THE METHOD OF BLUSTER
For anyone who will soberly and faithfully face the facts there must
sooner or later arise the problem, Is there any unifying personality
behind this medley of many sets of doctrines, many voices, many
schools? Even if it were possible to piece together from it a coherent
body of either ethical or religious thought, and jettison the rest,
is there any reason to believe that the selected matter belongs to the
Gospel Teacher with the Twelve Disciples, crucified on the morning
after the Passover under Pontius Pilate? When the crowning doctrine
of sacrament and sacrifice is seen to be but the consummation of a
religious lore beginning in prehistoric and systematic human sacrifice,
and traceable in a score of ancient cults, is it possible to claim that
the palpably dramatic record of Last Supper, Agony, Betrayal, Trial,
and Crucifixion is a historic record of a strange coincidence between
cult practice and biography? And if that goes, what is left? If,
says Loisy, the condemnation of Jesus as pretended Messiah by Pilate
"could be put in doubt, one would have no motive for affirming the
existence of Christ." [14] And it can!
Some, assuming to settle the problem by rhetoric, in effect stand
for a "personality" without any pretence of establishing what the
"personality" taught. And this inexpensive device will doubtless
long continue to be practised by the large class who insist upon
solving all such problems by instinct. An example of that procedure
is afforded by an article headed "A Barren Controversy," by the
Rev. Frederick Sinclair, in a magazine entitled Fellowship, the
organ of the Free Religious Fellowship, Melbourne, issue of March,
1915. The controversy is certainly barren enough as Mr. Sinclair
conducts it. His religious temper is of a familiar type. "It is a
hard task to prove the obvious," he begins; "and no obligation is
laid on us to examine and refute the evidences alleged in support of
this or that cock-and-bull theory." We can imagine how the reverend
critic would have shone in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century,
disposing of the Copernican theory, which so presumptuously assailed
"the obvious." True to his principles, he does not hamper himself
by meeting arguments or evidence. "Mythical theories about Christ
have about as much scientific value and importance as the theories
of the Baconians about Shakespeare. They ... are products ... of
that perverted credulity which will swallow anything, so long as
it is not orthodox; and they are best met by the method of satire
adopted by Whately in his 'Historic Doubts' on Napoleon." And yet
our expert renounces that admirable instrument in favour of the
simpler procedure vulgarly known as "bluff." He is in reality a good
example of the psychosis of the very Baconism which he contemns,
and which he would probably be quite unable to confute. An æsthetic
impression of "reality" derived from a hypnotized perusal of Mark,
and a feeling that only one man could deliver such oracles, are the
beginning and end of his dialectic and scholarly stock-in-trade;
even as a consciousness that Bacon must be the author of the Plays,
and that the actor Shakespeare could not have written them, is the
beginning and end of the ignorant polemic of the Baconists.
To do him justice, it should be noted that Mr. Sinclair warns
his readers both before and after his case that his handling of
the theme and their preparation for estimating it leave a great
deal to be desired by those who care to see applied "the method of
careful criticism." Still, he is satisfied that it is "adequate to
the particular question we have been considering." And this is how
Mr. Sinclair has considered:--
Anyone who will pay this controversy the compliment of a few hours'
consideration is advised to bring his own judgment to bear on it
in the following way: Let him begin by taking a copy of St. Mark's
Gospel, which is the earliest of the four, in either of the English
versions, and read it through, pencil in hand, striking out all
the miraculous or quasi-miraculous stories. Then, gathering up
what remains, let him read it, first as a whole, then singly,
episode by episode, always keeping the eye of the imagination open,
dismissing as far as possible any prepossessions, and letting the
author make his own impression, without the interfering offices
of critic or commentator. Having done this, let the reader ask
of himself of each story: Is this a story which seems to belong
to actual life, to be told of a real human being, with distinct
individuality, or is it rather a literary invention, designed
to add something to a conventional figure? Does the narrative
move with the freedom and variety of life, or does it fit into
a conventional, symmetrical design? Does the writer's style and
method arouse the suspicion of literary artifice? Must one say
of this or that story that its reality is the reality of life,
or of an art which cunningly counterfeits life?
The open-minded reader, I trust, will hardly need to be told that
what is here done is to set a false problem and ignore the real
issue. Mr. Sinclair either cannot understand that issue or elects
to evade it. Probably the former is the explanation. No critic of
the Gospels, so far as I remember, ever suggested that any of them
"cunningly counterfeits life"; and certainly no one ever pretended
that Mark [15] exhibits a "conventional, symmetrical design," though
Wilke argued that it "freely moulded the traditional historical
material in pursuance of literary aims," and B. Weiss praises its
literary colouring. It is a heap of unreal incident, fortuitously
collocated, [16] and showing nothing approaching to symmetrical
design. "Conventional" raises another question; in this as in all
the Gospels there is plenty of convention.
Let us but follow for a little the simple method of selection
prescribed by Mr. Sinclair, and see what we get. What we are to make of
Mark i, 1-9, is far from clear. It sets forth the advent of John as the
fulfilment of a prophecy--i.e., a miracle; and it describes his mission
in the baldest conceivable summary, save for the sentence: "And John
was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leathern girdle about his
loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey." Is this "convention" or
"reality"? I am not inclined to call it "literary artifice," unless we
are to apply that description to the beginning of the average nursery
tale, as perhaps we should. What must strike the inquiring reader is
that if we were to have a touch of "reality" about the Baptist we
should be told something about his inner history, his antecedents,
and what he preached. What we are told is that "he preached, saying,
There cometh after me he that is mightier than I.... I baptized you
with water; but he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
If this part of the narrative has not been "struck out" by
Mr. Sinclair's neophytes as plainly belonging to the miraculous,
the next five verses presumably must be. The non-miraculous narrative
begins at v. 14:--
Now, after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the Gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the
Gospel [not a word of which has been communicated].
And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew
the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were
fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will
make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they left the
nets, and followed him. And going on a little further, he saw
James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who also were
in the boat mending the nets. And straightway he called them;
and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired
servants, and went after him.
This "episode," for Mr. Sinclair, "seems to belong to real life,
to be told of a real human being with distinct individuality." For
critical readers it is a primitive "conventional" narrative, told by a
writer who has absolutely no historic knowledge to communicate. Of the
preaching of the Saviour he has no more to tell than of the preaching
of the Baptist. Both are as purely "conventional," so far, as an
archaic statue of Hermes. Of "the freedom and variety of life" there
is not a trace; Mr. Sinclair, who professes to find these qualities,
is talking in the manner of a showman at a fair. The important process
of making disciples resolves itself into a fairy tale: "Come and I
will make you fishers of men; and they came." A measure of "literary
artifice" is perhaps to be assigned to the items of "casting a net,"
"mending the net," and "left their father in the boat with the hired
servants"; [17] but it is the literary art of a thousand fairy tales,
savage and civilized, and stands for the method of a narrator who
is dealing with purely conventional figures, not with characters
concerning which he has knowledge. The calling of the first disciples
in the rejected Fourth Gospel has much more semblance of reality.
If the cautious reader is slow to see these plain facts on the pointing
of one who is avowedly an unbeliever in the historic tradition, let him
listen to a scholar of the highest eminence, who, after proving himself
a master in Old Testament criticism, set himself to specialize on the
New. Says Wellhausen: "The Gospel of Mark, in its entirety, lacks the
character of history." [18] And he makes good his judgment in detail:--
Names of persons are rare: even Jairus is not named in [codex]
D. Among the dramatis personæ it is only Jesus who distinctively
speaks and acts; the antagonists provoke him; the disciples are
only figures in the background. But of what he lived by, how he
dwelt, ate, and drank, bore himself with his companions, nothing
is vouchsafed. It is told that he taught in the synagogue on the
Sabbath, but no notion is given of the how; we get only something
of what he said outside the synagogue, usually through a special
incident which elicits it. The normal things are never related,
only the extraordinary.... The scantiness of the tradition is
remarkable. [19]
The local connection of the events, the itinerary, leaves as
much to be desired as the chronological; seldom is the transit
indicated in the change of scene. Single incidents are often
set forth in a lively way, and this without any unreal or merely
rhetorical devices, but they are only anecdotally related, rari
nantes in gurgite vasto. They do not amount to material for a life
of Jesus. And one never gets the impression that an attempt had
been made among those who had eaten and drunk with him to give
others a notion of his personality. [20]
Wellhausen, it is true, finds suggestions of a real and commanding
personality; but they are very scanty, the only concrete detail
being the watching the people as they drop their offerings into
the collecting-chest! "Passionate moral sensibility distinguishes
him. He gives way to divine feeling in anger against the oppressors
of the people and in sympathy with the lowly." But here too there
is qualification:--
But in Mark this motive for miracles seldom comes out. They are
meant to be mainly displays of the Messiah's power. Mark does
not write de vita et moribus Jesu: he has not the aim of making
his person distinguishable, or even intelligible. It is lost for
him in the divine vocation; he means to show that Jesus is the
Christ. [21]
Then we have a significant balancing between the perception that Mark
is not history, and that, after all, it is practically all there is:--
Already the oral tradition which he found had been condensed
under the influence of the standpoint from which he set out. He
is silent on this and that which he can omit as being known to
his readers--for instance, the names of the parents of Jesus
(!). Nevertheless, he has left little that is properly historical
for his successors to glean after him; and what they know in
addition is of doubtful worth....
Why is not something more, and something more trustworthy,
reported of the intercourse of the Master with his disciples? It
would rather seem that the narrative tradition in Mark did not
come directly from the intimates of Jesus. It has on the whole
a somewhat rude and demotic cast, as if it had previously by a
long circulation in the mouth of the people come to the rough
and drastic style in which it lies before us.... Mark took up
what the tradition carried to him.
Such is the outcome of a close examination by an original scholar who
takes for granted the historicity of Jesus. It is a poor support to
a pretence of finding a lifelike narrative.
If the reader under Mr. Sinclair's tutelage will at this point vary his
study somewhat (at the cost of a few extra hours) by reading samples
of quite primitive folk-lore--say the Hottentot Fables and Tales
collected by Dr. Bleek, in which the characters are mostly, but not
always, animals; or some of the fairy tales in Gill's Myths and Songs
of the South Pacific--and then proceed to the tale of Tom Tit Tot,
as given by Mr. Edward Clodd in the dialect of East Anglia, he will
perhaps begin to realize that unsophisticated narrators not only can
but frequently do give certain touches of quasi-reality to "episodes"
which no civilized reader can suppose to have been real. In particular
he will find in the vivacious Tom Tit Tot an amount of "the freedom and
variety of life" in comparison with which the archaic stiffness and
bareness of the Gospel narrative is as dumb-show beside drama. And
if he will next pay some attention to the narrative of Homer, in
which Zeus and Hêrê are so much more life-like than a multitude of
the human personages of the epic, and then turn to see how Plutarch
writes professed biography, some of it absolutely mythical, but all
of it on a documentary basis of some kind, he will perhaps begin
to suspect that Mr. Sinclair has not even perceived the nature of
the problem on which he pronounces, and so is not in a position to
"consider" it at all. Plutarch is nearly as circumstantial about
Theseus and Herakles and Romulus as about Solon. But when he has real
biographical material to go upon as to real personages he gives us a
"freedom and variety of life" which is as far as the poles asunder
from the hieratic figures of the Christian Gospel. Take his Fabius
Maximus. After the pedigree, with its due touch of myth, we read:--
His own personal nickname was Verrucosus, because he had a little
wart growing on his upper lip. The name of Ovicula, signifying
sheep, was also given him while yet a child, because of his slow
and gentle disposition. He was quiet and silent, very cautious in
taking part in children's games, and learned his lessons slowly
and with difficulty, which, combined with his easy obliging ways
with his comrades, made those who did not know him think that he
was dull and stupid. Few there were who could discern, hidden in
the depths of his soul, his glorious and lion-like character.
This is biography, accurate or otherwise. Take again the Life of
Pericles, where after the brief account of parentage, with the item
of the mother's dream, we get this:--
His body was symmetrical, but his head was long out of all
proportion; for which reason in nearly all his statues he is
represented wearing a helmet; as the sculptors did not wish,
I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish.... Most writers
tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name they say
should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle,
however, says that he studied under Pythocleides. This Damon,
it seems, was a sophist of the highest order....
The "biographer" who so satisfies Mr. Sinclair's sense of actuality has
not one word of this kind to say of the youth, upbringing, birthplace,
or appearance of the Teacher, who for him was either God or Supreme
Man. Seeking for the alleged "freedom and variety of life" in the
narrative, we go on to read:--
And they go into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he
entered into the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished
at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not
as the scribes. And straightway there was in their synagogue a
man with an unclean spirit--
and straightway we are back in the miraculous. Mr. Joseph McCabe, who
in his excellent book on the Sources of the Morality of the Gospels
avows that he holds by the belief in a historical Jesus, though unable
to assign to him with confidence any one utterance in the record,
fatally anticipates Mr. Sinclair by remarking that "If the inquirer
will try the simple and interesting experiment of eliminating from the
Gospel of Mark all the episodes which essentially involve miracle,
he will find the remainder of the narrative amazingly paltry." To
which verdict does the independent reader begin to incline? Thus the
"episodes" continue, after three paragraphs of the miraculous:--
And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up and went
out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed. And Simon
and they that were with him followed after him; and they found him,
and say unto him, All are seeking thee. And he saith unto them, Let
us go elsewhere into the next towns, that I may preach there also;
for to this end came I forth. And he went into their synagogues
throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out devils.
It would seem sufficient to say that Mr. Sinclair, with his "freedom
and variety of life," is incapable of critical reflection upon what he
reads. In the opening chapter we have not a single touch of actuality;
the three meaningless and valueless touches of detail ("a great
while before day" is the third) serve only to reveal the absolute
deficit of biographical knowledge. We have reiterated statements that
there was teaching, and not a syllable of what was taught. The only
utterances recorded in the chapter are parts of the miracle-episodes,
which we are supposed to ignore. Let us then consider the critic's
further asseveration:--
It will be observed that certain distinct traits appear in
the central figure, and that these traits are not merely those
of the conventional religious hero, but the more simple human
touches of anger, pity, indignation, despondency, exultation;
these scattered touches, each so vivid, fuse into a natural and
intelligible whole. The Jesus of Mark is a real man, who moves
and speaks and feels like a man (!)--"a creature not too bright
or good for human nature's daily food"--
a notable variation from the more familiar thesis of the "sublime" and
"unique" figure of current polemic. Looking for the alleged details,
we find Jesus calling the fifth disciple: "He saith unto him, Follow
me. And he arose and followed him"--another touch of "freedom and
variety." Then, after a series of Messianic utterances, including
a pronouncement against Sabbatarianism of the extremer sort, comes
the story of the healing of the withered hand, with its indignant
allocution to "them" in the synagogue: "Is it lawful on the sabbath
day to do good, or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?" Here, in a
miracle story, we have an intelligible protest against Sabbatarianism:
is it the protest or the indignation that vouches for the actuality
of the protesting figure? Nay, if we are to elide the miraculous,
how are we to let the allocution stand?
These protests against Sabbatarianism, as it happens, are the
first approximations to actuality in the document; and as such they
raise questions of which the "instinctive" school appear to have
no glimpse, but which we shall later have to consider closely. In
the present connection, it may suffice to ask the question: Was
anti-Sabbatarianism, or was it not, the first concrete issue raised by
the alleged Teacher? In the case put, is it likely to have been? Were
the miraculous healing of disease, and the necessity of feeding the
disciples, with the corollary that the Son of Man was Lord of the
Sabbath, salient features in a popular gospel of repentance in view of
the coming of the Kingdom of God? If so, it is in flat negation of the
insistence on the maintenance of the law in the Sermon on the Mount
(Mt. v, 17-20), which thus becomes for us a later imposition on the
cultus of a purely Judaic principle, in antagonism to the other. That
is to say, a movement which began with anti-Sabbatarianism was after a
time joined or directed by Sabbatarian Judaists, for whom the complete
apparatus of the law was vital. If, on the other hand, recognizing
that anti-Sabbatarianism, in the terms of the case, was not likely to
be a primary element in the new teaching, that its first obtrusion in
the alleged earliest Gospel is in an expressly Messianic deliverance,
and its second in a miracle-story, we proceed to "strike out" both
items upon Mr. Sinclair's ostensible principles, we are deprived of
the first touch of "indignation" and "anger" which would otherwise
serve to support his very simple thesis.