24 chapters
9 hour read
Selected Chapters
24 chapters
PREAMBLE
PREAMBLE
The problem of the historicity of the Jesus of the Gospels has been discussed by me in large sections of two bulky books, which in other sections deal with matters only indirectly connected with this, while even the sections directly devoted to the problem cover a good deal of mythological and anthropological ground which not many readers may care to master. The “myth theory” developed in them, therefore, may not be readily grasped even by open-minded readers; and the champions of tradition, of
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE HISTORICAL JESUS Chapter I THE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION
THE HISTORICAL JESUS Chapter I THE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION
No false belief from which men have been delivered since the day of Copernicus has been dismissed without strenuous resistance from men of learning, and even from men of vigorous capacity. The belief in witchcraft was championed by Bodin, one of the most powerful minds of his day; Glanvill, who sought to maintain it in England after the Restoration, was a man of philosophical culture and a member of the Royal Society; and he had the countenance of the Platonist Henry More and the chemist Boyle.
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter II MODES OF CONSERVATIVE FALLACY
Chapter II MODES OF CONSERVATIVE FALLACY
The plain truth would seem to be that Canon Inge has formed for himself no tenable critical position. He has merely reiterated the fallacy of Mill, who in his Three Essays on Religion (pp. 253–54) wrote:— Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter III ILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC
Chapter III ILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC
I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Think not that I come to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.... He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you [Chorazin and Bethsaida; because of non-acceptance of the teacher].... It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter IV THE METHOD OF BLUSTER
Chapter IV THE METHOD OF BLUSTER
The open-minded reader, I trust, will hardly need to be told that what is here done is to set a false problem and ignore the real issue. Mr. Sinclair either cannot understand that issue or elects to evade it. Probably the former is the explanation. No critic of the Gospels, so far as I remember, ever suggested that any of them “cunningly counterfeits life”; and certainly no one ever pretended that Mark 2 exhibits a “conventional, symmetrical design,” though Wilke argued that it “freely moulded t
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter V SCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH
Chapter V SCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH
It is thus ostensibly quite expedient to substitute for the simple thesis of “vividness” in regard to the second Gospel the quite different argument that some of the details exclude the notion that “the author” regarded Jesus as a supernatural person. But this thesis instantly involves the defence in fresh trouble, besides breaking down utterly on its own merits. In the early chapters of Mark, Jesus is emphatically presented as a supernormal person—the deity’s “beloved Son,” “the Holy One of God
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VI THE VISIONARY EVANGEL
Chapter VI THE VISIONARY EVANGEL
And this is history, or what the early Christian leaders thought fit to put in place of history, for Christian edification. The disciples, be it observed, had exorcized in the name of Jesus where Jesus had never been, a detail accepted by the faithful unsuspectingly, and temporized over no less unsuspectingly by the “liberal” school, but serving for the critical student to raise the question: Was there, then, an older cult of a Jesus-God in Palestine? Leaving that problem for the present, we can
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VII THE ALLEGED CONSENSUS OF SCHOLARS
Chapter VII THE ALLEGED CONSENSUS OF SCHOLARS
Let us take first the case of a real scholar in the strictest sense of the term, Professor Gustaf Dalman, of Leipzig, author of “ The Words of Jesus , considered in the light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings and the Aramaic Language.” 2 To me, Professor Dalman appears to be an expert of high competence, alike in Hebrew and Aramaic—a double qualification possessed by very few of those to whose “verdict” we are told to bow. By his account few previous experts in the same field have escaped bad mis
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VIII CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS
Chapter VIII CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS
By way of constructive solution of the problem we have from the apologist this:— If a conjecture may be hazarded here, we should be inclined to say that the Christian narrative largely presents, in picturesque and symbolic form, the subjective experiences and doubts of Jesus— whether these were of internal origin merely, or were suggested externally by some malignant spiritual being—as to His capacities and power for the great work which He had undertaken. The thoroughly orthodox, it would appea
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter IX BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE
Chapter IX BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE
Let us premise that scientific criticism, which has no concern with Unitarian predilections, stands quite impartially towards the question of Gospel dates. The modern tendency to carry down those dates, either for the whole or for any parts of the Gospels, towards or into the second century, is originally part of the general “liberal” inclination to put a Man in place of a God, though some believers in the God acquiesce as to the lateness of the act of writing. Those who have carried on the move
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter X THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY
Chapter X THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY
And Dr. Petrie adds: “Such a detail seemed excessively unlikely before the rise of Lutheranism; yet it came to pass.” 7 It is interesting to realize the notions held by scholars of such standing in regard to European history after a century signalized by so much historic research; and to find that such an ignorant proposition as that just cited should for Dr. Petrie “explode the dogma” that really fulfilled prophecies 8 have been framed post eventum . For centuries before Luther the desecration
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XI THE LOGIA THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEXT
Chapter XI THE LOGIA THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEXT
“I do not think,” says Blass, “that either the former or the latter of these foretellings is very distinct, since there are neither names given nor peculiar circumstances indicated; only the common order of events is described....” That will certainly not hold in respect of the “shall not leave in thee one stone on another,” or the “cast up a bank about thee,” which is a distinct specification of the Roman siege method of 70. But let us follow up the implication, which is that a Jewish vaticinat
