THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS

However widely views may differ even now in the sphere of Gospel

criticism, all really competent investigators agree on one point

with rare unanimity: the Gospels are not historical documents in the

ordinary sense of the word, but creeds, religious books, literary

documents revealing the mind of the Christian community. Their purpose

is consequently not to give information as to the life and teachings

of Jesus which would correspond to reality, but to awaken belief in

Jesus as the Messiah sent from God for the redemption of his people,

to strengthen and defend that belief against attacks. And as creeds

they confine themselves naturally to recounting such words and events

as have any significance for the faith; and they have the greatest

interest in so arranging and representing the facts as to make them

accord with the content of that faith.

(a) The Synoptic Jesus.

Of the numerous Gospels which were still current in the first half

of the second century, as is well known, only four have come down to

us. The others were not embodied by the Church in the Canon of the New

Testament writings, and consequently fell into oblivion. Of these at

most a few names and isolated and insignificant fragments remain to

us. Thus we know of a Gospel of Matthew, of Thomas, of Bartholomew,

Peter, the twelve apostles, &c. Of our four Gospels, two bear the

names of apostles and two the names of companions and pupils of

apostles, viz., Mark and Luke. In this, of course, it is in no way

meant that they were really written by these persons. According to

Chrysostom these names were first assigned to them towards the end

of the second century. And the titles do not run: Gospel of Matthew,

of Mark, and so on, but "according to" Matthew, "according to" Mark,

Luke, and John; so that they indicate at most only the persons or

schools whose particular conception of the Gospel they represent.

Of these Gospels, again, that of John ranks as the latest. It

presupposes the others, and shows such a dogmatic tendency, that it

cannot be considered the source of the story. Of the remaining Gospels,

which on account of their similarity as to form and matter have been

termed "Synoptic" (i.e., such as must be dealt with in connection

with each other and thus only give a real idea of the Saviour's

personality), that of Mark is generally regarded as the oldest. Matthew

and Luke rely on Mark, and all three, according to the prevailing

view, are indebted to a common Aramaic source, wherein Jesus' didactic

sermons are supposed to have been contained. Tradition points to John

Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, pupil of Peter, and Paul's companion on

his first missionary journey and later a sharer in the captivity at

Rome, as the author of the Gospel of Mark. It is believed that this

was written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem (70)--i.e., at

least forty years after Jesus' death (!). This tradition depends upon

a note of the Church historian Eusebius (d. about 340 A.D.), according

to which Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, learnt from the

"elder John" that Mark had set forth what he had heard from Peter,

and what this latter had in turn heard from the "Lord." On account

of its indirect nature and of Eusebius' notorious unreliability this

note is not a very trustworthy one, [375] and belief in it should

disappear in view of the fact that the author of the Gospel of Mark

had no idea of the spot where Jesus is supposed to have lived. And

yet Mark is supposed to have been born in Jerusalem and to have been a

missionary! As Wernle shows in his work, "Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu,"

Mark stands quite far from the life of Jesus both in time and place(!);

indeed, he has no clear idea of Jesus' doings and course of life. [376]

And Wrede confirms this in his work, "Das Messias-geheimnis" (1901),

probably the clearest and deepest inquiry into the fundamental

problem of the Gospel of Mark which we possess. Jesus is for Mark

at once the Messiah and the Son of God. "Faith in this dogma must be

aroused, it must be established and defended. The whole Gospel is a

defence. Mark wishes to lead all his readers, among whom he counts

the Heathens and Gentile Christians, to the recognition of what the

heathen centurion said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God!' [377]

The whole account is directed to this end." [378]

Mark's main proof for this purpose is that of miracles. Jesus'

doctrines are with Mark of so much less importance than his miracles,

that we never learn exactly what Jesus preached. "Consequently the

historical portrait is very obscure: Jesus' person is distorted

into the grotesque and the fantastic"(!) [379] Not only does Mark

often introduce his own thought into the tradition about Jesus,

and so prove perfectly wrong, and indeed absurd, the view held,

for instance, by Wernle, that Jesus had intentionally made use of an

obscure manner of speech and had spoken in parables and riddles so

as not to be understood by the people; [380] but also the connection

which he has established between the accounts, which had first gone

from mouth to mouth for a long time in isolation, is a perfectly

disconnected and external one. At first the stories reported by Mark

were totally disconnected with one another. There is no evidence at

all of their having followed each other in the present order(!). [381]

So that only the matter, not what Mark made of it, is of historical

value. [382] Single stories, discourses, and phrases are bound into

a whole by Mark; and often enough it may be seen that we have here a

tradition which was first built up in the earliest Christianity long

after Jesus' death. Experiences were at first gradually fashioned into

a story--and the miracle-stories may especially be regarded in this

way. In spite of all these trimmings and alterations, and in spite of

the fact that neither in the words of Jesus nor in the stories is it

for the most part any longer possible to separate the actual from the

traditional, which for forty years was not put into writing--in spite

of all this, the historical value of the traditions given us by Mark

is "very highly" estimated. For not only is "the general impression

of power, originality, and creation" "valuable," which is given in

this account of Mark's, but also there are so many individual phrases

"corresponding to reality." Numerous accounts, momentary pictures and

remarks, "speak for themselves." The modesty and ingenuousness(!), the

freshness and joy(!) with which Mark recounts all this, show distinctly

that he is here the reporter of a valid tradition, and that he writes

nothing but what eye-witnesses have told him(!). "And so finally, in

spite of all, this Gospel remains an extraordinarily valuable work,

a collection of old and genuine material, which is loosely arranged

and placed under a few leading conceptions; produced perhaps by that

Mark whom the New Testament knows, and of whom Papias heard from the

mouth of the elder John." [383]

One does not trust one's eyes with this style of attempting to set

up Mark as an even half-credible "historical source." This attempt

will remind us only too forcibly of Wrede's ironical remarks when

he is making fun of the "decisions as you like it" that flourish

in the study of Jesus' life. "This study," says Wrede, "suffers

from psychological suggestion, and this is one style of historical

solution." [384] One believes that he can secure this, another that,

as the historical nucleus of the Gospel; but neither has objective

proofs for his assertions. [385] If we wish to work with an historical

nucleus, we must really make certain of a nucleus. The whole point

is, that in an anecdote or phrase something is proved, which makes

any other explanation of the matter under consideration improbable,

or at least doubtful. [386] It seems very questionable, after his

radical criticism of the historical credibility of Mark's Gospel, that

Wrede saw in it such a "historical kernel"--though this is supposed

by Wernle to "speak for itself." Moreover, Wrede's opinion of the

"historian" Mark is not essentially different from Wernle's. In

his opinion, for example, Jesus' disciples, as the Gospel portrays

them, with their want of intelligence bordering on idiocy, their

folly, and their ambiguous conduct as regards their Master, are

"not real figures." [387] He also concedes, as we have stated, that

Mark had no real idea of the historical life of Jesus, [388] even if

"pallid fragments"(!) of such an idea entered into his superhistorical

faith-conception. "The Gospel of Mark," he says, "has in this sense a

place among the histories of dogma." [389] The belief that in it the

development of Jesus' public life is still perceptible appears to be

decaying. [390] "It would indeed be in the highest degree desirable

that such a Gospel were not the oldest." [391]

Thus, then, does Mark stand as an historical source. After this we

could hardly hope to be much strengthened in our belief in Jesus'

historical reality by the other two Synoptics. Of these, Luke's Gospel

must have been written, in the early part of the second century, by an

unknown Gentile Christian; and Matthew's is not the work of a single

author, but was produced--and unmistakably in the interests of the

Church--by various hands in the first half of the second century. [392]

But now both, as we have said, are based on Mark. And even if in

their representations they have attained a certain "peculiar value"

which is wanting in Mark--e.g., a greater number of Jesus' parables

and words--even if they have embellished the story of his life by

the addition of legendary passages (e.g., of the history of the time

preceding the Saviour, of many additions to the account of the Passion

and Resurrection, &c.), this cannot quite establish the existence of

an historical Jesus. It is true that Wernle takes the view that in this

respect "old traditions" have been preserved "with wonderful fidelity"

by both the Evangelists; but, on the other hand, he concedes as to

certain of Luke's accounts that even if he had used old traditions

they need not have been as yet written, and certainly they need not

have been "historically reliable." It seems rather peculiar when,

leaving completely on one side the historical value of the tradition,

he emphatically declares that even such a strong interest, as in

his opinion the Evangelists had in the shaping and formation of their

account, could not in any way set aside "the worth of its rich treasure

of parables and stories, through which Jesus himself [!] speaks to

us with freshness and originality" (!). He also strangely sums up at

the end, "that the peculiar value of both Gospels, in spite of their

very mixed nature, has claim enough on our gratitude"(!). [393] This

surely is simply to make use of the Gospels' literary or other value

in the interest of the belief in their historical credibility.

But there is still the collection of sayings, that "great authority

on the matter," from which all the Synoptics, and especially Luke

and Matthew, are supposed to have derived the material for their

declarations about Jesus. Unfortunately this is to us a completely

unknown quantity, as we know neither what this "great" authority

treats of, nor the arrangement of the matter in it, nor its text. We

can only say that this collection was written in the Aramaic tongue,

and the arrangement of its matter was not apparently chronological,

but according to the similarity of its contents. Again, it is doubtful

whether the collection was a single work, produced by one individual;

or whether it had had a history before it came to Luke and Matthew. All

the same, "the collection contains such a valuable number of the

Lord's words, that in all probability an eye-witness was its author"

(!). [394] As for the speeches of Jesus constructed from it, they were

never really made as speeches by Jesus, but owe the juxtaposition

of their contents entirely to the hand of the compiler. Thus the

much admired Sermon on the Mount is constructed by placing together

individual phrases of Jesus, which belong to all periods of his life,

perhaps made in the course of a year. The ideas running through it

and connecting the parts are not those of Jesus, but rather those

of the original community; "nevertheless, the historical value of

these speeches is, on the whole, very great indeed. Together with the

'Lord's words' of Mark they give us the truest insight into the spirit

of the Gospel"(!). [395]

Such are the authorities for the belief in an historical Jesus! If we

survey all that remains of the Gospels, this does indeed appear quite

"scanty," or, speaking plainly, pitiable. Wernle consoles himself with,

"If only it is certain and reliable." Yes, if! "And if only it was

able to give us an answer to the chief question: Who was Jesus?" [396]

This much is certain: a "Life of Jesus" cannot be written on the basis

of the testimony before us. Probably all present-day theologians are

agreed on this point; which, however, does not prevent them producing

new essays on it, at any rate for the "people," thus making up for the

lack of historical reliability by edifying effusions and rhetorical

phrases. "There is no lack of valuable historical matter, of stones for

the construction of Jesus' life; they lie before us plentifully. But

the plan for the construction is lost and completely irretrievable,

because the oldest disciples had no occasion for such an historical

connection, but rather claimed obedience to the isolated words and

acts, so far as they aroused faith." But would they have been less

faith-arousing if they had been arranged connectedly, would the

credibility of the accounts of Jesus have been diminished and not

much rather increased, if the Evangelists had taken the trouble to

give us some more information as to Jesus' real life? As things stand

at present, hardly two events are recounted in the same manner in

the Gospels, or even in the same connection. Indeed, the differences

and contradictions--and this not only as to unimportant things, such

as names, times and places, &c.--are so great that these literary

documents of Christianity can hardly be surpassed in confusion. [397]

But even this is, according to Wernle, "not so great a pity, if

only we can discover with sufficient clearness, what Jesus' actions

and wishes were on important points." [398] Unfortunately we are

not in a position to do even this. For the ultimate source of our

information, which we arrive at in our examination of the authorities

is completely unknown to us--the Aramaic collection of sayings, and

those very old traditions from which Mark is supposed to have derived

his production, gleanings of which have been preserved for us by Luke

and Matthew. But even if we knew these also, we would almost certainly

not have "come to Jesus himself." "They contain the possibility of

dispute and misrepresentation. They recount in the first place the

faith of the oldest Christians, a faith which arose in the course of

four hundred years, and moreover changed much in that time." [399]

So that at most we know only the faith of the earliest community. We

see how this community sought to make clear to itself through Jesus

its belief in the Resurrection, how it sought to "prove" to itself

and to others the divine nature of Jesus by the recital of tales

of miracles and the like. What Jesus himself thought, what he did,

what he taught, what his life was, and--might we say it?--whether he

ever lived at all--that is not to be learnt from the Gospels, and,

according to all the preceding discussion, cannot be settled from

them with lasting certainty.

