How much M. Loisy is swayed by prepossession may be further gathered from his argumentation over the “testimony of Paul” in connection with his criticism of the myth theory. Professor Drews, he remarks, does not follow those who contest the authenticity of the Epistles, “though the interest of his thesis imperiously demands it”; and again: “Paul is a dangerous witness for the mythic hypothesis.”1
It may be worth while for me here to note that a study of the Pauline epistles, on the view that “the four” were probably genuine in the main, was a determining factor in my own resort to the mythical hypothesis. The critical situation created by realizing that Paul practically knew nothing of the Gospel narratives save the detachable item of the resurrection was for me almost exactly analogous to that created by realizing that the Israel of the Book of Judges knew nothing of the Pentateuchal life in the wilderness. So far from being a witness against the myth theory, the Pauline literature was one of the first clear grounds for that theory. The school of Van Manen can realize, what M. Loisy cannot, that the spuriousness of the whole Pauline literature, so far from being “imperiously required” by the myth theory, sets up for that a certain complication.2 As a matter of fact, Van Manen took exactly the converse view to that of M. Loisy:—
He was at bottom a man of conservative character, and it was only with great reluctance that he found himself compelled to abandon the Paul consecrated by tradition. But when, as a man of science, he had once made this sacrifice to his convictions, his belief in an historical Jesus received a fresh accession of strength; now at length the existence of Jesus had become probable. If the letters were written a century later than the time when Jesus lived, then his deification in the Pauline letters ceases to be so astonishing.3
Decidedly M. Loisy had been somewhat superficial in his estimate of the tendencies of the argument over Paul. Now, the myth theory, as it happens, is neither made nor marred by any decision as to the spuriousness of the Pauline letters. The crucial point is that, whether early or late—and the dating of them as pseudepigrapha is a difficult matter—the cardinal epistles have been interpolated. This became clear to me at an early stage in my studies, independently of any previous criticism. That the two passages, 1 Cor. xi, 23–28; xv, 3–11, are interpolations, and that in the second case the interpolation has been added to, are as clear results of pure documentary analysis as any in the whole field of the discussion.4 And when M. Loisy ascribes to Professor Drews an “entirely gratuitous hypothesis of interpolation,” and implies that such hypotheses are set up because the texts are “extremely awkward for the mythic theory,”5 he is himself misled by his parti pris. Whereas I came to my conclusions6 as to interpolation while working towards the myth theory, exactly the same conclusions as mine, I afterwards found, had been previously reached by at least one continental scholar7 who had not the mythic theory in view; and later by others8 who equally stood aloof from it. M. Loisy would do well to ask himself whether it is not he who is uncritically swayed by his presuppositions, and whether the men to whom he imputes such bias are not the really disinterested critics.
In regard to the text of 1 Cor. xv, 3 sq., he describes as surprising the argument that the account of the appearance of Jesus to “five hundred at once” is shown to be late by its absence from the Gospels. This very silence of the evangelists, he insists, “renders unplausible [invraisemblable] the entirely gratuitous hypothesis of an interpolation.”9 One is driven to wonder what conception M. Loisy has formed of the manner of the compilation of the Gospels. On his view, Paul had very early put in currency the record that the risen Jesus had appeared to “above five hundred brethren at once”; yet this record, so welcome to the Church, was never inserted in the Gospels. Why not? In M. Loisy’s opinion, one of them, at least, was penned or redacted in the Pauline interest:—
One may without doubt ... affirm that the oldest of the synoptics, the Gospel of Mark, was composed, in a certain measure, in favour of Paul.... The same Gospel seems to have the conscious purpose of lowering the Galilean disciples to the advantage of Paul and his disciples.10
And while M. Loisy justly rejects, as opposed to the internal evidence, the claim that “Luke” is the intimate of Paul, and even denies that the third Gospel is really Pauline in tendency,11 he will hardly say that it is anti-Pauline, or likely on that or any other score to repel an important item of testimony to the appearances of the risen Jesus, supplied by such an authority as the Apostle to the Gentiles. He can give no reason whatever, then, why the “five hundred” item should appear neither in Gospels nor Acts. It is in point of fact to be taken as a very late interpolation indeed. And if M. Loisy, as in duty bound, would but note the sequence: “then to the twelve; then ... to above five hundred ... then to all the apostles,” he might, as simple critic, see that there have been successive tamperings.
As to the genuineness and the dating of the epistles, it may be well at this point to put the issue clearly. The general case of Van Manen is decidedly strong; and the entire absence from the Acts of any mention of any public epistle by Paul is all in Van Manen’s favour. The Epistle to the Romans is so far dissolved under criticism that it might be classed as neither Pauline nor an epistle.12 That there are late literary elements in the rest of the cardinal “four” I have myself argued,13 independently of the question of the interpolations of quasi-history. For a free historical student there can be no primary question of how the dating of the epistles will affect the problem of the historicity of Jesus: the problem is to be scientifically solved on its merits. But while the school of Van Manen fail to recognize interpolations in the epistles as they stand, and to revise their chronology in the light of that fact, they are postponing the critical settlement. That the rejection of all the Pauline epistles as pseudepigraphic is not at all a counter stroke to the myth theory is shown by Mr. Whittaker’s definite acceptance of both positions. Van Manen was premature on the historicity question.
Assuredly there is much to be done before the myth theory can be reduced to a definitive scientific form. It is to be hoped that, free as it is from perverting commitments, it may be developed rather more rapidly than the “liberal” theory of the human Christ, which has been on the stocks for over a hundred years without securing any higher measure of unanimity than exists among the Christian sects. But it can have no rapid acceptance. Questions of myth analogies—always open to the perverse handling of men who cannot or will not see that in mythology and anthropology claims of analogy are not claims of derivation—are apt to be obscure at best; and the establishment of the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus cult has been admitted from the outset to be difficult. And the sociological history of the rise of Christianity, to which the myth question is but preparatory, has still to be written.
In this direction too there may be complications. Pastor Kalthoff’s very important treatise on The Rise of Christianity puts the theory that the Church began as a communistic body; and Karl Kautsky, in his Der Ursprung des Christenthums (1908), has vigorously developed that conception. It has some strong grounds, and it is beset by very serious difficulties, which Kautsky, I think, has not met. When he denies that there were Hellenistic experiments and propagandas which in a later period could have set some Christian enthusiasts upon inventing a communistic beginning for the Church, he seems to ignore his own argument from the Epistle of James, and evidence which he could have found in Kalthoff. But unless the communistic theory (adumbrated long ago in De Quincey’s rash thesis that the Essenes were the first Christians) is pressed as giving the whole origin of Christianity, it remains a part rather of the sociological problem than of the hierological inquiry. And I do not think that Kalthoff, had he lived, would have so pressed it. He saw, I think, that there is a primary religious factor and problem, and that the other is secondary. There was a sacramental cult before there could be any communism. When the origin of the cult is made fairly clear the question of communism may be settled. But the Acts is a very dubious basis for a historical theory, and the Epistle of James tells rather of Ebionism than of communism. The history of the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, which for me was one of the points of reversion to a myth theory, seems to be the true starting point for the history of the Church.