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XII FAILURE OF THE LOGIA THEORY
Chapter XII FAILURE OF THE LOGIA THEORY
The prediction of the fall of the temple, which is in the Nucleus as being common in matter and order to all three synoptics, is in no better case. On Dr. Petrie’s principle, it is one of the earliest accepted sayings—that is, it was embodied when the Jesuist movement was pre-occupied over the law, and yet it did not disturb that pre-occupation. On his theory, it should not have appeared in the Nucleus at all, or in any Gospel until the occasion arose. Thus incompatible with Dr. Petrie’s own the
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIII RESURGENCE OF THE HISTORICAL PROBLEM
Chapter XIII RESURGENCE OF THE HISTORICAL PROBLEM
Upon this kind of basis Luke erects a new structure. The twelve are sent forth to exorcise, heal, and preach, unfurnished; and as before they are to give testimony against those who will not receive them. “And they departed, and went throughout the villages, preaching the Gospel , and healing everywhere.” “And the apostles, when they were returned, declared unto him what things they had done.” The story is not suppressed, and it is supplied with a conclusion; but it is on the mission of the seve
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIV ORTHODOXY AND THE “ORAL” HYPOTHESIS
Chapter XIV ORTHODOXY AND THE “ORAL” HYPOTHESIS
This plausible but dangerous detail, however, is not insisted on; what is essential is the datum of long oral tradition. Orthodox as he is, too, Mr. Wright holds that Luke i ; ii ; iii, 23–38 , “are comparatively late additions, which never formed part of the primitive oral teaching.” 4 Thus he can summarily get rid of a number of incredibilities which the other schools more prudently leave to be excised by the reader as he sees fit. But we shall find him making a stout fight for many others. On
39 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XV THE METHOD OF M. LOISY
Chapter XV THE METHOD OF M. LOISY
It is enviable to be so sans doute on so many points in a narrative of which so much has had to be abandoned as myth. The odd thing is that with all these certitudes M. Loisy introduces his book with the declaration, “We must [ il faut ] now renounce writing the life of Jesus. All the critics agree in recognizing that the materials are insufficient for such an enterprise.” 2 And then, after an introduction in which he contests the view that nothing can be written with certainty, he gives us a Li
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVI THE TRIAL CRUX
Chapter XVI THE TRIAL CRUX
Let us now survey broadly the process of historical criticism thus far. 1. At an early stage the reconstructors gave up as pure fiction the third trial before Herod, which appears solely in Luke. They did not ask what historical knowledge, or what sense of history, can have existed in a community among which such an absolute invention found ready currency. 2. The next step was to reject as “unhistorical” the narrative of the fourth Gospel, in which Jesus ( a ) is examined by Annas the high pries
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVII THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY
Chapter XVII THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY
So that the doctrine of an immortal or resurrected Christ was the sole doctrine of the Apostles. There was no other evangel. And this doctrine, which had just been declared to be born of the personal impression made by Jesus on his followers, is also the doctrine of Paul, who had never seen Jesus. The primary evangel having thus simply disappeared, we revert to the Jesuine Teaching (addressed in large part only to the disciples) which had formed among disciples and adherents such a “religious li
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVIII THE PAULINE PROBLEM
Chapter XVIII THE PAULINE PROBLEM
One may without doubt ... affirm that the oldest of the synoptics, the Gospel of Mark, was composed, in a certain measure, in favour of Paul.... The same Gospel seems to have the conscious purpose of lowering the Galilean disciples to the advantage of Paul and his disciples. 10 And while M. Loisy justly rejects, as opposed to the internal evidence, the claim that “Luke” is the intimate of Paul, and even denies that the third Gospel is really Pauline in tendency, 11 he will hardly say that it is
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIX THE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION
Chapter XIX THE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION
But his mood and his method not only made him fail to establish his mythical theory; they meant miscarriage in the very conception of it—a mere substitution of a subjective notion for the method of inductive science. Bauer’s final way of putting the theory merely discredits it. He decides that the whole myth was the creation of one evangelist, whereby he shows that he is no mythologist. He never reached the true myth basis. After all, “the German temperament” seems to fall short, at some rather
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XX THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH THEORY
Chapter XX THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH THEORY
“Loves me, loves me not,” as the little girls say in counting the flower petals. We seem entitled to suggest in the interests of simple science, as distinguished from Germanic Kultur , that temperament might perhaps usefully be left out of the debate; and that the question of what Jesus stands for may be left over till we have settled whether the film presented to us by Dr. Schweitzer can stand between us and a scientific criticism which assents to all of his verdict save the reservation in favo
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
1 See the brochure of Prof. R. H. Grützmacher, Ist das liberale Jesusbild modern? 1907. ↑ Astruc, 5 Baconism, 31 , 32 , 63 Baptism, 135 –36 Barabbas, 170 sq. Barante, quoted, 99 , 100 Barbarossa, 103 Baruch, Apocalypse of , 121 Bauer, Bruno, 195 sq. Baur, F. C., 9 , 53 , quoted, 16 Beatitudes, 122 Béziers, capture of, 99 Bible, study of, xiii Blass, F., Dalman on, 65 ; on Harnack, 71 , 72 , 58 ; as critic, 72 sq. ; on predictions, 83 sq. , 93 , 95 –96, 104 , 105 , 107 , 114 ; on Papias, 121 ; o
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IN PREPARATION
IN PREPARATION
“Splendid handbooks.” — Birmingham Gazette. Science Histories. Each 160 pages, with Illustrations; cloth, 1s. net , by post 1s. 3d. The thirteen vols. post free 14s. ASTRONOMY. By Professor GEORGE FORBES, M.A., F.R.S., M.Inst.C.E. CHEMISTRY. In two vols. Vol. I.: 2000 B.C. to 1850 A.D. Vol. II.: 1850 to Date. By Sir EDWARD THORPE, C.B., D.Sc., F.R.S., Director of the Government Laboratories, London; Professor-Elect and Director of the Chemical Laboratories of the Imperial College of Science and
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Corrections
Corrections
The following corrections have been applied to the text:...
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter