offence of a new advance in historical science.\n\nDr. Albert Schweitzer, who for almost the first time, after Schmiedel,\nhas brought the note of amenity into the argument for historicity as\nagainst the negative, remarks that the greatest Lives of Jesus are\nthose which have been written with hate--to wit, those by Reimarus\nand Strauss. Reimarus, whom Dr. Schweitzer genially overrates,\nwas indeed given to invective against mythological personages,\nfrom Moses downward; but \"hate\" is a strange term to apply to the\ncalm and judicial procedure of Strauss. As well ascribe to hate the\nrise of Unitarianism. If hate is to be the term for Strauss's mood,\nwhat epithet is left for that of his opponents, who, as Dr. Schweitzer\nrelates, circled him with unsleeping malignity to the end, and sought\nto ostracize the clerical friend of his youth who delivered an address\nover his grave? It is only historic religion that can foster and\nsustain such hates as these. It is true that Bruno Bauer, who so\nsuddenly advanced upon Strauss's position, detecting new elements\nof mythic construction in the Gospels, and arriving ten years later\nat the definite doctrine of non-historicity, exhibited a play of\nstorm and stress in the earlier part of his inquiry. He reviled at\nthat stage, not the Jesus whose \"life\" he was investigating, but\nthe theologians who had so confounded confusion. \"These outbreaks\nof bitterness,\" Dr. Schweitzer admits, \"are to be explained by the\nfeeling of repulsion which German apologetic theology inspired in\nevery genuinely honest and thoughtful man by the methods which it\nadopted in opposing Strauss.\" [211] Add that the same methods were\nbeing employed towards Bauer, and the case is perhaps simplified.\n\nWith these cases before him, and with the record to write of a hundred\nand thirty years of admittedly abortive discussion, Dr. Schweitzer\ncould not forgo an exordium in praise of the \"German temperament\" which\nhad so wonderfully kept the discussion going. Such a record seems a\nsurprising ground for national pride; but it may be granted him that\nthe German temperament will never lack material for self-panegyric,\nwhich appears to be the breath of its nostrils. To those, however,\nfor whom science is independent of nationality, the lesson has\na somewhat different aspect. What has been lacking is scientific\nthoroughness. Bruno Bauer's flaws of mood and method were such that\nhis more radical penetration of the problem at certain points made\nno such impression as did the orderly and temperate procedure of\nStrauss. \"One might suppose that between the work of Strauss and that\nof Bauer there lay not five but fifty years--the critical work of a\nwhole generation.\" [212] \"Bauer's 'Criticism of the Gospel History'\nis worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only\nnow coming to recognize, after half a century, is the ablest and most\ncomplete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which\nis anywhere to be found.\" [213]\n\nBut his mood and his method not only made him fail to establish his\nmythical theory; they meant miscarriage in the very conception of\nit--a mere substitution of a subjective notion for the method of\ninductive science. Bauer's final way of putting the theory merely\ndiscredits it. He decides that the whole myth was the creation of\none evangelist, whereby he shows that he is no mythologist. He never\nreached the true myth basis. After all, \"the German temperament\"\nseems to fall short, at some rather essential points, of the faculty\nfor solving great historical problems; one feels it somewhat acutely\nwhen Dr. Schweitzer comes to the undertaking himself.\n\nThe great merit of Schweitzer's book is its manly and genial tone;\nthough, as this is freely bestowed on the most extreme heretics, he may\nmake another impression when he speaks of the \"inconceivable stupidity\"\nof the average Life of Jesus in the treatment of the connection of\nevents. What his book mainly demonstrates is the laborious futility\nof the age-long discussion maintained by the professional theologians\nof Germany. When he comes to the latest developments, which are but\nextensions of the common-sense analyses of Bruno Bauer, he is full\nof admiration for criticisms which, I can testify, have occurred\nspontaneously to unpretending Freethinkers with no claim to special\ntraining. Some of the most important myth elements in the Gospels--for\ninstance, the story of Barabbas--he does not even glance at, having\napparently, like the other specialists, never realized that there is\nanything there to explain.\n\nBy Dr. Schweitzer's account, the great mass of the German specialists\nfor a century past have been unable to see contradictions and\nincompatibilities in the Gospels which leap to the eyes; to himself,\nWrede's statement of some of them appears to be a revelation. It would\nseem that the simple old \"Secularist\" method of exposing these had\ncovered ground which for the specialists was wholly unexplored. Thus\nit comes about that the myth theory, addressed to men who had never\nrealized the character of their own perpetually conned documents,\nfared as it might have done if addressed to the Council of Trent.\n\nOf no myth-theories save those of Bruno Bauer and Pastor Kalthoff,\nwhich alike ignore the clues of mythology and anthropology, does\nDr. Schweitzer seem to have any knowledge. He is capable of giving\na senseless account of a book he has not seen, and, it may be,\nof one he has seen. Of Christianity and Mythology he alleges that\n\"according to that work the Christ-myth is merely a form of the\nKrishna-myth\"--a proposition which tells only of absolute ignorance\nconcerning the book. If, as I suspect, he has no better ground for\nhis account of Hennell's Inquiry as \"nothing more than Venturini's\n'Non-miraculous History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth' tricked\nout with a fantastic paraphernalia of learning,\" [214] it speaks\nill for the regular functioning of his critical conscience. But\nwhere he has to deal with concrete arguments he is straightforward,\nalert, and readily appreciative; and his survey as a whole leads\nup to a complete dismissal of the whole work of the liberal school\nso-called. In his summing-up, the only critical choice left is between\n\"complete scepticism\" and \"complete eschatology\"--that is, between\nthe avowal that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, and the\nconviction that the historical Jesus was purely and simply a Jewish\n\"hero and dreamer,\" whose entire doctrine was the advent of the\nkingdom of God, the ending of the old order, in which consummation\nhe secretly believed he was to figure as the Messiah.