Of course the liberal theologian, for whom everything is compatible

with an historical Jesus, has many resources. He explains that all

the former discussion has not touched the main point, and that

this point is--What was Jesus' attitude to God, to the world,

and to mankind? What answer did he give to the questions: What

matters in the eyes of God? and What is religion? This should

indicate that the solution of the problem is contained in what has

preceded, and that this solution is unknown to us. But such is not

the case. Wernle knows it, and examines it "in the clear light of

day." "From his numerous parables and sermons and from countless

momentary recollections it comes to us as clearly and distinctly as

if Jesus were our contemporary [!]. No man on earth can say that it

is either uncertain or obscure how Jesus thought on this point, which

is to us [viz., to the liberal theologians] even at the present day

the chief point." "And if Christianity has forgotten for a thousand

years what its Master desired first and before all, to-day [i.e.,

after the clear solutions of critical theology] it shines on us once

more from the Gospels as clearly and wonderfully, as if the sun were

newly risen, driving before its conquering rays all the phantoms and

shadows of night." [400] And so Wernle himself, to whom we owe this

consoling assurance, has written a work, "Die Anfänge unserer Religion"

(1901), which is highly esteemed in theological circles, and in which

he has given a detailed account, in a tone of overwhelming assurance,

of the innermost thoughts, views, words, and teachings of Jesus and

of his followers, just as if he had been actually present.

We must be careful of our language. These are indeed the views of

a man who must be taken seriously, with whom we have been dealing

above, a "shining light" of his science! The often cited work on

"Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu" belongs to the series of "Popular

Books on the History of Religion," which contains the quintessence of

present-day theological study, and which is intended for the widest

circles interested and instructed in religion. We may suppose, probably

with justice, that that work expresses what the liberal theology of

our day wishes the members of the community subject to it to know

and to believe. Or is it only that the popular books on the history

of religion place the intellectual standard of their readers so low

that they think they can strengthen the educated in their belief in

an historical Jesus by productions such as Wernle's? We consider the

more "scientifically" elaborated works of other important theologians

on the same subject. We think of Beyschlag, Harnack, Bernard Weiss,

of Pfleiderer, Jülicher, and Holtzmann. We consult Bousset, who

defended against Kalthoff, with such great determination and warmth,

the existence of an historical Jesus. Everywhere there is the same

half-comic, half-pathetic drama: on the one hand the evangelical

authorities are depreciated and the information is criticised away

to such an extent that hardly anything positive remains from it;

on the other hand there is a pathetic enthusiasm for the so-called

"historical kernel." Then comes praise for the so-called critical

theology and its "courageous truthfulness," which, however, ultimately

consists only in declaring evident myths and legends to be such. This

was known for a long time previously among the unprejudiced. There

usually follows a hymn to Jesus with ecstatic raising of the eyes,

as if all the statements concerning him in the Gospels still had

validity. What then does Hausrath say?--"To conceal the miraculous

parts of the [evangelical] accounts and then to give out the rest as

historical, has not hitherto passed as criticism." [401] Can we object

to Catholic theology because it looks with open pity on the whole of

Protestant "criticism," and reproaches it with the inconsistency,

incompleteness, and lack of results, which is the mark of all its

efforts to discover the beginnings of Christianity. [402] Is it not

right in rejoicing at the blow which Protestantism has sustained

and from which it must necessarily suffer through all such attempts

at accepting the Gospels as basis for a belief in an historical

Jesus? Certainly what Catholic theologians bring forward in favour

of the historical Jesus is so completely devoid of any criticism

or even of any genuine desire to elucidate the facts, that it would

be doing them too much honour to make any more detailed examination

of their works on this point. For them the whole problem has a very

simple solution in this: the existence of the historical Jesus forms

the unavoidable presupposition of the Church, even though every

historical fact should register its veto against it; and as one of

its writers has put it, that is at bottom the long-established and

unanimous view of all our inquiries into the subject under discussion:

"The historical testimony for the authenticity of the Gospels is

as old, as extensive, and as well established as it is for very

few other books of ancient literature [!]. If we do not wish to be

inconsistent we cannot question their authenticity. Their credibility

is beyond question; for their authors were eye-witnesses of the events

[!] related, or they gained their information from such; they were as

competent judges [!] as men loving the truth can well be; they could,

and in fact were obliged to speak the truth." [403]

How distinguished, as compared with this kind of theologian, Kalthoff

seems! It is true that we are obliged to allow for the one-sidedness

and insufficiency of his positive working out of the origin of

Christianity, of his attempt to explain it, on the basis of Mark's

handling of the story, purely on the lines of social motives, and to

represent Christ as the mere reflection of the Christian community and

of its experiences. Quite certainly he is wrong in identifying the

biblical Pilate with Pliny, the governor of Bithynia under Trajan,

and in the proof based on this; and this because in all probability

Pliny's letter to the Emperor is a later Christian forgery. [404]

But Kalthoff is quite right in what he says about modern critical

theology and its historical Jesus. The critical theologians may

think themselves justified in treating this embarrassing opponent as

"incompetent," or in ignoring him on account of the mistaken basis of

argument; but all the efforts made with such great perseverance and

penetration by historical theologians to derive from the authorities

before us proof of the existence of a man Jesus in the traditional

sense have led, as Kalthoff very justly says, to a purely negative

conclusion. "The numerous passages in the Gospels which this theology,

in maintaining its historical Jesus, is obliged to place on one

side and pass over, stand from a literary point of view exactly

on the same footing as those passages from which it constructs its

historical Jesus; and consequently they claim historical value equal

to these latter. The Synoptic Christ, in whom modern theology thinks

it finds the characteristics of the historical Jesus, stands not

a hair's breadth nearer to a human interpretation of Christianity

than the Christ of the fourth Gospel. What the Epigones of liberal

theology think they can distil from this Synoptic Christ as historical

essence has historical value only as a monument of masterly sophistry,

which has produced its finest examples in the name of theological

science." [405] Historical research should not have so long set apart

from all other history that of early Christianity as the special domain

of theology and handed it over to churchmen, as if for the decision

of the questions on this point quite special talent was necessary--a

talent far beyond the ordinary sphere of science and one which was

only possessed by the Church theologian. The world would then long

since have done with the whole literature of the "Life of Jesus."

The sources which give information of the origin of Christianity are

of such a kind that, considering the present standard of historical

research, no historian would care to undertake an attempt to produce

the biography of an historical Christ. [406] They are, we can add,

of such a nature that a real historian, who meets them without a

previous conviction or expectation that he will find an historical

Jesus in it, cannot for a moment doubt that he has here to do with

religious fiction, [407] with myth in an historical form, which does

not essentially differ from other myths and legends--such as perhaps

the legend of Tell.

Supplement: Jesus in Secular Literature.

There seems to be but little hope of considerably adding to the weight

of the reasons in favour of the historical existence of Jesus by citing

documents of secular literature. As is well known, only two passages of

the Jewish historian Josephus, and one in each of the Roman historians,

Tacitus and Suetonius, must be considered in this connection. As for

the testimony of Josephus in his "Antiquities," which was written

93 A.D., the first passage (viz., xviii. 3, 3) is so evidently an

after-insertion of a later age, that even Roman Catholic theologians

do not venture to declare it authentic, though they always attempt,

with pitiful naïveté, to support the credibility of pre-Christian

documents of this type. [408] But the other passage, too (xx. 9,

1), which states that James was executed under the authority of the

priest Ananos (A.D. 62), and refers to him as "the Brother of Jesus,

the so-called Christ," in the opinion of eminent theologians such as

Credner, [409] Schürer, [410] &c., must be regarded as a forgery;

[411] but even if its authenticity were established it would still

prove nothing in favour of the historical Jesus. For, first, it

leaves it undecided whether a bodily relationship is indicated by

the word "Brother," or whether, as is much more likely, the reference

is merely to a religious brotherhood (see above, 170 sq.). Secondly,

the passage only asserts that there was a man of the name of Jesus who

was called Christ, and this is in no way extraordinary in view of the

fact that at the time of Josephus, and far into the second century,

many gave themselves out as the expected Messiah. [412]

The Roman historians' testimony is in no better case than that of

Josephus. It is true that Tacitus writes in his "Annals" (xv. 44),

in connection with the persecution of the Christians under Nero (64),

that "the founder of this sect, Christ, was executed in Tiberius'

reign by the procurator Pontius Pilate"; and Suetonius states in his

biography of the Emperor Claudius, chap. xxv., that he "drove out of

Rome the Jews, who had caused great disturbances at the instigation

of Chrestus." What does this prove? Are we so certain that the passage

cited from Tacitus as to the persecution of the Christians under Nero

is not after all a later insertion and falsification of the original

text? This is indeed the case, judging from Hochart's splendid and

exhaustive inquiry. In fact, everything points to the idea that the

"first persecution of the Christians," which is previously mentioned

by no writers, either Jewish or heathen, is nothing but the product

of a Christian's imagination in the fifth century. [413] But let

us admit the authenticity of Tacitus' assertion; let us suppose

also that by Suetonius' Chrestus is really meant Christ and not a

popular Jewish rioter of that name; let us suppose that the unrest

of the Jews was not connected with the expectation of the Messiah,

or that the Roman historian, in his ignorance of the Jewish dreams of

the future, did not imagine a leader of the name of Chrestus. [414]

Can writers of the first quarter of the second century after Christ,

at which time the tradition was already formed and Christianity had

made its appearance in History as a power, be regarded as independent

authorities for facts which are supposed to have taken place long

before the birth of the Tradition? Tacitus can at most have heard

that the Christians were followers of a Christ who was supposed to

have been executed under Pontius Pilate. That was probably even at

that time in the Gospels--and need not, therefore, be a real fact

of history. And if it has been proved, according to Mommsen, that

Tacitus took his material from the protocols of the Senate and imperial

archives, there has equally been, on the other hand, a most definite

counter-assertion that he never consulted these authorities. [415]

