in the second part of his work, that, prior to Jesus, no great man of
antiquity had devised a plan of beneficence of a scope commensurate with
the whole human race. In the third part the conclusion is drawn that Jesus
is the uniquely divine Teacher.
But before the author can venture to draw this conclusion, he feels it
necessary first to show that the plan of Jesus was no chimera. If we were
obliged to admit its impracticability Jesus would have to be ranked with
the visionaries and enthusiasts; and these, however noble and virtuous,
can only injure the cause of rational religion. “Visionary enthusiasm and
enlightened reason—who that knows anything of the human mind can conceive
these two as united in a single soul?” But Jesus was no visionary
enthusiast. “With what calmness, self‐mastery, and cool determination does
He think out and pursue His divine purpose?” By the truths which He
revealed and declared to be divine communications He did not desire to put
pressure upon the human mind, but only to guide it. “It would be
impossible to show a more conscientious respect and a more delicate
consideration for the rights of human reason than is shown by Jesus. He
will conquer only by convincing.” “He is willing to bear with
contradiction, and condescends to meet the most irrational objections and
the most ill‐natured misrepresentations with the most incredible
patience.”
It was well for Reinhard that he had no suspicion how full of enthusiasm
Jesus was, and how He trod reason under His feet!
But what kind of relation was there between this rational religion taught
by Jesus and the Christian theology which Reinhard accepted? How does he
harmonise the symbolical view of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper which he
here expounds with ecclesiastical doctrine? How does he pass from the
conception of the divine teacher to that of the Son of God?
This is a question which he does not feel himself obliged to answer. For
him the one circle of thought revolves freely within the other, but they
never come into contact with each other.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
So far as concerns the presentation of the teaching, the Life of Jesus by
Opitz follows the same lines as that of Reinhard. It is disfigured,
however, by a number of lapses of taste, and by a crass supernaturalism in
the description of the miracles and experiences of the Great Teacher.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Jakobi writes “for thoughtful and sympathetic readers.” He recognises that
much of the miraculous is a later addition to the facts, but he has a
rooted distrust of thoroughgoing rationalism, “whose would‐be helpful
explanations are often stranger than the miracles themselves.” A certain
amount of miracle must be maintained, but not for the purpose of founding
belief upon it: “the miracles were not intended to authenticate the
teaching of Jesus, but to surround His life with a guard of honour.”(20)
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Whether Herder, in his two Lives of Jesus, is to be classed with the older
rationalists is a question to which the answer must be “Yes, and No,” as
in the case of every attempt to classify those men of lonely greatness who
stand apart from their contemporaries, but who nevertheless are not in all
points in advance of them.
Properly speaking, he has really nothing to do with the rationalists,
since he is distinguished from them by the depth of his insight and his
power of artistic apprehension, and he is far from sharing their lack of
taste. Further, his horizon embraces problems of which rationalism, even
in its developed form, never came in sight. He recognises that all
attempts to harmonise the Synoptists with John are unavailing; a
conclusion which he had avowed earlier in his “Letters referring to the
Study of Theology.”(21) He grasps this incompatibility, it is true, rather
by the aid of poetic, than of critical insight. “Since they cannot be
united,” he writes in his “Life of Jesus according to John,” “they must be
left standing independently, each evangelist with his own special merit.
Man, Ox, Lion, and Eagle, they advance together, supporting the throne of
glory, but they refuse to coalesce into a single form, to unite into a
Diatessaron.” But to him belongs the honour of being the first and the
only scholar, prior to Strauss, to recognise that the life of Jesus can be
construed either according to the Synoptists, or according to John, but
that a Life of Jesus based on the four Gospels is a monstrosity. In view
of this intuitive historical grasp, it is not surprising that the
commentaries of the theologians were an abomination to him.
The fourth Gospel is, in his view, not a primitive historical source, but
a protest against the narrowness of the “Palestinian Gospels.” It gives
free play, as the circumstances of the time demanded, to Greek ideas.
“There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels,
of a Gospel at once theological and historical, like that of John,” in
which Jesus should be presented, not as the Jewish Messiah, “but as the
Saviour of the World.”
The additions and omissions of this Gospel are alike skilfully planned. It
retains only those miracles which are symbols of a continuous permanent
miracle, through which the Saviour of the World works constantly,
unintermittently, among men. The Johannine miracles are not there for
their own sakes. The cures of demoniacs are not even represented among
them. These had no interest for the Graeco‐Roman world, and the Evangelist
was unwilling “that this Palestinian superstition should become a
permanent feature of Christianity, to be a reproach of scoffers or a
belief of the foolish.” His recording of the raising of Lazarus is, in
spite of the silence of the Synoptists, easily explicable. The latter
could not yet tell the story “without exposing a family which was still
living near Jerusalem to the fury of that hatred which had sworn with an
oath to put Lazarus to death.” John, however, could recount it without
scruple, “for by this time Jerusalem was probably in ruins, and the
hospitable family of Bethany were perhaps already with their Friend in the
other world.” This most naïve of explanations is reproduced in a whole
series of Lives of Jesus.
In dealing with the Synoptists, Herder grasps the problem with the same
intuitive insight. Mark is no epitomist, but the creator of the archetype
of the Synoptic representation. “The Gospel of Mark is not an epitome; it
is an original Gospel. What the others have, and he has not, has been
added by them, not omitted by him. Consequently Mark is a witness to an
original, shorter Gospel‐scheme, to which the additional matter of the
others ought properly to be regarded as a supplement.”
Mark is the “unornamented central column, or plain foundation stone, on
which the others rest.” The birth‐stories of Matthew and Luke are “a new
growth to meet new needs.” The different tendencies, also, point to a
later period. Mark is still comparatively friendly towards the Jews,
because Christianity had not yet separated itself from Judaism. Matthew is
more hostile towards them because his Gospel was written at a time when
Christians had given up the hope of maintaining amicable relations with
the Jews and were groaning under the pressure of persecution. It is for
that reason that the Jesus of the Matthaean discourses lays so much stress
upon His second coming, and presupposes the rejection of the Jewish nation
as something already in being, a sign of the approaching end.
Pure history, however, is as little to be looked for in the first three
Gospels as in the fourth. They are the sacred epic of Jesus the Messiah,
and model the history of their hero upon the prophetic words of the Old
Testament. In this view, also, Herder is a precursor of Strauss.
In essence, however, Herder represents a protest of art against theology.
The Gospels, if we are to find the life of Jesus in them, must be read,
not with pedantic learning, but with taste. From this point of view,
miracles cease to offend. Neither Old Testament prophecies, nor
predictions of Jesus, nor miracles, can be adduced as evidence for the
Gospel; the Gospel is its own evidence. The miracles stand outside the
possibility of proof, and belong to mere “Church belief,” which ought to
lose itself more and more in the pure Gospel. Yet miracles, in a limited
sense, are to be accepted on the ground of the historic evidence. To
refuse to admit this is to be like the Indian king who denied the
existence of ice because he had never seen anything like it. Jesus, in
order to help His miracle‐loving age, reconciled Himself to the necessity
of performing miracles. But, in any case, the reality of a miracle is of
small moment in comparison with its symbolic value.
In this, therefore, Herder, though in his grasp of many problems he was
more than a generation in advance of his time, belongs to the primitive
rationalists. He allows the supernatural to intrude into the events of the
life of Jesus, and does not feel that the adoption of the historical
standpoint involves the necessity of doing away with miracle. He
contributed much to the clearing up of ideas, but by evading the question
of miracle he slurred over a difficulty which needed to be faced and
solved before it should be possible to entertain the hope of forming a
really historical conception of the life of Jesus. In reading Herder one
is apt to fancy that it would be possible to pass straight on to Strauss.
In reality, it was necessary that a very prosaic spirit, Paulus, should
intervene, and should attack the question of miracle from a purely
historical standpoint, before Strauss could give expression to the ideas
of Herder in an effectual way, _i.e._ in such a way as to produce offence.
The fact is that in theology the most revolutionary ideas are swallowed
quite readily so long as they smooth their passage by a few small
concessions. It is only when a spicule of bone stands out obstinately and
causes choking that theology begins to take note of dangerous ideas.
Strauss is Herder with just that little bone sticking out—the absolute
denial of miracle on historical grounds. That is to say, Strauss is a
Herder who has behind him the uncompromising rationalism of Paulus.
IV. THE EARLIEST FICTITIOUS LIVES OF JESUS
_Karl Friedrich Bahrdt._ Briefe über die Bibel im Volkston. Eine
Wochenschrift von einem Prediger auf dem Lande. (Popular Letters
about the Bible. A weekly paper by a country clergyman.) J. Fr.
Dost, Halle, 1782. 816 pp.
Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu. In Briefen an Wahrheit
suchende Leser. (An Explanation of the Plans and Aims of Jesus. In
letters addressed to readers who seek the truth.) 11 vols.,
embracing 3000 pp. August Mylius, Berlin, 1784‐1792. This work is
a sequel to the Popular Letters about the Bible.
Die sämtlichen Reden Jesu aus den Evangelisten ausgezogen. (The
Whole of the Discourses of Jesus, extracted from the Gospels.)
Berlin, 1786.
_Karl Heinrich Venturini._ Natürliche Geschichte des grossen
Propheten von Nazareth. (A Non‐supernatural History of the Great
Prophet of Nazareth.) Bethlehem (Copenhagen), 1st ed., 1800‐1802;
2nd ed., 1806. 4 vols., embracing 2700 pp. The work appeared
anonymously. The description given below is based on the 2nd ed.,
which shows dependence, in some of the exegetical details, upon
the then recently published commentaries of Paulus.
It is strange to notice how often in the history of our subject a few
imperfectly equipped free‐lances have attacked and attempted to carry the
decisive positions before the ordered ranks of professional theology have
pushed their advance to these decisive points.
Thus, it was the fictitious “Lives” of Bahrdt and Venturini which, at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, first
attempted to apply, with logical consistency, a non‐supernatural
interpretation to the miracle stories of the Gospel. Further, these
writers were the first who, instead of contenting themselves with the
simple reproduction of the successive sections of the Gospel narrative,
endeavoured to grasp the inner connexion of cause and effect in the events
and experiences of the life of Jesus. Since they found no such connexion
indicated in the Gospels, they had to supply it for themselves. The
particular form which their explanation takes—the hypothesis of a secret
society of which Jesus is the tool—is, it is true, rather a sorry
makeshift. Yet, in a sense, these Lives of Jesus, for all their colouring
of fiction, are the first which deserve the name. The rationalists, and
even Paulus, confine themselves to describing the teaching of Jesus;
Bahrdt and Venturini make a bold attempt to paint the portrait of Jesus
Himself. It is not surprising that their portraiture is at once crude and
fantastic, like the earliest attempts of art to represent the human figure
in living movement.
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt was born in 1741 at Bischofswerda. Endowed with
brilliant abilities, he made, owing to a bad upbringing and an
undisciplined sensuous nature, a miserable failure. After being first
Catechist and afterwards Professor Extraordinary of Sacred Philology at
Leipzig, he was, in 1766, requested to resign on account of scandalous
life. After various adventures, and after holding for a time a
professorship at Giessen, he received under Frederick’s minister Zedlitz
authorisation to lecture at Halle. There he lectured to nearly nine
hundred students who were attracted by his inspiring eloquence. The
government upheld him, in spite of his serious failings, with the double
motive of annoying the faculty and maintaining the freedom of learning.
After the death of Frederick the Great, Bahrdt had to resign his post, and
took to keeping an inn at a vineyard near Halle. By ridiculing Wöllner’s
edict (1788), he brought on himself a year of confinement in a fortress.
He died in disrepute, in 1792.
Bahrdt had begun as an orthodox cleric. In Halle he gave up his belief in
revelation, and endeavoured to explain religion on the ground of reason.
To this period belong the “Popular Letters about the Bible,” which were
afterwards continued in the further series, “An Explanation of the Plans
and Aims of Jesus.”
His treatment of the life of Jesus has been too severely censured. The
work is not without passages which show a real depth of feeling,
especially in the continually recurring explanations regarding the
relation of belief in miracle to true faith, in which the actual
description of the life of Jesus lies embedded. And the remarks about the
teaching of Jesus are not always commonplace. But the paraphernalia of
dialogues of portentous length make it, as a whole, formless and
inartistic. The introduction of a galaxy of imaginary characters—Haram,
Schimah, Avel, Limmah, and the like—is nothing less than bewildering.
Bahrdt finds the key to the explanation of the life of Jesus in the
appearance in the Gospel narrative of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
They are not disciples of Jesus, but belong to the upper classes; what
rôle, then, can they have played in the life of Jesus, and how came they
to intercede on His behalf? They were Essenes. This Order had secret
members in all ranks of society, even in the Sanhedrin. It had set itself
the task of detaching the nation from its sensuous Messianic hopes and
leading it to a higher knowledge of spiritual truths. It had the most
widespread ramifications, extending to Babylon and to Egypt. In order to
deliver the people from the limitations of the national faith, which could
only lead to disturbance and insurrection, they must find a Messiah who
would destroy these false Messianic expectations. They were therefore on
the look‐out for a claimant of the Messiahship whom they could make
subservient to their aims.
Jesus came under the notice of the Order immediately after His birth. As a
child He was watched over at every step by the Brethren. At the feasts at
Jerusalem Alexandrian Jews, secret members of the Essene Order, put
themselves into communication with Him, explained to Him the falsity of
the priests, inspired Him with a horror of the bloody sacrifices of the
Temple, and made him acquainted with Socrates and Plato. This is set forth
in dialogues of a hundred pages long. At the story of the death of
Socrates, the boy bursts into a tempest of sobs which His friends are
unable to calm. He longs to emulate the martyr‐death of the great
Athenian.
On the market‐place at Nazareth a mysterious Persian gives Him two
sovereign remedies—one for affections of the eye, the other for nervous
disorders.
His father does his best for Him, teaching Him, along with His cousin
John, afterwards the Baptist, about virtue and immortality. A priest
belonging to the Essene Order, who makes their acquaintance disguised as a
shepherd, and takes part in their conversations, leads the lads deeper
into the knowledge of wisdom. At twelve years old, Jesus is already so far
advanced that He argues with the Scribes in the Temple concerning
miracles, maintaining the thesis that they are impossible.
When they feel themselves ready to appear in public the two cousins take
counsel together how they can best help the people. They agree to open the
eyes of the people regarding the tyranny and hypocrisy of the priests.
Through Haram, a prominent member of the Essene Order, Luke the physician
is introduced to Jesus and places all his science at His disposal.
In order to produce any effect they were obliged to practise accommodation
to the superstitions of the people, and introduce their wisdom to them
under the garb of folly, in the hope that, beguiled by its attractive
exterior, the people would admit into their minds the revelation of
rational truth, and after a time be able to emancipate themselves from
superstition. Jesus, therefore, sees Himself obliged to appear in the rôle
of the Messiah of popular expectation, and to make up His mind to work by
means of miracles and illusions. About this He felt the gravest scruples.
He was obliged, however, to obey the Order; and His scruples were quieted
by the reminder of the lofty end which was to be reached by these means.
At last, when it is pointed out to Him that even Moses had followed the
same plan, He submits to the necessity. The influential Order undertakes
the duty of stage‐managing the miracles, and that of maintaining His
father. On the reception of Jesus into the number of the Brethren of the
First Degree of the Order it is made known to Him that these Brethren are
bound to face death in the cause of the Order; but that the Order, on its
part, undertakes so to use the machinery and influence at its disposal
that the last extremity shall always be avoided and the Brother
mysteriously preserved from death.
Then begins the cleverly staged drama by means of which the people are to
be converted to rational religion. The members of the Order are divided
into three classes: The Baptized, The Disciples, The Chosen Ones. The
Baptized receive only the usual popular teaching; the Disciples are
admitted to further knowledge, but are not entrusted with the highest
mysteries; the Chosen Ones, who in the Gospels are also spoken of as
“Angels,” are admitted into all wisdom. As the Apostles were only members
of the Second Degree, they had not the smallest suspicion of the secret
machinery which was at work. Their part in the drama of the Life of Jesus
was that of zealous “supers.” The Gospels which they composed therefore
report, in perfect good faith, miracles which were really clever illusions
produced by the Essenes, and they depict the life of Jesus only as seen by
the populace from the outside.
It is therefore not always possible for us to discover how the events
which they record as miracles actually came about. But whether they took
place in one way or another—and as to this we can sometimes get a clue
from a hint in the text—it is certain that in all cases the process was
natural. With reference to the feeding of the five thousand, Bahrdt
remarks: “It is more reasonable here to think of a thousand ways by which
Jesus might have had sufficient supplies of bread at hand, and by the
distribution of it have shamed the disciples’ lack of courage, than to
believe in a miracle.” The explanation which he himself prefers is that
the Order had collected a great quantity of bread in a cave and this was
gradually handed out to Jesus, who stood at the concealed entrance and
took some every time the apostles were occupied in distributing the former
supply to the multitude. The walking on the sea is to be explained by
supposing that Jesus walked towards the disciples over the surface of a
great floating raft; while they, not being able to see the raft, must
needs suppose a miracle. When Peter tried to walk on the water he failed
miserably. The miracles of healing are to be attributed to the art of
Luke. He also called the attention of Jesus to remarkable cases of
apparent death, which He then took in hand, and restored the apparently
dead to their sorrowing friends. In such cases, however, the Lord never
failed expressly to inform the disciples that the persons were not really
dead. They, however, did not permit this assurance to deprive them of
their faith in the miracle which they felt they had themselves witnessed.
In teaching, Jesus had two methods: one, exoteric, simple, for the world;
the other, esoteric, mystic, for the initiate. “No attentive reader of the
Bible,” says Bahrdt, “can fail to notice that Jesus made use of two
different styles of speech. Sometimes He spoke so plainly and in such
universally intelligible language, and declared truths so simple and so
well adapted to the general comprehension of mankind that even the
simplest could follow Him. At other times he spoke so mystically, so
obscurely, and in so veiled a fashion that words and thoughts alike
baffled the understandings of ordinary people, and even by more practised
minds were not to be grasped without close reflection, so that we are told
in John vi. 60 that ‘many of His disciples, when they heard this, said,
This is an hard saying; who can hear it?’ And Jesus Himself did not deny
it, but only told them that the reason of their not understanding His
sayings lay in their prejudices, which made them interpret everything
literally and materially, and overlook the ethical meaning which underlay
His figurative language.” Most of these mystical discourses are to be
found in John, who seems to have preserved for us the greater part of the
secret teaching imparted to the initiate. The key to the understanding of
this esoteric teaching is to be found, therefore, in the prologue to
John’s Gospel, and in the sayings about the new birth. “To be born again”
is identical with the degree of perfection which was attained in the
highest class of the Brotherhood.
The members of the Order met on appointed days in caves among the hills.
When we are told in the Gospels that Jesus went alone into a mountain to
pray, this means that He repaired to one of these secret gatherings, but
the disciples, of course, knew nothing about that. The Order had its
hidden caves everywhere; in Galilee as well as in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem.