GOSPEL-MAKING
§ 1. Tradition
According to the tradition preserved through Papias (d. circa 165),
from "John the presbyter," who is not pretended to have been John the
Apostle, the first gospels were those of Mark, the "interpreter" of
Peter, who set down in no chronological order the "sayings and doings"
of the Lord as he had gathered them from Peter; and of Matthew, who
wrote the logia or sayings "in the Hebrew dialect" [369]--presumably
Aramaic. This, the earliest written tradition concerning the matter
embodied in the gospels, is preserved to us from Papias' lost
"Exposition of the Dominical [370] Oracles" (Logiôn kyriakôn) by
Eusebius. For his own part, Papias professed to set more store by what
he received from Aristion and the Presbyter John and other disciples of
the Lord than by anything "out of books." And it chances that he gave
out as a Dominical Oracle [371] thus certificated a crude picture of
millennial marvels which is actually taken from either the Apocalypse
of Baruch, which here imitated the Book of Enoch, or from an older
source. [372] Concerning this utterance of the Lord, further, Papias
narrated a conversation between Jesus and Judas, in which the latter
figures as a freethinker, expressing disbelief in the prediction.
Eusebius, scandalized by such testimony, pronounced Papias a man of
small understanding. But he is the first Christian authority as to
the history of the gospels; and the very fact that he set less store
by them than by oral tradition is evidence that he had no reason for
thinking them more authoritative than the matter that reached him by
word of mouth. It may be that he knew only Greek, and that he could
not read for himself the Aramaic logia, concerning which he says that
"every one interpreted them for himself as he was able." From the
logia and the proto-Mark to the first two synoptics the evolution
can only be guessed. No one now claims that we possess the original
documents even in translation. Matthew as it stands is admittedly
not a translation; and Dr. Conybeare, who idly alleges that I pay no
heed to the order of priority of the gospels, and insists chronically
on the general priority of Mark, avows that "Mark, the main source
of the first and third evangelists, is himself no original writer,
but a compiler, who pieces together and edits earlier documents in
which his predecessors had written down popular traditions of the
miracles and passion of Jesus." [373] And he predicates in one part
"four stages of documentary development." [374] How in this state of
things the existing Mark can be proved to be the main source of Matthew
and Luke is not and cannot be explained. Mark too is admittedly not
a translation from Aramaic; but some of his sources may have been.
Concerning Matthew, again, the tradition runs that according to
Papias he told a story of a woman accused of many sins before the
Lord; and Eusebius adds, apparently on his own part, that this
is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. If this was
the story (now bracketed in R.V.) found only in late copies of the
fourth gospel, the "Hebrew" gospel contained matter notably special
to itself; and such is the conclusion established by a collation
of all the 33 fragments preserved. "We arrive ... at a Gospel (a)
in great part independent of the extant text of our gospels, and (b)
showing no signs of relationship to Mark or John, but (c) bearing a
very marked affinity to Matthew, and (d) a less constant but still
obvious affinity to Luke." [375] The hypothesis of Nicholson is "that
Matthew wrote at different times the canonical gospel and the gospel
according to the Hebrews, or at least that large part of the latter
which runs parallel to the former." [376]
On this view, "Matthew" in one of his versions deliberately omitted (1)
the remarkable story of the woman taken in adultery; (2) the remarkable
story that "the mother of the Lord and his brethren" proposed to him
that they should all go and be baptized by John, whereupon he asked
"Wherein have I sinned?" but added: "except perchance this very
thing that I have said in ignorance," and went accordingly; (3) the
statement that at baptism Jesus saw the dove "entering into him"; (4)
the further item that "the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended
and rested upon him," addressing him as "My son"; and (5) Jesus'
use of the phrase, "My mother, the Holy Spirit." Such a hypothesis,
if accepted, deprives of all meaning the notion of an "author" of
a document. The only fair inference is that a Greek translation of
the Hebrew gospel was one of the sources of the present Matthew,
and that either (a) many of its details have been rejected, or (b)
that many of the preserved fragments were additions to the original.
On either view, we must pronounce that the Hebrew gospel, as exhibited
in the fragments, has none of the marks of a real biographical
record. The items of narrative are wholly supernaturalist; the items
of teaching belong to the more advanced Jewish ethic which we find
progressively developed from Matthew to Luke. Once more, the critical
inference is either (a) that the ethically-minded among the Jesuist
"prophets" set out by putting approved doctrines in the mouth of the
legendary Saviour-God, whereafter doctrinary episodes were invented
for cult purposes, or (b) that the miraculous life was first pieced
out in terms of Old Testament prophecies held for Messianic. Having
regard to the ethical nullity of the primary evangel posited in the
synoptics, the presumption is wholly against any primary manufacture
of new logia. If we take the Sermon on the Mount as typical, the
matter is all pre-Christian. [377] If we pronounce the method of the
first canonical gospel to be secondary in relation to that of Mark,
the ethical element enters only after the cult has gone a long way,
and is then Jewish matter subsumed, as in the Didachê.
On bases so laid, there accrue a multitude of expletions, stones added
to the cairn, as: episodes favouring this or that view of the proper
Messianic heredity; of the Messiah's ascetic or non-ascetic character;
of his attitude for or against Samaritans; of his thaumaturgic
principles; of the universality or selectness of the salvation he
brings; of his attitude towards the Roman power, towards divorce,
towards the Scribes and Pharisees, and so on. Up to the point of the
establishment of something like a Canon, the longer the cult lasted,
the greater would be the variety of the teaching. Different views of
the descent and character of the Messiah, put forward by Davidists
and non-Davidists, Nazarites and non-Nazarites, Jews and Samaritans,
would all tend to find currency, and all would tend to find a place
in the scroll of some group, whence they could ill be ousted by any
"Catholic" movement. Still later, definitely anti-Jewish matter
is grafted piecemeal by Gentile adherents: the "good Samaritan"
is an impeachment of Jewish character; and the legendary apostles
are progressively belittled--notably so in the mystery play which
finally supersedes the earlier accounts of the Tragedy.
That such a general process actually took place is of necessity
admitted by the biographical school, their problem consisting in
delimiting the amount of tradition which they can plausibly claim as
genuine. From the point of that delimitation they posit a process of
doctrinal and other myth-making. The decision now claimed is that there
is no point of scientific delimitation, and that the process which
they carry forward from an arbitrarily fixed point must logically be
carried backwards.
No more general or more far-reaching result can be reached by a
mere collation and analysis of the synoptics on purely documentary
lines--a process which has gone on for a century without even a
documentary decision. The conclusion forced upon Schmiedel, even
on the assumption of the historicity of Jesus, that none of the
current theories of gospel-composition can meet the problem, [378]
becomes part of the case of the myth-theory. The assumption that a
"source," once established, gives a historic foundation, is no more
tenable in this than in any other case of a challenged myth; and
the current methods of establishing sources, rooted as they are in
the assumption of historicity, are often quite arbitrary even when
they profess to follow documentary tests. Nevertheless, the normal
pressure of criticism is seen driving champions of the priority of
Mark to the confession that Mark not only contains late additions
but is in itself a secondary or tertiary document, pointing to an
earlier Mark, an Ur-Markus. The primary flaw in the process is the
habit of looking to an author rather than at a compilation; and this
habit roots in the assumption of historicity. At no point can we be
sure whether we are reading a transcript of oral lore or a redaction.
Granting that Mark has pervading peculiarities of diction which suggest
one hand, we are still not entitled to say that such peculiarities
would not be adopted by a redactor. Again, as against the relative
terseness or simplicity of a number of passages which suggest
an earlier form, we have many which by their relative diffuseness
admittedly suggest deliberate elaboration. [379] And if we are to ask
ourselves what was likely to be the method of an early evangelist,
how shall we reconcile the "in the stern, asleep on the cushion" (iv,
38) with the absolute traditionalism and supernaturalism of the first
chapter? John, "clothed with camel's hair," is simply a duplicate of
Elijah. [380] Is one realistic detail to pass for personal knowledge
when the other is sheer typology? In the opening chapter, Jesus comes
as the promised "Lord," is prophesied of by John as the Coming One,
is hailed by God from heaven as his beloved son, sees the heavens rent
asunder and the Spirit descending as a dove, fasts forty days in the
wilderness, is ministered to by angels, calls on men to follow him
at his first word, proceeds to give marvellous teaching of which not
a word is preserved, is hailed by a demoniac as the Holy One of God,
expels a devil, cures a fever instantaneously, heals a multitude, casts
out many devils, who know him, goes through the synagogues of Galilee,
casting out devils and preaching, cures a leper instantaneously,
commands secrecy, is disobeyed, and is then flocked-to by more
multitudes. And we are invited to believe that we are reading the
biography of a real man, who always speaks to Jews as one Jew to
another, and is "not too bright and good for human nature's daily
food." And the confident champion of this biographical theory assures
us that we "need not doubt" that Jesus was a "successful exorcist."
§ 2. Schmiedel's Tests
Either the first chapter of Mark is primordial gospel-writing or
it is not. If it is, the biographical theory is as idle as those
ridiculed by Socrates in the Phædrus. If it is not, upon what does
the biographical theory found? The details of "mending their nets" and
"in the boat with the hired servants"? Professor Schmiedel, conscious
of the unreality of such narrative, falls back upon nine selected
texts, seven of them in Mark, which he claims as "pillars" of a real
biography of Jesus, [381] on the score that they present him as (a)
flouted in his pretensions or (b) himself disclaiming deity, or (c)
declining to work wonders, or (d) apparently denying a miracle story,
or (e) crying out to God on the cross that he is forsaken. Now, of
all such texts, only b and e types can have any such evidential force
as Schmiedel ascribes to them. [382] Type a counts for nothing: not
only the suffering Saviour-Gods but Apollo and Arês, to say nothing of
Hephaistos, Hêrê, and Aphroditê, are flouted in the pagan literature
which treats them as Gods. If to quote "he is beside himself" is to
prove historicity, why not quote the taunts to Jesus in the fourth
gospel, nay, the crucifixion itself?
In his able and interesting work on The Johannine Writings, Schmiedel
carefully developes the thesis that the Johannine Jesus is an invented
figure, conceived from the first as supernatural; and he puts among
other things the notable proposition that when Jesus weeps it is
implied by the evangelist that he does so not out of human sympathy,
but "simply because they [the kinsfolk of Lazarus] did not believe
in his power to work miracles." [383] Assuming for the argument's
sake that this is a true interpretation, we are driven to ask how the
thesis consists with that of the "pillar texts." The Johannine writer
starts with a supernatural Jesus, yet not only represents his attached
personal friends as not believing in his power to work miracles but
describes Jesus as weeping because of their unbelief. Nothing in Mark
is for moderns more incongruous with a supernaturalist view of Jesus,
yet Schmiedel sees no difficulty in believing that the Johannine
writer could deliberately frame the incongruity. Why then should even
an original author of Mark be held to regard Jesus as mortal because
in Mark he is flouted, or declines to work wonders, or is unable to
do so at Nazareth? If one writer can represent the Eternal Logos as
weeping from chagrin, why should not the other think him God even when
he cries out that God has forsaken him? And if, finally, the cry is
held to cite Psalm xxii, 1, and to imply the triumphant conclusion
of that psalm, what value has the passage for the critic's purpose?
An unbiassed criticism will of course recognize that the "Jesus wept"
may be an interpolation, for it is admitted that the Greek words
rendered "groaned in the spirit" may mean "was moved with indignation
in the spirit"; and, yet again, Martha is represented (xi, 22) as
avowing the belief that "even now" Jesus can raise Lazarus by the power
of God. Nay, the whole story may be an addition, not from the pen of
the writer who makes Jesus God. But equally the incongruities in Mark
may come of interpolation. A fair inference from the characteristics of
that document is that parts of it, notably the first dozen paragraphs,
represent a condensation of previously current matter, while others
are as plainly expansive; and even if these diversely motived sections
be from the same hand, interpolations might be made in either.
In reply to my argument [384] that texts in which Jesus figures
as a natural man would at most represent only Ebionitic views,
Professor Schmiedel puts the perplexing challenge, concerning the
Ebionites:--"Were they not also worshippers of Jesus as well? Were
they really men of such wickedness that they sought to bring the true
humanity of Jesus into acceptance by falsifying the Gospels? And
if they were, was it in their power to effect this falsification
with so great success?" [385] I cannot think that Dr. Schmiedel,
who is invariably candid, has thought out the positions here taken
up. The point that the Ebionites were "worshippers" of Jesus is
surely fatal to his own thesis. "Worshippers" could in their case
go on worshipping while maintaining that the worshipped one was
a mortal. Then to assert that he avowed himself a mortal was not
inconsistent with "worship." But the challenge obscures the issue;
and it is still more obscured when the Professor goes on to ask: "Had
they [the Ebionites] no predecessors in this view of his person? Must
we not suppose that precisely the earliest Christians, the actual
companions of Jesus--supposing Him really to have lived--were their
predecessors?" This argument, the Professor must see, has small
bearing on my position.
Three questions are involved, from the mythological point of view:
first, whether actual believers in an alleged divinity could represent
him as flouted, humiliated, or temporarily powerless; second, whether
the Ebionitic view of Jesus can be accounted for otherwise than as
the persistence of a proto-Christian view, arising among the immediate
adherents of a man Jesus; third, whether in the second century Jesuists
of Ebionitic views could invent, and insert in the gospels, sayings
of or concerning Jesus which were meant to countervail the belief in
his divinity.
On the first head, the answer is, as aforesaid, that throughout
all ancient religion we find derogatory views of deity constantly
entertained, at different stages of culture, without any clear
consciousness of incongruity. Yahweh in the Old Testament "repents"
that he made man; wrangles with Sarah; and is unable to overcome
worshippers of other Gods who have "chariots of iron." Always he is a
"jealous" God; and at a later stage he is alleged to be consciously
thwarted by the Israelites when they insist on having a king. These
are all priest-made stories. Among the early Greeks, the Gods are
still less godlike. In Homer, Athênê is almost the only deity who
is treated with habitual reverence: the others are so constantly
satirized, humanized, thwarted, or humiliated, that it is difficult
to associate reverence, in our sense, with the portrayal at all. The
statement of Arno Neumann that "it is impossible (here every historian
will agree) for one who worships a hero to think and speak in such
a way as to contradict or essentially modify his own worship" [386]
is an astonishingly uncritical pronouncement, which simply ignores
the main mass of ancient religious literature.
As regards the Demigods in particular it belongs to the very nature of
the case that they should be at times specially thwarted and reviled
by mortals, since it is their fate to die, albeit to rise again. If,
then, sayings were once invented which fastened human limitations upon
the Divine One for the Jesuists, there was nothing in the psychology of
worshippers on their intellectual plane that should make them pronounce
such sayings forgeries. As we have seen, even in the fourth gospel,
which puts the Divine One higher than ever, he is made, on Professor
Schmiedel's own view, to weep for sheer chagrin.
§ 3. Tendential Tests
More complex is the second question, as to how the Ebionite view of
Jesus emerged. But the answer has already been indicated in terms of
the myth-theory. And the question really cannot be answered on the
biographical view, for the canonical documents give no hint [387]
of a persistence of a "human" view among the early Christists as
against a "divine" one. The Judaizers are represented equally with
the Paulinists as making Jesus "Lord"; and it is on the Paulinist side
that we hear of adherents who do not believe in the resurrection. That
is really a divergence from the Judaistic view, for Jews in general
accepted immortality. The moment, however, we put the hypothesis
of a primitive cult of a Saviour-God whose sacrifice in some way
benefits men, and whose Sacrament is the machinery of that benefit,
we account for all the varieties of Jesuism known to us. The cult
was primordially Semitic, a thing on the outskirts of later Judaism,
which would be Judaized in so far as it came under Jewish influence,
and then theologically re-cast for Gentilism by Gentilizing Jews. Thus
there would be Judaistic Ebionites, and Jesuists such as those taught
by the Didachê, who would insist on connecting Jesus only with the
Eucharist, making him a subordinate figure, upon whose legend were
slowly grafted moral teachings.
On the other hand there would be non-Jewish Jesuists who valued the
Sacrament as they and others valued those of Paganism, counting
on magical benefits from it (as "Catholics" in general did for
many centuries), but making light of the Jewish future life. The
one thing in common was the primordial sacrament, at once Jewish
and non-Jewish. For Jews it would easily connect with the belief in
immortality, already much connected with Messianism; for Gentiles who
accepted the former belief, it would be still more easily connected
with a doctrine of future individual salvation. All is broadly
intelligible on the myth-theory. On the biographical theory, the
Jesuists of the Didachê are as inexplicable as the Gentile Jesuists
who denied a future life, or the Docetists who denied that Jesus had
come in the flesh.
Given such Jewish Jesuists, and given Docetism, the invention of
sayings and episodes in which Jesus is thwarted or flouted, or disavows
Godhood, is perfectly simple. Why Professor Schmiedel should raise the
question of "wickedness" in this connection I cannot divine. On his
own showing, the invention of sayings and episodes was normal among
the Christists in general; and it affected all of the synoptics. Does
he impute "wickedness" to the author of the fourth gospel, whom he
represents as inventing discourses and episodes systematically? The
Ebionites and Docetists had as much right to invent as any one else;
and once their inventions were current, they stood a fair chance
of being embodied in a gospel or gospels by reason of the general
incapacity of the Christists for critical reflection.
From the biographical standpoint, the Ebionites and their counterparts
the Nazaræans are indeed enigmatic. It is important to have a clear
view of what is known as to both sects. [388] Origen, noting that the
Hebrew name of the former means "the poor," angrily implies that it was
given to them as describing their poverty of mind, [389] but leaves
open the rational inference that the name originally described their
chosen social status, which connected with a belief in the speedy end
of the world. In his book Against Celsus, [390] he tells that they
include believers in the Virgin Birth and deniers of it. Here arises
the surmise that the former were the socii Ebionitarum mentioned by
Jerome, who diverged from Judaic views, and may have been of the
general cast of the Nazaræans. [391] These bodies constituted the
mass of the Christians in Judæa in the second century. According to
the ecclesiastical tradition, the church of Jerusalem had withdrawn
during the siege to Pella and the neighbouring region beyond the
Jordan. In the reign of Hadrian, after the revolt and destruction of
the Messiah Bar-Cochab, who had attempted to rebuild the temple, the
new Roman city of Ælia Capitolina was built on the ruins of Jerusalem;
and in that no Jews were permitted to dwell. Only those Christians
who renounced Judaic usages, then, could enter; and a number of such
Christians, Jew and Gentile, did so. Others, probably including
both Ebionites and Nazaræans, remained at Pella, and these appear
to have furnished the types of heresy discussed by Irenæus, Origen,
Jerome, and Epiphanius under the head of Ebionism. Those who set up
in Jerusalem were in the way of substituting for "voluntary poverty"
a propaganda and organization which meant comfort. Those who stayed
behind would represent the primitive type.
Now, neither Ebionism nor Nazaræanism offers any semblance of
support for the biographical view. Some Ebionites denied the Virgin
Birth; some, presumably the Nazaræans in particular, accepted it,
the latter being described as accepting the canonical Matthew (or a
Hebrew gospel nearly equivalent) with the present opening chapters,
while the Ebionites had a Matthew without them. Of the two views,
neither testified to any impression made by a "personality." The Virgin
Birth myth is a reversion to universal folk-lore by way of enlarging
the supernaturalist claim: the Ebionite denial is either a rejection
of all purely human claim for Jesus or only supernaturalism with a
difference, inasmuch as it inferribly posits a divinization of the
Founder either at the moment of his baptism or at his anointing. His
"personality" is the one thing never heard of in the discussion, so
far as we can trace it. In one account, "the" Ebionites are said to
have alleged that Christ became so because he perfectly fulfilled
the law, and that they individually might become Christs if they
fulfilled it as perfectly. [392] Ebionites and Nazaræans between them,
on the biographical view, let slip all knowledge of the Sacred Places,
of Golgotha, of the place of the Sepulchre.
If it be asked how, on the biographical view, there came to be Jewish
Jesuists of the Ebionite type, men such as those described by Justin
Martyr and his Jewish antagonist Trypho, believing in a Jesus "anointed
by election" who thus became Christ, but adhering otherwise to Judaic
practices, [393] what is the answer? What idea, what teaching, had
Jesus left them? The notion which seems to have mainly differentiated
Ebionites from Jews was simply that Jesus had been the Messiah, and
that his Second Coming would mean the end of the world. Expectation of
the Second Coming would at once promote and be promoted by poverty,
which would thus have a special religious significance. Nazaræans,
on the other hand, were latterly marked by a general opposition to the
Pharisees. [394] But this could perfectly well be a simple development
of sectarianism. If it be claimed as a result of the teaching of Jesus,
what becomes of the other teaching as to the love of enemies? Which
species of teaching is supposed to have represented the "personality"?
Given a general hostility between Nazaræans and Pharisees, the
ascription of anti-Pharisaic teachings to the Master would have been
in the ordinary way of all Jewish doctrinal propaganda. In so far as
they acclaimed sincerity and denounced formalism, they are intelligible
as part of a general revolt against Judaic legalism. Nazaræans would
invent anti-Pharisaic teachings just as they or "Catholics" would
invent pro-Samaritan teachings. And in so far as the Ebionites resisted
the assimilation of fresh supernaturalist folk-lore they would tend
to put appropriate sayings in the mouth of the Master just as did the
others. They are expressly charged not only with inventing a saying
[395] in denunciation of sacrifices, by way of sanctifying their
vegetarianism, which was presumably an aspect of their poverty, but of
tampering in various ways with their texts. [396] This is precisely
what the gospel-makers in general did; and to impeach the Ebionites
in particular is merely to ignore the general procedure. When, then,
we say that Ebionites might well invent a saying in which the Master
was made to repudiate Godhood, and that such a saying might find its
way into many manuscripts, as did other passages from their Hebrew
gospel, it is quite irrelevant to raise questions of "wickedness"
and of "worship."
But it is important here to note the point, insisted on by Professor
W. B. Smith, that most of Professor Schmiedel's "pillar" texts
could be framed with no thought of lowering the status of Jesus,
while some, on the contrary, betray the motive of discrediting the
Jews. The story of Jesus' people (hoi par' autou, not "friends"
as in our versions) saying "He is beside himself" (Mk. iii, 21), is
simply a Gentile intimation that even among his own kin or associates
he was treated as a madman. The idea is exactly the same as that of
the story in the fourth gospel, that "the Jews" said he "had a devil"
and was a Samaritan. Similarly "tendential" is the avowal (Mk. vi, 5)
that at Nazareth the wonder-worker "could do no mighty work ... and
he marvelled because of their unbelief." Healing in other texts
is declared to depend on faith; and to call the people of Nazareth
unbelievers was either to explain why Jesus of Nazareth there had no
following or to emphasize the point that the Jews had rejected the
Lord. Such a doctrine, again, as that of Mt. xii, 31, that blasphemy
against the Son of Man was pardonable, was perfectly natural at a stage
at which the cult was seeking eagerly for converts. Had not Peter,
in the legend, denied his Lord with curses, and Paul persecuted the
Church to the death?
In other cases, the bearing of Professor Schmiedel's texts is so much
a matter of arbitrary interpretation that the debate is otiose; and
in yet others there are insoluble questions of text corruption. The
thesis that any text "could not have been invented," and must infer the
existence of a teacher regarded as mortal, is so infirm in logic that
it is not surprising to find it regarded with bitter dislike by the
orthodox, transparently honest as is Professor Schmiedel's use of it.
There is really more force in his argument [397] that the predictions
of the immediate re-appearance of the Christ after "the tribulation
of those days" could not have been invented long after the fall of
Jerusalem, the apparent impulse being rather to minimize them. They
may perfectly well have been predictions made at the approach of
danger by professed prophets. But it does not in the least follow
that they were made by one answering to the description of the
gospel Jesus, predicting his own Second Coming, though some one may
have so prophesied. Any Messiah would be "the Lord"; and the gospel
predictions as to false Christs tell of "many" Messiahs, every one
of whom would speak as "the Lord." Such utterances, after a little
while, could no more be discriminated by the Christists than the
certainly pre-Christian sayings put by their propagandists in the
mouth of Jesus. And, once a prediction had been written down, it
lived by the tenure of uncertainty that attached to all prediction
among blind believers. When one "tribulation" had apparently passed
without a Second Coming, there was nothing for it but to look forward
to the next.
After generations of expectation, the early eschatology of the Church
became a burden to its conductors, inasmuch as expectation of the end
of the world made for disorder, and neglect of industry; and Second
Thessalonians was written to explain away previous predictions
of imminent ending. After the whole mass of such prediction had
been falsified by ages of continuance, there was still no critical
reaction, simply because religious belief excludes the practice of
radical criticism. To this day, orthodoxy has no rational account to
give of the pervading doctrine of the New Testament as to the speedy
end of the world. The biographical school finds in it a measure of
support for its belief in a real Jesus, who shared the delusions of
his age. But as that explanation equally applies to all men in the
period, it gives the biographical view no standing as against the
myth-theory. Christian prophets spoke for "the Lord" just as Jewish
prophets did before them.
In this connection, finally, it has to be noted that Professor
Schmiedel finds an à priori authenticity in a prediction in which
Jesus claims supernatural status, though the ostensibly unhistorical
character of such claims was his avowed ground for positing the
"pillar-texts" which alone defied all skepticism. And the formula
in both cases is the same--"it could not have been invented." [398]
The major premiss involved is: "No passage could be invented which
would stultify the position of the believers." But do none of the
admitted inventions [399] in the gospels stultify the position of the
believers? The two genealogies do; the anti-Davidic passages stultify
these; the pro-Samaritan teaching stultifies the anti-Samaritan;
and so on through twenty cases of contradiction. M. Loisy, indeed,
claims the pro-Samaritan passage as genuine: does he then admit the
anti-Samaritan to be spurious?
The biographical school cannot have it both ways. The very fact that
they have to oust so many passages on the score of incompatibility
is the complete answer to the plea of "genuine because unsuitable
to the purposes of the propaganda." The fact that a multitude of
contradictions are left standing proves simply that when once an
awkward passage was installed it was nearly impossible to get rid of
it; because some copies were always left which retained it; and in
the stage of increasing respect for the written word it was generally
restored. The "Jesus" before Barabbas was at last ejected only because
everybody recoiled from it. Predictions were not so easily dropped.
On the page on which he claims that Jesus' prediction of his Second
Coming could not have been invented, Professor Schmiedel avows that
various passages in Mt. xxiv really belong to "a small composition,
perhaps Jewish, on the signs of the end of the world, written shortly
before the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70." If the one set of
passages are borrowed, why not the other? Was it unlikely that Jewish
eschatologists should predict the coming of the Son of Man at the
near end of the world, and that Jesuists should put the prediction in
the mouth of their Lord and make him say it of himself? The à priori
negative is quite untenable.
While, then, the argument from unsuitableness is logically barred for
the biographical school by their own frequent rejection of passages
on the score of incompatibility, no aspect or portion of the New
Testament supplies a conclusive argument against the mythological
view. The whole constitutes an intelligible set of growths from the
point of view of the myth-theory; and from no other is the medley
explicable. A biographical theory, having posited a Messiah whose
Messianic claim is a mystery, a Teacher whose alleged teachings are
a mass of conflicting tendencies, and whose disciples admittedly
have no Messianic gospel till after his inexplicable execution,
following on an impossible trial, may make the assumption that by way
of popular myth he was then fortuitously deified by Messianist Jews,
and later transformed by other Jews into a Saviour for Gentiles;
but the biographical theory cannot even pretend to account for the
Apocalypse and the Didachê; and it has to renounce its own ground
principle of "personality" in order to assimilate the Epistles. On
critical principles, assent must go to the theory which explains
things, reducing the otherwise inexplicable to a natural evolution
on the known lines and bases of hierology.
§ 4. Historic Summary
We may now bring together in one outline the series of inductive
hypotheses by which we seek to recover the natural evolution of the
historic cult.
1. A primitive Semitic sacramental cult, whose sacrament centres in a
slain Saviour-God, a Jesus, who has assimilated to an abstraction of
the victim annually sacrificed to him--as in the case of the cults of
Adonis and Attis, both also Asiatic. Of the sacrificial rite, which in
the historic cult is embodied in the Last Supper and the dramatized
story of the Passion, the memory was preserved in particular by a
Jewish rite of Jesus Barabbas, Jesus the Son of the Father, in which
a victim goes through a mock coronation, ending latterly, perhaps, in
a mock-execution, where once there had been an actual human sacrifice.
2. This cult, with its sacrament, existed sporadically in various
parts of Asia Minor, whence it spread to Greece and Egypt. Its forms
would vary, and under Jewish control the sacrificial sacrament tended
to be reduced to a Eucharist or thankoffering in which the "body and
blood" are only vaguely, if at all, reminiscent of the Divine One's
death. As a God can always be developed indefinitely out of a God-Name,
and personal Gods are historically but conceptual aggregates shaped
round names or functions, the adherents of this could proselytize
like others. When the Temple of Jerusalem fell in the year 70, the
adherents of the cult there had a new opportunity and motive, which
some of them actively embraced, to cut loose from the Judaic basis
and proclaim a religion of universal scope, freed from Judaic trammels
and claims. Economic motives played a considerable part in the process.
3. The first tendency of the new Jewish promoters had been to develop
the Saviour-God of the sacramental rite (which they may at this stage
have adopted in its "pagan" form, now taken as canonical) into a
Messiah who was to "come again," introducing the Jewish "kingdom
of heaven." At a later stage they adopted the rite of baptism,
traditionally associated with John, whom they represented as a
Forerunner of the Messiah who had met, baptized, and acclaimed him,
playing the part assigned by Jewish prophecy to Elias.
4. As time passed on, such a cult would of necessity die out among
Jews, in default of the promised "Second Coming." The connection of
the idea of salvation with a future life for all believers, Jew or
Gentile, gave it a new and larger lease of life throughout the Roman
Empire, in every part of which there were Asiatics. But the Jewish
doctrine of the Second Coming remained part of the developed teaching.
5. Further machinery was accordingly necessary to spread and sustain
the cult; and this was spontaneously provided by (a) developments
of the early and simple propagandist organization, and (b) provision
for the needs of the poor, who among the Gentiles as among the Jews
were the natural adherents of a faith promising the speedy closing
of the earthly scene. Richer sympathizers won esteem by giving their
aid; but the poor, as always, helped each other. The propaganda
included the services of travelling "prophets," and "apostles" who
would be the natural compilers and inventors of Jesuine lore. The
administrative organization, framed on Hellenistic lines, put more
and more power in the hands of the bishop, whose interest it was
to develop his diocese. At first the "prophets" and "apostles" were
strictly peripatetic, being called upon to avoid the appearance of
mercenariness. In course of time they were enabled to settle down,
being systematically provided for.
6. Under the hands of this organization grew up the Christian Sacred
Books, which gave the cult its footing as against, or rather alongside
of, the Jewish, which in the circumstances had an irresistible and
indispensable prestige. Thus on the literary side the Jewish influence
overlaid the non-Jewish, assimilating the outside elements of scattered
Jesuism. The earliest literature is Jewish, as in the case of the
Didachê, or a Jewish-Jesuist manipulation of outside Semitic matter,
as in the Apocalypse. On these foundations are laid "Christian" strata.
7. The Didachê ("Teaching of the Twelve Apostles of the Lord") was
primarily a brief manual of monotheistic and moral instruction used by
the Twelve Apostles of the Jewish High Priest. To this, Jesuist matter
was gradually added. The result was that "Twelve Apostles" became part
of the Christian tradition; and they had ultimately to be imposed on
the gospel record, which obviously had not originally that item.
8. The Epistles represent a polemic development, perhaps on the
basis of a few short Paulines. That of James, which has no specific
"Christian" colour, represents Judaic resistance, in the Ebionite
temper of "voluntary poverty," to the Gentilizing movement. The
Paulines carry on doctrinal debate and construction against the
Judaistic influence. The synoptic gospels, which in their present
forms were developing about the same time, reflect those struggles
primarily in anti-Samaritan and pro-Samaritan pronouncements,
both ascribed to Jesus. Primarily the gospels are Judaic, and the
Gentilizing movement had naturally not employed them. Paul is made
in effect to disclaim their aid. In time they are adopted and partly
turned to anti-Judaic ends.
9. The chief Gentile achievement in the matter is the development of
the primitive sacrament-motive and ritual (fundamentally dramatic)
into the mystery-play which is transcribed in the closing chapters
of Matthew and Mark. Previous accounts of the foundation of the
Sacrament and the death of the Lord are now superseded by a vivid
though dramatically brief narrative in which the Jewish people
are collectively saddled with the guilt of his death and the Roman
government is crudely and impossibly exonerated. The apostles in
general are made to play a poor part; one plays an impossible rôle
of betrayer; and the legendary Judaizing apostle is made to deny his
Master. The whole story is thoroughly unhistorical, from the triumphal
Entry to the quasi-regal crucifixion; but it embodied the main ritual
features of the traditional human sacrifice, and, there being simply
no biographical record to compete with it, it held its ground. The
mystery-play in its complete form was inferribly developed and played
in a Gentile city; and its transcription probably coincided with its
cessation as a drama. But the Sacrament was long a quasi-secret rite.
10. The picture drawn in the Acts, in which Peter and Paul alike
"turn to the Gentiles"--Peter taking the initiative--is the work of
a late and discreet redactor, bent on reconciling Jewish and Gentile
factors. It is a highly factitious account of early Christism; but
it preserves traces of the early state of things, in which no Jesuine
teaching was pretended to be current, and the cult is seen to exist in
a scattered form independently of the central propaganda. It evidently
had a footing in Samaria. The synoptics themselves reveal the absence
of baptism from the early procedure of the cult. Only in the latest
of the four canonical gospels is it pretended that either Jesus or
his disciples had baptized.
11. The fourth gospel is only one more systematic step in the
process of myth-making. The biographical school, in giving this
up as unhistorical, in effect admits that the "personality" of the
alleged Teacher had been so ineffectual as to admit of a successful
interposition of a new and thoroughly mythical figure, entirely
supernatural in theory, but more "impressive" as a speaking and
quasi-human personage. The "Logos" of John is again an adaptation of
a Jewish adaptation of a pagan conception, the doctrine of the Logos
set forth by the Alexandrian Jew Philo having come through Greek and
Eastern channels. [400] There was no critical faculty in the early
Church that could secure its rejection, though it was somewhat slow
of acceptance. The doctrine of the Trinity is again an assimilation
from paganism, proximately Egyptian. [401]
Such, in outline, is our working hypothesis. As explained at the
outset, it is not supposed that so complex a problem can in so
brief a space and time be conclusively solved; and criticism will
doubtless involve modification when criticism is scientifically
applied. To such scientific criticism the production of a complete
outline may be an aid; previous debate, even when rational in temper,
having been spent on some of the "trees" without regard to the "wood"
in general. All that is claimed for the complete hypothesis is that
it is at all points inductively reached, and that for that reason it
squares better with the whole facts than any form of the biographical
theory--including the highly attenuated "eschatological" form in which
Jesus is conceived solely as a proclaimer of "the last things." That
thesis, indeed, reduces the biographical theory to complete nullity
by leaving the mass of the record without any explanation save the
mythical one, which suffices equally to account for eschatology.