THE PAULINE PROBLEM
How much M. Loisy is swayed by prepossession may be further gathered
from his argumentation over the "testimony of Paul" in connection
with his criticism of the myth theory. Professor Drews, he remarks,
does not follow those who contest the authenticity of the Epistles,
"though the interest of his thesis imperiously demands it"; and again:
"Paul is a dangerous witness for the mythic hypothesis." [197]
It may be worth while for me here to note that a study of the Pauline
epistles, on the view that "the four" were probably genuine in the
main, was a determining factor in my own resort to the mythical
hypothesis. The critical situation created by realizing that Paul
practically knew nothing of the Gospel narratives save the detachable
item of the resurrection was for me almost exactly analogous to that
created by realizing that the Israel of the Book of Judges knew nothing
of the Pentateuchal life in the wilderness. So far from being a witness
against the myth theory, the Pauline literature was one of the first
clear grounds for that theory. The school of Van Manen can realize,
what M. Loisy cannot, that the spuriousness of the whole Pauline
literature, so far from being "imperiously required" by the myth
theory, sets up for that a certain complication. [198] As a matter of
fact, Van Manen took exactly the converse view to that of M. Loisy:--
He was at bottom a man of conservative character, and it was only
with great reluctance that he found himself compelled to abandon
the Paul consecrated by tradition. But when, as a man of science,
he had once made this sacrifice to his convictions, his belief
in an historical Jesus received a fresh accession of strength;
now at length the existence of Jesus had become probable. If the
letters were written a century later than the time when Jesus
lived, then his deification in the Pauline letters ceases to be
so astonishing. [199]
Decidedly M. Loisy had been somewhat superficial in his estimate
of the tendencies of the argument over Paul. Now, the myth theory,
as it happens, is neither made nor marred by any decision as to
the spuriousness of the Pauline letters. The crucial point is that,
whether early or late--and the dating of them as pseudepigrapha is a
difficult matter--the cardinal epistles have been interpolated. This
became clear to me at an early stage in my studies, independently of
any previous criticism. That the two passages, 1 Cor. xi, 23-28; xv,
3-11, are interpolations, and that in the second case the interpolation
has been added to, are as clear results of pure documentary analysis
as any in the whole field of the discussion. [200] And when M. Loisy
ascribes to Professor Drews an "entirely gratuitous hypothesis of
interpolation," and implies that such hypotheses are set up because
the texts are "extremely awkward for the mythic theory," [201] he is
himself misled by his parti pris. Whereas I came to my conclusions
[202] as to interpolation while working towards the myth theory,
exactly the same conclusions as mine, I afterwards found, had been
previously reached by at least one continental scholar [203] who had
not the mythic theory in view; and later by others [204] who equally
stood aloof from it. M. Loisy would do well to ask himself whether
it is not he who is uncritically swayed by his presuppositions,
and whether the men to whom he imputes such bias are not the really
disinterested critics.
In regard to the text of 1 Cor. xv, 3 sq., he describes as surprising
the argument that the account of the appearance of Jesus to
"five hundred at once" is shown to be late by its absence from the
Gospels. This very silence of the evangelists, he insists, "renders
unplausible [invraisemblable] the entirely gratuitous hypothesis
of an interpolation." [205] One is driven to wonder what conception
M. Loisy has formed of the manner of the compilation of the Gospels. On
his view, Paul had very early put in currency the record that the
risen Jesus had appeared to "above five hundred brethren at once";
yet this record, so welcome to the Church, was never inserted in
the Gospels. Why not? In M. Loisy's opinion, one of them, at least,
was penned or redacted in the Pauline interest:--
One may without doubt ... affirm that the oldest of the synoptics,
the Gospel of Mark, was composed, in a certain measure, in favour
of Paul.... The same Gospel seems to have the conscious purpose
of lowering the Galilean disciples to the advantage of Paul and
his disciples. [206]
And while M. Loisy justly rejects, as opposed to the internal evidence,
the claim that "Luke" is the intimate of Paul, and even denies that the
third Gospel is really Pauline in tendency, [207] he will hardly say
that it is anti-Pauline, or likely on that or any other score to repel
an important item of testimony to the appearances of the risen Jesus,
supplied by such an authority as the Apostle to the Gentiles. He can
give no reason whatever, then, why the "five hundred" item should
appear neither in Gospels nor Acts. It is in point of fact to be
taken as a very late interpolation indeed. And if M. Loisy, as in
duty bound, would but note the sequence: "then to the twelve; then
... to above five hundred ... then to all the apostles," he might,
as simple critic, see that there have been successive tamperings.
As to the genuineness and the dating of the epistles, it may be
well at this point to put the issue clearly. The general case of
Van Manen is decidedly strong; and the entire absence from the Acts
of any mention of any public epistle by Paul is all in Van Manen's
favour. The Epistle to the Romans is so far dissolved under criticism
that it might be classed as neither Pauline nor an epistle. [208]
That there are late literary elements in the rest of the cardinal
"four" I have myself argued, [209] independently of the question of
the interpolations of quasi-history. For a free historical student
there can be no primary question of how the dating of the epistles
will affect the problem of the historicity of Jesus: the problem is
to be scientifically solved on its merits. But while the school of Van
Manen fail to recognize interpolations in the epistles as they stand,
and to revise their chronology in the light of that fact, they are
postponing the critical settlement. That the rejection of all the
Pauline epistles as pseudepigraphic is not at all a counter stroke
to the myth theory is shown by Mr. Whittaker's definite acceptance
of both positions. Van Manen was premature on the historicity question.
Assuredly there is much to be done before the myth theory can be
reduced to a definitive scientific form. It is to be hoped that, free
as it is from perverting commitments, it may be developed rather more
rapidly than the "liberal" theory of the human Christ, which has been
on the stocks for over a hundred years without securing any higher
measure of unanimity than exists among the Christian sects. But it
can have no rapid acceptance. Questions of myth analogies--always
open to the perverse handling of men who cannot or will not see that
in mythology and anthropology claims of analogy are not claims of
derivation--are apt to be obscure at best; and the establishment
of the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus cult has been admitted
from the outset to be difficult. And the sociological history of the
rise of Christianity, to which the myth question is but preparatory,
has still to be written.
In this direction too there may be complications. Pastor Kalthoff's
very important treatise on The Rise of Christianity puts the theory
that the Church began as a communistic body; and Karl Kautsky, in
his Der Ursprung des Christenthums (1908), has vigorously developed
that conception. It has some strong grounds, and it is beset by very
serious difficulties, which Kautsky, I think, has not met. When he
denies that there were Hellenistic experiments and propagandas which
in a later period could have set some Christian enthusiasts upon
inventing a communistic beginning for the Church, he seems to ignore
his own argument from the Epistle of James, and evidence which he could
have found in Kalthoff. But unless the communistic theory (adumbrated
long ago in De Quincey's rash thesis that the Essenes were the first
Christians) is pressed as giving the whole origin of Christianity,
it remains a part rather of the sociological problem than of the
hierological inquiry. And I do not think that Kalthoff, had he lived,
would have so pressed it. He saw, I think, that there is a primary
religious factor and problem, and that the other is secondary. There
was a sacramental cult before there could be any communism. When the
origin of the cult is made fairly clear the question of communism may
be settled. But the Acts is a very dubious basis for a historical
theory, and the Epistle of James tells rather of Ebionism than of
communism. The history of the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, which for
me was one of the points of reversion to a myth theory, seems to be
the true starting point for the history of the Church.