historical point which he has brought into the discussion, and is also
willing to admit that thoroughgoing eschatology has advanced the solution
of many problems, these are mere demonstrations which are quite inadequate
to raise the blockade of modern theology by the allied forces. Supposing
that only a half—nay, only a third—of the critical arguments which are
common to Wrede and the “Sketch of the Life of Jesus” are sound, then the
modern historical view of the history is wholly ruined.
The reader of Wrede’s book cannot help feeling that here no quarter is
given; and any one who goes carefully through the present writer’s
“Sketch” must come to see that between the modern historical and the
eschatological Life of Jesus no compromise is possible.
Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology may, in their
union, either destroy, or be destroyed by modern historical theology; but
they cannot combine with it and enable it to advance, any more than they
can be advanced by it.
We are confronted with a decisive issue. As with Strauss’s “Life of
Jesus,” so with the surprising agreement in the critical basis of these
two schools—we are not here considering the respective solutions which
they offer—there has entered into the domain of the theology of the day a
force with which it cannot possibly ally itself. Its whole territory is
threatened. It must either reconquer it step by step or else surrender it.
It has no longer the right to advance a single assertion until it has
taken up a definite position in regard to the fundamental questions raised
by the new criticism.
Modern historical theology is no doubt still far from recognising this. It
is warned that the dyke is letting in water and sends a couple of masons
to repair the leak; as if the leak did not mean that the whole masonry is
undermined, and must be rebuilt from the foundation.
To vary the metaphor, theology comes home to find the broker’s marks on
all the furniture and goes on as before quite comfortably, ignoring the
fact it will lose everything if it does not pay its debts.
The critical objections which Wrede and the “Sketch” agree in bringing
against the modern treatment of the subject are as follows.
In order to find in Mark the Life of Jesus of which it is in search,
modern theology is obliged to read between the lines a whole host of
things, and those often the most important, and then to foist them upon
the text by means of psychological conjecture. It is determined to find
evidence in Mark of a development of Jesus, a development of the
disciples, and a development of the outer circumstances; and professes in
so doing to be only reproducing the views and indications of the
Evangelist. In reality, however, there is not a word of all this in the
Evangelist, and when his interpreters are asked what are the hints and
indications on which they base their assertions they have nothing to offer
save _argumenta e silentio_.
Mark knows nothing of any development in Jesus; he knows nothing of any
paedagogic considerations which are supposed to have determined the
conduct of Jesus towards the disciples and the people; he knows nothing of
any conflict in the mind of Jesus between a spiritual and a popular,
political Messianic ideal; he does not know, either, that in this respect
there was any difference between the view of Jesus and that of the people;
he knows nothing of the idea that the use of the ass at the triumphal
entry symbolised a non‐political Messiahship; he knows nothing of the idea
that the question about the Messiah’s being the Son of David had something
to do with this alternative between political and non‐political; he does
not know, either, that Jesus explained the secret of the passion to the
disciples, nor that they had any understanding of it; he only knows that
from first to last they were in all respects equally wanting in
understanding; he does not know that the first period was a period of
success and the second a period of failure; he represents the Pharisees
and Herodians as (from iii. 6 onwards) resolved upon the death of Jesus,
while the people, down to the very last day when He preached in the
temple, are enthusiastically loyal to Him.
All these things of which the Evangelist says nothing—and they are the
foundations of the modern view—should first be proved, if proved they can
be; they ought not to be simply read into the text as something self‐
evident. For it is just those things which appear so self‐evident to the
prevailing critical temper which are in reality the least evident of all.
Another hitherto self‐evident point—the “historical kernel” which it has
been customary to extract from the narratives—must be given up, until it
is proved, if it is capable of proof, that we can and ought to distinguish
between the kernel and the husk. We may take all that is reported as
either historical or unhistorical, but, in respect of the definite
predictions of the passion, death, and resurrection, we ought to give up
taking the reference to the passion as historical and letting the rest go;
we may accept the idea of the atoning death, or we may reject it, but we
ought not to ascribe to Jesus a feeble, anaemic version of this idea,
while setting down to the account of the Pauline theology the
interpretation of the passion which we actually find in Mark.
Whatever the results obtained by the aid of the historical kernel, the
method pursued is the same; “it is detached from its context and
transformed into something different.” “It finally comes to this,” says
Wrede, “that each critic retains whatever portion of the traditional
sayings can be fitted into his construction of the facts and his
conception of historical possibility and rejects the rest.” The
psychological explanation of motive, and the psychological connexion of
the events and actions which such critics have proposed to find in Mark,
simply do not exist. That being so, nothing is to be made out of his
account by the application of a priori psychology. A vast quantity of
treasures of scholarship and erudition, of art and artifice, which the
Marcan hypothesis has gathered into its storehouse in the two generations
of its existence to aid it in constructing its life of Jesus has become
worthless, and can be of no further service to true historical research.
Theology has been simplified. What would become of it if that did not
happen every hundred years or so? And the simplification was badly needed,
for no one since Strauss had cleared away its impedimenta.
Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology, between them, are
compelling theology to read the Marcan text again with simplicity of mind.
The simplicity consists in dispensing with the connecting links which it
has been accustomed to discover between the sections of the narrative
(_pericopes_), in looking at each one separately, and recognising that it
is difficult to pass from one to the other.
The material with which it has hitherto been usual to solder the sections
together into a life of Jesus will not stand the temperature test. Exposed
to the cold air of critical scepticism it cracks; when the furnace of
eschatology is heated to a certain point the solderings melt. In both
cases the sections all fall apart.
Formerly it was possible to book through‐tickets at the supplementary‐
psychological‐knowledge office which enabled those travelling in the
interests of Life‐of‐Jesus construction to use express trains, thus
avoiding the inconvenience of having to stop at every little station,
change, and run the risk of missing their connexion. This ticket office is
now closed. There is a station at the end of each section of the
narrative, and the connexions are not guaranteed.
The fact is, it is not simply that there is no very obvious psychological
connexion between the sections; in almost every case there is a positive
break in the connexion. And there is a great deal in the Marcan narrative
which is inexplicable and even self‐contradictory.
In their statement of the problems raised by this want of connexion Wrede
and the “Sketch” are in the most exact agreement. That these difficulties
are not artificially constructed has been shown by our survey of the
history of the attempts to write the Life of Jesus, in the course of which
these problems emerge one after another, after Bruno Bauer had by
anticipation grasped them all in their complexity.
How do the demoniacs know that Jesus is the Son of God? Why does the blind
man at Jericho address Him as the Son of David, when no one else knows His
Messianic dignity? How was it that these occurrences did not give a new
direction to the thoughts of the people in regard to Jesus? How did the
Messianic entry come about? How was it possible without provoking the
interference of the Roman garrison of occupation? Why is it as completely
ignored in the subsequent controversies as if had never taken place? Why
was it not brought up at the trial of Jesus? “The Messianic acclamation at
the entry into Jerusalem,” says Wrede, “is in Mark quite an isolated
incident. It has no sequel, neither is there any preparation for it
beforehand.”
Why does Jesus in Mark iv. 10‐12 speak of the parabolic form of discourse
as designed to conceal the mystery of the Kingdom of God, whereas the
explanation which He proceeds to give to the disciples has nothing
mysterious about it? What is the mystery of the Kingdom of God? Why does
Jesus forbid His miracles to be made known even in cases where there is no
apparent purpose for the prohibition? Why is His Messiahship a secret and
yet no secret, since it is known, not only to the disciples, but to the
demoniacs, the blind man at Jericho, the multitude at Jerusalem—which
must, as Bruno Bauer expresses it, “have fallen from heaven”—and to the
High Priest?
Why does Jesus first reveal His Messiahship to the disciples at Caesarea
Philippi, not at the moment when He sends them forth to preach? How does
Peter know without having been told by Jesus that the Messiahship belongs
to his Master? Why must it remain a secret until the “resurrection”? Why
does Jesus indicate His Messiahship only by the title Son of Man? And why
is it that this title is so far from prominent in primitive Christian
theology?
What is the meaning of the statement that Jesus at Jerusalem discovered a
difficulty in the fact that the Messiah was described as at once David’s
son and David’s Lord? How are we to explain the fact that Jesus had to
open the eyes of the people to the greatness of the Baptist’s office,
subsequently to the mission of the Twelve, and to enlighten the disciples
themselves in regard to it during the descent from the mount of
transfiguration? Why should this be described in Matt. xi. 14 and 15 as a
mystery difficult to grasp (“If ye can receive it” ... “He that hath ears
to hear, let him hear”)? What is the meaning of the saying that he that is
least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the Baptist? Does the
Baptist, then, not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? How is the Kingdom of
Heaven subjected to violence since the days of the Baptist? Who are the
violent? What is the Baptist intended to understand from the answer of
Jesus?
What importance was attached to the miracles by Jesus Himself? What office
must they have caused the people to attribute to Him? Why is the discourse
at the sending out of the Twelve filled with predictions of persecutions
which experience had given no reason to anticipate, and which did not, as
a matter of fact, occur? What is the meaning of the saying in Matt. x. 23
about the imminent coming of the Son of Man, seeing that the disciples
after all returned to Jesus without its being fulfilled? Why does Jesus
leave the people just when His work among them is most successful, and
journey northwards? Why had He, immediately after the sending forth of the
Twelve, manifested a desire to withdraw Himself from the multitude who
were longing for salvation?
How does the multitude mentioned in Mark viii. 34 suddenly appear at
Caesarea Philippi? Why is its presence no longer implied in Mark ix. 30?
How could Jesus possibly have travelled unrecognised through Galilee, and
how could He have avoided being thronged in Capernaum although He stayed
at “the house”?
How came He so suddenly to speak to His disciples of His suffering and
dying and rising again, without, moreover, explaining to them either the
natural or the moral “wherefore”? “There is no trace of any attempt on the
part of Jesus,” says Wrede, “to break this strange thought gradually to
His disciples ... the prediction is always flung down before the disciples
without preparation, it is, in fact, a characteristic feature of these
sayings that all attempt to aid the understanding of the disciples is
lacking.”
Did Jesus journey to Jerusalem with the purpose of working there, or of
dying there? How comes it that in Mark x. 39, He holds out to the sons of
Zebedee the prospect of drinking His cup and being baptized with His
baptism? And how can He, after speaking so decidedly of the necessity of
His death, think it possible in Gethsemane that the cup might yet pass
from Him? Who are the undefined “many,” for whom, according to Mark x. 45
and xiv. 24, His death shall serve as a ransom?(260)
How came it that Jesus alone was arrested? Why were no witnesses called at
His trial to testify that He had given Himself out to be the Messiah? How
is it that on the morning after His arrest the temper of the multitude
seems to be completely changed, so that no one stirs a finger to help Him?
In what form does Jesus conceive the resurrection, which He promises to
His disciples, to be combined with the coming on the clouds of heaven, to
which He points His judge? In what relation do these predictions stand to
the prospect held out at the time of the sending forth of the Twelve, but
not realized, of the immediate appearance of the Son of Man?
What is the meaning of the further prediction on the way to Gethsemane
(Mark xiv. 28) that after His resurrection He will go before the disciples
into Galilee? How is the other version of this saying (Mark xvi. 7) to be
explained, according to which it means, as spoken by the angel, that the
disciples are to journey to Galilee to have their first meeting with the
risen Jesus there, whereas, on the lips of Jesus, it betokened that, just
as now as a sufferer He was going before them from Galilee to Jerusalem,
so, after His resurrection, He would go before them from Jerusalem to
Galilee? And what was to happen there?
These problems were covered up by the naturalistic psychology as by a
light snow‐drift. The snow has melted, and they now stand out from the
narratives like black points of rock. It is no longer allowable to avoid
these questions, or to solve them, each by itself, by softening them down
and giving them an interpretation by which the reported facts acquire a
quite different significance from that which they bear for the Evangelist.
Either the Marcan text as it stands is historical, and therefore to be
retained, or it is not, and then it should be given up. What is really
unhistorical is any softening down of the wording, and the meaning which
it naturally bears.
The sceptical and eschatological schools, however, go still farther in
company. If the connexion in Mark is really no connexion, it is important
to try to discover whether any principle can be discovered in this want of
connexion. Can any order be brought into the chaos? To this the answer is
in the affirmative.
The complete want of connexion, with all its self‐contradictions, is
ultimately due to the fact that two representations of the life of Jesus,
or, to speak more accurately, of His public ministry, are here crushed
into one; a natural and a deliberately supernatural representation. A
dogmatic element has intruded itself into the description of this
Life—something which has no concern with the events which form the outward
course of that Life. This dogmatic element is the Messianic secret of
Jesus and all the secrets and concealments which go along with it.
Hence the irrational and self‐contradictory features of the presentation
of Jesus, out of which a rational psychology can make only something which
is unhistorical and does violence to the text, since it must necessarily
get rid of the constant want of connexion and self‐contradiction which
belongs to the essence of the narrative, and portray a Jesus who was the
Messiah, not one who at once was and was not Messiah, as the Evangelist
depicts Him. When rational psychology conceives Him as one who was
Messiah, but not in the sense expected by the people, that is a concession
to the self‐contradictions of the Marcan representation; which, however,
does justice neither to the text nor to the history which it records,
since the Gospel does not contain the faintest hint that the contradiction
was of this nature.
Up to this point—up to the complete reconstruction of the system which
runs through the disconnectedness, and the tracing back of the dogmatic
element to the Messianic secret—there extends a close agreement between
thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology. The critical
arguments are identical, the construction is analogous and based on the
same principle. The defenders of the modern psychological view cannot,
therefore, play off one school against the other, as one of them proposed
to do, but must deal with them both at once. They differ only when they
explain whence the system that runs through the disconnectedness comes.
Here the ways divide, as Bauer saw long ago. The inconsistency between the
public life of Jesus and His Messianic claim lies either in the nature of
the Jewish Messianic conception, or in the representation of the
Evangelist. There is, on the one hand, the eschatological solution, which
at one stroke raises the Marcan account as it stands, with all its
disconnectedness and inconsistencies, into genuine history; and there is,
on the other hand, the literary solution, which regards the incongruous
dogmatic element as interpolated by the earliest Evangelist into the
tradition and therefore strikes out the Messianic claim altogether from
the historical Life of Jesus. _Tertium non datur._
But in some respects it really hardly matters which of the two “solutions”
one adopts. They are both merely wooden towers erected upon the solid main
building of the consentient critical induction which offers the enigmas
detailed above to modern historical theology. It is interesting in this
connexion that Wrede’s scepticism is just as constructive as the
eschatological outline of the Life of Jesus in the “Sketch.”
Bruno Bauer chose the literary solution because he thought that we had no
evidence for an eschatological expectation existing in the time of Christ.
Wrede, though he follows Johannes Weiss in assuming the existence of a
Jewish eschatological Messianic expectation, finds in the Gospel only the
Christian conception of the Messiah. “If Jesus,” he thinks, “really knew
Himself to be the Messiah and designated Himself as such, the genuine
tradition is so closely interwoven with later accretions that it is not
easy to recognise it.” In any case, Jesus cannot, according to Wrede, have
spoken of His Messianic Coming in the way which the Synoptists report. The
Messiahship of Jesus, as we find it in the Gospels, is a product of Early
Christian theology correcting history according to its own conceptions.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish in Mark between the reported
events which constitute the outward course of the history of Jesus, and
the dogmatic idea which claims to lay down the lines of its inward course.
The principle of division is found in the contradictions.
The recorded events form, according to Wrede, the following picture. Jesus
came forward as a teacher,(261) first and principally in Galilee. He was
surrounded by a company of disciples, went about with them, and gave them
instruction. To some of them He accorded a special confidence. A larger
multitude sometimes attached itself to Him, in addition to the disciples.
He is fond of discoursing in parables. Besides the teaching there are the
miracles. These make a stir, and He is thronged by the multitudes. He
gives special attention to the cases of demoniacs. He is in such close
touch with the people that He does not hesitate to associate even with
publicans and sinners. Towards the Law He takes up an attitude of some
freedom. He encounters the opposition of the Pharisees and the Jewish
authorities. They set traps for Him and endeavour to bring about His fall.
Finally they succeed, when He ventures to show Himself not only on Judaean
soil, but in Jerusalem. He remains passive and is condemned to death. The
Roman administration supports the Jewish authorities.
“The texture of the Marcan narrative as we know it,” continues Wrede, “is
not complete until to the warp of these general historical notions there
is added a strong weft of ideas of a dogmatic character,” the substance of
which is that “Jesus, the bearer of a special office to which He was
appointed by God,” becomes “a higher, superhuman being.” If this is the
case, however, then the motives of His conduct are not derived from human
characteristics, human aims and necessities. “The one motive which runs
throughout is rather a Divine decree which lies beyond human
understanding. This He seeks to fulfil alike in His actions and His
sufferings. The teaching of Jesus is accordingly supernatural.” On this
assumption the want of understanding of the disciples to whom He
communicates, without commentary, unconnected portions of this
supernatural knowledge becomes natural and explicable. The people are,
moreover, essentially “non‐receptive of revelation.”
“It is these _motifs_ and not those which are inherently historical which
give movement and direction to the Marcan narrative. It is they that give
the general colour. On them naturally depends the main interest, it is to
them that the thought of the writer is really directed. The consequence is
that the general picture offered by the Gospel is not an historical
representation of the Life of Jesus. Only some faded remnants of such an
impression have been taken over into a supra‐historical religious view. In
this sense the Gospel of Mark belongs to the history of dogma.”
The two conceptions of the Life of Jesus, the natural and the
supernatural, are brought, not without inconsistencies, into a kind of
harmony by means of the idea of intentional secrecy. The Messiahship of
Jesus is concealed in His life as in a closed dark lantern, which,
however, is not quite closed—otherwise one could not see that it was
there—and allows a few bright beams to escape.
The idea of a secret which must remain a secret until the resurrection of
Jesus could only arise at a time when nothing was known of a Messianic
claim of Jesus during His life upon earth: that is to say, at a time when
the Messiahship of Jesus was thought of as beginning with the
resurrection. But that is a weighty piece of indirect historical evidence
that Jesus did not really profess to be the Messiah at all.
The positive fact which is to be inferred from this is that the
appearances of the risen Jesus produced a sudden revolution in His
disciples’ conception of Him. “The resurrection” is for Wrede the real
Messianic event in the Life of Jesus.
Who is responsible, then, for introducing this singular feature, so
destructive of the real historical connexion, into the life of Jesus,
which was in reality that of a teacher? It is quite impossible, Wrede
argues, that the idea of the Messianic secret is the invention of Mark. “A
thing like that is not done by a single individual. It must, therefore,
have been a view which was current in certain circles, and was held by a
considerable number, though not necessarily perhaps by a very great number
of persons. To say this is not to deny that Mark had a share and perhaps a
considerable share in the creation of the view which he sets forth ... the
_motifs_ themselves are doubtless not, in part at least, peculiar to the
Evangelist, but the concrete embodiment of them is certainly his own work;
and to this extent we may speak of a special Marcan point of view which
manifests itself here and there. Where the line is to be drawn between
what is traditional and what is individual cannot always be determined
even by a careful examination directed to this end. We must leave it
commingled, as we find it.”