THE HISTORICAL JESUS
A SURVEY OF POSITIONS
BY
JOHN M. ROBERTSON
[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1916
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preamble xi
Chapter I.--THE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION
Presupposition in science. The Copernican theory. The reception of
Galileo, Harvey, and Darwin. Blinding effects of scholarship. The
theological record. Mutations of Christian opinion. Defence
of the belief in witchcraft. Leibnitz and Newton. Criticism
of the Pentateuch. Parvish, Astruc, Voltaire, Colenso, and the
professional scholars 1
Chapter II.--MODES OF CONSERVATIVE FALLACY
Persistence of the theological temper. Each abandoned position
first defended with the same fierceness. Saner forms of
conservatism. Persistence in presupposition. Canon Inge on Jesus
and Paul. The logical hiatus. Mill's precedent. His dithyrambic
mood and critical inadequacy. Disregard of the documentary
evidence. Need to face the real problem. The sociological
process. Mill's dictum contrasted with those of Newman and
Baur 6
Chapter III.--ILLUSIONS AS TO GOSPEL ETHIC
Mill's method and mind non-historical. "The historic
sense." Dr. J. E. Carpenter's. The concept of "sublimity." God
portraiture. Its limitations. The Gospel ethic. Significance of the
contradictions. The parable of the Good Samaritan. Incompetent
verdicts of theologians. The story of Lycurgus and
Alcander. Plutarch on forgiveness of enemies. Fanaticism of
Christian estimates of antiquity 18
Chapter IV.--THE METHOD OF BLUSTER
The historic problem. Its treatment by a Unitarian cleric. The
method of bluster. The real and the pretended character of the
Gospel according to Mark. Wellhausen's estimate. Actual features
of primitive and popular myth-lore. Biography in Plutarch. Mr.
McCabe on the Marcan residuum. The gospel figure. Doctrinal
determinants 30
Chapter V.--SCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH
Collapse of the thesis of "human characteristics." The myth
and the historicity of Herakles. The more considerate thesis
of Schmiedel: argument from "derogatory" episodes. Kalthoff on
the human characteristics in Ruth and Jonah. Confusion of the new
argument. Jesus introduced in Mark with divine characteristics. The
Unitarian blunder as to "conventional" and "unconventional"
hero-worship. Jewish and Pagan heroes and Gods alike put in
"derogatory" positions. Herakles, Dionysos, and Apollo. Need to
apply anthropological, mythological, and hierological as well as
N. T. scholarship. Grounds for a Christian myth of the Founder
as opposed by his family 44
Chapter VI.--THE VISIONARY EVANGEL
B. Weiss's "Primitive Gospel." Its characteristics common to
Mark. The enigma of the evangel of the Twelve. That problem never
rightly realized by the exegetes. The allegorical explanations
to be withheld from the people. Complete deficit of historical
matter. The evangel of the Twelve a myth. Real origin in a rite,
not in an evangel. The last hypothesis: a political evangel that
could not be later avowed. Incompatibility of this view with the
Gospels. Composition of the record. Why the Primitive Gospel lacked
the Tragedy. Breakdown of the traditionary explanation. Orthodox
avowals of anomaly 51
Chapter VII.--THE ALLEGED CONSENSUS OF SCHOLARS
Resort to the myth-theory forced by the data. Unitarian attitude to
that. Appeal for acceptance of the "consensus of scholars." No such
consensus ever attained. Dalman on his fellow-specialists. His own
presuppositions. Pretensions to solve historical problems through
philology. Distinction between pedantry and science. Candour of
Schmiedel. Inadequacy of his method. Resistance of scholarship
to scientific thought. Colenso and the Zulu and the orthodox
resistance. Attack on the New Testament scholars by Professor
Blass 62
Chapter VIII.--CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS
Modifications of conservative attitude. Lack of good faith
or of comprehension. Samples of misrepresentation. The
Unitarian attitude. Treatment of myth-solutions: the Myth of
the Temptation. Dr. Thorburn's orthodox solution. Mythology
and psychology. Psychic determinants of resistance to new
views. Attitude to "healing powers" ascribed to Jesus. Force of
presupposition. Davidson's "must." 74
Chapter IX.--BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE
The attempt to find an "impersonal" test of the documentary
basis. Dr. Flinders Petrie on The Growth of the Gospels. Theory
of selection and compilation from logia. Acceptance of any
item as early. The argument of Blass as to possibility of real
predictions. Case of Savonarola. Nature of the problem. Political
anticipation versus prophecy. Investigation of the Savonarola
case. His earlier prophecies, conditional and absolute 82
Chapter X.--THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY
Comparison between Savonarola's prediction of the Sack of Rome
and the gospel prophecy of the Fall of Jerusalem. Normality
of Savonarola's vaticinations. Historical blunder of the Blass
school as to medieval warfare. Frequency of sacrilege in Christian
war. The Christian sack of Constantinople 93
Chapter XI.--THE "LOGIA" THEORY AND THE HISTORICAL TEST
Blass on the gospel prophecy: analysis of the texts. Their
arbitrary handling by Blass. The "Nucleus" theory of
Dr. Petrie. Its arbitrary implications. Impersonal method
of selection not followed by impersonal inference from the
results. The logia theory much more compatible with the myth-theory
than with the tradition. Test cases 104
Chapter XII.--FAILURE OF THE "LOGIA" THEORY
The scientific inference. Omission and invention of logia
necessarily to be inferred as well as selection. Implicit
abandonment of certain prophecies, and resulting incoherence
of the argument. Reversion to the fundamental issue between
supernaturalism and reason. Final futility of the attempt
to vindicate the documents. Possibilities as to currency
of written logia. Illustration from Islam. The mass of
incompatibilities in the Gospel Teaching. Possibilities of genuine
self-contradiction. Carlyle and Ruskin. Mohammed. The gospels not
thus explicable. Damaging implications of the logia theory. Variety
of "Christs." Papias. Baruch and Enoch 113
Chapter XIII.--RESURGENCE OF THE HISTORIC PROBLEM
The actually recovered logia of Oxyrhynchus. Their incompatibility
with Dr. Petrie's assumption of historic genuineness for
all. The real process of composition in Luke's gospel. Motives
for invention. The myth of the Seventy Disciples a sample and
test case. Inadequacy alike of the documentary theory and that
of scattered logia 123
Chapter XIV.--ORTHODOXY AND THE "ORAL" HYPOTHESIS
The "oral" hypothesis of the Rev. A. Wright. His approximations
to the "liberal" chronology as against the Blass school. His
candour. Hypothesis of fifty-two Lessons. Another "selection"
theory--selection from oral traditions locally cherished. Wide
departures of Mr. Wright from his theory. Unaccountableness of
apostolic information. The tradition as to baptism. Problem of
the duration of the Ministry, and of the one or four visits to
Jerusalem. The oral hypothesis, like the others, more compatible
with the myth-theory than with the tradition. Stand on the
Resurrection 129
Chapter XV.--THE METHOD OF M. LOISY
M. Loisy and the "liberal" school. His attitude to the
myth-theory. His certitudes. Disclaims biography, and
produces one. His treatment of the legend. The problem of the
multitude of healings. Collapse of the assumption in the case
of Nazareth. Inconsistency of M. Loisy's method, and weakness
of his solutions. His acceptance of the Joseph legend. "The
carpenter." Difficulty set up by Origen. The myth solution. "The
son of Mary." Dilemma set up by later passages. Problem of the
Messianic declaration of Peter. Impossibility of the personality
set up by Petrine and anti-Petrine records 141
Chapter XVI.--THE TRIAL CRUX
Lax treatment of the main problems by M. Loisy. Acceptance
of the non-historical as historical. The Purification of the
Temple. The Agony. Approximation to the true solution. The
priestly Trial. Virtual abandonment of the narrative by
M. Loisy. Illicit reconstruction. Successive retreats of the
"liberal" school. Surrender of (1) the Trial before Herod, (2)
the Johannine record, (3) the Trial before the priests. Stand on
the Trial before Pilate. Untenableness of that. The Roman Trial
admittedly a loose tradition. Impossible as recorded. A clear
solution supplied by the myth theory. Irreconcilable character
of the Triumphal entry and the unanimous hostility of the people
before Pilate. The Barabbas story admittedly unhistorical. Its
presence accounted for only by the myth-theory 161
Chapter XVII.--THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY
The dilemma of the Evangel of the Twelve. M. Loisy on the
Teaching of Jesus as preparative for the cult. Destructive
effect of his admissions as to the teaching of Paul. His attitude
towards the myth-theory. Demanding definiteness, he rests in the
indefinite. His self-contradictions. His ascription of originality
to quoted teachings. Incompatibility of his Teacher and his
Messiah. The teaching as to divorce not that of one expecting
a new order. Its prior currency. Bases of the gospel ethic. The
Good Samaritan documentarily a late creation 173
Chapter XVIII.--THE PAULINE PROBLEM
M. Loisy on the testimony of Paul. His misconception as to
its bearings on the myth-theory. Van Manen helped by his own
thesis to accept the historicity of Jesus. The myth-theory quite
independent of the dating of the Epistles. Importance of noting
that, early or late, they are interpolated. M. Loisy's treatment
of the documentary problem. Van Manen's strong case against the
Epistles. Need to revise the details of the chronology. Also
to orient the myth-theory aright. Inadequacy of the theories of
Kalthoff and Kautsky 185
Chapter XIX.--THE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION
Prospects of controversy. Slow advance of the "liberal"
view. Identity of the final positions of Strauss and
Loisy. Tentative beginnings of the myth-theory. Effects of
persecution and of Strauss's final dialectic. Schweitzer on
the evolution "from Reimarus to Wrede." Bruno Bauer. Claims
for "the German temperament." Need for a truly scientific
temper. Effects of Bauer's flaws of mood and method. Schweitzer's
amenity and candour. Demonstrates the shortsightedness of German
specialism. Schweitzer's ignorance concerning the myth-theory
in its later developments. His laxities in research. His own
thesis 193
Chapter XX.--THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH-THEORY
The issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede. Each destroys one half
of the "liberal" case for historicity. Schweitzer confutes Wrede,
and then puts a still more untenable view. His acceptance of the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem as historical. His Jesus hailed
not as a Messiah but as Elias. Schweitzer's new view of the
Betrayal. Judas a revealer of his Master's private claim to be
Messiah. The multitude supposed to be thus cleared of the charge
of fickleness. Schweitzer's fallacy as to Messianic claims being
blasphemous. His service to criticism by clearing the ground. His
final ethical and sociological confusion. The fortunes of the
myth-theory in England. Early adumbrations. Difference in modern
spirit and method, resulting from establishment of anthropology as
a science. Lyell and Tylor. Schweitzer's scientific temper. The
myth-theory. The battleground of the future. Positions of Sir
J. G. Frazer. Countervailing declarations by supporters of the
myth-theory. The question one of science, not sentiment 201
Conclusion 211
Index 217
PREAMBLE
The problem of the historicity of the Jesus of the Gospels has been
discussed by me in large sections of two bulky books, which in other
sections deal with matters only indirectly connected with this, while
even the sections directly devoted to the problem cover a good deal
of mythological and anthropological ground which not many readers may
care to master. The "myth theory" developed in them, therefore, may
not be readily grasped even by open-minded readers; and the champions
of tradition, of whatever school, have a happy hunting-ground for
desultory misrepresentation and mystification. It has been felt to be
expedient, therefore, by disinterested readers as well as by me, to
put the problem in a clearer form and in a more concise compass. The
process ought to involve some logical improvement, as the mythological
investigation made in Christianity and Mythology had been carried out
independently of the anthropological inquiry made in Pagan Christs,
and the theory evolved may well require unification. In particular,
the element of Jewish mythology calls for fuller development. And
the highly important developments of the myth theory by Professor
Drews and Professor W. B. Smith have to be considered with a view
to co-ordination.
To such a re-statement, however, certain preliminary steps are
necessary. The ground needs to be cleared (1) of à priori notions
as to the subject matter; (2) of mistaken opinions as to a supposed
"consensus of critics"; and (3) of uncritical assumptions as to the
character of the Gospel narratives.
Writers who have not gone very deeply into problems of normal history,
however they may have specialized in the Biblical, are still wont to
assert that the historicity of non-supernatural data in the Sacred
Books is on all fours with that of the subject matter of "profane"
history. Indeed it is still common to hear it claimed that the
Resurrection is as well "attested" as the assassination of Julius
Cæsar, or even better. In exactly the same tone and spirit did the
traditionalists of a previous generation assert that the stoppage of
the sun and moon in the interest of Joshua was better attested than any
equally ancient historical narrative. Those who have decided to abandon
the supernatural reduce the claim, of course, to the historicity of
the Trial and Crucifixion; but as to these they confidently repeat
the old formulas. Yet in point of fact they have made no such critical
scrutiny of even these items as historians have long been used to make,
with destructive results, into many episodes of ancient history--for
instance, the battle of Thermopylæ and the founding of the Spartan
constitution by Lycurgus. Men who affect to dismiss the myth theory
as an ungrounded speculation are all the while taking for granted
the historicity of a record which is a mere tissue of incredibilities.
It has been justly remarked that serious risk of error is set up even
by the long-current claim of naturalist critics to "treat the Bible
like any other book." Even in their meaning the phrase should have run:
"like any other Sacred Book of antiquity"; inasmuch as critical tests
and methods are called for in the scrutiny of such books which do not
apply in the case of others. But inasmuch, further, as the Christian
Sacred Books form a problem by themselves, a kind of scrutiny which
in the case of other books of cult-history might substantially reveal
all the facts may here easily fail to do so.
The unsuspecting student, coming to a narrative in which supernatural
details are mingled with "natural," decides simply to reject the
former and take as history what is left. It is the method of the
amateur mythologists of ancient Greece, derided by Socrates, and
chronically resuscitated in all ages by men seeking short cuts to
certitude where they have no right to any. If the narrative of the
Trial and Crucifixion, thus handled, is found to be still incredible
in point of time-arrangement, the adaptor meets the difficulty by
reducing the time-arrangement to probability and presenting the twice
redacted result as "incontestable" history. All this, as will be
shown in the following pages, is merely a begging of the question. A
scientific analysis points to a quite different solution, which the
naïf "historical" student has never considered.
He is still kept in countenance, it is true, by "specialists" of the
highest standing. The average "liberal" theologian still employs the
explanatory method of Toland; and anthropologists still offer him
support. Thus Sir James Frazer, by far the most learned collector
of mytho-anthropological lore in his age, positively refuses to
apply to the history of the Christian cult his own express rule of
mythology--formulated before him [1] but independently reiterated
by him--that "all peoples have invented myths to explain why they
observed certain customs," and that a graphic myth to explain a rite
is presumptively "a simple transcript of a ceremony"; which is the
equivalent of the doctrine of Robertson Smith, that "in almost every
case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the
myth," and of the doctrine of K. O. Müller that "the mythus sprang from
the worship, and not the worship from the mythus." What justification
Sir James can give for his refusal to act on his own principles is of
course a matter for full and careful consideration. But at least the
fact that he has to justify the refusal to apply in a most important
case one of the best-established generalizations of comparative
mythology is not in this case a recommendation of the principle of
authority to scientific readers.
General phrases, then, as to how religions must have originated in
the personal impression made by a Founder are not only unscientific
presuppositions but are flatly contradictory, in this connection, of
a rule scientifically reached in the disinterested study of ancient
hierology in general.
It is a delusion, again, to suppose, as do some scholarly men,
that there is such a consensus of view among New Testament scholars
as to put out of court any theory that cancels the traditionalist
assumption of historicity which is the one position that most of
them have in common. As we shall see, the latest expert scholarship,
professionally recognized as such, makes a clean sweep of their whole
work; but they themselves, by their insoluble divisions, had already
discredited it. Any careful collection of their views will show that
the innumerable and vital divergences of principle and method of the
various schools, and their constant and emphatic disparagement of
each other's conclusions, point rather to the need for a radically
different theory and method. A theory, therefore, which cancels their
conflicts by showing that all the data are reducible to order only when
their primary assumption is abandoned, is entitled to the open-minded
attention of men who profess loyalty to the spirit of science.
There is need, thirdly, to bring home even to many readers who profess
such loyalty, the need for a really critical study of the Gospels. I
have been blamed by some critics because, having found that sixty
years' work on the documents by New Testament scholars yielded no clear
light on the problem of origins, I chose to approach that by way (1)
of mythology, (2) of extra-evangelical literature and sect-history,
and (3) of anthropology. The question of the order and composition
of the Gospels, in the view of these critics, should be the first
stage in the inquiry.
Now, for the main purposes of the myth-theory, the results reached
by such an investigator as Professor Schmiedel were quite sufficient;
and though at many points textual questions had to be considered, it
seemed really not worth while to discuss in detail the quasi-historical
results claimed by the exegetes. But it has become apparent that a
number of readers who claim to be "emancipated" have let themselves
be put off with descriptions of the Gospel-history when they ought to
have read it attentively for themselves. A confident traditionalist,
dealt with hereinafter, writes of the "pretentious futilities into
which we so readily drop when we talk about them [the Gospels] instead
of reading them." The justice of the observation is unconsciously
but abundantly illustrated by himself; and he certainly proves the
need for inducing professed students to read with their eyes open.
Early in 1914 there was published a work on The Historical Christ,
by Dr. F. C. Conybeare, in which, as against the myth hypothesis,
which he vituperatively assailed, a simple perusal of the Gospel of
Mark (procurable, as he pointed out, for one penny) was confidently
prescribed as the decisive antidote to all doubts of the historicity
of the central figure. The positions put were the conventional ones
of the "liberal" school. No note was taken of the later professional
criticism which, without accepting the myth-theory, shatters the
whole fabric of current historicity doctrine. But that is relatively
a small matter. In the course of his treatise, Dr. Conybeare asserted
three times over, with further embellishments, that in the Gospel of
Mark Jesus is "presented quite naturally as the son of Joseph and his
wife Mary, and we learn quite incidentally the names of his brothers
and sisters." Dr. Conybeare's printers' proofs, he stated, had been
read for him by Professor A. C. Clark. I saw, I think, fully twenty
newspaper notices of the book; and in not a single one was there any
recognition of the gross and thrice-repeated blunder above italicized,
to modify the chorus of uncritical assent. A professed Rationalist
repeated and endorsed Dr. Conybeare's assertion. Needless to say,
not only did Dr. Conybeare not mention that Joseph is never named in
Mark, he never once alluded to the fact that in the same Gospel Mary
is presented as not the mother of Jesus; and the brothers and sisters,
by implication, as not his brothers and sisters.
When aggressive scholars and confident reviewers thus alike reveal
that they have not read the Gospels with the amount of attention
supposed to be bestowed on them by an intelligent Sunday-school
teacher, it is evidently inadvisable to take for granted any general
critical preparation even among rationalistic readers. Before men
can realize the need for a new theoretic interpretation of the whole,
they must be invited to note the vital incongruities (as apart from
miracle stories) in each Gospel singly, as the lay Freethinkers of
an earlier generation did without pretending to be scholars.
Those Rationalists are ill-advised who suppose that, in virtue of
having listened to latter-day publicists who profess to extract a
non-supernatural "religion" from the supernaturalisms of the past, they
have reached a higher and truer standpoint than that of the men who
made sheer truth their standard and their ideal. Really scholarly and
scrupulous advocates of theism are as zealous to expose the historical
truth as the men who put that first and foremost; it is the ethical
sentimentalists who put the question of historic truth on one side. The
fact that some men of scientific training in other fields join at times
in such complacent constructions does not alter the fact that they
are non-scientific. The personal equation even of a man of science
is not science. On these as on other sides of the intellectual life,
"opinion of store is cause of want," as Bacon has it.
Some of us who in our teens critically read the sacred books first and
foremost to clear our minds on the general question of supernaturalism,
and then proceeded to try, with the help of the documentary scholars,
to trace the history of religion as matter of anthropology and
sociology, had the experience of being told by Professor Huxley,
whose own work we had followed, that we were still at the standpoint
of Voltaire. Later we had the edification of seeing Huxley expatiate
upon topics which had long been stale for Secularist audiences,
and laboriously impugn the story of the Flood and the miracle of
the Gadarene swine in discursive debate with Gladstone, even making
scientific mistakes in the former connection.
In view of it all, it seems still a sound discipline to treat all
opinions as for ever open to revision, and at the same time to doubt
whether the acceptance of any popular formula will place us in a
position to disparage unreservedly all our critical predecessors. If we
find reason to dismiss as inadequate the conclusions of many scholars
of the past, orthodox and heterodox, we are not thereby entitled
to speak of the best of them otherwise than as powerful minds and
strenuous toilers, hampered by some of their erroneous assumptions
in the task of relieving their fellows of the burden of others.
It is precisely the habituation of the professional scholars to
working in a special groove that has so retarded the progress of New
Testament criticism. The re-discussion of the historicity question
that has followed upon the modern exposition of the myth-theory
has involved the reiteration by the historicity school of a set
of elementary claims from the long-discredited interpolation in
Josephus and the pagan "testimonies" of Suetonius and Tacitus; and
Professor W. B. Smith has had to meet these with a detailed rebuttal
such as used to be made--of course with less care and fullness--on
the ordinary English Secularist platform forty or even seventy years
ago. Less advanced scholars once more begin to recognize the nullity
of the argument from the famous passage in the Annals of Tacitus,
[2] which was clear to so many unpretending freethinkers in the
past; and to other Gelehrten vom Fach it has to be again pointed out
that the impulsore Chresto of Suetonius, so far from testifying to
the presence of a Christian multitude at Rome under Nero--a thing
so incompatible with their own records--is rather a datum for the
myth-theory, inasmuch as it posits a cult of a Chrestos or Christos
out of all connection with the "Christian" movement.
The passage in Josephus was given up long ago by hundreds of orthodox
scholars as a palpable interpolation, proved as such by the total
silence in regard to it of early Fathers who would have rejoiced to
cite it if it had been in existence. The device of supposing it to
be a Christian modification of a different testimony by Josephus is
a resort of despair, which evades altogether the fact of the rupture
of context made by the passage--a feature only less salient in the
paragraph of Tacitus. But even if there were no reason to suspect
the latter item of being a late echo from Sulpicius Severus, who
is assumed to have copied it, nothing can be proved from it for the
historicity of the Gospel Jesus, inasmuch as it does but set forth from
a hostile standpoint the ordinary Christian account of the beginnings
of the cult. Those who at this time of day found upon such data are
further from an appreciation of the evidential problem than were
their orthodox predecessors who debated the issue with Freethinkers
half a century ago.
I have thought it well, then, to precede a restatement of the
"myth-theory" with a critical survey in which a number of preliminary
questions of scientific method and critical ethic are pressed upon
those who would deal with the main problem aright; and a certain
amount of controversy with other critical schools is indulged in
by way of making plain the radical weakness of all the conventional
positions. The negative criticism, certainly, will not establish in
advance the positive theory: that must meet the ordeal of criticism
like every other. But the preliminary discussion may at once serve to
free from waste polemic the constructive argument and guard readers
against bringing to that a delusive light from false assumptions.
A recent and more notorious exhibition of "critical method"
by Dr. Conybeare has satisfied me that it is needless to offer
any further systematic exposure of the nullity of his treatise,
with which I had dealt at some length in The Literary Guide. His
memorable attack upon the Foreign Secretary, and his still more
memorable retractation, may enable some of his laudatory reviewers
to realize the kind of temper and the kind of scrutiny he brings to
bear upon documents and theories that kindle his passions. All that
was relevant in his constructive process was really extracted, with
misconceptions and blunders and exaggerations, from the works of a
few scholars of standing who, however inconclusive their work might
be, set him a controversial example which he was unable to follow. In
dealing with them, I have the relief of no longer dealing with him. As
to the constructive argument from comparative mythology, anthropology,
and hierology, attacked by him and others with apparently no grasp of
the principles of any of these sciences, objections may be best dealt
with incidentally where they arise in the restatement of the case.
For the rest, I can conceive that some will say the second year of the
World War is no time for the discussion even of a great problem of
religious history. I answer that the War has actually been made the
pretext for endless religious discussions of the most futile kind,
ranging between medieval miracle-mongering and the lowest forms of
journalistic charlatanism, with chronic debates on theism and on
the military value of faith and prayer. The newspaper discussions on
theism, in particular, reveal a degree of philosophic naïveté on the
theistic side which seems to indicate that that view of the universe
has of late years been abandoned by most men capable of understanding
the logical problem. When dispute plays thus uselessly at the bidding
of emotion there must be some seniors, or others withheld from war
service, who in workless hours would as lief face soberly an inquiry
which digs towards the roots of the organized religion of Europe. If
the end of the search should be the conviction that that system took
shape as naturally as any other cult of the ancient world, and that the
sacrosanct records of its origin are but products of the mythopoeic
faculty of man, the time of war, with its soul-shaking challenge to
the sense of reality, may not be the most unfit for the experience.
THE HISTORICAL JESUS
CHAPTER I
THE SNARE OF PRESUPPOSITION
He who would approach with an alert mind such a question as that of
the historic actuality of the Gospel Jesus would do well to weigh
a preliminary warning. Though after four hundred years of chronic
scientific discovery all men are supposed to know the intellectual
danger of a confident and foregone rejection of new theories, it is
scarcely likely that the vogue of such error is at an end. After all,
apart from the special experience in question, and from the general
effect of the spread of "science," the average psychosis of men is not
profoundly different from what it was in the two centuries which passed
before the doctrines of Copernicus found general acceptance. Not many
modern novelties of thought can so reasonably be met with derision
as was the proposition that the earth moves round the sun.
Let the ingenuous reader try to make the supposition that he had
been brought up in ignorance of that truth, and without any training
in astronomy, and that in adolescence or mature years it had been
casually put to him as a non-authoritative suggestion. Would he have
been quick to surmise that the paradox might be truth? Let him next
try to imagine that he had been educated by an eccentric guardian in
the Ptolemaic creed, which accounted so plausibly for so many solar
and stellar phenomena, and that until middle life he had been kept
unaware of the Copernican heresy. Can he be sure that, meeting it
not as an accredited doctrine but as a novel hypothesis, he would
have been prompt to recognize that it was the better solution? If he
can readily say Yes, I know not whether his confidence is enviable
or otherwise. Reading in Sylvester's translation of the Divine
Weeks of Du Bartas, which had such vogue in the days of James VI,
the confident derision and "confutation" of the heliocentric theory,
I really cannot be sure that had I lived in those days I should have
gone right where Bacon went wrong.
To a mere historical student, not conscious of any original insight
into the problems of nature, there ought to be something chastening
in the recollection that every great advance in the human grasp
of them has been hotly or hilariously denounced and derided;
and that not merely by the average ignoramus, but by the mass of
the experts. It was not the peasants of Italy who refused to look
through Galileo's telescope--they were not invited to; it was the
academics, deep in Aristotle. It was not the laity who distinguished
themselves by rejecting Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the
blood; it was all the doctors above forty then living, if we can
believe a professional saying. And it was not merely the humdrum
Bible-readers who scouted geology for generations, or who laughed
consumedly for decades over the announcement that Darwin made out
men to be "descended from monkeys." That theory, as it happened,
had been unscientifically enough propounded long before Darwin; and,
albeit not grounded upon any such scientific research as served
to establish the Darwinian theory in a generation, yet happened
to be considerably nearer rationality than the Semitic myth which
figured for instructed Christendom as the absolute and divinely
revealed truth on the subject. A recollection of the hate and fury
with which geologists like Hugh Miller repelled the plain lesson of
their own science when it was shown to clash with the sacred myth,
and a memory of the roar of derision and disgust which met Darwin,
should set reasonable men on their guard when they find themselves
faced by propositions which can hardly seem more monstrous to this
generation than those others did to our fathers and grandfathers.
It is difficult, again, without suggesting contempt of that
scholarship which as concerning historical problems is the equivalent
of experimental research in science, to insist aright upon the
blinding tendency of pure scholarship in the face of a radically
innovating doctrine. Without scholarly survey no such doctrine can
maintain itself. Yet it is one of the commonest of experiences to
find the accredited scholars among the last to give an intelligent
hearing to a new truth. Only for a very few was skill in the Ptolemaic
astronomy a good preparation towards receiving the Copernican. The
errors of Copernicus--the inevitable errors of the pioneer--served
for generations to establish the Ptolemaists in theirs. And where
religious usage goes hand-in-hand with an error, not one man in a
thousand can escape the clutch of the double habit.
Hence the special blackness of the theological record in the history of
culture. In the present day the hideous memory of old crimes withholds
even the clerical class as a whole from the desire to employ active
persecution; but that abstention--forced in any case--cannot save
the class from the special snare of the belief in the possession of
fixed and absolute truth. Since the day when Tyndale was burned for
translating the Sacred Books, English Christians have passed through
a dozen phases of faith, from the crassest evangelicalism to the
haziest sentimentalism, and in all alike they have felt, mutatis
mutandis, the same spontaneous aversion to the new doctrine that
disturbs the old. Who will say that the stern Tyndale, had he ever
been in power, would not have made martyrs in his turn? The martyr
Latimer had applauded the martyrdom of Anabaptists. The martyred
Cranmer had assented to martyrdoms in his day, though a man forgiving
enough in respect of his own wrongs. And if the educated Christians
of to-day have reached a level at which they can recognize as old
delusions not only the beliefs in relics and images and exorcisms,
once all sacrosanct, but the "literal" acceptance of Semitic and
Christian myths and miracle-stories, to whom do they think they owe
the deliverance? To their accredited teachers? Not so.
No false belief from which men have been delivered since the day of
Copernicus has been dismissed without strenuous resistance from men
of learning, and even from men of vigorous capacity. The belief in
witchcraft was championed by Bodin, one of the most powerful minds
of his day; Glanvill, who sought to maintain it in England after the
Restoration, was a man of philosophical culture and a member of the
Royal Society; and he had the countenance of the Platonist Henry
More and the chemist Boyle. So great a man as Leibnitz repulsed
the cosmology of Newton on the score that it expelled God from
the universe. It was not professional theologians who invented the
"higher criticism" of the Pentateuch, any more than they introduced
geology. Samuel Parvish, the Guildford bookseller, who discovered in
the days of Walpole that Deuteronomy belonged to the seventh century
B.C., is not recorded to have made any clerical converts; and Astruc,
the Parisian physician who began the discrimination between the
Jehovistic and Elohistic sources in Genesis in 1753, made no school in
his country or his time. Voltaire, no Hebraist, demonstrated clearly
enough that the Pentateuchal tale of the tabernacle in the wilderness
was a fiction; but three toiling generations of German specialists
passed the demonstration by, till a Zulu convert set the good Bishop
Colenso upon applying to the legend the simple tests of his secular
arithmetic. Then the experts began slowly to see the point.