Lately, Tacitus proving to be slightly inconsistent, it has been usual

to refer to Pliny's letter to the Emperor Trajan, asserting that the

historical Jesus is certified to in this. The letter hinges on the

question of what Pliny's attitude as Governor of Bithynia must be

to the Christians; so that naturally the Christians are much spoken

of, and once even there is mention of Christ, whose followers sing

alternate hymns to him "as to a God" (quasi deo). But Jesus as an

historical person is not once mentioned in the whole letter; and Christ

was even for Paul a "Quasi-god," a being fluctuating between man and

God. What then is proved by the letter of Pliny as to the historical

nature of Jesus? It only proves the liberal theologians' dilemma over

the whole question, that they think they can cite these witnesses

again and again for strengthening the belief in an historical Jesus,

as, e.g. Melhorn does in his work "Wahrheit und Dichtung im Leben Jesu"

(in "Aus Natur und Geisteswelt," 1906), trying to make it appear that

these witnesses are in any way worthy of consideration. Joh. Weiss

also--according to the newspaper account--in his lecture on Christ in

the Berlin vacation-course of March, 1910, confessed that "statements

from secular literature as to the historical nature of Jesus which

are absolutely free of objection are very far from having been

authenticated." Even an orthodox theologian like Kropatscheck writes

in the "Kreuzzeitung" (April 7, 1910): "It is well known that the

non-Christian writers in a very striking way ignore the appearing of

Christ. The few small notices in Tacitus, Suetonius, &c., are easily

enumerated. Though we date our chronology from him, his advent made no

impression at all on the great historians of his age. The Talmud gives

a hostile caricature of his advent which has no historical value. The

Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, from whom we might have expected

information of the first rank, is absolutely silent. We are referred

to our Gospels, as Paul also says little of the life of Jesus; and we

can understand how it is that attempts are always being made to remove

him, as an historical person, from the past." The objection to this,

that the secular writers, even though they give no positive testimony

for Jesus' historical existence, have never brought it in question,

is of very little strength. For the writings considered in it, viz.,

Justin's conversation with the Jew Trypho, as well as the polemical

work of Celsus against Christianity, both belong to the latter half

of the second century, while the passages in the Talmud referred to

are probably of a later date, and all these passages are merely based

on the tradition. So that this "proof from silence" is in reality

no proof. It is, rather, necessary to explain why the whole of the

first century, apart from the Gospels, seems to know nothing of Jesus

as an historical personality. The Frenchman Hochart ridicules the

theological attitude: "It seems that the most distinguished men lose

a part of their brilliant character in the study of martyrology. Let

us leave it to German theologians to study history in their way. We

Frenchmen wish throughout our inquiries to preserve our clearness of

mind and healthy common-sense. Let us not invent new legends about

Nero: there are really too many already." [416]

(b) The Objections against a Denial of the Historicity of the

Synoptic Jesus.

There the matter ends: we know nothing of Jesus, of an historical

personality of that name to whom the events and speeches recorded in

the Gospels refer. "In default of any historical certainty the name

of Jesus has become for Protestant theology an empty vessel, into

which that theology pours the content of its own meditations." [417]

And if there is any excuse for this, it is that that name has never at

any time been anything but such an empty vessel: Jesus, the Christ,

the Deliverer, Saviour, Physician of oppressed souls, has been from

first to last a figure borrowed from myth, to whom the desire for

redemption and the naïve faith of the Western Asiatic peoples have

transferred all their conceptions of the soul's welfare. The "history"

of this Jesus in its general characteristics had been determined even

before the evangelical Jesus. Even Weinel, one of the most zealous

and enthusiastic adherents of the modern Jesus-worship, confesses that

"Christology was almost completed before Jesus came on earth." [418]

It was not, however, merely the general frame and outlines of the

"history" of Jesus which had been determined in the Messiah-faith,

in the idea of a divine spirit sent from God, of the "Son of Man" of

Daniel and the Jewish Apocalyptics, &c., not merely that this vague

idea was filled out with new content through the Redeemer-worship of

the neighbouring heathen peoples. Besides this, many of the individual

traits of the Jesus-figure were present, some in heathen mythology,

some in the Old Testament; and they were taken thence and worked into

the evangelical representation. There is, for instance, the story of

the twelve-year old Jesus in the Temple. "Who would have invented this

story?" asks Jeremias. "Nevertheless," he thinks it "probable" that in

this Luke was thinking of Philo's description of the life of Moses;

he calls to mind that Plutarch gives us a quite similar statement

concerning Alexander, whose life was consciously decorated with all

the traits of the Oriental King-redeemer. [419] Perhaps, however, the

account comes from a Buddhist origin. The account of the temptation of

Jesus also sounds very much like the temptation of Buddha, so far as

it is not derived from the temptation of Zarathustra by Ahriman [420]

or the temptation of Moses by the devil, of which the Rabbis told,

[421] while Jesus is said to have entered upon his ministry in his

thirtieth year, [422] because at that age the Levite was fitted for

his sacred office. [423] Till then (i.e., till his baptism) we learn

nothing of Jesus' life. Similarly Isa. liii. 2, jumps from the early

youth of the Servant of God ("He grew up as a tender plant, as a root

out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness, is despised and

rejected of men") straight to his passion and death; while the Gospels

attempt to fill in the interval from Jesus' baptism up to his passion

by painting in further so-called Messianic passages from the Old

Testament and Words of Jesus. We know how the early Christians liked

to rediscover their faith in the Scriptures and see it predicted,

and with what zeal they consequently studied the Old Testament and

altered the "history" of their Jesus to make it agree with those

predictions, thus rendering it valuable as corroboration of their own

notions. In this connection it has been shown above how the "ride of

the beardless one" influenced the collection of the tribute and his

direct attack on the shopkeepers and money-changers in the evangelical

account of Jesus' advent to the Temple at Jerusalem. [424] But the

more detailed development of this scene is determined by Zech. ix. 9,

Mal. iii. 1-3, and Isa. i. 10 sqq., and the words placed in Jesus'

mouth on this occasion are taken from Isa. lvi. 7 and Jer. vii. 1

sqq., so that this "most important" event in Jesus' life can lay no

claim to historical actuality. [425]

And again the account of the betrayal, of the thirty pieces of silver,

and of Judas' death, have their source in the Old Testament, viz.,

in the betrayal and death of Ahitophel. [426] To what extent in

particular the figures of Moses, with reference to Deut. xviii. 15

and xxxiv. 10, of Joshua, of Elijah and Elisha, influenced the

portrayal of the evangelical Jesus has also been traced even by the

theological party. [427] Jesus has to begin his activities through

baptism in the Jordan, because Moses had begun his leadership of

Israel with the passage through the Red Sea and Joshua at the time

of the Passover led the people through the Jordan, and this passage

(of the sun through the watery regions of the sky) was regarded as

baptism. [428] He has to walk on the water, even as Moses, Joshua,

and Elias walked dryshod through the water. He has to awaken the

dead, like Elijah; [429] to surround himself with twelve or seventy

disciples and apostles, just as Moses had surrounded himself with

twelve chiefs of the people and seventy elders, and as Joshua had

chosen twelve assistants at the passage of the Jordan; [430] he has

to be transfigured, [431] and to ascend into heaven like Moses [432]

and Elijah. [433] Elijah (Eli-scha) and Jeho-schua (Joshua, Jesus)

agree even in their names, so that on this ground alone it would not

have been strange if the Prophet of the Old Testament had served as

prototype of his evangelical namesake. [434] Now Jesus places himself

in many ways above the Mosaic Law, especially above the commands as

to food, [435] and in this at least one might find a trait answering

to reality. But in the Rabbinical writings we find: "It is written,

[436] the Lord sets loose that which is bound; for every creature

that passes as unclean in this world, the Lord will pronounce clean

in the next." [437] So that similarly the disposition of the Law

belongs to the general characteristics of the Messiah, and cannot be

historical of Jesus, because if it were the attitude of the Jewish

Christians to Paul on account of his disposition of the Law would

be incomprehensible. [438] The contrary attitude, which is likewise

represented by Jesus, [439] was already foreseen in the Messianic

expectation. For while some hoped for a lightening and amendment

of the Law by the Messiah, others thought of its aggravation and

completion. In Micah iv. 5 the Messiah was to exert his activity,

not merely among the Jews, but also among the Gentiles, and the

welfare of the kingdom of the Messiah was to extend also to the

latter. According to Isaiah lx. and Zechariah xiv., on the contrary,

the Gentiles were to be subjected and brought to nothing, and only

the Jews were worthy of participation in the kingdom of God. For

that reason Jesus had to declare himself with like determination for

both conceptions, [440] without any attempt being made to reconcile

the contradiction contained in this. [441] That the parents of Jesus

were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father was a "carpenter,"

were determined by tradition, just as the name of his birthplace,

Nazareth, was occasioned by the name of a sect (Nazaraios = Protector),

or by the fact that one sect honoured the Messiah as a "branch of the

root of Jesse" (nazar Isai). [442] It was a Messianic tradition that

he began his activity in Galilee and wandered about as Physician,

Saviour, Redeemer, and Prophet, as mediator of the union of Israel,

and as one who brought light to the Gentiles, not as an impetuous

oppressor full of inconsiderate strength, but as one who assumed a

loving tenderness for the weak and despairing. [443] He heals the sick,

comforts the afflicted, and proclaims to the poor the Gospel of the

nearness of the kingdom of God. That is connected with the wandering

of the sun through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Galil = circle),

and is based on Isa. xxxv. 5 sqq., xlii. 1-7, xlix. 9 sqq., as well

as on Isa. lxi. 1, a passage which Jesus himself, according to Luke

iv. 16 sqq., began his teaching in Nazareth by explaining. [444] He

had to meet with opposition in his work of salvation, and nevertheless

endure patiently, because of Isa. 1. 5. Naturally Jesus, behind whose

human nature was concealed a God, and to whom the pilgrim "Saviour"

Jason corresponded, [445] was obliged to reveal his true nature by

miraculous healing, and could not take a subordinate place in this

regard among the cognate heathen God-redeemers. At most we may wonder

that even in this the Old Testament had to stand [446] as a model,

and that Jesus' doings never surpass those which the heathens praise

in their gods and heroes, e.g., Asclepius. Indeed, according to

Tacitus [447] even the Emperor Vespasian accomplished such miracles

at Alexandria, where, on being persistently pressed by the people,

he healed both a lame man and a blind, and this almost in the same

way as Jesus did, by moistening their eyes and cheeks with spittle;

which information is corroborated also by Suetonius [448] and Dio

Cassius. [449] But the most marvellous thing is that the miracles

of Jesus have been found worth mentioning by the critical theology,

and that there is an earnest search for an "historical nucleus,"

which might probably "underlie them."

All the individual characteristics cited above are, however,

unimportant in comparison with the account of the Last Supper, of the

Passion, death (on the cross), and resurrection of Jesus. And yet

what is given us on these points is quite certainly unhistorical;

these parts of the Gospels owe their origin, as we have stated,

merely to cult-symbolism and to the myth of the dying and rising

divine Saviour of the Western Asiatic religions. No "genius" was

necessary for their invention, as everything was given: the derision,

[450] the flagellation, both the thieves, the crying out on the cross,

the sponge with vinegar (Psa. lxix. 22), the piercing with a lance,

[451] the soldiers casting dice for the dead man's garments, also

the women at the place of execution and at the grave, the grave in a

rock, are found in just the same form in the worship of Adonis, Attis,

Mithras, and Osiris. Even the Saviour carrying his cross is copied from

Hercules (Simon of Cyrene), [452] bearing the pillars crosswise, as

well as from the story of Isaac, who carried his own wood to the altar

on which he was to be sacrificed. [453] But where the authors of the

Gospels have really found something new, e.g., in the account of Jesus'

trial, of the Roman and Jewish procedure, they have worked it out in

such an ignorant way, and to one who knows something about it betray

so significantly the purely fictitious nature of their account, that

here really there is nothing to wonder at except perhaps the naïveté of

those who still consider that account historical, and pique themselves

a little on their "historical exactness" and "scientific method." [454]

Is not Robertson perhaps right after all in considering the whole

statement of the last fate of Jesus to be the rewriting of a dramatic

Mystery-play, which among the Gentile Christians of the larger cities

followed the sacramental meal on Easter Day? We know what a great rôle

was played by dramatic representations in numerous cults of antiquity,

and how they came into especial use in connection with the veneration

of the suffering and rising God-redeemers. Thus in Egypt the passion,

death, and resurrection of Osiris and the birth of Horus; at Eleusis

the searching and lamentation of Demeter for her lost Persephone and

the birth of Iacchus; at Lernæ in Argolis and many other places the

fate of Dionysus (Zagreus); in Sicyon the suffering of Adrastos, who

threw himself on to the funeral pyre of his father Hercules; at Amyclæ

the passing away of Nature and its new life in the fate of Hyacinth:

these were celebrated in festal pageants and scenic representations,

to say nothing of the feasts of the death and resurrection of Mithras,

Attis, and Adonis. Certainly Matthew's account, xx.-xxviii. (with the

exception of verses 11-15 in the last chapter), with its connected

sequence of events, which could not possibly have actually followed

each other like this--Supper, Gethsemane, betrayal, passion, Peter's

denial, the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection--throughout gives

one the impression of a chain of isolated dramatic scenes. And the

close of the Gospel agrees very well with this conception, for the

parting words and exhortations of Jesus to his people are a very

suitable ending to a drama. [455]

If we allow this, an explanation is given of the "clearness" which is

so generally praised in the style of the Gospels by the theologians

and their following, and which many think sufficient by itself to

prove the historical nature of the Synoptic representation of Jesus.

Of course, Wrede has already warned us "not too hastily to consider

clearness a sign of historical truth. A writing may have a very

secondary, even apocryphal character, and yet show much clearness. The

question always is how this was obtained." [456] Wernle and Wrede quite

agree that at least in Mark's production the clearness is of no account

at all, while clearness in the other Gospels is found just in those

parts which admittedly belong to the sphere of legend. And how clearly

and concretely do not our authors of the various "Lives of Jesus," not

to mention Renan, or our ministers in the pulpits describe the events

of the Gospels, with how many small and attractive traits do they

not decorate these events, in order that they should have a greater

effect on their listeners! This kind of clearness and personal stamp

is really nothing but a matter of the literary skill and imagination

of the authors in question. The writings of the Old Testament, and

not merely the historical writings, are also full of a most clear

ability for narration and of most individual characteristics,

which prove how much the Rabbinical writers in Palestine knew

of this side of literary activity. Or is anything wanting to the

clearness and individual characterisation, to which Kalthoff also

has alluded, of the touching story of Ruth; of the picture of the

prophet Jonah, of Judith, Esther, Job, &c? And then the stories of the

patriarchs--the pious Abraham, the good-natured, narrow-minded Esau,

the cunning Jacob, and their respective wives--or, to take one case,

how clear is not the meeting of Abraham's servant with Rebecca at the

well! [457] Or let us consider Moses, Elijah, Samson--great figures

who in their most essential traits demonstrably belong to myth and

religious fable! If in preaching our ministers can go so vividly into

the details of the story of the Saviour that fountains of poetry are

opened and there stream forth from their lips clear accounts of Jesus'

goodness of heart, of his heroic greatness, and of his readiness for

the sacrifice, how much more would this have been so at first in the

Christian community, when the new religion was still in its youth,

when the faith in the Messiah was as yet unweakened by sceptical

doubts, and when the heart of man was still filled with the desire

for immediate and final redemption? And even if we are confronted

with a host of minor traits, which cannot so easily be accounted for

by religious motives and poetic imagination, must these all refer to

the same real personality? May they not be based on events which are

very far from being necessarily experiences of the liberal theology's

historical Jesus? Even Edward v. Hartmann, who is generally content

to adhere to the historical Jesus, suggests the possibility "that

several historical personages, who lived at quite different times,

have contributed concrete individual characteristics to the picture of

Jesus." [458] There is a great deal of talk about the "uninventable"

in the evangelical representation. Von Soden even goes so far as to

base his chief proof for the historical existence of Jesus on this

individuality that cannot be invented. [459] As if there was any such

thing as what cannot be invented for men with imagination! And as if

all the significant details of Jesus' life were not invented on the

lines of the so-called Messianic passages in the Old Testament, in

heathen mythology, and in the imported conceptions of the Messiah! The

part that is professedly "uninventable" shrinks continuously the more

assiduously criticism busies itself with the Gospels; and the word can

at present apply only to side-issues and matters of no importance. We

are indeed faced with the strange fact, that all the essential part of

the Gospels, everything which is of importance for religious faith,

such as especially the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus,

is demonstrably invented and mythical; but such parts as can at best

only be historical because of their supposed "uninventable" nature

are of no importance for the character of the Gospel representation!

Now, it has been shown that the Gospel picture of Jesus is not without

deficiencies. We may see a proof [460] of the historical nature of

the events referred to in small traits, as, for example, in Jesus'

temporary inability to perform miracles, [461] the circumstance that he

is not represented as omniscient, [462] the attitude of his relatives

to him. [463] So the theologian Schmiedel set up first five and then

nine passages as "clearly credible," and pronounced these to be the

basis of a really scientific knowledge of Jesus. The passages are Mark

x. 17 sqq. (Why callest thou me good?), Matt. xii. 31 sqq. (The sin

against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven), Mark iii. 21 (He is

beside himself), Mark xiii. 32 (But the day and the hour is known to

no man), Mark xv. 24 (My God, why has thou forsaken me?), Mark vi. 5

(And he could there do no mighty work), Mark viii. 12 (There shall no

sign be given unto this generation), Mark viii. 14-21 (Reproaching the

disciples on the occasion of the lack of bread), Matt. xi. 5 (The blind

see, the lame walk). All these "bases" evidently have a firm support

only on the supposition that the Gospels are meant to paint a stainless

ideal, a God, that they are at most but a conception, such, perhaps,

as has been set up by Bruno Bauer. But they are useless from the point

of view intended, as portraying a man. If, however, the Evangelists'

intention was to paint the celestial Christ of the Apostle Paul, the

God-man, the abstract spirit-being, as a completely real man for the

eyes of the faithful, to place him on the ground of historical reality,

and so to treat seriously Paul's "idea" of humanity, they were obliged

to give him also human characteristics. And these could be either

invented afresh or taken from the actual life of honoured teachers,

in which the fact is acknowledged that, even for the noblest and best

of men, there are hours of despair and grief, that the prophet is

worth nothing in his own fatherland, or is even unknown to his nearest

relatives. Even the prophet Elijah, the Old Testament precursor of

the Messiah, who has in many ways determined the picture of Jesus, is

said to have had moments of despair in which he wanted to die, till

God strengthened him anew to the fulfilment of his vocation. [464]

Moreover, Mark x. 17 was a commonplace in all ancient philosophy

from the time of Plato, and gained that form by an alteration of

the original text (A. Pott, "Der Text des Neuen Testaments nach

seiner gesch. Entwicklung" in "Aus Natur und Geisteswelt," 1906,

p. 63, sq.); Mark xiv. 24 is taken from the 22nd Psalm, which has

also in other respects determined the details of the account of the

crucifixion. Mark iii. 21 is, as Schleiermacher showed and Strauss

corroborated, a pure invention of the Evangelist, the words of the

Pharisees being put into their mouths, as their opinion, in order

to explain Jesus' answer by the assertion of his kinship (Strauss,

"Leben Jesu," i. 692; cf. also Psa. lix. 1: "I am become a stranger

unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children"). Matt. xi. 5

is based on Isaiah xxxv. 5, xlii. 7, xlix. 9, lxi. 1, which runs in

the Septuagint: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord

hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the poor; he hath sent

me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and to the blind the opening of their eyes; to proclaim the acceptable

year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort

all that mourn." [465] Schmiedel's nine "bases" consequently are at

most testimony to a "lost glory"; but the construction of a "really

scientific" life of Jesus cannot possibly arise from them. [466]

Clearness of exposition, then, can never afford a proof of the

historical nature of the matter concerned. And how easily is not this

clearness imported by us into the evangelical information! We are

brought up in the atmosphere of these tales, and carry about with us,

under the influence of the surrounding Christianity, an imaginary

picture of them, which we unwittingly introduce into our reading of

the Gospels. And how subjective and dependent on the reader's "taste"

the impression of clearness given by the Gospel picture of Jesus is,

to what a great extent personal predilections come in, is evidenced by

this fact, that a Vollers could not discover in the Gospels any real

man of flesh and blood, but only a "shadowy image," which he analysed

into a thaumaturgical (the miracle-worker) and a soteriological (the

Saviour) part. [467] In opposition to the efforts of the historical

theology to give Jesus a "unique" position above that of all other

founders of religions, Vollers justly remarks how difficult it

must be for the purely historical treatment to recognise these and

similar assertions. "The improbability, not to say impossibility,

of the soteriological picture is too obvious. At bottom this picture

of critical theology is nothing but the contemporary transformation

of Schleiermacher's ideal man; what must have a hundred years ago

appeared comprehensible as the product of a refined Moravianism, in

the atmosphere of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, is nowadays a mere

avoidance of an open and honourable analysis from the point of view

that prevails outside of theology, and is principally known in the

spheres of Nature and of History. Who would deny that the tone of the

catechism and of the pulpit, that full-sounding words of many meanings,

even the concealment and glossing over of unpleasant admissions,

play a part in this sphere such as they could never have in in any

other science?"

We are then reduced to the individual maxims and sermons of

Jesus. These must be proved to be intelligible only as the personal

experiences and thoughts of one supreme individual. Unfortunately

just this, as has already been proved, seems peculiarly doubtful. As

for Jesus' sermons, we have already understood from Wernle that

they were in any case not received from Jesus in the form in

which they have been handed down to us, but were subsequently

compiled by the Evangelists from isolated and occasional maxims of

his. [468] These single phrases and occasional utterances of Jesus

are supposed to have been taken in the last resort partly from oral

tradition, partly from the Aramaic collection--that "great source"

of Wernle's--which was translated into Greek by the Gospels. The

existence of this source has been established only very indirectly,

and we know absolutely nothing more of it. But it is self-evident

that even in the translation from one language into another much of

the originality of those "words of the Lord" must have been lost;

and, as may be shown, the different Evangelists have "translated"

the same words quite differently. Whether it will be possible to

reconstruct the original work, as critical theology is striving to

do, from the material before us, seems very questionable. And we are

given no guarantee that we have to do with actual "words of the Lord"

as they were contained in the Aramaic collection.

