Arthur Drews

However widely views may differ even now in the sphere of Gospel criticism, all really competent investigators agree on one point with rare unanimity: the Gospels are not historical documents in the ordinary sense of the word, but creeds, religious books, literary documents revealing the mind of the Christian community. Their purpose is consequently not to give information as to the life and teachings of Jesus which would correspond to reality, but to awaken belief in Jesus as the Messiah sent from God for the redemption of his people, to strengthen and defend that belief against attacks. And as creeds they confine themselves naturally to recounting such words and events as have any significance for the faith; and they have the greatest interest in so arranging and representing the facts as to make them accord with the content of that faith.

Of the numerous Gospels which were still current in the first half of the second century, as is well known, only four have come down to us. The others were not embodied by the Church in the Canon of the New Testament writings, and consequently fell into oblivion. Of these at most a few names and isolated and insignificant fragments remain to us. Thus we know of a Gospel of Matthew, of Thomas, of Bartholomew, Peter, the twelve apostles, &c. Of our four Gospels, two bear the names of apostles and two the names of companions and pupils of apostles, viz., Mark and Luke. In this, of course, it is in no way meant that they were really written by these persons. According to Chrysostom these names were first assigned to them towards the end of the second century. And the titles do not run: Gospel of Matthew, of Mark, and so on, but “according to” Matthew, “according to” Mark, Luke, and John; so that they indicate at most only the persons or schools whose particular conception of the Gospel they represent.

Of these Gospels, again, that of John ranks as the latest. It presupposes the others, and shows such a dogmatic tendency, that it cannot be considered the source of the story. Of the remaining Gospels, which on account of their similarity as to form and matter have been termed “Synoptic” (i.e., such as must be dealt with in connection with each other and thus only give a real idea of the Saviour’s personality), that of Mark is generally regarded as the oldest. Matthew and Luke rely on Mark, and all three, according to the prevailing view, are indebted to a common Aramaic source, wherein Jesus’ didactic sermons are supposed to have been contained. Tradition points to John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, pupil of Peter, and Paul’s companion on his first missionary journey and later a sharer in the captivity at Rome, as the author of the Gospel of Mark. It is believed that this was written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem (70)—i.e., at least forty years after Jesus’ death (!). This tradition depends upon a note of the Church historian Eusebius (d. about 340 A.D.), according to which Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, learnt from the “elder John” that Mark had set forth what he had heard from Peter, and what this latter had in turn heard from the “Lord.” On account of its indirect nature and of Eusebius’ notorious unreliability this note is not a very trustworthy one,1 and belief in it should disappear in view of the fact that the author of the Gospel of Mark had no idea of the spot where Jesus is supposed to have lived. And yet Mark is supposed to have been born in Jerusalem and to have been a missionary! As Wernle shows in his work, “Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu,” Mark stands quite far from the life of Jesus both in time and place(!); indeed, he has no clear idea of Jesus’ doings and course of life.2 And Wrede confirms this in his work, “Das Messias-geheimnis” (1901), probably the clearest and deepest inquiry into the fundamental problem of the Gospel of Mark which we possess. Jesus is for Mark at once the Messiah and the Son of God. “Faith in this dogma must be aroused, it must be established and defended. The whole Gospel is a defence. Mark wishes to lead all his readers, among whom he counts the Heathens and Gentile Christians, to the recognition of what the heathen centurion said, ’Truly this man was the Son of God!’3 The whole account is directed to this end.”4

Mark’s main proof for this purpose is that of miracles. Jesus’ doctrines are with Mark of so much less importance than his miracles, that we never learn exactly what Jesus preached. “Consequently the historical portrait is very obscure: Jesus’ person is distorted into the grotesque and the fantastic”(!)5 Not only does Mark often introduce his own thought into the tradition about Jesus, and so prove perfectly wrong, and indeed absurd, the view held, for instance, by Wernle, that Jesus had intentionally made use of an obscure manner of speech and had spoken in parables and riddles so as not to be understood by the people;6 but also the connection which he has established between the accounts, which had first gone from mouth to mouth for a long time in isolation, is a perfectly disconnected and external one. At first the stories reported by Mark were totally disconnected with one another. There is no evidence at all of their having followed each other in the present order(!).7 So that only the matter, not what Mark made of it, is of historical value.8 Single stories, discourses, and phrases are bound into a whole by Mark; and often enough it may be seen that we have here a tradition which was first built up in the earliest Christianity long after Jesus’ death. Experiences were at first gradually fashioned into a story—and the miracle-stories may especially be regarded in this way. In spite of all these trimmings and alterations, and in spite of the fact that neither in the words of Jesus nor in the stories is it for the most part any longer possible to separate the actual from the traditional, which for forty years was not put into writing—in spite of all this, the historical value of the traditions given us by Mark is “very highly” estimated. For not only is “the general impression of power, originality, and creation” “valuable,” which is given in this account of Mark’s, but also there are so many individual phrases “corresponding to reality.” Numerous accounts, momentary pictures and remarks, “speak for themselves.” The modesty and ingenuousness(!), the freshness and joy(!) with which Mark recounts all this, show distinctly that he is here the reporter of a valid tradition, and that he writes nothing but what eye-witnesses have told him(!). “And so finally, in spite of all, this Gospel remains an extraordinarily valuable work, a collection of old and genuine material, which is loosely arranged and placed under a few leading conceptions; produced perhaps by that Mark whom the New Testament knows, and of whom Papias heard from the mouth of the elder John.”9

One does not trust one’s eyes with this style of attempting to set up Mark as an even half-credible “historical source.” This attempt will remind us only too forcibly of Wrede’s ironical remarks when he is making fun of the “decisions as you like it” that flourish in the study of Jesus’ life. “This study,” says Wrede, “suffers from psychological suggestion, and this is one style of historical solution.”10 One believes that he can secure this, another that, as the historical nucleus of the Gospel; but neither has objective proofs for his assertions.11 If we wish to work with an historical nucleus, we must really make certain of a nucleus. The whole point is, that in an anecdote or phrase something is proved, which makes any other explanation of the matter under consideration improbable, or at least doubtful.12 It seems very questionable, after his radical criticism of the historical credibility of Mark’s Gospel, that Wrede saw in it such a “historical kernel”—though this is supposed by Wernle to “speak for itself.” Moreover, Wrede’s opinion of the “historian” Mark is not essentially different from Wernle’s. In his opinion, for example, Jesus’ disciples, as the Gospel portrays them, with their want of intelligence bordering on idiocy, their folly, and their ambiguous conduct as regards their Master, are “not real figures.”13 He also concedes, as we have stated, that Mark had no real idea of the historical life of Jesus,14 even if “pallid fragments”(!) of such an idea entered into his superhistorical faith-conception. “The Gospel of Mark,” he says, “has in this sense a place among the histories of dogma.”15 The belief that in it the development of Jesus’ public life is still perceptible appears to be decaying.16 “It would indeed be in the highest degree desirable that such a Gospel were not the oldest.”17

Thus, then, does Mark stand as an historical source. After this we could hardly hope to be much strengthened in our belief in Jesus’ historical reality by the other two Synoptics. Of these, Luke’s Gospel must have been written, in the early part of the second century, by an unknown Gentile Christian; and Matthew’s is not the work of a single author, but was produced—and unmistakably in the interests of the Church—by various hands in the first half of the second century.18 But now both, as we have said, are based on Mark. And even if in their representations they have attained a certain “peculiar value” which is wanting in Mark—e.g., a greater number of Jesus’ parables and words—even if they have embellished the story of his life by the addition of legendary passages (e.g., of the history of the time preceding the Saviour, of many additions to the account of the Passion and Resurrection, &c.), this cannot quite establish the existence of an historical Jesus. It is true that Wernle takes the view that in this respect “old traditions” have been preserved “with wonderful fidelity” by both the Evangelists; but, on the other hand, he concedes as to certain of Luke’s accounts that even if he had used old traditions they need not have been as yet written, and certainly they need not have been “historically reliable.” It seems rather peculiar when, leaving completely on one side the historical value of the tradition, he emphatically declares that even such a strong interest, as in his opinion the Evangelists had in the shaping and formation of their account, could not in any way set aside “the worth of its rich treasure of parables and stories, through which Jesus himself [!] speaks to us with freshness and originality” (!). He also strangely sums up at the end, “that the peculiar value of both Gospels, in spite of their very mixed nature, has claim enough on our gratitude”(!).19 This surely is simply to make use of the Gospels’ literary or other value in the interest of the belief in their historical credibility.

But there is still the collection of sayings, that “great authority on the matter,” from which all the Synoptics, and especially Luke and Matthew, are supposed to have derived the material for their declarations about Jesus. Unfortunately this is to us a completely unknown quantity, as we know neither what this “great” authority treats of, nor the arrangement of the matter in it, nor its text. We can only say that this collection was written in the Aramaic tongue, and the arrangement of its matter was not apparently chronological, but according to the similarity of its contents. Again, it is doubtful whether the collection was a single work, produced by one individual; or whether it had had a history before it came to Luke and Matthew. All the same, “the collection contains such a valuable number of the Lord’s words, that in all probability an eye-witness was its author” (!).20 As for the speeches of Jesus constructed from it, they were never really made as speeches by Jesus, but owe the juxtaposition of their contents entirely to the hand of the compiler. Thus the much admired Sermon on the Mount is constructed by placing together individual phrases of Jesus, which belong to all periods of his life, perhaps made in the course of a year. The ideas running through it and connecting the parts are not those of Jesus, but rather those of the original community; “nevertheless, the historical value of these speeches is, on the whole, very great indeed. Together with the ‘Lord’s words’ of Mark they give us the truest insight into the spirit of the Gospel”(!).21

Such are the authorities for the belief in an historical Jesus! If we survey all that remains of the Gospels, this does indeed appear quite “scanty,” or, speaking plainly, pitiable. Wernle consoles himself with, “If only it is certain and reliable.” Yes, if! “And if only it was able to give us an answer to the chief question: Who was Jesus?”22 This much is certain: a “Life of Jesus” cannot be written on the basis of the testimony before us. Probably all present-day theologians are agreed on this point; which, however, does not prevent them producing new essays on it, at any rate for the “people,” thus making up for the lack of historical reliability by edifying effusions and rhetorical phrases. “There is no lack of valuable historical matter, of stones for the construction of Jesus’ life; they lie before us plentifully. But the plan for the construction is lost and completely irretrievable, because the oldest disciples had no occasion for such an historical connection, but rather claimed obedience to the isolated words and acts, so far as they aroused faith.” But would they have been less faith-arousing if they had been arranged connectedly, would the credibility of the accounts of Jesus have been diminished and not much rather increased, if the Evangelists had taken the trouble to give us some more information as to Jesus’ real life? As things stand at present, hardly two events are recounted in the same manner in the Gospels, or even in the same connection. Indeed, the differences and contradictions—and this not only as to unimportant things, such as names, times and places, &c.—are so great that these literary documents of Christianity can hardly be surpassed in confusion.23 But even this is, according to Wernle, “not so great a pity, if only we can discover with sufficient clearness, what Jesus’ actions and wishes were on important points.”24 Unfortunately we are not in a position to do even this. For the ultimate source of our information, which we arrive at in our examination of the authorities is completely unknown to us—the Aramaic collection of sayings, and those very old traditions from which Mark is supposed to have derived his production, gleanings of which have been preserved for us by Luke and Matthew. But even if we knew these also, we would almost certainly not have “come to Jesus himself.” “They contain the possibility of dispute and misrepresentation. They recount in the first place the faith of the oldest Christians, a faith which arose in the course of four hundred years, and moreover changed much in that time.”25 So that at most we know only the faith of the earliest community. We see how this community sought to make clear to itself through Jesus its belief in the Resurrection, how it sought to “prove” to itself and to others the divine nature of Jesus by the recital of tales of miracles and the like. What Jesus himself thought, what he did, what he taught, what his life was, and—might we say it?—whether he ever lived at all—that is not to be learnt from the Gospels, and, according to all the preceding discussion, cannot be settled from them with lasting certainty.

Of course the liberal theologian, for whom everything is compatible with an historical Jesus, has many resources. He explains that all the former discussion has not touched the main point, and that this point is—What was Jesus’ attitude to God, to the world, and to mankind? What answer did he give to the questions: What matters in the eyes of God? and What is religion? This should indicate that the solution of the problem is contained in what has preceded, and that this solution is unknown to us. But such is not the case. Wernle knows it, and examines it “in the clear light of day.” “From his numerous parables and sermons and from countless momentary recollections it comes to us as clearly and distinctly as if Jesus were our contemporary [!]. No man on earth can say that it is either uncertain or obscure how Jesus thought on this point, which is to us [viz., to the liberal theologians] even at the present day the chief point.” “And if Christianity has forgotten for a thousand years what its Master desired first and before all, to-day [i.e., after the clear solutions of critical theology] it shines on us once more from the Gospels as clearly and wonderfully, as if the sun were newly risen, driving before its conquering rays all the phantoms and shadows of night.”26 And so Wernle himself, to whom we owe this consoling assurance, has written a work, “Die AnfÄnge unserer Religion” (1901), which is highly esteemed in theological circles, and in which he has given a detailed account, in a tone of overwhelming assurance, of the innermost thoughts, views, words, and teachings of Jesus and of his followers, just as if he had been actually present.

