III.
THE JESUS OF HISTORY.[1]
OF all the great founders of religions, Jesus is at
once the best known and the least known to the
modern scholar. From the dogmatic point of view he
is the best known, from the historic point of view he
is the least known. The Christ of dogma is in every
lineament familiar to us from early childhood; but
concerning the Jesus of history we possess but few facts
resting upon trustworthy evidence, and in order to form
a picture of him at once consistent, probable, and distinct
in its outlines, it is necessary to enter upon a long
and difficult investigation, in the course of which some
of the most delicate apparatus of modern criticism is
required. This circumstance is sufficiently singular to
require especial explanation. The case of Sakyamuni,
the founder of Buddhism, which may perhaps be cited
as parallel, is in reality wholly different. Not only did
Sakyamuni live five centuries earlier than Jesus, among
a people that have at no time possessed the art of insuring
authenticity in their records of events, and at an
era which is at best but dimly discerned through the
mists of fable and legend, but the work which he
achieved lies wholly out of the course of European history,
and it is only in recent times that his career has
presented itself to us as a problem needing to be solved.
Jesus, on the other hand, appeared in an age which is
familiarly and in many respects minutely known to us,
and among a people whose fortunes we can trace with
historic certainty for at least seven centuries previous
to his birth; while his life and achievements have probably
had a larger share in directing the entire subsequent
intellectual and moral development of Europe
than those of any other man who has ever lived. Nevertheless,
the details of his personal career are shrouded
in an obscurity almost as dense as that which envelops
the life of the remote founder of Buddhism.
This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and
paradoxical when we come to examine it more closely.
A little reflection will disclose to us several good reasons
why the historical records of the life of Jesus
should be so scanty as they are. In the first place, the
activity of Jesus was private rather than public. Confined
within exceedingly narrow limits, both of space
and of duration, it made no impression whatever upon
the politics or the literature of the time. His name
does not occur in the pages of any contemporary writer,
Roman, Greek, or Jewish. Doubtless the case would
have been wholly different, had he, like Mohammed,
lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his peculiar
position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought
him into relations with the Empire; though whether, in
such case, the success of his grand undertaking would
have been as complete as it has actually been, may well
be doubted.
Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul,
leave behind him authentic writings which might serve
to throw light upon his mental development as well as
upon the external facts of his career. Without the Koran
and the four genuine Epistles of Paul, we should be
nearly as much in the dark concerning these great men
as we now are concerning the historical Jesus. We
should be compelled to rely, in the one case, upon the
untrustworthy gossip of Mussulman chroniclers, and in
the other case upon the garbled statements of the "Acts
of the Apostles," a book written with a distinct dogmatic
purpose, sixty or seventy years after the occurrence
of the events which it professes to record.
It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by
hearsay tradition through the generation immediately
succeeding his death, have come down to us, probably
with little alteration, in the pages of the three earlier
evangelists. These are priceless data, since, as we shall
see, they are almost the only materials at our command
for forming even a partial conception of the character
of Jesus' work. Nevertheless, even here the cautious
inquirer has only too often to pause in face of the difficulty
of distinguishing the authentic utterances of the
great teacher from the later interpolations suggested by
the dogmatic necessities of the narrators. Bitterly must
the historian regret that Jesus had no philosophic
disciple, like Xenophon, to record his Memorabilia. Of
the various writings included in the New Testament,
the Apocalypse alone (and possibly the Epistle of Jude)
is from the pen of a personal acquaintance of Jesus;
and besides this, the four epistles of Paul, to the Galatians,
Corinthians, and Romans, make up the sum of the
writings from which we may expect contemporary testimony.
Yet from these we obtain absolutely nothing
of that for which we are seeking. The brief writings of
Paul are occupied exclusively with the internal significance
of Jesus' work. The epistle of Jude—if it be
really written by Jesus' brother of that name, which is
doubtful—is solely a polemic directed against the
innovations of Paul. And the Apocalypse, the work of
the fiery and imaginative disciple John, is confined to a
prophetic description of the Messiah's anticipated return,
and tells us nothing concerning the deeds of that
Messiah while on the earth.
Here we touch upon our third consideration,—the
consideration which best enables us to see why the historic
notices of Jesus are so meagre. Rightly considered,
the statement with which we opened this article
is its own explanation. The Jesus of history is so little
known just because the Christ of dogma is so well
known.
[2] Other teachers—Paul, Mohammed, Sakyamuni—
have come merely as preachers of righteousness,
speaking in the name of general principles with
which their own personalities were not directly implicated.
But Jesus, as we shall see, before the close of
his life, proclaimed himself to be something more than
a preacher of righteousness. He announced himself—
and justly, from his own point of view—as the long-expected Messiah sent by Jehovah to liberate the Jewish
race. Thus the success of his religious teachings
became at once implicated with the question of his personal
nature and character. After the sudden and violent
termination of his career, it immediately became
all-important with his followers to prove that he was
really the Messiah, and to insist upon the certainty of
his speedy return to the earth. Thus the first generation
of disciples dogmatized about him, instead of narrating
his life,—a task which to them would have
seemed of little profit. For them the all-absorbing object
of contemplation was the immediate future rather
than the immediate past. As all the earlier Christian
literature informs us, for nearly a century after the death
of Jesus, his followers lived in daily anticipation of his
triumphant return to the earth. The end of all things
being so near at hand, no attempt was made to insure
accurate and complete memoirs for the use of a posterity
which was destined, in Christian imagination,
never to arrive. The first Christians wrote but little;
even Papias, at the end of a century, preferring second-hand or third-hand oral tradition to the written gospels
which were then beginning to come into circulation.
[3]
Memoirs of the life and teachings of Jesus were called
forth by the necessity of having a written standard of
doctrine to which to appeal amid the growing differences
of opinion which disturbed the Church. Thus the
earlier gospels exhibit, though in different degrees, the
indications of a modifying, sometimes of an overruling
dogmatic purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious violation
of historic truth, but from the varied mass of
material supplied by tradition, such incidents are selected
as are fit to support the views of the writers concerning
the personality of Jesus. Accordingly, while
the early gospels throw a strong light upon the state of
Christian opinion at the dates when they were successively
composed, the information which they give concerning
Jesus himself is, for that very reason, often
vague, uncritical, and contradictory. Still more is this
true of the fourth gospel, written late in the second
century, in which historic tradition is moulded in the
interests of dogma until it becomes no longer recognizable,
and in the place of the human Messiah of the
earlier accounts, we have a semi-divine Logos or Æon,
detached from God, and incarnate for a brief season in
the likeness of man.
