of antithetic conceptions. But whereas in the latter the antitheses
Docetism and Ebionism are simply limiting conceptions, between which his
view is statically suspended, the synthesis with which Strauss operates
represents a composition of forces, of which his view is the dynamic
resultant. The dialectic is in the one case descriptive, in the other
creative. This Hegelian dialectic determines the method of the work. Each
incident of the life of Jesus is considered separately; first as
supernaturally explained, and then as rationalistically explained, and the
one explanation is refuted by the other. “By this means,” says Strauss in
his preface, “the incidental advantage is secured that the work is fitted
to serve as a repertory of the leading views and discussions of all parts
of the Gospel history.”
In every case the whole range of representative opinions is reviewed.
Finally the forced interpretations necessitated by the naturalistic
explanation of the narrative under discussion drives the reader back upon
the supernaturalistic. That had been recognised by Hase and
Schleiermacher, and they had felt themselves obliged to make a place for
inexplicable supernatural elements alongside of the historic elements of
the life of Jesus. Contemporaneously there had sprung up in all directions
new attempts to return by the aid of a mystical philosophy to the
supernaturalistic point of view of our forefathers. But in these Strauss
recognises only the last desperate efforts to make the past present and to
conceive the inconceivable; and in direct opposition to the reactionary
ineptitudes by means of which critical theology was endeavouring to work
its way out of rationalism, he sets up the hypothesis that these
inexplicable elements are mythical.
In the stories prior to the baptism, everything is myth. The narratives
are woven on the pattern of Old Testament prototypes, with modifications
due to Messianic or messianically interpreted passages. Since Jesus and
the Baptist came into contact with one another later, it is felt necessary
to represent their parents as having been connected. The attempts to
construct Davidic genealogies for Jesus, show us that there was a period
in the formation of the Gospel History during which the Lord was simply
regarded as the son of Joseph and Mary, otherwise genealogical studies of
this kind would not have been undertaken. Even in the story of the twelve‐
year‐old Jesus in the temple, there is scarcely more than a trace of
historical material.
In the narrative of the baptism we may take it as certainly unhistorical
that the Baptist received a revelation of the Messianic dignity of Jesus,
otherwise he could not later have come to doubt this. Whether his message
to Jesus is historical must be left an open question; its possibility
depends on whether the nature of his confinement admitted of such
communication with the outer world. Might not a natural reluctance to
allow the Baptist to depart this life without at least a dawning
recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus have here led to the insertion of
a legendary trait into the tradition? If so, the historical residuum would
be that Jesus was for a time one of the adherents of the Baptist, and was
baptized by him, and that He soon afterwards appeared in Galilee with the
same message which John had proclaimed, and even when He had outgrown his
influence, never ceased to hold John in high esteem, as is shown by the
eulogy which He pronounced upon him. But if the baptism of John was a
baptism of repentance with a view to “him who was to come,” Jesus cannot
have held Himself to be sinless when He submitted to it. Otherwise we
should have to suppose that He did it merely for appearance’ sake. Whether
it was in the moment of the baptism that the consciousness of His
Messiahship dawned upon Him, we cannot tell. This only is certain, that
the conception of Jesus as having been endowed with the Spirit at His
baptism, was independent of, and earlier than, that other conception which
held Him to have been supernaturally born of the Spirit. We have,
therefore, in the Synoptists several different strata of legend and
narrative, which in some cases intersect and in some are superimposed one
upon the other.
The story of the temptation is equally unsatisfactory, whether it be
interpreted as supernatural, or as symbolical either of an inward struggle
or of external events (as for example in Venturini’s interpretation of it,
where the part of the Tempter is played by a Pharisee); it is simply
primitive Christian legend, woven together out of Old Testament
suggestions.
The call of the first disciples cannot have happened as it is narrated,
without their having known anything of Jesus beforehand; the manner of the
call is modelled upon the call of Elisha by Elijah. The further legend
attached to it—Peter’s miraculous draught of fishes—has arisen out of the
saying about “fishers of men,” and the same idea is reflected, at a
different angle of refraction, in John xxi. The mission of the seventy is
unhistorical.
Whether the cleansing of the temple is historical, or whether it arose out
of a Messianic application of the text, “My house shall be called a house
of prayer,” cannot be determined. The difficulty of forming a clear idea
of the circumstances is not easily to be removed. How freely the
historical material has been worked up, is seen in the groups of stories
which have grown out of a single incident; as, for example, the anointing
of Jesus at Bethany by an unknown woman, out of which Luke has made an
anointing by a penitent sinner, and John an anointing by Mary of Bethany.
As regards the healings, some of them are certainly historical, but not in
the form in which tradition has preserved them. The recognition of Jesus
as Messiah by the demons immediately arouses suspicion. It is doubtless
rather to be ascribed to the tendency which grew up later to represent Him
as receiving, in His Messianic character, homage even from the world of
evil spirits, than to any advantage in respect of clearness of insight
which distinguished the mentally deranged, in comparison with their
contemporaries. The cure of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum may
well be historical, but, in other cases, the procedure is so often raised
into the region of the miraculous that a psychical influence of Jesus upon
the sufferer no longer suffices to explain it; the creative activity of
legend must have come in to confuse the account of what really happened.
One cure has sometimes given rise to three or four narratives. Sometimes
we can still recognise the influences which have contributed to mould a
story. When, for example, the disciples are unable to heal the lunatic boy
during Jesus’ absence on the Mount of Transfiguration, we are reminded of
2 Kings iv., where Elisha’s servant Gehazi tries in vain to bring the dead
boy to life by using the staff of the prophet. The immediate healing of
leprosy has its prototype in the story of Naaman the Syrian. The story of
the ten lepers shows so clearly a didactic tendency that its historic
value is thereby rendered doubtful.
The cures of blindness all go back to the case of the blind man at
Jericho. But who can say how far this is itself historical? The cures of
paralytics, too, belong rather to the equipment of the Messiah than to
history. The cures through touching clothes, and the healings at a
distance, have myth written on their foreheads. The fact is, the Messiah
must equal, nay, surpass, the deeds of the prophets. That is why raisings
from the dead figure among His miracles.
The nature miracles, over a collection of which Strauss puts the heading
“Sea‐Stories and Fish‐Stories,” have a much larger admixture of the
mythical. His opponents took him severely to task for this irreverent
superscription.
The repetition of the story of the feeding of the multitude arouses
suspicion regarding the credibility of what is narrated, and at once
invalidates the hypothesis of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel of
Matthew. Moreover, the incident was so naturally suggested by Old
Testament examples that it would have been a miracle if such a story had
not found its way into the Life of Jesus. An explanation on the analogy of
an expedited process of nature, is here, as in the case of the miracle at
Cana also, to be absolutely rejected. Strauss allows it to be laughed out
of court. The cursing of the fig‐tree and its fulfilment go back in some
way or other to a parable of Jesus, which was afterwards made into
history.
More important than the miracles heretofore mentioned are those which have
to do with Jesus Himself and mark the crises of His history. The
transfiguration had to find a place in the life of Jesus, because of the
shining of Moses’ countenance. In dealing with the narratives of the
resurrection it is evident that we must distinguish two different strata
of legend, an older one, represented by Matthew, which knew only of
appearances in Galilee, and a later, in which the Galilaean appearances
are excluded in favour of appearances in Jerusalem. In both cases,
however, the narratives are mythical. In any attempt to explain them we
are forced on one horn of the dilemma or the other—if the resurrection was
real, the death was not real, and vice versa. That the ascension is a myth
is self‐evident.
Such, and so radical, are the results at which Strauss’s criticism of the
supernaturalistic and the rationalistic explanations of the life of Jesus
ultimately arrives.
In reading Strauss’s discussions one is not so much struck with their
radical character, because of the admirable dialectic skill with which he
shows the total impossibility of any explanation which does not take
account of myth. On the whole, the supernaturalistic explanation, which at
least represents the plain sense of the narratives, comes off much better
than the rationalistic, the artificiality of which is everywhere
remorselessly exposed.
The sections which we have summarised are far from having lost their
significance at the present day. They marked out the ground which is now
occupied by modern critical study. And they filled in the death‐
certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have
all the air of being alive, but are not really so. If these continue to
haunt present‐day theology, it is only as ghosts, which can be put to
flight by simply pronouncing the name of David Friedrich Strauss, and
which would long ago have ceased to “walk,” if the theologians who regard
Strauss’s book as obsolete would only take the trouble to read it.
The results so far considered do not represent the elements of the life of
Jesus which Strauss was prepared to accept as historical. He sought to
make the boundaries of the mythical embrace the widest possible area; and
it is clear that he extended them too far.
For one thing, he overestimates the importance of the Old Testament
motives in reference to the creative activity of the legend. He does not
see that while in many cases he has shown clearly enough the source of the
_form_ of the narrative in question, this does not suffice to explain its
_origin_. Doubtless, there is mythical material in the story of the
feeding of the multitude. But the existence of the story is not explained
by referring to the manna in the desert, or the miraculous feeding of a
multitude by Elisha.(35) The story in the Gospel has far too much
individuality for that, and stands, moreover, in much too closely
articulated an historical connexion. It must have as its basis some
historical fact. It is not a myth, though there is myth in it. Similarly
with the account of the transfiguration. The substratum of historical fact
in the life of Jesus is much more extensive than Strauss is prepared to
admit. Sometimes he fails to see the foundations, because he proceeds like
an explorer who, in working on the ruins of an Assyrian city, should cover
up the most valuable evidence with the rubbish thrown out from another
portion of the excavations.
Again, he sometimes rules out statements by assuming their impossibility
on purely dialectical grounds, or by playing off the narratives one
against another. The Baptist’s message to Jesus is a case in point. This
is connected with the fact that he often fails to realise the strong
confirmation which the narratives derive from their connexion with the
preceding and following context.
That, however, was only to be expected. Who ever discovered a true
principle without pressing its application too far?
What really alarmed his contemporaries was not so much the comprehensive
application of the mythical theory, as the general mining and sapping
operations which they were obliged to see brought to bear upon the
Gospels.
In section after section Strauss cross‐examines the reports on every
point, down to the minutest detail, and then pronounces in what proportion
an alloy of myth enters into each of them. In every case the decision is
unfavourable to the Gospel of John. Strauss was the first to take this
view. It is true that, at the end of the eighteenth century, many doubts
as to the authenticity of this Gospel had been expressed, and
Bretschneider, the famous General Superintendent at Gotha (1776‐1848), had
made a tentative collection of them in his _Probabilia_.(36) The essay
made some stir at the time. But Schleiermacher threw the aegis of his
authority over the authenticity of the Gospel, and it was the favourite
Gospel of the rationalists because it contained fewer miracles than the
others. Bretschneider himself declared that he had been brought to a
better opinion through the controversy.
After this episode the Johannine question had been shelved for fifteen
years. The excitement was, therefore, all the greater when Strauss
reopened the discussion. He was opposing a dogma of critical theology,
which, even at the present day, is wont to defend its dogmas with a
tenacity beyond that of the Church itself.
The luminous haze of apparent circumstantiality which had hitherto
prevented men from recognising the true character of this Gospel is
completely dissipated. Strauss shows that the Johannine representation of
the life of Jesus is dominated by a theory, and that its portraiture shows
the further development of the tendencies which are perceptible even in
the Synoptists. He shows this, for example, in the case of the Johannine
narrative of the baptism of Jesus, in which critics had hitherto seen the
most credible account of what occurred, pointing out that it is just in
this pseudo‐simplicity that the process of bringing Jesus and the Baptist
into the closest possible relations reaches its limit. Similarly, in
regard to the call of the first disciples, it is, according to Strauss, a
later postulate that they came from the Baptist’s following and were
brought by him to the Lord. Strauss does not scruple even to assert that
John introduces imaginary characters. If this Gospel relates fewer
miracles, the miracles which it retains are proportionately greater; so
great, indeed, that their absolutely miraculous character is beyond the
shadow of doubt; and, moreover, a moral or symbolical significance is
added.
Here, therefore, it is no longer the unconscious action of legend which
selects, creates, or groups the incidents, but a clearly‐determined
apologetic and dogmatic purpose.
The question regarding the different representations of the locality and
chronology of the life of Jesus, had always been decided, prior to
Strauss, in favour of the Fourth Gospel. De Wette makes it an argument
against the genuineness of Matthew’s Gospel that it mistakenly confines
the ministry of Jesus to Galilee. Strauss refuses to decide the question
by simply weighing the chronological and geographical statements one
against the other, lest he should be as one‐sided in his own way as the
defenders of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel were in theirs. On this
point, he contents himself with remarking that if Jesus had really taught
in Jerusalem on several occasions, it is absolutely unintelligible how all
knowledge of this could have so completely disappeared from the Synoptic
tradition; for His going up to the Passover at which He met His death is
there represented as His sole journey to Jerusalem. On the other hand, it
is quite conceivable that if Jesus had only once been in Jerusalem there
would be a tendency for legend gradually to make several journeys out of
this one, on the natural assumption that He regularly went up to the
Feasts, and that He would proclaim His Gospel not merely in the remote
province, but also in the capital.
From the triumphal entry to the resurrection, the difference between the
Synoptic and Johannine narratives is so great that all attempts to
harmonise them are to be rejected. How are we to reconcile the statement
of the Synoptists that the ovation at the triumphal entry was offered by
Galilaeans who accompanied him, with that of John, according to which it
was offered by a multitude from Jerusalem which came out to welcome
Jesus—who, moreover, according to John, was not coming from Galilee and
Jericho—and escorted Him into the city. To suppose that there were two
different triumphal entries is absurd.
But the decision between John and the Synoptists is not based solely upon
their representation of the facts; the decisive consideration is found in
the ideas by which they are respectively dominated. John represents a more
advanced stage of the mythopoeic process, inasmuch as he has substituted
for the Jewish Messianic conception, the Greek metaphysical conception of
the Divine Sonship, and, on the basis of his acquaintance with the
Alexandrian Logos doctrine, even makes Jesus apply to Himself the Greek
speculative conception of pre‐existence. The writer is aware of an already
existing danger from the side of a Gnostic docetism, and has himself an
apologetic Christology to propound, thus fighting the Gnostics as a
Gnostic of another kind. That he is free from eschatological conceptions
is not, from the historical point of view, an advantage, but very much the
reverse. He is not unacquainted with eschatology, but deliberately
transforms it, endeavouring to substitute for the expectation of the
Second Coming of Christ, as an external event of the future, the thought
of His inward presence.
The most decisive evidence of all is found in the farewell discourses and
in the absence of all mention of the spiritual struggle in Gethsemane. The
intention here is to show that Jesus not only had a foreknowledge of His
death, but had long overcome it in anticipation, and went to meet His
tragic fate with perfect inward serenity. That, however, is no historical
narrative, but the final stage of reverent idealisation.
The question is decided. The Gospel of John is inferior to the Synoptics
as a historical source just in proportion as it is more strongly dominated
than they by theological and apologetic interests. It is true that the
assignment of the dominant motives is for Strauss’s criticism mainly a
matter of conjecture. He cannot define in detail the attitude and tendency
of this Gospel, because the development of dogma in the second century was
still to a great extent obscure. He himself admits that it was only
subsequently, through the labours of Baur, that the positions which he had
taken up in 1835 were rendered impregnable. And yet it is true to say that
Johannine study has added in principle nothing new to what was said by
Strauss. He recognised the decisive point. With critical acumen he
resigned the attempt to base a decision on a comparison of the historical
data, and allowed the theological character of the two lines of tradition
to determine the question. Unless this is done the debate is endless, for
an able man who has sworn allegiance to John will always find a thousand
ways in which the Johannine data can be reconciled with those of the
Synoptists, and is finally prepared to stake his life upon the exact point
at which the missing account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper must
be inserted into the narrative.
This changed estimate of John carries with it a reversal of the order in
which the Gospels are supposed to have originated. Instead of John, Luke,
Matthew, we have Matthew, Luke, and John—the first is last, and the last
first. Strauss’s unsophisticated instinct freed Matthew from the
humiliating vassalage to which Schleiermacher’s aesthetic had consigned
him. The practice of differentiating between John and the Synoptists,
which in the hands of Schleiermacher and Hase had been an elegant
amusement, now received unexpected support, and it at last became possible
for the study of the life of Jesus to go forward.
But no sooner had Strauss opened up the way than he closed it again, by
refusing to admit the priority of Mark. His attitude towards this Gospel
at once provokes opposition. For him Mark is an epitomising narrator, a
mere satellite of Matthew with no independent light. His terse and graphic
style makes on Strauss an impression of artificiality. He refuses to
believe this Evangelist when he says that on the first day at Capernaum
“the whole town” (Mark i. 33) came together before Peter’s door, and that,
on other occasions (Mark iii. 20, vi. 31), the press was so great that
Jesus and His disciples had no leisure so much as to eat. “All very
improbable traits,” he remarks, “the absence of which in Matthew is
entirely to his advantage, for what else are they than legendary
exaggerations?” In this criticism he is at one with Schleiermacher, who in
his essay on Luke(37) speaks of the unreal vividness of Mark “which often
gives his Gospel an almost apocryphal aspect.”
This prejudice against Mark has a twofold cause. In the first place, this
Gospel with its graphic details had rendered great service to the
rationalistic explanation of miracle. Its description of the cure of the
blind man at Bethsaida (Mark viii. 22‐26)—whose eyes Jesus first anointed
with spittle, whereupon he at first saw things dimly, and then, after he
had felt the touch of the Lord’s hand upon his eyes a second time, saw
more clearly—was a veritable treasure‐trove for rationalism. As Strauss is
disposed to deal much more peremptorily with the rationalists than with
the supernaturalists, he puts Mark upon his trial, as their accessory
before the fact, and pronounces upon him a judgment which is not entirely
unprejudiced. Moreover, it is not until the Gospels are looked at from the
point of view of the plan of the history and the inner connexion of events
that the superiority of Mark is clearly realised. But this way of looking
at the matter does not enter into Strauss’s purview. On the contrary, he
denies that there is any traceable connexion of events at all, and
confines his attention to determining the proportion of myth in the
content of each separate narrative.
Of the Synoptic question he does not, strictly speaking, take any account.
That was partly due to the fact that when he wrote it was in a thoroughly
unsatisfactory position. There was a confused welter of the most various
hypotheses. The priority of Mark, which had had earlier champions in
Koppe,(38) Storr,(39) Gratz,(40) and Herder,(41) was now maintained by
Credner and Lachmann, who saw in Matthew a combination of the logia‐
document with Mark. The “primitive Gospel” hypothesis of Eichhorn,
according to which the first three Gospels went back to a common source,
not identical with any of them, had become somewhat discredited. There had
been much discussion and various modifications of Griesbach’s “dependence
theory,” according to which Mark was pieced together out of Matthew and
Luke, and Schleiermacher’s _Diegesentheorie_,(42) which saw the primary
material not in a gospel, but in unconnected notes; from these,
collections of narrative passages were afterwards formed, which in the
post‐apostolic period coalesced into continuous descriptions of the life
of Jesus such as the three which have been preserved in our Synoptic
Gospels.