We must be careful of our language. These are indeed the views of a man who must be taken seriously, with whom we have been dealing above, a “shining light” of his science! The often cited work on “Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu” belongs to the series of “Popular Books on the History of Religion,” which contains the quintessence of present-day theological study, and which is intended for the widest circles interested and instructed in religion. We may suppose, probably with justice, that that work expresses what the liberal theology of our day wishes the members of the community subject to it to know and to believe. Or is it only that the popular books on the history of religion place the intellectual standard of their readers so low that they think they can strengthen the educated in their belief in an historical Jesus by productions such as Wernle’s? We consider the more “scientifically” elaborated works of other important theologians on the same subject. We think of Beyschlag, Harnack, Bernard Weiss, of Pfleiderer, JÜlicher, and Holtzmann. We consult Bousset, who defended against Kalthoff, with such great determination and warmth, the existence of an historical Jesus. Everywhere there is the same half-comic, half-pathetic drama: on the one hand the evangelical authorities are depreciated and the information is criticised away to such an extent that hardly anything positive remains from it; on the other hand there is a pathetic enthusiasm for the so-called “historical kernel.” Then comes praise for the so-called critical theology and its “courageous truthfulness,” which, however, ultimately consists only in declaring evident myths and legends to be such. This was known for a long time previously among the unprejudiced. There usually follows a hymn to Jesus with ecstatic raising of the eyes, as if all the statements concerning him in the Gospels still had validity. What then does Hausrath say?—“To conceal the miraculous parts of the [evangelical] accounts and then to give out the rest as historical, has not hitherto passed as criticism.”27 Can we object to Catholic theology because it looks with open pity on the whole of Protestant “criticism,” and reproaches it with the inconsistency, incompleteness, and lack of results, which is the mark of all its efforts to discover the beginnings of Christianity.28 Is it not right in rejoicing at the blow which Protestantism has sustained and from which it must necessarily suffer through all such attempts at accepting the Gospels as basis for a belief in an historical Jesus? Certainly what Catholic theologians bring forward in favour of the historical Jesus is so completely devoid of any criticism or even of any genuine desire to elucidate the facts, that it would be doing them too much honour to make any more detailed examination of their works on this point. For them the whole problem has a very simple solution in this: the existence of the historical Jesus forms the unavoidable presupposition of the Church, even though every historical fact should register its veto against it; and as one of its writers has put it, that is at bottom the long-established and unanimous view of all our inquiries into the subject under discussion: “The historical testimony for the authenticity of the Gospels is as old, as extensive, and as well established as it is for very few other books of ancient literature [!]. If we do not wish to be inconsistent we cannot question their authenticity. Their credibility is beyond question; for their authors were eye-witnesses of the events [!] related, or they gained their information from such; they were as competent judges [!] as men loving the truth can well be; they could, and in fact were obliged to speak the truth.”29

How distinguished, as compared with this kind of theologian, Kalthoff seems! It is true that we are obliged to allow for the one-sidedness and insufficiency of his positive working out of the origin of Christianity, of his attempt to explain it, on the basis of Mark’s handling of the story, purely on the lines of social motives, and to represent Christ as the mere reflection of the Christian community and of its experiences. Quite certainly he is wrong in identifying the biblical Pilate with Pliny, the governor of Bithynia under Trajan, and in the proof based on this; and this because in all probability Pliny’s letter to the Emperor is a later Christian forgery.30 But Kalthoff is quite right in what he says about modern critical theology and its historical Jesus. The critical theologians may think themselves justified in treating this embarrassing opponent as “incompetent,” or in ignoring him on account of the mistaken basis of argument; but all the efforts made with such great perseverance and penetration by historical theologians to derive from the authorities before us proof of the existence of a man Jesus in the traditional sense have led, as Kalthoff very justly says, to a purely negative conclusion. “The numerous passages in the Gospels which this theology, in maintaining its historical Jesus, is obliged to place on one side and pass over, stand from a literary point of view exactly on the same footing as those passages from which it constructs its historical Jesus; and consequently they claim historical value equal to these latter. The Synoptic Christ, in whom modern theology thinks it finds the characteristics of the historical Jesus, stands not a hair’s breadth nearer to a human interpretation of Christianity than the Christ of the fourth Gospel. What the Epigones of liberal theology think they can distil from this Synoptic Christ as historical essence has historical value only as a monument of masterly sophistry, which has produced its finest examples in the name of theological science.”31 Historical research should not have so long set apart from all other history that of early Christianity as the special domain of theology and handed it over to churchmen, as if for the decision of the questions on this point quite special talent was necessary—a talent far beyond the ordinary sphere of science and one which was only possessed by the Church theologian. The world would then long since have done with the whole literature of the “Life of Jesus.”

The sources which give information of the origin of Christianity are of such a kind that, considering the present standard of historical research, no historian would care to undertake an attempt to produce the biography of an historical Christ.32 They are, we can add, of such a nature that a real historian, who meets them without a previous conviction or expectation that he will find an historical Jesus in it, cannot for a moment doubt that he has here to do with religious fiction,33 with myth in an historical form, which does not essentially differ from other myths and legends—such as perhaps the legend of Tell.

There the matter ends: we know nothing of Jesus, of an historical personality of that name to whom the events and speeches recorded in the Gospels refer. “In default of any historical certainty the name of Jesus has become for Protestant theology an empty vessel, into which that theology pours the content of its own meditations.”43 And if there is any excuse for this, it is that that name has never at any time been anything but such an empty vessel: Jesus, the Christ, the Deliverer, Saviour, Physician of oppressed souls, has been from first to last a figure borrowed from myth, to whom the desire for redemption and the naÏve faith of the Western Asiatic peoples have transferred all their conceptions of the soul’s welfare. The “history” of this Jesus in its general characteristics had been determined even before the evangelical Jesus. Even Weinel, one of the most zealous and enthusiastic adherents of the modern Jesus-worship, confesses that “Christology was almost completed before Jesus came on earth.”44

It was not, however, merely the general frame and outlines of the “history” of Jesus which had been determined in the Messiah-faith, in the idea of a divine spirit sent from God, of the “Son of Man” of Daniel and the Jewish Apocalyptics, &c., not merely that this vague idea was filled out with new content through the Redeemer-worship of the neighbouring heathen peoples. Besides this, many of the individual traits of the Jesus-figure were present, some in heathen mythology, some in the Old Testament; and they were taken thence and worked into the evangelical representation. There is, for instance, the story of the twelve-year old Jesus in the Temple. “Who would have invented this story?” asks Jeremias. “Nevertheless,” he thinks it “probable” that in this Luke was thinking of Philo’s description of the life of Moses; he calls to mind that Plutarch gives us a quite similar statement concerning Alexander, whose life was consciously decorated with all the traits of the Oriental King-redeemer.45 Perhaps, however, the account comes from a Buddhist origin. The account of the temptation of Jesus also sounds very much like the temptation of Buddha, so far as it is not derived from the temptation of Zarathustra by Ahriman46 or the temptation of Moses by the devil, of which the Rabbis told,47 while Jesus is said to have entered upon his ministry in his thirtieth year,48 because at that age the Levite was fitted for his sacred office.49 Till then (i.e., till his baptism) we learn nothing of Jesus’ life. Similarly Isa. liii. 2, jumps from the early youth of the Servant of God (“He grew up as a tender plant, as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness, is despised and rejected of men”) straight to his passion and death; while the Gospels attempt to fill in the interval from Jesus’ baptism up to his passion by painting in further so-called Messianic passages from the Old Testament and Words of Jesus. We know how the early Christians liked to rediscover their faith in the Scriptures and see it predicted, and with what zeal they consequently studied the Old Testament and altered the “history” of their Jesus to make it agree with those predictions, thus rendering it valuable as corroboration of their own notions. In this connection it has been shown above how the “ride of the beardless one” influenced the collection of the tribute and his direct attack on the shopkeepers and money-changers in the evangelical account of Jesus’ advent to the Temple at Jerusalem.50 But the more detailed development of this scene is determined by Zech. ix. 9, Mal. iii. 1–3, and Isa. i. 10 sqq., and the words placed in Jesus’ mouth on this occasion are taken from Isa. lvi. 7 and Jer. vii. 1 sqq., so that this “most important” event in Jesus’ life can lay no claim to historical actuality.51

And again the account of the betrayal, of the thirty pieces of silver, and of Judas’ death, have their source in the Old Testament, viz., in the betrayal and death of Ahitophel.52 To what extent in particular the figures of Moses, with reference to Deut. xviii. 15 and xxxiv. 10, of Joshua, of Elijah and Elisha, influenced the portrayal of the evangelical Jesus has also been traced even by the theological party.53 Jesus has to begin his activities through baptism in the Jordan, because Moses had begun his leadership of Israel with the passage through the Red Sea and Joshua at the time of the Passover led the people through the Jordan, and this passage (of the sun through the watery regions of the sky) was regarded as baptism.54 He has to walk on the water, even as Moses, Joshua, and Elias walked dryshod through the water. He has to awaken the dead, like Elijah;55 to surround himself with twelve or seventy disciples and apostles, just as Moses had surrounded himself with twelve chiefs of the people and seventy elders, and as Joshua had chosen twelve assistants at the passage of the Jordan;56 he has to be transfigured,57 and to ascend into heaven like Moses58 and Elijah.59 Elijah (Eli-scha) and Jeho-schua (Joshua, Jesus) agree even in their names, so that on this ground alone it would not have been strange if the Prophet of the Old Testament had served as prototype of his evangelical namesake.60 Now Jesus places himself in many ways above the Mosaic Law, especially above the commands as to food,61 and in this at least one might find a trait answering to reality. But in the Rabbinical writings we find: “It is written,62 the Lord sets loose that which is bound; for every creature that passes as unclean in this world, the Lord will pronounce clean in the next.”63 So that similarly the disposition of the Law belongs to the general characteristics of the Messiah, and cannot be historical of Jesus, because if it were the attitude of the Jewish Christians to Paul on account of his disposition of the Law would be incomprehensible.64 The contrary attitude, which is likewise represented by Jesus,65 was already foreseen in the Messianic expectation. For while some hoped for a lightening and amendment of the Law by the Messiah, others thought of its aggravation and completion. In Micah iv. 5 the Messiah was to exert his activity, not merely among the Jews, but also among the Gentiles, and the welfare of the kingdom of the Messiah was to extend also to the latter. According to Isaiah lx. and Zechariah xiv., on the contrary, the Gentiles were to be subjected and brought to nothing, and only the Jews were worthy of participation in the kingdom of God. For that reason Jesus had to declare himself with like determination for both conceptions,66 without any attempt being made to reconcile the contradiction contained in this.67 That the parents of Jesus were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father was a “carpenter,” were determined by tradition, just as the name of his birthplace, Nazareth, was occasioned by the name of a sect (Nazaraios = Protector), or by the fact that one sect honoured the Messiah as a “branch of the root of Jesse” (nazar Isai).68 It was a Messianic tradition that he began his activity in Galilee and wandered about as Physician, Saviour, Redeemer, and Prophet, as mediator of the union of Israel, and as one who brought light to the Gentiles, not as an impetuous oppressor full of inconsiderate strength, but as one who assumed a loving tenderness for the weak and despairing.69 He heals the sick, comforts the afflicted, and proclaims to the poor the Gospel of the nearness of the kingdom of God. That is connected with the wandering of the sun through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Galil = circle), and is based on Isa. xxxv. 5 sqq., xlii. 1–7, xlix. 9 sqq., as well as on Isa. lxi. 1, a passage which Jesus himself, according to Luke iv. 16 sqq., began his teaching in Nazareth by explaining.70 He had to meet with opposition in his work of salvation, and nevertheless endure patiently, because of Isa. 1. 5. Naturally Jesus, behind whose human nature was concealed a God, and to whom the pilgrim “Saviour” Jason corresponded,71 was obliged to reveal his true nature by miraculous healing, and could not take a subordinate place in this regard among the cognate heathen God-redeemers. At most we may wonder that even in this the Old Testament had to stand72 as a model, and that Jesus’ doings never surpass those which the heathens praise in their gods and heroes, e.g., Asclepius. Indeed, according to Tacitus73 even the Emperor Vespasian accomplished such miracles at Alexandria, where, on being persistently pressed by the people, he healed both a lame man and a blind, and this almost in the same way as Jesus did, by moistening their eyes and cheeks with spittle; which information is corroborated also by Suetonius74 and Dio Cassius.75 But the most marvellous thing is that the miracles of Jesus have been found worth mentioning by the critical theology, and that there is an earnest search for an “historical nucleus,” which might probably “underlie them.”

All the individual characteristics cited above are, however, unimportant in comparison with the account of the Last Supper, of the Passion, death (on the cross), and resurrection of Jesus. And yet what is given us on these points is quite certainly unhistorical; these parts of the Gospels owe their origin, as we have stated, merely to cult-symbolism and to the myth of the dying and rising divine Saviour of the Western Asiatic religions. No “genius” was necessary for their invention, as everything was given: the derision,76 the flagellation, both the thieves, the crying out on the cross, the sponge with vinegar (Psa. lxix. 22), the piercing with a lance,77 the soldiers casting dice for the dead man’s garments, also the women at the place of execution and at the grave, the grave in a rock, are found in just the same form in the worship of Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and Osiris. Even the Saviour carrying his cross is copied from Hercules (Simon of Cyrene),78 bearing the pillars crosswise, as well as from the story of Isaac, who carried his own wood to the altar on which he was to be sacrificed.79 But where the authors of the Gospels have really found something new, e.g., in the account of Jesus’ trial, of the Roman and Jewish procedure, they have worked it out in such an ignorant way, and to one who knows something about it betray so significantly the purely fictitious nature of their account, that here really there is nothing to wonder at except perhaps the naÏvetÉ of those who still consider that account historical, and pique themselves a little on their “historical exactness” and “scientific method.”80

Is not Robertson perhaps right after all in considering the whole statement of the last fate of Jesus to be the rewriting of a dramatic Mystery-play, which among the Gentile Christians of the larger cities followed the sacramental meal on Easter Day? We know what a great rÔle was played by dramatic representations in numerous cults of antiquity, and how they came into especial use in connection with the veneration of the suffering and rising God-redeemers. Thus in Egypt the passion, death, and resurrection of Osiris and the birth of Horus; at Eleusis the searching and lamentation of Demeter for her lost Persephone and the birth of Iacchus; at LernÆ in Argolis and many other places the fate of Dionysus (Zagreus); in Sicyon the suffering of Adrastos, who threw himself on to the funeral pyre of his father Hercules; at AmyclÆ the passing away of Nature and its new life in the fate of Hyacinth: these were celebrated in festal pageants and scenic representations, to say nothing of the feasts of the death and resurrection of Mithras, Attis, and Adonis. Certainly Matthew’s account, xx.–xxviii. (with the exception of verses 11–15 in the last chapter), with its connected sequence of events, which could not possibly have actually followed each other like this—Supper, Gethsemane, betrayal, passion, Peter’s denial, the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection—throughout gives one the impression of a chain of isolated dramatic scenes. And the close of the Gospel agrees very well with this conception, for the parting words and exhortations of Jesus to his people are a very suitable ending to a drama.81

If we allow this, an explanation is given of the “clearness” which is so generally praised in the style of the Gospels by the theologians and their following, and which many think sufficient by itself to prove the historical nature of the Synoptic representation of Jesus.

Of course, Wrede has already warned us “not too hastily to consider clearness a sign of historical truth. A writing may have a very secondary, even apocryphal character, and yet show much clearness. The question always is how this was obtained.”82 Wernle and Wrede quite agree that at least in Mark’s production the clearness is of no account at all, while clearness in the other Gospels is found just in those parts which admittedly belong to the sphere of legend. And how clearly and concretely do not our authors of the various “Lives of Jesus,” not to mention Renan, or our ministers in the pulpits describe the events of the Gospels, with how many small and attractive traits do they not decorate these events, in order that they should have a greater effect on their listeners! This kind of clearness and personal stamp is really nothing but a matter of the literary skill and imagination of the authors in question. The writings of the Old Testament, and not merely the historical writings, are also full of a most clear ability for narration and of most individual characteristics, which prove how much the Rabbinical writers in Palestine knew of this side of literary activity. Or is anything wanting to the clearness and individual characterisation, to which Kalthoff also has alluded, of the touching story of Ruth; of the picture of the prophet Jonah, of Judith, Esther, Job, &c? And then the stories of the patriarchs—the pious Abraham, the good-natured, narrow-minded Esau, the cunning Jacob, and their respective wives—or, to take one case, how clear is not the meeting of Abraham’s servant with Rebecca at the well!83 Or let us consider Moses, Elijah, Samson—great figures who in their most essential traits demonstrably belong to myth and religious fable! If in preaching our ministers can go so vividly into the details of the story of the Saviour that fountains of poetry are opened and there stream forth from their lips clear accounts of Jesus’ goodness of heart, of his heroic greatness, and of his readiness for the sacrifice, how much more would this have been so at first in the Christian community, when the new religion was still in its youth, when the faith in the Messiah was as yet unweakened by sceptical doubts, and when the heart of man was still filled with the desire for immediate and final redemption? And even if we are confronted with a host of minor traits, which cannot so easily be accounted for by religious motives and poetic imagination, must these all refer to the same real personality? May they not be based on events which are very far from being necessarily experiences of the liberal theology’s historical Jesus? Even Edward v. Hartmann, who is generally content to adhere to the historical Jesus, suggests the possibility “that several historical personages, who lived at quite different times, have contributed concrete individual characteristics to the picture of Jesus.”84 There is a great deal of talk about the “uninventable” in the evangelical representation. Von Soden even goes so far as to base his chief proof for the historical existence of Jesus on this individuality that cannot be invented.85 As if there was any such thing as what cannot be invented for men with imagination! And as if all the significant details of Jesus’ life were not invented on the lines of the so-called Messianic passages in the Old Testament, in heathen mythology, and in the imported conceptions of the Messiah! The part that is professedly “uninventable” shrinks continuously the more assiduously criticism busies itself with the Gospels; and the word can at present apply only to side-issues and matters of no importance. We are indeed faced with the strange fact, that all the essential part of the Gospels, everything which is of importance for religious faith, such as especially the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is demonstrably invented and mythical; but such parts as can at best only be historical because of their supposed “uninventable” nature are of no importance for the character of the Gospel representation!

Now, it has been shown that the Gospel picture of Jesus is not without deficiencies. We may see a proof86 of the historical nature of the events referred to in small traits, as, for example, in Jesus’ temporary inability to perform miracles,87 the circumstance that he is not represented as omniscient,88 the attitude of his relatives to him.89 So the theologian Schmiedel set up first five and then nine passages as “clearly credible,” and pronounced these to be the basis of a really scientific knowledge of Jesus. The passages are Mark x. 17 sqq. (Why callest thou me good?), Matt. xii. 31 sqq. (The sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven), Mark iii. 21 (He is beside himself), Mark xiii. 32 (But the day and the hour is known to no man), Mark xv. 24 (My God, why has thou forsaken me?), Mark vi. 5 (And he could there do no mighty work), Mark viii. 12 (There shall no sign be given unto this generation), Mark viii. 14–21 (Reproaching the disciples on the occasion of the lack of bread), Matt. xi. 5 (The blind see, the lame walk). All these “bases” evidently have a firm support only on the supposition that the Gospels are meant to paint a stainless ideal, a God, that they are at most but a conception, such, perhaps, as has been set up by Bruno Bauer. But they are useless from the point of view intended, as portraying a man. If, however, the Evangelists’ intention was to paint the celestial Christ of the Apostle Paul, the God-man, the abstract spirit-being, as a completely real man for the eyes of the faithful, to place him on the ground of historical reality, and so to treat seriously Paul’s “idea” of humanity, they were obliged to give him also human characteristics. And these could be either invented afresh or taken from the actual life of honoured teachers, in which the fact is acknowledged that, even for the noblest and best of men, there are hours of despair and grief, that the prophet is worth nothing in his own fatherland, or is even unknown to his nearest relatives. Even the prophet Elijah, the Old Testament precursor of the Messiah, who has in many ways determined the picture of Jesus, is said to have had moments of despair in which he wanted to die, till God strengthened him anew to the fulfilment of his vocation.90 Moreover, Mark x. 17 was a commonplace in all ancient philosophy from the time of Plato, and gained that form by an alteration of the original text (A. Pott, “Der Text des Neuen Testaments nach seiner gesch. Entwicklung” in “Aus Natur und Geisteswelt,” 1906, p. 63, sq.); Mark xiv. 24 is taken from the 22nd Psalm, which has also in other respects determined the details of the account of the crucifixion. Mark iii. 21 is, as Schleiermacher showed and Strauss corroborated, a pure invention of the Evangelist, the words of the Pharisees being put into their mouths, as their opinion, in order to explain Jesus’ answer by the assertion of his kinship (Strauss, “Leben Jesu,” i. 692; cf. also Psa. lix. 1: “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children”). Matt. xi. 5 is based on Isaiah xxxv. 5, xlii. 7, xlix. 9, lxi. 1, which runs in the Septuagint: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the poor; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to the blind the opening of their eyes; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.”91 Schmiedel’s nine “bases” consequently are at most testimony to a “lost glory”; but the construction of a “really scientific” life of Jesus cannot possibly arise from them.92

Clearness of exposition, then, can never afford a proof of the historical nature of the matter concerned. And how easily is not this clearness imported by us into the evangelical information! We are brought up in the atmosphere of these tales, and carry about with us, under the influence of the surrounding Christianity, an imaginary picture of them, which we unwittingly introduce into our reading of the Gospels. And how subjective and dependent on the reader’s “taste” the impression of clearness given by the Gospel picture of Jesus is, to what a great extent personal predilections come in, is evidenced by this fact, that a Vollers could not discover in the Gospels any real man of flesh and blood, but only a “shadowy image,” which he analysed into a thaumaturgical (the miracle-worker) and a soteriological (the Saviour) part.93 In opposition to the efforts of the historical theology to give Jesus a “unique” position above that of all other founders of religions, Vollers justly remarks how difficult it must be for the purely historical treatment to recognise these and similar assertions. “The improbability, not to say impossibility, of the soteriological picture is too obvious. At bottom this picture of critical theology is nothing but the contemporary transformation of Schleiermacher’s ideal man; what must have a hundred years ago appeared comprehensible as the product of a refined Moravianism, in the atmosphere of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, is nowadays a mere avoidance of an open and honourable analysis from the point of view that prevails outside of theology, and is principally known in the spheres of Nature and of History. Who would deny that the tone of the catechism and of the pulpit, that full-sounding words of many meanings, even the concealment and glossing over of unpleasant admissions, play a part in this sphere such as they could never have in in any other science?”

We are then reduced to the individual maxims and sermons of Jesus. These must be proved to be intelligible only as the personal experiences and thoughts of one supreme individual. Unfortunately just this, as has already been proved, seems peculiarly doubtful. As for Jesus’ sermons, we have already understood from Wernle that they were in any case not received from Jesus in the form in which they have been handed down to us, but were subsequently compiled by the Evangelists from isolated and occasional maxims of his.94 These single phrases and occasional utterances of Jesus are supposed to have been taken in the last resort partly from oral tradition, partly from the Aramaic collection—that “great source” of Wernle’s—which was translated into Greek by the Gospels. The existence of this source has been established only very indirectly, and we know absolutely nothing more of it. But it is self-evident that even in the translation from one language into another much of the originality of those “words of the Lord” must have been lost; and, as may be shown, the different Evangelists have “translated” the same words quite differently. Whether it will be possible to reconstruct the original work, as critical theology is striving to do, from the material before us, seems very questionable. And we are given no guarantee that we have to do with actual “words of the Lord” as they were contained in the Aramaic collection.

Even if the Evangelist is supposed to have expressed the original meaning, what is to assure us that this phrase was spoken by Jesus just in this way, and not in other connections, if even the phrases were taken down as soon as uttered? But this is admittedly supposed not to have occurred till after Jesus’ death, after his Messianic significance was clearly recognised, and after people were making efforts to go back in memory to the Master’s figure and preserve of his sayings any that were serviceable. Bousset, indeed, in his work, “Was wissen wir von Jesus?”—which was directed against Kalthoff—has referred to the “good Oriental memory of the disciples.” All who know the East from personal experience are in tolerable agreement on one point, viz., how little an Oriental is able to repeat what he has heard or experienced in a true and objective fashion. Consequently there are in the East no historical traditions in our sense of the word, but all important events are decorated like a novel, and are changed according to the necessities of the moment. Such maxims, indeed, as “Love your enemies,” “To give is more blessed than to receive,” “No one but God is good,” “Blessed are the poor,” “You are the light of the world,” “Give to CÆsar that which is CÆsar’s,” &c., once heard may be “not easily forgotten,” as the theological phrase runs. But also they are not of such a kind that the Jesus of liberal theology was necessary for their invention.

We need not here take into consideration how many of Jesus’ expressions may have been imported into the Gospels from the Mystery drama, with whose existence we must nevertheless reckon, and from which phrases may have been changed into sayings of the “historical” Jesus. Such obscure and high-flown passages as, e.g., Matt. x. 32 sq.; xi. 15–30, xxvi. 64, and xxviii. 18, give one the impression of coming from the mouth of God’s representative on the stage; and this probability is further increased when we meet quite similar expressions, such as of the “light burden” and the “easy yoke,” in the Mysteries of Mithras or of Isis.95 Bousset admits that all the individual words which have been handed down to us as expressions of Jesus are “mediated by the tradition of a community, and have passed through many hands.”96 They are, as Strauss has observed, like pebbles which the waves of tradition have rolled and polished, setting them down here and there and uniting them to this and that mass. “We are,” Steck remarks, “absolutely certain of no single word of the Gospels—that it was spoken by Jesus just in this way and in no other.”97 “It would be very difficult,” thinks Vollers, “to refer even one expression, one parable, one act of this ideal man to Jesus of Nazareth with historical certainty, let us say with the same certainty with which we attribute the Epistle to the Galatians to the Apostle Paul, or explain the Johannine Logos as the product of Greek philosophy.”98 Even one of the leaders of Protestant orthodoxy, Professor KÄhler, of Halle, admitted, as was stated in the “Kirchliche Monatsblatt fÜr Rheinland und Westfalen,” in a theological conference held in Dortmund, that we possess “no single authentic word” of Jesus. Any attempt, such as Chamberlain has made, to gather from the tradition a certain nucleus of “words of Jesus,” is consequently mistaken; and if nothing is to be a criterion but one’s personal feelings, it would be better to confess at once that here there can be no talk of any kind of decision.

It is, then, settled that we cannot with certainty trace back to an historical Jesus any single one of the expressions of the “Lord” that have come down to us. Even the oldest authority, the Aramaic collection, may have contained merely the tradition of a community. Can we then think that the supporters of an “historical” Jesus are right in treating it as nothing more than a “crude sin against all historical methods,” as something most monstrous and unscientific, if one draws the only possible inference from the result of the criticism of the Gospels, and disputes the existence at any time of an historical Jesus? There may after all have been such a collection of “words of the Lord” in the oldest Christian communities; but must we understand by this words of a definite human individual? May they not rather have been words which had an authoritative and canonical acceptation in the community, being either specially important or congenial to it, and which were for this reason attributed to the “Lord”—that is, to the hero of the association or cult, Jesus? It has been generally agreed that this was the case, for example, with the directions as to action in the case of quarrels among the members of the community99 and with regard to divorce.100 Let us also recall to our minds the “words of the Lord” in the other cult-associations of antiquity, the ??t?? ?fa of the Pythagoreans. And how many particularly popular, impressive, and favourite sayings were current in antiquity bearing the names of one of the “Seven Wise Men,” without any one dreaming of ascribing to them an historical signification! How then can it be anything but hasty and uncritical to give out the “words of the Lord” in the collection, which are the basis of Jesus’ sermons in the Gospels, as sayings of one definite Rabbi—that is, of the “historical” Jesus? One may have as high an opinion of Jesus’ words as one likes: the question is whether Jesus, even the Jesus of liberal theology, is their spiritual father, or whether they are not after all in the same position as the psalms or sayings of the Old Testament which are current in the names of David and Solomon, and of which we know quite positively that their authors were neither the one nor the other.

But perhaps those sayings and sermons of Jesus are of such a nature that they could only arise from the “historical Jesus”? Of a great number both of isolated sayings and parables of Jesus—and among these indeed the most beautiful and the most admired, for example, the parable of the good Samaritan, whose moral content coincides with Deut. xxix. 1–4, of the Prodigal Son,101 of the man that sowed—we know that they were borrowed102 partly from Jewish philosophy, partly from oral tradition of the Talmud, and partly from other sources. In any case they have no claim to originality.103 This holds good even of the Sermon on the Mount, which is, as has been shown by Jewish scholars in particular, and as Robertson has once more proved, a mere patchwork taken from ancient Jewish literature, and, together with the Lord’s Prayer, contains not a single thought which has not its prototype in the Old Testament and in the ancient philosophical maxims of the Jewish people.104 Moreover, the remaining portions, whose genesis from any other quarter is at least as yet unproved, is not at all of such a nature that it could only have arisen in the mind of such a personality as the theological Jesus of Nazareth. At bottom, indeed, he neither said nor taught anything beyond the purer morality of contemporary Judaism—to say nothing at all of the Stoics and of the other ethical teachers of antiquity, in particular those of the Indians. The gravest suspicion of their novelty and originality is awakened at the Gospels’ emphasising the novelty and significance of Jesus’ sayings by “the ancients said”—“but I say unto you”; attempting thereby to make an artificial contradiction with the former spiritual and moral standpoint of Judaism, even in places where only a look at the Old Testament is necessary to convince us that such a contradiction does not exist, as, for example, in the case of the love of God and of one’s neighbor.105 Moreover, our cultivated reverence for Jesus and the overwhelming glorification of everything connected with him has surrounded a great many of the “words of the Lord” with a glitter of importance which stands in no relation to their real value, and which they would never have obtained had they been handed down to us in another connection or under some other name.

Let us only think how much that is in itself quite trivial and insignificant has been raised to quite an unjustifiable importance merely through the use of the pulpit and the consecration of divine service. Even though our theologians are not already tired of extolling the “uniqueness,” incomparability, and majesty of Jesus’ words and parables, they might nevertheless just for once consider how much that is of little worth, how much that is mistaken, spiritually insignificant and morally insufficient, even absolutely doubtful, there is in what Jesus preached.106 In this connection it has always been the custom to extenuate the tradition by referring to the inexactitude or to fly in the face of any genuine historical method by tortuous elucidations of the passages in question, by unmeaning references to the temporal and educational limitations even of the “superman,” and by suppression of the disagreeable parts.

How much trouble have not our theologians taken, and do they not even now take, to show even one single point in Jesus’ doctrines which may justify their declaring with a good conscience his “uniqueness” in the sense understood by them, and may justify their raising their purely human Jesus as high as possible above his own age! Not one of all the passages quoted to this end has been allowed to remain. The Synoptic Jesus taught neither a new and loftier morality, nor a “new meekness,” nor a deepened consciousness of God; neither the “indestructible value of the individual souls of men” in the present-day individualistic sense, nor even freedom as against the Jewish Law, nor the immanence of the kingdom of God, nor anything else, that surpassed the capabilities of another intellectually distinguished man of his age. Even the love, the general love, of one’s neighbour, the preaching of which is with the greater portion of the laity the chief claim to veneration possessed by the historical Jesus, in the Synoptics plays no very important part in Jesus’ moral conception of life; governing no wider sphere than had already been allowed it in the Old Testament.107 And if the pulpit eloquence of nineteen hundred years has nevertheless attempted to lay stress on this point, it is because it counts on the faithful not having in mind the difference between the Gospels, and on their peacefully permitting the Gospel of John, the one and only “gospel of love,” which, however, is not supposed to be “historical,” to be substituted for the Synoptic Gospels. And so we actually see the glorification of Jesus’ doctrines which, a short time ago, flourished so luxuriantly, appearing recently in more and more moderate terms.108

Thus it was for a time customary in theology, under the influence of Holtzmann and Harnack, to consider the ethical deepening and return of God’s “fatherly love” as the essentially new and significant point in Jesus’ “glad tidings,” and to write about it in unctuous phrases. Recently, even this seems to have been abandoned, as, for example, Wrede openly confesses, with respect to the “filiation to God,” that this conception existed in Judaism very long before Christ; also that Jesus did not especially preach God as the loving “Father” of each individual, that indeed he did not once place in the foreground the name of God as the Father.109 But so much the more decidedly is reference made to the “enormous effects” which attended Jesus’ appearance, and the attempt is made to prove from them his surpassing greatness, “uniqueness,” and historical reality. As if Zarathustra, Buddha, and Mohammed had achieved less, as if the effects which proceed from a person must stand in a certain relation to his human significance, and as if those effects were to be ascribed to the “historical” and not rather to the mythical Jesus—that is, to the idea of the God sacrificing himself for humanity! As a matter of fact, his faith in the immediate proximity of the Messianic kingdom of God, and the demand for a change of life based on this, which is really “unique” in the traditional Jesus, is without any religious and ethical significance for us, and is at most only of interest for the history of civilisation. On the other hand, such part of his teaching as is still of importance to us is not “unique,” and only has the reputation of being so because we are accustomed by a theological education to treat it in the light of the Christian dogmatic metaphysics of redemption. Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Laotse, or Buddha in their ethical views are not behind Jesus with his egoistical pseudo-morals, his basing moral action on the expectation of reward and punishment in the future, his narrow-minded nationalism, which theologians in vain attempt to debate away and to conceal; and his obscure mysticism, which strives to attain a special importance for its maxims by mysterious references to his “heavenly Father.”110 And as for the “great impression” which Jesus is supposed to have made on his own people and on the following age, and without which the history of Christianity is supposed to be inexplicable, Kalthoff has shown with justice that the Gospels do not in any way reflect the impression which a person produced, but only such as the accounts of Jesus’ personality would have made on the members of the Christian community. “Even the strongest impression proves nothing as to the historical truth of these accounts. Even an account of a fictitious personage may produce the deepest impression on a community if it is given in historical terms. What an impression Goethe’s “Werther” produced, though the whole world knew that it was only a romance! Yet it stirred up countless disciples and imitators.”111

In this we have at the same time a refutation of the popular objection that to deny the historical existence of Jesus is to misunderstand “the significance of personality in the historical life of peoples and religions.” Certainly, as Mehlhorn says, active devotion above all is enkindled to persons in whom this personality strikes us in an evident, elevating, and animating way.112 But in order to enkindle devotion and faith in Jesus Christ the elevating personality of a Paul sufficed, whether or not he was the author of the epistles current in his name; the missionary activity of apostles, working, like him, in the service of the Jesus-creed, was enough, since they moved from place to place, and, often undergoing great personal sacrifice and privation, with danger to their own lives demanded adoration of the new God. Those in need of redemption could never find any real religious support outside of the faith in a divine redeemer, they could never find satisfaction and deliverance but in the idea of the God sacrificing himself for mankind—the God whose redeeming power and whose distinct superiority to the other Mystery-deities the apostles could portray in such a lively and striking fashion. That an idea can only be effective and fruitful by means of a great personality is a barren formula.113 In thinking they can with this argument support their faith in an historical Jesus liberal theologians avail themselves of an irrelevant bit of modern street-philosophy without noticing that in their case it proves nothing at all. Where, then, is the “great personality” which gave to Mithraism such an efficacy that in the first century of our era it was able to conquer from the East almost the whole of the West and to make it doubtful for a time whether the world was to be Mithraic or Christian? In such influential religions as those of Dionysus and Osiris, or indeed in Brahmanism, we cannot speak of great personalities as their “founders”; and as for Zarathustra, the pretended founder of the Persian, and Moses, the founder of the Israelite religion, they are not historical persons; while the views of different investigators differ as to the historical existence of the reputed founder of Buddhism. Of course, even in the above-mentioned religions the particular ideas would have been brought forward by brilliant individuals, and the movements depending on them would have been first organised and rendered effective by men of energy and purpose. But the question is whether persons of this type are necessarily “great,” even “unique,” in the sense of liberal theology, in order to be successful. So that to set aside Paul, whose inspiring personality gifted with a genius for organisation we know from his epistles,—to set him aside in favour of an imaginary Jesus, to base the importance of the Christian religion on the “uniqueness” of its supposed founder, and to base this uniqueness in turn on the importance of the religious movement which resulted from it, is to abandon the critical standpoint and to turn about in circles. “It is an empty assertion,” says LÜtzelberger, “without any real foundation, that the invention of such a person as the Gospels give us in their Jesus would have been quite impossible, as we find in him such a peculiar and sharply defined character that imagination would never have been able to invent and adhere to it. For the personality which meets us in the Gospels is by no means one that is sharply drawn and true to itself; but the story shows us rather a man who from quite different mental tendencies spoke now one way and now another, and is perfectly different in the first and fourth Gospels. Only with the greatest trouble can a homogeneous and coherent whole be formed from the descriptions in the Gospels. So that we are absolutely wrong in concluding from the originality of the person of Christ in the Gospels to their historical credibility.” The conclusion is much more justifiable that if such a person with such a life-history and such speech had stood at the beginning of the Christian Church, the history of its development must have been quite a different one, just as the history of Judaism would have been different if a Moses with his Law had stood at its head.114