Not only was history subordinated to dogma by the
writers of the gospel-narratives, but in the minds of the
Fathers of the Church who assisted in determining what
writings should be considered canonical, dogmatic
prepossession went very much further than critical acumen.
Nor is this strange when we reflect that critical discrimination
in questions of literary authenticity is one
of the latest acquisitions of the cultivated human mind.
In the early ages of the Church the evidence of the
genuineness of any literary production was never weighed
critically; writings containing doctrines acceptable to
the majority of Christians were quoted as authoritative
while writings which supplied no dogmatic want were
overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal. A
striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of
the Apocalypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated
work in the New Testament collection, its millenarian
doctrines caused it to become unpopular as the
Church gradually ceased to look for the speedy return
of the Messiah, and, accordingly, as the canon assumed
a definite shape, it was placed among the "Antilegomena,"
or doubtful books, and continued to hold a precarious
position until after the time of the Protestant
Reformation. On the other hand, the fourth gospel,
which was quite unknown and probably did not exist
at the time of the Quartodeciman controversy (A. D.
168), was accepted with little hesitation, and at the
beginning of the third century is mentioned by Irenæus,
Clement, and Tertullian, as the work of the Apostle
John. To this uncritical spirit, leading to the neglect
of such books as failed to answer the dogmatic requirements
of the Church, may probably be attributed the
loss of so many of the earlier gospels. It is doubtless
for this reason that we do not possess the Aramæan
original of the "Logia" of Matthew, or the "Memorabilia"
of Mark, the companion of Peter,—two works to
which Papias (A. D. 120) alludes as containing authentic
reports of the utterances of Jesus.
These considerations will, we believe, sufficiently explain
the curious circumstance that, while we know the
Christ of dogma so intimately, we know the Jesus of
history so slightly. The literature of early Christianity
enables us to trace with tolerable completeness the
progress of opinion concerning the nature of Jesus, from
the time of Paul's early missions to the time of the Nicene
Council; but upon the actual words and deeds of
Jesus it throws a very unsteady light. The dogmatic
purpose everywhere obscures the historic basis.
This same dogmatic prepossession which has rendered
the data for a biography of Jesus so scanty and untrustworthy,
has also until comparatively recent times prevented
any unbiassed critical examination of such data
as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century
any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon
purely historical methods would have been not only
contemned as irrational, but stigmatized as impious.
And even in the eighteenth century, those writers who
had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition
were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so
unskilled in scientific methods of criticism, that they
utterly failed to comprehend the requirements of the
problem. Their aims were in the main polemic, not
historical. They thought more of overthrowing current
dogmas than of impartially examining the earliest Christian
literature with a view of eliciting its historic contents;
and, accordingly, they accomplished but little.
Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed.
Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the
eighteenth, were men far in advance of their age. They
are the fathers of modern historical criticism; and to
Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition and
incomparable sagacity, belongs the honour of initiating
that method of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tübingen School, has led to such striking and
valuable conclusions concerning, the age and character
of all the New Testament literature. But it was long
before any one could be found fit to bend the bow which
Lessing and Spinoza had wielded. A succession of able
scholars—Semler, Eichhorn, Paulus, Schleiermacher
Bretschneider, and De Wette—were required to examine,
with German patience and accuracy, the details
of the subject, and to propound various untenable
hypotheses, before such a work could be performed as that
of Strauss. The "Life of Jesus," published by Strauss
when only twenty-six years of age, is one of the monumental
works of the nineteenth century, worthy to rank,
as a historical effort, along with such books as Niebuhr's
"History of Rome," Wolf's "Prolegomena," or Bentley's
"Dissertations on Phalaris." It instantly superseded
and rendered antiquated everything which had preceded
it; nor has any work on early Christianity been written
in Germany for the past thirty years which has not
been dominated by the recollection of that marvellous
book. Nevertheless, the labours of another generation
of scholars have carried our knowledge of the New Testament
literature far beyond the point which it had
reached when Strauss first wrote. At that time the
dates of but few of the New Testament writings had
been fixed with any approach to certainty; the age and
character of the fourth gospel, the genuineness of the
Pauline epistles, even the mutual relations of the three
synoptics, were still undetermined; and, as a natural.
result of this uncertainty, the progress of dogma during
the first century was ill understood. At the present
day it is impossible to read the early work of Strauss
without being impressed with the necessity of obtaining
positive data as to the origin and dogmatic character
of the New Testament writings, before attempting to
reach any conclusions as to the probable career of Jesus.
These positive data we owe to the genius and diligence
of the Tübingen School, and, above all, to its founder,
Ferdinand Christian Baur. Beginning with the epistles
of Paul, of which he distinguished four as genuine,
Baur gradually worked his way through the entire New
Testament collection, detecting—with that inspired insight
which only unflinching diligence can impart to
original genius—the age at which each book was written,
and the circumstances which called it forth. To
give any account of Baur's detailed conclusions, or of
the method by which he reached them, would require
a volume. They are very scantily presented in Mr.
Mackay's work on the "Tübingen School and its Antecedents,"
to which we may refer the reader desirous of
further information. We can here merely say that
twenty years of energetic controversy have only served
to establish most of Baur's leading conclusions more
firmly than ever. The priority of the so-called gospel
of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of "Luke," the second
in date of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand
character of "Mark," and the unapostolic origin of the
fourth gospel, are points which may for the future be
regarded as wellnigh established by circumstantial evidence.
So with respect to the pseudo-Pauline epistles,
Baur's work was done so thoroughly that the only question
still left open for much discussion is that concerning
the date and authorship of the first and second
"Thessalonians,"—a point of quite inferior importance,
so far as our present subject is concerned. Seldom have
such vast results been achieved by the labour of a single
scholar. Seldom has any historical critic possessed such
a combination of analytic and of co-ordinating powers
as Baur. His keen criticism and his wonderful flashes
of insight exercise upon the reader a truly poetic effect
like that which is felt in contemplating the marvels of
physical discovery.
The comprehensive labours of Baur were followed up
by Zeller's able work on the "Acts of the Apostles," in
which that book was shown to have been partly founded
upon documents written by Luke, or some other companion
of Paul, and expanded and modified by a much
later writer with the purpose of covering up the traces
of the early schism between the Pauline and the Petrine
sections of the Church. Along with this, Schwegler's
work on the "Post-Apostolic Times" deserves mention
as clearing up many obscure points relating to the early
development of dogma. Finally, the "New Life of
Jesus," by Strauss, adopting and utilizing the principal
discoveries of Baur and his followers, and combining all
into one grand historical picture, worthily completes
the task which the earlier work of the same author had
inaugurated.
The reader will have noticed that, with the exception
of Spinoza, every one of the names above cited in connection
with the literary analysis and criticism of the
New Testament is the name of a German. Until within
the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost
an absolute monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism;
other countries having remained not only unfamiliar
with its methods, but even grossly ignorant of its
conspicuous results, save when some German treatise
of more than ordinary popularity has now and then
been translated. But during the past ten years France
has entered the lists; and the writings of Réville, Reuss,
Nicolas, D'Eichthal, Scherer, and Colani testify to the
rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon
her soil.
[18]
None of these books, however, has achieved such
wide-spread celebrity, or done so much toward interesting
the general public in this class of historical inquiries,
as the "Life of Jesus," by Renan. This pre-eminence
of fame is partly, but not wholly, deserved. From
a purely literary point of view, Renan's work doubtless
merits all the celebrity it has gained. Its author writes
a style such as is perhaps surpassed by that of no other
living Frenchman. It is by far the most readable book
which has ever been written concerning the life of Jesus.
And no doubt some of its popularity is due to its very
faults, which, from a critical point of view, are neither
few nor small. For Renan is certainly very faulty, as a
historical critic, when he practically ignores the extreme
meagreness of our positive knowledge of the career of
Jesus, and describes scene after scene in his life as
minutely and with as much confidence as if he had
himself been present to witness it all. Again and again
the critical reader feels prompted to ask, How do you
know all this? or why, out of two or three conflicting
accounts, do you quietly adopt some particular one, as
if its superior authority were self-evident? But in the
eye of the uncritical reader, these defects are excellences;
for it is unpleasant to be kept in ignorance
when we are seeking after definite knowledge, and it is
disheartening to read page after page of an elaborate
discussion which ends in convincing us that definite
knowledge cannot be gained.
In the thirteenth edition of the "Vie de Jésus," Renan
has corrected some of the most striking errors of the
original work, and in particular has, with praiseworthy
candour, abandoned his untenable position with regard
to the age and character of the fourth gospel. As is
well known, Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to
this gospel a historical value superior to that of the
synoptics, believing it to have been written by an eyewitness
of the events which it relates; and from this
source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his
materials. Now, if there is any one conclusion concerning
the New Testament literature which must be
regarded as incontrovertibly established by the labours
of a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the
fourth gospel was utterly unknown until about A. D. 170,
that it was written by some one who possessed very
little direct knowledge of Palestine, that its purpose was
rather to expound a dogma than to give an accurate
record of events, and that as a guide to the comprehension
of the career of Jesus it is of far less value than
the three synoptic gospels. It is impossible, in a brief
review like the present, to epitomize the evidence upon
which this conclusion rests, which may more profitably
be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayler's work on "The
Fourth Gospel," or in Davidson's "Introduction to the
New Testament." It must suffice to mention that this
gospel is not cited by Papias; that Justin, Marcion, and
Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since it
furnishes so much that is germane to their views, they
would gladly have appealed to it, had it been in existence,
when those views were as yet under discussion;
and that, finally, in the great Quartodeciman controversy,
A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but
the authority of John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction
of the view afterwards taken by this evangelist.
Still more, the assumption of Renan led at once
into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apocalypse.
The fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably
announce itself as the work of John, at least professes
to be Johannine; and it cannot for a moment be
supposed that such a book, making such claims, could
have gained currency during John's lifetime without
calling forth his indignant protest. For, in reality, no
book in the New Testament collection would so completely
have shocked the prejudices of the Johannine
party. John's own views are well known to us from
the Apocalypse. John was the most enthusiastic of
millenarians and the most narrow and rigid of Judaizers.
In his antagonism to the Pauline innovations he
went farther than Peter himself. Intense hatred of
Paul and his followers appears in several passages of
the Apocalypse, where they are stigmatized as "Nicolaitans,"
"deceivers of the people," "those who say they
are apostles and are not," "eaters of meat offered to
idols," "fornicators," "pretended Jews," "liars,"
"synagogue of Satan," etc. (Chap. II.). On the other hand,
the fourth gospel contains nothing millenarian or Judaical;
it carries Pauline universalism to a far greater
extent than Paul himself ventured to carry it, even condemning
the Jews as children of darkness, and by implication
contrasting them unfavourably with the Gentiles;
and it contains a theory of the nature of Jesus
which the Ebionitish Christians, to whom John belonged,
rejected to the last.
In his present edition Renan admits the insuperable
force of these objections, and abandons his theory of
the apostolic origin of the fourth gospel. And as this
has necessitated the omission or alteration of all such
passages as rested upon the authority of that gospel, the
book is to a considerable extent rewritten, and the
changes are such as greatly to increase its value as a
history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the author has so long
been in the habit of shaping his conceptions of the career
of Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it has become
very difficult for him to pass freely to another point
of view. He still clings to the hypothesis that there is
an element of historic tradition contained in the book,
drawn from memorial writings which had perhaps been
handed down from John, and which were inaccessible to
the synoptists. In a very interesting appendix, he collects
the evidence in favour of this hypothesis, which
indeed is not without plausibility, since there is every
reason for supposing that the gospel was written at Ephesus,
which a century before had been John's place of residence.
But even granting most of Renan's assumptions,
it must still follow that the authority of this gospel is
far inferior to that of the synoptics, and can in no case
be very confidently appealed to. The question is one
of the first importance to the historian of early Christianity.
In inquiring into the life of Jesus, the very
first thing to do is to establish firmly in the mind the
true relations of the fourth gospel to the first three.
Until this has been done, no one is competent to write
on the subject; and it is because he has done this so
imperfectly, that Renan's work is, from a critical point
of view, so imperfectly successful.
The anonymous work entitled "The Jesus of History,"
which we have placed at the head of this article,
is in every respect noteworthy as the first systematic
attempt made in England to follow in the footsteps of
German criticism in writing a life of Jesus. We know
of no good reason why the book should be published
anonymously; for as a historical essay it possesses extraordinary
merit, and does great credit not only to its
author, but to English scholarship and acumen.
[5]
It is not, indeed, a book calculated to captivate the imagination
of the reading public. Though written in a clear,
forcible, and often elegant style, it possesses no such
wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan; and
it will probably never find half a dozen readers where
the "Vie de Jésus" has found a hundred. But the success
of a book of this sort is not to be measured by its
rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation to the literary
tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but
rather by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings
to bear upon the elucidation of the many difficult and
disputed points in the subject of which it treats. Measured
by this standard, "The Jesus of History" must
rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more
light upon the career of Jesus than any work which has
ever before been written in English would be very inadequate
praise, since the English language has been
singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature.
We shall convey a more just idea of its merits
if we say that it will bear comparison with anything
which even Germany has produced, save only the works
of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.
The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken
is shown at the outset by his choice of materials.
In basing his conclusions almost exclusively upon the
statements contained in the first gospel, he is upheld
by every sound principle of criticism. The times and
places at which our three synoptic gospels were written
have been, through the labours of the Tübingen critics,
determined almost to a certainty. Of the three, "Mark"
is unquestionably the latest; with the exception of
about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from "Matthew"
and "Luke," the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies
of which it strives to neutralize in conformity
to the conciliatory disposition of the Church at Rome,
at the epoch at which this gospel was written, about
A. D. 130. The third gospel was also written at Rome,
some fifteen years earlier. In the preface, its author
describes it as a compilation from previously existing
written materials. Among these materials was certainly
the first gospel, several passages of which are adopted
word for word by the author of "Luke." Yet the narrative
varies materially from that of the first gospel in
many essential points. The arrangement of events is
less natural, and, as in the "Acts of the Apostles," by
the same author, there is apparent throughout the design
of suppressing the old discord between Paul and
the Judaizing disciples, and of representing Christianity
as essentially Pauline from the outset. How far Paul
was correct in his interpretation of the teachings of
Jesus, it is difficult to decide. It is, no doubt, possible
that the first gospel may have lent to the words of Jesus
an Ebionite colouring in some instances, and that now
and then the third gospel may present us with a truer account.
To this supremely important point we shall by
and by return. For the present it must suffice to observe
that the evidences of an overruling dogmatic purpose are
generally much more conspicuous in the third synoptist
than in the first; and that the very loose manner in
which this writer has handled his materials in the
"Acts" is not calculated to inspire us with confidence
in the historical accuracy of his gospel. The writer
who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself
could represent the apostle to the Gentiles as acting
under the direction of the disciples at Jerusalem, and
who puts Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Peter,
would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably
giving a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself.
We are therefore, as a last resort, brought back to the
first gospel, which we find to possess, as a historical
narrative, far stronger claims upon our attention than the
second and third. In all probability it had assumed
nearly its present shape before A. D. 100, its origin is
unmistakably Palestinian; it betrays comparatively few
indications of dogmatic purpose; and there are strong
reasons for believing that the speeches of Jesus recorded
in it are in substance taken from the genuine "Logia"
of Matthew mentioned by Papias, which must have
been written as early as A. D. 60-70, before the
destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, we are inclined to
agree with our author that the gospel, even in its present
shape (save only a few interpolated passages), may
have existed as early as A. D. 80, since it places the
time of Jesus' second coming immediately after the
destruction of Jerusalem; whereas the third evangelist,
who wrote forty-five years after that event, is careful to
tell us, "The end is
not immediately." Moreover, it
must have been written while the Paulo-Petrine controversy
was still raging, as is shown by the parable of
the "enemy who sowed the tares," which manifestly
refers to Paul, and also by the allusions to "false
prophets" (vii. 15), to those who say "Lord, Lord," and
who "cast out demons in the name of the Lord" (vii.
21-23), teaching men to break the commandments
(v. 17-20). There is, therefore, good reason for believing
that we have here a narrative written not much
more than fifty years after the death of Jesus, based
partly upon the written memorials of an apostle, and in
the main trustworthy, save where it relates occurrences
of a marvellous and legendary character. Such is our
author's conclusion, and in describing the career of the
Jesus of history, he relies almost exclusively upon the
statements contained in the first gospel. Let us now
after this long but inadequate introduction, give a brief
sketch of the life of Jesus, as it is to be found in our
author.
Concerning the time and place of the birth of Jesus,
we know next to nothing. According to uniform tradition,
based upon a statement of the third gospel, he was
about thirty years of age at the time when he began
teaching. The same gospel states, with elaborate precision,
that the public career of John the Baptist began
in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, or A. D. 28. In the
winter of A. D. 35-36, Pontius Pilate was recalled from
Judæa, so that the crucifixion could not have taken
place later than in the spring of 35. Thus we have
a period of about six years during which the ministry
of Jesus must have begun and ended; and if the tradition
with respect to his age be trustworthy, we shall not
be far out of the way in supposing him to have been
born somewhere between B. C. 5 and A. D. 5. He is
everywhere alluded to in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth
in Galilee, where lived also his father, mother
brothers and sisters, and where very likely he was born.
His parents' names are said to have been Joseph and
Mary. His own name is a Hellenized form of Joshua,
a name very common among the Jews. According to
the first gospel (xiii. 55), he had four brothers,—Joseph
and Simon; James, who was afterwards one of the
heads of the church at Jerusalem, and the most
formidable enemy of Paul; and Judas or Jude, who is
perhaps the author of the anti-Pauline epistle commonly
ascribed to him.
Of the early youth of Jesus, and of the circumstances
which guided his intellectual development, we know
absolutely nothing, nor have we the data requisite for
forming any plausible hypothesis. He first appears in
history about A. D. 29 or 30, in connection with a very
remarkable person whom the third evangelist describes
as his cousin, and who seems, from his mode of life, to
have been in some way connected with or influenced by
the Hellenizing sect of Essenes. Here we obtain our
first clew to guide us in forming a consecutive theory
of the development of Jesus' opinions. The sect of Essenes
took its rise in the time of the Maccabees, about
B. C. 170. Upon the fundamental doctrines of Judaism
it had engrafted many Pythagorean notions, and was
doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in spreading
Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, where Judaism
was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem.
The Essenes attached but little importance to
the Messianic expectations of the Pharisees, and mingled
scarcely at all in national politics. They lived for
the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the
legitimate predecessors of the early Christian hermits
and monks. But while pre-eminent for sanctity of life,
they heaped ridicule upon the entire sacrificial service
of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as hypocrites, and
insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old
Jewish exclusiveness.
It was once a favourite theory that both John the
Baptist and Jesus were members of the Essenian brotherhood;
but that theory is now generally abandoned.
Whatever may have been the case with John, who is
said to have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there
seems to have been but little practical Essenism in
Jesus, who is almost uniformly represented as cheerful
and social in demeanour, and against whom it was expressly
urged that he came eating and drinking, making
no presence of puritanical holiness. He was neither a
puritan, like the Essenes, nor a ritualist, like the
Pharisees. Besides which, both John and Jesus seem to
have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene
doctrine of the speedy advent of the "kingdom of
heaven," by which is meant the reign of the Messiah
upon the earth. Nevertheless, though we cannot regard
Jesus as actually a member of the Essenian community
or sect, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that he, as
well as John the Baptist, had been at some time strongly
influenced by Essenian doctrines. The spiritualized
conception of the "kingdom of heaven" proclaimed by
him was just what would naturally and logically arise
from a remodelling of the Messianic theories of the
Pharisees in conformity to advanced Essenian notions.
It seems highly probable that some such refined conception
of the functions of the Messiah was reached by
John, who, stigmatizing the Pharisees and Sadducees as
a "generation of vipers," called aloud to the people to
repent of their sins, in view of the speedy advent of the
Messiah, and to testify to their repentance by submitting
to the Essenian rite of baptism. There is no positive
evidence that Jesus was ever a disciple of John; yet
the account of the baptism, in spite of the legendary
character of its details, seems to rest upon a historical
basis; and perhaps the most plausible hypothesis which
can be framed is, that Jesus received baptism at John's
hands, became for a while his disciple, and acquired
from him a knowledge of Essenian doctrines.
The career of John seems to have been very brief.
His stern puritanism brought him soon into disgrace
with the government of Galilee. He was seized by
Herod, thrown into prison, and beheaded. After the
brief hints given as to the intercourse between Jesus
and John, we next hear of Jesus alone in the desert,
where, like Sakyamuni and Mohammed, he may have
brooded in solitude over his great project. Yet we do
not find that he had as yet formed any distinct conception
of his own Messiahship. The total neglect of chronology
by our authorities
[6]
renders it impossible to trace
the development of his thoughts step by step; but for
some time after John's catastrophe we find him calling
upon the people to repent, in view of the speedy approach
of the Messiah, speaking with great and commanding
personal authority, but using no language which
would indicate that he was striving to do more than worthily
fill the place and add to the good work of his late
master. The Sermon on the Mount, which the first gospel
inserts in this place, was perhaps never spoken as a
continuous discourse; but it no doubt for the most part
contains the very words of Jesus, and represents the
general spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion
of his career. In this is contained nearly all that has
made Christianity so powerful in the domain of ethics.
If all the rest of the gospel were taken away, or destroyed
in the night of some future barbarian invasion,
we should still here possess the secret of the wonderful
impression which Jesus made upon those who heard
him speak. Added to the Essenian scorn of Pharisaic
formalism, and the spiritualized conception of the Messianic
kingdom, which Jesus may probably have shared
with John the Baptist, we have here for the first time
the distinctively Christian conception of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of men, which ultimately
insured the success of the new religion. The special
point of originality in Jesus was his conception of Deity.
As Strauss well says, "He conceived of God, in a moral
point of view, as being identical in character with himself
in the most exalted moments of his religious life,
and strengthened in turn his own religious life by this
ideal. But the most exalted religious tendency in his
own consciousness was exactly that comprehensive
love, overpowering the evil only by the good, which he
therefore transferred to God as the fundamental tendency
of His nature." From this conception of God,
observes Zeller, flowed naturally all the moral teaching
of Jesus, the insistence upon spiritual righteousness
instead of the mere mechanical observance of Mosaic
precepts, the call to be perfect even as the Father is
perfect, the principle of the spiritual equality of men
before God, and the equal duties of all men toward
each other.
How far, in addition to these vitally important lessons,
Jesus may have taught doctrines of an ephemeral
or visionary character, it is very difficult to decide. We
are inclined to regard the third gospel as of some importance
in settling this point. The author of that gospel
represents Jesus as decidedly hostile to the rich.
Where Matthew has "Blessed are the poor in spirit,"
Luke has "Blessed are ye poor." In the first gospel we
read, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they will be filled"; but in the third
gospel we find, "Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye
will be filled"; and this assurance is immediately followed
by the denunciation, "Woe to you that are rich,
for ye have received your consolation! Woe to you
that are full now, for ye will hunger." The parable of
Dives and Lazarus illustrates concretely this view of
the case, which is still further corroborated by the
account, given in both the first and the third gospels,
of the young man who came to seek everlasting life.