\n\nThe bare statement of the proposition hardly reveals its\nsignificance. Dr. Schweitzer's \"dreamer\" is not M. Loisy's, who is\nconceived as having had something to teach to his disciples, and even\nto the multitude. Dr. Schweitzer's Jesus has, indeed, disciples for\nno assignable reason, but he is expressly declared to be no Teacher,\neven as Wrede's Teacher is expressly declared to be no Messiah. The\njoint result is to leave the ground tolerably clear for the scientific\nmyth theory, of which Dr. Schweitzer has not come within sight,\nhaving omitted to inquire about it. As he sums up:--\n\n\n    Supposing that only a half--nay, only a third--of the critical\n    arguments which are common to Wrede and the \"Sketch of the Life\n    of Jesus\" [by Schweitzer] are sound, then the modern historical\n    view of the history is wholly ruined. The reader of Wrede's book\n    cannot help feeling that here no quarter is given; and any one\n    who goes carefully through the present writer's \"Sketch\" must come\n    to see that between the modern historical and the eschatological\n    life of Jesus no compromise is possible. [215]\n\n\nLet us see, then, to what the eschatological theory amounts, considered\nas a residual historical explanation.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nTHE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH THEORY\n\n\nThe issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede comes to this. Wrede sees\nthat the Messiahship is a creation following upon the belief in the\nresurrection, and only uncritically deducible from the documents. For\nhim, Jesus is a Teacher who was made into a Messiah by his followers\nafter his death, the Gospels being manipulated to conceal the fact\nthat he made no Messianic claims. Schweitzer sees that the Teaching\nJesus is a documentary construction; and that, unless the Crucified\nOne had some Messianic idea, the Gospel story as a whole crumbles to\nnothing. And he asks:--\n\n\n    But how did the appearance of the risen Jesus suddenly become for\n    them [the disciples] a proof of His Messiahship and the basis of\n    their eschatology? That Wrede fails to explain, and so makes this\n    \"event\" an \"historical\" miracle which in reality is harder to\n    believe than the supernatural event. [216]\n\n\nSo be it: Wrede's thesis is here, after all, part of the common\ncontent of the \"liberal\" ideal, which cannot stand. But how does\nhis critic make good the converse of a would-be Messiah who was\nno Teacher, but yet had disciples, and was finally crucified for\nmaking a secret Messianic claim? The answer is too na\u00efve to be\nguessed. Accepting, in defiance of every suggestion of common sense,\nthe story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Dr. Schweitzer\ndecides that \"the episode was Messianic for Jesus, but not Messianic\nfor the people.\" With no authority save the documents which at\nthis point he radically and recklessly alters, he decides that the\nmultitude had hailed Jesus \"as the Prophet, as Elias,\" whatever\nthe texts may say; and Jesus, feeling he was the Messiah, \"played\nwith his Messianic self-consciousness\" all the while. Why, then,\nwas he put to death? Simply because Judas betrayed his secret to\nthe priests! Dr. Schweitzer can see well enough the futility of the\nbetrayal story as it stands, inasmuch as Judas is paid to do what was\nnot required--identifying a well-known public figure. But rather than\nadmit myth here he will invent a better story for himself, and we get\nthis: Jesus had dropped Messianic hints to his disciples, and Judas\nsold the information. And all the while none of the other disciples\nknew this, though at the trial the priests went among the people\nand induced them \"not to agree to the Procurator's proposal. How? By\ntelling them why He was condemned; by revealing to them the Messianic\nsecret. That makes him at once from a prophet worthy of honour into\na deluded enthusiast and blasphemer.\" [217]\n\n\"In the name of the Prophet, figs!\" Dr. Schweitzer has, he believes,\nsaved the character of \"the mob of Jerusalem\" at last; and by what a\ndevice! By assuming that to claim to be the Messiah was to blaspheme,\nwhich it certainly was not; [218] and by assuming that the mob who\nhad (on Schweitzer's view) acclaimed an Elias would be struck dumb\nwith horror on being told that Elias claimed to be the Messiah. The\nsecret of this psychosis is in Dr. Schweitzer's sole possession,\nas is the explanation of the total absence of his statement from all\nthe literature produced by the generation which, on his assumption,\nknew all about the case. And this is what is left after a survey of\nthe German exegesis \"from Reimarus to Wrede.\"\n\nIt is to be feared that neither the scholars nor the laity will\naccept either of Dr. Schweitzer's alternatives, and that the nature\nof his own prestidigitatory solution may tend somewhat to weaken\nthe effect of his indictment of the kaleidoscopic process which\nhas hitherto passed as a solution among the experts. Dr. Schweitzer\nseems to realize all absurdities save his own. None the less, he has\ndone a critical service in arguing down all the rest, though even\nin his final verdict he exhibits symptoms of the \"sacred disease,\"\nthe theologian's malady of self-contradiction:--\n\n\n    The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah,\n    who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the\n    Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final\n    consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by\n    rationalism, [219] endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed\n    by modern theology in an historical garb....\n\n    He passes by our time and returns to his own....\n\n    The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by\n    rationalistic, by liberal, and by modern theology no longer exists;\n    but that does not mean that Christianity has lost its historical\n    foundation....\n\n    Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force\n    streams forth from Him and flows through our time also [220]....\n\n\n\"Loves me, loves me not,\" as the little girls say in counting the\nflower petals. We seem entitled to suggest in the interests of simple\nscience, as distinguished from Germanic Kultur, that temperament might\nperhaps usefully be left out of the debate; and that the question of\nwhat Jesus stands for may be left over till we have settled whether\nthe film presented to us by Dr. Schweitzer can stand between us and\na scientific criticism which assents to all of his verdict save the\nreservation in favour of his own thesis.\n\nMeantime, let us not seem to suggest that the English handling of\nthe historical problem during the nineteenth century has been any\nmore scientific than the German. Hennell's treatment of it was but\na simplification of Strauss's; and Thomas Scott's Life of Jesus\nwas but an honest attempt to solidify Renan. In the early part of\nthe nineteenth century little was achieved beyond the indispensable\nweakening of the reign of superstition by critical propaganda. In early\nVictorian England, where Freethought had been left to unprofessional\nfreelances, still liable to brutal prosecution, an anonymous attempt\nwas made to carry the matter further in a curious book entitled \"The\nExistence of Christ Disproved by Irresistible Evidence, in a Series\nof Letters by a German Jew.\" It bears no date, but seems to have been\npublished between 1841 and 1849, appearing serially in thirty penny\nweekly numbers, printed in Birmingham, and published in London by\nHetherington. As Hetherington, who died in 1849, was imprisoned in\n1840 for the \"blasphemous libel\" of publishing Haslam's Letters to\nthe Clergy, but not earlier or later on any similar charge, he would\nseem to have been allowed to publish this without molestation.\n\nAbout the author I have no information. He writes English fluently\nand idiomatically, and had read Strauss in the original. But though\nhe presses against Hennell the argument from the case of Apollos,\nlatterly developed by Professor W. B. Smith with such scholarly skill,\nthe book as a whole has little persuasive power. The author is one\nof the violent and vehement men who alone, in the day of persecution,\nwere likely to hazard such a thesis; and he does it with an amount of\nvociferation much in excess of his critical effort or his knowledge. It\nmade, and could make, no impression whatever on the educated world;\nand I never met any Freethinker who had seen or heard of it.\n\nIt is in another spirit, and in the light of a far greater accumulation\nof evidence than was available in the first half of the last century,\nthat the mythical theory has been restated in our day. In particular\nit proceeds upon a treasury of anthropological lore which was lacking\nto Bruno Bauer, as it was to Ghillany, who was so much better fitted\nthan Bauer to profit by such light. As knowledge of the past gradually\narranges itself into science, and the malice of religious resistance\nrecedes from point to point before the sapping process of culture,\nthe temper of the whole debate undergoes a transmutation. After a\ngeneration in which a Lyell could only in privacy avow his views as\nto the antiquity of man, came that in which Tylor, without polemic,\ncould establish an anthropological method that was to mean the\nreduction of all religious phenomena, on a new line, to the status\nof natural phenomena. And even the malice of the bigoted faithful,\nwhich will subsist while the faith endures, falls into its place as\none of these, equally with the malice of the conventional theorists\nwho meet the exposure of their untenable positions with aspersion in\ndefect of argument.\n\nBut the fact that a recent German exegete has been found capable of\nfacing the problem in a spirit of scientific candour and good temper,\nand with something of the old-time detachment which made Rosenkranz\nmarvel at Carlyle's tone towards Diderot, may be a promise of a more\ngeneral resort to civilized controversial methods. In any case, the\nfact that a trained New Testament critic, undertaking to establish\nthe historicity of Jesus, has affirmed the scientific failure of all\nthe preceding attempts, and offered a historic residuum which few will\nthink worth an hour's consideration, seems a sufficient demonstration\nthat the mythical theory is the real battleground of the future.\n\nIn that connection it is interesting to note that Sir J. G. Frazer,\nwho has so warmly contended that, as history cannot be explained\n\"without the influence of great men,\" we must accept the historicity\nof Jesus, [221] latterly propounds a tentative theory of a historic\noriginal for Osiris, whom he supposes to have been perhaps evolved\nfrom the idealized personality of an ancient King Khent, buried\nat Abydos. [222] It is a mere suggestion, and it at once evokes the\nreminder that, on the theorist's own general principles, King Khent may\nbe regarded as having been theocratically identified with the already\nexisting God. However that may be, the hypothesis does nothing to save\nSir James's irrelevant plea about the operation of \"great men\" and\n\"extraordinary minds\" in the founding of all religions, for he does\nnot suggest that King Khent's career in any way resembled the myth\nof Osiris, or that he first taught the things Osiris is said to have\ntaught. So that, in the case of Osiris as of Jesus, the required great\nmen and extraordinary minds may still, in the terms of the claim, be\ninserted at any point rather than in the personage named or suggested\nas Founder. [223] If we agree to call the compiler of the Sermon on\nthe Mount and the parables of the Kingdom and the Prodigal Son and\nthe Good Samaritan great men and extraordinary minds, Sir James's very\nsimple argument is turned. And we should still be left asking who were\nthe historic founders of the cults of Zeus and Brahma and Attis and\nAdonis, Dionysos and Herakles and Krishna and Aphrodite and Artemis.\n\nOn the other hand, as it happens, that very suggestion as to King\nKhent points afresh to the myth theory as the solution of the Gospel\nproblem. Nothing emerges oftener in Sir James's great survey than the\nancient connection between kingship and liability to sacrifice. It\nwill not avail to close off that connection by claiming King Khent as\na potentate of an age after that of sacrificed kings. The sacrificial\npast would still have to be taken into account in explaining the\ndeification of King Khent. And it is just an analogous process that\nis suggested in our theory of the Jesus myth. A long series of slain\nJesuses, ritually put to death at an annual sacrament \"for the sins\nof many,\" is the ultimate anthropological ground given for the special\ncultus out of which grew the mythical biography of the Gospels.\n\nAnd if Sir James remains satisfied with his charge that in putting\nsuch a theory we \"flatter the vanity of the vulgar,\" we may be\npermitted to ask him which line of propaganda is likeliest to appeal\nto the multitude. Let him, in his turn, be on his guard against the\nvulgarity which seeks support in science from popular prejudice. As to\nhis pronouncement that the theory which he so inexpensively attacks\n\"will find no favour with the philosophic historian,\" one must just\npoint out that it does not lie with him to draw up the conclusions of\nphilosophic history outside of his own great department, or even, for\nthat matter, in that department. His own historical generalizations,\nwhen they seek to pass from the strictly anthropological to the\nsociological status, will often really not bear the slightest critical\nanalysis. They express at times an entire failure to realize the\nnature of a historical process, offering as they do mere chance\nspeculations which patently conflict with the whole mass of the\nevidence he has himself collected. It is not an isolated opinion that\nby such abortive attempts at \"philosophic history\" he has tended to\nlessen the usefulness even of that collection, for which all students\nare his grateful debtors. In short, he would do well to turn from his\nill-timed incursion into dogmatics to the relevant problem which he\nhas forced upon so many of his readers--namely, What has become of\nhis mythological maxim that the ritual precedes the myth?\n\nWhile the professed mythologist rejects the application of the\nmyth theory to the current religion in the name of \"philosophic\nhistory,\" students ostensibly more concerned about religion reject\nthe historicity theory in the name of their religious ideals, finding\nin the myth theory the vindication of these. Thus Professor Drews has\nfrom the first connected the argument of his Das Christusmythe with\na claim to regenerate religion by freeing it from anthropomorphism;\nand I have seen other theistic pronouncements to the same effect;\nto say nothing of the declarations of scholarly Churchmen that for\nthem the Jesus of the Gospels is a God or nothing, and that for them\nthe historicity argument has no religious value. Such positions seem\nto me, equation for equation, very sufficiently to balance the bias\nof Sir James Frazer. For my own part, I am content to maintain the\ntheory in the name of science, and it is by scientific tests that I\ninvite the reader to try it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nEnough has now been said to make it clear to the open-minded reader\nthat the myth-theory is no wanton challenge to belief in a clear\nand credible historical narrative. It is not the advocates of the\nmyth-theory who have raised the issue. The trouble began with the\nattempts of the believers to solve their own difficulties. Before\nthe rise of criticism so-called we find them hating and burning\neach other in their quarrels over the meaning of their central\nsacrament. As soon as criticism began to work on the problem of the\nmiracles and the contradictions in the narratives of these, they set\nthemselves to frame \"Harmonies\" of the Gospels which only brought\ninto clearer relief their discordance. After the spread of scientific\nviews had shaken the belief in miracles, they set themselves, still as\nbelievers, to frame explanatory Lives of Jesus in which miracles were\ndissolved into hallucinations or natural episodes misunderstood; and,\nas before, no two explanations coincided. A \"consensus of scholars\"\nhas never existed.\n\nIt was after a whole generation of German scholars had laboured\nto extract a historical Jesus from the Gospel mosaic that Strauss\nproduced his powerful and sustained argument to show that most of\nthe separate episodes which they had arbitrarily striven to reduce\nto history were but operations of the mythopoeic faculty, proceeding\nupon the mass of Jewish prophecy and legend under the impulse of the\nMessianic idea. Strauss was no wanton caviller, but a great critic,\nforced to his work by the failure of a multitude of Gelehrten vom\nFach to extract a credible result from what they admitted to be,\nas it stood, a history in large part incredible.\n\nStrauss, in turn, believing at once in a residual historical Jesus and\nin the perfect sufficiency of a mere ideal personage as a standard for\nmen's lives and a basis for their churches, left but a new enigma to\nhis successors. He had stripped the nominal Founder of a mass of mythic\naccretions, but, attempting no new portrait, left him undeniably more\nshadowy than before. Later \"liberal\" criticism, tacitly accepting\nStrauss's negations, set itself anew to extract from the Gospels,\nby a process of more or less conscientious documentary analysis, the\n\"real\" Jesus whom the critics and he agreed to have existed. Renan\nundertook to do as much in his famous \"romance\"; and German critics,\nwho so characterized his work, produced for their part only much duller\nromances, devoid of Renan's wistful artistic charm. And, as before,\nevery \"biographer\" in turn demurred to the results of the others.\n\nIt is the result of the utter inadequacy of all these attempts to solve\nthe historical problem, and of the ever-growing sense of the inadequacy\nof a mere legendary construction to form a code for human life and a\nbasis for a cosmic philosophy, that independent inquirers in various\ncountries have set about finding out the real historical process of the\nrise of Christianity, dismissing the worn-out convention. Small-minded\nconservatives at once exclaim, and will doubtless go on saying, that\nthose who thus explain away the \"historical Jesus,\" are moved by their\nantipathy to Christianity, and to theism in general. The assertion\nis childishly false. One of the leading exponents of the myth-theory\ngives his theism--or pantheism--as the primary inspiration of his\nwork. The present writer, as he has more than once explained, began\nby way of writing a sociological history of the rise of Christianity\non the foundation of a historical Jesus with twelve disciples--this\nlong after coming to a completely naturalistic view of religion,\nwhich excluded theism. From such a point of view there was no \u00e0 priori\nobjection whatever to a historical Jesus. At one time he sketched a\nhypothesis of several successive Jesuses. The intangibility of any\nhistorical Jesus was the conclusion slowly forced by a long attempt\nto clear the historical starting-point, supposed to be irreducible.\n\nSince that discovery was reached, the discrediting of the conventional\nview has been carried to the verge of nihilism by men who still posit\na historical Jesus, but critically eliminate nearly every accepted\ndetail, leaving only a choice between two shadowy and elusive\nhistorical concepts, even less tenable than those they reject. In\nthe works of Schweitzer and Wrede, there is literally more direct\nand detailed destruction of Gospel-myth than had been attempted\nby almost any advocate of the myth-theory who had preceded them;\nthough, as we have seen, it is not difficult to carry the process\nfurther. In the name of the historicity claim, they have gone on\neliminating one by one myth elements where the myth-theorists had\nbeen content to recognize myth in mass. He who would re-establish\nthe historical Jesus has to combat, first and foremost, the latest\nscientific champions of the belief in the historicity.\n\nThose English critics who, like Dr. Conybeare, have declaimed so\nloudly of a consensus of critics and of historical common-sense on\nthe side of a \"historical Christ,\" are simply fulminating from the\nstandpoint of the German \"liberalism\" of thirty years ago. Nine-tenths\nof what they violently affirm has been definitely and destructively\nrejected by the latest German representatives of the critical class,\nin the very name of the defence of the historicity of Jesus. Orthodox\nGermans, on the other hand, have been pointing out that the \"liberal\"\nview is no longer \"modern,\" the really modern criticism having\nshown that the Gospel-figure is a God-figure or nothing. Vainly they\nhope to reinforce orthodoxy by the operations of a strict critical\nmethod. [224] Our English \"liberal-conservatives,\" all the while,\nare fighting with obsolete (German) weapons, and in total ignorance\nof the real course of the campaign in recent years.\n\nIn such circumstances, those of us who did our thinking for ourselves,\nwithout waiting for new German leads, have perhaps some right to appeal\nanew to readers to do the same. There is no race quarrel involved. But\nperhaps those students in the English-speaking countries who in the\npast have been wont to follow the German leads of the generation\nbefore their own, may now realize that they were unduly diffident,\nand proceed to make that use of their own faculties which Germans\nwere always making from time to time.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n\n[1] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 179, note.\n\n[2] That is, even supposing the Annals to be genuine. Professor\nW. B. Smith speaks of a contention \"of late\" that they are forged by\nPoggio Bracciolini, but refers only to the work of Ross, 1878. The\nthesis has been far more efficiently maintained in a series of works\nby Hochart (1890, etc.), which are worth Professor Smith's attention.\n\n[3] See the collection of illustrations in Mr. Joseph McCabe's Sources\nof the Morality of the Gospels (R. P. A., 1914), and his excellent\nchapter on \"The Parables of the Gospel and the Talmud.\"\n\n[4] The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ed. by R. H. Charles,\n1908, pp. lxxx, 97, 122, 213, 214.\n\n[5] Id. pp. lxxxi, 213.\n\n[6] Id. pp. xciii-xciv.\n\n[7] Id. Test. Iss. v, 2; Dan. v, 3; Iss. vii, 6.\n\n[8] Id. p. xcv.\n\n[9] Id. p. 210 sq.\n\n[10] Bain, J. S. Mill, p. 139.\n\n[11] Letter to W. S. Lilly, cited in his Claims of Christianity,\n1894, pp. 30-31.\n\n[12] Das Christenthum ... der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1853,\npp. 35-36. (Eng. trans, i, 38.)\n\n[13] Prof. Flint in \"St. Giles Lectures\" on \"The Faiths of the World,\"\n1882, p. 419.\n\n[14] J\u00e9sus et la tradition \u00e9vang\u00e9lique, 1910, p. 45.\n\n[15] It should be explained that in using, for convenience sake, the\ntraditional ascriptions of the four Gospels, I do not for a moment\nadmit that these hold good of the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of\nthe tradition. In not one case is that tradition historically valid.\n\n[16] The Rev. A. Wright (N. T. Problems, 1898, p. 15) pronounces it\n\"completely unchronological.\" Sanday acquiesces (id., p. 177).\n\n[17] Such details, imposed on an otherwise empty narrative, suggest\na pictorial basis, as does the account of the Baptist. Strauss cites\nthe Hebrew myth-precedent of the calling of Elisha from the plough\nby Elijah.\n\n[18] Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, 1905, p. 51.\n\n[19] Id. p. 47.\n\n[20] Id. p. 51.\n\n[21] Id. p. 52.\n\n[22] Note the identity of terms, euergeton in Acts (x, 38), euergetesas\nin Diodorus.\n\n[23] Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 441 sq.; Pagan Christs,\n2nd ed. pp. 229-236. A notably effective criticism is passed on the\nthesis in Prof. W. B. Smith's Ecce Deus, p. 177 sq. Mr. Sinclair,\nof course, does not dream of meeting such replies.\n\n[24] What else is signified by Acts iii, 18; xvii, 3?\n\n[25] Dr. W. B. Smith sees in the story a mere symbolizing of the\nrejection of Jesus by the Jews. This may very well be the case.\n\n[26] Dr. Flinders Petrie even infers a \"late\" reference to the\nVirgin-Birth. The Growth of the Gospels, 1910, p. 86. This Loisy\nrejects.\n\n[27] See the useful work of Mr. A. J. Jolley, The Synoptic Problem\nfor English Readers, 1893.\n\n[28] Yet B. Weiss had contended (Manual, Eng. tr. ii, 224) that Mark\nii, 24 ff., 28, \"must be taken from a larger collection of sayings in\nwhich the utterances of Jesus respecting the keeping of the Sabbath\nwere put together (Matt. xii, 2-8).\"\n\n[29] Cp. Dr. R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, 1902, p. xiv.\n\n[30] Work cited, p. 94.\n\n[31] Manual of Introd. to the N. T., Eng. tr. 1888, ii, 261.\n\n[32] Einleitung, p. 51.\n\n[33] Id. p. 49.\n\n[34] Some N. T. Problems, 1898, p. 176.\n\n[35] I have wasted a good deal of time in reading and in confuting\nthe Baconians, but only in one or two of them have I met with any\netymologies. Their doctrine had no such origin, and in no way rests\non etymologies. Not once have I seen in their books an appeal to\nanti-theological bias, and hardly ever an emendation, though there are\nplenty of \"forced parallels.\" Nor are etymologies primary elements\nin any form of the myth theory. Mr. Sinclair seems to \"unpack his\nmouth with words\" in terms of a Shakespearean formula.\n\n[36] Eng. trans. by Prof. D. M. Kay, 1902.\n\n[37] Wellhausen notably does--Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien,\n1905, pp. 39-41. Dr. R. H. Charles, who in his masterly introduction to\nthe Assumption of Moses indicates so many blunders of German scholars,\nmay be reckoned quite able to criticize Dalman in his turn.\n\n[38] Cp. Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 1909, pp. 65-66.\n\n[39] Rev. A. Wright, Some New Testament Problems, p. 212.\n\n[40] Blass, Philology of the Gospels, 1898, p. 35.\n\n[41] Die Entstehung und der Charakter unserer Evangelien, 1907, p. 9.\n\n[42] With the customary bad faith of the orthodox apologist,\nDr. Thorburn represents as a sudden change of thesis the proposition\nthat \"the Christian narrative is merely an ethical adaptation of the\nGreek story,\" because that proposition follows on the remark that the\nChristian myth \"might fairly be regarded\" [as it actually has been]\n\"as a later sophistication\" of the Buddhist myth. On this \"might\"\nthere had actually followed, in the text quoted, the statement: \"There\nare fairly decisive reasons, however, for concluding that the Christian\nstory was evolved on another line.\" This sentence Dr. Thorburn conceals\nfrom his readers. There had been no change of thesis whatever.\n\n[43] Rev. Dr. T. J. Thorburn, Jesus the Christ: Historical or\nMythical?, p. 231.\n\n[44] Dr. Thorburn appears to be wholly unaware of this fact of Jewish\ntheology. See Dr. Schechter's Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology,\n1909, ch. xv; Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, ii, 304.\n\n[45] The Nemesis of this uncritical method appears in its development\nat the hands of Dr. Conybeare: \"That Jesus was a successful exorcist\nwe need not doubt, nor that he worked innumerable faith cures\" (Myth,\nMagic, and Morals, 2nd. ed., p. 142). Such a writer \"need not doubt\"\nanything he wants to believe. In particular he \"need not doubt\"\nthat the disciples were \"successful exorcists\" also.\n\n[46] Introd. to the N. T., 3rd. ed., i, 4.\n\n[47] Work cited, p. 7.\n\n[48] Put in the Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1896, p. 964 sq.; and\nPhilology of the Gospels, 1898, pp. 41-43. Professor Blass has worked\nthis argument diligently. See his Die Entstehung und der Charakter\nunserer Evangelien, 1907, p. 24.\n\n[49] Villari, Life of Savonarola, Eng. trans. 1-vol. ed. p. 185.\n\n[50] Herbert Lucas, S.J., Fra Girolamo Savonarola, 2nd ed. 1906,\np. 116. Father Lucas does not deny that such a sermon might possibly\nhave been preached late in 1493. Cp. p. 118.\n\n[51] Life of Savonarola, as cited, p. 186.\n\n[52] Villari, p. 214.\n\n[53] See the investigation of Father Lucas, pp. 114-18.\n\n[54] I had written this, and the confutation of Villari, before\nreading the work of Father Lucas.\n\n[55] As cited, p. 189. Father Lucas comments more mildly on the\nmisstatement; but it is really a grave departure from historical truth.\n\n[56] Cp. Lucas, p. 117 note.\n\n[57] Lucas, p. 129 note.\n\n[58] This, again, he might well expect, as he avows that he had\ncorrespondents in Germany who applauded his attitude towards the\nPapacy. Villari, pp. 439, 519, 609. But Maximilian was invited\nby Sforza in the name of the Papal League, by way of forestalling\nCharles. Id. p. 458.\n\n[59] Villari, pp. 411-13. Cp. Perrens's J\u00e9rome Savonarole, 1854, ii,\n88 sq., 95 sq.; Lucas, p. 201.\n\n[60] Manifesto A tutti li Christiani; Lucas, p. 236.\n\n[61] Id. p. 256.\n\n[62] Id. p. 278.\n\n[63] Lucas, p. 70.\n\n[64] Nor are we here concerned with the question of Savonarola's\n\"sincerity.\" On that head it may be noted that Perrens the Rationalist\nand Lucas the sympathetic and moderate Catholic are very much at one.\n\n[65] Lucas, p. 69 note. Compare the references of Lucas and those of\nVillari (p. 317) for researches on the subject.\n\n[66] Cp. Perrens, as cited, ii, 94.\n\n[67] 1 Mac. i, 47, 54, 59.\n\n[68] Refs. in De Potter, L'Esprit de l'\u00c9glise, 1821, iv, 95-98.\n\n[69] Philology of the Gospels, p. 43.\n\n[70] Growth of the Gospels, p. 45.\n\n[71] Professed prophecies, that is, not political calculations.\n\n[72] The systematic deposition of ordure in the drawers of commodes in\n1870, in beds and rooms and on piles of food in 1914, is a historical\nfact. As to the sack of Rome, Cant\u00f9's account is: \"Delle bolle papali\nstabbiano i cavalli\" (Istoria degli Italiani, ed. 1876, ix, 372).\n\n[73] History of Sacrilege, 1698, p. 113.\n\n[74] Id. p. 122.\n\n[75] Zeller, L'histoire de France racont\u00e9e par les contemporains,\nvol. 21, p. 102.\n\n[76] Id. vol. 22, p. 17.\n\n[77] Sismondi-Toccagni, Storia delle repub. ital., 1852, iv, 123.\n\n[78] Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr., ed. 1892, p. 23.\n\n[79] Villari, pp. 463, 532, 554-55.\n\n[80] \"Slay all! God will know his own!\"\n\n[81] Rev. W. Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 1888, pp. 81-82.\n\n[82] Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, ed. 7i\u00e8me, iii, 234.\n\n[83] Id. ib. p. 248.\n\n[84] Id. ib. p. 416.\n\n[85] This detail, from Niketas, is also given by Gibbon, ch. lx, near\nend, and by Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, iii (1817), 154-55. Mills\nomits it. Michaud, like Cant\u00f9, stresses the point of ordure. So does\nFleury, Hist. \u00e9ccles., xvi, 149.