Even if the Evangelist is supposed to have expressed the original

meaning, what is to assure us that this phrase was spoken by Jesus

just in this way, and not in other connections, if even the phrases

were taken down as soon as uttered? But this is admittedly supposed

not to have occurred till after Jesus' death, after his Messianic

significance was clearly recognised, and after people were making

efforts to go back in memory to the Master's figure and preserve of

his sayings any that were serviceable. Bousset, indeed, in his work,

"Was wissen wir von Jesus?"--which was directed against Kalthoff--has

referred to the "good Oriental memory of the disciples." All who know

the East from personal experience are in tolerable agreement on one

point, viz., how little an Oriental is able to repeat what he has heard

or experienced in a true and objective fashion. Consequently there

are in the East no historical traditions in our sense of the word,

but all important events are decorated like a novel, and are changed

according to the necessities of the moment. Such maxims, indeed,

as "Love your enemies," "To give is more blessed than to receive,"

"No one but God is good," "Blessed are the poor," "You are the light

of the world," "Give to Cæsar that which is Cæsar's," &c., once heard

may be "not easily forgotten," as the theological phrase runs. But

also they are not of such a kind that the Jesus of liberal theology

was necessary for their invention.

We need not here take into consideration how many of Jesus' expressions

may have been imported into the Gospels from the Mystery drama, with

whose existence we must nevertheless reckon, and from which phrases

may have been changed into sayings of the "historical" Jesus. Such

obscure and high-flown passages as, e.g., Matt. x. 32 sq.; xi. 15-30,

xxvi. 64, and xxviii. 18, give one the impression of coming from the

mouth of God's representative on the stage; and this probability is

further increased when we meet quite similar expressions, such as of

the "light burden" and the "easy yoke," in the Mysteries of Mithras or

of Isis. [469] Bousset admits that all the individual words which have

been handed down to us as expressions of Jesus are "mediated by the

tradition of a community, and have passed through many hands." [470]

They are, as Strauss has observed, like pebbles which the waves of

tradition have rolled and polished, setting them down here and there

and uniting them to this and that mass. "We are," Steck remarks,

"absolutely certain of no single word of the Gospels--that it was

spoken by Jesus just in this way and in no other." [471] "It would

be very difficult," thinks Vollers, "to refer even one expression,

one parable, one act of this ideal man to Jesus of Nazareth with

historical certainty, let us say with the same certainty with which we

attribute the Epistle to the Galatians to the Apostle Paul, or explain

the Johannine Logos as the product of Greek philosophy." [472] Even one

of the leaders of Protestant orthodoxy, Professor Kähler, of Halle,

admitted, as was stated in the "Kirchliche Monatsblatt für Rheinland

und Westfalen," in a theological conference held in Dortmund, that

we possess "no single authentic word" of Jesus. Any attempt, such as

Chamberlain has made, to gather from the tradition a certain nucleus

of "words of Jesus," is consequently mistaken; and if nothing is to

be a criterion but one's personal feelings, it would be better to

confess at once that here there can be no talk of any kind of decision.

It is, then, settled that we cannot with certainty trace back to an

historical Jesus any single one of the expressions of the "Lord"

that have come down to us. Even the oldest authority, the Aramaic

collection, may have contained merely the tradition of a community. Can

we then think that the supporters of an "historical" Jesus are

right in treating it as nothing more than a "crude sin against all

historical methods," as something most monstrous and unscientific, if

one draws the only possible inference from the result of the criticism

of the Gospels, and disputes the existence at any time of an historical

Jesus? There may after all have been such a collection of "words of the

Lord" in the oldest Christian communities; but must we understand by

this words of a definite human individual? May they not rather have

been words which had an authoritative and canonical acceptation in

the community, being either specially important or congenial to it,

and which were for this reason attributed to the "Lord"--that is,

to the hero of the association or cult, Jesus? It has been generally

agreed that this was the case, for example, with the directions as to

action in the case of quarrels among the members of the community [473]

and with regard to divorce. [474] Let us also recall to our minds the

"words of the Lord" in the other cult-associations of antiquity, the

autos epha of the Pythagoreans. And how many particularly popular,

impressive, and favourite sayings were current in antiquity bearing

the names of one of the "Seven Wise Men," without any one dreaming

of ascribing to them an historical signification! How then can it

be anything but hasty and uncritical to give out the "words of the

Lord" in the collection, which are the basis of Jesus' sermons in the

Gospels, as sayings of one definite Rabbi--that is, of the "historical"

Jesus? One may have as high an opinion of Jesus' words as one likes:

the question is whether Jesus, even the Jesus of liberal theology,

is their spiritual father, or whether they are not after all in the

same position as the psalms or sayings of the Old Testament which

are current in the names of David and Solomon, and of which we know

quite positively that their authors were neither the one nor the other.

But perhaps those sayings and sermons of Jesus are of such a nature

that they could only arise from the "historical Jesus"? Of a great

number both of isolated sayings and parables of Jesus--and among

these indeed the most beautiful and the most admired, for example,

the parable of the good Samaritan, whose moral content coincides with

Deut. xxix. 1-4, of the Prodigal Son, [475] of the man that sowed--we

know that they were borrowed [476] partly from Jewish philosophy,

partly from oral tradition of the Talmud, and partly from other

sources. In any case they have no claim to originality. [477] This

holds good even of the Sermon on the Mount, which is, as has been

shown by Jewish scholars in particular, and as Robertson has once

more proved, a mere patchwork taken from ancient Jewish literature,

and, together with the Lord's Prayer, contains not a single thought

which has not its prototype in the Old Testament and in the ancient

philosophical maxims of the Jewish people. [478] Moreover, the

remaining portions, whose genesis from any other quarter is at least

as yet unproved, is not at all of such a nature that it could only

have arisen in the mind of such a personality as the theological Jesus

of Nazareth. At bottom, indeed, he neither said nor taught anything

beyond the purer morality of contemporary Judaism--to say nothing at

all of the Stoics and of the other ethical teachers of antiquity, in

particular those of the Indians. The gravest suspicion of their novelty

and originality is awakened at the Gospels' emphasising the novelty

and significance of Jesus' sayings by "the ancients said"--"but I say

unto you"; attempting thereby to make an artificial contradiction with

the former spiritual and moral standpoint of Judaism, even in places

where only a look at the Old Testament is necessary to convince us that

such a contradiction does not exist, as, for example, in the case of

the love of God and of one's neighbor. [479] Moreover, our cultivated

reverence for Jesus and the overwhelming glorification of everything

connected with him has surrounded a great many of the "words of the

Lord" with a glitter of importance which stands in no relation to

their real value, and which they would never have obtained had they

been handed down to us in another connection or under some other name.

Let us only think how much that is in itself quite trivial and

insignificant has been raised to quite an unjustifiable importance

merely through the use of the pulpit and the consecration of divine

service. Even though our theologians are not already tired of extolling

the "uniqueness," incomparability, and majesty of Jesus' words and

parables, they might nevertheless just for once consider how much

that is of little worth, how much that is mistaken, spiritually

insignificant and morally insufficient, even absolutely doubtful,

there is in what Jesus preached. [480] In this connection it has

always been the custom to extenuate the tradition by referring to the

inexactitude or to fly in the face of any genuine historical method

by tortuous elucidations of the passages in question, by unmeaning

references to the temporal and educational limitations even of the

"superman," and by suppression of the disagreeable parts.

How much trouble have not our theologians taken, and do they not even

now take, to show even one single point in Jesus' doctrines which

may justify their declaring with a good conscience his "uniqueness"

in the sense understood by them, and may justify their raising their

purely human Jesus as high as possible above his own age! Not one of

all the passages quoted to this end has been allowed to remain. The

Synoptic Jesus taught neither a new and loftier morality, nor a

"new meekness," nor a deepened consciousness of God; neither

the "indestructible value of the individual souls of men" in the

present-day individualistic sense, nor even freedom as against the

Jewish Law, nor the immanence of the kingdom of God, nor anything

else, that surpassed the capabilities of another intellectually

distinguished man of his age. Even the love, the general love, of

one's neighbour, the preaching of which is with the greater portion of

the laity the chief claim to veneration possessed by the historical

Jesus, in the Synoptics plays no very important part in Jesus' moral

conception of life; governing no wider sphere than had already been

allowed it in the Old Testament. [481] And if the pulpit eloquence

of nineteen hundred years has nevertheless attempted to lay stress

on this point, it is because it counts on the faithful not having

in mind the difference between the Gospels, and on their peacefully

permitting the Gospel of John, the one and only "gospel of love,"

which, however, is not supposed to be "historical," to be substituted

for the Synoptic Gospels. And so we actually see the glorification of

Jesus' doctrines which, a short time ago, flourished so luxuriantly,

appearing recently in more and more moderate terms. [482]

Thus it was for a time customary in theology, under the influence of

Holtzmann and Harnack, to consider the ethical deepening and return

of God's "fatherly love" as the essentially new and significant

point in Jesus' "glad tidings," and to write about it in unctuous

phrases. Recently, even this seems to have been abandoned, as,

for example, Wrede openly confesses, with respect to the "filiation

to God," that this conception existed in Judaism very long before

Christ; also that Jesus did not especially preach God as the loving

"Father" of each individual, that indeed he did not once place in

the foreground the name of God as the Father. [483] But so much

the more decidedly is reference made to the "enormous effects"

which attended Jesus' appearance, and the attempt is made to prove

from them his surpassing greatness, "uniqueness," and historical

reality. As if Zarathustra, Buddha, and Mohammed had achieved less,

as if the effects which proceed from a person must stand in a certain

relation to his human significance, and as if those effects were

to be ascribed to the "historical" and not rather to the mythical

Jesus--that is, to the idea of the God sacrificing himself for

humanity! As a matter of fact, his faith in the immediate proximity

of the Messianic kingdom of God, and the demand for a change of life

based on this, which is really "unique" in the traditional Jesus,

is without any religious and ethical significance for us, and is at

most only of interest for the history of civilisation. On the other

hand, such part of his teaching as is still of importance to us is

not "unique," and only has the reputation of being so because we are

accustomed by a theological education to treat it in the light of the

Christian dogmatic metaphysics of redemption. Plato, Seneca, Epictetus,

Laotse, or Buddha in their ethical views are not behind Jesus with his

egoistical pseudo-morals, his basing moral action on the expectation

of reward and punishment in the future, his narrow-minded nationalism,

which theologians in vain attempt to debate away and to conceal; and

his obscure mysticism, which strives to attain a special importance for

its maxims by mysterious references to his "heavenly Father." [484]

And as for the "great impression" which Jesus is supposed to have

made on his own people and on the following age, and without which

the history of Christianity is supposed to be inexplicable, Kalthoff

has shown with justice that the Gospels do not in any way reflect the

impression which a person produced, but only such as the accounts of

Jesus' personality would have made on the members of the Christian

community. "Even the strongest impression proves nothing as to the

historical truth of these accounts. Even an account of a fictitious

personage may produce the deepest impression on a community if it

is given in historical terms. What an impression Goethe's "Werther"

produced, though the whole world knew that it was only a romance! Yet

it stirred up countless disciples and imitators." [485]

In this we have at the same time a refutation of the popular objection

that to deny the historical existence of Jesus is to misunderstand

"the significance of personality in the historical life of peoples

and religions." Certainly, as Mehlhorn says, active devotion above

all is enkindled to persons in whom this personality strikes us in an

evident, elevating, and animating way. [486] But in order to enkindle

devotion and faith in Jesus Christ the elevating personality of a Paul

sufficed, whether or not he was the author of the epistles current

in his name; the missionary activity of apostles, working, like him,

in the service of the Jesus-creed, was enough, since they moved

from place to place, and, often undergoing great personal sacrifice

and privation, with danger to their own lives demanded adoration of

the new God. Those in need of redemption could never find any real

religious support outside of the faith in a divine redeemer, they

could never find satisfaction and deliverance but in the idea of the

God sacrificing himself for mankind--the God whose redeeming power and

whose distinct superiority to the other Mystery-deities the apostles

could portray in such a lively and striking fashion. That an idea

can only be effective and fruitful by means of a great personality

is a barren formula. [487] In thinking they can with this argument

support their faith in an historical Jesus liberal theologians avail

themselves of an irrelevant bit of modern street-philosophy without

noticing that in their case it proves nothing at all. Where, then,

is the "great personality" which gave to Mithraism such an efficacy

that in the first century of our era it was able to conquer from the

East almost the whole of the West and to make it doubtful for a time

whether the world was to be Mithraic or Christian? In such influential

religions as those of Dionysus and Osiris, or indeed in Brahmanism,

we cannot speak of great personalities as their "founders"; and as

for Zarathustra, the pretended founder of the Persian, and Moses, the

founder of the Israelite religion, they are not historical persons;

while the views of different investigators differ as to the historical

existence of the reputed founder of Buddhism. Of course, even in

the above-mentioned religions the particular ideas would have been

brought forward by brilliant individuals, and the movements depending

on them would have been first organised and rendered effective by men

of energy and purpose. But the question is whether persons of this

type are necessarily "great," even "unique," in the sense of liberal

theology, in order to be successful. So that to set aside Paul, whose

inspiring personality gifted with a genius for organisation we know

from his epistles,--to set him aside in favour of an imaginary Jesus,

to base the importance of the Christian religion on the "uniqueness"

of its supposed founder, and to base this uniqueness in turn on the

importance of the religious movement which resulted from it, is to

abandon the critical standpoint and to turn about in circles. "It is

an empty assertion," says Lützelberger, "without any real foundation,

that the invention of such a person as the Gospels give us in their

Jesus would have been quite impossible, as we find in him such a

peculiar and sharply defined character that imagination would never

have been able to invent and adhere to it. For the personality which

meets us in the Gospels is by no means one that is sharply drawn and

true to itself; but the story shows us rather a man who from quite

different mental tendencies spoke now one way and now another, and

is perfectly different in the first and fourth Gospels. Only with

the greatest trouble can a homogeneous and coherent whole be formed

from the descriptions in the Gospels. So that we are absolutely

wrong in concluding from the originality of the person of Christ

in the Gospels to their historical credibility." The conclusion is

much more justifiable that if such a person with such a life-history

and such speech had stood at the beginning of the Christian Church,

the history of its development must have been quite a different one,

just as the history of Judaism would have been different if a Moses

with his Law had stood at its head. [488]

And now if we compare the praises of Buddha in the Lalita Vistara with

the description of Jesus' personality given in the New Testament, we

will be convinced how similarly--even if we exclude the hypothesis of

a direct influence--and under what like conditions the kindred religion

took shape: "In the world of creatures, which was long afflicted by the

evils of natural corruption, thou didst appear, O king of physicians,

who redeemest us from all evil. At thy approach, O guide, unrest

disappears, and gods and men are filled with health. Thou art the

protector, the firm foundation, the chief, the leader of the world,

with thy gentle and benevolent disposition. Thou art the best of

physicians, who bringest the perfect means of salvation and healest

suffering. Distinguished by thy compassion and sympathy, thou governest

the things of the world. Distinguished by thy strength of mind and

good works, completely pure, thou hast attained to perfection, and,

thyself redeemed, thou wilt, as the prophet of the four truths, redeem

other creatures also. The power of the Evil One has been overcome

by wisdom, courage, and humility. Thou hast brought it about,--the

highest and immortal glory. We greet thee as the conqueror of the

army of the Deceiver. Thou whose word is without fault, who freest

from error and passion, hast trod the path of eternal life; thou dost

deserve in heaven and on earth honour and homage unparalleled. Thou

quickenest Gods and men with thy clear words. By the beams which go

forth from thee thou art the conqueror of this universe, the Master of

Gods and men. Thou didst appear, Light of the Law, destroyer of misery

and ignorance, completely filled with humility and majesty. Sun, moon,

and fires no longer shine before thee and thy fulness of imperishable

glory. Thou who teachest us to know truth from falsehood, ghostly

leader with the sweetest voice, whose spirit is calm, whose passions

are controlled, whose heart is perfectly at rest, who teachest what

should be taught, who bringest about the union of gods and men: I

greet thee, Sakhyamuni, as the greatest of men, as the wonder of the

three thousand worlds, who deservest honour and homage in heaven and on

earth, from Gods and men!" Where, then, is the "uniqueness" of Jesus,

into which the future divinity of the World-redeemer has disappeared

for modern critical theology, and into which it has striven to import

all the sentimental considerations which once belonged to the "God-man"

in the sense of the Church dogma? "Nothing is more negative than the

result of the inquiry into the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth,

who appeared as the Messiah, who proclaimed the morals of the kingdom

of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and died to

give consecration to his acts, never existed. He is a figure which was

invented by Rationalism, restored by Liberalism, and painted over with

historical science by modern theologians." With these words of the

theologian Schweitzer [489] the present inquiry may be said to agree.

In fact, in the Gospels we have nothing but the expression of the

consciousness of a community. In this respect the view supported

by Kalthoff is completely right. The life of Jesus, as portrayed by

the Synoptics, merely brings to an expression in historical garb the

metaphysical ideas, religious hopes, the outer and inner experiences

of the community which had Jesus for its cult-god. His opinions,

statements, and parables only reflect the religious-moral conceptions,

the temporary sentiments, the casting down and the joy of victory,

the hate and the love, the judgments and prejudices of the members of

the community, and the differences and contradictions in the Gospels

prove to be the developing material of the conception of the Messiah

in different communities and at different times. Christ takes just

the same position in the religious-social brotherhoods which are named

after him as Attis has in the Phrygian, Adonis in the Syrian, Osiris

in the Egyptian, Dionysus, Hercules, Hermes, Asclepius, &c., in the

Greek cult-associations. He is but another form of these club-gods

or patrons of communities, and the cult devoted to him shows in

essentials the same forms as those devoted to the divinities above

named. The place of the bloody expiatory sacrifice of the believers

in Attis, wherein they underwent "baptism of blood" in their yearly

March festival, and wherein they obtained the forgiveness of their

sins and were "born again" to a new life, was in Rome the Hill of

the Vatican. In fact, the very spot on which in Christian times the

Church of Peter grew above the so-called grave of the apostle. It

was at bottom merely an alteration of the name, not of the matter,

when the High Priest of Attis blended his rôle with that of the High

Priest of Christ, and the Christ-cult spread itself from this new

point far over the other parts of the Roman Empire.

(c) The True Character of the Synoptic Jesus.

The Synoptic Gospels leave open the question whether they treat

of a man made God or of a God made man. The foregoing account has

shown that the Jesus of the Gospels is to be understood only as a

God made man. The story of his life, as presented in the Gospels,

is the rendering into history of a primitive religious myth. Most

of the great heroes of the legend, which passes as historical, are

similar incarnate Gods--such as Jason, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus,

Perseus, Siegfried, &c.; in these we have nothing but the old Aryan

sun--champion in the struggle against the powers of darkness and of

death. That primitive Gods in the view of a later age should become

men, without, however, ceasing to be clothed with the glamour of the

deity, is to such an extent the ordinary process, that the reverse,

the elevation of men to Gods, is as a rule only found in the earliest

stages of human civilisation, or in periods of moral and social decay,

when fawning servility and worthless flattery fashion a prominent man,

either during his life or after his death, into a divine being. Even

the so-called "Bible Story" contains numerous examples of such God

made men: the patriarchs, Joseph, Joshua, Samson, Esther, Mordecai,

Haman, Simon Magus, the magician Elymas, &c., were originally pure

Gods, and in the description of their lives old Semitic star-myths and

sun-myths obtained a historical garb. If we cannot doubt that Moses,

the founder of the old covenant, was a fictitious figure, and that his

"history" was invented by the priests at Jerusalem only for the purpose

of sanctioning and basing on his authority the law of the priests named

after him; if for this end the whole history of Israel was falsified,

and the final event in the religious development of Israel, i.e., the

giving of the Law, was placed at the beginning--why cannot what was

possible with Moses have been repeated in the case of Jesus? Why may

not also the founder of the new covenant as an historical person belong

entirely to pious legend? According to Herodotus, [490] the Greeks also

changed an old Phoenician God, Hercules, for national reasons, into a

native hero, the son of Amphitryon, and incorporated him in their own

sphere of ideas. Let us consider how strong the impulse was, especially

among Orientals, to make history of purely internal experiences and

ideas. To carry historical matter into the sphere of myth, and to

conceive myth as history, is, as is shown by the investigations of

Winckler, Schrader, Jensen, &c., for the Orientals such a matter of

course, that, as regards the accounts in the Old Testament, it is

hardly possible to distinguish their genuinely "historical nucleus"

from its quasi-historical covering. And it is more especially the

Semitic thought of antiquity which proves to be completely unable

to distinguish mythical phantasy from real event! It is, indeed,

too often said that the Semite produced and possessed no mythology

of his own, as Renan asserted; and no doubt at all is possible that

they could not preserve as such and deal with the mythical figures and

events whencesoever they derived them, but always tended to translate

them into human form and to associate them with definite places and

times. "The God of the Semites is associated with place and object,

he is a Genius loci," says Winckler. [491] But if ever a myth required

to be clothed in the garment of place and the metaphysical ideas

contained in it to be separated into a series of historical events,

it was certainly the myth of the God sacrificing himself for humanity,

who sojourned among men in human form, suffered with the rest of men

and died, returning, after victoriously overcoming the dark powers

of death, to the divine seat whence he set out.

We understand how the God Jesus, consequent on his symbolical

unification with the man sacrificed in his stead, could come to be

made human, and how on this basis the faith in the resurrection of God

in the form of an historical person could arise. But how the reverse

process could take place, how the man Jesus could be elevated into a

God, or could ever fuse with an already existing God of like name into

the divine-human redeemer--indeed, the Deity--that is and remains, as

we have already said, a psychological puzzle. The only way to solve

it is to refer to the "inscrutable secrets of the Divine will." In

what other way can we explain how "that simple child of man, as he has

been described," could so very soon after his death be elevated into

that "mystical being of imagination," into that "celestial Christ,"

as he meets us in the epistles of Paul? There can only have been at

most seven, probably three, years, according to a recent estimate

hardly one year, between the death of Jesus and the commencement

of Paul's activity. [492] And this short time is supposed to have

sufficed to transform the man Jesus into the Pauline Christ! And

not only Paul is supposed to have been able to do this; even Jesus'

immediate disciples, who sat with him at the same table, ate and drank

with him, knowing then who Jesus was, are supposed to have declared

themselves in agreement with this, and to have prayed to him whom they

had always seen praying to the "Father"! Certainly in antiquity the

deification of a man was nothing extraordinary: Plato and Aristotle

were, after their death, honoured by their pupils as god-like beings;

Demetrius Poliorcetes, Alexander, the Ptolemies, &c., had divine

honours rendered to them even during their lives. But this style of

deification is completely different from that which is supposed to

have been allotted to Jesus. It is merely an expression of personal

gratitude and attachment, of overflowing sentiment and characterless

flattery, and never obtained any detailed theological formulation. It

was the basis for no new religion. Schopenhauer has very justly pointed

out the contradiction between Paul's apotheosis of Jesus and usual

historical experience, and remarked that from this consideration

could be drawn an argument against the authenticity of the Pauline

epistles. [493] In fact, Holtzmann considers, with reference to this

assertion of the philosopher's, the question "whether the figure of

Jesus attaining such colossal dimensions in Paul's sight may not be

taken to establish the distance between the two as that of only a few

years, if there was not immediate temporal contact," as the question

"most worthy of discussion, which the critics of the Dutch school have

propounded for consideration." [494] According to the prevalent view of

critical theologians, as presented even by Pfleiderer, the apparitions

of the "Lord," which after Jesus' death were seen by the disciples

who had fled from Jerusalem, the "ecstatic visionary experiences,

in which they thought they saw their crucified Master living and

raised up to heavenly glory," were the occasion of their faith in

the resurrection, and consequently of their faith in Jesus' divine

rôle as Redeemer. [495] Pathological states of over-excited men and

hysterical women are then supposed to form the "historical foundation"

for the genesis of the Christian religion! And with such opinions they

think themselves justified in looking down on the rationalist of the

eighteenth-century Enlightenment with supreme contempt, and in boasting

of the depth to which their religious-historical insight reaches! But

if we really admit, with historical theology, this more than doubtful

explanation, which degrades Christianity into the merely chance product

of mental excitement, at once the further question arises as to how

the new religion of the small community of the Messiah at Jerusalem

was able to spread itself abroad with such astounding rapidity that,

even so soon as at most two decades after Jesus' death, we meet

with Christian communities not only over the whole of Western Asia,

but also in the islands of the Mediterranean, in the coast-towns of

Greece, even in Italy, at Puteoli, and in Rome; and this at a time

when as yet not a line had been written about the Jewish Rabbi. [496]

Even the theologian Schweitzer is obliged to confess of historical

theology that "until it has in some way explained how it was that,

under the influence of the Jewish sect of the Messiah, Greek and

Roman popular Christianity appeared at all points simultaneously,

it must admit a formal right of existence to all hypotheses, even the

most extravagant, which seek to attack and solve this problem." [497]

If in all this it is shown to be possible, or even probable, that

in the Jesus of the Gospels we have not a deified man, but rather a

humanised God, there remains but to find an answer to the question as

to what external reasons led to the transplanting of the God Jesus into

the soil of historical actuality and the reduction of the eternal or

super-historical fact of his redeeming death and of his resurrection

into a series of temporal events.

This question is answered at once if we turn our attention to the

motives present in the earliest Christian communities known to us,

which motives appear in the Acts and in the Pauline epistles. From

these sources we know at what an early stage an opposition arose

between Paul's Gentile Christianity and the Jewish Christianity,

the chief seat of which was at Jerusalem, and which for this reason,

as we can understand, claimed for itself a special authority. As

long as the former persecutor of the Christian community, over whose

conversion they could not at first rejoice too much, [498] did not

obstruct others and seemed to justify his apostolic activity by his

success among the Gentiles, they left him to go his way. But when

Paul showed his independence by his reserve before the "Brothers"

at Jerusalem, and began to attract the feelings of those at Jerusalem

by his abrogation of the Mosaic Law, then they commenced to treat him

with suspicion, to place every obstacle in the way of his missionary

activity, and to attempt, led by the zealous James, to bring the

Pauline communities under their own government. Then, seeking a

title for the practice of the apostolic vocation, they found it in

this--that every one who wished to testify to Christ must himself

have seen him after his resurrection.

But Paul could very justly object that to him also the transfigured

Jesus had appeared. [499] Then they made the justification for the

apostolic vocation consist in this, that an apostle must not only

have seen Christ risen up, but must also have eaten and drunk with

him. [500] This indeed was not applicable in the case of Judas, who in

the Acts i. 16 is nevertheless counted among the apostles; and it was

also never asserted of Matthias, who was chosen in the former's stead,

that he had been a witness of Jesus' resurrection. Much less even does

he seem to have fulfilled the condition to which advance was made in

the development of the original idea, i.e., that an apostle of Jesus

should have been personally acquainted with the living Jesus, that he

should have belonged to the "First Apostles" and have been present as

eye-witness and hearer of Jesus' words from the time of John's baptism

up to the Resurrection and Ascension. [501] Now Seufert has shown

that the passage of the Acts referred to is merely a construction,

a transference of later conditions to an earlier epoch; and that the

whole point of it is to paralyse Paul's mission to the Gentiles and

to establish the title of the Jew-Christians at Jerusalem as higher

than that of his followers.

If with this purpose, as Seufert showed, the organisation of the

Apostleship of Twelve arose--an organisation which has no satisfactory

basis or foundation in the Gospels or in the Pauline epistles--then it

is from this purpose also that we can find cause for the God Jesus to

become a human founder of the apostleship. "An apostle was to be only

such an one as had seen and heard Jesus himself, or had learnt from

those who had been his immediate disciples. A literature of Judaism

arose which had at quite an early stage the closest interest in the

historical determination of Jesus' life; and this formed the lowest

stratum on which our canonical Gospels are based." [502] Judaism in

general, and the form of it at Jerusalem in particular, needed a legal

title on which to base its commanding position as contrasted with the

Gentile Christianity of Paul; and so its founders were obliged to have

been companions of Jesus in person, and to have been selected for their

vocation by him. For this reason Jesus could not remain a mere God,

but had to be drawn down into historical actuality. Seufert thinks

that the tracing of the Apostleship of Twelve back to an "historical"

Jesus, and the setting up of the demand for an apostle of Jesus to

have been a companion of his journeying, took place in Paul's lifetime

in the sixth, or perhaps even in the fifth decade. [503] In this he

presupposes the existence of an historical Jesus, while the Pauline

epistles themselves contain nothing to lead one to believe that the

transformation of the Jesus-faith into history took place in Paul's

lifetime. In early Christianity exactly the same incident took place

here, on the soil of Palestine and at Jerusalem, as took place later in

"eternal" Rome, when the bishop of this city, in order to establish

his right of supremacy in the Church, proclaimed himself to be the

direct successor of the Apostle Peter, and caused the "possession of

the keys" to have been given to this latter by Jesus himself. [504]

So that there were very mundane and very practical reasons which

after all gave the impulse for the God Jesus to be transformed into

an historical individual, and for the central point of his action,

the crisis in his life, his death and his resurrection, which alone

affected religious considerations, to be placed in the capital of

the Jewish state, the "City of God," the Holy City of David, of the

"ancestors" of the Messiah, with which now the Jews connected religious

salvation. But how could this fiction succeed and maintain its ground,

so that it was able to become an absolutely vital question for the

new religion, an indestructible dogma, a self-evident "fact," so

that its very calling in question seems to the critical theologians

of our time a perfect absurdity?

Before we can answer this question we must turn our attention to the

Gnostic movement and its relations to the growing Church.

(d) Gnosticism and the Johannine Jesus.

Christianity was originally developed from Gnosticism (Mandaism). The

Pauline religion was only one form of the many syncretising efforts

to satisfy contemporary humanity's need of redemption by a fusion

of religious conceptions derived from different sources. So much the

greater was the danger which threatened to spring up on this side of

the youthful Church.

Gnosticism agreed with Christianity in its pessimistic valuation of

the world, in its belief in the inability of man to obtain religious

salvation by himself, in the necessity for a divine mediation of

"Life." Like Christianity, it expected the deliverance of the oppressed

souls of men by a supernatural Redeemer. He came down from Heaven

upon earth and assumed a human form, establishing, through a mystic

union with himself, the connection between the spheres of heaven and

earth. He thereby guarantees to mankind an eternal life in a bliss

to come. Gnosticism also involves a completely dualistic philosophy

in its opposition of God and world, of spirit and matter, of soul

and body, &c.; but all its efforts are directed to overcoming these

contradictions by supernatural mediation and magical contrivances. It

treats the "Gnosis," the knowledge, the proper insight into the

coherence of things, as the necessary condition of redemption. The

individual must know that his soul comes from God, that it is only

temporarily confined in this prison of the body, and that it is

intended for something higher than to be lost here in the obscurity

of ignorance, of evil and of sin; so that he is already freed from

the trammels of the flesh, and finds a new life for himself. The

God-Redeemer descended upon earth to impart this knowledge to mankind;

and Gnosticism pledges itself, on the basis of the "revelation"

received directly from God, to open to those who strive for the

highest knowledge all the heights and depths of Heaven and of earth.

This Gnosticism of the first century after Christ was a wonderfully

opalescent and intricate structure--half religious speculation, half

religion, a mixture of Theosophy, uncritical mythological superstition,

and deep religious mysticism. In it Babylonian beliefs as to Gods and

stars, Parsee mythology, and Indian doctrines of metempsychosis and

Karma were combined with Jewish theology and Mystery-rites of Western

Asia; and through the whole blew a breath of Hellenic philosophy,

which chiefly strove to fix the fantastic creatures of speculation

in a comprehensible form, and to work up the confusion of Oriental

licence and extravagance of thought into the form of a philosophical

view of the world. The Gnostics also called their mediating deity,

as we have already seen of the Mandaic sect of the Nassenes, "Jesus,"

and indulged in a picture rendering of his pre-worldly existence and

supernatural divine majesty. They agreed with the Christians that

Jesus had been "human."

The extravagant metaphysical conception which they had of Jesus at

the same time prevented them from dealing seriously with the idea of

his manhood. So that they either maintained that the celestial Christ

had attached himself to the man Jesus in a purely external way, and

indeed, first on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan, and only

temporarily, i.e., up to the Passion--it being only the "man" Jesus

who suffered death (Basilides, Cerinthus); or they thought of Jesus as

having assumed merely a ghostly body--and consequently thought that all

his human actions took place merely as pure appearance (Saturninus,

Valentinus, Marcion). But how little they managed to penetrate into

the centre of the Christian doctrine of redemption and to value the

fundamental significance of the Christ-figure, is shown by the fact

that they thought of Christ merely as one mediator among countless

others. It is shown also by the romantic and florid description of the

spirits or "æons," who are supposed to travel backwards and forwards

between heaven and earth, leading their lives apart. These played a

great part in the Gnostic systems.

It was a matter of course that the Christian faith had to take

exception to such a fantastic and external treatment of the idea of

the God-man. The Pauline Christianity was distinct from Gnosticism,

with which it was most closely connected, just in this, that it was

in earnest with the "manhood" of Jesus. It was still more serious

that the Gnostics combined with their extreme dualism an outspokenly

anti-Jewish character. For this in the close relationship between

Gnosticism and Christianity would necessarily frighten the Jews from

the Gospel, and incite only too many against the young religion. But

the Jews formed the factor with which early Christianity had first of

all to reckon. In addition to this the Gnostics, from the standpoint of

their spiritualistic conception of God, turned to contempt of the world

and asceticism. They commended sexual continence, rejected marriage,

and wished to know nothing either of Christ's or of man's bodily

resurrection. But in the West no propaganda of an ascetic religion

could succeed. And yet even with the Gnostics, as is so often the

case, asceticism only too frequently degenerated into unbridled

voluptuousness and libertinage, and the spiritual pride of those

chosen by God to knowledge, who were raised above the Mosaic Law,

threatened completely to tear apart the connection with Judaism

by its radical criticism of the Old Testament. In this Gnosticism

not only undermined the moral life of the communities, but also

brought the Gospel into discredit in other parts of the world. As

an independent religion, which expressly opposed all other worships,

and the adherents of which withdrew from the religious practices of

the State, even from any political activity whatsoever, Christianity

brought on itself the suspicion of the authorities and the hate of

the people, and incurred the prohibition of new religions and secret

sects (lex Julia majestatis). [505] So that Gnosticism, by taking it

from its Jewish native soil, drove Christianity into a conflict with

the Roman civil laws.

All these dangers, which threatened Christianity from the Gnostic

movement, were set aside in one stroke by the recognition of the true

"manhood" of Jesus, the assertion of the "historical" Jesus. This

preserved the connection, so important for the unhindered spread of

Christianity in the Roman Empire, with Judaism and its "revealed"

legality--the heteronomous and ritualistic character of which

had indeed been shown by Paul, and the moral content of which was

nevertheless adhered to by the Christians even later. It was made

possible, in default of any previous written documents of revelation,

even yet to regard the Old Testament in essentials as the authoritative

book of the new faith, and as a preparatory testimony to the final

revelation which appeared in Jesus. And most of all, it put a check

on Gnostic phantasy, in drawing together the perplexing plurality of

the Gnostic æons into the one figure of the World-redeemer and Saviour

Christ, in making the chief dogma the redeeming sacrificial death of

the Messiah, and in concentrating the religious man's attention on

this chief turning-point of all the historical events. This was the

reason why the Apologists and "Fathers" of Christianity, Ignatius,

Polycarp, Justin, Irenæus, &c., spoke with such decision in favour

of the actuality and true manhood of Jesus. It was not perhaps a

better historical knowledge which caused them to do this, but the

life-instinct of the Church, which knew only too well that its own

position and the prosecution of its religious task, in contrast with

the excitements of Gnosticism and its seductive attempts to explain

the world, was dependent on the belief in an historical Redeemer. So

the historical Jesus was from the beginning a dogma, a fiction,

caused by the religious and practical social needs, of the growing

and struggling Christian Church. This Jesus has, indeed, led it to

victory; not, however, as an historical reality, but as an idea; or,

in other words, not an historical Jesus, in the proper sense of the

word, a really human individual, but the pure idea of such a person,

is the patron-saint, the Genius of ecclesiastical Christianity, the

man who enabled it to overcome Gnosticism, Mithraism, and the other

religions of the Redeemer-Gods of Western Asia.

The importance of the fourth Gospel rests in having brought to

a final close these efforts of the Church to make history of the

Redeemer-figure Christ. Begun under the visible influence of the

Gnostic conception of the process of redemption, it meets Gnosticism

later as another Gospel; indeed, it seems saturated through and

through with the Gnostic attitude and outlook. To a certain degree

it shares with Gnosticism its anti-Jewish character. But at the same

time it adheres, with the Synoptics, to Jesus' historical activity,

and seeks to establish a kind of mediation between the essentially

metaphysical conception of the Gnostics and the essentially human

conception of the Synoptic Gospels.

The author who wrote the Gospel in the name of John, the "favourite

disciple of Jesus," probably about 140 A.D., agrees with Gnosticism in

its dualistic conception of the universe. On one side is the world,

the kingdom of darkness, deceit, and evil, in deadly enmity to the

divine kingdom of light, the kingdom of truth and life. At the head

of the divine kingdom is God, who is himself Light, Truth, Life,

and Spirit--following Parsee thought. At the head of the kingdom of

earth is Satan (Angromainyu). In the middle, between them, is placed

man. But mankind is also divided, as all the rest of existence,

into two essentially different kinds. The souls of the one part of

mankind are derived from God, those of the other from Satan. The

"children of God" are by nature destined for the good and are fit for

redemption. The "children of Satan"--among whom John, in agreement

with the Gnostics, counts the Jews before all--are not susceptible

of anything divine and are assigned to eternal damnation. In order to

accomplish redemption, God, from pure "Love" for the world, selected

Monogenes, his only-begotten Son, that is, the only being which, as the

child of God, was produced not by other beings, but by God himself. The

author of the Gospel fuses Monogenes with the Philonic Logos, who

in the Gnostic conception was only one of countless other æons, and

was a son of Monogenes, the divine reason, and so only a grandson

of God. At the same time, he transfers the whole "pleroma"--the

plurality of the æons into which, in the Gnostic conception, the

divine reality was divided--to the single principle of the Logos,

defines the Logos as the unique bearer of the whole fulness of divine

glory, as the pre-existent creator of the world; and calls him also,

since he is in essence identical with God his "Father," the source

of life, the light, the truth, and the spirit of the universe.

And how then does the Logos bring about redemption? He becomes flesh,

that is, he assumes the form of the "man" Jesus, without, however,

ceasing to be the supernatural Logos, and as such brings to men the

"Life" which he himself is, by revealing wisdom and love. As revealer

of wisdom he is the "light of the world"; he opens to men the secret

of their filial relation to God; he teaches them, by knowing God,

to understand themselves and the world; he collects about himself the

children of God, who are scattered through the world, in a united and

brotherly society; and gives them, in imitating his own personality,

the "light of life"--that is, he inwardly enlightens and elevates

them. As revealer of love he not only assumes the human form and

the renunciation of his divine bliss connected with it, but as a

"good shepherd" he lays down his life for his flock; he saves them

from the power of Satan, from the terrors of darkness, and sacrifices

himself for his people, in order through this highest testimony of

his love for men, through the complete surrender of his life, to

regain the life which he really is, and to return to his celestial

glory. This is the meaning of Christ's work of redemption, that men

by faith and love become inwardly united with him and so with God;

whereby they gain the "life" in the higher spirit. For though Christ

himself may return to God, his spirit still lives on earth. As the

"second Paraclete" or agent, the Spirit proceeds with the Saviour's

work of redemption, arouses and strengthens the faith in Christ and

the love for him and for the Brotherhood, thereby mediating for them

the "Life," and leading them after their death into the eternal bliss.

In all this the influence of Gnosticism and of the Philonic doctrine

of the Logos is unmistakable, and it is very probable that the

author of the fourth Gospel was influenced by the recollection,

still living at Ephesus, of the Ephesian Heraclitus' Logos, in his

attachment to Philo and to the latter's more detailed exposition of the

Hellenic Logos-philosophy. But he fundamentally differs from Philo and

Gnosticism in his assertion that the Logos "was made flesh," sojourned

on earth in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, and suffered death. It

is true, however, that the Evangelist is more persistent in this

assertion than successful in delineating a real man, notwithstanding

his use of the Synoptic accounts of the personal fate of Jesus. The

idea of the divine nature of the Saviour is the one that prevails

in his writings. The "historical picture" which came down to him was

forcibly rectified, and the personality of Jesus was worked up into

something so wonderful, extraordinary, and supernatural that, if we

were in possession of the fourth Gospel alone, in all probability the

idea would hardly have occurred to any one that it was a treatment

of the life-story of an historical individual. And yet in this the

difference between the Johannine and the Synoptic Gospels is only a

slight one. For the Synoptic Jesus also is not really a man, but a

"superman," the original Christian community's God-man, cult-hero,

and mediator of salvation. And if it is settled that the quarrel

between the Church teachers and the Gnostic heretics hinged, not

on the divinity of Christ, in which they agreed, but rather on the

kind and degree of his humanity, then this "paradoxical fact" is

by itself sufficient to corroborate the assertion that the divinity

of the mediator of redemption was the only originally determined and

self-evident presupposition of the whole Christian faith; and that, on

the contrary, his humanity was doubtful even in the earliest times, and

for this reason alone could become a subject of the bitterest strife.

Indeed, even the author of the fourth Gospel did not bring about a real

fusion between the human person Jesus and the mythological person, the

Gnostic Son of God, who with Philo wavered, also in the form of the

Logos, between impersonal being and allegorical personality. All the

efforts to render comprehensible "the interfusion of the divine and the

human in the unity of the personal, its basis (essence) being divine,

its appearance a human life of Jesus," are frustrated even with the

so-called John by one fact. This fact is that a Logos considered as

a person can never be at once a human personality and yet have as its

basis and essence a divine personality, but can only be demoniacally

possessed by this latter, and can never be this latter itself. And so,

as Pfleiderer says, the Johannine Christ wavers throughout "between

a sublime truth and a ghostly monstrosity; the former, in so far as

he represents the ideal of the Son of God, and so the religion of

mankind, separated from all the accidents and limits of individuality

and nationality, of space and time--and the latter so far as he is the

mythical covering of a God sojourning on earth in human form." [506]

It is true that this fusion of the Gnostic Son of God and the Philonic

Logos with the Synoptic Jesus first fixed the hazy uncertainty of

mythological speculation and abstract thought in the clear form and

living individuality of the personal mediator of redemption. It brought

this personality nearer to the hearts of the faithful than any other

figure of religious belief, and thereby procured for the Christian

cult-god Jesus, in his pure humanity, his overflowing goodness and

benevolence, such a predominance over his divine competitors, Mithras,

Attis, and others, that by the side of Jesus these faded away into

empty shadows. The Gnostic ideal man, that is, the Platonic idea, and

the moral ideal of man merged in him directly into a unity. The miracle

of the union of God and man, over which the ancient world had so hotly

and so fruitlessly disputed, seemed to have found its realisation in

Christ. Christ was the "Wise man" of the Stoic philosophy, in whom was

united for them all that is most honourable in man; more than this,

he was the God-man, as he had been preached and demanded by Seneca

for the moral elevation of mankind. [507] The world was consequently

so ready to receive and so well prepared for his fundamental ideas

that we easily see why the Church Christianity took its stand on the

human personality of its redeeming principle with almost more decision

than on the divine character of Jesus. Nevertheless, in spite of

the majesty and sublimity, in spite of the immeasurable significance

which the accentuation of the true humanity of Jesus has had for the

development of Christianity, it remains true that on the other hand it

is just this which is the source of all the insoluble contradictions,

of all the insurmountable difficulties from which the Christian view

of the world suffers. This is the reason why that great idea, which

Christianity brought to the consciousness of the men of the West,

and through which it conquered Judaism--the idea of the God-man--was

utterly destroyed, and the true content of this religion was obscured,

hidden, and misrepresented in such disastrous fashion, that to-day it

is no longer possible to assent to its doctrine of redemption without

the sacrifice of the intellect.