Jesus here maintains that righteousness is insufficient
unless voluntary poverty be superadded. Though the
young man has strictly fulfilled the greatest of the
commandments,—to love his neighbour as himself,—he is
required, as a needful proof of his sincerity, to distribute
all his vast possessions among the poor. And when he
naturally manifests a reluctance to perform so superfluous
a sacrifice, Jesus observes that it will be easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to share in the glories of the anticipated Messianic
kingdom. It is difficult to escape the conclusion
that we have here a very primitive and probably authentic
tradition; and when we remember the importance
which, according to the "Acts," the earliest disciples
attached to the principle of communism, as illustrated
in the legend of Ananias and Sapphira, we must admit
strong reasons for believing that Jesus himself held
views which tended toward the abolition of private
property. On this point, the testimony of the third
evangelist singly is of considerable weight; since at the
time when he wrote, the communistic theories of the
first generation of Christians had been generally abandoned,
and in the absence of any dogmatic motives, he
could only have inserted these particular traditions
because he believed them to possess historical value.
But we are not dependent on the third gospel alone.
The story just cited is attested by both our authorities,
and is in perfect keeping with the general views of
Jesus as reported by the first evangelist. Thus his disciples
are enjoined to leave all, and follow him; to take
no thought for the morrow; to think no more of laying
up treasures on the earth, for in the Messianic kingdom
they shall have treasures in abundance, which can
neither be wasted nor stolen. On making their journeys,
they are to provide neither money, nor clothes,
nor food, but are to live at the expense of those whom
they visit; and if any town refuse to harbour them, the
Messiah, on his arrival, will deal with that town more
severely than Jehovah dealt with the cities of the plain.
Indeed, since the end of the world was to come before
the end of the generation then living (Matt. xxiv. 34;
1 Cor. xv. 51-56, vii. 29), there could be no need for
acquiring property or making arrangements for the future;
even marriage became unnecessary. These teachings
of Jesus have a marked Essenian character, as well
as his declaration that in the Messianic kingdom there
was to be no more marriage, perhaps no distinction of
sex (Matt. xxii. 30). The sect of Ebionites, who represented
the earliest doctrine and practice of Christianity
before it had been modified by Paul, differed from the
Essenes in no essential respect save in the acknowledgment
of Jesus as the Messiah, and the expectation of
his speedy return to the earth.
How long, or with what success, Jesus continued to
preach the coming of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible
to conjecture. His fellow-townsmen of Nazareth
appear to have ridiculed him in his prophetical
capacity; or, if we may trust the third evangelist, to
have arisen against him with indignation, and made an
attempt upon his life. To them he was but a carpenter,
the son of a carpenter (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3), who
told them disagreeable truths. Our author represents
his teaching in Galilee to have produced but little result,
but the gospel narratives afford no definite data for
deciding this point. We believe the most probable conclusion
to be that Jesus did attract many followers, and
became famous throughout Galilee; for Herod is said
to have regarded him as John the Baptist risen from
the grave. To escape the malice of Herod, Jesus then
retired to Syro-Phœnicia, and during this eventful journey
the consciousness of his own Messiahship seems
for the first time to have distinctly dawned upon him
(Matt. xiv. 1, 13; xv. 21; xvi. 13-20). Already, it
appears, speculations were rife as to the character of this
wonderful preacher. Some thought he was John the
Baptist, or perhaps one of the prophets of the Assyrian
period returned to the earth. Some, in accordance with
a generally-received tradition, supposed him to be Elijah,
who had never seen death, and had now at last returned
from the regions above the firmament to announce the
coming of the Messiah in the clouds. It was generally
admitted, among enthusiastic hearers, that he who spake
as never man spake before must have some divine commission
to execute. These speculations, coming to the
ears of Jesus during his preaching in Galilee, could not
fail to excite in him a train of self-conscious reflections.
To him also must have been presented the query as to
his own proper character and functions; and, as our
author acutely demonstrates, his only choice lay between
a profitless life of exile in Syro-Phœnicia, and a bold
return to Jewish territory in some pronounced character.
The problem being thus propounded, there could hardly
be a doubt as to what that character should be. Jesus
knew well that he was not John the Baptist; nor, however
completely he may have been dominated by his
sublime enthusiasm, was it likely that he could mistake
himself for an ancient prophet arisen from the lower
world of shades, or for Elijah descended from the sky.
But the Messiah himself he might well be. Such indeed
was the almost inevitable corollary from his own
conception of Messiahship. We have seen that he had,
probably from the very outset, discarded the traditional
notion of a political Messiah, and recognized the truth
that the happiness of a people lies not so much in political
autonomy as in the love of God and the sincere practice
of righteousness. The people were to be freed from
the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of consecrated
hypocrisy,—a bondage more degrading than the
payment of tribute to the emperor. The true business
of the Messiah, then, was to deliver his people from the
former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah, in his own
good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding
these views, it was hardly possible that it should not
sooner or later occur to Jesus that he himself was the
person destined to discharge this glorious function, to
liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of Pharisaic
ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom
of spiritual righteousness. Had he not already
preached the advent of this spiritual kingdom, and been
instrumental in raising many to loftier conceptions of
duty, and to a higher and purer life? And might he not
now, by a grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central
stronghold, destroy its prestige in the eyes of the people,
and cause Israel to adopt a nobler religious and ethical
doctrine? The temerity of such a purpose detracts
nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should
be accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the
legitimate work of the Messiah. Thus, from his own
point of view, Jesus was thoroughly consistent and
rational in announcing himself as the expected Deliverer;
and in the eyes of the impartial historian his
course is fully justified.
"From that time," says the first evangelist, "Jesus
began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem,
and suffer many things from the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be put to death, and rise again
on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge
of the writer, after the event, reflected back and
attributed to Jesus. It is of course impossible that
Jesus should have predicted with such definiteness his
approaching death; nor is it very likely that he entertained
any hope of being raised from the grave "on the
third day." To a man in that age and country, the conception
of a return from the lower world of shades was
not a difficult one to frame; and it may well be that
Jesus' sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently
great to inspire him with the confidence that, even in
case of temporary failure, Jehovah would rescue him
from the grave and send him back with larger powers
to carry out the purpose of his mission. But the difficulty
of distinguishing between his own words and the
interpretation put upon them by his disciples becomes
here insuperable; and there will always be room for
the hypothesis that Jesus had in view no posthumous
career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken confidence
in the success of his enterprise, even after and
in spite of his death.
At all events, the possibility of his death must now
have been often in his mind. He was undertaking a
wellnigh desperate task,—to overthrow the Pharisees
in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was left him.
And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly
at fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus
upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt. According to Mr.
Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain
death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do
so.
[7] But such "glittering generalizations" will here
help us but little. The historic data show that to go to
Jerusalem, even at the risk of death, was absolutely
necessary to the realization of Jesus' Messianic project.
Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag
out an inglorious and baffled existence in Syro-Phœnicia.
If the Messianic kingdom was to be fairly inaugurated,
there was work to be done in Jerusalem, and
Jesus must go there as one in authority, cost what it
might. We believe him to have gone there in a spirit
of grand and careless bravery, yet seriously and soberly,
and under the influence of no fanatical delusion. He
knew the risks, but deliberately chose to incur them,
that the will of Jehovah might be accomplished.
We next hear of Jesus travelling down to Jerusalem
by way of Jericho, and entering the sacred city in his
character of Messiah, attended by a great multitude.
It was near the time of the Passover, when people from
all parts of Galilee and Judæa were sure to be at Jerusalem,
and the nature of his reception seems to indicate
that he had already secured a considerable number of
followers upon whose assistance he might hope to rely,
though it nowhere appears that he intended to use
other than purely moral weapons to insure a favourable
reception. We must remember that for half a century
many of the Jewish people had been constantly looking
for the arrival of the Messiah, and there can be little
doubt that the entry of Jesus riding upon an ass in literal
fulfilment of prophecy must have wrought powerfully
upon the imagination of the multitude. That the
believers in him were very numerous must be inferred
from the cautious, not to say timid, behaviour of the
rulers at Jerusalem, who are represented as desiring to
arrest him, but as deterred from taking active steps
through fear of the people. We are led to the same
conclusion by his driving the money-changers out of
the Temple; an act upon which he could hardly have
ventured, had not the popular enthusiasm in his favour
been for the moment overwhelming. But the enthusiasm
of a mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon
the excitement of brilliant and dramatically arranged
events. The calm preacher of righteousness, or even
the fiery denouncer of the scribes and Pharisees, could
not hope to retain undiminished authority save by the
display of extraordinary powers to which, so far as
we know, Jesus (like Mohammed) made no presence
(Matt. xvi. 1-4). The ignorant and materialistic populace
could not understand the exalted conception of
Messiahship which had been formed by Jesus, and as
day after day elapsed without the appearance of any
marvellous sign from Jehovah, their enthusiasm must
naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear
cautiously endeavouring to entrap him into admissions
which might render him obnoxious to the Roman
governor. He saw through their design, however, and
foiled them by the magnificent repartee, "Render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the
things that are God's." Nothing could more forcibly
illustrate the completely non-political character of his
Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are told that,
failing in this attempt, the chief priests suborned false
witnesses to testify against him: this Sabbath-breaker,
this derider of Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic
pretensions excited the people against their hereditary
teachers, must at all events be put out of the way.
Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often
had in store for the reformer; the fate which Sokrates
and Savonarola, Vanini and Bruno, have suffered for
being wiser than their own generation. Messianic
adventurers had already given much trouble to the Roman
authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically
the peculiar claims of Jesus. And when the chief
priests accused him before Pilate of professing to be
"King of the Jews," this claim could in Roman apprehension
bear but one interpretation. The offence was
treason, punishable, save in the case of Roman citizens,
by crucifixion.
Such in its main outlines is the historic career of
Jesus, as constructed by our author from data furnished
chiefly by the first gospel. Connected with the narrative
there are many interesting topics of discussion, of
which our rapidly diminishing space will allow us to
select only one for comment. That one is perhaps the
most important of all, namely, the question as to how
far Jesus anticipated the views of Paul in admitting
Gentiles to share in the privileges of the Messianic
kingdom. Our author argues, with much force, that
the designs of Jesus were entirely confined to the Jewish
people, and that it was Paul who first, by admitting
Gentiles to the Christian fold without requiring them
to live like Jews, gave to Christianity the character of
a universal religion. Our author reminds us that the
third gospel is not to be depended upon in determining
this point, since it manifestly puts Pauline sentiments
into the mouth of Jesus, and in particular attributes to
Jesus an acquaintance with heretical Samaria which the
first gospel disclaims. He argues that the apostles were
in every respect Jews, save in their belief that Jesus
was the Messiah; and he pertinently asks, if James,
who was the brother of Jesus, and Peter and John, who
were his nearest friends, unanimously opposed Paul and
stigmatized him as a liar and heretic, is it at all likely
that Jesus had ever distinctly sanctioned such views as
Paul maintained?
In the course of many years' reflection upon this point,
we have several times been inclined to accept the narrow
interpretation of Jesus' teaching here indicated;
yet, on the whole, we do not believe it can ever be conclusively
established. In the first place it must be remembered
that if the third gospel throws a Pauline
colouring over the events which it describes, the first
gospel also shows a decidedly anti-Pauline bias, and the
one party was as likely as the other to attribute its own
views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this
tendency has been pointed out by Strauss, who has
shown that the verses Matt. v. 17-20 are an interpolation.
The person who teaches men to break the commandments
is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish
a text against Paul's followers, the "Nicolaitans," Jesus
is made to declare that he came not to destroy one tittle
of the law, but to fulfil the whole in every particular.
Such an utterance is in manifest contradiction to the
spirit of Jesus' teaching, as shown in the very same
chapter, and throughout a great part of the same gospel.
He who taught in his own name and not as the scribes,
who proclaimed himself Lord over the Sabbath, and
who manifested from first to last a more than Essenian
contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil
the law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can
any inference adverse to this conclusion be drawn from
the injunction to the disciples (Matt. x. 5-7) not to
preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only "to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel"; for this remark is
placed before the beginning of Jesus' Messianic career,
and the reason assigned for the restriction is merely
that the disciples will not have time even to preach to
all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose
approach Jesus was announcing (Matt. x. 23)
These examples show that we must use caution in
weighing the testimony even of the first gospel, and
must not too hastily cite it as proof that Jesus supposed
his mission to be restricted to the Jews. When we
come to consider what happened a few years after the
death of Jesus, we shall be still less ready to insist upon
the view defended by our anonymous author. Paul,
according to his own confession, persecuted the Christians
unto death. Now what, in the theories or in the
practice of the Jewish disciples of Jesus, could have
moved Paul to such fanatic behaviour? Certainly not
their spiritual interpretation of Mosaism, for Paul himself
belonged to the liberal school of Gamaliel, to the
views of which the teachings and practices of Peter,
James, and John might easily be accommodated. Probably
not their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, for at the
riot in which Stephen was murdered and all the Hellenist
disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disciples
were allowed to remain in the city unmolested.
