simplest sections. Oskar Holtzmann ventures to conjecture that the healing
of the blind man at Jericho “is to be understood as a symbolical
representation of the conversion of Zacchaeus,” which, of course, is found
only in Luke. Here then the defender of the Marcan hypothesis rejects the
incident by which the Evangelist explains the enthusiasm of the entry into
Jerusalem, not to mention that Luke tells us nothing whatever about a
conversion of Zacchaeus, but only that Jesus was invited to his house and
graciously accepted the invitation.
It would be something if this almost Alexandrian symbolical exegesis
contributed in some way to the removal of difficulties and to the solution
of the main question, that, namely, of the present or future Messiah, the
present or future Kingdom. Oskar Holtzmann lays great stress upon the
eschatological character of the preaching of Jesus regarding the Kingdom,
and assumes that, at least at the beginning, it would not have been
natural for His hearers to understand that Jesus, the herald of the
Messiah, was Himself the Messiah. Nevertheless, he is of opinion that, in
a certain sense, the presence of Jesus implied the presence of the
Kingdom, that Peter and the rest of the disciples, advancing beyond the
ideas of the multitude, recognised Him as Messiah, that this recognition
ought to have been possible for the people also, and, in that case, would
have been “the strongest incentive to abandon evil ways,” and “that Jesus
at the time of His entry into Jerusalem seems to have felt that in Isa.
lxii. 11(228) there was a direct command not to withhold the knowledge of
His Messiahship from the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
But if Jesus made a Messianic entry He must thereafter have given Himself
out as Messiah, and the whole controversy would necessarily have turned
upon this claim. This, however, was not the case. According to Holtzmann,
all that the hearers could make out of that crucial question for the
Messiahship in Mark xii. 35‐37 was only “that Jesus clearly showed from
the Scriptures that the Messiah was not in reality the son of David.”(229)
But how was it that the Messianic enthusiasm on the part of the people did
not lead to a Messianic controversy, in spite of the fact that Jesus “from
the first came forward in Jerusalem as Messiah”? This difficulty O.
Holtzmann seems to be trying to provide against when he remarks in a
footnote: “We have no evidence that Jesus, even during the last sojourn in
Jerusalem, was recognised as Messiah except by those who belonged to the
inner circle of disciples. The repetition by the children of the
acclamations of the disciples (Matt. xxi. 15 and 16) can hardly be
considered of much importance in this connexion.” According to this, Jesus
entered Jerusalem as Messiah, but except for the disciples and a few
children no one recognised His entry as having a Messianic significance!
But Mark states that many spread their garments upon the way, and others
plucked down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way, and that
those that went before and those that followed after, cried “Hosanna!” The
Marcan narrative must therefore be kept out of sight for the moment in
order that the Life of Jesus as conceived by the modern Marcan hypothesis
may not be endangered.
We should not, however, regard the evidence of supernatural knowledge and
the self‐contradictions of this Life of Jesus as a matter for censure, but
rather as a proof of the merits of O. Holtzmann’s work.(230) He has
written the last large‐scale Life of Jesus, the only one which the Marcan
hypothesis has produced, and aims at providing a scientific basis for the
assumptions which the general lines of that hypothesis compel him to make;
and in this process it becomes clearly apparent that the connexion of
events can only be carried through at the decisive passages by violent
treatment, or even by rejection of the Marcan text in the interests of the
Marcan hypothesis.
These merits do not belong in the same measure to the other modern Lives
of Jesus, which follow more or less the same lines. They are short
sketches, in some cases based on lectures, and their brevity makes them
perhaps more lively and convincing than Holtzmann’s work; but they take
for granted just what he felt it necessary to prove. P. W. Schmidt’s(231)
_Geschichte Jesu_ (1899), which as a work of literary art has few rivals
among theological works of recent years, confines itself to pure
narrative. The volume of prolegomena which appeared in 1904, and is
intended to exhibit the foundations of the narrative, treats of the
sources, of the Kingdom of God, of the Son of Man, and of the Law. It
makes the most of the weakening of the eschatological standpoint which is
manifested in the second edition of Johannes Weiss’s “Preaching of Jesus,”
but it does not give sufficient prominence to the difficulties of
reconstructing the public ministry of Jesus.