And now if we compare the praises of Buddha in the Lalita Vistara with the description of Jesus’ personality given in the New Testament, we will be convinced how similarly—even if we exclude the hypothesis of a direct influence—and under what like conditions the kindred religion took shape: “In the world of creatures, which was long afflicted by the evils of natural corruption, thou didst appear, O king of physicians, who redeemest us from all evil. At thy approach, O guide, unrest disappears, and gods and men are filled with health. Thou art the protector, the firm foundation, the chief, the leader of the world, with thy gentle and benevolent disposition. Thou art the best of physicians, who bringest the perfect means of salvation and healest suffering. Distinguished by thy compassion and sympathy, thou governest the things of the world. Distinguished by thy strength of mind and good works, completely pure, thou hast attained to perfection, and, thyself redeemed, thou wilt, as the prophet of the four truths, redeem other creatures also. The power of the Evil One has been overcome by wisdom, courage, and humility. Thou hast brought it about,—the highest and immortal glory. We greet thee as the conqueror of the army of the Deceiver. Thou whose word is without fault, who freest from error and passion, hast trod the path of eternal life; thou dost deserve in heaven and on earth honour and homage unparalleled. Thou quickenest Gods and men with thy clear words. By the beams which go forth from thee thou art the conqueror of this universe, the Master of Gods and men. Thou didst appear, Light of the Law, destroyer of misery and ignorance, completely filled with humility and majesty. Sun, moon, and fires no longer shine before thee and thy fulness of imperishable glory. Thou who teachest us to know truth from falsehood, ghostly leader with the sweetest voice, whose spirit is calm, whose passions are controlled, whose heart is perfectly at rest, who teachest what should be taught, who bringest about the union of gods and men: I greet thee, Sakhyamuni, as the greatest of men, as the wonder of the three thousand worlds, who deservest honour and homage in heaven and on earth, from Gods and men!” Where, then, is the “uniqueness” of Jesus, into which the future divinity of the World-redeemer has disappeared for modern critical theology, and into which it has striven to import all the sentimental considerations which once belonged to the “God-man” in the sense of the Church dogma? “Nothing is more negative than the result of the inquiry into the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth, who appeared as the Messiah, who proclaimed the morals of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and died to give consecration to his acts, never existed. He is a figure which was invented by Rationalism, restored by Liberalism, and painted over with historical science by modern theologians.” With these words of the theologian Schweitzer115 the present inquiry may be said to agree.

In fact, in the Gospels we have nothing but the expression of the consciousness of a community. In this respect the view supported by Kalthoff is completely right. The life of Jesus, as portrayed by the Synoptics, merely brings to an expression in historical garb the metaphysical ideas, religious hopes, the outer and inner experiences of the community which had Jesus for its cult-god. His opinions, statements, and parables only reflect the religious-moral conceptions, the temporary sentiments, the casting down and the joy of victory, the hate and the love, the judgments and prejudices of the members of the community, and the differences and contradictions in the Gospels prove to be the developing material of the conception of the Messiah in different communities and at different times. Christ takes just the same position in the religious-social brotherhoods which are named after him as Attis has in the Phrygian, Adonis in the Syrian, Osiris in the Egyptian, Dionysus, Hercules, Hermes, Asclepius, &c., in the Greek cult-associations. He is but another form of these club-gods or patrons of communities, and the cult devoted to him shows in essentials the same forms as those devoted to the divinities above named. The place of the bloody expiatory sacrifice of the believers in Attis, wherein they underwent “baptism of blood” in their yearly March festival, and wherein they obtained the forgiveness of their sins and were “born again” to a new life, was in Rome the Hill of the Vatican. In fact, the very spot on which in Christian times the Church of Peter grew above the so-called grave of the apostle. It was at bottom merely an alteration of the name, not of the matter, when the High Priest of Attis blended his rÔle with that of the High Priest of Christ, and the Christ-cult spread itself from this new point far over the other parts of the Roman Empire.

The Synoptic Gospels leave open the question whether they treat of a man made God or of a God made man. The foregoing account has shown that the Jesus of the Gospels is to be understood only as a God made man. The story of his life, as presented in the Gospels, is the rendering into history of a primitive religious myth. Most of the great heroes of the legend, which passes as historical, are similar incarnate Gods—such as Jason, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, Perseus, Siegfried, &c.; in these we have nothing but the old Aryan sun—champion in the struggle against the powers of darkness and of death. That primitive Gods in the view of a later age should become men, without, however, ceasing to be clothed with the glamour of the deity, is to such an extent the ordinary process, that the reverse, the elevation of men to Gods, is as a rule only found in the earliest stages of human civilisation, or in periods of moral and social decay, when fawning servility and worthless flattery fashion a prominent man, either during his life or after his death, into a divine being. Even the so-called “Bible Story” contains numerous examples of such God made men: the patriarchs, Joseph, Joshua, Samson, Esther, Mordecai, Haman, Simon Magus, the magician Elymas, &c., were originally pure Gods, and in the description of their lives old Semitic star-myths and sun-myths obtained a historical garb. If we cannot doubt that Moses, the founder of the old covenant, was a fictitious figure, and that his “history” was invented by the priests at Jerusalem only for the purpose of sanctioning and basing on his authority the law of the priests named after him; if for this end the whole history of Israel was falsified, and the final event in the religious development of Israel, i.e., the giving of the Law, was placed at the beginning—why cannot what was possible with Moses have been repeated in the case of Jesus? Why may not also the founder of the new covenant as an historical person belong entirely to pious legend? According to Herodotus,116 the Greeks also changed an old Phoenician God, Hercules, for national reasons, into a native hero, the son of Amphitryon, and incorporated him in their own sphere of ideas. Let us consider how strong the impulse was, especially among Orientals, to make history of purely internal experiences and ideas. To carry historical matter into the sphere of myth, and to conceive myth as history, is, as is shown by the investigations of Winckler, Schrader, Jensen, &c., for the Orientals such a matter of course, that, as regards the accounts in the Old Testament, it is hardly possible to distinguish their genuinely “historical nucleus” from its quasi-historical covering. And it is more especially the Semitic thought of antiquity which proves to be completely unable to distinguish mythical phantasy from real event! It is, indeed, too often said that the Semite produced and possessed no mythology of his own, as Renan asserted; and no doubt at all is possible that they could not preserve as such and deal with the mythical figures and events whencesoever they derived them, but always tended to translate them into human form and to associate them with definite places and times. “The God of the Semites is associated with place and object, he is a Genius loci,” says Winckler.117 But if ever a myth required to be clothed in the garment of place and the metaphysical ideas contained in it to be separated into a series of historical events, it was certainly the myth of the God sacrificing himself for humanity, who sojourned among men in human form, suffered with the rest of men and died, returning, after victoriously overcoming the dark powers of death, to the divine seat whence he set out.

We understand how the God Jesus, consequent on his symbolical unification with the man sacrificed in his stead, could come to be made human, and how on this basis the faith in the resurrection of God in the form of an historical person could arise. But how the reverse process could take place, how the man Jesus could be elevated into a God, or could ever fuse with an already existing God of like name into the divine-human redeemer—indeed, the Deity—that is and remains, as we have already said, a psychological puzzle. The only way to solve it is to refer to the “inscrutable secrets of the Divine will.” In what other way can we explain how “that simple child of man, as he has been described,” could so very soon after his death be elevated into that “mystical being of imagination,” into that “celestial Christ,” as he meets us in the epistles of Paul? There can only have been at most seven, probably three, years, according to a recent estimate hardly one year, between the death of Jesus and the commencement of Paul’s activity.118 And this short time is supposed to have sufficed to transform the man Jesus into the Pauline Christ! And not only Paul is supposed to have been able to do this; even Jesus’ immediate disciples, who sat with him at the same table, ate and drank with him, knowing then who Jesus was, are supposed to have declared themselves in agreement with this, and to have prayed to him whom they had always seen praying to the “Father”! Certainly in antiquity the deification of a man was nothing extraordinary: Plato and Aristotle were, after their death, honoured by their pupils as god-like beings; Demetrius Poliorcetes, Alexander, the Ptolemies, &c., had divine honours rendered to them even during their lives. But this style of deification is completely different from that which is supposed to have been allotted to Jesus. It is merely an expression of personal gratitude and attachment, of overflowing sentiment and characterless flattery, and never obtained any detailed theological formulation. It was the basis for no new religion. Schopenhauer has very justly pointed out the contradiction between Paul’s apotheosis of Jesus and usual historical experience, and remarked that from this consideration could be drawn an argument against the authenticity of the Pauline epistles.119 In fact, Holtzmann considers, with reference to this assertion of the philosopher’s, the question “whether the figure of Jesus attaining such colossal dimensions in Paul’s sight may not be taken to establish the distance between the two as that of only a few years, if there was not immediate temporal contact,” as the question “most worthy of discussion, which the critics of the Dutch school have propounded for consideration.”120 According to the prevalent view of critical theologians, as presented even by Pfleiderer, the apparitions of the “Lord,” which after Jesus’ death were seen by the disciples who had fled from Jerusalem, the “ecstatic visionary experiences, in which they thought they saw their crucified Master living and raised up to heavenly glory,” were the occasion of their faith in the resurrection, and consequently of their faith in Jesus’ divine rÔle as Redeemer.121 Pathological states of over-excited men and hysterical women are then supposed to form the “historical foundation” for the genesis of the Christian religion! And with such opinions they think themselves justified in looking down on the rationalist of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment with supreme contempt, and in boasting of the depth to which their religious-historical insight reaches! But if we really admit, with historical theology, this more than doubtful explanation, which degrades Christianity into the merely chance product of mental excitement, at once the further question arises as to how the new religion of the small community of the Messiah at Jerusalem was able to spread itself abroad with such astounding rapidity that, even so soon as at most two decades after Jesus’ death, we meet with Christian communities not only over the whole of Western Asia, but also in the islands of the Mediterranean, in the coast-towns of Greece, even in Italy, at Puteoli, and in Rome; and this at a time when as yet not a line had been written about the Jewish Rabbi.122 Even the theologian Schweitzer is obliged to confess of historical theology that “until it has in some way explained how it was that, under the influence of the Jewish sect of the Messiah, Greek and Roman popular Christianity appeared at all points simultaneously, it must admit a formal right of existence to all hypotheses, even the most extravagant, which seek to attack and solve this problem.”123

If in all this it is shown to be possible, or even probable, that in the Jesus of the Gospels we have not a deified man, but rather a humanised God, there remains but to find an answer to the question as to what external reasons led to the transplanting of the God Jesus into the soil of historical actuality and the reduction of the eternal or super-historical fact of his redeeming death and of his resurrection into a series of temporal events.

This question is answered at once if we turn our attention to the motives present in the earliest Christian communities known to us, which motives appear in the Acts and in the Pauline epistles. From these sources we know at what an early stage an opposition arose between Paul’s Gentile Christianity and the Jewish Christianity, the chief seat of which was at Jerusalem, and which for this reason, as we can understand, claimed for itself a special authority. As long as the former persecutor of the Christian community, over whose conversion they could not at first rejoice too much,124 did not obstruct others and seemed to justify his apostolic activity by his success among the Gentiles, they left him to go his way. But when Paul showed his independence by his reserve before the “Brothers” at Jerusalem, and began to attract the feelings of those at Jerusalem by his abrogation of the Mosaic Law, then they commenced to treat him with suspicion, to place every obstacle in the way of his missionary activity, and to attempt, led by the zealous James, to bring the Pauline communities under their own government. Then, seeking a title for the practice of the apostolic vocation, they found it in this—that every one who wished to testify to Christ must himself have seen him after his resurrection.

But Paul could very justly object that to him also the transfigured Jesus had appeared.125 Then they made the justification for the apostolic vocation consist in this, that an apostle must not only have seen Christ risen up, but must also have eaten and drunk with him.126 This indeed was not applicable in the case of Judas, who in the Acts i. 16 is nevertheless counted among the apostles; and it was also never asserted of Matthias, who was chosen in the former’s stead, that he had been a witness of Jesus’ resurrection. Much less even does he seem to have fulfilled the condition to which advance was made in the development of the original idea, i.e., that an apostle of Jesus should have been personally acquainted with the living Jesus, that he should have belonged to the “First Apostles” and have been present as eye-witness and hearer of Jesus’ words from the time of John’s baptism up to the Resurrection and Ascension.127 Now Seufert has shown that the passage of the Acts referred to is merely a construction, a transference of later conditions to an earlier epoch; and that the whole point of it is to paralyse Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and to establish the title of the Jew-Christians at Jerusalem as higher than that of his followers.

If with this purpose, as Seufert showed, the organisation of the Apostleship of Twelve arose—an organisation which has no satisfactory basis or foundation in the Gospels or in the Pauline epistles—then it is from this purpose also that we can find cause for the God Jesus to become a human founder of the apostleship. “An apostle was to be only such an one as had seen and heard Jesus himself, or had learnt from those who had been his immediate disciples. A literature of Judaism arose which had at quite an early stage the closest interest in the historical determination of Jesus’ life; and this formed the lowest stratum on which our canonical Gospels are based.”128 Judaism in general, and the form of it at Jerusalem in particular, needed a legal title on which to base its commanding position as contrasted with the Gentile Christianity of Paul; and so its founders were obliged to have been companions of Jesus in person, and to have been selected for their vocation by him. For this reason Jesus could not remain a mere God, but had to be drawn down into historical actuality. Seufert thinks that the tracing of the Apostleship of Twelve back to an “historical” Jesus, and the setting up of the demand for an apostle of Jesus to have been a companion of his journeying, took place in Paul’s lifetime in the sixth, or perhaps even in the fifth decade.129 In this he presupposes the existence of an historical Jesus, while the Pauline epistles themselves contain nothing to lead one to believe that the transformation of the Jesus-faith into history took place in Paul’s lifetime. In early Christianity exactly the same incident took place here, on the soil of Palestine and at Jerusalem, as took place later in “eternal” Rome, when the bishop of this city, in order to establish his right of supremacy in the Church, proclaimed himself to be the direct successor of the Apostle Peter, and caused the “possession of the keys” to have been given to this latter by Jesus himself.130

So that there were very mundane and very practical reasons which after all gave the impulse for the God Jesus to be transformed into an historical individual, and for the central point of his action, the crisis in his life, his death and his resurrection, which alone affected religious considerations, to be placed in the capital of the Jewish state, the “City of God,” the Holy City of David, of the “ancestors” of the Messiah, with which now the Jews connected religious salvation. But how could this fiction succeed and maintain its ground, so that it was able to become an absolutely vital question for the new religion, an indestructible dogma, a self-evident “fact,” so that its very calling in question seems to the critical theologians of our time a perfect absurdity?

Before we can answer this question we must turn our attention to the Gnostic movement and its relations to the growing Church.

Christianity was originally developed from Gnosticism (Mandaism). The Pauline religion was only one form of the many syncretising efforts to satisfy contemporary humanity’s need of redemption by a fusion of religious conceptions derived from different sources. So much the greater was the danger which threatened to spring up on this side of the youthful Church.

Gnosticism agreed with Christianity in its pessimistic valuation of the world, in its belief in the inability of man to obtain religious salvation by himself, in the necessity for a divine mediation of “Life.” Like Christianity, it expected the deliverance of the oppressed souls of men by a supernatural Redeemer. He came down from Heaven upon earth and assumed a human form, establishing, through a mystic union with himself, the connection between the spheres of heaven and earth. He thereby guarantees to mankind an eternal life in a bliss to come. Gnosticism also involves a completely dualistic philosophy in its opposition of God and world, of spirit and matter, of soul and body, &c.; but all its efforts are directed to overcoming these contradictions by supernatural mediation and magical contrivances. It treats the “Gnosis,” the knowledge, the proper insight into the coherence of things, as the necessary condition of redemption. The individual must know that his soul comes from God, that it is only temporarily confined in this prison of the body, and that it is intended for something higher than to be lost here in the obscurity of ignorance, of evil and of sin; so that he is already freed from the trammels of the flesh, and finds a new life for himself. The God-Redeemer descended upon earth to impart this knowledge to mankind; and Gnosticism pledges itself, on the basis of the “revelation” received directly from God, to open to those who strive for the highest knowledge all the heights and depths of Heaven and of earth.

This Gnosticism of the first century after Christ was a wonderfully opalescent and intricate structure—half religious speculation, half religion, a mixture of Theosophy, uncritical mythological superstition, and deep religious mysticism. In it Babylonian beliefs as to Gods and stars, Parsee mythology, and Indian doctrines of metempsychosis and Karma were combined with Jewish theology and Mystery-rites of Western Asia; and through the whole blew a breath of Hellenic philosophy, which chiefly strove to fix the fantastic creatures of speculation in a comprehensible form, and to work up the confusion of Oriental licence and extravagance of thought into the form of a philosophical view of the world. The Gnostics also called their mediating deity, as we have already seen of the Mandaic sect of the Nassenes, “Jesus,” and indulged in a picture rendering of his pre-worldly existence and supernatural divine majesty. They agreed with the Christians that Jesus had been “human.”

The extravagant metaphysical conception which they had of Jesus at the same time prevented them from dealing seriously with the idea of his manhood. So that they either maintained that the celestial Christ had attached himself to the man Jesus in a purely external way, and indeed, first on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan, and only temporarily, i.e., up to the Passion—it being only the “man” Jesus who suffered death (Basilides, Cerinthus); or they thought of Jesus as having assumed merely a ghostly body—and consequently thought that all his human actions took place merely as pure appearance (Saturninus, Valentinus, Marcion). But how little they managed to penetrate into the centre of the Christian doctrine of redemption and to value the fundamental significance of the Christ-figure, is shown by the fact that they thought of Christ merely as one mediator among countless others. It is shown also by the romantic and florid description of the spirits or “Æons,” who are supposed to travel backwards and forwards between heaven and earth, leading their lives apart. These played a great part in the Gnostic systems.

It was a matter of course that the Christian faith had to take exception to such a fantastic and external treatment of the idea of the God-man. The Pauline Christianity was distinct from Gnosticism, with which it was most closely connected, just in this, that it was in earnest with the “manhood” of Jesus. It was still more serious that the Gnostics combined with their extreme dualism an outspokenly anti-Jewish character. For this in the close relationship between Gnosticism and Christianity would necessarily frighten the Jews from the Gospel, and incite only too many against the young religion. But the Jews formed the factor with which early Christianity had first of all to reckon. In addition to this the Gnostics, from the standpoint of their spiritualistic conception of God, turned to contempt of the world and asceticism. They commended sexual continence, rejected marriage, and wished to know nothing either of Christ’s or of man’s bodily resurrection. But in the West no propaganda of an ascetic religion could succeed. And yet even with the Gnostics, as is so often the case, asceticism only too frequently degenerated into unbridled voluptuousness and libertinage, and the spiritual pride of those chosen by God to knowledge, who were raised above the Mosaic Law, threatened completely to tear apart the connection with Judaism by its radical criticism of the Old Testament. In this Gnosticism not only undermined the moral life of the communities, but also brought the Gospel into discredit in other parts of the world. As an independent religion, which expressly opposed all other worships, and the adherents of which withdrew from the religious practices of the State, even from any political activity whatsoever, Christianity brought on itself the suspicion of the authorities and the hate of the people, and incurred the prohibition of new religions and secret sects (lex Julia majestatis).131 So that Gnosticism, by taking it from its Jewish native soil, drove Christianity into a conflict with the Roman civil laws.

All these dangers, which threatened Christianity from the Gnostic movement, were set aside in one stroke by the recognition of the true “manhood” of Jesus, the assertion of the “historical” Jesus. This preserved the connection, so important for the unhindered spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, with Judaism and its “revealed” legality—the heteronomous and ritualistic character of which had indeed been shown by Paul, and the moral content of which was nevertheless adhered to by the Christians even later. It was made possible, in default of any previous written documents of revelation, even yet to regard the Old Testament in essentials as the authoritative book of the new faith, and as a preparatory testimony to the final revelation which appeared in Jesus. And most of all, it put a check on Gnostic phantasy, in drawing together the perplexing plurality of the Gnostic Æons into the one figure of the World-redeemer and Saviour Christ, in making the chief dogma the redeeming sacrificial death of the Messiah, and in concentrating the religious man’s attention on this chief turning-point of all the historical events. This was the reason why the Apologists and “Fathers” of Christianity, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, IrenÆus, &c., spoke with such decision in favour of the actuality and true manhood of Jesus. It was not perhaps a better historical knowledge which caused them to do this, but the life-instinct of the Church, which knew only too well that its own position and the prosecution of its religious task, in contrast with the excitements of Gnosticism and its seductive attempts to explain the world, was dependent on the belief in an historical Redeemer. So the historical Jesus was from the beginning a dogma, a fiction, caused by the religious and practical social needs, of the growing and struggling Christian Church. This Jesus has, indeed, led it to victory; not, however, as an historical reality, but as an idea; or, in other words, not an historical Jesus, in the proper sense of the word, a really human individual, but the pure idea of such a person, is the patron-saint, the Genius of ecclesiastical Christianity, the man who enabled it to overcome Gnosticism, Mithraism, and the other religions of the Redeemer-Gods of Western Asia.

The importance of the fourth Gospel rests in having brought to a final close these efforts of the Church to make history of the Redeemer-figure Christ. Begun under the visible influence of the Gnostic conception of the process of redemption, it meets Gnosticism later as another Gospel; indeed, it seems saturated through and through with the Gnostic attitude and outlook. To a certain degree it shares with Gnosticism its anti-Jewish character. But at the same time it adheres, with the Synoptics, to Jesus’ historical activity, and seeks to establish a kind of mediation between the essentially metaphysical conception of the Gnostics and the essentially human conception of the Synoptic Gospels.

The author who wrote the Gospel in the name of John, the “favourite disciple of Jesus,” probably about 140 A.D., agrees with Gnosticism in its dualistic conception of the universe. On one side is the world, the kingdom of darkness, deceit, and evil, in deadly enmity to the divine kingdom of light, the kingdom of truth and life. At the head of the divine kingdom is God, who is himself Light, Truth, Life, and Spirit—following Parsee thought. At the head of the kingdom of earth is Satan (Angromainyu). In the middle, between them, is placed man. But mankind is also divided, as all the rest of existence, into two essentially different kinds. The souls of the one part of mankind are derived from God, those of the other from Satan. The “children of God” are by nature destined for the good and are fit for redemption. The “children of Satan”—among whom John, in agreement with the Gnostics, counts the Jews before all—are not susceptible of anything divine and are assigned to eternal damnation. In order to accomplish redemption, God, from pure “Love” for the world, selected Monogenes, his only-begotten Son, that is, the only being which, as the child of God, was produced not by other beings, but by God himself. The author of the Gospel fuses Monogenes with the Philonic Logos, who in the Gnostic conception was only one of countless other Æons, and was a son of Monogenes, the divine reason, and so only a grandson of God. At the same time, he transfers the whole “pleroma”—the plurality of the Æons into which, in the Gnostic conception, the divine reality was divided—to the single principle of the Logos, defines the Logos as the unique bearer of the whole fulness of divine glory, as the pre-existent creator of the world; and calls him also, since he is in essence identical with God his “Father,” the source of life, the light, the truth, and the spirit of the universe.

And how then does the Logos bring about redemption? He becomes flesh, that is, he assumes the form of the “man” Jesus, without, however, ceasing to be the supernatural Logos, and as such brings to men the “Life” which he himself is, by revealing wisdom and love. As revealer of wisdom he is the “light of the world”; he opens to men the secret of their filial relation to God; he teaches them, by knowing God, to understand themselves and the world; he collects about himself the children of God, who are scattered through the world, in a united and brotherly society; and gives them, in imitating his own personality, the “light of life”—that is, he inwardly enlightens and elevates them. As revealer of love he not only assumes the human form and the renunciation of his divine bliss connected with it, but as a “good shepherd” he lays down his life for his flock; he saves them from the power of Satan, from the terrors of darkness, and sacrifices himself for his people, in order through this highest testimony of his love for men, through the complete surrender of his life, to regain the life which he really is, and to return to his celestial glory. This is the meaning of Christ’s work of redemption, that men by faith and love become inwardly united with him and so with God; whereby they gain the “life” in the higher spirit. For though Christ himself may return to God, his spirit still lives on earth. As the “second Paraclete” or agent, the Spirit proceeds with the Saviour’s work of redemption, arouses and strengthens the faith in Christ and the love for him and for the Brotherhood, thereby mediating for them the “Life,” and leading them after their death into the eternal bliss.

In all this the influence of Gnosticism and of the Philonic doctrine of the Logos is unmistakable, and it is very probable that the author of the fourth Gospel was influenced by the recollection, still living at Ephesus, of the Ephesian Heraclitus’ Logos, in his attachment to Philo and to the latter’s more detailed exposition of the Hellenic Logos-philosophy. But he fundamentally differs from Philo and Gnosticism in his assertion that the Logos “was made flesh,” sojourned on earth in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, and suffered death. It is true, however, that the Evangelist is more persistent in this assertion than successful in delineating a real man, notwithstanding his use of the Synoptic accounts of the personal fate of Jesus. The idea of the divine nature of the Saviour is the one that prevails in his writings. The “historical picture” which came down to him was forcibly rectified, and the personality of Jesus was worked up into something so wonderful, extraordinary, and supernatural that, if we were in possession of the fourth Gospel alone, in all probability the idea would hardly have occurred to any one that it was a treatment of the life-story of an historical individual. And yet in this the difference between the Johannine and the Synoptic Gospels is only a slight one. For the Synoptic Jesus also is not really a man, but a “superman,” the original Christian community’s God-man, cult-hero, and mediator of salvation. And if it is settled that the quarrel between the Church teachers and the Gnostic heretics hinged, not on the divinity of Christ, in which they agreed, but rather on the kind and degree of his humanity, then this “paradoxical fact” is by itself sufficient to corroborate the assertion that the divinity of the mediator of redemption was the only originally determined and self-evident presupposition of the whole Christian faith; and that, on the contrary, his humanity was doubtful even in the earliest times, and for this reason alone could become a subject of the bitterest strife.

Indeed, even the author of the fourth Gospel did not bring about a real fusion between the human person Jesus and the mythological person, the Gnostic Son of God, who with Philo wavered, also in the form of the Logos, between impersonal being and allegorical personality. All the efforts to render comprehensible “the interfusion of the divine and the human in the unity of the personal, its basis (essence) being divine, its appearance a human life of Jesus,” are frustrated even with the so-called John by one fact. This fact is that a Logos considered as a person can never be at once a human personality and yet have as its basis and essence a divine personality, but can only be demoniacally possessed by this latter, and can never be this latter itself. And so, as Pfleiderer says, the Johannine Christ wavers throughout “between a sublime truth and a ghostly monstrosity; the former, in so far as he represents the ideal of the Son of God, and so the religion of mankind, separated from all the accidents and limits of individuality and nationality, of space and time—and the latter so far as he is the mythical covering of a God sojourning on earth in human form.”132

It is true that this fusion of the Gnostic Son of God and the Philonic Logos with the Synoptic Jesus first fixed the hazy uncertainty of mythological speculation and abstract thought in the clear form and living individuality of the personal mediator of redemption. It brought this personality nearer to the hearts of the faithful than any other figure of religious belief, and thereby procured for the Christian cult-god Jesus, in his pure humanity, his overflowing goodness and benevolence, such a predominance over his divine competitors, Mithras, Attis, and others, that by the side of Jesus these faded away into empty shadows. The Gnostic ideal man, that is, the Platonic idea, and the moral ideal of man merged in him directly into a unity. The miracle of the union of God and man, over which the ancient world had so hotly and so fruitlessly disputed, seemed to have found its realisation in Christ. Christ was the “Wise man” of the Stoic philosophy, in whom was united for them all that is most honourable in man; more than this, he was the God-man, as he had been preached and demanded by Seneca for the moral elevation of mankind.133 The world was consequently so ready to receive and so well prepared for his fundamental ideas that we easily see why the Church Christianity took its stand on the human personality of its redeeming principle with almost more decision than on the divine character of Jesus. Nevertheless, in spite of the majesty and sublimity, in spite of the immeasurable significance which the accentuation of the true humanity of Jesus has had for the development of Christianity, it remains true that on the other hand it is just this which is the source of all the insoluble contradictions, of all the insurmountable difficulties from which the Christian view of the world suffers. This is the reason why that great idea, which Christianity brought to the consciousness of the men of the West, and through which it conquered Judaism—the idea of the God-man—was utterly destroyed, and the true content of this religion was obscured, hidden, and misrepresented in such disastrous fashion, that to-day it is no longer possible to assent to its doctrine of redemption without the sacrifice of the intellect.

1 As to the small value of Papias’ statement, cf. GfrÖrer, “Die heilige Sage,” 1838, i. 3–23; also LÜtzelberger, “Die kirchl. Tradition Über den Apostel Johannes,” 76–93. The whole story, according to which Mark received the essential content of the Gospel named after him from Peter, is based on 1 Peter v. 13, and merely serves the purpose of increasing the historical value of the Gospel of Mark. “As the first Gospel was believed to be the work of the Apostle Matthew, and the second (Luke) the work of an assistant of Paul, it was very easy to ascribe to the third (Mark) at least a similar origin as the second, i.e., to trace it back in an analogous way to Peter; as it would have seemed natural for the chief of the apostles, longest dead, to have had his own Gospel, one dedicated to him, as well as Paul. The passage 1 Peter v. 13, “My son Mark saluteth you,” gave a suitable opportunity for bestowing a name on the book,” (GfrÖrer, op. cit., 15; cf. also Brandt, “Die evangelische Geschichte u. d. Ursprung des Christentums,” 1893, 535 sq.)?

2 Op. cit., 58.?

3 xv. 39.?

4 60.?

5 Id.?

6 The proper explanation for this should lie in the fact that the Jesus-faith was set up as a sect-faith and not for “outsiders.”?

7 63 sqq.?

8 68.?

9 70.?

10 3.?

11 It strikes the reader, who stands apart from the controversy, as comical to find the matter characterised in the theological works on the subject as “undoubtedly historical,” “distinct historical fact,” “true account of history,” and so forth; and to consider that what holds for one as “historically certain” is set aside by another as “quite certainly unhistorical.” Where is the famous “method” of which the “critical” theologians are so proud in opposition to the “laity,” who allow themselves to form judgments as to the historical worth or worthlessness of the Gospels??

12 Wrede, op. cit., 91.?

13 104.?

14 129.?

15 131.?

16 148.?

17 148.?

18 Cf. Pfleiderer, “Entstehung des Christentums,” 207, 213. All estimates as to the time at which the Gospels were produced rest entirely on suppositions, in which points of view quite different from that of purely historical interest generally predominate. Thus it has been the custom on the Catholic side to pronounce, not Mark or Luke, but Matthew, to be the oldest source. “Proofs” for this are also given—naturally, as it is indeed the “Church” Gospel: it contains the famous passage (xvi. 18, 19) about Peter’s possession of the keys; how, then, should this not be the oldest? And lately Harnack (“BeitrÄge zur Einl. in das N.T.,” iii., “Die Apostelgeschichte,” 1908) has tried to prove that the Acts, with the Gospel of Luke, had been already produced in the early part of the year 60 A.D. But he does not dare to come to a real decision; and his reasons are opposed by just as weighty ones which are against that “possibility” suggested by him (op. cit., 219 sqq.). Such is, first, the fact that all the other early Christian writings which belong to the first century, as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, evidently know nothing of them. In the Epistle of Barnabas, written about 96 A.D., we read that Jesus chose as his own apostles, as men who were to proclaim his Gospel, “of all men the most evil, to show that he had come to call, not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (iv.). As to this LÜtzelberger very justly remarks, “That is more even than our Gospels say. For these are content to prove that Jesus did not come for the righteous by saying that he ate with publicans and was anointed by women of evil life; while in this Epistle even the Apostles must be most wicked sinners, so that grace may shine forth to them. This passage was quite certainly written neither by an Apostle nor by a pupil of an Apostle; and also it was not written after our Gospels, but at a time when the learned Masters of the Church had still a free hand to show their spirit and ingenuity in giving form to the evangelical story” (“Die hist. Tradition,” 236 sq.). But also the so-called Epistle of Clement, which must have been written at about the same time, is completely silent as to the Gospels, while the “Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles,” which perhaps also belongs to the end of the first century, cites Christ’s words, such as stand in the Gospels, but not as sayings of Jesus. Moreover, according to Harnack, the “Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles” is the Christian elaboration of an early Jewish document; whence we may conclude that its Words of Christ have a similar origin in Jewish thought to that from which the Gospels obtained them. (Cf. LÜtzelberger, op. cit., 259–271.)?

19 81.?

20 71.?

21 81 sq.?

22 Id.?

23 The laity has, as is well known, but a slight suspicion of this. So S. E. Verus’ “Vergleichende Übersicht der vier Evangelien” (1897), with the commentary, is to be recommended.?

24 83.?

25 83.?

26 85 sq.?

27 “Jesus u. d. neutestamentl. Schriftsteller,” ii. 43. Let us take the final paragraph in E. Petersen’s “Die wunderbare Geburt des Heilandes,” which reaches the zenith in proving the mythical nature of the evangelical account of the Saviour’s birth: “If, not because we wish it, but because we are forced to do so by the necessity of History, we remove the sentence, ‘Conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary’—Jesus nevertheless remains the ‘Son of God.’ He remains such because he experienced God as his father, and because he stands at God’s side for us. Also, in spite of our setting aside the miraculous birth as unhistorical, we are quite justified in declaring ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.’” M. BrÜckner speaks similarly at the close of his otherwise excellent work. “Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland.” For the person to whom such phraseology is not—futile, there is no help.?

28 Cf. “Jesus Christus,” a course of lectures delivered at the University of Freiburg i. B., 1908.?

29 SchÄfer, “Die Evangelien und die Evangelienkritik,” 1908, 123. The story of the Church’s development in the first century is a story of shameless literary falsifications, of rough violence in matters of faith, of unlimited trial of the credence of the masses. So that for those who know history the iteration of the “credibility” of the Christian writers of the age raises at most but an ironical smile. Cf. Robertson, “History of Christianity,” 1910.?

30 Cf. Hochart, “Études au sujet de la persÉcution des ChrÉtiens sous NÉron,” 1885, cp. 4.?

31 A. Kalthoff, “Das Christusproblem, GrundzÜge zu einer Sozialtheologie,” 1902, 14 sq.?

32 Kalthoff, “Die Entstehung des Christentums: Neue BeitrÄge zum Christusproblem,” 1904, 8.?

33 If v. Soden (“Hat Jesus gelebt?” vii. 45) has proved wrong the comparison with the Tell-legend, and thinks I have “probably once more” forgotten that Schiller first transformed a very meagre legend, which was bound up in a single incident, from grey antiquity into a living picture, he can know neither Tschudi nor J. v. MÜller. Cf. Hertslet, “Der Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte,” 6 Aufl., 1905, 216 sqq.?

34 The passage runs: “At this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he accomplished miracles and was a teacher of men who joyously embrace the truth, and he found a great following among Jews and Greeks. This one was the Christ. Although at the accusation of the leading men of our people Pilate sentenced him to the cross, those who had first loved him remained still faithful. For he appeared again to them on the third day, risen again to a new life, as the prophets of God had foretold of him, with a thousand other prophecies. After him are called the Christians, whose sect has not come to an end.”?

35 “Einl. ins N.T.,” 1836, 581.?

36 “Gesch. d. jÜd. Volkes,” i. 548.?

37 Origen, though he collected all Josephus’ assertions which could serve as support to the Christian religion, does not know the passage, but probably another, in which the destruction of Jerusalem was represented as a punishment for James’ execution, which is certainly a forgery.?

38 Cf. Kalthoff, “Entstehung d. Chr.,” 16 sq. As to the whole matter, SchÜrer, op. cit., 544–549.?

39 V. Soden proves the contrary in his work, “Hat Jesus gelebt?” (1910), “in order to show the reliability of Drew’s assertions,” from Clement’s letter of 96 A.D., from Dionysius of Corinth (about 170) from Tertullion and Eusebius (early fourth century, not third, as v. Soden writes); and wishes to persuade his readers that the persecution under Nero is testified to. The authenticity of the letter of Clement is, however, quite uncertain, and has been most actively combated, from its first publication in 1633 till the present day, by investigators of repute, such as Semler, Baur, Schwegler, Volkmar, Keim, &c. But as for the above-cited authors, the unimportance of their assertions on the point is so strikingly exhibited by Hochart that we have no right to call them up as witnesses for the authenticity of the passage of Tacitus.?

40 Cf. Hochart, op. cit., 280 sqq.; H. Schiller, “Gesch. d. rÖm. Kaiserzeit,” 447, note.?

41 “Consulting the archives has been but little customary among ancient historians; and Tacitus has bestowed but little consideration on the Acta Diurna and the protocols of the Senate” (“Handb. d. klass. Altertumsw.,” viii., 2 Abt., Aft. 2, under “Tacitus”). Moreover, the difficulties of the passage from Tacitus have been fully realised by German historians (H. Schiller, op. cit., 449; “De. Gesch. d. rÖm. Kaiserreiches unter der Regierung des Nero,” 1872, 434 sqq., 583 sq.), even if they do not generally go as far as to say that the passage is completely unauthentic, as Volney did at the end of the eighteenth century (“Ruinen,” Reclam, 276). Cf. also Arnold, “Die neronische Christenverfolgung. Eine historiche Untersuchung zur Geschichte d. Ältesten Kirche,” 1888. The author does indeed adhere to the authenticity of the passage in Tacitus, but as a matter of fact he presupposes it rather than attempts to prove it; while in many isolated reflections he gives an opinion against the correctness of the account given by Tacitus, and busies himself principally in disproving false inferences connected with that passage, such as the connection of the Neronic persecution with the Book of Revelation. The conceivable possibility that the persecution actually took place, but that at all events the sentence of Tacitus may be a Christian interpolation, Arnold seems never to have considered.?

42 Op. cit., 227.?

43 Kalthoff, “Christusproblem,” 17.?

44 Weinel, “Jesus im 19 Jahrhundert,” 1907, 68.?

45 “Babylonisches im Neuen Testament,” 109 sq.?

