SCHMIEDEL AND DEROGATORY MYTH
From this point onwards, every step in the investigation will be found
to convict the Unitarian thesis of absolute nullity. It is indeed,
on the face of it, an ignorant pronouncement. The characteristics
of "anger, pity, indignation, despondency, exultation," are all
present in the myth of Herakles, of whom Diodorus Siculus, expressly
distinguishing between mythology and history, declares (i, 2) that
"by the confession of all, during his whole life he freely undertook
great and continual labours and dangers, in order that by doing
good to the race of men he might win immortal fame." Herakles was,
in fact, a Saviour who "went about doing good." [22] The historicity
of Herakles is not on that score accepted by instructed men; though I
have known divinity students no less contemptuous over the description
of the cognate Samson saga as a sun myth than is Mr. Sinclair over
the denial of the historicity of Jesus.
So common a feature of a hundred myths, indeed, is the set of
characteristics founded on, that we may at once come to the basis
of his argument, a blundering reiteration of the famous thesis of
Professor Schmiedel, who is the sole source of Mr. Sinclair's latent
erudition. "The line of inquiry here suggested," he explains, "has
been worked out in a pamphlet of Schmiedel, which will be found in
the Fellowship library." But the dialectic which broadly avails for
the Bible class will not serve their instructor here. The essence
of the argument which Professor Schmiedel urges with scholarlike
sobriety is thus put by Mr. Sinclair with the extravagance natural
to his species:--
Many [compare Schmiedel!] of the stories represent him [Jesus] in a
light which, from the point of view of conventional hero-worship,
is even derogatory; his friends come to seize him as a madman;
he is estranged from his own mother; he can do no mighty work in
the unsympathetic atmosphere of his own native place.
The traditionalist is here unconsciously substituting a new and
different argument for the first. Hitherto the thesis has been
that of the "vividness" of the record, the "human touches," the
"speaking and feeling like a real man," the "freedom and variety of
life." Apparently he has had a shadow of misgiving over these simple
criteria. If, indeed, he had given an hour to the perusal of Albert
Kalthoff's Rise of Christianity, instead of proceeding to vilipend a
literature of which he had read nothing, he would have learned that
his preliminary thesis is there anticipated and demolished. Kalthoff
meets it by the simple observation that the books of Ruth and Jonah
supply "human touches" and "freedom and variety of life" to a far
greater degree than does the Gospel story considered as a life of
Jesus; though practically all scholars are now agreed that both of
the former books are deliberately planned fictions, or early "novels
with a purpose." Ruth is skilfully framed to contend against the
Jewish bigotry of race; and Jonah to substitute a humane ideal for
the ferocious one embalmed in so much of the sacred literature. Yet
so "vividly" are the central personages portrayed that down till the
other day all the generations of Christendom, educated and uneducated
alike, accepted them unquestioningly as real records, whatever might
be thought by the judicious few of the miracle element in Jonah.
It is thus ostensibly quite expedient to substitute for the simple
thesis of "vividness" in regard to the second Gospel the quite
different argument that some of the details exclude the notion that
"the author" regarded Jesus as a supernatural person. But this thesis
instantly involves the defence in fresh trouble, besides breaking down
utterly on its own merits. In the early chapters of Mark, Jesus is
emphatically presented as a supernormal person--the deity's "beloved
Son," "the Holy One of God," who has the divine power of forgiving
sins, is "lord even of the sabbath," and is hailed by the defeated
spirits of evil as "the Son of God," and the "Son of the Most High
God." Either the conception of Jesus in Mark vi is compatible with all
this or it is not. If not, the case collapses, for the "derogatory"
episode must be at once branded as an interpolation. And if it
be argued that even as an interpolation it testifies at once to a
non-supernaturalist view of the Founder's function and a real knowledge
of his life and actions, we have only to give a list of more or less
mythical names in rebuttal. To claim that the episode in Mark vi, 1-6,
is "derogatory from the point of view of conventional hero-worship,"
and therefore presumptively historical, is to ignore alike Jewish and
Gentile hero-worship. In the Old Testament Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob,
Judah, Moses, Aaron, Samson, David, and Solomon are all successively
placed in "derogatory" positions; and the Pagan hero-worshippers of
antiquity are equally with the Jewish recalcitrant to Mr. Sinclair's
conviction of what they ought to do.
Professor Schmiedel is aware, though Mr. Sinclair apparently is
not, that Herakles in the myth is repeatedly placed in "derogatory"
positions, and is not only seized as a madman but actually driven
mad. The reader who will further extend Mr. Sinclair's brief curriculum
to a perusal of the Bacchæ of Euripides will find that the God,
who in another story is temporarily driven mad by Juno, is there
subjected to even greater indignities than those so triumphantly
specified by our hierologist. Herakles and Dionysos, we may be told,
were only demigods, not Gods. But Professor Schmiedel's thesis is that
for the writer of Mark or of his original document Jesus was only a
holy man. On the other hand--to say nothing of the myths of Zeus and
Hêrê, Arês and Aphroditê, Hephaistos and Poseidon--Apollo, certainly
a God for the framers of his myth, is there actually represented
as being banished from heaven and living in a state of servitude to
Admetus for nine years. A God, then, could be conceived in civilized
antiquity as undergoing many and serious indignities. These simple
à priori arguments are apt to miscarry even in the hands of careful
and scrupulous scholars like Professor Schmiedel, who have failed to
realize that no amount of textual scholarship can suffice to settle
problems which in their very nature involve fundamental issues of
anthropology, mythology, and hierology. As Professor Schmiedel is never
guilty of browbeating, I make no disparagement of his solid work on the
score that he has not taken account of these fields in his argument;
but when his untenable thesis is brandished by men who have neither his
form of scholarship nor any other, it is apt to incur summary handling.
Elsewhere I have examined Professor Schmiedel's thesis in detail. [23]
Here it may suffice to point out (1) as aforesaid, that the argument
from derogatory treatment is not in the least a proof that in an
ancient narrative a personage is not regarded as superhuman; (2) that
a suffering Messiah was expressly formulated in Jewish literature
in the pre-Christian period; [24] and (3) that there are extremely
strong grounds for inferring purposive invention--of that naïf kind
which marks the whole mass of early hierology--in the very episodes
upon which he founds. The first concrete details of the Founder's
propaganda in Mark, as we have seen, exhibit him as clashing with
the Judaic environment. In later episodes he clashes with it yet
further. The "derogatory" episodes exhibit him as clashing with his
personal environment, his family and kin, concerning whom there has
been no mention whatever at the outset, where we should expect to find
it. All this is in line with the anti-Judaic element of the Gospel. If
at early stages in the larger Jesuine movement there were reasons
why the Founder should be represented as detaching himself from the
Mosaic law; as being misunderstood and deserted by his disciples; and
as disparaging even the listening Jewish multitude (concerning whom
Mark, iv, 10 sq., makes him say that "unto them that are without,
all things are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not
perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest haply they
should turn again, and it should be forgiven them"), is there anything
unlikely in his being inventively represented as meeting antipathetic
treatment from his family? [25] At a time when so-called "brothers of
the Lord" ostensibly claimed authority in the Judæo-Gentile community,
an invented tale of original domestic hostility to the Teacher would
be as likely as the presence of authorities so styled is unlikely
on the assumption that the story in Mark was all along current. The
very fact that allusions to the family of the Lord suddenly appear in
a record which had introduced him as a heavenly messenger, without
mention of home or kindred or preparation, tells wholly against the
originality of the later details, which in the case of the naming of
"the carpenter" and his mother have a polemic purpose. [26]