Neither Otto Schmiedel’s “The Principal Problems of the Study of the Life
of Jesus,” nor von Soden’s “Vacation Lectures” on “The Principal Questions
in the Life of Jesus” fulfils the promise of its title.(232) They both aim
rather at solving new problems proposed by themselves than at restating
the old ones and adding new. They hope to meet the views of Johannes Weiss
by strongly emphasising the eschatology, and think they can escape the
critical scepticism of writers like Volkmar and Brand by assuming an “Ur‐
Markus.” Their view is, therefore, that with a few modifications dictated
by the eschatological and sceptical school, the traditional conception of
the Life of Jesus is still tenable, whereas it is just the a priori
presuppositions of this conception, hitherto held to be self‐evident,
which constitute the main problems.
“It is self‐evident,” says von Soden in one passage, “in view of the inner
connexion in which the Kingdom of God and the Messiah stood in the
thoughts of the people ... that in all classes the question must have been
discussed, so that Jesus could not permanently have avoided their
question, ‘What of the Messiah? Art thou not He?’ ” Where, in the
Synoptics, is there a word to show that this is “self‐evident”? When the
disciples in Mark viii. tell Jesus “whom men held Him to be,” none of them
suggests that any one had been tempted to regard Him as the Messiah. And
that was shortly before Jesus set out for Jerusalem.
From the day when the envoys of the Scribes from Jerusalem first appeared
in the north, the easily influenced Galilaean multitude began, according
to von Soden, “to waver.” How does he know that the Galilaeans were easily
influenced? How does he know they “wavered”? The Gospels tell us neither
one nor the other. The demand for a sign was, to quote von Soden again, a
demand for a proof of His Messiahship. “Yet another indication,” adds the
author, “that later Christianity, in putting so high a value on the
miracles of Jesus as a proof of His Messiahship, departed widely from the
thoughts of Jesus.”
Before levelling reproaches of this kind against later Christianity, it
would be well to point to some passage of Mark or Matthew in which there
is mention of a demand for a sign as a proof of His Messiahship.
When the appearance of Jesus in the south—we are still following von
Soden—aroused the Messianic expectations of the people, as they had
formerly been aroused in His native country, “they once more failed to
understand the correction of them which Jesus had made by the manner of
His entry and His conduct in Jerusalem.” They are unable to understand
this “transvaluation of values,” and as often as the impression made by
His personality suggested the thought that He was the Messiah, they became
doubtful again. Wherein consisted the correction of the Messianic
expectation given at the triumphal entry? Was it that He rode upon an ass?
Would it not be better if modern historical theology, instead of always
making the people “grow doubtful,” were to grow a little doubtful of
itself, and begin to look for the evidence of that “transvaluation of
values” which, according to them, the contemporaries of Jesus were not
able to follow?
Von Soden also possesses special information about the “peculiar history
of the origin” of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. He knows that it
was subsidiary to a primary general religious consciousness of Sonship.
The rise of this Messianic consciousness implies, in its turn, the
“transformation of the conception of the Kingdom of God, and explains how
in the mind of Jesus this conception was both present and future.” The
greatness of Jesus is, he thinks, to be found in the fact that for Him
this Kingdom of God was only a “limiting conception”—the ultimate goal of
a gradual process of approximation. “To the question whether it was to be
realised here or in the beyond Jesus would have answered, as He answered a
similar question, ‘That, no man knoweth; no, not the Son.’ ”
As if He had not answered that question in the petition “Thy Kingdom
come”—supposing that such a question could ever have occurred to a
contemporary—in the sense that the Kingdom was to pass from the beyond
into the present!
This modern historical theology will not allow Jesus to have formed a
“theory” to explain His thoughts about His passion. “For Him the certainty
was amply sufficient; ‘My death will effect what My life has not been able
to accomplish.’ ”
Is there then no theory implied in the saying about the “ransom for many,”
and in that about “My blood which is shed for many for the forgiveness of
sins,” although Jesus does not explain it? How does von Soden know what
was “amply sufficient” for Jesus or what was not?
Otto Schmiedel goes so far as to deny that Jesus gave distinct expression
to an expectation of suffering; the most He can have done—and this is only
a “perhaps”—is to have hinted at it in His discourses.
In strong contrast with this confidence in committing themselves to
historical conjectures stands the scepticism with which von Soden and
Schmiedel approach the Gospels. “It is at once evident,” says Schmiedel,
“that the great groups of discourses in Matthew, such as the Sermon on the
Mount, the Seven Parables of the Kingdom, and so forth, were not arranged
in this order in the source (the _Logia_), still less by Jesus Himself.
The order is, doubtless, due to the Evangelist. But what is the answer to
the question, ‘On what grounds is this “at once” clear?’ ”(233)
Von Soden’s pronouncement is even more radical. “In the composition of the
discourses,” he says, “no regard is paid in Matthew, any more than in
John, to the supposed audience, or to the point of time in the life of
Jesus to which they are attributed.” As early as the Sermon on the Mount
we find references to persecutions, and warnings against false prophets.
Similarly, in the charge to the Twelve, there are also warnings, which
undoubtedly belong to a later time. Intimate sayings, evidently intended
for the inner circle of disciples, have the widest publicity given to
them.
But why should whatever is incomprehensible to us be unhistorical? Would
it not be better simply to admit that we do not understand certain
connexions of ideas and turns of expression in the discourses of Jesus?
But instead even of making an analytical examination of the apparent
connexions, and stating them as problems, the discourses of Jesus and the
sections of the Gospels are tricked out with ingenious headings which have
nothing to do with them. Thus, for instance, von Soden heads the
Beatitudes (Matt. v. 3‐12), “What Jesus brings to men,” the following
verses (Matt. v. 13‐16), “What He makes of men.” P. W. Schmidt, in his
“History of Jesus,” shows himself a past master in this art. “The rights
of the wife” is the title of the dialogue about divorce, as if the
question at stake had been for Jesus the equality of the sexes, and not
simply and solely the sanctity of marriage. “Sunshine for the children” is
his heading for the scene where Jesus takes the children in His arms—as if
the purpose of Jesus had been to protest against severity in the
upbringing of children. Again, he brings together the stories of the man
who must first bury his father, of the rich young man, of the dispute
about precedence, of Zacchaeus, and others which have equally little
connexion under the heading “Discipline for Jesus’ followers.” These often
brilliant creations of artificial connexions of thought give a curious
attractiveness to the works of Schmidt and von Soden. The latter’s survey
of the Gospels is a really delightful performance. But this kind of thing
is not consistent with pure objective history.
Disposing in this lofty fashion of the connexion of events, Schmiedel and
von Soden do not find it difficult to distinguish between Mark and “Ur‐
Markus”; that is, to retain just so much of the Gospel as will fit in to
their construction. Schmiedel feels sure that Mark was a skilful writer,
and that the redactor was “a Christian of Pauline sympathies.” According
to “Ur‐Markus,” to which Mark iv. 33 belongs, the Lord speaks in parables
in order that the people may understand Him the better; “it was only by
the redactor that the Pauline theory about hardening their hearts (Rom.
ix.‐xi.) was interpolated, in Mark iv. 10 ff., and the meaning of Mark iv.
33 was thus obscured.”
It is high time that instead of merely asserting Pauline influences in
Mark some proof of the assertion should be given. What kind of appearance
would Mark have presented if it had really passed through the hands of a
Pauline Christian?
Von Soden’s analysis is no less confident. The three outstanding miracles,
the stilling of the storm, the casting out of the legion of devils, the
overcoming of death (Mark iv. 35‐v. 43), the romantically told story of
the death of the Baptist (Mark vi. 17‐29), the story of the feeding of the
multitudes in the desert, of Jesus’ walking on the water, and of the
transfiguration upon an high mountain, and the healing of the lunatic
boy—all these are dashed in with a broad brush, and offer many analogies
to Old Testament stories, and some suggestions of Pauline conceptions, and
reflections of experiences of individual believers and of the Christian
community. “All these passages were, doubtless, first written down by the
compiler of our Gospel.”
But how can Schmiedel and von Soden fail to see that they are heading
straight for Bruno Bauer’s position? They assert that there is no
distinction of principle between the way in which the Johannine and the
Synoptic discourses are composed: the recognition of this was Bruno
Bauer’s starting‐point. They propose to find experiences of the Christian
community and Pauline teaching reflected in the Gospel of Mark; Bruno
Bauer asserted the same. The only difference is that he was consistent,
and extended his criticism to those portions of the Gospel which do not
present the stumbling‐block of the supernatural. Why should these not also
contain the theology and the experiences of the community transformed into
history? Is it only because they remain within the limits of the natural?
The real difficulty consists in the fact that all the passages which von
Soden ascribes to the redactor stand, in spite of their mythical
colouring, in a closely‐knit historical connexion; in fact, the historical
connexion is nowhere so close. How can any one cut out the feeding of the
multitudes and the transfiguration as narratives of secondary origin
without destroying the whole of the historical fabric of the Gospel of
Mark? Or was it the redactor who created the plan of the Gospel of Mark,
as von Soden seems to imply?(234)
But in that case how can a modern Life of Jesus be founded on the Marcan
plan? How much of Mark is, in the end, historical? Why should not Peter’s
confession at Caesarea Philippi have been derived from the theology of the
primitive Church, just as well as the transfiguration? The only difference
is that the incident at Caesarea Philippi is more within the limits of the
possible, whereas the scene upon the mountain has a supernatural
colouring. But is the incident at Philippi so entirely natural? Whence
does Peter know that Jesus is the Messiah?
This semi‐scepticism is therefore quite unjustifiable, since in Mark
natural and supernatural both stand in an equally good and close
historical connexion. Either, then, one must be completely sceptical like
Bruno Bauer, and challenge without exception all the facts and connexions
of events asserted by Mark; or, if one means to found an historical Life
of Jesus upon Mark, one must take the Gospel as a whole because of the
plan which runs right through it, accepting it as historical and then
endeavouring to explain why certain narratives, like the feeding of the
multitude and the transfiguration, are bathed in a supernatural light, and
what is the historical basis which underlies them. A division between the
natural and supernatural in Mark is purely arbitrary, because the
supernatural is an essential part of the history. The mere fact that he
has not adopted the mythical material of the childhood stories and the
post‐resurrection scenes ought to have been accepted as evidence that the
supernatural material which he does embody belongs to a category of its
own and cannot be simply rejected as due to the invention of the primitive
Christian community. It must belong in some way to the original tradition.
Oskar Holtzmann realises that to a certain extent. According to him Mark
is a writer “who embodied the materials which he received from the
tradition more faithfully than discriminatingly.” “That which was related
as a symbol of inner events, he takes as history—in the case, for example,
of the temptation, the walking on the sea, the transfiguration of Jesus.”
“Again in other cases he has made a remarkable occurrence into a
supernatural miracle, as in the case of the feeding of the multitude,
where Jesus’ courageous love and ready organising skill overcame a
momentary difficulty, whereas the Evangelist represents it as an amazing
miracle of Divine omnipotence.”
Oskar Holtzmann is thus more cautious than von Soden. He is inclined to
see in the material which he wishes to exclude from the history, not so
much inventions of the Church as mistaken shaping of history by Mark, and
in this way he gets back to genuine old‐fashioned rationalism. In the
feeding of the multitude Jesus showed “the confidence of a courageous
housewife who knows how to provide skilfully for a great crowd of children
from small resources.” Perhaps in a future work Oskar Holtzmann will be
less reserved, not for the sake of theology, but of national well‐being,
and will inform his contemporaries what kind of domestic economy it was
which made it possible for the Lord to satisfy with five loaves and two
fishes several thousand hungry men.
Modern historical theology, therefore, with its three‐quarters scepticism,
is left at last with only a torn and tattered Gospel of Mark in its hands.
One would naturally suppose that these preliminary operations upon the
source would lead to the production of a Life of Jesus of a similarly
fragmentary character. Nothing of the kind. The outline is still the same
as in Schenkel’s day, and the confidence with which the construction is
carried out is not less complete. Only the catch‐words with which the
narrative is enlivened have been changed, being now taken in part from
Nietzsche. The liberal Jesus has given place to the Germanic Jesus. This
is a figure which has as little to do with the Marcan hypothesis as the
“liberal” Jesus had which preceded it; otherwise it could not so easily
have survived the downfall of the Gospel of Mark as an historical source.
It is evident, therefore, that this professedly historical Jesus is not a
purely historical figure, but one which has been artificially transplanted
into history. As formerly in Renan the romantic spirit created the
personality of Jesus in its own image, so at the present day the Germanic
spirit is making a Jesus after its own likeness. What is admitted as
historic is just what the Spirit of the time can take out of the records
in order to assimilate it to itself and bring out of it a living form.
Frenssen betrays the secret of his teachers when in _Hilligenlei_ he
confidently superscribes the narrative drawn from the “latest critical
investigations” with the title “The Life of the Saviour portrayed
according to German research as the basis for a spiritual re‐birth of the
German nation.”(235)
As a matter of fact the Life of Jesus of the “Manuscript”(236) is
unsatisfactory both scientifically and artistically, just because it aims
at being at once scientific and artistic. If only Frenssen, with his
strongly life‐accepting instinct, which gives to his thinking, at least in
his earliest writings where he reveals himself without artificiality, such
a wonderful simplicity and force, had dared to read his Jesus boldly from
the original records, without following modern historical theology in all
its meanderings! He would have been able to force his way through the
underwood well enough if only he had been content to break the branches
that got in his way, instead of always waiting until some one went in
front to disentwine them for him. The dependence to which he surrenders
himself is really distressing. In reading almost every paragraph one can
tell whether Kai Jans was looking, as he wrote it, into Oskar Holtzmann or
P. W. Schmidt or von Soden. Frenssen resigns the dramatic scene of the
healing of the blind man at Jericho. Why? Because at this point he was
listening to Holtzmann, who proposes to regard the healing of the blind
man as only a symbolical representation of the “conversion of Zacchaeus.”
Frenssen’s masters have robbed him of all creative spontaneity. He does
not permit himself to discover _motifs_ for himself, but confines himself
to working over and treating in cruder colours those which he finds in his
teachers.
And since he cannot veil his assumptions in the cautious, carefully
modulated language of the theologians, the faults of the modern treatment
of the life of Jesus appear in him exaggerated an hundredfold. The violent
dislocation of narratives from their connexion, and the forcing upon them
of a modern interpretation, becomes a mania with the writer and a torture
to the reader. The range of knowledge not drawn from the text is
infinitely increased. Kai Jans sees Jesus after the temptation cowering
beneath the brow of the hill “a poor lonely man, torn by fearful doubts, a
man in the deepest distress.” He knows too that there was often great
danger that Jesus would “betray the ’Father in heaven’ and go back to His
village to take up His handicraft again, but now as a man with a torn and
distracted soul and a conscience tortured by the gnawings of remorse.”
The pupil is not content, as his teachers had been, merely to make the
people sometimes believe in Jesus and sometimes doubt Him; he makes the
enthusiastic earthly Messianic belief of the people “tug and tear” at
Jesus Himself. Sometimes one is tempted to ask whether the author in his
zeal “to use conscientiously the results of the whole range of scientific
criticism” has not forgotten the main thing, the study of the Gospels
themselves.
And is all this science supposed to be new?(237) Is this picture of Jesus
really the outcome of the latest criticism? Has it not been in existence
since the beginning of the ’forties, since Weisse’s criticism of the
Gospel history? Is it not in principle the same as Renan’s, only that
Germanic lapses of taste here take the place of Gallic, and “German art
for German people,”(238) here quite out of place, has done its best to
remove from the picture every trace of fidelity?