which it offers than in the problems which it raises. By its very thorough
discussions it challenges historical theology to test its most cherished
assumptions regarding the teaching of Jesus, and make sure whether they
are really so certain and self‐evident. Thus, in opposition to Schürer, he
denies that the thought of the pre‐existence in heaven of all the good
things belonging to the Kingdom of God was at all generally current in the
Late‐Jewish world of ideas, and thinks that the occasional references(218)
to a pre‐existing Jerusalem, which shall finally be brought down to the
earth, do not suffice to establish the theory. Similarly, he thinks it
doubtful whether Jesus used the terms “this world (age),” “the world (age)
to come” in the eschatological sense which is generally attached to them,
and doubts, on linguistic grounds, whether they can have been used at all.
Even the use of עלם or עולם for “world” cannot be proved. In the pre‐
Christian period there is much reason to doubt its occurrence, though in
later Jewish literature it is frequent. The expression ἐν τῇ παλιγγενεσίᾳ
in Matt. xix. 28, is specifically Greek and cannot be reproduced in either
Hebrew or Aramaic. It is very strange that the use which Jesus makes of
_Amen_ is unknown in the whole of Jewish literature. According to the
proper idiom of the language “אמן is never used to emphasise one’s own
speech, but always with reference to the speech, prayer, benediction,
oath, or curse of another.” Jesus, therefore, if He used the expression in
this sense, must have given it a new meaning as a formula of asseveration,
in place of the oath which He forbade.
All these acute observations are marked by the general tendency which was
observable in the interpretation of the term Son of Man, that is, by the
endeavour so to weaken down the eschatological conceptions of the Kingdom
and the Messiah, that the hypothesis of a making‐present and
spiritualising of these conceptions in the teaching of Jesus might appear
inherently and linguistically possible and natural. The polemic against
the pre‐existent realities of the Kingdom of God is intended to show that
for Jesus the Reign of God is a present benefit, which can be sought
after, given, possessed, and taken. Even before the time of Jesus,
according to Dalman, a tendency had shown itself to lay less emphasis, in
connexion with the hope of the future, upon the national Jewish element.
Jesus forced this element still farther into the background, and gave a
more decided prominence to the purely religious element. “For Him the
reign of God was the Divine power, which from this time onward was
steadily to carry forward the renewal of the world, and also the renewed
world, into which men shall one day enter, which even now offers itself,
and therefore can be grasped and received as a present good.” The
supernatural coming of the Kingdom is only the final stage of the coming
which is now being inwardly spiritually brought about by the preaching of
Jesus. Though He may perhaps have spoken of “this” world and the “world to
come,” these expressions had in His use of them no very special
importance. It is for Him less a question of an antithesis between “then”
and “now,” than of establishing a connexion between them by which the
transition from one to the other is to be effected.
It is the same in regard to Jesus’ consciousness of His Messiahship. “In
Jesus’ view,” says Dalman, “the period before the commencement of the
Reign of God was organically connected with the actual period of His
Reign.” He was the Messiah because He knew Himself to stand in a unique
ethico‐religious relation to God. His Messiahship was not something wholly
incomprehensible to those about Him. If redemption was regarded as being
close at hand, the Messiah must be assumed to be in some sense already
present. Therefore Jesus is both directly and indirectly spoken of as
Messiah.
Thus the most important work in the department of Aramaic scholarship
shows clearly the anti‐eschatological tendency which characterised it from
the beginning. The work of Lietzmann, Meyer, Wellhausen, and Dalman, forms
a distinct episode in the general resistance to eschatology. That Aramaic
scholarship should have taken up a hostile attitude towards the
eschatological system of thought of Jesus lies in the nature of things.
The thoughts which it takes as its standard of comparison were only
reduced to writing long after the period of Jesus, and, moreover, in a
lifeless and distorted form, at a time when the apocalyptic temper no
longer existed as the living counterpoise to the legal righteousness, and
this legal righteousness had allowed only so much of Apocalyptic to
survive as could be brought into direct connexion with it. In fact, the
distance between Jesus’ world of thought and this form of Judaism is as
great as that which separates it from modern ideas. Thus in Dalman
modernising tendencies and Aramaic scholarship were able to combine in
conducting a criticism of the eschatology in the teaching of Jesus in
which the modern man thought the thoughts and the expert in Aramaic
formulated and supported them, yet without being able in the end to make
any impression upon the well‐rounded whole formed by Jesus’ eschatological
preaching of the Kingdom.
Whether Aramaic scholarship will contribute to the investigation of the
life and teaching of Jesus along other lines and in a direct and positive
fashion, only the future can show. But certainly if theologians will give
heed to the question‐marks so acutely placed by Dalman, and recognise it
as one of their first duties to test carefully whether a thought or a
connexion of thought is linguistically or inherently Greek, and only
Greek, in character, they will derive a notable advantage from what has
already been done in the department of Aramaic study.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
But if the service rendered by Aramaic studies has been hitherto mainly
indirect, no success whatever has attended, or seems likely to attend, the
attempt to apply Buddhist ideas to the explanation of the thoughts of
Jesus. It could only indeed appear to have some prospect of success if we
could make up our minds to follow the example of the author of one of the
most recent of fictitious lives of Christ in putting Jesus to school to
the Buddhist priests; in which case the six years which Monsieur Nicolas
Notowitsch allots to this purpose, would certainly be none too much for
the completion of the course.(219) If imagination boggles at this, there
remains no possibility of showing that Buddhist ideas exercised any direct
influence upon Jesus. That Buddhism may have had some kind of influence
upon Late Judaism and thus indirectly upon Jesus is not inherently
impossible, if we are prepared to recognise Buddhistic influence on the
Babylonian and Persian civilisations. But it is unproved, unprovable, and
unthinkable, that Jesus derived the suggestion of the new and creative
ideas which emerge in His teaching from Buddhism. The most that can be
done in this direction is to point to certain analogies. For the parables
of Jesus, Buddhist parallels were suggested by Renan and Havet.(220)
How little these analogies mean in the eyes of a cautious observer is
evident from the attitude which Max Müller took up towards the question.
“That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity,”
he remarks in one passage,(221) “cannot be denied; and it must likewise be
admitted that Buddhism existed at least four hundred years before
Christianity. I go even further and say that I should be extremely
grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through
which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. I have been looking for
such channels all my life, but hitherto I have found none. What I have
found is that for some of the most startling coincidences there are
historical antecedents on both sides; and if we once know these
antecedents the coincidences become far less startling.”
A year before Max Müller formulated his impression in these terms, Rudolf
Seydel(222) had endeavoured to explain the analogies which had been
noticed by supposing Christianity to have been influenced by Buddhism. He
distinguishes three distinct classes of analogies:
1. Those of which the points of resemblance can without difficulty be
explained as due to the influence of similar sources and motives in the
two cases.
2. Those which show a so special and unexpected agreement that it appears
artificial to explain it from the action of similar causes, and the
dependence of one upon the other commends itself as the most natural
explanation.
3. Those in which there exists a reason for the occurrence of the idea
only within the sphere of one of the two religions, or in which at least
it can very much more easily be conceived as originating within the one
than within the other, so that the inexplicability of the phenomenon
within the one domain gives ground for seeking its source within the
other.
This last class demands a literary explanation of the analogy. Seydel
therefore postulates, alongside of primitive forms of Matthew and Luke, a
third source, “a poetic‐apocalyptic Gospel of very early date which fitted
its Christian material into the frame of a Buddhist type of Gospel,
transforming, purifying, and ennobling the material taken from the foreign
but related literature by a kind of rebirth inspired by the Christian
Spirit.” Matthew and Luke, especially Luke, follow this poetic Gospel up
to the point where historic sources become more abundant, and the
primitive form of Mark begins to dominate their narrative. But even in
later parts the influence of this poetical source, which as an independent
document was subsequently lost, continued to make itself felt.
The strongest point of support for this hypothesis, if a mere conjecture
can be described as such, is found by Seydel in the introductory
narratives in Luke. Now it is not inherently impossible that Buddhist
legends, which in one form or another were widely current in the East, may
have contributed more or less to the formation of the mythical preliminary
history. Who knows the laws of the formation of legend? Who can follow the
course of the wind which carries the seed over land and sea? But in
general it may be said that Seydel actually refutes the hypothesis which
he is defending. If the material which he brings forward is all that there
is to suggest a relation between Buddhism and Christianity, we are
justified in waiting until new discoveries are made in that quarter before
asserting the necessity of a Buddhist primitive Gospel. That will not
prevent a succession of theosophic Lives of Jesus from finding their
account in Seydel’s classical work. Seydel indeed delivered himself into
their hands, because he did not entirely avoid the rash assumption of
theosophic “historical science” that Jewish eschatology can be equated
with Buddhistic.
Eduard von Hartmann, in the second edition of his work, “The Christianity
of the New Testament,”(223) roundly asserts that there can be no question
of any relation of Jesus to Buddha, nor of any indebtedness either in His
teaching or in the later moulding of the story of His life, but only of a
parallel formation of myth.
XVIII. THE POSITION OF THE SUBJECT AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
_Oskar Holtzmann._ Das Leben Jesu. Tübingen, 1901. 417 pp.
Das Messianitätsbewusstsein Jesu und seine neueste Bestreitung.
Vortrag. (The Messianic Consciousness of Jesus and the most recent
denial of it. A Lecture.) 1902. 26 pp. (Against Wrede.)
War Jesus Ekstatiker? (Was Jesus an ecstatic?) Tübingen, 1903. 139
pp.
_Paul Wilhelm Schmidt._ Die Geschichte Jesu. (The History of
Jesus.) Freiburg. 1899. 175 pp. (4th impression.)
Die Geschichte Jesu. Erläutert. Mit drei Karten von Prof. K.
Furrer (Zürich). (The History of Jesus. Preliminary Discussions.
With three maps by Prof. K. Furrer of Zurich.) Tübingen, 1904. 414
pp.
_Otto Schmiedel._ Die Hauptprobleme der Leben‐Jesu‐Forschung. (The
main Problems in the Study of the Life of Jesus.) Tübingen, 1902.
71 pp. 2nd ed., 1906.
_Hermann Freiherr von Soden._ Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben
Jesu. (The most important Questions about the Life of Jesus.)
Vacation Lectures. Berlin, 1904. 111 pp.
_Gustav Frenssen._ Hilligenlei. Berlin, 1905, pp. 462‐593: “Die
Handschrift.” (“The Manuscript”—in which a Life of Jesus, written
by one of the characters of the story, is given in full.)
_Otto Pfleiderer._ Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren
in geschichtlichem Zusammenhang beschrieben. (Primitive
Christianity. Its Documents and Doctrines in their Historical
Context.) 2nd ed. Berlin, 1902. Vol. i., 696 pp.
Die Entstehung des Urchristentums. (How Primitive Christianity
arose.) Munich, 1905. 255 pp.
_Albert Kalthoff._ Das Christus‐Problem. Grundlinien zu einer
Sozialtheologie. (The Christ‐problem. The Ground‐plan of a Social
Theology.) Leipzig, 1902. 87 pp.
Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christus‐
Problem. (How Christianity arose. New contributions to the Christ‐
problem.) Leipzig, 1904. 155 pp.
_Eduard von Hartmann._ Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments. (The
Christianity of the New Testament.) 2nd revised edition of
“Letters on the Christian Religion.” Sachsa‐in‐the‐Harz, 1905. 311
pp.
_De Jonge._ Jeschua. Der klassische jüdische Mann. Zerstörung des
kirchlichen, Enthüllung des jüdischen Jesus‐Bildes. Berlin, 1904.
112 pp. (Jeshua. The Classical Jewish Man. In which the Jewish
picture of Jesus is unveiled, and the ecclesiastical picture
destroyed.)
_Wolfgang Kirchbach._ Was lehrte Jesus? Zwei Urevangelien. (What
was the teaching of Jesus? Two Primitive Gospels.) Berlin, 1897.
248 pp. 2nd revised and greatly enlarged edition, 1902, 339 pp.
_Albert Dulk._ Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu. In geschichtlicher
Auffassung dargestellt. (The Error of the Life of Jesus. An
Historical View.) 1st part, 1884, 395 pp.; 2nd part, 1885, 302 pp.
_Paul de Régla._ Jesus von Nazareth. German by A. Just. Leipzig,
1894. 435 pp.
_Ernest Bosc._ La Vie ésotérique de Jésus de Nazareth et les
origines orientales du christianisme. (The secret Life of Jesus of
Nazareth, and the Oriental Origins of Christianity.) Paris, 1902.
The ideal Life of Jesus of the close of the nineteenth century is the Life
which Heinrich Julius Holtzmann did not write—but which can be pieced
together from his commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and his New Testament
Theology.(224) It is ideal because, for one thing, it is unwritten, and
arises only in the idea of the reader by the aid of his own imagination,
and, for another, because it is traced only in the most general outline.
What Holtzmann gives us is a sketch of the public ministry, a critical
examination of details, and a full account of the teaching of Jesus. He
provides, therefore, the plan and the prepared building material, so that
any one can carry out the construction in his own way and on his own
responsibility. The cement and the mortar are not provided by Holtzmann;
every one must decide for himself how he will combine the teaching and the
life, and arrange the details within each.
We may recall the fact that Weisse, too, the other founder of the Marcan
hypothesis, avoided writing a Life of Jesus, because the difficulty of
fitting the details into the ground‐plan appeared to him so great, not to
say insuperable. It is just this modesty which constitutes his greatness
and Holtzmann’s. Thus the Marcan hypothesis ends, as it had begun, with a
certain historical scepticism.(225)
The subordinates, it is true, do not allow themselves to be disturbed by
the change of attitude at head‐quarters. They keep busily at work. That is
their right, and therein consists their significance. By keeping on trying
to take the positions, and constantly failing, they furnish a practical
proof that the plan of operations worked out by the general staff is not
capable of being carried out, and show why it is so, and what kind of new
tactics will have to be evolved.
The credit of having written a life of Christ which is strictly
scientific, in its own way very remarkable, and yet foredoomed to failure,
belongs to Oskar Holtzmann.(226) He has complete confidence in the Marcan
plan, and makes it his task to fit all the sayings of Jesus into this
framework, to show “what can belong to each period of the preaching of
Jesus, and what cannot.” His method is to give free play to the magnetic
power of the most important passages in the Marcan text, making other
sayings of similar import detach themselves from their present connexion
and come and group themselves round the main passages.
For example, the controversy with the scribes at Jerusalem regarding the
charge of doing miracles by the help of Satan (Mark iii. 22‐30) belongs,
according to Holtzmann, as regards content and chronology, to the same
period as the controversy, in Mark vii., about the ordinances of men which
results in Jesus being “obliged to take to flight”; the woes pronounced
upon Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, which now follow on the eulogy
upon the Baptist (Matt. xi. 21‐23), and are accordingly represented as
having been spoken at the time of the sending forth of the Twelve, are
drawn by the same kind of magnetic force into the neighbourhood of Mark
vii., and “express very clearly the attitude of Jesus at the time of His
withdrawal from the scene of His earlier ministry.” The saying in Matt.
vii. 6 about not giving that which is holy to the dogs or casting pearls
before swine, does not belong to the Sermon on the Mount, but to the time
when Jesus, after Caesarea Philippi, forbids the disciples to reveal the
secret of His Messiahship to the multitude; Jesus’ action in cursing the
fig‐tree so that it should henceforth bring no fruit to its owner, who was
perhaps a poor man, is to be brought into relation with the words spoken
on the evening before, with reference to the lavish expenditure involved
in His anointing, “The poor ye have always with you,” the point being that
Jesus now, “in the clear consciousness of His approaching death, feels His
own worth,” and dismisses “the contingency of even the poor having to lose
something for His sake” with the words “it does not matter.”(227)
All these transpositions and new connexions mean, it is clear, a great
deal of internal and external violence to the text.
A further service rendered by this very thorough work of Oskar
Holtzmann’s, is that of showing how much reading between the lines is
necessary in order to construct a Life of Jesus on the basis of the Marcan
hypothesis in its modern interpretation. It is thus, for instance, that
the author must have acquired the knowledge that the controversy about the
ordinances of purification in Mark vii. forced the people “to choose
between the old and the new religion”—in which case it is no wonder that
many “turned back from following Jesus.”
Where are we told that there was any question of an old and a new
“religion”? The disciples certainly did not think of things in this way,
as is shown by their conduct at the time of His death and the discourses
of Peter in Acts. Where do we read that the people turned away from Jesus?
In Mark vii. 17 and 24 all that is said is, that Jesus left the people,
and in Mark vii. 33 the same multitude is still assembled when Jesus
returns from the “banishment” into which Holtzmann relegates Him.
Oskar Holtzmann declares that we cannot tell what was the size of the
following which accompanied Jesus in His journey northwards, and is
inclined to assume that others besides the Twelve shared His exile. The
Evangelists, however, say clearly that it was only the μαθηταί, that is,
the Twelve, who were with Him. The value which this special knowledge,
independent of the text, has for the author, becomes evident a little
farther on. After Peter’s confession Jesus calls the “multitude” to Him
(Mark viii. 34) and speaks to them of His sufferings and of taking up the
cross and following Him. This “multitude” Holtzmann wants to make “the
whole company of Jesus’ followers,” “to which belonged, not only the
Twelve whom Jesus had formerly sent out to preach, but many others also.”
The knowledge drawn from outside the text is therefore required to solve a
difficulty in the text.
But how did His companions in exile, the remnant of the previous
multitude, themselves become a multitude, the same multitude as before?
Would it not be better to admit that we do not know how, in a Gentile
country, a multitude could suddenly rise out of the ground as it were,
continue with Him until Mark ix. 30, and then disappear into the earth as
suddenly as they came, leaving Him to pursue His journey towards Galilee
and Jerusalem alone?
Another thing which Oskar Holtzmann knows is that it required a good deal
of courage for Peter to hail Jesus as Messiah, since the “exile wandering
about with his small following in a Gentile country” answered “so badly to
the general picture which people had formed of the coming of the Messiah.”
He knows too, that in the moment of Peter’s confession, “Christianity was
complete” in the sense that “a community separate from Judaism and
centring about a new ideal, then arose.” This “community” frequently
appears from this point onwards. There is nothing about it in the
narratives, which know only the Twelve and the people.
Oskar Holtzmann’s knowledge even extends to dialogues which are not
reported in the Gospels. After the incident at Caesarea Philippi, the
minds of the disciples were, according to him, preoccupied by two
questions. “How did Jesus know that He was the Messiah?” and “What will be
the future fate of this Messiah?” The Lord answered both questions. He
spoke to them of His baptism, and “doubtless in close connexion with that”
He told them the story of His temptation, during which He had laid down
the lines which He was determined to follow as Messiah.
Of the transfiguration, Oskar Holtzmann can state with confidence, “that
it merely represents the inner experience of the disciples at the moment
of Peter’s confession.” How is it then that Mark expressly dates that
scene, placing it (ix. 2) six days after the discourse of Jesus about
taking up the cross and following Him? The fact is that the time‐
indications of the text are treated as non‐existent whenever the Marcan
hypothesis requires an order determined by inner connexion. The statement
of Luke that the transfiguration took place eight days after, is dismissed
in the remark “the motive of this indication of time is doubtless to be
found in the use of the Gospel narratives for reading in public worship;
the idea was that the section about the transfiguration should be read on
the Sunday following that on which the confession of Peter formed the
lesson.” Where did Oskar Holtzmann suddenly discover this information
about the order of the “Sunday lessons” at the time when Luke’s Gospel was
written?
It was doubtless from the same private source of information that the
author derived his knowledge regarding the gradual development of the
thought of the Passion in the consciousness of Jesus. “After the
confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi,” he explains, “Jesus’ death
became for Him only the necessary point of transition to the glory beyond.
In the discourse of Jesus to which the request of Salome gave occasion,
the death of Jesus already appears as the means of saving many from death,
because His death makes possible the coming of the Kingdom of God. At the
institution of the Supper, Jesus regards His imminent death as the
meritorious deed by which the blessings of the New Covenant, the
forgiveness of sins and victory over sin, are permanently secured to His
‘community.’ We see Jesus constantly becoming more and more at home with
the idea of His death and constantly giving it a deeper interpretation.”
Any one who is less skilled in reading the thoughts of Jesus, and more
simple and natural in his reading of the text of Mark, cannot fail to
observe that Jesus speaks in Mark x. 45 of His death as an expiation, not
as a means of saving others from death, and that at the Lord’s Supper
there was no reference to His “community,” but only to the inexplicable
“many,” which is also the word in Mark x. 45. We ought to admit freely
that we do not know what the thoughts of Jesus about His death were at the
time of the first prediction of the Passion after Peter’s confession; and
to be on our guard against the “original sin” of theology, that of
exalting the argument from silence, when it happens to be useful, to the
rank of positive realities.
Is there not a certain irony in the fact that the application of “natural”
psychology to the explanation of the thoughts of Jesus compels the
assumption of supra‐historical private information such as this? Bahrdt
and Venturini hardly read more subjective interpretations into the text
than many modern Lives of Jesus; and the hypothesis of the secret society,
which after all did recognise and do justice to the inexplicability from
an external standpoint of the relation of events and of the conduct of
Jesus, was in many respects more historical than the psychological links
of connexion which our modernising historians discover without having any
foundation for them in the text.