\n\n[86] Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, The Crusades, 8th ed. p. 157.\n\n[87] Perrens, ii, 95.\n\n[88] Memoirs of Philip de Commines, Bohn trans. i, 158.\n\n[89] Hall's Chronicle, Hen. VIII, ed. 1550, fol. 112.\n\n[90] Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, p. 29.\n\n[91] Perrens, Hist. de Florence, 1434-1531, i, 385.\n\n[92] Guicciardini, lib. x, c. 4.\n\n[93] Id. xvii, 3.\n\n[94] Though in reporting the sack of Rome he makes the Germans behave\nthe more brutally as regards the cardinals.\n\n[95] Philology of the Gospels, p. 41.\n\n[96] As cited, p. 46.\n\n[97] Work cited, p. 34.\n\n[98] Id. p. 40.\n\n[99] Id. p. 38.\n\n[100] Histor. Introd. to the N. T., 4th ed. 1889, p. 111.\n\n[101] N\u00f6ldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, 1892, p. 28.\n\n[102] The Odes and Psalms of Solomon, ed. Rendel Harris, 1909,\npp. 74, 118.\n\n[103] Work cited, p. 49.\n\n[104] Bousset (The Anti-Christ Legend, Eng. tr. p. 23) \"assumes,\nwith many recent expositors, that the distinctly apocalyptic part of\nMatt. xxiv and Mark xiii is a fragment of foreign origin introduced\namid genuine utterances of the Lord. It is also evident that, compared\nwith that of Mark, the text of Matthew is the original.\" Here we have\nthe old strategy of compromise.\n\n[105] The assertion of Dr. Conybeare (Myth, Magic, and Morals,\np. 46), that the destruction of the temple was \"an event which any\nclear-sighted observer of the growing hostility between Jew and\nRoman must have foreseen,\" is characteristic of that writer's way of\ninterpreting documents. A second reading may perhaps yield him another\nimpression. Forty years of non-fulfilment is a precious proof of the\n\"must.\"\n\n[106] Muir and Weir, Life of Mohammed, ed. 1912, p. xlii.\n\n[107] Muir and Weir, as cited, p. xxvi.\n\n[108] Id. p. xxviii. Contrast the pronouncements of Palmer, Kuenen,\nand Nicholson, cited in the author's History of Freethought, 3rd\ned. i, 250.\n\n[109] Josephus, Antiq. xx, 5, \u00a7 1; Bel. Jud., vii, 11; Dio Cassius,\nlxix; Orosius, vii, 12.\n\n[110] E.g. the orthodox Ewald, Geschichte Christus' und seiner Zeit,\n3te Ausg. p. 31 note.\n\n[111] \"Stupidity\" is ascribed to him by Blass (Entstehung, p. 8),\nwho on his own principles has no right whatever to reject such a\n\"tradition.\"\n\n[112] Compare with this avowal of an orthodox scholar, Mill's\nassumption of the total absence of genius in Palestine apart from\nJesus.\n\n[113] See the collection of opinions in Dr. Charles Taylor's The\nOxyrhynchus Logia and the Apocryphal Gospels, 1899, pp. 15-19, 23,\n24, 25, 27, 39, 42, etc.\n\n[114] These logia, it should be noted, are always ascribed to\n\"Ies.\" The full name Iesous is never given, and there is no cognomen.\n\n[115] \"Many,\" says Blass (Entstehung, p. 11), may mean 3, 4, 5,\nor even more.\n\n[116] Codices A and C preface this with \"And turning to his disciples,\nhe said.\"\n\n[117] Strauss speaks of it as having been \"firmly established.\" Das\nLeben Jesu, Einl. \u00a7 9, end.\n\n[118] Some New Testament Problems, 1898, pp. 197-98.\n\n[119] Id. p. 14.\n\n[120] Id. p. 15.\n\n[121] Elsewhere (p. 200) Mr. Wright speaks of the traditions as\n\"circulated in an oral form from very early times\"; but he does not\nappear to mean this in the natural sense.\n\n[122] Id. p. 102.\n\n[123] Id. p. 213.\n\n[124] Would it? For Loisy it is stamped with Jewish exclusiveness. The\n\"dog\" merely gets a compassionate crumb.\n\n[125] Id. p. 209.\n\n[126] Id. p. 215.\n\n[127] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 388.\n\n[128] The \"Arise, let us go hence,\" at the end of ch. 14, is another\ninterpolation which has no meaning in the context.\n\n[129] Work cited, p. 209.\n\n[130] Id. p. 178.\n\n[131] Id. p. 175.\n\n[132] Id. p. 177.\n\n[133] Id. p. 176.\n\n[134] Id. p. 191.\n\n[135] Id. p. 186.\n\n[136] Id. p. 187.\n\n[137] Id. pp. 222, 223.\n\n[138] Id. p. 123.\n\n[139] J\u00e9sus et la tradition \u00e9vang\u00e9lique, 1910, pp. 9, 12, 36, 40,\n56, 57, 99, 102, 105, 113.\n\n[140] So, for instance, Wernle: \"On the basis of these oldest sources\nwe can write no biography, no so-called Life of Jesus\" (Die Quellen\ndes Lebens Jesu, 1905, p. 82).\n\n[141] Work cited, p. 56 sq.\n\n[142] Les \u00c9vangiles, i, 663 sq.\n\n[143] Encyc. Bib. as cited, col. 1,872.\n\n[144] It should be remembered that the Gospels do not specify Nazareth,\nbut speak simply of \"his own country\" (patris). Professor Burkitt,\nrecognizing the mass of difficulties in regard to Nazareth, suggests\nthat that name is a \"literary error,\" and that the patris of Jesus\nwas Chorazin (Proc. of Brit. Acad. vol. v, 1912, pp. 17-18).\n\n[145] See above, p. 147, note, as to the theory of Prof. Burkitt, that\nJesus was born at Chorazin. On that view, the unbelieving birthplace\nwas denounced.\n\n[146] Strauss, in pointing to this detail in Jewish Messianism (Das\nLeben Jesu, Abschn. III, Kap. i, \u00a7 112) abstained from stressing it on\nthe score that there are no certain traces of it before the Babylonian\nGemara, the compilation of which took place in the Christian era,\nand the book Sohar, of which the age is doubtful. Principal Drummond\n(The Jewish Messiah, 1877, p. 357) further agreed, with Gfr\u00f6rer, that\nthe doctrine of a Messiah Ben-Joseph is extremely unlikely to have\nbeen pre-Christian. The obvious answer is that it is overwhelmingly\nunlikely to have been post-Christian! But that thesis is apparently not\nnow maintained even by orthodox scholars. Bousset, who in his confused\nway suggests that the notion of a suffering and dying Messiah \"would\nseem to have been suggested by disputations with the Christians\"\n(The Anti-Christ Legend, 1896, p. 103), avows immediately that\nW\u00fcnsche traces \"a very distinct application of Zechariah xii, 10,\nto the Messiah Ben Joseph\" in the Jerusalem Talmud; and goes on to\nsuggest that the notions of the \"two witnesses\" and the two Messiahs\n\"may rest upon a common source, which, however, is still to be sought\nfurther back than Jewish tradition.\"\n\n[147] Against Celsus, vi, 36, end.\n\n[148] Protevang., ix, 1; Pseud. Matt., x, 1; xxxvii, 1 sq.; Hist. of\nJoseph the Carpenter; Thomas, 1st. Gr. form, xiii, 1 sq.; 2nd Gr. form,\nxi, 1 sq.; Lat. xi, 2 sq.; Arabic Gosp. of the Infancy, xxxviii, xxxix.\n\n[149] Karppe, Essais de critique et d'histoire de philosophie, 1902,\npp. 51-52.\n\n[150] Iren\u00e6us, Ag. Heresies, i, 26; Hippolytus, Ref. of all Heresies,\nvii, 21. See Baur, Das Christenthum, p. 174. (Eng. trans. i, 199.) The\nfact that Cerinthus is the earliest known Christian Gnostic, being\ntraditionally associated with the Apostle John (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii,\n28) goes far to support Dr. Karppe's view that Gnosticism entered\nChristianity from the Jewish side.\n\n[151] Cp. Apoc. of Baruch, xxix, 3; 4 Esdras, vii, 28; xiii, 32; John,\nvii, 27; Justin, Dial. cum Tryph., 8; and Charles's note on Apoc. of\nBaruch, as cited, giving these and other references. See also Schodde's\ned. of the Book of Enoch, pp. 47, 57; and the Rev. W. J. Deane's\nPseudepigrapha, 1891, p. 17.\n\n[152] Les \u00e9vangiles synoptiques, 1907-8, ii, 697.\n\n[153] The varying designations, certainly, point to repeated additions\nto the text. But the question arises whether the Maria he Iose or\nMaria Iose of Mk. xv, 47, may have been meant to specify \"Mary the\nwife of Joseph.\"\n\n[154] Entstehung, p. 22. Of course Harnack's method is really only\na development of Baur's.\n\n[155] Les \u00e9vangiles synoptiques, ii, 617.\n\n[156] Id. p. 618.\n\n[157] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 92.\n\n[158] Les \u00e9vangiles synoptiques, ii, 562.\n\n[159] Id. p. 570.\n\n[160] Id. p. 599.\n\n[161] Id. p. 610.\n\n[162] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 102.\n\n[163] Babl. Sanhedrin, ap. Lightfoot, cited by Strauss.\n\n[164] Compare the other Jewish declarations collected by Brandt,\nDie evangelische Geschichte, 1893, p. 150 sq.\n\n[165] In Luke the high priest is not in the story, and the chief\npriests and others take as well as try the prisoner.\n\n[166] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. pp. xviii, 2, 122;\nPagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 287, note 4.\n\n[167] Les \u00e9vangiles, ii, 624.\n\n[168] Die evangelische Geschichte, 1893, p. 88.\n\n[169] Les \u00e9vangiles, ii, 632.\n\n[170] E.g. Dalman, The Words of Jesus, p. 312; Brandt, Die evangelische\nGeschichte, p. 89; Loisy, Les \u00e9vangiles, ii, 517, note; 604, note; 633.\n\n[171] This is the one of the two stories preferred by the \"liberal\"\nschool, who dismiss the story of the two asses as a verbal\nhallucination rather than recognize a zodiacal myth. It makes no\nfinal difference. The \"ass the foal of an ass,\" in their exegesis,\nstill means an unbroken colt, an impossible steed for a procession.\n\n[172] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed., and Christianity and Mythology,\n2nd ed., per index.\n\n[173] Les \u00e9vangiles, ii, 643.\n\n[174] Nicholson, The Gospel According to the Hebrews, 1879, pp. 141-42.\n\n[175] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 114.\n\n[176] Id. pp. 117-18.\n\n[177] A propos d'histoire des religions, 1911, pp. 274-281.\n\n[178] Id. pp. 296-97.\n\n[179] Id. p. 314.\n\n[180] Id. p. 280.\n\n[181] So Dalman (The Words of Jesus, p. 94 sq.), as well as Loisy. They\nagree that \"kingdom of heaven\" was only a more reverent way of saying\nthe same thing. (J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 128.)\n\n[182] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, pp. 125-26.\n\n[183] Id. p. 105. Cp. p. 168.\n\n[184] A propos d'histoire des religions, p. 287.\n\n[185] Id. pp. 288-89.\n\n[186] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 136.\n\n[187] Schmiedel pronounces it a\n\"conglomerate.\" Encyc. Bib. art. Gospels, col. 1,886.\n\n[188] See Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 1879,\np. 52 sq.\n\n[189] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 143.\n\n[190] Id. ib. and A propos d'histoire des religions, p. 288.\n\n[191] J\u00e9sus et la tradition, p. 141.\n\n[192] Les \u00e9vangiles synoptiques, ii, 482-83.\n\n[193] Id. ii, 357.\n\n[194] Id. i, 152.\n\n[195] See above, p. 127.\n\n[196] A propos d'histoire des religions, p. 290.\n\n[197] A propos d'histoire des religions, pp. 291, 304.\n\n[198] Dr. G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga, Radical Views about the\nNew Testament, Eng. tr. 1912, p. 102.\n\n[199] Id. pp. 101-2.\n\n[200] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. pp. 341, 357.\n\n[201] A propos d'histoire des religions, p. 294.\n\n[202] First published in 1886.\n\n[203] J. W. Straatman, in Critical Studies on First Corinthians,\n1863-65, cited by Mr. Whittaker.\n\n[204] W. Seufert, Der Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Apostolates,\n1887, p. 46; Sir G. W. Cox, lect. in Religious Systems of the World,\n3rd ed. p. 242.\n\n[205] A propos d'histoire des religions, p. 295.\n\n[206] Id. p. 310.\n\n[207] Les \u00e9vangiles, i, 172, 173. Contrast the case put long ago by\nZeller, The Acts of the Apostles, Eng. tr. 1875, i, 129-30.\n\n[208] Compare, however, the elaborate essay of Prof. G. A. Deissmann,\nin his Bible Studies (Eng. tr. 1901), on \"Letters and Epistles,\" p. 48.\n\n[209] Short History of Christianity, 2nd ed. p. 4.\n\n[210] Wieland was something of a Freethinker; but when Napoleon in\nthe famous interview mooted the problem raised by Dupuis and Volney,\nWieland treated it as pure absurdity. He was then an old man.\n\n[211] The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Eng. tr. of Von Reimarus zu\nWrede), 1910, p. 153.\n\n[212] Schweitzer, p. 151.\n\n[213] Id. p. 159.\n\n[214] Work cited, p. 161.\n\n[215] Id. p. 329.\n\n[216] Id. p. 343.\n\n[217] Id. p. 395.\n\n[218] Compare Dalman, The Words of Jesus, p. 313.\n\n[219] I.e., the old German \"rationalism\" so-called, the theological\nmethod of compromise with reason.\n\n[220] Id. pp. 396-97.\n\n[221] Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed. (vols. v and vi of 3rd ed. of The\nGolden Bough) i, 312, note. See the passage discussed in Christianity\nand Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 281.\n\n[222] Adonis, Attis, Osiris, as cited, ii, 19 sq., and pref. to vol. i.\n\n[223] Compare Prof. W. B. Smith's criticism of the \"great man\" theory\nas put by Von Soden--Ecce Deus, p. 9 sq.\n\n[224] See the brochure of Prof. R. H. Gr\u00fctzmacher, Ist das liberale\nJesusbild modern? 1907.","title":"The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":59603}