(See Acts viii. 1, 14.) This marked difference of treatment
indicates that Paul regarded Stephen and his
friends as decidedly more heretical and obnoxious than
Peter, James, and John, whom, indeed, Paul's own master
Gamaliel had recently (Acts v. 34) defended before
the council. And this inference is fully confirmed by
the account of Stephen's death, where his murderers
charge him with maintaining that Jesus had founded a
new religion which was destined entirely to supersede
and replace Judaism (Acts vi. 14). The Petrine disciples
never held this view of the mission of Jesus; and
to this difference it is undoubtedly owing that Paul and
his companions forbore to disturb them. It would thus
appear that even previous to Paul's conversion, within
five or six years after the death of Jesus, there was a
prominent party among the disciples which held that the
new religion was not a modification but an abrogation
of Judaism; and their name "Hellenists" sufficiently
shows either that there were Gentiles among them or
that they held fellowship with Gentiles. It was this
which aroused Paul to persecution, and upon his sudden
conversion it was with these Hellenistic doctrines
that he fraternized, taking little heed of the Petrine
disciples (Galatians i. 17), who were hardly more than a
Jewish sect.
Now the existence of these Hellenists at Jerusalem
so soon after the death of Jesus is clear proof that he
had never distinctly and irrevocably pronounced against
the admission of Gentiles to the Messianic kingdom,
and it makes it very probable that the downfall of
Mosaism as a result of his preaching was by no means
unpremeditated. While, on the other hand, the obstinacy
of the Petrine party in adhering to Jewish customs
shows equally that Jesus could not have unequivocally
committed himself in favour of a new gospel for
the Gentiles. Probably Jesus was seldom brought into
direct contact with others than Jews, so that the questions
concerning the admission of Gentile converts did
not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was
left open for the controversy which soon broke out
between the Petrine party and Paul. Nevertheless,
though Jesus may never have definitely pronounced
upon this point, it will hardly be denied that his teaching,
even as reported in the first gospel, is in its utter
condemnation of formalism far more closely allied to
the Pauline than to the Petrine doctrines. In his hands
Mosaism became spiritualized until it really lost its
identity, and was transformed into a code fit for the
whole Roman world. And we do not doubt that if any
one had asked Jesus whether circumcision were an
essential prerequisite for admission to the Messianic
kingdom, he would have given the same answer which
Paul afterwards gave. We agree with Zeller and Strauss
that, "as Luther was a more liberal spirit than the Lutheran
divines of the succeeding generation, and Sokrates
a more profound thinker than Xenophon or Antisthenes,
so also Jesus must be credited with having raised himself
far higher above the narrow prejudices of his nation
than those of his disciples who could scarcely understand
the spread of Christianity among the heathen
when it had become an accomplished fact."
January, 1870.
[[1]]
The Jesus of History. Anonymous. 8vo. pp. 426. London: Williams & Norgate, 1869.
Vie de Jésus, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1867. (Thirteenth edition, revised and partly rewritten.)
In republishing this and the following article on "The Christ of
Dogma," I am aware that they do but scanty justice to their very interesting subjects. So much ground is covered that it would be
impossible to treat it satisfactorily in a pair of review-articles; and in particular the views adopted with regard to the New Testament literature
are rather indicated than justified. These defects I hope to remedy in a future work on "Jesus of Nazareth, and the Founding of Christianity,"
for which the present articles must be regarded as furnishing only a few introductory hints. This work has been for several years on my mind,
but as it may still be long before I can find the leisure needful for writing it out, it seemed best to republish these preliminary sketches
which have been some time out of print. The projected work, however, while covering all the points here treated, will have a much wider
scope, dealing on the one hand with the natural genesis of the complex aggregate of beliefs and aspirations known as Christianity, and on the
other hand with the metamorphoses which are being wrought in this aggregate by modern knowledge and modern theories of the world.
The views adopted in the present essay as to the date of the Synoptic
Gospels may seem over-conservative to those who accept the ably-argued
conclusions of "Supernatural Religion." Quite possibly in a more
detailed discussion these briefly-indicated data may require revision; but
for the present it seems best to let the article stand as it was written.
The author of "Supernatural Religion" would no doubt admit that,
even if the synoptic gospels had not assumed their present form before
the end of the second century, nevertheless the body of tradition contained
in them had been committed to writing very early in that century.
So much appears to be proved by the very variations of text
upon which his argument relies. And if this be granted, the value of
the synoptics as historical evidence is not materially
altered. With their value as testimony to so-called supernatural events,
the present essay is in no way concerned.
[[2]]
"Wer einmal vergöttert worden ist, der hat seine Menschheit
unwiederbringlich eingebüsst."—Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube,
p. 76.
[[3] "Roger was the attendant of Thomas [Becket]]
during his sojourn
at Pontigny. We might have expected him to be very full on that part
of his history; but, writing doubtless mainly for the monks of Pontigny,
he says that he will not enlarge upon what every one knows,
and cuts
that part very short."—Freeman, Historical Essays, 1st series, p. 90.
[[4]]
But now, in annexing Alsace, Germany has "annexed" pretty
much the whole of this department of French scholarship,—a curious
incidental consequence of the late war.
[[5]]
"The Jesus of History" is now known to have been written by Sir
Richard Hanson, Chief Justice of South Australia.
[[6] "The biographers [of Becket]]
are commonly rather careless as to
the order of time. Each .... recorded what struck him most or
what he best knew, one set down one event and another another; and
none of them paid much regard to the order of details."—Freeman,
Historical Essays, 1st series, p. 94.
[[7]]
Phases of Faith, pp. 158-164.