46 “Zerduscht Nameh,” ch. xxvi.?

47 GfrÖrer, “Jahrhundert des Heils,” Part II., 380 sqq.?

48 Luke iii. 23.?

49 Numb. iv. 3.?

50 Matt. xxi. 12 sqq.?

51 Zech. xiv. 21 runs in the Targum translation: “Every vessel in Jerusalem will be consecrated to the Lord, &c., and at that time there will no longer be shopkeepers in the House of the Lord.” In this there may have been a further inducement for the Evangelists to state that Jesus chases the tradesmen from the Temple.?

52 2 Sam. xvii. 23; cf. also Zech. xi. 12 sq.; Psa. xli. 10.?

53 GfrÖrer, “Jahr. d. Heils,” ii. 318 sqq.?

54 Cf. 1 Cor. x. 1 sq.?

55 2 Kings iv. 19 sqq.?

56 Numb. i. 44; Jos. iii. 12; iv. 1 sqq. Cf. “Petrus-legende,” 51 sq.?

57 Cf. p. 127, note.?

58 Josephus, “Antiq.,” iv. 8, 48; Philo, “Vita Mos.,” iii.?

59 2 Kings ii. 11.?

60 E.g. also the account of the arrest of Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 51 sqq.) cf. 2 Kings vi. 10–22.?

61 Matt. ix. 11 sq., xii. 8 sq., xv. 1 sqq., 11 and 20, xxviii. 18.?

62 Psa. cxlvi. 7.?

63 Bereshith Rabba zu Gen. xli. 1.?

64 Cf. esp. Acts xi. 2 sqq.?

65 Matt. v. 17 sqq.?

66 Id. viii. 11 sqq., x. 5, xxiii. 34 sqq., xxviii. 19 sqq.?

67 Cf. LÜtzelberger, “Jesus, was er war und wollte,” 1842, 16 sqq.?

68 Cf. above, 59 sqq.?

69 It is given as a reason for his appearing first in Galilee that the Galileans were first led into exile, and so should first be comforted, as all divine action conforms to the law of requital (GfrÖrer, “Jahr. d. Heils,” 230 sq. Cf. also Isa. viii. 23).?

70 Cf. above, 173 sq.?

71 See above, 171.?

72 Exod. xvi. 17 sqq.; Numb. xxi. 1 sqq.; Exod. vii. 17 sqq. 1 Kings xvii. 5 sqq.?

73 “Hist.,” iv. 81.?

74 “Vespasian,” vii.?

75 lxvi. 8.?

76 Isa. 1. 6 sq.?

77 Zech. xii 10.?

78 Cf. “Petruslegende,” 24.?

79 Gen. xxvi. 6; cf. also Tertullian, “Adv. Jud.,” 10.?

80 Cf. for this Brandt, “Die Evangelische Geschichte,” esp. 53 sqq. Even such a cautious investigator as GfrÖrer confesses that, after his searching examination of the historical content of the Synoptics, he is obliged to close “with the sad admission” that their testimony does not give sufficient assurance to enable us to pronounce anything they contain to be true, so far as they are concerned, with a good historical conscience. “In this it is by no means asserted that many may not think their views correct, but only that we cannot rely on them sufficiently to rest a technically correct proof on them alone. They tell us too many things which are purely legendary, and too many others which are at least suspicious, for a prudent historian to feel justified in a construction based on their word alone. This admission may be disagreeable—it is also unpleasant to me—but it is genuine, and it is demanded by the rules which hold everywhere before a good tribunal, and in the sphere of history” (“Die hl. Sage,” 1838, ii. 243).?

81 This is the case with the corresponding account in Mark, while in Luke the dramatic presentation seems to be more worked away, and the coherence, through the introduction of descriptions and episodes (disciples at Emmaus) bears more the character of a simple narrative. Cf. Robertson, “Pagan Christs,” 186 sqq.; “A Short History,” 87 sqq. The fact that in almost all representations of this kind both the scene at Gethsemane and the words spoken by Jesus usually serve as signs of his personality (e.g. also Bousset’s “Jesus”—Rel. Volksb., 1904, 56), shows what we must think of the historical value of the accounts of the life of Jesus; especially when we consider that certainly no listeners were there, and Jesus cannot himself have told his experience to his disciples, as the arrest is supposed to have taken place on the spot.?

82 “Messiasgeheimnis,” 143.?

83 Gen. xxiv.?

84 E. v. Hartmann, “Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments,” 1905, 22.?

85 Op. cit.?

86 Cf. H. Jordan, “Jesus und die modernen Jesusbilder, Bibl. Zeit- u. Streitfragen,” 1909, 38.?

87 Mark vi. 1 sq.?

88 Mark xiii. 32.?

89 Mark iii. 20.?

90 1 Kings xix.; cf. also Isa. xlii. 4.?

91 Cf. Brandt, op. cit., 553 sq.?

92 Hertlein treats of these Bases of Schmiedel in the “Prot. Monatsheften,” 1906, 386 sq.; cf. also Schmiedel’s reply.?

93 Op. cit., 141.?

94 Bousset agrees with this in his work “Was wissen wir von Jesus?” (1901). “Jesus’ speeches are for the most part creations of the communities, placed together by the community from isolated words of Jesus.” “In this, apart from all the rest, there was a powerful and decided alteration of the speeches” (47 sqq.).?

95 Cf. Robertson, “Christianity and Mythology,” 424 sqq., 429.?

96 Op. cit., 43.?

97 “Protest. Monatshefte,” 1903, MÄrzheft.?

98 Op. cit., 161 sq.?

99 Matt. xviii. 15 sqq.?

100 Id. xxix. 3 sqq.?

101 Cf. Pfleiderer, “Urchristentum,” i. 447 sq.; van den Bergh van Eysinga, op. cit., 57 sqq.?

102 Smith, op. cit., 107 sqq.?

103 Cf. Nork, “Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen,” 1839.?

104 Cf. Robertson, “Christianity and Mythology,” 440–457.?

105 Cf. v. Hartmann, op. cit., 131–143. It will always be a telling argument against the historical nature of the sayings of Jesus that Paul seems to know nothing of them, that he never refers to them exactly; and that even up to the beginning of the second century, with the exception of a few remarks in Clement and Polycarp, the Apostles and Fathers in all their admonitions, consolations, and reprimands, never make use of Jesus’ sayings to give greater force to their own words.?

106 V. Hartmann, op. cit., 44 sq.?

107 Let us hear what Clemen says against this: “In its reduction of the Law to the Commandment of love, though this was already prominent in the Old Testament [!] and even earlier had here and there [!] been characterised as the chief Commandment, Christianity is completely original [!]. And for Jesus the subordination of religious duties to moral was consequent on this, though in this respect he would have been equally influenced by the prophets of the Old Testament” (op. cit., 135 sq.).?

108 “We must (as regards the moral ideals of Jesus) pay just as much attention to what he does not treat of, to what he set aside, as to what he clung to, indeed, setting it in opposition to all the rest. At least this wonderfully sure selection is Jesus’ own. We may produce analogies for each individual thing, but the whole is unique and cannot be invented” (v. Soden, op. cit., 51 sq.). This method, practised by liberal theology, of extolling their Jesus as against all other mortals, and of raising him up to a “uniqueness” in the absolute sense, can make indeed but a small impression on the impartial.?

109 Wrede, “Paulus,” 91.?

110 We admit that besides the eschatological grounding of his moral demands, Jesus also makes use occasionally of expressions that pass beyond the idea of reward. But they are quite isolated—as, e.g., Matt. v. 48, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” a phrase which is, moreover, in accord with Lev. xi. 44 and xix. 3—and without any fundamental significance. In general, and in particular even in the Sermon on the Mount, that “Diamond in the Crown of Jesus’ ethics,” the idea of reward and punishment is prevalent (Matt. v. 12 and 46; vi. 1, 4, 6, 14, 18; v. 20; vi. 15; vii. 1, &c.). Views may still differ widely as to whether it is historically correct to estimate, as Weinel would like to, Jesus’ ethics in this connection really by the few sayings which go beyond that idea. (Cf. v. Hartmann, op. cit., 116–124.) The favourite declaration, however, is quite unhistorical, that Jesus was the first who introduced into the world the principle of active love; and that the Stoics, as Weinel represents, only taught the doing away with all our passions, even that of love; or indeed that Jesus, who wished salvation only to benefit the Jews, who forbade his people to walk in the ways of the Gentiles, and who hesitated to comply with the Canaanite woman’s prayer, “raised to the highest degree of sincerity” the “altruistic ideal,” and that in principle he broke down the boundaries between peoples and creeds with his “Love thy enemy,” (Weinel, op. cit., 55, 57). As against this cf. the following passage from Seneca: “Everything which we must do and avoid may be reduced to this short formula of human obligation: We are members of a mighty body. Nature has made us kindred, having produced us from the same stuff and for the same ends. She has implanted in us a mutual love, and has arranged it socially. She has founded right and equity. Because of her commands to do evil is worse than to suffer evil. Hands ready to aid are raised at her call. Let that verse be in our mouths and our hearts: I am a man, nothing human do I despise! Human life consists in well-doing and striving. It will be cemented into a society of general aid not by fear but by mutual love. What is the rightly constituted, good and high-minded soul, but a God living as a guest in a human body? Such a soul may appear just as well in a knight as in a freedman or in a slave. We can soar upwards to heaven from any corner. Make this your rule, to treat the lower classes even as you would wish the higher to treat you. Even if we are slaves, we may yet be free in spirit. The slaves are men, inferior relatives, friends; indeed, our fellow-slaves in a like submission to the tyranny of fate. A friendship based on virtue exists between the good man and God, yes, more than a friendship, a kinship and likeness; for the good man is really his pupil, imitator, and scion, differing from God only because of the continuance of time. Him the majestic father brings up, a little severely, as is the strict father’s wont. God cherishes a fatherly affection towards the good man, and loves him dearly. If you wish to imitate the gods, give also to the ungrateful; for the sun rises even on the ungodly and the seas lie open even to the pirate, the wind blows not only in favour of the good, and the rain falls even on the fields of the unjust. If you wish to have the gods well-disposed towards you, be good: he has enough, who honours and who imitates them.” Cf. also Epictetus: “Dare, raising your eyes to God, to say, Henceforth make use of me to what end thou wilt! I assent, I am thine, I draw back from nothing which thy will intends. Lead me whithersoever thou wilt! For I hold God’s will to be better than mine.” (Cf. also Matt. xxvi. 39.)?

111 Kautsky, “Ursprung des Christentums,” 17.?

112 Op. cit., 3.?

113 “How is it conceivable,” even Pfleiderer asks, “that the new community should have fashioned itself from the chaos of material without some definite fact, some foundation-giving event which could form the nucleus for the genesis of the new ideas? Everywhere in the case of a new historical development the powers and impulses which are present in the crowd are first directed to a definite end and fastened into an organism that can survive by the purpose-giving action of heroic personalities. And so the impulse for the formation of the Christian community must have come from some definite point, which, from the testimony of the Apostle Paul and of the earliest Gospels, we can only find in the life and death of Jesus” (“Entstehung des Chr.,” 11). But that the “testimony” for an historical Jesus is not testimony, and that the “definite fact,” the “foundation-giving event,” is to be looked for, if anywhere, in Paul himself and nowhere else—such is the central point of all this analysis.?

114 Op. cit., 61 sq.?

115 “Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 396.?

116 ii. 44.?

117 “Gesch. Israels,” ii. 1 sqq.?

118 Holtzmann, “Zum Thema ‘Jesus und Paulus’” (“Prot. Monatsheft,” iv., 1900, 465).?

119 Parerga, ii. 180.?

120 Neutest. Theol. ii. 4. Cf. R. H. GrÜtzmacher: “Ist das liberale Christusbild modern? Bibl. Zeit- und Streitfragen,” 39 sq.?

121 Pfleiderer, “Entstehung d. Chr.,” 108 sqq.?

122 Cf. Stendel, op. cit., 22.?

123 “Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 313.?

124 Gal. i. 24.?

125 1 Cor. ii. 1; 2 Cor. xix. 9.?

126 Acts i. 3, x. 41.?

127 Acts i. 21 sq.?

128 Seufert, “Der Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Apostolates in der christlichen Kirche der ersten Jahrhunderte,” 1887, 143. Cf. also my “Petruslegende,” in which the unhistorical nature of the disciples and apostles is shown, 50 sqq.?

129 Op. cit., 42.?

130 Cf. my work “Die Petruslegende.”?

131 Cf. Hausrath, “Jesus und die neutestamentl. Schriftsteller,” ii. 203 sqq.?

132 “Entstehung d. Chr.,” 239.?

133 Cf. above, p. 31. sqq.?